kc trommer || making the world safe for poesy

Corky, Corky with a Spoon, Joop

2011-04-04T04:21:00.000-07:00

My poem "First Map" has been selected for an honorary mention for Southword Journal, based in Cork, Ireland, home of UCC, the Shaky Bridge to Sunday's Well, potato salad sandwiches, Robert O'Leary and Connor Kinelly, breakfasts with Bretje, and a whole host of other memories . . .

World o Poesy

2011-03-07T21:30:00.000-08:00

Since we are a small community (practical invisible to everyone but ourselves but, seen by us through the myopic lens of our genre, we are of Staggering Import), why not hold ourselves up to a higher standard rather than the subpar, low-grade, below standard non-standard standard that poets seem to find acceptable? Why not do right by each other?

To wit: If I submit something in May 2009, let it not be March 2011 when I hear back yea or nay. Let me also not have been the one to folow up on the submission (twice). Let me not be told in January 2010 that my submission is "still being considered" and then, in February 2011 that my submission has been lost, would I please resend it? If those things do come to pass, do not then pass on the poems (ha!) and encourage me to resubmit again in the future.

You know, when the clocks run more slowly and time is not of the essence.

Right, Willow Springs? Does the 30 Years in tagline refer to turnaround time?
Lame ass. Lame.

Also, a word to the wise to the makers of poetry journals and magazines: stop sending your submission form along with a rejection notice. Let the rejection be just that, not also an entreaty. You waste paper.

So, sue me

2011-01-19T15:05:00.000-08:00

I am now in possession of the cutest mammal in North America. He is so dear, so sweet, such a laugher. Sleep has been elusive, and equally elusive has been my ability to sit at my desk and write, sleepily or otherwise. My boy is napping now, in a carrier, next to my heart. I can hear him breathing. My brain is emerging from the fog of new parenthood--sharper and clearer for having been fogged in. I am thinking about art and poetry, about attention and what I value. I thank him for this, for making my life make sense so suddenly. More soon.

Sound Advice from Mr. Pound

2010-07-18T13:27:00.000-07:00

Merwin, beret tilted at a not-so-rakish angle, told the Times about approaching Pound for advice on how to become a poet, and Pound "told him to write 75 lines every day. Pound also suggested taking up poetry translation to learn what could be done with language". That's in the spirit of putting in the requisite 10,000 hours. With regards to translation, have a looksee at this wee and illuminating tome when you have a moment.

Wordle Me Happy

2010-07-10T08:45:00.000-07:00

Heard about this site via the Times and dumped a poem in to see what it would do. Here is my villanelle "Magritte's The Titanic Days (1928)", all Wordled as it were.

Sayeth the Times:
This self-described “toy” allows students to analyze word frequency in any text, from a poem to a science book chapter, by simply copying and pasting “a bunch of text” into the box on the top of this page. Click on “go” and you’ll get a snapshot of the most common words in that text as shown by size. (The most frequently appearing words appear larger.)

Here's also a sestina that I'm working on, Wordled up.

Sunnysider named as Queens Poet Laureate

2010-07-03T07:22:00.000-07:00

The next time to apply is in 2013.

Art Show & Fair

2010-06-08T05:02:00.001-07:00

If you're around Sunnyside this weekend, I will be showing one of my collages in the juried art show "Portrait of the Exquisite," which will open Sunday, June 13 (as part of Queens Art Express) at Bliss Bistro (45-20 Skillman at 46th/Bliss). The show will be up until July 18. Also on Sunday, June 13, I'll be selling prints along with other Sunnyside Artists during a one-day art fair (Skillman Avenue at 44th Street; 1-5 p.m.). Come by and say hello!

"Baker's Dozen" a triolet

2010-03-03T23:47:00.001-08:00

Viva Iviva!

2010-03-03T23:45:00.000-08:00

The talented, wry, and lovely Iviva Olenick is stitching up some of my poems. "Baker's Dozen" is a triolet that I have also realized as a video poem (see above). I love Iviva's handiwork and am so pleased to be collaborating with her.

I highly recommend her classes for those with nimble fingers. She's teaching this weekend at 3rd Ward in Brooklyn and at Pratt.

"Marginalia" with a little help from my friends at the Sunday Salon in late January 2010

2010-03-03T23:40:00.000-08:00

MARGIE Love

2010-01-31T20:38:00.000-08:00

Justin and I appear in the same issue (Volume 8, pages 79 and 359, respectively), along with my friend Troy Jollimore. Check it!

Poesy Peeps

2010-01-27T08:11:00.000-08:00

As a testimony to the ongoing love affair between The Sycamore Review and me, I submit this piece of evidence. Love those people!

With love and admiration also for Bill Carpenter (author of Rain, and other fine poetry collections and novels) and Thylias Moss, proto-Forker.

Always happy to do a reading for you fine people.

