Poem of the Week: "Winter Turkeys" by Jeff Knorr

The VPR Poem of the Week is Jeff Knorr’s “Winter Turkeys,” which appeared in the Fall/Winter 2003-2004 issue (Volume V, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Jeff Knorr is the author of five books, including Standing Up to the Day (Pecan Grove Press), Keeper (Mammoth Books), and The Third Body (Cherry Grove Press). He is also the co-author of Mooring Against the Tide: Writing Poetry and Fiction (Prentice Hall), as well as the co-editor of A Writer's Country (Prentice Hall). His work has appeared in Chelsea, Connecticut Review, Oxford Magazine, Red Rock Review, and various other literary journals. Jeff Knorr teaches literature and writing at Sacramento City College.

Tuesday of each week “One Poet’s Notes” highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers revisit it. Please check the sidebar to view the list of poets and works that have been past “Poem of the Week” selections. Additionally, readers are reminded that VPR pages are best read with the browser font preference in which they were set, 12 pt. Times New Roman, in order to guarantee the stanza alignment and the breaks of longer lines are preserved.

Poet of the Year: W.S. Merwin

Each December “One Poet’s Notes” participates in the annual ritual practiced by numerous magazines, newspapers, and television programs that review the previous year in order to create various “best of” lists or to select an “Entertainer of the Year,” “Athlete of the Year,” or even “Person of the Year,” as Time magazine labels its choice. As has been the case in the past, “One Poet’s Notes” designates a “Poet of the Year.” At the close of each year, a poet whose notable work merited attention during the previous twelve months is selected for acknowledgment and appreciation.

Just as in previous years, a number of outstanding poets have distinguished themselves since last December to a degree that they earned serious consideration for this annual recognition. Nevertheless, one poet’s work garnered praise for its content and quality, but also encouraged a wide array of readers to review and reconsider a lifetime of considerable contribution to poetry worthy of acclaim and applause. Consequently, W.S. Merwin deserves designation as the 2009 Poet of the Year.

As noted in a “One Poet’s Notes” article last April, W.S. Merwin won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for The Shadow of Sirius, published by Copper Canyon Press. Merwin had previously won a Pulitzer Prize nearly forty years ago for his book of poems, The Carrier of Ladders, published in 1970. Indeed, W.S. Merwin has been an important voice in American poetry since winning the Yale Series of Younger Poets award with his first volume of poems, A Mask for Janus, in 1952.

Some of the accomplishments chronicled in that previous post at “One Poet’s Notes” include the following: “W.S. Merwin has published nearly two dozen collections of poetry and twenty books of translation, as well as numerous plays and books of prose. In addition to the two Pulitzer Prizes, Merwin also has won the National Book Award for Migration: New and Selected Poems, published in 2005. Furthermore, he has received the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, the Bollingen Prize, a Ford Foundation grant, the Governor’s Award for Literature of the State of Hawaii, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Harriet Monroe Award, the PEN Translation Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Wallace Stevens Award, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, the Tanning Prize, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and fellowships from The Academy of American Poets, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation. W.S. Merwin is a former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and has served as Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress.”

During the last year, success enjoyed by The Shadow of Sirius, accompanied by some news features and interviews on television or radio, has expanded the audience for W.S. Merwin’s poetry and extended interest in his unique style of writing to numerous new readers of poetry. The spotlight focused upon Merwin’s latest collection of poetry has created a larger readership for his poems, one that consists of many younger readers just discovering his work, and resulted in renewing older readers’ attention to Merwin’s distinguished lifetime of writing.

Indeed, various reviews of The Shadow of Sirius have remarked upon the book’s sense of retrospection, how this volume seems to present messages that blend memory and imagination with a mixture of mature wisdom and acute awareness of mortality (“part memory part distance remaining”), apparently serving as an apt culmination of his career. The Harvard Review concluded: “The Shadow of Sirius may be showing us some of the best poetry written today, but unlike the impossible shadow cast by the sky’s brightest star, the book also shows the earthly possibilities of simple completeness in a writer’s mature work.” Harold Bloom has hailed The Shadow of Sirius as “the very best of Merwin,” and the Pulitzer Prize citation for The Shadow of Sirius declared it “a collection of luminous, often tender poems that focus on the profound power of memory.”

