Book Reviews

I am learning that the best way to make a poetic footprint in the world is not only through publishing poetry. Well, I knew that a while ago. A mentor said so. But you refuse to acknowledge that poetry cannot feed you. You're like: fiction writers get paid to just write fiction. Then you just sound like a whiny writer who is unhappy with your lot. Maybe I am. Maybe I want the world to be like it was in the old days. When poetry mattered. Not to say poetry doesn't matter. It does. Of course it does. But what I mean is, when people could live off of their poetry. When people were sponsored by the state and governments and monarchies and officials to write poetry...for the people.

Anyways. It's not like writing book reviews is a chore. Well, it can be. Some places want you to be "objective" -- meaning, they want you to find something bad about a poetry book to say. I don't know that I think that is fair...a mentor of mine who writes several poetry books a month says he only writes book reviews for books he likes. Which is fair -- why would you intentionally put bad vibes out into the world? Especially if you are a poet yourself and someone may or will have the opportunity to review your book. Isn't the purpose of book reviews to say: hey, this book is out there...here's my take on it...see for yourself? That's what I believe they are for. They are exposure for the book/author being reviewed, and maybe even the reviewer.

Maybe it's like karma: I review your book and you review mine?

Anyways. I am writing this review....I hope to finish it tomorrow. It only needs to be about 500 words. I have a magazine ready and waiting. Which is, too, exciting.

Onward --

sieve

i love that word. i don't know why. it sounds almost like it's job.

today, i'm going to go through my poems with a dear, dear friend of mine and figure out which ones i am using to apply to graduate school(s). I need to narrow down about 40ish poems to 10. crazy, huh? that's why you ask a friend to help you.

i am currently re-reading ross gay's _against which_ and honoree fannone jeffer's _red clay suite_. it is here i am learning about rethinking the narratives and stories we tell in our poetry books. i am preparing _cartographer_ to send out again nearing the end or middle of december.

my looming loneliness has served as a sieve to figure out what people i really need in my life. it has been a hard process, filtering. but necessary. some people in your life actually do you harm, i'm learning. even if their intentions seem good. what may feel or what you may think feels good is actually stripping you away, down to nothing, down to the exposed nerve. some people are like candy to teeth. you're happy and happy until you have to get a root canal, and you'd wished you hadn't eaten so much in the first place -- but the damage is too deep, too far gone to take any of it back.

*sneeze #3 in the last hour*

i'm looking forward, i think, to some time away from this schedule i keep. some friends are coming into town for thanksgiving...and we're going to my friend's sister's house to eat and drink and be merry. hopefully things are fine. i believe they will be. but i miss my family. i miss cooking half of the thanksgiving meal myself. i miss eating and sleeping and getting up to eat again.

next thanksgiving i'm not spending it away.

'tis the season

Winter is a beast. It's not even winter yet. But it, already is a beast.

I'm a little homesick, I'm not going to lie. I've never really been this homesick before. A friend said he never experienced homesickness. I guess I could say that before now. Maybe it is the winter. Maybe it is I do not get enough vitamin D, or essential sun rays on my face and shoulders, because they're bundled up in layers upon layers of clothing.

I haven't really had a reason to get dressed up and go out. I've been a loser and staying inside. Granted, I get sucked into going out after work or a poetry reading, but I've not had a date or a real time set out to go and explore, to live, to just enjoy life and being alive. The cold does not facilitate this, either, as I just want to stay in my bed, in my room. Inside.

On the writing side of things, who are you reading? I realize this is a question I've come to hate. I'm always "reading" someone or something, but I dont really know what this means when folks ask it. Generally, this comes on the heels of me saying something like, "Yeh, I just put together another manuscript" or "yeh, I just did a poetry challenge." or something. I don't know. Do they want to know who is influencing my work?

I came to the conclusion that I read more fiction when I'm working on poetry. I read poetry to pass time on the train. (truth told) I read poetry when I am working on a specific poem and I remembered a poem I read in passing or a poet that I could look at to get my gears turning. But, truthfully, outside of Mahmoud Darwish....who I haven't read in a while, and I haven't even read the one book I have all the way through...is probably my knee-jerk answer, because people look for an answer a name, a book. As if they expect you to have an answer. I don't ever have an answer, but I say Darwish to appease them, to move the conversation along.

