The winner from the 32 Poems Prompt from the summer challenge is in! To read the winning poem, log into the forum.
Deborah Ager, editor and founder of 32 Poems, selected S Yount’s poem “In Lieu of Flowers Bring More Flowers.” Thanks so all who participated–and stay tuned for a new back-to-school prompt next week as well as the winner of the Smartish Pace Prompt challenge!
Hi Poets! We’re extending the deadline for week 4 of the summer challenge. The prompt for the week is inspired by Smartish Pace.
So if you haven’t yet registered for the forum or haven’t yet posted a poem to the forum, now’s your chance!
I met Maggie at a Smartish Pace event in May, and I had already kinda fallen in love with her from reading her poems “White Goldfish” and “On Finally Blaming Myself a Little Finally” in SP 16. Then we saw each other and fell in love with each other’s dresses and wonderful tales of, well, lots of different stuff. After asking her the following questions and reading her answers, I have the desire to ask her many more questions; if you do, too, go for it in the comments section!
Maggie received her BA at Denison University and MFA at West Virginia University. She lives in Pittsburgh.
Oh and, don’t forget about this week’s prompt — post those poems in the forum!
Lucy: It was interesting to read your poems BEFORE I met you, because reading your poems, I wouldn’t have guessed that you were another late-twenties MFA woman. Because your poems feel a little bit magical, fictional, declarative, even MYSTICAL–where a lot of our peers’ poems are confessional, autobiographical, and lyric. What are some of your influences? where do you place yourself among young contemporary poets?
Maggie: This question really got me thinking, as I had never before thought of my poems as mystical (but I certainly like it)! I think that my poems are definitely rooted in the autobiographical lyric. There’s no denying that, I’m a confessional poet (at least for now). However, the touch of “magic” I have to credit to the stories of the saints that I read over and over while growing up. I was raised Catholic, and I simply could not get enough of the doomed lives of martyrs. Terrible things were always happening to these people, but their stories always ended with a miracle. As for where I stand among my contemporaries, I’m not exactly sure, partly because I think I am still developing my voice and style.
Lucy: Both of the poems in Smartish Pace are 10 lines, double spaced. How did you come across that form? When and why do you use it?
Maggie: I have no idea where this came from. I think it may have to do with Christine Garren’s poetry. Her book, “The Piercing” had a large effect on me; the clarity of her poems is incredible. Jorie Graham, too, is a favorite poet of mine and the the spacing she uses in “Never” is certainly an influence. I will say that I return to this double-spaced, short form over and over. It just seems to make the most sense the most often.
Lucy: That double-spaced form makes me think of what’s going on “between the lines,” before, after, and behind the poem. “White Goldfish” starts out in media res: “Another blackout, this one for days–” The poem is like the “flash of butter” in the pan, all the moments that flash into the available light and then go back into the darkness. How much writing and thinking and imagining is behind your poems?
Maggie: The story of the “White Goldfish” differs from other poems because it was inspired by a writing exercise I received in graduate school to “write a poem from my third book.” This exercise, of course, implied that I should write a poem that I would write many years down the road. However, the poem turned out to be very much a “present” poem in that I think that in many ways it is the epitome of the style of poems that I write now. However, the subject matter was inspired by a sort of apocalyptic vision of what the future might hold. In terms of imagining my style and voice in many years, this poem failed the assignment!
The majority of my poems are written with much less planning or intention behind them. They start with a line in my head, and then go from there. As I often tell my friends and family, I usually don’t know what a poem is “about” until it is finished. But I think most of us write like that, don’t we?
We know, we know–you don’t have to tell us. You’re worried about what’s going to happen when the summer challenge ends on Sunday. Don’t worry; we have a plan! Here are some things to look forward to at the Poetry Instigator in the weeks and months to come:
In the meantime, week 4 of the Summer Challenge, featuring Smartish Pace, is in full swing.
If you have suggestions, comments, complaints, corrections, or compliments, please let us know!
We love Smartish Pace’s website; it has poetry news, a section where you can submit questions for writers to answer (right now the Michael Collier and Carol Muske-Dukes are taking questions), videos from Smartish Pace readings, a juicy book reviews section, and interviews.
This got us thinking about what makes a great poetry website.
Lucy: When I had a full-time job, basically all I did all day was read poetry websites (if you happen to work at Tax Analysts, that’s not true. I actually copy edited all day. If you don’t work at Tax Analysts, it IS true; I did read about poetry all day).
