Recalling James Dickey's Poetry on Veterans Day

As Americans remember the service and sacrifice of military personnel throughout the nation’s history at celebrations or memorial events across the country on this Veterans Day, I’d also like to recall the war poetry of James Dickey, whose engaging work unfortunately may have faded from the memories of many in recent decades. In past articles I have spoken of my admiration for various poems by Dickey: I specifically commented upon “Sleeping Out at Easter” and “The Firebombing.” I also chronicled my own observations of James Dickey when he and I once shared a publication party at the Gotham Book Mart for our volumes of poetry published by BOA Editions.

When reflecting upon “The Firebombing,” I offered that Dickey may have “written more powerful poems about World War II than any other American poet.” Among those persuasive works by James Dickey responding to incidents experienced during combat, readers will find “Drinking from a Helmet,” which was included in Helmets, published by Wesleyan University Press in 1964.

The poet, an aviator during World War II, described in Self-Interviews (Dell, 1970), a collection of personal opinions and assessments, his intentions when composing “Drinking from a Helmet”:

I don’t think I wrote anything in Helmets about flying. I wrote about the war from the standpoint of the infantry where you have a much closer intimacy with what happens to the people in a war. For example, “Drinking from a Helmet” deals with being in the center of action, between the enemy and the graveyard. The incident occurred on Okinawa where we were fighting on Coral Ridge and the graves registration people were about two hundred yards in the rear laying out a cemetery that the fellows fighting up on the ridge would soon be occupying. This was one of the weirdest sights I ever saw. I wanted to write at least one poem about the kind of physical involvement istead of using the terrific and terrifying detachment of the combat aviator—I later wrote about that subject in a poem called “The Firebombing.”

Later in the same volume, Dickey expanded upon his thoughts about the difficult conditions and emotional stress endured by soldiers in a combat zone, as he explained his perceptions that shaped the writing of “Drinking from a Helmet”:

In World War II I was in some awfully harrowing action in the Pacific, and in some places I didn’t think it would be possible to survive at all. The result is that now, far removed from those scenes, places, and events, I view existence pretty much from the standpoint of a survivor—sort of like a perpetual convalescent. Someone wrote an article on me once which was called, “James Dickey, the Grateful Survivor,” and I can very well affirm that this is my attitude. It’s really the only personal philosophical implication of the war that I can think of, although there doubtless are a good many others I’m not aware of consciously.

I think physical courage is a very, very great thing, though. I’ve always thought so. Injuries are terrible. Anyone who will stand up to possible injury, either to help someone else or to perform some kind of mission is a great man to me. I feel very much as Malraux does or Antoine de St. Exupéry did. I’m not a worshiper of duty in the way that St. Exupéry was at all, but I very much admire dependability, which involves some degree of courage.

I’ve already said something about “Drinking from a Helmet,” a poem about being in war and close to destruction. The poem deals with a boy’s first inkling that his attitude is going to be that of a grateful survivor if he survives this day. He’s drinking water and identifying with the soldiers lying in the graveyard who have not been as lucky as he. He dedicates himself to survival and to looking up the brother of the dead soldier whose last thought he inherited by drinking from the dead man’s helmet and putting it on afterwards.

Dickey’s ambitious poem, “Drinking from a Helmet,” is written in nineteen numbered sections. I present below a sampling from the work, displaying the first four parts and the last four parts:

DRINKING FROM A HELMET


I

I climbed out, tired of waiting
For my foxhole to turn in the earth
On its side or its back for a grave,
And got in line
Somewhere in the roaring of dust.
Every tree on the island was nowhere,
Blasted away.


II

In the middle of combat, a graveyard
Was advancing after the troops
With laths and balls of string;
Grass already tinged it with order.
Between the new graves and the foxholes
A green water-truck stalled out.
I moved up on it, behind
The hill that cut off the firing.


III

My turn, and I shoved forward
A helmet I picked from the ground,
Not daring to take mine off
Where somebody else may have come
Loose from the steel of his head.


IV

Keeping the foxhole doubled
In my body and begging
For water, safety, and air,
I drew water out of the truckside
As if dreaming the helmet full.
In my hand, the sun
Came on a featherly light.

* * *

XVI

Enough
Shining, I picked up my carbine and said.
I threw my old helmet down
And put the wet one on.
Warmed water ran over my face.
My last thought changed, and I knew
I inherited one of the dead.


XVII

I saw tremendous trees
That would grow on the sun if they could,
Towering. I saw a fence
And two boys facing each other,
Quietly talking,
Looking in at the gigantic redwoods,
The rings in the trunks turning slowly
To raise up stupendous green.
They went away, one turning
The wheels of a blue bicycle,
The smaller one curled catercornered
In the handlebar basket.


