Writing poetry well should be like training yourself for the
Olympics. The poetry Olympics. Even there are no gold medals, no silver or
bronze, even though there are no endorsements, (I keep writing to Nike, “I run,
I write poetry, give me shoes! But no luck.) even though the rewards of poetry
are being able to go around saying, “I’m a poet,” which, if you throw in a couple
dollars will get you coffee, in spite of that, you should take it
seriously.
For me, that means doing what they do in the Olympics, going
through training. When I meet with MFA
students, they want to know how long it will take before they get their
first
book published. Here’s what I think
about: When my kids were in karate, their
teacher Ken Nagayama would say, “When an American enters the dojo, he
likes to
ask one question. ‘How long will it take
for me to get a black belt?’ That is not the right question. That is
not right thinking. Right thinking is, ‘Is this a place where I
can enter the lifelong study of martial arts and learn about what it
means to
be human using this art form?’ That is the right question.”
Can I enter the study of poetry here? Is the right place for me at
this time? Are there poets I can learn from? Red Hen Press has a list
of about twenty core
poets who know we have a slot for them every several years so they can
focus on
writing knowing their work has a home.
This list includes Percival Everett, Peggy Shumaker, Camille Dungy, Doug
Kearney, David Mason, Cynthia Hogue, Jim Tilley, Kim Dower and Lisa C.
Krueger.
We have three poets who have undertaken to enter the dojo of
poetry and let the martial arts instructor take some serious swings at their
work. Lisa C. Krueger, who read last
month at Poets House with David St. John and Phil Levine had two books out but
wanted to see how daring and risk taking she could be with her third book. She enrolled in the Bennington MFA
program. As an adult with a thriving Psychotherapy
practice, it isn’t easy to become a student again, to submit to having your
poetry—which feels like your children!—be whacked around by the throngs, to say
nothing of the poets who lead the workshops, but that’s what she’s done. The poems that have emerged are ferocious,
they have bite and wild as if they were surrounded by wolves and learned to
speak anyway.
Jim Tilley retired from Morgan Stanley and dedicated himself
to a life of language and ideas, but first to poetry. He’s been to Breadloaf, to Squaw, to Palm Beach, and he keeps
going. Every summer. He works on his craft as hard as he ever
worked in the world of finance, and the result is amazing. Poems that walk
between math, light and energy. Poems
that are precise and balanced, poems where the poet is paying attention to
every word.
Kim Dower, a renowned publicist went back to poetry after an
absence of twenty-five years and dedicated herself to attending the conferences
where she could submit her poems to criticism.
She takes classes with Terry Wolverton, one of Los Angeles’ treasures both as poet and writing
teacher. Her second book, Slice of Moon will be out from Red Hen
Press next year, and she is reading this weekend on Saturday at the Ruskin Art
Club at 4 pm with Oliver de la Paz and Cynthia Hogue.
Red Hen’s core poets have this in common. They are not hoping for a black belt. They have entered the life of poetry and are
in there, in the muck and grime, the wet evenings, the long winters, the pages
on the floor. They’re not hoping for
game, they are the game. I salute all
poets who are in it for the long haul, for entering language cracked and
brittle and ending up with poems whole and humming.
http://redhen.org/events/rhp-at-the-ruskin-art-club/
KATE GALE is Managing Editor of Red Hen
Press, Editor of the Los Angeles Review and President of the American Composers
Forum, LA. She teaches in the Low
Residency MFA program at the University of Nebraska in Poetry, Fiction and
Creative Non-Fiction. She serves on the boards of A Room of Her Own Foundation
and Poetry Society of America. She is
author of five books of poetry and six librettos including Rio de Sangre, a libretto for an opera with composer Don Davis
which had its world premiere October 2010 at the Florentine Opera in
Milwaukee. Her current projects include a
creative non-fiction book Flight of the
Ugly Duckling, a co-written libretto, Paradises Lost with Ursula K. LeGuin
and composer Stephen Taylor, and a libretto based on The Inner Circle by
T. C. Boyle, based on Dr. Kinsey’s life with composer Daniel Felsenfeld.