Take the A Train: The Angeline Interview

[Angeline]

~There will now be a brief intermission while I start dinner. Please enjoy the refreshments and the entertainment. Annie, sorry about the jazz but I have to find ways to explain to Tzara about Lester Young~

This sounds like poetry to me.

 

[wakingDown]

Hi wD.

I'm glad you stopped in this thread and I appreciate your thanks. When someone new like you comes to Lit and I read their poems and see the talent there, well that is my favorite thing about being here: the opportunity to meet and learn with new people who bring fresh and different perspectives to writing. So thank you.

I have never been a moderator anywhere but here so I can only speak to this experience. For the most part I love it because while it is work it is also work that is my passion, you know? If I can help get new people to come here and write or "old" people to come back I know it's good for everyone here, including me. And that gets to your question about inspiration. I am definitely inspired by reading other poems here as well as by challenges (thank you Annie!). I read something that excites me or gets me thinking and then I'm writing. There is a wonderful synergy that develops when a large group of people are writing here and reading each others' poems, commenting on them. I look at some of the poems that have been written here lately, stuff from Tess and Harry, Remec, Neonurotic and even people like you who write and submit rather than write here on the forum and I see everyone's writing taking leaps forward. Harry wrote a poem here about his trip that is a tour de force. Tess just writes one gorgeous poem after another. And you have been taking chances, imo, in some of your poems, exploring new territory that is making your poetry more nuanced and complex. That is all inspiring to me.

I love being a moderator enough that I will make a fool of myself and start goofy threads or act like a cheerleader, schmaltz it up, whatever if it helps make poetry happen here. I'm a little nutty about that but ok with it. I do not like being a cop (oh how I don't like it) or telling people what to do, but this is a moderated forum and sometimes I have to go there to try to keep the forum from degenerating into people yelling at each other. My experience is that when that happens it makes everyone feel uncomfortable and distracts from writing. Of course sometimes I lose my temper, too. I have a long fuse but I'm human like the rest of you. I regret some of the things I've said in anger or things I've done here that seemed like a good idea at first but turned out not to be. I've made some dumb mistakes that resulted in my losing the friendship of a few people I really love here. That hurts. But, overall, I like doing this and I know my heart is in the right place about it.

Mistakes are invariably a part of the human condition, and must be taken as a matter of course, when they are made honestly and without malice, the way I see it. While we learn more from doing things right, we have more opportunities to try when we do things wrong, so the balance is what is important when deciding regret over mistakes. In your experience have seen any trend in whether there is a correlation in ability to span for writers? I mean, do those that write over a longer, more spaced out timeframe seem to be better or worse than those that produce in a shorter, faster paced flurry? I ask because I had an English teacher in high school who railed against 'flash in the pan' authors who would write a fistful of works and then step aside, their days writing at an end after only a few years of a high volume of output. She thought that nothing worthwhile could come of a short salvo that exhausted inspiration. I ran into her not long ago and we quickly found that old argument again. I would like to hear your opinion on the matter.

As an aside, I have never sat down and read through the entirety of Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, but I listen to Iron Maiden's take on it quite often. Not the same, I know, but if classic poetry came with Dave Murray on lead guitar more often I think that there would be a hell of a lot more English Literature majors in the world. Just my opinion.

 

[Angeline]

Tess brings up a really interesting topic; the melancholia I'm sure only poets find a way to express in such a manner that we're all driven to tears and catharsis through reading mere words!

I second the question about unhappiness related "juice flow" and add: I know you write to answer literotica-based challenges, personal emotions or current events. I've read your jazz, your political liberal leftiness take and so much more that (although even I didn't realize this until just now) I've been drawn to write my view of your view many times. So, inspirational you, what draws you to write a poem as opposed to a rant?

I do express my views in poems but I still try to keep it poetic. I think my poem Kate Smith Talks Back to the Mirror is one of the better poems I've written, but most people who commented on it saw it as a rant. It kind of was but I was trying to say it in the language of poetry. And I thought it was ironic that at least one person saw it as too "pro-America." It was, to me, a very ironic poem. I love America but I ain't blind to its many scars and problems, and that contradiction is really the source of the poem.