2010-01-17T05:54:00.000-08:00

January 24 @ 7 p.m.

I'll be reading in good company at The Sunday Salon Reading Series in the semi-secret nook of their new East Village locale. Honored to read with the peerless Suzanne Wise, with the extra fine and funny husband, Justin Courter, and with the super supernumerary Rob Jacklowsky. This is going to be a fun one.

Poetry East No. 66

2009-12-05T10:39:00.000-08:00

My poem "Reformation" appears in the new issue of Poetry East. I am in some very fine company there.

I was waiting for it, and waiting, and it came along with some more ms. rejections. Buggery. I am sick of my ms. being beaten out by collections with some reference to birds in the title. I know poets are enamored of birds (how could one not know this--look in any lit mag and they'll be there, swooping about, lying quivering in the poet's palm, & etc.) but really, people. There are a few other fascinating creatures out there.

Emily, too, hated to wait.

2009-11-16T12:40:00.000-08:00

"Dear Sir: Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?" asked Emily Dickinson of Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

Listen to Wineapple's interview on Diane Rhem's show via Public Radio Redux

Next!

2009-11-11T11:33:00.000-08:00

Oh, it's been a rough few work years, post-MFA, returning to New York and trying to get the work aspect of things working. When I first came back and fell into a university publications job that seemed to be a mash-up between corporate publishing and the DMV, complete with all the disgruntlement that those descriptions imply. I had to hop out of it and away from all the closed doors and toxic babble that haunted the place, and so I taught a bit, and commuted more than I taught, and faced the stacks of papers and the itty-bitty paycheck and decided to do something else. While I made that decision, the economy went in the toilet (and me without my plunger) and I looked and looked for work, ending up in university publications again.

Along the way, I taught a few poetry classes, and published some poems, sent out the ms. and fought with the mailbox. Coming back to New York with an MFA, I thought I should do something that showed I was a Legitimate Writer, and so I went into each of these jobs with that in mind. But, in the period of reflection offered to me by a few weeks of unemployment, I thought back over my work life. Whenever I have taken this approach--that of doing what I thought I should do based on a narrow set of skills that I particularly value--I've ended up feeling good about how I appeared on paper but not in my day-to-day doings. (I'm looking at you, Simon & Schuster.) Perhaps a new approach was in order?

From my early days in publishing, I knew that corporate publishing was just corporate life where the product happened to be books. When I left, I wanted to get far away from the manufacture of books and book culture so as to preserve my love of literature. (But later I did an MFA. Ahem.) Through a head hunter, I ended up interviewing for and securing a job with a private school. It was an all-boys private school on the Upper East Side--an unlikely place for outspoken, non-UES, progressive, feminist me, and a choice that confused some friends--but found that I loved being a part of a school community, particularly when finding community is hard in New York. I also valued having some aspect of my life that let me be hyper-organized, with my i dotting and t crossing. With that beast fed, I benefited from a decent paycheck and paid time off in the summer. For four years, I wrote poetry and let my avocation and my vocation exist in separate spheres.

I'm returning to work in a school beginning next week--this time a progressive place with an ambitious curriculum for its ambitious students. The position will let me do some admissions work and work with students as a teacher and a tutor. I'm hoping this job will carry me well into the next few years--into more writing, more teaching, and the opening up of more positive possibilities. Best of all, I'll get to talk with people all day long. The jobs I've had since coming back have all involved lonely hours writing and grading. I love to talk, to make people laugh, and to learn from other people, particularly students. This will be talking, talking, and more talking. I hope I get sick of it.

It seems like the kind of job I would not have known I wanted had I not fallen into working for a school after leaving publishing. But I always get in trouble (as most people do) when I decide what would be best for me, instead of paying attention to life's surprises and being honest about where I am. I was railing against the state of my resume, and along came something that speaks to the wide swath of skills I have cultivated while trying to figure out what I should be doing.

It's not a job where I have to write all say (as I do now), a situation that puts me off from going home and writing, nor is it teaching in an MFA program where all my poetry anxieties would stand out and be (I imagine) aggravated. It's something else.

I hope it will be a space where, plates spinning all around me, I will sneak the writing in.

A Nice Bit of Nester

2009-10-28T12:53:00.000-07:00

Everyone has a few goodbye-to-all-thats in them if they stick around for long enough. It's funny to watch it all play out, and Nester captures it nicely Even If He Is Overfond of Capping Things.

Nicholson Baker talking poetry.

2009-10-22T13:52:00.000-07:00

JN: What is the question at the beginning of Modernism?

NB: What’s the energy that motivates us? Is it the energy to make new, or is it simply the desire to break? If it’s just to break, if it’s just hostility, then it doesn’t get you very far. And in Marinetti and Pound there’s an awful lot of hostility, and a bossiness, of insisting that your way is the right way. A really good poem makes its case without making its case. It doesn’t insist that its way is the only way. That’s what’s so beautiful about “The Fish,” by Elizabeth Bishop. She just bends over the fish and looks it in the eye and then lets it go. Her description of what happened is just one description. She’s not insisting on something big. She’s not a manifesto writer. She’s a letter writer. Those are the two antipodes of Modernism, I think: manifestoes versus letters. A letter is anchored in a single day and is to a particular person and is not attempting to change anything.