Commenting on The Shadow of Sirius in a lengthy televised interview with Bill Moyers, Merwin offered: “We are the shadow of Sirius. There is the other side—as we talk to each other, we see the light, and we see these faces, but we know that behind that, there’s the other side, which we never know. And that—it’s the dark, the unknown side that guides us—and that is part of our lives all the time. It’s the mystery. That’s always with us, too. And it gives the depth and dimension to the rest of it.”

W.S. Merwin has delighted and inspired readers with his singular style of poetry and insightful perceptions of the world around him for more than half a century. With The Shadow of Sirius, this poet continues to educate and enlighten everyone with an engaging work that in 2009 has reached a larger audience and now is establishing connections with a new generation of readers.

[Readers are invited to visit posts at “One Poet’s Notes” in the past that have announced the Poet of the Year: “Poet of the Year: John Ashbery” (2007) and “Poet of the Year: Mark Doty” (2008).]

Remembering and Celebrating the Poetry of James Wright

James Wright was born in Martins Ferry, Ohio on this date (December 13) in 1927. The author of a dozen books of poetry, Wright’s career as a poet was framed by his first volume, The Green Wall, winning the Yale Series of Younger Poets award in 1957 and his Collected Poems winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1980, the year of his death. Stanley Plumly, a fellow Ohio poet, has written in an essay titled “Sentimental Forms” from his book of criticism, Argument & Song: Sources & Silences in Poetry: “Wright’s gift to us is his ability to identify and identify with the sources of emotion. His poems are among the most generous we have because they risk again and again the tension of the form not finding what will suffice.”

In his collection of critical essays, Unassigned Frequencies, Laurence Lieberman similarly describes Wright: “He has the largeness of heart of the great empathizers, and worse, a mind suicidally honest, a mind hellishly bent on stripping away all self-protective devices. His best poems enact the drama of a mind struggling, usually with punishing success, to resist the temptation to take solace from its own compassionating ardor. The pain he feels for another never becomes a disguised way of cheering himself up. It is a tougher thing.”

This blog’s meter displaying statistics of visitors to the site indicates one of the most popular posts published at “One Poet’s Notes”—originally appearing in February, 2008—has been an article written about James Wright and his wonderful work titled “Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio,” which may be the best-known poem concerning football and Americans’ fascination with sport. In that piece I offered how Wright identifies and empathizes with the individuals depicted in his poem, presenting scholastic athletics as part of a metaphor that “addresses social issues of distinction or contrast based upon individuals’ wealth, class, ethnicity, race, and gender.”

Today, as Wright’s birth date coincides with the weekend’s announcement of another Heisman Trophy winner, a pinnacle achievement in scholastic athletics, perhaps this is an apt time to invite readers to revisit my commentary on “Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio,” as well as to urge everyone to take this opportunity to remember and celebrate the poetic achievement of James Wright.

Update on Poetry Books: EAST OF OMAHA and TIDAL AIR

I have been informed that Pecan Grove Press, which has published two of my poetry books (East of Omaha and Tidal Air), has updated its authors’ web pages and now includes a shopping cart feature that enables easier selection of volumes for purchasing. Readers interested in obtaining copies of these books are invited to visit the web page for my publications at Pecan Grove Press. I also urge everyone to take advantage of the provided links to check the PGP main page and browse the assorted pages displaying the press’s various other poets for information about the many fine books published by Pecan Grove Press under the wise guidance of its editor, Palmer Hall.

Poem of the Week: "Cold River Season" by Patricia Fargnoli

The VPR Poem of the Week is Patricia Fargnoli’s “Cold River Season,” which appeared in the Fall/Winter 2009-2010 issue (Volume XI, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Patricia Fargnoli, the New Hampshire Poet Laureate from 2005 to March 2009, is the author of five collections of poetry. Her recent book of poems, Then, Something, was published by Tupelo Press in 2009. Duties of the Spirit (Tupelo Press, 2005) won the N.H. Jane Kenyon Poetry Award for an Outstanding Book of Poetry, and her first book, Necessary Light, (Utah State University Press, 2000), won the May Swenson Poetry Award. Her work has appeared in various literary journals, including Nimrod, Ploughshares, Poet Lore, Poetry International, and Yalobusha Review.

Tuesday of each week “One Poet’s Notes” highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers revisit it. Please check the sidebar to view the list of poets and works that have been past “Poem of the Week” selections. Additionally, readers are reminded that VPR pages are best read with the browser font preference in which they were set, 12 pt. Times New Roman, in order to guarantee the stanza alignment and the breaks of longer lines are preserved.