Also, if I'm too emotional about something, I can't write. My poems may be conceived from a place of emotion, but I need to be calm and clear-headed to actually write. And anything can inspire me, but music is probably my biggest source of inspiration. I usually listen to jazz or classical music while I write, but listening to almost anything can trigger a memory or help me conceive something I want to try to express in a poem. Music almost always helps me understand how I want the poem to sound.

Two more things about avoiding the rant. Senna Jawa, who has been a great friend to me these many years, helped me understand that the minute you start explaining or describing something, your poem starts going south. And he also taught me that you cannot succeed with a poem that doesn't express something true. If your own experience isn't in there somehow, the poem will sound false. I have thought about those two things so often that it is ingrained in me now. I'm not saying I succeed but it is what I'm aiming at when I write.

 

[Angeline]

You talk of bringing poets back, so who would you if you could?I would like to point out to readers that she once more kicked my backside to come back Some alas we can't get back but if you had a magic wand?

Well obviously the folks I've mentioned like smithpeter and Eve and Annaswirls. Rybka, who is no longer with us, told the dumbest jokes ever, but he was a damn good poet. And dear Boo Merengue who had the most contagious enthusiasm.

Lauren Hynde always kicked my ass like I've kicked yours. I'm just paying it forward. But I miss Lauren a lot.

And Tathagata. His poetry here has inspired me so many times. I think we lived parallel lives and just got each other. I'd read him and a poem would just start materializing in my thoughts.

Judo because I love her and she gets my jazz obsession. Sassy, too.

The Fool because I miss him.

And there are some people who I wish would write here more like darkmaas. He can be very inspiring. He helped me understand that you can think past single poems to groups of poems and books of poems. This is also true for me of Tzara and greenmountaineer. There are never enough of either of their poems here for me.

And karmadog. I love me some karmadog.

This is hard because I could go on and on. Liar, Icingsugar, Linbido, jthserra, Risia Sky, Perks. It's like potato chips. Hard to stop at a few.

But some people that I love will be back. The next interview is with Denis Hale. Those of you who don't know Denis will love him. He is a sweetheart of a guy who writes poetry that makes you feel like you're on a roller coaster. He only has a few poems here now, but he's sending me links to his newer stuff plus the two books he has published since he wrote here.

And after that, another surprise.

 

[champagne1982]

OMG! Don't turn this thread into an "I-can't-wait-for-a-4-hour-hard-on" Denis Hale thread... LOL no more foreshadowing, missy. Let's keep your interview rolling.
I'm sure you've written something that all the world (or at least the part of the world you showed it to) has gushed over and praised it, only to decide to hide it away for a while; then bring it back and get told that it's pure and utter trash. How do you cope with unfavourable review and critique besides the inevitable "thick skin"?

Or maybe, you feel you aren't receiving honest critique around here because the majority of us, all love what you do. How can we turn off our Angeline blindness and point a harsher glare at your poems? I know you're of an editing background so you must have some technique in your arsenal that allows you to form an unbiased opinion, which I hope you'll share.

 

[Angeline]

Mistakes are invariably a part of the human condition, and must be taken as a matter of course, when they are made honestly and without malice, the way I see it. While we learn more from doing things right, we have more opportunities to try when we do things wrong, so the balance is what is important when deciding regret over mistakes. In your experience have seen any trend in whether there is a correlation in ability to span for writers? I mean, do those that write over a longer, more spaced out timeframe seem to be better or worse than those that produce in a shorter, faster paced flurry? I ask because I had an English teacher in high school who railed against 'flash in the pan' authors who would write a fistful of works and then step aside, their days writing at an end after only a few years of a high volume of output. She thought that nothing worthwhile could come of a short salvo that exhausted inspiration. I ran into her not long ago and we quickly found that old argument again. I would like to hear your opinion on the matter.