NewLights Press Broadside Series

2009-09-09T08:33:00.000-07:00

I am honored that the talented Aaron Cohick, the mastermind and masterprinter behind NewLight Press, has selected my poem "Meat Cove, Cape Breton" for inclusion in his new broadside series. The first round of work includes selected pieces of poetry and prose by Brian Evenson, Brenda Iijima, Justin Sirois, John Yau, and yours truly. I met Aaron at the chapbook fair, held this spring at the Graduate Center, where I was completely blown away by his gorgeous books in which he effortlessly wedded art and text to make objects that seemed to open and reopen possibilities.

On the Platform

2009-08-12T08:46:00.000-07:00

August is a notoriously slow news month—molasses slow, even in interesting times—allowing the media spotlights to swing over and highlight the radiantly screechy Birthers, as well as the overheated Republicans who seem to enjoy embarrassing themselves (and all of America) at Town Hall meetings, and who seem unable to grasp the democratic concept of conversation. Listening seems quite a hard skill to master, but to live in a world with other people, master it one must.

I feel as if I am in a toxic cloud in the middle of a mild summer which has suddenly turned muggy. That toxic feeling (hopeless, dark, and wearying) is extending beyond the political realm and has polluted my feelings about poetry. For the most part, I have taken this month off from writing and reading poetry, as well as from submitting my work. (Though this morning I picked up and began to read Helen Vendler’s book on Yeats’ lyric form, Our Secret Discipline, and found it a balm for what’s ailing me.)

My ambivalence is borne out of discouragement, from the responses (and lack thereof) to my work but also a feeling that extreme mediocrity is pervading the country and the culture. When I commented into the hotbox of Facebook that I was sick of feeling sick of contemporary poetry, a friend responded by asking if I felt differently about contemporary art, which is just the kind of response that posting such a moan elicits and I should know better. (One friend, a poet, returned quickly with “I, too, dislike it.”) Because I’m less invested in contemporary art, I could say truthfully that I feel less disillusioned about it by sheer dint of not being as exposed to it (though I have emerged from PS1 a few times, stunned by all that wasn’t there). The very next day after this exchange, I opened the current issue of Poetry Magazine, whose usual offerings range from the predictable to the passable (punctuated with occasional happy surprises, such as the palindromic poems of Hailey Leithauser), to find an incursion of the conceptual and of Flarf,* whose name seems to be its most interesting aspect, and that ain't saying much.

Do I need to be familiar with a considerable number of the digits in pi? I do not. Do I care to review, in the pages of one of the country’s few leading, high-profile magazines, the chemical makeup of the ingredients of a piece of paper? I do not. Conceptual poetry, like conceptual art, is, more often than not, dull as dirt. Just write down your idea and don’t bother to actualize it, since all you really want--isn't it?--is a pat on the back for being clever. Pat, pat. Clever, ducky! Clever! I say. Now, off you go. I'm sorry that Poetry seems to feel the need to punch its altcred card. I have listened, and read, and listened to this kind of poetry and what I mostly find, with a few exceptions, is that it is hollow. It's about the poet's posture more than it is about anything else.

While I don’t think that this malaise I'm feeling is uncommon among artists of any generation, particularly when they are while on hiatus from making something, be it poems or paintings, I certainly don’t welcome it. I would love to feel that poetry is chugging back and forth across the American landscape, sending out wisps of poems worth reading from the smokestack, but I don’t. Perhaps it’s the curse of seeing too clearly (an arrogant assumption, I suppose), or of being worn out by having seen that, when given the chance, most contemporary poets take the path of most resistance, call it difficulty, and do not bother to try to meet any standards beyond keeping everything as close to the vest as possible. And that is just lazy, juvenile, and, ultimately, lonely. My biggest concern about the strong bent toward the conceptual in contemporary poetry is that such writing, if one can call it writing since it doesn’t particularly seem to engage in the use of the imagination nor does it seem to accept the premise that writing is about communication not about posturing, is about the surface of things.

I will not be the first nor the last person to say that, at this particular moment in history, we live on the surface, gliding from one idea or image lightly to the next. I have always looked to poetry to offer a deeper connection to other people, and have sought to find in poetry the voices that record shared moments of our humanity. I’m looking for a sense of connection amid the clutter and chaos, and a place to find joy. I look for this in poetry and in the world at large. Are these requests too lofty for contemporary American poetry? Too retro? Shall we dwell hereafter in irony, writhing on top of a pile of numbers and half-thoughts, sloughing disaffectedly? Where, exactly, is my train?