XVIII

I would survive and go there,
Stepping off the train in a helmet
That held a man’s last thought,
Which showed him his older brother
Showing him trees.
I would ride through all
California upon two wheels
Until I came to the white
Dirt road where they had been,
Hoping to meet his blond brother,
And to walk with him into the wood
Until we were lost,
Then take off the helmet
And tell him where I had stood,
What poured, what spilled, what swallowed:


XIX

And tell him I was the man.


—James Dickey

Visitors are invited to view other pages at “One Poet’s Notes” with commentary and video concerning the poetry of James Dickey: “James Dickey: ‘Sleeping Out at Easter,’” “James Dickey’s Last Lecture: What It Means to Be a Poet,” and “James Dickey: ‘The Firebombing.’”

Katharine Coles: "Hawks"

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

Katharine Coles’ books include four collections of poetry—Fault, The Golden Years of the Fourth Dimension, A History of the Garden, and The One Right Touch—and two novels, Fire Season and The Measureable World. Her stories, poems, and essays have appeared in Kenyon Review, The New Republic, Paris Review, Poetry, and a number of other journals. She has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and PEN, among many other organizations. Coles teaches creative writing and literature in the English Department at the University of Utah. In 2006, she was named to a five-year term as Utah’s Poet Laureate. Katharine Coles is Director of the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute at the Poetry Foundation in Chicago.

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.

Anne Sexton on Her Life and the Importance of Poetry

I live the wrong life for the person I am. —Anne Sexton

Anne Sexton was born on this date (November 9) in 1928; therefore, I thought today a good time to offer for viewing the rare film above of Sexton reading poems, responding to questions, and engaging with family members. In a letter Sexton wrote to Jon Stallworthy on September 24th of 1965, she described her life and the importance of poetry for her:

I am 36, fairly attractive, a mother, two girls are 10 and 12, a husband in the wool business. I live nine miles outside of Boston. I do not live a poet’s life. I look and act like a housewife. My daughter says to her friends “a mother is someone who types all day.” But still I cook. But still my desk is a mess of letters to be answered and poems that want to tear their way out of my soul and onto the typewriter keys. At that point I am a lousy cook, a lousy wife, a lousy mother, because I am too busy wrestling with the poem to remember that I am a normal (?) American housewife.

I led an average childhood of rather well-to-do parents. I did very badly in school because I was (is this an American expression?) too boycrazy to bother. I attended public school (free) until the last two years when I was sent away to boarding school (where there were no boys). At boarding school I spent my time writing to boys . . . (It’s rather dull isn’t it!) At any rate I eloped at nineteen and thought it a great idea. I am still married to the same man, by the way. Still . . . I wish I hadn’t married until 30. I wrote poems, a little in high school, but stopped and didn’t start again until I was 27. I knew nothing about poetry at the time. I had to start from the very beginning. My children were young at the time. I worked like hell, staying up until 3 or 4 in the morning to type out years of bad poems.

My family tree goes back to William Brewster who came over here on the Mayflower. It goes back further to William the Conqueror, to Peter the Cruel, King of Castile, to Sir Edward Neville, who was beheaded in 1538, to Edward the Third who married Phillipa of Hainault, his mistress at age 15.

I live the wrong life for the person I am. I’m tall and thin and that’s all right with me, but my life is square and small and I wish I had a maid but that wouldn’t help. But only important part of the story is that I started to write, and it was a solitary act . . . One might add that interviews and life stories give me the horrors.

—From Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters, edited by Linda Gray Sexton and Lois Ames (Houghton Mifflin, 1977)

Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Mark Doty, and the Berlin Wall

In the city’s melted furnace, unexpectedly we watched

With faces hidden while the walls were tightening . . .
And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.
—Bob Dylan

In recognition of the twentieth anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s destruction, begun by citizens chipping at its structure with hammers and chisels on November 9, 1989, the New York Times invited a distinguished group of poets to write works inspired by this occasion. The authors contributing poems to an opinion piece, titled “What Fell Apart, What Came Together,” include Mark Doty, Marie Howe, Yusef Komunyakaa, Ewa Lipska, Vera Pavlova, Tomaz Salamun, Zafer Senocak, Bruce Weigl, and C.K. Williams.

In an excerpt from Doty’s fine poem, “The Lesson,” readers are reminded of the scene many of us remember as transmitted on television screens and witnessed around the world that night twenty years ago:

. . . the night they first scaled the wall,

the people at the top reached down to pull
the others up, and shouted Come on,
Come on! When the guards turned the water cannons on them,

they sprayed back from open bottles of champagne.
Then the broken chunks appeared, in the hands of those
who had loosened them, fragments of concrete

glazed with spray paint inscriptions, scarred
with sledgehammer and chisel: instruments of union.