As an aside, I have never sat down and read through the entirety of Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, but I listen to Iron Maiden's take on it quite often. Not the same, I know, but if classic poetry came with Dave Murray on lead guitar more often I think that there would be a hell of a lot more English Literature majors in the world. Just my opinion.

I think everyone's inspiration is different and sometimes it is there and sometimes it has to be dormant for a while. I have periods where I want to write every day and I can produce anywhere between one and three poems a day. When I'm "on" the poems come through fast. And then I'll have months, sometimes years, go by where I don't feel like I have anything new to say. I remember the first time I saw someone here was not writing anything new and I asked him why and that was his answer: "I don't have anything new to say." At the time I thought well you have to write daily anyway, but now I think we can burn out and it's good to take breaks and not do too much forcing. The first time I burned out from doing such intensive writing I thought I was done, but then it came back. Now I know it always will wax and wane.

And what I have found is that when I do take breaks I may not be writing but I'm still reading and things are happening under the surface. So I won't want to write for X time, but when I do again, my writing is improved. It's like I've moved in a new direction or thought of something different to try. So, to me, it isn't so much about being a flash in the pan as it is about writing when I know I have things to express and recognizing that just because I don't want to write today doesn't mean I won't want to forever.

I know what you mean about music. I realize it's probably not your taste, but when I was around 18, this made me fall in love with Yeats, while this made me cry because the words are so beautiful and made me want to read Hamlet again and again. I am a child of pop culture, but it has taken me to some really good places.

 

[Angeline]

OMG! Don't turn this thread into an "I-can't-wait-for-a-4-hour-hard-on" Denis Hale thread... LOL no more foreshadowing, missy. Let's keep your interview rolling.
I'm sure you've written something that all the world (or at least the part of the world you showed it to) has gushed over and praised it, only to decide to hide it away for a while; then bring it back and get told that it's pure and utter trash. How do you cope with unfavourable review and critique besides the inevitable "thick skin"?

Or maybe, you feel you aren't receiving honest critique around here because the majority of us, all love what you do. How can we turn off our Angeline blindness and point a harsher glare at your poems? I know you're of an editing background so you must have some technique in your arsenal that allows you to form an unbiased opinion, which I hope you'll share.

LOL. Sorry, I could not resist!

And it'll be more like a 168-hour hard-on because I believe we are starting on the 20th. And then Denis can take us all to the emergency room.

The one thing that I have never liked here is that the "Angeline" rep is sometimes like my own personal albatross. I sometimes fear I'm either expected to write in a certain way or that everyone gets sick of hearing what a great poet this "Angeline" person is, so they will automatically dismiss me. I really do appreciate anyone taking time to comment on my poems. But there are people here who have always been honest and critical with me (you are one of them), and that is like gold to me-- people who I feel react more to the poem and less to me when they comment. That is what I want when I get feedback. I don't care if it is a negative review. I'll either agree with it or I won't, but either way I will learn something valuable from what the person says. I mean everyone wants to be loved but I can separate constructive criticism from "omg she doesn't like me!"

The most important thing I learned from editing is that people see their writing as an extension of their self. If your poem is your third arm, you don't want someone breaking it. So I always try to emphasize what I think is good in a poem, be kind about what I think needs work and remind people that it's just my opinion. It's ok to disagree with me. It's your poem, not mine. I've worked with so many touchy authors that I do have a pretty thick skin myself because I know I'm not trying to be mean when I say I don't think something is working. I'm just trying to help.

 

[champagne1982]

Do you remember that thread CharleyH started where we had to send her a poem and then guess which poem all the others wrote. Eve was the spoiler in that one. I'm going to look it up, because I learned from that exercise that a) 'tess and I write in a similar style and b) no matter how well I think I know someone else's writing voice, that once you put a pair of "blinkers" on, you're really on a path where everyone sounds alike.

I can't remember if I guessed you correctly or if I was totally off in left field with your bunt. Maybe we should do a similar challenge with our newbs.

eta: Poet auteur

voila, c'est ca.