Is that bad of me to say? That I don't really read? That I expect people to read, but that I don't read. That's the wrong way of saying what I'm trying to say. I read. I could have a full on conversation about the last books of poetry I've read. I could give you my opinions and such. But it's hard for me to say "I'm reading x" when really what it seems they want is a favorite poet, which I do not or cannot say with assurance that I have. A favorite poet. And this puts me a crazy position. Because I know there may come a time when I will be interviewed or asked questions or people want to know the origins of my genius. And I guess, what I'm saying is that my foundation is not from reading. My foundation is from talking to people. To engaging. To writing and writing and writing. It is in the communities and conversations I build. It is in thinking about history and how to tell history in a poem. It is watching the world outside.

It does not come from a book.

Tuesday

I'm trying to be a better blogging citizen. I mean, I have people's blogs that I check everyday. Yet I do not update my life enough on this thing. Although, I must admit, it becomes challenging telling the same store several times over. I write most of my life in my journals/moleskins.

Today ends my November week-long poetry challenge. This has been a good one. I believe I love every poem I wrote, although several now I cannot remember.

Let's refresh. Here's the titles, at least, of the poems written this week. Everything is about Harlem.

Wednesday: M101L Uptown Bus
Thursday: P.S. 153 Auditorium
Friday: Bird Song
Saturday: 120th and Morningside
Sunday: Cerebral
Monday: 132nd and Adam Clayton Powell
Tuesday: Saturdays, 125th Street

The last two pieces are in form. Monday's poem is a Pantoum, as said. Today's poem I came and sat down at a cafe with a nice cup of coffee and pounded out a hefty sestina. It's probably one that I'm most proud of, and well, I've written a lot of sestinas. It is my #2 favorite form.

I believe I hit a momentum. I believe the momentum came when I finally let the project be a project instead of a bunch of poems in a folder. So. I think I'm going to try one more week. Or just continue as long as this lasts...as long as I have something. Although, I do believe that my turn to form is saying I am beginning to lose things to talk about. Weird conclusion, for some, I know. But I tend to turn to form when I have a poem I don't know how to shape or get out (my pantoum is about a homeless man & a severed 5$ bill on the ground at his feet)....or when I have a half-realized idea....I sit down at the table with it like a sudoku puzzle and move some things around and turn it and twist it until it fits into a poem. I think that's how my sestina arrived.

I might try a few more forms both to give some "weight" -- as form seems to do that for poetry books -- and because I feel like there are still some things that if I'm writing about Harlem I need to address.

What kind of things would you like to see about Harlem?

Monday update:

So I've got great news. Be sure I'll tell you all this in a few months, but I'd like to begin to put the energy into the world right now.

May 10, 2009 will be the night of my NYC Book Party/Launch. Yep. At The Bowery Poetry Club. Yep. from 6-930pm.

Other than that, business as usual. The economy being what it is required me to take some time (really, they "fixed" my schedule) off at work, and at first I was totally upset. I was livid. However, I will still make decent enough money to tide me over. I should be thankful, I concluded. For the time. I have this new manuscript that needs to be nurtured. I have a novel that I would like to see finished before the end of the year. I should be thankful that I have these few more hours, these few more days, really, a week to devote to writing. Here, I am trying to channel the positive.

I ordered two books last week. Toni Morrison's _a mercy_ and Jericho Brown's (Hi, Jericho!) _please_. They arrived yesterday. Whenever I work in the Bronx, I have a 45 minute commute from my apartment in Harlem there, and then an hour from the Bronx to my job's office on Wall Street. While I have this "policy" of three takes for music and poetry collections before I come down hard and fast, Jericho's book decidedly kept me engaged the whole ride. Let me just say, "Track 1: Lush Life". And I'm not just saying it because it's the first poem of the book. I mean, there are other poems -- but I remember reading that poem (sometimes I read collections back to front...) and immediately looking forward to the next 40 minute commute.

Last night I did get to see Toni Morrison. For like 2 seconds. Maybe my devotion is not that deep. My best friend called me earlier in the day to say she was in Barnes and Noble and Toni Morrison was giving a reading and immediately thought about me. I didn't know. But I thought how sweet, I just picked up the book today. It's in my bag. Perfect. I had just promised a friend I would go hear him feature. I cursed myself. So, I tried to slip away and gave myself excuses for going to see Toni Morrison at Barnes & Noble. When I got there, I thought, the bookstore was pretty empty to be having Toni there. I forgot about the four floors, and took myself to the top. Before the last escalator, a woman stopped me to ensure the4th floor was my destination.

"You're here for the event?" Yes, I say. Thinking she was going to tell me I needed a ticket or something I didn't have because I had just gotten off the train from work.

"There's like 1000 people up there and it's hot as heck. You have to go up and all the way to the back," she says.

