Writing

Why Poetry is Sometimes Not Enough

by emilyvogel Writing
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This evening at Catholic mass, while everyone bowed their heads to pray, I asked Jesus not only to help me be good to my husband and my family, but also what he thought about my poetry. I heard a voice, perhaps in my head, or perhaps funneled out the church ceiling which said, “your poetry will touch a few hearts, but it won’t help you in heaven.”

Tagged as: Catholic, fishing, Franz Wright, Heaven, Poetry and Poetics, sacred, writing

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On Poetry and Loss, Part 2

by Joe Weil Memoir
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I sometimes think African American “cool” and Irish humor developed out of an awareness of the truth that life is not merciful.

Tagged as: Catholic, Catholicism, grief, hernandez, Jimenez, Lorca, Loss, Me Sobra El Corazon, or Machado, Poetry and Poetics, spanish poetry

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On Poetry and Loss

by Joe Weil Memoir
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The handling of such overwhelming material is first and last, a question of form. Grief, loss, outrage, must be made portable.

Tagged as: and Elizabeth Bishop, apostrophe, apostrophic address, elegy, Facebook, Fernando Pessoa, frank o'hara, grief, Loss, lullaby of the onion, miguel hernandez, One Art, Paul Celan, Roethke, status updates, The Book of Disquiet, The Day Lady Died, villanelle

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Translating Horace: Ode i.5

by Micah Towery Poetry and Poetics
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Horace is just too good a craftsman for a translation to do him any ultimate justice. Yet I believe translators hope for a sort of “good will” that can exist between between themselves and the poet.

Tagged as: Anthony Hecht, David Ferry, Greek, heather mchugh, Horace, i.5, james mitchie, Johnny Cash, Latin, Milton, Odes, pyrrha, simplex munditiis, tear stained letter, Translation

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Creative Stupidity

by Joe Weil Poetry and Poetics
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Many people do not become artists not because they are stupid, but because they are incapable of suspending the thinking/feeling functions. They fail to become writers and musicians and painters because they cannot enter their highest stupidity.

Tagged as: Bach, composer, composition, music, organ, Poetry and Poetics, Porgy and Bess, self-taught

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Overcoming Writer’s Block

by Joe Weil Writing
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The words art and habit might seem an odd pairing, but that’s what art is: the glamor of drudgery, and the drudgery of glamor.

Tagged as: Flannery O’Connor, Picasso, self-esteem, Sylvia Plath, writer’s block

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On Mimesis

by emilyvogel Poetry and Poetics
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Aristotle meant that poetry was mimetic of all of things, independent of another poet’s unique perspective. It is not necessary that poets imitate other poets, but that they imitate life.

Tagged as: classes, emily vogel, experimental poetry, mimesis, Neruda, Neruda poem, Phantom, school, shtick, style, workshop

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Sentimentality vs. Feeling

by Joe Weil Aesthetics
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True feeling has the force of grace; sentimentality has the stench of morals. The word “should” and “must” cling to its fat cherubic legs. Half comprised of self regard, and the other half a mixture of cliche, the sentimental is close to the feigned regard of the funeral director: appropriate, and grave, but with one eye on the itemized bill.

Tagged as: Chekov, feeling, Lipa, Madame Bovary, Nabokov, Russian Literature, sentimentality, The Gully, The Ravine, The Sound of Music, Tolstoy

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Kenneth Burke: Do you Eros into Logos? (with a note on Tu Fu)

by Micah Towery Poetry and Poetics
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Poets who write for self-expression write awful poetry. They don’t seek advice but affirmation.

Tagged as: 100 Chinese Poems, artist, Classics revisited, counter-statement, Eros, ESL, evocation, evoke, formalism, how tu fu works, Image, kenneth burke, kenneth rexroth, logos, MFA, poet, Poetry and Poetics, symbol, the poetic process, Tom Sleigh, Translation, Tu Fu

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Look What God Can Do!

by Colie Hoffman Memoir
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No one wants to appear childlike and vulnerable to others, but everyone (everyone who seeks out new experiences, anyway) wants to feel that way–along with love, awe is the one of the emotions people seek most deeply. And for writers, whose job is to express the inexpressible, the hidden, these two aims can feel at odds.

Tagged as: colie hoffman, India, Sangam House, vulnerability, Writer in Residence

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The Simple Life

by Mike Foldes Writing
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I was concerned about not knowing. Concerned about not being known. Yet I did little to be known outside of persevering with the work. The work being whatever I was doing at the time in my virtual creative space. Mind, body. Divine intervention. Spiritual revelation. The meaning of every day was living every day as if to make it your last. Life was simple. Inevitable.

Tagged as: Mike Foldes, Ragazine, simple life

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Dispatch after emerging from the post-AWP hangover: or My first AWP

by Adam Pellegrini Memoir
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At a party last Thursday night after a full day at this year’s AWP conference, I broke one of my own absolute rules – never, under any circumstances resort to quoting The Big Lebowski.

Tagged as: Adam Pellegrini, AWP, Big Lebowski, Coen Brothers, movie quotes

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