As I wrote earlier this year in an article, “Bruce Springsteen Sings Bob Dylan’s ‘Chimes of Freedom’ in East Berlin,” relating to the observed event, “the images of young folks opening the barrier between East and West piece by piece remain among the most exciting ever witnessed on television, as their courageous acts indicated a close to the Cold War was at hand. Today, my son possesses a piece of the Berlin Wall, which continues to exist as a concrete reminder of the value of freedom.”

In addition, I suggested readers celebrate the historic moment by revisiting the following video of Bruce Springsteen performing Bob Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom” to hundreds of thousands of dancing and clapping Germans in an East Berlin concert just a year before the wall crumbled.

Alfred Corn: "Swiss Army Knife"

The VPR Poem of the Week is Alfred Corn’s “Swiss Army Knife,” which appears in the special tenth anniversary issue (Volume XI, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Alfred Corn has published nine books of poetry, a novel, and two collections of critical essays, the most recent titled Atlas: Selected Essays, 1989-2007, published last year by the University of Michigan Press. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. He spends part of every year in London.

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.

Baseball and Poetry: David Citino

Who in the world do you think you are?

Last night, while watching the World Series with my son, I recalled the famous photograph of Marianne Moore throwing a first pitch at Yankee Stadium, and I considered all the allusions to baseball I had seen in poems or essays by poets over the years, some of which are chronicled at one of the Poetry Foundation’s pages devoted to baseball and verse. I also remembered references to baseball as a metaphor for life lessons, including studying poetry, a perspective particularly offered repeatedly by the late poet David Citino, who died of complications from multiple sclerosis during the baseball post-season of 2005.

David Citino’s fondness for baseball could be found in his personal life as an avid fan and little league coach, as well as in his poetry and prose, particularly in a chapter, “I Don’t Care If I Never Get Back,” from his fine book of essays and memoirs, Paperwork (Kent State University Press, 2003), where Citino declares: “Poetry and baseball go way back. Walt Whitman filed what I like to think of as one of the first reports from spring training, in 1846. He happened upon ‘several parties of youngsters playing “base,” a certain game of ball.’ Whitman seems always to speak the truth with both clarity and exuberance. ‘The game of ball,’ he says, ‘is glorious.’”

Citino liked to note the ways baseball seemed to connect generations to one another, as when I watch the World Series with my son, and he enjoyed comparing poetry to baseball: “A poem and a baseball game have many similarities. Both involve skill and rules, talent and tradition, beauty and grace, the use of time and space. Everything matters between the lines.”

In a terrific collection of essays by poets that Citino earlier had edited—The Eye of the Poet: Six Views on the Art and Craft of Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2002), which includes commentary by David Baker, Billy Collins, Yusef Komunyakaa, Maxine Kumin, Carol Muske, and Ann Townsend—Citino as well presented a piece he’d written with advice for beginning poets on obtaining knowledge about the art of poetry, “Tell Me How It Was in the Old Days: In Search of the Poet.” In the opening of his essay, Citino reminisces about a situation he also would repeat in Paperwork, a series of events that began when he’d been a fifth-grader wanting to discover how to pitch well and seeking out advice of an older kid at school:

I went to a ninth-grader to learn how to throw a curve ball. He showed me. “You grip the seams. You snap your wrist down, as if you held a match a second too long.” Then one day the coach of my little league team, with even more wisdom won from age, told me not to throw a curve at all until I reached sixteen and started to get my grown-up body, or I’d do irreparable damage to my elbow. (Perhaps there are moves, twists, and velocities that younger poets should wait to try. I need to investigate this further.)

Years later, an opposing coach, after his team had knocked me around quite smartly, my best pitches whizzing back past my ears, told me that he had alerted his team to the fact that, whenever I threw the curve, I tipped my hand by sticking out my tongue a little, as if I were concentrating.

“Son,” he said to me, “you have to learn, when you throw the bender, to keep your damn tongue in your mouth.”

Live and learn. I hadn’t known that the art is to hide the art. A pitcher or poet needs (I hope this doesn’t mix the metaphor too violently) a poker face, so as not to announce to the batter or reader his or her intentions. I’ve never forgotten this kindness extended to an enemy—nor have I forgotten the importance to the poet of having a reader with a good eye and ear. Those paunchy, grizzled men sitting in dugouts are there for a reason. Those poets—women and men—sitting on benches back in the mists of time also are there for a reason. It’s all about coaching and being able to take constructive criticism. The hardest lesson young pitchers and young poets have to learn is that their job is to listen, and to read, carefully.