 

[CharleyH]

First a thanks to Tzara for making this happen and second a thanks to you, Ang, for revealing (exposing - lol) so much of yourself. I've been reading the entire conversation with intense interest and fascination and adore all of your reflections and experiences, both of life and of poetry, and to a certain extent the way that they interact, almost symbiotically.

While there are so many questions, I did want to delve a little into your reflections on your own poetry, if possible. You mentioned earlier that all of your poems feel unfinished, but I'm curious, how do you view your poet today as compared with the poet you were when you first found Lit, to the poet you were as a teen and/or to the poet you were when you wrote your very first (sort of) finished piece?

 

[butters]

Hey there, Angeline

Great interview so far, and I've just been off reading all the poetry entries and comments on the poet auteur thread champagne linked! So I got a little side-tracked.

So, how consciously do you apply poetic ticks of the trade as you write? Or is your process more organic, a more internal/visceral approach that gets modified after the fact in the editing process? As someone with well-developed skillsets, do you find you've used a whole lot of stuff that - possibly - you weren't aware of as you wrote? And do you now find that, although the editing process has to be thorough, there's often a lot less you actually change or discard? How hard do you find jettisoning a phrase you really really like from a piece because you know, ultimately, it makes the whole thing work better without it?

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Which are your favourites of your own poems? The ones that make you think 'Yes I got that down exactly how I wanted'.

 

[Angeline]

Do you remember that thread CharleyH started where we had to send her a poem and then guess which poem all the others wrote. Eve was the spoiler in that one. I'm going to look it up, because I learned from that exercise that a) 'tess and I write in a similar style and b) no matter how well I think I know someone else's writing voice, that once you put a pair of "blinkers" on, you're really on a path where everyone sounds alike.

I can't remember if I guessed you correctly or if I was totally off in left field with your bunt. Maybe we should do a similar challenge with our newbs.

eta: Poet auteur

voila, c'est ca.

It is so much fun to read these old threads we've been unearthing. I hope others here check them out, too, because you really can see that this forum has a unique personality that has stayed pretty consistent over time.

I think doing another one of those challenges is a superb idea! Will you run it? I'll help stick or move or whatever you want. I assume I won't be any better at guessing who the poets are this time around, but at least I wasn't alone and at least this time I'm not in the middle of a 1300 mile move! I am, however, sorry for all the whining I did about it in that thread. Rereading it I can see I was totally stressed from that move! But I wrote a poem! And you all knew I would, too.

 

[Angeline]

First a thanks to Tzara for making this happen and second a thanks to you, Ang, for revealing (exposing - lol) so much of yourself. I've been reading the entire conversation with intense interest and fascination and adore all of your reflections and experiences, both of life and of poetry, and to a certain extent the way that they interact, almost symbiotically.

While there are so many questions, I did want to delve a little into your reflections on your own poetry, if possible. You mentioned earlier that all of your poems feel unfinished, but I'm curious, how do you view your poet today as compared with the poet you were when you first found Lit, to the poet you were as a teen and/or to the poet you were when you wrote your very first (sort of) finished piece?

Hello darling. (Now you can tell Lauren we made out.) By the way, is the H in CharleyH for Hynde?

The first things I wrote were little stories to accompany pictures I'd draw. I remember I wrote one after a Mother's Day when my sister and I got my mom a dogwood tree and we all planted it in our front yard. I noticed there were rhymes in my story and I liked that. And I guess it stayed with me because I have written about that tree in many poems.

The poems I wrote as a teenager were, as you might imagine, angsty and awful. There were a lot of anti-war platitudes. But even then friends would read them and say over and over how good they were, so I know there was some kernel of poetry in them. I had a boyfriend with the wonderful name of Harmon Einstein (no relation lol) who was a musician (me and musicians is an um thing) and we wrote songs together and his band would play them and I thought I was like the coolest little tiny dancer evah.