Sherman Alexie Talks About Book Publication with Stephen Colbert

Sherman Alexie—whose “Homily” appears in the latest issue (Fall/Winter 2009-2010: Volume XI, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review and also is the current VPR “Poem of the Week” on “One Poets Note’s”—discussed with Stephen Colbert the other day a few of his views on the nature of book publication and digital distribution of literary works.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Sherman Alexie
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor U.S. Speedskating

Allen Ginsberg's "Howl": The Movie

This week, the roster of independent films to be premiered and to contend for prizes at the Sundance Film Festival was announced. More than 100 movies have been chosen for screenings to be held during the festival’s ten days of events, January 21-31. Attendees at Utah’s Park City will have an opportunity to view Howl, one of the more anticipated works, which concerns Allen Ginsberg’s composition of his most famous poem, “Howl,” as well as its publication by City Lights Books and the subsequent trial for charges of obscenity that occurred more than half a century ago.

The film, which presents James Franco’s portrayal of Ginsberg (pictured here), as well as other Hollywood stars—including Mary-Louise Parker, Jeff Daniels, Alan Alda, and Treat Williams—in supporting roles, is directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, best known for Academy Award-winning documentaries such as Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt and The Times of Harvey Milk.

Allen Ginsberg first introduced his groundbreaking poem in October of 1955 at a poetry reading in San Francisco’s Six Gallery. Ginsberg’s performance of the poem created an immediate response from listeners, who knew the landscape of Modern American poetry had been expanded. Kenneth Rexroth once described the experience of Ginsberg’s reading to be a significant change in the voice of American poetry as oral presentation in opposition to merely words on the printed page. Michael McClure, who attended the reading, wrote about a gathering in which people were left “cheering or wondering, but knowing at the deepest level that a barrier had been broken, that a human voice and body had been hurled against the harsh wall of America.”

Lawrence Ferlinghetti also attended the reading, and he promptly requested from Ginsberg a manuscript of “Howl” for a poetry series published by Ferlinghetti’s fledgling press, City Lights Books. After the poem’s release in Howl and Other Poems, copies were obtained by the government as evidence in an obscenity trial targeting language within “Howl.” The 1957 trial extended for months, with testimony by poets, editors, and professors in support of Ginsberg’s poem as a work of cultural and social significance. The court’s verdict concluded that publication of “Howl” was legal, covered by the Constitution’s guarantees of free speech and equal protection, and it proved to be a landmark decision that has influenced content included in all sorts of art forms during the past fifty years.

Readers are invited to listen to Allen Ginsberg’s reading of “Howl.”

LIGHT FROM A BULLET HOLE: POEMS NEW AND SELECTED 1950-2008, Ralph Salisbury (VPR Editor's Pick)

Editor's Pick: Recommended Reading

In correspondence received from readers of Valparaiso Poetry Review over the years, one regular feature of the journal, “Recent and Recommended Books,” repeatedly has been complimented and noted for its usefulness. Accompanying each issue of VPR, this page lists current volumes of poetry or poetics, as well as other books concerning poets, such as biographies, readers of the journal might wish to examine.

Despite the fact that a number of the collections cited have been reviewed within the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review or in the posts of “One Poet’s Notes,” the editor’s blog, the unfortunate reality is that most of those worthy books received do not get enough specific attention and could be overlooked, lost among the long list annually tucked away in the additional pages archived at VPR. Therefore, to increase awareness about more of those valuable collections that have not been a subject of individual commentary or review in Valparaiso Poetry Review, “One Poet’s Notes” offers a continuing series of brief notices, known as “Editor’s Picks,” containing additional information concerning highly recommended books.

Light from a Bullet Hole: Poems New and Selected 1950–2008, Ralph Salisbury. Silverfish Review Press, 2009.

Ralph Salisbury is the author of ten books of poetry and three books of short fiction. His awards include a Rockefeller Bellagio Award, a Northwest Review Poetry Award, and a Chapelbrook Award. His poems have appeared in various anthologies and numerous journals, including Carolina Quarterly, New Letters, New Yorker, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Poetry Northwest. In choosing him as a finalist for the Oregon Book Award, judge Maxine Kumin wrote, “This is a poet dedicated to keeping his heritage alive. His book deserves a broad audience.”