__________________________________________________________________________________________

*Flarf is more sandbox than it is Dionysian.

CBA Reading 7/22

2009-07-18T13:21:00.000-07:00

The TEXTFORM Series features readings and performances by writers whose methods of production, presentation, and distribution are a vital component of their work.

UPCOMING READING:
Wednesday, July 22, 6:30 pm

WITH READINGS BY:
Ari Banias
James Hoff
Patrick Lovelace
Lee Norton
Danny Snelson
KC Trommer

ORGANIZED BY:
Jeremy James Thompson

BIOS:
Ari Banias has poems in recent or upcoming issues of Literary Imagination, EOAGH, The Cincinnati Review, Field, Aufgabe, Love Among the Ruins, The Portable Boog Reader, and others. He teaches writing and literature, sells books, and runs Uncalled-for Readings, a queer reading series in Brooklyn, NY.

James Hoff is an artist living in New York City. He is the co-founder and editor of Primary Information, a non-profit publisher devoted to printing artists' books and multiples by artists both young and old. He was the co-editor of 0 To 9: The Complete Magazine 1967 - 1969 (Ugly Duckling Presse) and the editor of Aram Saroyan's Complete Minimal Poems (Ugly Duckling Presse), winner of the William Carlos Williams Book of the Year Award. With Primary Information he has edited publications and multiples by John Cage, the Art Workers' Coalition, DISBAND, Dan Graham, Robert Filliou, Al Hansen, Dick Higgins, Allan Kaprow, Dieter Roth, Seth Siegelaub, and Emmett Williams, among many others. He is the recent author of Topten (No Input Books) and co-author of Endless Nameless (No Input Books). Upcoming publications include Memoirs (No Input Books).

Patrick Lovelace is a poet, the publisher of Patrick Lovelace Editions, and the author of the blog By My Green Candle.

Lee Norton has work forthcoming in Hayden's Ferry Review, Sawbuck and Drunken Boat. A 2008 graduate of Wesleyan University, he lives in Brooklyn and works in New York.

Danny Snelson is an editor, writer, and archivist moving to Philadelphia. His online work can be found at UbuWeb, PennSound and Eclipse. He is the founder of Aphasic Letters (with Phoebe Springstubb) and No Input Books (with James Hoff). Forthcoming is an Autotypist edition of Testimony, an expanded recomposition in Deseret, the lost Mormon alphabet.

Jeremy James Thompson is a typographer and poet currently working in New York City. His work focuses on the process of collaboration, the reinvention of propaganda, and the defining of a practical avant-garde.

KC Trommer's poems have appeared in AGNI, The Antioch Review, Coconut, MARGIE, Octopus, The Sycamore Review and are forthcoming from Poetry East. A graduate of the MFA program at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, KC has been the recipient of an Academy of American Poets prize, as well as fellowships from the Maine Summer Arts Program, the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Prague Summer Program.

HOW MUCH:
Suggested admission: $10 / $5 members

WHERE:
The Center for Book Arts
28 West 27th Street, Third Floor
Between Broadway and Sixth Avenue
Subway: N, R, W to 28th Street; F, V to 23rd Street; 1 to 28th Street
www.centerforbookarts.org

Dear Editors

2009-07-09T06:30:00.001-07:00

Dear

Here is where I say nice things about the journal and your poetry selections. Here is where I say thank you for your encouraging responses to past submissions, which have made me hazard rejection once again.

Here is where I list the titles of submitted poems, and feel pleased with myself for how the titles look when read together, and the little poem they form within the quotation marks.

Here is where I try to impress you with my publication credits, my MFA degree, and the awards I've won, places I've attended for residencies. Then I name my talented husband and even, in some cases, try to direct you to my website.

Then I thank you for considering my work, and hope that you enjoy the enclosed.

I sign with a jaunty Cheers, knowing that some will be bothered by the faux-Britness of it, and that the ones I like will think something along the lines of "What a good sign off" and/or "I should gank that,"
KC
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
www.kctrommer.com

Oops, I did it again.

2009-06-30T08:38:00.000-07:00

Out goes the ms., this time in as final a form as I can muster. It's humiliating paying the contest fees, waiting forever to hear something, knowing that the likelihood of the ms. getting read carefully is almost nil, and wanting to not want or need recognition and wanting it still.

But now I have to think that I put that baby to bed, and someone will hopefully see its merits. At this point, 1/3 of it has been published in journals, so if I were to gather up those pages, lo! there I would have a hideous Frankenmoster of my poems.

In truth there's so much wrong with the contest process that it's absurd to even send the ms. out. That said, it does seem to me if presses are getting over 500+ submissions per contest that some changes are in order. Namely, ask for a sample of poems and not a whole ms. If you don't like my first 10 or 20 poems, you won't like the whole sheebang. And if you're that innundated, no one is reading the work anyway. So save some trees, some time, and some postage and ask for a smaller sample, and ask for more if you like what you see. Chances are there are only a few ms. that are really in play for any given contest, so why not save the bother for all involved?