Then in college I started reading a lot of literature, a lot of poetry and it was like feeding a fire: all this stuff I was learning and thinking about. I'd try to copy this poet's style or that one's. And then a friend (the woman I wrote the poem For AS about in the poem-a-week thread) gave me a copy of Howl and it kind of blew me away. Another friend gave me this book called The Young American Poets and in it were poems by Ted Berrigan, James Tate, Marvin Bell and on and on, like 600 pages of poems. It was a revelation. And because we were so close to NYC and because it was the mid-1970s, we would go to poetry readings there, mostly at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery. I can't even list everyone we saw read: Burroughs and Laurie Anderson, Patti Smith, Yoko Ono, Ginsberg (who also read at my school, twice), Helen Adam. That's just off the top of my head but there were so many. We also got a lot of wonderful people from Princeton and NYC teaching at my school (Douglass College, the women's college at Rutgers--a very anti-establishment feminist kind of place at the time). Adrienne Rich taught a few poetry seminars there. Paul Fussell, the great historian, was teaching at Rutgers College. David Oshinsky, another great historian, taught at Douglass. My faculty advisor was Elaine Showalter, another academic superstar. It was like being in a pressure cooker of words and ideas. This one friend and I would go to the mall with a tape recorder and record people's conversations as they passed and then go back to the dorms and make poems out of them. Sometimes we'd flip the channels on tv and record that and then make poems of them. We were trying to be as Avant-gard as we could lol. (But they were some pretty funny poems.)

The other thing that happened then was that my (then new) boyfriend got me listening to jazz. The boyfriend did not last my college years but I think I married the jazz!

I did not write poems for most of the years of my marriage. I was too busy and ultimately, too unhappy. But I was editing and, increasingly, getting involved in helping develop large-scale writing assessments, writing essay questions that kids across the country would write responses to and that we would then score. We had to develop scoring scales for different kinds of writing and consider what elements constitute good writing, not so good writing. It was really intensive work and then my company would send us out to train people to score all these essays. The place they sent us to do this was Iowa City, Iowa, which has corn and pigs and about a zillion poets studying at the University there. I'd have to be there for weeks at a time and all we did all day, every day, six days a week was talk about writing. And I'd go back to my hotel room and all of a sudden I was writing again. All these poems started coming out and the style was what I now think of as my poetic voice. I guess I'd consider those poems my first "real" poems.

Now, my poems are more crafted and considered. I think a lot more about things like where I want to break lines, if and where I want to use punctuation, how I want to incorporate space, do words give multiple meanings, am I being precise, am I using unnecessary words? Mostly I now understand that inspiration is only the beginning of a poem. And most recently I've been working to hear the rhythms in every line of poetry I write, not to perfect forms, but to understand how to manipulate the rhythm that underlies the meaning. (Thank you Tzara for the encouragement on that!).

Whew. I don't know if I answered your question, but that's my poetry journey to date. And now I need some lunch!

 

[CharleyH]

LOVE THIS! Thank you for sharing. xo

 

[Angeline]

Hey there, Angeline

Great interview so far, and I've just been off reading all the poetry entries and comments on the poet auteur thread champagne linked! So I got a little side-tracked.

So, how consciously do you apply poetic ticks of the trade as you write? Or is your process more organic, a more internal/visceral approach that gets modified after the fact in the editing process? As someone with well-developed skillsets, do you find you've used a whole lot of stuff that - possibly - you weren't aware of as you wrote? And do you now find that, although the editing process has to be thorough, there's often a lot less you actually change or discard? How hard do you find jettisoning a phrase you really really like from a piece because you know, ultimately, it makes the whole thing work better without it?

to you, too! This is more fun than I expected lol, but it's also a little like psychotherapy.