The young have it over the older generations in everything but those degrees earned in schools of hard knocks. Many of the birds setting off on migrations and falling into the sea or getting lost under a maze of spinning stars—each year tens of thousands of birds never make it on their long and arduous journeys—are young ones who never made the trip before. Birds, baseball players, and poets need to find out what was in order to understand better what is. I tell student poets that the best way to develop is to read poetry of all ages and all cultures, to ask of every poet, Who in the world do you think you are? The answer varies of course from poet to poet (as it does from pitcher to pitcher), but also from poem to poem.

Readers are also invited to examine a previous post at “One Poet’s Notes” relating to this topic: “David Bottoms: ‘Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt.’”

Happy Halloween!

Best of the Web: VPR Nominations

I am pleased to announce Valparaiso Poetry Review’s nominations for the upcoming Best of the Web anthology from Dzanc Books, an annual collection described as “representing in book form the best literary writing online magazines have to offer.” I have been privileged to report in the past that works from Valparaiso Poetry Review have been chosen to be among those published in previous editions of Best of the Web.

The editors invite up to three nominated works for submission by each online literary journal. As I have mentioned in the past, I maintain a high regard for every poem selected for publication in VPR, and I am reluctant to pick some pieces for honor over others. Indeed, I value all the poems and depend on all the poets in Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Yet, I welcome the admirable efforts of the editors at Dzanc Books as they bring attention to the growing number of fine works appearing in online magazines. Moreover, I have recently written about my belief that we are witnessing a coming of age for electronic literary journals, and I am confident publications like the Best of the Web anthology help raise awareness of the excellent quality existing in writings regularly witnessed in such online venues. Additionally, I am pleased whenever an opportunity arises for greater recognition of the contents in issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Reviews of the 2009 edition of Best of the Web included the following:

“The book is heartily significant, featuring work that is sometimes surprising . . . and sometimes exhilarating—not unlike the Web itself. —Los Angeles Times

“The book both recognizes a wide range of quality online writing, and gives its readers a comprehensive look at the field from which its contents come—two characteristics of a good anthology . . . . Such a development could not have come at a better time for online literary publishing.” —New Pages

Therefore, I have offered the editors three poems for consideration from the most recent issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review, works that are eligible for Dzanc Books’ 2010 Best of the Web anthology, and I am pleased to report the following nominations:

Cornelius Eady: “Aretha Franklin’s Inauguration Hat”

Claudia Emerson: “Ground Truth”

Charles Wright: “I’ve Been Sitting Here Thinking Back over My Life . . .”

These poems appear in the tenth anniversary issue (Fall/Winter 2009-2010: Volume XI, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review, released earlier this month, and I again invite readers to examine the entire roster of writers in this wonderful issue.

I congratulate the nominated poets. At the same time, as I have in the past, I wish to express my appreciation to all the contributors whose works appear in the current issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review, as well as to those hundreds of poets published in VPR during its tenure of ten years. I am grateful for all the ongoing support Valparaiso Poetry Review has received from contributors and readers during its decade of publication, and I look forward to much more splendid poetry available to readers among the pages of VPR in the future.

Dorianne Laux: "Mine Own Phil Levine"

The VPR Poem of the Week is Dorianne Laux’s “Mine Own Phil Levine,” which appears in the special tenth anniversary issue (Volume XI, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Dorianne Laux is the author of four collections of poetry. She is also the coauthor, with Kim Addonizio, of The Poet’s Companion. Among her awards are a Pushcart Prize, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Guggenheim fellowship. What We Carry (BOA Editions, 1994) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her fourth book of poems, Facts about the Moon (W.W. Norton, 2007), reviewed in “One Poet’s Notes,” was the recipient of the Oregon Book Award and was short-listed for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Laux teaches at North Carolina State University and lives in Raleigh with her husband, the poet Joseph Millar.

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.

Back from Bedlam: Brian Turner

In his article, “To Bedlam and Back,” that appears in the New York Times this week, poet Brian Turner writes about the difficulties facing soldiers when they make the transition from war to home. Even as a veteran, an infantry sergeant who served both in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Iraq, Turner questions his own perspective on this issue: “I guess what I’m wondering most is, as a country that is currently at war, how do our veterans rejoin the life waiting for them back home? How do they rejoin the tribe once they’ve been to Bedlam? How do we help them so that they don’t feel as if they’re encased in glass, pinned to the walls as specimens in some museum-house of culture? It’s a difficult question to answer. I have trouble answering it myself.”