In an introduction to Light from a Bullethole: Poems New and Selected 1950-2008, Andre Krupat reports about this new collection of poetry and its author: “The poems of this volume make stunningly clear the ways in which Ralph Salisbury continues to model the traditional and modern (postmodern, if you will) roles of the poet as Cherokee humanist and indigenous cosmopolitan. Marked by deep roots and varied routes—he has read and taught in Italy, England, Norway, Germany, and India, and helped to English the work of the Finnish Sami, Nils-Aslak Valkeapaa—he is a little like the postindian but deeply tribal characters in Gerald Vizenor’s novels, The Heirs of Columbus and Dead Voices. This is to say that Salisbury writes, as he puts it in the dedication to Rainbows of Stone (2000), in the interest of all ‘the human tribe of this world,’ and the animal tribes as well.”

Praise for Light from a Bullet Hole: Poems New and Selected 1950-2008:

“Although Ralph Salisbury may refer to himself as ‘A Killer Seeking Forgiveness,’ this collection of his new and selected work shows him to be one of the most thoughtful and moral writers of his generation. Without ever sacrificing literary excellence for self-righteousness or eloquence for polemic, Salisbury’s memorable poetry reflects not only his long full life and the Cherokee culture that has shaped his vision, it is also a corrective lens through which we may view anew the story of our American nation.” —Joseph Bruchac

Poem of the Week: "Homily" by Sherman Alexie

The VPR Poem of the Week is Sherman Alexie’s “Homily,” which appeared in the Fall/Winter 2009-2010 issue (Volume XI, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Sherman Alexie is the author of 21 books of poetry and prose. His collections of poetry include the recent Face (Hanging Loose, 2009), as well as One Stick Song (2000), The Man Who Loves Salmon (1998), The Summer of Black Widows (1996), Water Flowing Home (1995), Old Shirts & New Skins (1993), First Indian on the Moon (1993), I Would Steal Horses (1992), and The Business of Fancydancing (1992). He is also the author of several novels and collections of short fiction, including Reservation Blues (1994), which won the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award; and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), which received a Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award.

Among his other honors and awards are poetry fellowships from the Washington State Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award. In addition, he has received the Stranger Genius Award, a Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, a National Book Award, a Pushcart Prize, and the PEN/Malamud Award. Alexie co-wrote the screenplay for the movie Smoke Signals, which was based on Alexie’s short story “This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona.” The movie won two awards at the Sundance Film Festival in 1998 and was released internationally by Miramax Films. He lives with his family in Seattle.

Tuesday of each week “One Poet’s Notes” highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers revisit it. Please check the sidebar of “One Poet’s Notes” to view the list of poets and works that have been past “Poem of the Week” selections. Additionally, readers are reminded that VPR pages are best read with the browser font preference in which they were set, 12 pt. Times New Roman, in order to guarantee the stanza alignment and the breaks of longer lines are preserved.

Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn

Billy Strayhorn, one of the unsung heroes of jazz, was born on this date in 1915. Strayhorn worked for decades as an arranger for Duke Ellington, and he composed or co-composed some of Ellington’s most famous pieces, including “Take the ‘A’ Train,” “Chelsea Bridge,” “Lotus Blossom,” “Passion Flower,” and “Satin Doll.” Ellington once said, “It’s a wonderful thing, I mean, to bow after a Billy Strahorn orchestration. It’s one of the things I do best.”

Strayhorn, who died in 1967, remained mostly obscured by Ellington’s shadow throughout his life. However, in 1996, with the publication of David Hajdu’s Lush Life, titled after Staryhorn’s magnificent ballad and one of the best jazz biographies ever released, many music lovers discovered the depth of Billy Strayhorn’s contributions to jazz and understood the complexities of the man much more. In Ted Gioia’s fine volume, The History of Jazz, Strayhorn’s lovely works are described as “the closest jazz has ever approached to art song.”

[Readers are also invited to visit a previous post at “One Poet’s Notes” concerning Duke Ellington: “Duke Ellington and Quincy Troupe.”]

Happy Thanksgiving from Valparaiso Poetry Review

On this Thanksgiving Day, I pause to offer my gratitude for all of the good fortune that has occurred in the past year, and I once again express my appreciation to each reader of Valparaiso Poetry Review who has happened upon the valuable works included in the current tenth anniversary issue of VPR, as well as the marvelous materials accumulated in the journal’s pages in the twenty-one issues throughout its decade of publication.