My process is both studied and organic imho. Elements of poetry like assonance, alliteration, repetitions, even rhyme and near-rhyme to an extent, have become internalized. As I am writing I do notice the words I'm choosing (obviously) or that something is or isn't working. But beyond that are the things that just show up in poems that I don't even notice until after I've written and edited and go back to read. It might be a metaphor that I don't really recall thinking about as I wrote or a word that has layers of meaning germane to the subject of my poem. It seems like some weird synchronicity to me when I notice it, but of course it can't be coincidental because it's bubbling up from my subconscious and into the poem.

Please someone tell me I am not the only one who experiences this when they write!

My dream is that someday this will happen for me with meter. I am working on it.

As to your other question, a novelist I adore, John Irving, says that sometimes you have to kill your children. If something is wrong in the poem it doesn't matter how attached I am to it, it needs to be fixed. It may take me a little time to come to terms with it, but I do try. And hey, if it's that great a metaphor or phrase or even word, I will use it somewhere else I can make it work.

For years my ethos has been take away, but now I think I'm trying to see it more as finding the right balance, which sometimes means adding. I've come to realize that adding words is good if they are the right words. Otherwise I will ruthlessly cut whatever I feel is dead weight. Again, not saying I always succeed but there is a conscious effort to do that.

 

[ishtat]

Lurking and Learning.

I'm a lurker here rather than anything else but have I hope learned a lot from reading you. I have noticed many times what an effective critic/editor you are. You share with Wicked Eve the ability to unerringly focus on that one thing in a poem which really needs looking at again.

The first time I noticed, was in a comment on a piece by (I think) Patrick Carrington which was a poem I had uncritically admired. I was almost shocked - then it dawned on me - blimey she's right! A point soon confirmed by Mr C.

That 'eye' is perhaps your teacher gene coming through and there have been many beneficiaries.

 

[wakingDown]

Thank you for taking the time to stand under the spotlight, I believe that this is revealing quite a bit of context for a lot of the critical observation that your supply to the community so often. A view of the person behind the advice. Not that you seem to be hidden away normally, but this kind of direct discussion about the views of those that are giving instruction or guidance is always a benefit to both sides. I valued your input before this closer look into your perspective, but now I have a better understanding of where it comes from, and that is a wonderful thing. How much value would you place on the source of a critique? Not in general, I suppose, but for example: From a close friend, would you worry overmuch about being patronized for fear of hurt feelings, or would you simply account for it from the start and assume it would be there? Would you place a high value on the words of an anonymous critic, someone who simply gives a short review and disappear? Or another poet, not necessarily a friend or rival, just an acquaintance. Would that be deemed neutral, or would you feel that bias could still linger there for whatever reason? I know that the review of peers is important for the growth of a poet, but how important is it for you? How much do you think is effective in most instances? I don't know if I am phrasing this well, forgive me if this doesn't make much sense.

 

[Angeline]

Which are your favourites of your own poems? The ones that make you think 'Yes I got that down exactly how I wanted'.

This turns out to be a much harder question to answer than I thought it would. You grow and change as a writer so when you look back you see how you would do things differently. Still I do have personal favorites.

I love Night Tripper, which is nominally about this guy, but really about the spirit of New Orleans. If you listen to the song I linked, you can hear the history of jazz in it: the booze-soaked piano and that voice sound straight out of a Storyville cathouse parlor. I believe I made that sound and its history come alive in that poem (and that was the point of writing it), but I also now see where I can improve it (and probably will try to do so).

I wrote a series of poems based on fairy tales and one, The Nightingale, got a lot of attention here. But I much prefer His Shadow Speaks, which is basically Peter Pan's story as told by his shadow. I just love it (such modesty!) and believe it is meant to be read aloud, not unlike a fairy tale.

Lavender Trumpet is a lousy title (and there's a typo I never fixed in it!), but it may be my favorite form poem I've written. I feel it captures essential things I wanted to express about WB Yeats, plus I really like writing terzanelles.

Finally Chambers Street is maybe my favorite of all because every word of it is true. It was my life. I didn't even change names. It is a love song to my old neighborhood so a real sentimental favorite for me.