I shrug it off, thinking, what's so bad about sitting on the back row or something. I go up there and it is packed. The air has stopped moving. And there is a low murmur from the front of the room that barely makes it past the rows and rows - and indeed, bookshelves - of people on the fourth floor. I strained to hear her from across the room and between the stacks. I was sweating, and suffocating (in truth: I'm slightly claustrophobic) and after about 2 minutes I got out of there. I love Toni, but the reality of me getting my book signed or surviving that reading was not happening. So, I left and went to Bar 13.

There, I wrote a pantoum. My favorite form. About Harlem, my favorite place.

Make your own luck!

I don't know or remember where I've heard that quote. But I just thought about it. I suppose it's the moral, or at least similar to the idea that if the world gives you lemons, make lemonade.

This week has been a hell of a week. I will not relive it here. Just know, that I've been pissy and moody.

However, I decided to channel that energy into something productive. I decided to stop saying "I have enough poems for another manuscript" and actually produce it.

Tonight, I put together another manuscript.

A couple days ago, I assembled a chapbook.

Monday, I have to send it off, for a deadline, for the Crab Orchard Open Series. Within the next month, I need to send it to Tupelo for the Dorsett Prize.

Tis the season for sowing. Next season, reaping.

Community!

I've been so thankful that despite the recent and continual unraveling around me, I have poets and friends for support.

July and August I did month-long poetry challenges. I wasn't working, I had all day to think about my poem. It was an interesting exercise in watching, or monitoring, your process and watching it change. Undoubtedly, if you engage in even just one month-long challenge, your process will change. It's beautiful to watch, really.

Anyways. I don't believe I could sustain another month-long challenge, so I started doing these series of week-long challenges once a month. I use them to write poems for this specific project I'm working on. So it's like, I focus deeply for a week producing the poems, and I read the rest of the month and look for materials.

Here's today's poem:


Bird song


The call nearing 2am can’t seem
to dislodge itself from my ear even

after hours we’ve said good night
and I’ve rolled to the cold side

of my bed looking to fall back
into slumber. Last night I was

somewhere in Harlem, listening
to this bird sing and I know now

where women get the sorrow,
the low, guttural notes

to say You made me love you,
I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t –

and mean it. I’ve seen other sparrow-
women fly around the city with hope

caught in their beak looking to build
a nest. The wind outside sounds

a vortex, and the whistle wakes me
again, and your laughter is unraveling itself

from my memory. There is no settling,
just nights flapping wings outside

windows wondering what ifs, their weary
suppositions. The cup in our hands, unfilled.


(c) delana r.a. dameron

Poem for today

because i'm trying to be good again and really keep up a blog, yo.

and because i love this woman, this poet. and because i needed to read it myself this morning. happy thursday. (the week is almost over)



Love,


you be the reason why
we swagger & jive,
lift the guitar, & pick up the axe.

when it is i tilt my hat to the side,
wearing colors & perfumes, it's cause, love,
you did it to me. oh,

you do sure turn my tongue to fiddle,
& make the salt taste sweet. man,

i don't need a rooster, or peacock even,
to help me spend my time, nope,
just you, love, right & solid as
a line.

(c) aracelis girmay

Writing Sample

Not that I have a bunch of poems, but, well, I do.

I've dreaded this moment for a while now. In truth, it was the writing sample that kept me from applying to the appropriate grad schools in the beginning. I mean, how do you narrow down your work to 10 pages?

Anyone reading this -- what are your strategies for narrowing down?

I think I have 35 poems that are, for now, for the first round...musts.

Now. to say to 25 of them... you just didn't make the cut.

help!

i try to keep the walls from falling down

the title of today's blog is from Tracy Chapman. Beautiful woman. Beautiful song. It is one of those albums (telling stories) that reminds me of a time in my life. a whole time. i listen to this album now, and i am back in charleston, SC. it was the first time that I lived in my own apartment. when i started to work to pay bills to live in this world. it was my first real experience in "the real world".

mind you, i was still in college. i transferred out of chapel hill (perhaps i have a history of being decidedly undecided) to "finish" at the college. big mistake. i was enrolled full time and working two jobs. and loving this man i shouldn't be while crushing on my roommate a bit because he was always around when the other man wasn't.

it was a true situation of me trying to keep the walls from falling down around me. my two jobs paid a buck and some change above minimum wage. basically all of my money went towards rent. luckiy one of my jobs was a coffeeshop, and so I ate their food, drank their coffee. i did homework there. i lived there. i lived off of the 30some dollars i received from tips per week. i would buy a footlong veggie sub from subway and split it between lunch and dinner.