Secondly, cut down on the grift. Don't charge more than $10 for a submission/reading fee. It's just insulting for poets to have to pay the publication costs and their competitor's winnings. For all the talk about how presses don't make money on poetry (I can think of a number of reasons why this is, but that's another post), I can do a little math and 500 x $25 = $12,500--it doesn't cost that much to pay a judge ($1,000) and screeners ($1,000) and print the books ($1,500) and the winner's winnings ($1,000). There's a goodly bit left over.

Thirdly, make sure that there is transparency in the process (something that Foetry helped instigate). I want to know who the judge is. The choice of judge tells you a lot about the press (as does their backlist) and it is a waste of time and money for me to send my work to some poets. They won't like it, and I would like to know who is on the docket to read my work if it makes it through the screeners. And a finer point, but one worth mentioning: email the contest results rather than requesting an SASE. More often than not, even when I have included an SASE, I haven't heard back from contests and have to find the info on the Web anyway. It would be a nice use of my submission/reading fee to have someone email the news. . .

Just a thunk.

Default Mode

2009-06-22T07:10:00.000-07:00

Special for you and all you poet-voiced readers out there.

I'm not saying I've never read this way, just saying enough already. Basta!

Love and kisses,
KC

Duotrope

2009-06-22T06:12:00.000-07:00

This is very handy and somehow escaped my notice until this weekend. Very handy indeed.

It's love between me and the Brooklyn Bridge

2009-06-17T13:17:00.000-07:00

Here are some photos of the wee flag o' poesy being flown by yours truly (and other Guiding Stars) at the fantastic Bridge Walk 2009, organized by the good poets of Poets House, which hasn't moved yet but which will soon move into luxe, rent-free space in Lower Manhattan. Just don't ask the PHers when exactly they will move.
They are tired of that question.

Reading Aloud

2009-06-16T04:46:00.000-07:00

In this piece, Klinkenborg touches on the shared experience of reading aloud. (Thanks to Peggy for the link.) Whenever J. and I go for a long drive, we bring books to read on our own and books to read to each other. This is one of the joys of our trips for me, as I love being read to and I love reading to J. while he drives. I highly recommend the practice. (PG Woodhouse is an excellent travelling companion, witty and light and not a backseat driver.) At home, J. and I read poetry to each other, which does indeed sound very Victorian. They did get some things right.

One thing that I ask my students to do in workshop is to read their poems aloud. Afterwards, I ask another student to read the poem so the poet can hear how it's received and interpreted. Poets, in this age of hyper-flat lines and dry diction, would do well to pay closer attention to the sounds of the words off the page. (Perhaps all those list poems and poems without lyricism would die off a bit?) I ask students to seek out poets reading thier poety, at PennSound, From the Fishhouse, and on the Academy of American Poets. I also load up the iPod with poetry podcasts to hear what I can hear. (Though of course some poets really think that Poet Voice is the voice poems should be read in.

Oy.)

We have gotten used to reading, and reading alone, to the detriment of understanding how poems work aurally and what it is we're giving readers. This is part of why I enjoy Linebreak's approach. One of the delights of memorizing a poem is discovering through repetition how a poem works and how its sounds hold it together, inscribing it in your mind, and then transmitting the poem to the world solely from memory. It's a gift you give to yourself, and one that you have with you always.

Upcoming readings

2009-06-15T11:41:00.000-07:00

Bring your eyes and ears.
Smelling salts optional.

Willing to kill . . .

2009-06-15T11:39:00.000-07:00

. . . if I hear another poet read in Poet Voice. It's the aural equivalent of pouring lye on a poem.

Discovering new language poetry in the junk mail pile. It has charm.

2009-06-15T06:45:00.000-07:00

Scamp Swathe

I.

feel gas fetid penes?
lives large give.
tops tops give pink!
rococo oakery flake outre.
fetid emir pant coatee.
penes lumper bay fetid.
seer slam gooey sleety!
chump fetid bled.
lumper sap cashew.
gooey peso aerate chalk.
cue slam graft flood?
sell warble pawn feel.
nopal sleety nimbus.
scamp swathe.
cue foci nopal ladder?
warble bled sleety mix?
gasper acuity flood aerate?
novel chump ape oakery?
feel moving lives.
lumper arise pupa cashew!
scamp estop keeker sell!
chalk feed tare.
swathe nibble slam renew.
shrink flood bounty ragout!