Additionally, I am thankful to the large number of individuals who have visited this site in the last year and examined the articles at “One Poet’s Notes,” the editor’s blog for Valparaiso Poetry Review. I am amazed and honored by the tremendous growth in readership for this blog since its initiation in 2007, as the accumulated number of visits to the pages of “One Poet’s Notes” alone approaches 300,000, with monthly statistics now averaging nearly 15,000.

I am especially thankful to the many readers over the years that have sent messages containing complimentary comments and continually constructive statements about the content or form of both Valparaiso Poetry Review and the VPR blog. Moreover, I have been struck recently by the many supportive emails and facebook notes, particularly concerning the celebration of VPR’s tenth anniversary, as readers have favorably responded to the special fall issue with words of praise and have expressed respect for the ongoing efforts at Valparaiso Poetry Review during the past decade.

Therefore, I would like to acknowledge again the fine contributions by the hundreds of authors who have had their works appear in VPR since its initial publication in 1999. I wish all those writers, as well as each reader who generously decided to spend some time considering posts at “One Poet’s Notes” or browsing the poetry and prose among the thousands of pages of Valparaiso Poetry Review, best wishes for an enjoyable holiday season.

Happy Thanksgiving!


—Edward Byrne, Editor of Valparaiso Poetry Review

A Happy Thanksgiving Treat: Cheers!

“We are not here to be thankful for strange things we can do with our bodies!”

“On this very special occasion, my mind goes back over the years to the people who have influenced me . . . Tielhard de Chardin, George Sand, Caravaggio, oh, Emily Dickinson . . .”

Deborah Bogen: "November"

The VPR Poem of the Week is Deborah Bogen’s “November,” which appeared in the Fall/Winter 2008-2009 issue (Volume X, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Deborah Bogen’s book-length collection, Landscape with Silos (Texas A&M University Press), was a 2004 National Poetry Series finalist and won the 2005 X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize. Jana Bouma’s book review of Landscape with Silos also appears in the Fall/Winter 2008-2009 issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review. Bogen’s Living by the Children's Cemetery was selected by Edward Hirsch as winner of 
the 2002 ByLine Press Chapbook Competition. Her poems and reviews have been published widely in magazines, including Crazyhorse, Field, Gettysburg Review, Margie, New Letters, Poetry Daily, Poetry International, Shenandoah, and Verse Daily.

Tuesday of each week “One Poet’s Notes” highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers revisit it. Please check the sidebar to view the list of poets and works that have been past “Poem of the Week” selections. Additionally, readers are reminded that VPR pages are best read with the browser font preference in which they were set, 12 pt. Times New Roman, in order to guarantee the stanza alignment and the breaks of longer lines are preserved.

Jericho Brown: PLEASE

Hit it!—The Love Song of Jericho Brown’s Please
review by Susanna Childress

Too many times in the past few years I have finished a recently published volume of poetry and put it back on the bookshelf thinking, “Okay, okay, I get it: not only have you suffered but you’re really clever.” Jericho Brown’s Please not only led me away from this begrudging confession but allowed me while reading to become far more aware of the poems than of the poetry. That is, the book seems less a grand endeavor that orchestrates to bring attention to itself as such than a collected set of deliberate, sharply crafted pieces which reflect an unpretentious yet demanding batch of sensibilities—each poem is both gift and plea. Maybe I should put it this way: Brown’s debut volume avoids the self-conciliatory, self-congratulatory tone he might well have taken on, and that’s not because there’s nothing here to mourn or be proud of. The poems are smart and raw, but readers will recognize this as distinct from clever or pitiable, in part because the writer does not ask his readers to recognize them as such. Any insight, any complexity here is the result of intricate tonal and metaphorical maneuvering, crafting, nuance: questioning and requiring all at once, the way the word please is both a desire and a demand.

What makes avoiding self-conciliation and self-congratulation more of a feat is that, among poems that clearly employ personae and others that do so more opaquely, all are to varying degrees and by various means self-referential, and with lesser frequency but equal intensity, reader-referential. Brown opens the book with “Track 1: Lush Life,” a familiar scenario in what might be a jazz club but with such an unfamiliar and pointed analogy as to be applicable to the reader in both an eerie and endearing way:

The woman with the microphone sings to hurt you,
To see you shake your head. The mic may as well
Be a leather belt. You drive to the center of town
To be whipped by a woman’s voice. You can’t tell
The difference between a leather belt and a lover’s
Tongue…. She does not mean to entertain
You, and neither do I. Speak to me in a lover’s tongue—
Call me your bitch, and I’ll sing the whole night long.