One of the ways Brian Turner has responded to his history, as a soldier at the battlefront who returns home, has been to explore in his poems various experiences encountered in a war zone and to examine the enduring emotions evoked by them. Turner’s first book, Here, Bullet (Alice James Books, 2005), was the winner of the Beatrice Hawley Book Award, the Poets’ Prize, the Northern California Book Award in Poetry, and other honors. In my review of Here, Bullet posted in January of 2007 to “One Poet’s Notes,” I remarked: “Admirably, Turner tries to offer different versions and to identify differing visions of the events related throughout the book by learning various aspects of local language, customs, and religious beliefs. The speaker in these poems desires a way to understand and empathize with those whose country is caught in the crossfire of conflict.”

I am pleased to report Brian Turner is among the poets contributing work for the new issue (Fall/Winter 2009-2010) of Valparaiso Poetry Review, celebrating its tenth anniversary, with two of his poems: “Molotov Cocktails” and “The Battle of Fucine Lake, AD 52.” Readers are also urged to visit another article at “One Poet’s Notes,” “Veteran’s Day: Brain Turner’s ‘Here, Bullet,’” to view a video of Turner performing his poetry.

Cornelius Eady: "Aretha Franklin's Inauguration Hat"

The VPR Poem of the Week is Cornelius Eady’s “Aretha Franklin’s Inauguration Hat,” which appears in the special tenth anniversary issue (Volume XI, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Cornelius Eady is the author of eight books of poetry: Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems (2008), Brutal Imagination (2001), a National Book Award finalist; The Autobiography of a Jukebox (1997); You Don’t Miss Your Water (1995); The Gathering of My Name (1991); Boom, Boom, Boom (1988); Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (1986), winner of the 1985 Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets; and Kartunes (1980). He is also co-editor, with Toi Derricote, of Gathering Ground (2006). Eady’s work in theater includes the libretto for an opera, The Running Man, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1999. His play, Brutal Imagination, won Newsday’s Oppenheimer Award in 2002. He has received the Prairie Schooner Strousse Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Eady is the director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Notre Dame.

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.

Editor's Note of Appreciation

In an article posted over the weekend at Blogalicious, Diane Lockward kindly noted the tenth anniversary issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review, released last week, and offered complimentary comments focusing on some of my remarks in the editor’s note that opens the new issue of VPR. I appreciate Lockward’s response, and I am particularly pleased that she directs her readers to two points expressed in my introduction to VPR’s current collection of works and authors. First, she applauds my continuing desire to produce an online journal that contributes to the growing stature of electronic magazines seen in recent years. Second, she shares my contention that we are witnessing the arrival of acceptance—by readers, academics, and publishers—of online magazines as existing on a par with various valued print periodicals.

As I mention in the editor’s note (reprinted below), and as I have previously discussed in a piece (“Online Literary Journals: Coming of Age”) that appeared last spring in “One Poet’s Notes,” I believe numerous online literary journals, especially those concerning the genre of poetry, have progressed tremendously during the past decade. Many magazines also have undoubtedly matured into quality publications deserving more attention and the greater respect they now seem to be receiving. Such positive reactions have been reflected in the large number of visitors to Valparaiso Poetry Review in the seven days since the tenth anniversary issue appeared, as well as in the many favorable personal messages I have received this week from readers offering praise about the poems and reviews included by contributors to the new issue of VPR, for which I am again thankful.

TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF VALPARAISO POETRY REVIEW: A NOTE OF APPRECIATION

Ten years ago, in October of 1999, the initial issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review premiered as an online journal designed to introduce new, emerging, and established poets to the larger audience available on the Internet. Much has changed since that publication of Valparaiso Poetry Review’s first issue. At the time, the concept of an online literary journal was still a fairly novel idea and relatively untested. Reputations of existing electronic literary magazines, among authors and readers, were spotty at best. As Sandra Beasley stated in a recent article for Poets & Writers: “Online journals were a pale imitation of print, marred by amateurish fonts, garish backgrounds, and the lack of editorial accountability.” Consequently, one could not blame any writers who wondered about the wisdom of publishing material in such venues, where even the environment might diminish readers’ responses to the work.

Indeed, in the early issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review I was particularly grateful to those poets and critics who contributed to the journal based solely upon a confidence that their good works would appear among other fine pieces and be placed in an atmosphere reflecting literary integrity. I appreciated their faith that I would exercise editorial judgment in a manner that would benefit all the contributions included in every volume of VPR. Over the opening decade of the journal’s existence, I have always attempted to honor the privilege bestowed upon me by those writers who entrusted Valparaiso Poetry Review with their poetry, reviews, and essays.