II.

cue tops budge luting?
cooker swathe gasper estop.
estop seer fully sap!
sleety sleety sin gypsa!
thyme arise cooker.
moving baboo potboy.
seer glover grouch give!
foci thyme.
valuer potion public.
foci acuity valuer aerate!
lumper tempi.
swathe smelt how fetid.
tops public agile.
novel palmy.
feel grouch bled.
large lives.
moving ingle aerate.
potboy swathe alb mix.
potboy chose ingle.
novel thyme outre tempi!
penes pawn tandem bay?
wen shrink pawn nimbus?
nibble seer elan cashew.
ape arise nopal ape?

When the accountant asked me, "How did these places get your poems without paying for them?" I just said, "It's a fair question."

2009-06-14T13:41:00.000-07:00

A Sarah Vowell knock-off at NPR offers up this bit of fluff, featuring the typical self-defeated poetry posture about how we love our obscurity. Not so, Keith! T'aint't so, Robert. Sorry, lads, but no.

I fly the flag o' poesy every day, and try to invite non-poets to the fun. (Groucho Marx glasses factor heavily in recruitment. Everybody loves Groucho.)

In its best forms*, poetry is transformative & economical**. Do we love the margins in which we dwell? Do we love that the only people who read poetry are other poets? I don't. Do we write only for other poets? I do not, though I hope my fellow poets, my most likely readers, think well of what I write. I want poetry to be read and enjoyed widely, not just by those, sitting on the subway, whose gaze happens to drift up because their iPods died, or those who only hear poetry on A Prairie Home Companion (his taste is very good), or read The New Yorker (has Muldoon made a change from Quinn? Brothers-in-paw? I think not.). There is so much more than what we (poets and non-poets alike) passively receive.

I would rather the point had been made that I have been making since the economy went into the toilet: the imagination is free. Use yours on breaks from looking for work, or to change your idea of what kind of work you want to do in order to accommodate writing poetry or making art rather than working around these. Make it your real work while you look for other work or reimagine a world in which investment bankers shop at TJ Maxx rather than Brooks Brothers.

I have a great idea: How about if poetry contests started charging a) NOTHING for ms. being considered or b) a reasonable fee (like $10, rather than the standard $25)? Those contest fees are absurd and many presses don't even return your SASE to let you know which poet d' won. Insult + injury + insult = the PoBiz.

Art should be free. Or cheap, cheap at least.

Or, barring that, perhaps more people who care about the arts should SUPPORT THE ARTS, buy books and not lattes, collages rather than cheeseburgers. Put your money where your MFA is. You know you haven't cut back that much. Cut back and fill up with art. It will feed you.

On the docket: one Recession Hiaku for you.

* ha ha
** all meanings intended

Poetry Whores

2009-06-07T11:27:00.000-07:00

Dust off your corsets and sharpen your quills. You can be a whore for poetry in more ways than thirty-seven.

But soft! What slam though yonder window breaks?

2009-06-05T11:11:00.001-07:00

Lil softie.

A wee history of MFA programs

2009-06-02T05:53:00.001-07:00

And the quick and dirty survey that responded to it.

I feel a rant/personal essay/bit of autobiography coming on.

UNHELPFUL EXPRESSIONS USED WITH ALARMING FREQUENCY IN MFA POETRY WORKSHOPS ACROSS AMERICA

2009-05-31T09:24:00.000-07:00

BUT ALSO AS APPLIED TO A SERIES OF POEMS I WROTE IN THE FALL OF 2006,
by KC Trommer, poet

the so-what question
use of the page
what about cutting the first two stanzas?
throat-clearing
engine-revving
it feels a little . . . expected
a record of the poet’s will
willfulness
willed
is this the poem it wants to be?

*

Just cleaning out the archives, peoples.

But who is making the world safe for poesy, that is the Q.

2009-05-28T13:31:00.000-07:00

via Touched by a Monkey, another great place for poesy.

Nouveau Po | Post Po Po

2009-05-25T10:15:00.000-07:00

I think you will know what kind o' poesy I'm talking about when I say, That is so so nouveau po.

Perhaps, per a friend's suggestion, post po po.

Or faux-po?

You know, you know, you know.

Poetry Collections: A Rude and Incomplete List

2009-05-21T05:24:00.001-07:00

Here's my list of favorite collections. Recommendations are welcome, particularly of specific collections to consider. I've bolded new additions. There are some people (I'm looking at you, Miz Bang) who I can't bring myself to list here, so they will remain forever off my book pile, to be read and enjoyed by others.

