Time for Us to Say Sayanora

Headed off on vacation for a bit. I'll be off the grid -- no blogging from the road for me -- but hope to return with some new poem material.

As Bob D. would say, Hope you all keep on keepin' on....

Letter to the Editor

Well, I didn't get the call from Poetry saying they'd run my letter -- and no surprise; I'm sure they get tons, and anyway ought to run a letter re: this essay from a more bloggish blogger than me. But here's the beauty of this enterprise: I can publish it myself:

Dear Editor,

In an essay that, in other passages, is thoughtful and sharp, Peter Campion completely misses the point about blogs. Of course writing poems is a solitary act, but for everything that follows from it – submitting poems, putting together a manuscript, giving readings, promoting a first book – the camaraderie and support of fellow writers is vital to keeping going.

Blogs offer a community that makes geography irrelevant – surely a boon to poets who live in less poetry-heavy places than me. But even New Yorkers have plenty to be excited about: dozens and dozens of poets – from around the country and the world; from different aesthetic camps, stages of their careers, walks of life – gathered together to talk about anything and everything to do with poetry (and plenty of “felt experience,” too). Career-talk sure, but mostly shop-talk: revision, translation, and such. The one example Campion cites is hardly representative of poets’ blogs. But how could one example be representative? Poets’ blogs, at their best, are as various and strange and wide-ranging as their poems.

And this is the point: what blogs offer poets are connections, in the best sense of the word. Because of their blogs, I’ve found out about the work of new poets like Eduardo C. Corral, Reb Livingston, Zachary Schomberg and Wendy Wisner. And thanks to their blogs, I’ve been able to correspond with, and even meet, some of these writers – making the kind of connections that are encouraging and refreshing. We write alone, but we don’t have to be lonely writers.

As for Campion’s hanky-to-the-nose distaste for the word “blog,” I’m frankly worried. There isn’t much hope for a poet who shies away from seemingly unpoetic language. He may not be up to the challenge, but I’d love to see one of our topflight rhymers (paging Paul Muldoon) take “blog” out for a spin.

Matthew Thorburn
New York, NY

Friday Night's Reading

Wendy beat me to it and posted a recap of Friday night's reading. To second what she says, Glenn is a wonderful host and the George Washington Lounge is a great room to read in. It reminded me of one of the lounges in my college dorm, South Quad, back in Ann Arbor. I arrived a little after Wendy, though, so I missed the explanation of why the goat was on the table, something I'd been wondering about.

It was great to hear Wendy read her new work, and especially the poems from Epicenter. But even before that: it was great to meet Wendy and Danny.

Inevitably I find that poems I've read on the page mean more to me after I hear the poet read the work (ideally in person, though a CD or tape works in a pinch). You too? Also I love hearing the back story or whatever incidentals about the poems that poets choose to share. I was struck by how Wendy really seemed to develop a rapport with the audience right from the start -- though of course I didn't know then that she knew about 2/3 of the people there!

I tried to read some poems from my book that I don't read so often (as I think Wendy said she did too), though I have favorites I love coming back to, like "Refrain" -- probably my fav for reading aloud. But some poems in the book I don't feel will come across well off the page. I think you need to see them, and not just hear them, in order to get them. So I do end up reading from the same 2/3 of the book, more or less, each time out. It was also fun to read "Something Perky and Glib," a poem from Like Luck that I don't think I've ever read in front of an audience before. (I'm tempted to take a page from Dan Nester's book, fire up the scanner, and get my reading "set lists" up here.)

The marketing professional in me did cringe when Wendy dissed her book -- and the reader in me too, since I like Epicenter. I remember about 10 years ago Robert Hass visited Umich and talked to one of my English classes. Human Wishes was fairly new at the time, but we'd been reading his first book, Field Guide -- and he expressed feelings for it sort of similar to what Wendy said about her book, albeit from a much further remove, time-wise. [Unfortunately, I don't remember exactly what he said, but it's probably safe to say most anyone would feel some distance from the work he or she had done 20 or more years ago.] On the other hand, I do remember he said that, when writing those early poems, "every line break was electric." And then he said, "It's not like that for me anymore." (Maybe not, but Human Wishes is a hell of a great book -- one of my very very favorites.) And I know I'm most excited about whatever I've written most recently, which I suspect is how most writers probably feel -- at least I hope they do.

Lastly, I want to say thanks again to Wendy for inviting me to read with her. It was a real pleasure for me. And if you get the chance to read at the West Side Y, grab it -- it's a terrific place to read.