Additionally, I felt a responsibility to produce an online literary journal that would attain a certain amount of respect and would contribute to the overall stature of electronic magazines, whose standing was already beginning to become more elevated due largely to the exemplary efforts by a number of other editors at similar sites. These individuals also were working toward building a community of Internet publications that would complement the numerous excellent titles in the world of print journals. I believe most readers of contemporary literature have been amazed in the past decade by the growth in popularity and the increased sophistication level of various online literary journals. I know I admire the wonderful work witnessed in many electronic publications nowadays, and I regularly applaud the activities of their editors. Moreover, as I have suggested in my writing elsewhere, I believe we have finally reached a point where readers may safely say they are observing a coming of age for the online literary journal.

I have been pleased to notice, as further evidence of an increased respect for online magazines, the “table of contents” pages of some electronic literary journals now display a wide range of well-known poets and fiction writers whose presence was limited to print journals not too long ago, and whose contributions bring greater attention to those emerging authors publishing exciting work alongside them. Moreover, when I glance at the “acknowledgments” pages of new books of poetry or volumes of literary commentary, I find myself noting how many titles of online journals, including Valparaiso Poetry Review, are represented side by side with those titles of traditional print periodicals, all of which seem to have adopted at least some degree of online presence as well in recent years. In fact, various print journals have evolved into “hybrids,” also offering their content online, and during the past few years, readers have seen esteemed literary magazines start to migrate fully from a print format to an online-only status.

I value all the poems and depend on each author in Valparaiso Poetry Review; therefore, I wish to take this special opportunity to express again my appreciation to everyone whose splendid work has appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review during the past ten years of the journal’s publication. The number of people to whom I am grateful for contributing their writing rises every year, as VPR currently includes about 500 poems and more than 100 works of prose commentary in its twenty-one issues.

Likewise, the readership for Valparaiso Poetry Review has soared far beyond my expectations over the years, and I am pleased to report I am confident VPR’s readers can look forward to more exceptional work in the future with poems, essays, interviews, reviews, and commentary that visitors to Valparaiso Poetry Review will find equally as entertaining, engaging, and enlightening.

Additionally, I appreciate very much all the ongoing support and positive feedback Valparaiso Poetry Review has received in e-mails or through readers’ comments at “One Poet’s Notes,” the VPR editor’s blog, as well as in messages sent by means of the VPR Facebook page. I also look forward to any responses readers might have to this special tenth anniversary issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review, which celebrates the occasion by presenting significantly more poems than previous issues of VPR.

Once again, thank you to all, writers and readers, for the numerous outstanding contributions and many kind words of encouragement concerning Valparaiso Poetry Review during the past decade.

With gratitude,
Edward Byrne
Editor, Valparaiso Poetry Review

Visitors are invited to read the tenth anniversary issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review (Fall/Winter 2009-2010: Volume XI, Number 1).

Jared Carter: "John Brown and His Men . . ."

This weekend marks the 150th anniversary of the Harper’s Ferry raid led by abolitionist John Brown. The attack began on October 16, 1859, when Brown and a band of about twenty charged the Harper’s Ferry Armory in Virginia, aiming to obtain arms from the arsenal that could be distributed to slaves for an uprising. Though initially successful in capturing the armory, two more days of battle with militia occurred, during which Brown’s plans failed. Brown’s men were defeated by troops commanded by Colonel Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart. Both would become better known as participants for the Confederacy in the Civil War. Many of Brown’s abolitionists, including two of his sons, were killed in the fighting, while the rest were taken prisoner for trial and execution. Brown, who had previously led a bloody massacre and was considered a “madman” by Lee, was tried for treason and hanged on December 2.

Readers are invited to visit the current issue (Fall/Winter 2009-2010: Volume XI, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review, released earlier this week, which includes a poem (“John Brown and His Men, with Some Account of the Roads Traveled to Reach Harper’s Ferry” by Jared Carter) concerning these events.