Besides the layered tensions of intimacy and violence (readers may gloss over the lover’s tongue as leather belt, and vice-versa, as proverbial jest, but just when we’ve forgotten the literal possibility of such an intersection, it appears, and numerously, in later sections of the volume even while images of unjust beatings—often with belts—show up throughout), we also find the layers of reverence and intimacy as well as the paradox of request and demand as a unified gesture. Additionally, the line, “She does not mean to entertain / You, and neither do I,” does two things: readers are introduced to the speaker within or beyond the second-person point-of-view, which then allows us to recognize the perspective heretofore not as a “Gotcha!” but the complication of both holistic invitation and experiential impossibility, something of a “You think, reader, you can inhabit my world, and though you won’t, fully, ever, let’s go after it anyway—why not?” We understand, too, that this is not a door opened for our use of the poet, a way to be entertained, as Brown puts it. He will not be clever for us, to amuse or to dismay. Instead, the summons is more dangerous: the poet will sing, but readers best prepare themselves for harm, perhaps pleasurable in its torment, but injurious nonetheless . . . .

[Visitors are invited to read the rest of Susanna Childress’s commentary on Please by Jericho Brown, as well as her reviews of other poetry books by Stephanie Brown (Domestic Interior), William Greenway (Everywhere at Once), and Cathy Park Hong (Dance Dance Revolution) in the current issue (Fall/Winter 2009-2010: Volume XI, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.]

VPR Pushcart Prize Nominations: 2009

Since 1976, editor Bill Henderson has brought added recognition to the many fine small presses and literary journals publishing quality material with his annual anthology, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses. In recent years, the nomination process for the Pushcart Prize has been opened to online journals and their editors. I have been pleased to see this acknowledgment of the quality of writing found in many electronic publications. Therefore, I am honored to offer the half-dozen works listed below as the 2009 nominees from Valparaiso Poetry Review for the Pushcart Prize. I hope readers will again view this action as an expression of VPR’s support for the inclusion of literature from online magazines for consideration in the long-standing tradition of this fine anthology.

As I have continually mentioned when nominating works from Valparaiso Poetry Review for the additional recognition of an award or further publication in any “best of” anthology, I value all the poems and depend on all the poets in VPR; therefore, such decisions are not easy. Yet, I welcome the admirable efforts of the Pushcart Press and Bill Henderson to bring attention to the excellent literary works found in small presses and journals, in print and online. Moreover, I am grateful when an opportunity arises for a few of VPR’s splendid poets to reach an even larger audience and find the greater recognition they deserve through possible inclusion in such an anthology.

I am proud to announce the six following poems represent the 2009 nominations from Valparaiso Poetry Review to be considered for inclusion in the next volume by the Pushcart Press, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses XXXV, which is scheduled to be published in December 2010:

PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINEES FROM VALPARAISO POETRY REVIEW

Alfred Corn: “Swiss Army Knife”

Kwame Dawes: “Among the Dithering Feathers”

T.R. Hummer: “Evening Report”

Allison Joseph: “Little Epiphanies”

Dorianne Laux: “Mine Own Phil Levine”

Brian Turner: “Molotov Cocktails”

I congratulate each of these poets, and I wish to express my appreciation to all the contributors whose works have appeared in VPR.


—Edward Byrne, Editor of Valparaiso Poetry Review

Alison Stine: "Marriage"

The VPR Poem of the Week is “Marriage” by Alison Stine, which appears in the special tenth anniversary issue (Volume XI, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Alison Stine’s first full-length book of poetry, Ohio Violence, a winner of the Vassar Miller Prize, was published in 2009 by the University of North Texas Press. Kent State University published her chapbook, Lot of My Sister, winner of the Wick Prize, in 2001. Her poems have also appeared in such journals as Kenyon Review, New England Review, Paris Review, and Poetry, and her awards include a 2008 Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. Currently, Stine is a PhD candidate at Ohio University.

Tuesday of each week “One Poet’s Notes” highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers visit it. Please check the sidebar to view the list of poets and works that have been past “Poem of the Week” selections. Additionally, readers are reminded that VPR pages are best read with the browser font preference in which they were set, 12 pt. Times New Roman, in order to guarantee the stanza alignment and the breaks of longer lines are preserved.