Always the Last to Know

I just discovered that the amazing Mary Biddinger has a blog

http://wordcage.blogspot.com/

and discovered, via her blog, that she's now teaching in the NEOMFA. That's Ohio!

Last night at the Westside Y, reading with Wendy Wisner, some poems from Like Luck in my hands. Man, I love these sit-down readings. 

Answers for Eduardo

Eduardo posed some questions to me in my comments quite a while ago, which I’ve been meaning to answer and will answer now. I don’t know how interesting this will be to anyone else, but it must be better than posting my results for one more “You are…” web questionnaire thingy. So:

EDUARDO: Can you blog about the writing and completion of your second mss.? How are the poems in the second mss. different from the poems in the first book? When did you realize you were writing the poems that would make up your second book?

ME: Well, I put together my first manuscript, Subject to Change, in the fall of 2001. As I was sending STC out to contests all through '02, I kept writing new poems and rearranging the mss. In fact, in the spring of '03, when I got the call from Herb Scott, saying that Brenda Hillman had picked my mss. and six others for the New Issues Poetry Prize, I had slotted in six or eight newer poems since sending it to them. I had pretty well rejiggered the whole thing. But Herb -- wisely, I think -- said he wanted to publish the manuscript in the form that B.H. had selected. And so I thought, OK, here's the first six or eight poems of a second manuscript.

So it was at that point that I started thinking of these newer poems in terms of a new project -- rather than as possible adds to STC. This is all a long way of saying that for me the poems in the two manuscripts don't really have a clear break between them. It’s mostly a matter of timing, though there is a three-part prose poem in LL that actually pre-dates much of STC (technically; but I kept revising it all these years). And partly, I suppose, it’s because they're not really book-length projects, or poem sequences, or even specifically thematic (beyond the usual thematic preoccupations each of us has throughout our writing). So in both cases there wasn’t really a sense of it being finished, except to see that I had 30-odd poems that seemed to stand up together pretty well.

On the other hand, STC ended up being fairly formal (the 33 poems include eight sonnets, an odd-form rhymed poem, and a sestina), while the new one, Like Luck, also 33 poems, is basically "free," aside from two loose ghazals. Both contain several prose poems. Like Luck tends towards longer poems, with quite a few 2-3 pagers in the mix. It also includes more poems that respond to, or relate to, or take off from other art works (a Matisse painting, a Chinese scroll, Li Po's "The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter") -- though that's a tendency that was already starting to show in STC. Maybe the biggest difference is one of process: In writing the LL poems, I focused much more on improvisation as a way of starting many of them (with much revision following that initial improv.).

Eduardo, when you return, I want to hear about how you put together your manuscript....

Thorburn 811

Silly, I know, but I'm pleased as punch to see my book is available (status: "checked in") at the New York Public Library.

It's filed as "811 Thorburn" -- right between Tom Thompson's Live Feed (a book I just bought from the Astoria sidewalk bookseller, as it happens) and the Collected Poems of one Mr. Henry D. Thoreau.

File Under: Awkward, Unsettling, Too Much Information

From the L.A. Times (via Slate):

"We're sleeping in the same bed," he says, but nights are still frosty. He has promised to wean himself from F0etry and let others run it. [She] is skeptical he can let go so easily. She gazes at her husband with conflicted affection, her expression fluctuating between "I love him" and "I'd like to kill him."

And he looks like Philip Seymour Hoffman... In Search of Poetic Justice

Everybody's Doing It

You are John Ashbery. People love your work but
have no idea why, really. You are respected by
all kinds of scholars and poets. Even artists
like you.


Which Famous Modern American Poet Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

This Friday -- Now with Q&A

NYers, please don't forget: this Friday night I'm reading with the wonderful Wendy Wisner at the Westside Y.

If hearing us read isn't reason enough, and you're somehow still on the fence about this, here are three other great reasons to go:

1. Poets' Q&A -- Ask us those dreaded questions about "the muse"
2. Contrary to what I for some reason believed, there's no cover charge
3. They're serving wine

Wendy Wisner and Matthew Thorburn
Friday, June 17th, 7:30 p.m.
West Side Y -- The Writer's Voice
5 W. 63rd Street
http://www.ymcanyc.org/

The check is in the mail

In this case, I mean that literally.

Not in the bad sense. But in the tiny sense.

Where I've been spending my weekends... 