Ranking MFA Programs in Creative Writing

This week, Poets & Writers issued online rankings of all the MFA programs in creative writing across the country for the upcoming academic year of 2010. The findings will appear in an article (“The Top Fifty MFA Programs in the United States: A Comprehensive Guide”) for the November issue of Poets & Writers print magazine. The complete list includes about 140 graduate programs, and the rankings were designed by Seth Abramson based upon criteria outlined in the article for Poets & Writers. As Abramson states:

None of the data used for the rankings that follow was subjective, nor were any of the specific categories devised and employed for the rankings based on factors particular to any individual applicant. Location, for instance, cannot be quantified—some applicants prefer warm climates, some cold; some prefer cities, some college towns; and so on—and so it forms no part of the assessment. Other factors traditionally viewed as vital to assessing MFA programs have likewise been excluded. For instance, conventional wisdom has been for many years that a program may be best assessed on the basis of its faculty. The new wisdom holds that applicants are well advised to seek out current and former students of a program to get as much anecdotal information about its faculty as possible, but, in the absence of such information, one must be careful not to confuse a writer's artistic merit with merit as a professor. In the past, too many applicants have staked years of their lives on the fact that the work of this writer or that one appealed to them more than others, only to find that the great writers are not always the great teachers, and vice versa. Likewise, mentoring relationships are difficult to form under even the best of circumstances, particularly because neither faculty member nor incoming student knows the other's personality and temperament in advance.

According to the criteria developed for Poets & Writers, the following represent a top-20 list of the top-50 MFA creative writing programs in overall ranking:

1. University of Iowa in Iowa City
2. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
3. University of Virginia, Charlottesville
4 (tie). University of Massachusetts, Amherst
4 (tie). University of Texas, Austin
6. University of Wisconsin, Madison
7. Brown University in Providence
8. New York University in New York City
9. Cornell University in Ithaca, New York
10. University of Oregon, Eugene
11. Syracuse University in New York
12. Indiana University, Bloomington
13. University of California, Irvine
14. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
15. Brooklyn College, CUNY
16. University of Montana, Missoula
17. Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore
18. Vanderbilt University in Nashville
19. University of North Carolina, Greensboro
20. Washington University, St. Louis

The MFA programs are also ranked separately in various genre categories—including poetry rank, fiction rank, and nonfiction rank—as well as for funding, selectivity, and postgraduate placement. When the programs are considered for the genre of poetry only, the top-10 rankings appear as follows:

1. University of Iowa in Iowa City
2. University of Virginia, Charlottesville
3. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
4. University of Massachusetts, Amherst
5. University of Texas, Austin
6. University of Wisconsin, Madison
7. New York University in New York City
8. Brown University in Providence
9. Cornell University in Ithaca, New York
10. University of North Carolina, Greensboro

As Abramson acknowledges, the “rankings do not address MA programs in English that offer creative writing concentrations, low-residency MFA programs, or creative writing PhD programs.” He also advises: “Because there are 140 full-residency MFA programs in the United States, any school whose numerical ranking is in the top fifty in any of the ranked categories—the overall rankings; rankings in the poetry, fiction, or nonfiction genres; or the rankings by funding, selectivity, and postgraduate placement—should be considered exceptional in that category.”

In an article (“Creative Writing Programs: Brief Observations and Advice”) that I posted at “One Poet’s Notes” in March of 2008, I noted how “an explosion of growth in the number of creative writing programs during the last few decades has created a wealth of opportunities for young writers; still, the multitude of choices also can cause some confusion or uncertainty. Moreover, although many creative writing programs exist, the pool of applicants to these programs has increased over the years as well. Therefore, the acceptance rate for each program remains quite low and only adds to the anxiety experienced by those anticipating responses.”

Consequently, although the rankings provided by Poets & Writers omit subjective considerations that might play an important role in any applicant’s decision, the data offered in the article permits those considering MFA programs some valuable objective information that ought to be among the significant factors taken into account.

VPR Featured Poet: Charles Wright

The Fall/Winter 2009-2010 issue (Volume XI, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review that was released yesterday includes Charles Wright as the “featured poet.” Readers are invited to visit this tenth anniversary issue of VPR, which contains a trio of poems by Wright and a review of his three most recent books: “The World as We Know It: Charles Wright’s Scar Tissue, Littlefoot, and Sestets.” Among its comments on Scar Tissue, the review reports: “Charles Wright submits persuasive poetry persistently filled with wisdom, aided by a nostalgic filter of memory and an ability to render exquisite descriptions of nature.” Wright received the 2007 Griffin International Poetry Prize for Scar Tissue. In the video above, Charles Simic introduces Charles Wright at the June 2007 Griffin readings in Toronto, and Wright presents “The Woodpecker Pecks, but the Hole Does Not Appear,” one of the poems from Scar Tissue.

VPR: Tenth Anniversary Issue

I am pleased to announce the tenth anniversary issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review is now available. Valparaiso Poetry Review celebrates a decade since the initial publication in October of 1999 with a special twenty-first issue, and VPR continues as one of the longest running online literary journals. Therefore, I believe this is an appropriate moment to offer from the issue the following brief excerpt that is included among my remarks in the editor’s “note of appreciation”:

Once again, thank you to all, writers and readers, for the numerous outstanding contributions and many kind words of encouragement concerning Valparaiso Poetry Review during the past decade.