Complementary Characteristics of Critical Classrooms and Creative Workshops

Last week, I was invited to attend a creative-writing class taught by one of my colleagues, Susanna Childress, the talented poet and an inspiring instructor. As preparation for the visit, most of the students had read a handful of poems copied from a couple of my earlier books. In addition, a pair of graduate students had carefully examined the contents of the books and designed a series of perceptive questions, which would be asked of me as an interview within the class period.

I enjoyed discussing the topics raised during this process, particularly those issues concerning the choices I’d made in the various stages of inspiration, composition, revision, and publication. As the students posed their questions about these areas of interest, I was reminded of an essay I had read only a few days before in the current issue (December 2009: Volume 42, Number 3) of The Writer’s Chronicle. The article, “Out of the Margins: The Expanding Role of Creative Writing in Today’s College Curriculum” by Chad Davidson and Gregory Fraser, included a number of acute observations about the increased influence of creative-writing courses not only on apprentice writers in workshops, but also on students of literature in English departments.

As the authors remark, a large portion of students studying creative writing “elect to major in English, where classes tend to focus on literary history and the making of criticism.” Likewise, many English majors investigating different eras of literary history have decided to add creative-writing courses among the electives they take. Consequently, Davidson and Fraser suggest today’s students have begun to blend the distinct critical approaches taught in literature courses with the close scrutiny and inquiry involved in creative-writing workshops. The article explains that students exposed to theories of critical analysis—“new historicism, neo-Marxism, post-feminism, psychoanalysis, deconstructionism, and related interpretive approaches”—in literature courses find classes in creative writing “foreground the act of close reading.”

Furthermore, the authors describe creative-writing workshops as “laboratories in which students test their comprehension and presentation of language, with the frequent consequence that emerging creative writers develop a nuanced sense of language and its arrangement as rich signifiers of meaning. Creative-writing classes require scrupulous attention to a range of textual clues: stray connotations, sound textures, and all other extra-denotative factors. Students learn to approach the craft of writing as if it were sculpture, where language becomes concretized. They also learn to pay keen-eyed attention to the submissions of their workshop peers. This type of close scrutiny excites at the textual level, as practitioners learn to travel ‘inside’ language in pleasurable ways. And such discoveries prove beneficial not only in creative development but also in the arena of critical writing—especially in the act of locating textual phenomena that might remain invisible to many other students.”

Just as the sisters depicted in the Giorgio de Chirico painting above appear to display opposing characteristics, the two kinds of classes—critical and creative—frequently seem on the surface at odds in their tactics for reading literature. Yet, Davidson and Fraser applaud the contributions of each, and they urge a mixture of the methods: “Instead of validating an ‘either-or’ logic—where creative writers cordon themselves off from other disciplines—writers today increasingly adopt a ‘both-and’ mentality that encourages border crossings and cultural exchanges. How creative-writing courses may in turn influence and re-imagine the critical setting, however, has received less attention. The terms ‘creative’ and ‘critical,’ in fact, need not represent a binary within the academy. The schism can be overcome, the gap closed.”

Indeed, early in their essay, the authors advise such interaction between creative writing and other disciplines within the university’s arts and sciences can be a healthy development arising from the proliferation of creative writing programs: “Creative-writing teachers and students have begun to think increasingly in terms of cross-fertilizations between disciplines. Instead of seeing creative and critical classrooms as polar opposites, practicing writers and teachers of writing have begun to test out hybrid learning styles that draw on the strengths of varying discourses.”

My classroom conversation with the students in the creative-writing workshop I visited confirmed the connections between writing and other forms of art, as we regarded the influence of music and painting on my poetry, or I spoke about how some knowledge of sciences like geology or meteorology might lead to enhanced descriptions of nature. I also explained how specific words had been chosen for their connotative associations, phrases for their contributions to rhythm, or personal preferences of line lengths and breaks for their ability to supply a lyrical tone.

In addition, upon investigation of formal decisions and discussions about my experimentation with different styles, or appraisal of poets’ concerns about organization of manuscripts for publication, the students and I focused on an array of aspects to writing that most likely would not be primary items for study in a literature course. Our casual conversation delightfully highlighted for me a combined look at literature and the process of writing that I’ve seen reflected as well lately by students in the period courses of literature I also teach.

In fact, the opportunity for students in our English department to select a major or minor in creative writing has been a rather recent development. Nevertheless, in the years since such options have been available, and as the enrollment in creative-writing courses has increased, I have noticed some of the complementary characteristics of courses in literary criticism and workshops in creative writing evidenced in students’ classroom consideration of texts or seeping into the composition of term papers.