 

[Angeline]

I'm a lurker here rather than anything else but have I hope learned a lot from reading you. I have noticed many times what an effective critic/editor you are. You share with Wicked Eve the ability to unerringly focus on that one thing in a poem which really needs looking at again.

The first time I noticed, was in a comment on a piece by (I think) Patrick Carrington which was a poem I had uncritically admired. I was almost shocked - then it dawned on me - blimey she's right! A point soon confirmed by Mr C.

That 'eye' is perhaps your teacher gene coming through and there have been many beneficiaries.

You do lurk more than post here. You added a lot to the conversations when you posted more here in what was a very good time on the forum. I only wish Patrick Carrington would come here again, too.

Thank you for the kind words. I started out as a teacher and I've taught a lot over the years, from little kids to adults, so I guess that never really leaves you though I do try not to sound pedantic. I think that's always a danger when you're passionate about something.

Whatever ability I have to see things in others' poems comes mostly from editing, I think. Copy-editing, where you are reading to find and correct errors in grammar and style is very close work. It forces you to consider language at the sentence level (does this word work, is it the best way to say whatever, the most correct way?), and that is not so different from looking at a line of poetry. And substantive editing, in which you look not only for stuff at the sentence level, but beyond to overall structure and effectiveness given the purpose of the writing, can be applied to whole poems. I've done a lot of both kinds of editing. It has been my career for over 30 years now. I have thought a lot about this shit!

It's good to talk with you again, Mr. Ishtat.

 

[Angeline]

Thank you for taking the time to stand under the spotlight, I believe that this is revealing quite a bit of context for a lot of the critical observation that your supply to the community so often. A view of the person behind the advice. Not that you seem to be hidden away normally, but this kind of direct discussion about the views of those that are giving instruction or guidance is always a benefit to both sides. I valued your input before this closer look into your perspective, but now I have a better understanding of where it comes from, and that is a wonderful thing. How much value would you place on the source of a critique? Not in general, I suppose, but for example: From a close friend, would you worry overmuch about being patronized for fear of hurt feelings, or would you simply account for it from the start and assume it would be there? Would you place a high value on the words of an anonymous critic, someone who simply gives a short review and disappear? Or another poet, not necessarily a friend or rival, just an acquaintance. Would that be deemed neutral, or would you feel that bias could still linger there for whatever reason? I know that the review of peers is important for the growth of a poet, but how important is it for you? How much do you think is effective in most instances? I don't know if I am phrasing this well, forgive me if this doesn't make much sense.

I think I understand. You can tell me if I don't. To me, there's value in any comment even if it's just "thanks and I liked your poem." Even from that, you know that someone connected with what you wrote. And if they say more specific things, positive or negative, you learn from that, too. But the bottom line is you have to extract what is useful in the comment and not get too attached to who said it or how it was said. People have all kinds of reasons for why they say what they say, but the only thing that matters to me is what helps or give me some insight.

I appreciate it when people say nice things. I'm sure most people who like me will say nice things in comments and be gentle about saying this or that is not working. But it is ok to be harsher, too. I can deal with it. I tend to get more aggrieved when people do it to others who I feel are less able to avoid taking it personally than I am.

Anyway when your poems are rejected for publication--something that definitely will happen if you submit them somewhere that doesn't just accept everything--you either develop a thick skin or you stop trying. I may have a lot of accolades here but overall I have had much more rejection from other places that publish poetry. So I guess I'm saying yes comments matter but you have you find your own confidence and make that your compass.

My sweetheart eagleyez, who I met on this forum (ten years ago next month!) is a really good writer. He knows his stuff. But he loves me so no matter what I read to him, he'll smile at me and say "that's really good." So you know I try to keep it all in perspective (but when his eyes light up when he says it I know that means it really is good).

 

[butters]

foggy bones

now there's a phrase to conjure with

 

[Angeline]

...What’s her favorite color? Comfort food? Beatles song? (One sung by John I’ll bet.)

...

Oh, and “Why Lester Young and not, say, Dexter Gordon or Charlie Parker?” I’m especially curious about that one.