it made me realize, however, that i am a fighter. i made it through. i graduated, and moved up to new jersey only to face harder obstacles. higher rent, a car note, travel money (path, subway, bus...everyday), food, etc etc.

now i'm probably my most stable ever living in nyc. which i find ironic, as it is ont of the most expensive cities in the world.

where am i going with this? well...i'm trying to keep my life together. while i'm stable a bit, financially, i am unstable in relationships. those walls are falling down, down, down.

some of them i have asked to fall apart and away. a week ago i decided what things i wanted to see manifest. i asked for a full ride to graduate school, for a prize for my book, and for people in my life who are harmful to disappear. it's the letting go that breaks up everything that you know. it's why we don't let go. we hold on, thinking we're holding things together, that to let go is to let all the walls fall down.

maybe i need to understand that letting go is keeping the walls from falling down.

November Run-Down

I am applying again to grad school. It is a pressing time, begging folks for letters of recommendation, etc etc. I am happy that it hasn't been as hard as it could be, though there have been some noted (and perhaps, expected) bumps along the way.

I would like to post the list of potential schools, but I think not only is it dangerous to do so (yes, I said it) but also...jinxing it. Let's just say, I believe that this time around will be a good one.

In other news, the book! "How God Ends Us" is coming along smoothly. Everything according to plan and deadlines. The next step: I receive the typeset pages. I am supposed to send off my acknowledgments page. I promised them that on Monday. Maybe I am behind. Ugh. Tomorrow. That is my plan for tomorrow. While I already have one, I want to make everything is covered. I want to make sure everyone is properly thanked that should be.

Plans are in process for website development. And book party. I plan on having a multi-city launch. Part of the cool thing with the organization, the Poetry Initiative, that sponsored the prize is they put together a book launch. So I'll have a book launch at home. I'm trying to plan a book launch in NYC. Or two. Or several. Is that doing too much?

Other projects/things going on in my life at the moment: I've been doing a series of week-long poetry challenges with friends. It's good because I'm only really responsible for one week of poetry a month. The rest that happens, I'm thankful. Other than that, I don't freak out. And I still have pretty good progress towards things I'm working on.

I've put together a chapbook from my work this summer. I call it "kingdom: animalia". Someone suggested I look for an illustrator. I might do that. It could be a cool project. I'm also going to submit it to a couple of presses, maybe.

What else? I'm writing about Harlem for a larger "project" and in that, too, about NYC. It fascinates me, I guess you could say plainly. I'm taken by the city for reasons unknown. I'm taking that fascination and channeling it. And publishing it.

I treated myself to a poetry book today. It has been a while since I've treated myself to a poetry book. I was looking for Jericho Brown's book (which everyone has been drooling over) in the stores in NYC. Something about ordering books -- I'm so impatient. Anyways. I stopped in Strand and picked up a book since I couldn't find one that I wanted. Not to say the book I chose was a bad choice, it just wasn't what i was going for...but when the poetry appetite is roaring, it cannot go unfed. I picked up C. Dale Young's "The Second Person". I've never read anything of his. Which, this, too, is a treat. Sometimes I go and pick up books that I've never considered on my radar.

I'll post more about it as I read. I'm also reading 2 fiction books: The Secret Life of Bees and Claude McKay's Home to Harlem.

Other than that, just laying low, grading papers, teaching writing...educating the masses. I keep thinking: if I were 200 years removed, what I would be doing would be considered illegal. granted, my own education would be illegal. But just think: my whole being: writer, teacher who is both black and female, who teaches only students of color how to read, write, and articulate themselves...yes. I sort of like that.

Okay -- back to the grad school and work grind.

long time

I've been away for way too long. My last real post was in August. Since then, my life has been whisked from under my feet and getting from day to day upright is a struggle. A struggle I sometimes lose.

Big news: I bought a new bed. This is significant because I prided myself once in my ability to pack up my life and go...just go away from here. or there. or anywhere I was "living". All of my moves happened by packing up my car. That's it. My life has been able to fit into either a Suzuki Esteem or Honda Civic. Two doors.

So I brooded over it for a week. I shopped over the internet for the perfect bed. I found a place that delivers on the same day and assembles it. Long story short, the bed didn't get put together until Tuesday, which gave me lots of time to brood about how I really couldn't afford the bed, but that I needed it...or how the bed was symbolic for putting my feet into nyc...which is saying that I now have to fight to stay here. This is pure Darwinism right here. It's flight vs. fight. I'm saying that I plan to fight. Because I have roots here. I've bought matching curtains. I am scheming on a new desk and bookshelves. I am scheming on settling in.