After I finished my stint as a guest speaker for Susanna’s creative-writing workshop, I started to think of the lesson plan for my literature course the following day, and I realized again how much my lectures in such classes also are influenced, usually subconsciously, by my awareness of the writing process and my teaching of creative-writing courses, particularly as I regularly emphasize that students ought to attempt an additional reading of works from the author’s perspective, especially conscious of the choices made or possibly rejected during the creation of the work.

I concluded, as the authors do in The Writer’s Chronicle article, that the crossover of coursework in the curriculum by English majors and creative writers has served to benefit all. As Chad Davidson and Gregory Fraser write: “creative-writing workshops, because they tend to be text-based and focus primarily on student-generated work, complement largely context-based critical classrooms. Ultimately, for the students and teachers of such hybrid learning practices and pedagogies, the marriage of writing workshops with critical coursework offers a ‘win-win’ situation.”

Georgia O'Keeffe: RUST RED HILLS

Rust Red Hills
Georgia O’Keeffe

Georgia O’Keeffe was born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin on this date (November 15) in 1887; therefore, I believe today is an appropriate occasion for inviting visitors to read Gregg Hertzlieb’s splendid commentary on O’Keeffe’s Rust Red Hills (pictured above), cover art for the current issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review. Since the Fall/Winter 2009-2010 issue (Volume XI, Number 1) celebrates ten years of VPR’s existence, I felt the anniversary publication deserved a dramatic and vibrant cover. Consequently, when making my selection, I could think of no better example than O’Keeffe’s painting, which is one of the most popular pieces among those in the permanent collection at Valparaiso University’s Brauer Museum of Art, where Gregg Hertzlieb serves as Director and Curator.

Georgia O’Keeffe’s Rust Red Hills from 1930 is one of the Brauer Museum of Art’s most beloved paintings, a masterpiece by the artist and a concrete example of the wisdom and prescience of the museum’s founding director, Richard Brauer. Brauer purchased the painting in 1962 for the museum’s permanent collection; at that time, the price was modest because American art had not yet become desirable for collectors and because viewers were still gaining an appreciation for O’Keeffe’s contributions and creativity. Rust Red Hills now stands as a monetarily and culturally valuable work, a true gem in the Brauer’s collection that dramatically depicts a New Mexico landscape that captured the artist’s imagination.

Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) endures as a key figure in the history of art, the history and development of modern art in particular. While Western art prior to the twentieth century primarily was preoccupied with representational or realistic goals, with artists striving to transcribe the scenes or subjects before them, modern artists of the twentieth century (in part reacting to the representational possibilities afforded by the camera and photography) sought instead to present in their works interpretive views that commented as much on the artists’ individual identities and states of mind as they offered literal likenesses of the selected subjects. For early modern artists, abstraction gave them opportunities to see the world in new and fresh ways, sharing through their pieces their attitudes about objects or scenes that prompted or inspired them, with the actual vocabulary of painting or art making providing additional vehicles for metaphor and commentary.

Early in her career, O’Keeffe explored the abstract possibilities of various natural forms, using them perhaps as commentaries on fundamental or primal states of being as well as investigations of coloristic and gestural effects. She also painted New York cityscapes of expressive color and stylization, with such grand scenes speaking to the size of her ambition for her art and impulse toward abstraction. O’Keeffe’s husband, the famed photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), encouraged her in her efforts, praising her innovation as he did other pioneering modernists whom he championed and who were connected with his influential Manhattan gallery, An American Place.

O’Keeffe’s marriage to Stieglitz faced significant problems, however, leading O’Keeffe to travel in 1929 without Stieglitz to New Mexico and the American Southwest. This setting fascinated the artist, leading her to return every year before eventually settling permanently in 1949 in the New Mexican village of Abiquiu. O’Keeffe’s discovery of the American Southwest as a source of lasting inspiration lies at the heart of a moving and inspiring story in art that continues to captivate viewers of her pictures and readers of her biography. Here is an example of someone who truly looked deeply within and without before finding a place that enabled her to realize herself . . ..

Readers are urged to examine the rest of Gregg Hertzlieb’s commentary on Rust Red Hills, as well as the other contributions to the special tenth anniversary Fall/Winter 2009-2010 issue (Volume XI, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.