The Queens Botanical Garden 

No rain, no white chickens 

Don't Call It A Comeback

But for anyone who couldn't find it (Glenn), my website is back.

http://www.matthewthorburn.com/

Thanks, as always, to Tom Carter, webdev to the stars.

Gimme Back Me Blog!

Some prankster has hijacked Eduardo's blog and filled it with the kind of photos people love to forward around on email.

Says Eduardo, "So far the pics are harmless but one never knows.... There are some crazy folks on the net."

Says I, Bring back that Old Guitar, for the love of pete! I definitely didn't need to see that whale.

Freq of the Week

I had a great time reading with Shafer Hall this afternoon at the Liar. I posted some pics below -- brightened and contrasted, but still grainy due to the pleasantly dark coolness of the Liar. Shafer is an excellent poet, reader and host -- a trifecta that certainly deserves some kind of prize!

We had a very small, but very high quality audience. Who can complain when you get to meet Gina and Maureen. It's still a strange (in a good way) sensation for me to actually meet poets I know only via their poems and blogs. Rounding out the audience were my F. and our friend Angela, along with the shadows of three departing drinkers -- Shafer gave them fair warning that poetry would shortly ensue, and they hightailed it out to a sidewalk table.

Shafer read some of his May poems (conveniently available on his blog) and I read a couple poems from Subject to Change and a couple from my new manuscript, Like Luck. For those keeping score at home, we each read one recipe poem and one "motherf*cker" poem.

A little afterwards, I also got to see Shanna and meet Jennifer L. Knox (who I've heard read a couple times, but hadn't ever actually met) and snag a broadside of Jen's poem "Spring & Still Some Short."

What a day -- with paella at Tio Pepe, across the street, for a grand finale.

Shafer just read a bunch of his May poems, including my favorite, "Big Plans Small Apartment," and now I'm reading "If I Keep A Green Bough in My Chest, A Singing Bird will Alight," and thinking how great it is to do a reading sitting down. 

Reading "Woken Each Morning by the Glad Laughter of Birds," which was published in the issue of Pool I later found out Maureen had in her bag a little ways down the bar. 

Signing a copy of STC for my kind host and fellow reader. 

New to Me -- Reading Room Update

C.S. Carrier has a blog, I just found out. I know C.S.'s work from my days editing Good Foot.

So there's something good to read while I continue to miss the irreverent wit of Mr. Eduardo C. Corral.

Don't Forget!

I'm reading at The Four-Faced Liar on Sunday, as part of the Frequency reading series. From Shafer Hall:

Freq of the Week!
Frequency this Sunday June 5th will feature Matthew Thorburn plus a special guest! We like everybody at Frequency, but we like Matthew best of all.

Sunday 2:30 PM at 165 W. 4th & 6th Ave.

Hope to see you there!

That Felt Good

Just wrote my first letter to the editor of Poetry. Who knows if they'll publish it -- I bet a lot of people had a beef with one part or another of "Grasshoppers: A Notebook." Maybe if they don't publish it, I'll just stick it up here. It's not a gin-fueled, middle-of-the-night whinge or anything, but I did spend quite a while revising it.

* * *

It's comforting, somehow, to find out today, reading on the subway, that Hart Crane's first name was Harold; it cuts the distance. Hart was his middle name, one he shared with his mother. Maybe everyone else knew this already, but I'm just now reading The Bridge for the first time.

My friend Mike and I started a reading group of two last year, as a way of circling back to pick up some of the poetry we missed the first time around, when we were students together at Umich. He's an English professor now, though, so he has a definite edge on me, but there's still plenty to pick from.

Each round, we read something older and something newer. Round 1 was Theodore Roethke's Collected and Rick Barot's The Darker Fall. Round 2 was Berryman's Dream Songs and Raymond McDaniel's Murder: A Violet. Now, Round 3, we're reading The Bridge and the latest Best American Poetry.

It's an interesting experience to be a quasi-student again, or at least to try to read like one. What threw me off initially was the feeling that Crane wrote and published much earlier than he actually did -- that he was from the 19th century, rather than the 20th. (Maybe in my head he'd done a switcheroo with Stephen Crane?) Or maybe he just doesn't sound as recent as he is. To think The Bridge was preceded by Harmonium seems wrong to me, though it's right.

Speaking of which, I might kick this student streak up a notch: I see Helen Vendler is teaching a Stevens seminar next "semester" at the 92nd Street Y.