Akhmatova, Anna Poems of Akhmatova
Ali, Agha Shahid The Country Without a Post Office
Armantrout, Rae Next Life
Ashbery, John Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
Auden, W.H. Collected Poems
Auden, W.H. Collected Shorter Poems, 1930-1944
Berryman, John The Dream Songs
Berrigan, Ten The Sonnets
Bidart, Frank Desire
Bishop, Elizabeth The Complete Poems, 1927-1979
Blake, William Songs of Innocence and Experience
Bogan, Louise The Blue Estuaries: Poems: 1923-1968
Broumas, Olga Rave: Poems, 1975-1999
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Sonnets from the Portuguese
Buchanan, Oni What Animal
Carpenter, William Rain
Carson, Anne Glass, Irony, and God
Carson, Anne Men in the Off Hours
Chiasson, Dan Natural History
Collins, Billy Sailing Alone Around the Room
Courter, Justin The Death of the Poem and Other Paragraphs
Covey, Bruce Elapsing Speedway Organism
cummings, e.e. Complete Poems
Dickinson, Emily The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Doty, Mark My Alexandria: Poems
Eliot, T.S. Four Quartets
Eliot, T.S. The Wasteland and Other Poems
Emerson, Claudia Late Wife: Poems
Fanning, Robert The Seed Thieves
Ferlinghetti, Lawrence A Coney Island of the Mind
Flynn, Nick Some Ether: Poems
Forche, Carolyn The Country Between Us
Fragos, Emily Little Savage
Frost, Robert Collected Poems of Robert Frost
Ginsberg, Allen Howl
Glück, Louise Wild Iris
Goodison, Lorna Controlling the Silver
Graham, Jorie The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994
Graham, Jorie Overlord
Gregerson, Linda The Woman Who Died in Her Sleep
Gunn,Thom The Man with Night Sweats: Poems
Hamilton, Saskia Divide These
Hass, Robert Praise
Hass, Robert Sun Under Wood
Heaney, Seamus Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996
Herbert, Zbigniew Report From The Besieged City and Other Poems
Howe, Marie The Good Thief: Poems
Howe, Marie What the Living Do: Poems
Muldoon, Paul Poems 1968-1998
Jarman, Mark Epistles
Jollimore, Troy Tom Thomson in Purgatory
Jordan, A. Van Macnolia
Kandpal, Kawita Folding a River
Kees, Weldon The Collected Poems of Weldon Kees
Kelly, Brigit Pegeen Song
Kelly, Brigit Pegeen The Orchard
Kirby, David The Ha-Ha: Poems
Koch, Kenneth - which should I start with?
Komunyakaa, Yusef Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems
Komunyakaa, Yusef Talking Dirty to the Gods
Kooser, Ted Delights and Shadows
Kunitz, Stanley The Collected Poems
Lowell, Robert Collected Poems: Edited by Frank Bidart and David Gewanter
Manguso, Sarah Siste Viator
Marvin, Cate World's Tallest Disaster
McDaniel, Ray Murder (a Violet)
McHugh, Heather The Father of the Predicaments
McHugh, Heather Eyeshot
McMichael, James Four Good Things
Merwin, W.S. Migration
Moss, Thylias Slave Moth: A Narrative in Verse
O'Hara, Frank The Lunch Poems
Olds, Sharon The Gold Cell
Ovid Tales from Ovid
Plath, Sylvia Ariel
Pozzi, Antonia Breath: Poems and Letters
Prufer, Kevin Fallen From A Chariot
Reddy, Srikanth Facts for Visitors: Poems
Rich, Adrienne The Will to Change
Rilke, Rainer Maria Sonnets to Orpheus
Robinson, Edward Edward Arlington Robinson: Selected Poems
Roethke, Theodore The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
Ryan, Kay The Niagara River
Ryan, Michael New and Selected Poems
Seshadri, Vijay The Long Meadow
Siken, Richard Crush
Snyder, Gary Danger on Peaks
Stevens, Wallace Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens
Tate, James Shroud of the Gnome
Teicher, Craig Morgan Brenda Is In The Room And Other Poems
Wise, Suzanne The Kingdom of the Subjunctive
Whitman, Walt Leaves of Grass [best read with in a round and with wine and cheese]
Williams, William Carlos Spring and All
Wojahn, David Glassworks
Woodward, Jon Mister Goodbye Easter Island
Yeats, William Butler The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

I'm sure I'm missing a heap of them either through oversight or my own lack of industry; this is the list that comes to me off the top of my head (and my goodreads list).

I would welcome suggestions of books of criticism as well: Vendler, Orr, et al.

Dear "Normal School": Take This Rejection and Stick It

2009-05-18T09:43:00.000-07:00

Corrine Clegg Hales, Tim Skeen, and Brian Turner, Poetry Editors
The Normal School
5245 North Backer Avenue
M/S PB 98
California State University, Fresno
Fresno, CA 93740-8001

May 15, 2009

Dear Ms. Hales, Mr. Skeen, and Mr. Turner:

I received your sticker in the mail today: “I was rejected by The Normal School.” It’s obnoxious and it's rude. Please find it enclosed. You can keep it.

As a writer, it’s hard enough to face getting rejections without having them made into a joke. The least you can do is not be glib.

Perhaps some of you have forgotten what it’s like to send your work out and to hope and trust that it will be thoughtfully read and considered by the journals and magazines you send to. Perhaps publication has come easily for each of you, or perhaps you think other people should adopt a bullshit, disaffected posture where we all pretend we’re too cool to care if we get published or not.