A lot of the poetry sites I love on the web satisfy my gossip-y little sister-ish interest in young contemporary post-MFA poets. Especially Every Other Day, Kate Greenstreet’s interviews with emerging poets about getting their first books published. And Here Comes Everybody. And I love reading online journals like Diagram and Story South, both of which always have new stuff to read and interesting new poets and writers all the time.
And I went to Web Del Sol when I couldn’t find anything to read elsewhere, because on its amazing main page –or “portal,” as it accurately calls itself–there are links to all sorts of great poetry sites, essays, poems, reviews, and more.
I got really obsessed with Ron Silliman’s blog for a while but I’m not including it as one of my links, because I had to wean myself off it–I couldn’t stop thinking about it, even after I got home from work. I’d wake up thinking about it. It was unhealthy.
Eleanor’s top five favorite sites
The blog that I really get into quite often is John Gallaher’s. I think he covers some really interesting poetry topics, and I love his last book: Map of the Folded World.
Basically, the rest of my links are quite standard and boring, but really good for me during the school year.
The American Academy of Poets
The Library of Congress Poetry Site
Poet and the Poem Webcast
The Poetry Archive
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/
What do you think makes a great poetry site? What sites do you go to every day, or most days? What non-poetry sites inspire you as a poet? Let us know in the comments section!
The winner from the So to Speak prompt from the summer challenge is in! To read the winning poem, log into the forum.
Megan Ronan, Poetry Editor of So to Speak had this to say about the judging prociess and John’s poem: (more…)
Welcome to the fourth and final week of our SUMMER CHALLENGE! This week we’ll feature Smartish Pace, a journal out of Baltimore edited by Stephen Reichert. And now … this week’s prompt!
[by Lucy & Ellie]
Smartish Pace’s aesthetic, it feels to us, is narrative AND fragmentary, storyteller-ish and lyric. This week, write a poem that tells a story, but incorporate non-narrative elements into the poem–whether through form, sentence structure, voice, or anything else. We have some narratives possibilities to choose from–or supply your own:
Curtis Blow, the first superstar rapper, just turned 50.
“A Moroccan Oven That’s Open to All”
“Looking for a MAN with a very expensive sports car”
**The deadline for submitting your So to Speak prompted poems for the contest is 12am Monday August 3, 2009 (i.e., the stroke of midnight on Sunday night)
What, you haven’t yet registered for our summer challenge? Go, get instigated!
To change your password or figure out what’s going on, check out our FAQs or drop us a line.
Hi All! Just a friendly reminder to post your poems by midnight this evening– same time same place as the previous two weeks to be considered for the free subscription to 32 Poems. We love reading your work!
-Ellie & Lucy
Hi Instigators! We hope that you all are enjoying this summer challenge as much as we are. It’s been fun so far to get to read everyone’s poems and blog and blog and blog about the different journals.
With one week left to go on the challenge, we wanted to check in with you all and see how your poems are going? So please feel free to jump in and leave comments on any of the questions:
-How is your writing going as you have to write a poem a week?
-Are the prompts challenging you? Pushing you in new directions for your writing?
-What kinds of prompts would you like to see on this site in the future?
-Any thing in general about your poems that you’d like to share?
Posted by Eleanor Tipton
I’d like to spend a little time highlighting some of the authors from recent issues.
Reamy Jansen’s Two Ways of Not Hearing is a brilliant poem. He compares the loss of hearing with images of blurred vision in order to create a texture of silence that I find compelling.
First, bits of things begin to go, a swatch of sound here, another there like condensation in the mirror, as you squint to see your face.
After this opening into the first image of water and vision, the poem moves into a methodical repetition of things known, assumed, apprehended which creates a negative space of what is not heard.
Students you ask to repeat themselves, you knowing they can't pronounce a thing, knowing your wife is just talking to herself only sometimes and mouth somewhere else, assuming you'll pick it up, but you don't, and give out with a nod, a dumbshow of apprehension to hide the panic. But she's not worried because you tell her the first alto is Benny Carter, now ninety six, the next is Johnny Hodges, and the last, Bird. But you know you've memorized all that.
Here, the names of the musicians provide a respite from the repetition of things known, but this simply increases the tension that comes with the confession in the following line that these were memorized facts. (more…)
Powered by WordPress