We’re open for questions, people. Fire away.

Color: Dark Green

Comfort Food: Pizza and ice cream. Pizza followed by ice cream makes me really happy. I sound like an 8-year-old but there you have it.

Beatles Song: You were right, of course

With Lester Young, it is not just the music. When the tenor saxophone became part of the jazz sound the most popular player was Coleman Hawkins who had a big beefy sound. And he's wonderful. Lester Young's sound is the opposite: it's very light and ethereal yet he could also make that sound be bluesy and urgent. I find it mesmerizing. Stan Getz totally ripped off Lester's sound (in fact one of Lester's bitter jokes later in life was "Stan Getz the money"), but a lot of players have emulated his sound, worked it into their own style. But you know this, I'm sure.

The other thing about Lester is that he really was kind of a poet. He practically had his own language, a kind of jazz-speak that he used to keep people he didn't want from understanding him. He created a lot of the Beat poetry vocabulary (allegedly), words like "bread" for "money." He named Billie Holiday "Lady Day." So he really had this poetic sensibility imo. In fact the Beats wrote more about him than any other jazz musician, so I think they saw something in his music and life that moved them in a certain direction as poets.

Many artists see metaphors about America in him, something iconic. I know I do. David Meltzer wrote a book-length poem about him. John Clellon Holmes based his novel The Horn on Lester. Dexter Gordon played a character based on Lester in the great film Round Midnight. (And yes that is Martin Scorcese in the film along with other luminaries.) I'm just following the tradition, I guess. There is just something about Lester. If you listen to him enough, you'll probably want to write about him, too.

 

[greenmountaineer]

I had a couple of questions, Angeline, relating to the wide swath of the NYC melting pot and how it may have affected your writing as well as how all your editing work made you a better poet; however, you seemed to have addressed those questions already, so I'll just say that "Chambers Street" really brought back memories, I probably worked in New Brunswick when you were at Douglas, and we probably passed each other in one of the shopping malls on US 1 sometime or another. (Or is it "some time or another," Madame Editor?(LOL))

I so much appreciate your poetry and what you do here as moderator.

 

[champagne1982]

to you, too! This is more fun than I expected lol, but it's also a little like psychotherapy.

My process is both studied and organic imho. Elements of poetry like assonance, alliteration, repetitions, even rhyme and near-rhyme to an extent, have become internalized. As I am writing I do notice the words I'm choosing (obviously) or that something is or isn't working. But beyond that are the things that just show up in poems that I don't even notice until after I've written and edited and go back to read. It might be a metaphor that I don't really recall thinking about as I wrote or a word that has layers of meaning germane to the subject of my poem. It seems like some weird synchronicity to me when I notice it, but of course it can't be coincidental because it's bubbling up from my subconscious and into the poem.

Please someone tell me I am not the only one who experiences this when they write!

It happens to me all of the time, like suddenly there's a rhyme in the middle of my free verse and it just works to perfection ... Like my e.e. cummings glosa; I had no idea I'd done such a thing until 2 days from when I posted it. Then I thought, how 'bout that! I like that it snuck in since it seems to flow seamlessly through the meter right back into that sense of fear I was trying to convey.

So, yes, Ange, you are not alone.

 

[theognis]

But yes you know me for the liberal, lefty, humanist hippie that I am who recycles and freaks out about global warming and what it will mean for my kids, so I would like, in general, to see less emphasis on fossil fuels and more on renewable resources. I don't want to see jobs lost but I also believe we can create jobs and improve our respective economies in the long run by creating a grid of alternate energy sources. So yeah count me with Neil and Paul though I am willing to listen and potentially be convinced of my wrongness. I'm a poet, not a scientist!

Hello, Angeline. I've made it clear in the past what I think of your poetry, so no need to go there again, but I thought I'd say something about your fear of global warming. I've spent a good deal of time studying the AGW hypothesis, and my advice to you is to spend less time worrying about the planet overheating and more time preparing for the opposite.

Interesting thread.