What I write matters to me.

Anyone submitting to you should be treated with respect. I’m sure you’ll be cutting down on the number of submissions you receive with this juvenile approach. I’ll be saving my work and my postage for publications with more class.

Many happy returns,
KC Trommer

_________

Dear K.C.,

We're sorry that your poems were not accepted for publication and also sorry that you did not appreciate our sticker. Believe it or not, the response from others has been mostly positive. We too hate form rejection letters that don't even make an effort and we hoped our sticker might be a little more fun. Maybe not.

We're thinking of maybe including as part of our submission guidelines a request that writers tell us in their cover letters if they should happen to be rejected whether they would prefer a standard form rejection or a sticker. Some people like stickers. Some don't.

Best luck with your writing.

-- Editors
The Normal School

______________

Dear Editors:

Thanks for writing back, but I continue not to understand your thinking at all. Why would you foreground that someone should choose what kind of rejection he or she would like when first submitting? Why foreground rejection? Who submits thinking: hmm, what kind of rejection would I like to get? I chose no rejection. I choose a bunch of peonies and a beautiful letterpress edition of my poems and a wide readership, thank you very much.

Most of the poets I know are rather tender about rejection, and I don't think you'll hear from the people who are offended--that they were offended or by way of another submission.

Good luck with the journal.

Cheers,
KC

P.S. I love stickers. Just not rejection stickers, you see?

"These came close" et al

2009-05-15T19:47:00.000-07:00

These are now known as "rec'ceptances."

New Collages

2009-05-12T13:45:00.001-07:00

Have a gander, please.
If you like them, buy 'em. They ain't pricey!

And some of them need names. Your suggestions are welcome.

Letterpress Printing & Fine Press Publishing Seminar For Emerging Writers at the Center for Book Arts

2009-05-11T08:02:00.000-07:00

Intense, intensive, and excellent. Also: free.

The Center for Book Arts invites applications for Letterpress Printing & Fine Press Publishing Seminar For Emerging Writers. The next section of this seminar is scheduled for Thursday through Sunday, July 16 through 19, 2009. The seminar is tuition free for participants and includes the cost of materials. Those selected must attend the entire four-day workshop. Deadline June 1, 2009. details and application (PDF file)

Photos here.
My new po name is kctrOmmer. take that bell hooks.

Verboten Poem

2009-05-03T06:19:00.000-07:00

To compensate for being dictatorial (always an error), I'm writing a poem using the below overused and ugly poesy words (suggestions welcome):

Bird (Raven, Crow, Starling, Heron, etc.)
Apocalypse
Palimpsest
Soul
Shard
Mirror
Heart

...

Please Be Advised

2009-05-02T07:13:00.001-07:00

Dear Poets*:

The Apocalypse is a modern cliche.

Please make a note of it.

Best,
KC

P.S. Birds should also be stricken from the repitoire. Unless you are Heaney, in which case, you get a pass. The likelihood is that you are not Heaney and so might want to consider chucking the starlings, sparrows, ravens, crows & etc.

Thank you.

*and other writers, for that matter.

The Tollund Man

2009-04-29T15:27:00.000-07:00

Hear Heaney read "The Tollund Man" and see the peaceful head about which the poem is written.

Blue Plate Special

2009-04-29T09:52:00.000-07:00

As if the rejections themselves aren’t bad enough, today I got a rejection just for fun:

Dear Writer,

Thank you for your submission to __________. Unfortunately, we must pass at this time. Best of luck placing your work elsewhere.

Sincerely,
__________ Editors

And me:

Dear __________:

In looking at my records, I am not sure what submission your message refers to. I sent __________ a short story of mine in 2006 and a set of poems in 2007, and had received responses for both of those submissions.

Could you kindly let me know why I have received this rejection? If I sent something, I may have sent it in error.

Otherwise, I reject your rejection!

Cheers,
KC Trommer

It was a technical glitch but even so, it felt good to reject the rejection. It was kind of like breaking up with someone who you know's going to break up with you. I might start enclosing my rejections of rejections along with the poems. I could save us all a lot of paperwork and postage.

There's the World o Poesy (WoP), and then there's poesy. Know what I mean?

2009-04-29T06:00:00.000-07:00

The distinction is important to keep in mind, especially when so many are snatching for a piece of the same wee pie.

*

There was no poesy pie to fuss and fret over (my precious!) when you were sitting ________________________ reading __________________ and when __________________ was blowing your mind. There was just the amazement that words on a page could do what they were doing, and you wanted more.

*

Filling in the above blanks:

in your bedroom in Bangor, Maine, 113 Leighton Street, late January 1989
"Leda and the Swan"
Yeats

or

on the soft green grass of Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, June 1990
"Love"
William Carpenter

& etc.

*

The poetry matters; politics is for the savvy, the overinitiated, the insecure.