Tenth Anniversary Issue

Contents of the Fall/Winter 2009-2010 issue (Volume XI, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review include the following:

Featured Poet: Charles Wright

Additional Poets: Sherman Alexie, Mary Biddinger, Jared Carter, Katharine Coles, Alfred Corn, Kwame Dawes, Susan Donnelly, Cornelius Eady, Claudia Emerson, Patricia Fargnoli, Annie Finch, Daisy Fried, Reginald Gibbons, H. Palmer Hall, T.R. Hummer, Allison Joseph, David Kirby, Dorianne Laux, Frannie Lindsay, Diane Lockward, Sebastian Matthews, Eric Nelson, Joel Peckham, Greg Rappleye, Margot Schilpp, Jeffrey Skinner, Floyd Skloot, Martha Silano, Dave Smith, Alison Stine, Virgil Suarez, Elizabeth Swados, Daniel Tobin, Catherine Tufariello, Brian Turner

Poets Reviewed: Jericho Brown, Stephanie Brown, William Greenway, Cathy Park Hong, Charles Wright

Cover Art Commentary: Gregg Hertzlieb on Georgia O'Keeffe

Robert Lietz: "Adapting the Cuisine"

The VPR Poem of the Week is Robert Lietz’s “Adapting the Cuisine,” which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2007 issue (Volume VIII, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Robert Lietz has authored seven collections of poetry, including Running in Place and At Park and East Division, both published by L’Epervier Press. His poetry has appeared widely in literary journals, including Agni Review, Carolina Quarterly, Epoch, Georgia Review, Missouri Review, North American Review, Poetry, and Shenandoah. He is a professor of English and creative writing at Ohio Northern University.

Tuesday of each week “One Poet’s Notes” highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the archives 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.

Elizabeth Bishop on Meeting Marianne Moore

I have always been fascinated by the manner in which older and established poets or artists have served as mentors for those just beginning to learn their craft. In recent decades, many of those relationships have developed in the formal setting of the university creative writing programs, places where students choose to be guided by authors on the faculty. I know I have been grateful for the counsel I received as a beginning poet from a few faculty members I regarded as mentors. Indeed, I believe any comprehensive examination of influences in American poetry during the last half of a century would need to explore the inspiration and instruction offered by mentors to their writing students in academic programs, especially with the increased presence of creative writing workshops on campuses across the country and the more structured network of such programs as evidenced by the expansion of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) in the past couple of decades. Nevertheless, one will find a number of prominent poets who also discovered mentors or role models for their writing from associations established outside the classroom.

I was reminded of this as I prepared for classes in the upcoming week, during which students in my Twentieth Century Poetry course and I will discuss the poems of Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop. We also will consider Bishop’s admiration for Moore, as well as Moore’s advice to Bishop. In fact, only Robert Lowell’s later friendship with Bishop matched her ongoing ties to Moore. [Visitors are urged to read “Elizabeth Bishop’s Poetic Voice: Reconciling Influences” for more on this topic.]

Elizabeth Bishop first met Marianne Moore in 1934 when a librarian at Vassar College, which Bishop attended as a student, arranged a meeting between the two near the reading room at the New York Public Library. Bishop later wrote an essay outlining her friendship with Moore, which began on that afternoon in 1934 and continued until Moore’s death in 1972, at the age of 84. That article, “Efforts of Affection: A Memoir of Marianne Moore,” initially appeared in a 1983 issue of Vanity Fair, four years after Bishop’s death, and the piece is included in Elizabeth Bishop: The Collected Prose (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984). A wonderful section of Bishop’s essay about her friendship with Moore describes the introduction to one another, on a bench in New York City, and an opening conversation that included a rather unusual invitation, which began a treasured lengthy association for the two poets:

I was very frightened, but I put on my new spring suit and took the train to New York. I had never seen a picture of Miss Moore: all I knew was that she had red hair and usually wore a wide-brimmed hat. I expected the hair to be bright red and for her to be tall and intimidating. I was right on time, even a bit early, but she was there before me (no matter how early one arrived, Marianne was always there first) and, I saw at once, not very tall and not in the least bit intimidating. She was forty-seven, an age that seemed old to me then, and her hair was mixed with white to a faint rust pink, and her rust-pink eyebrows were frosted with white. The large black flat hat was as I’d expected it to be. She wore a blue tweed suit that day and, as she usually did then, a man’s “polo shirt,” as they were called, with a black bow at the neck. The effect was quaint, vaguely Bryn Mawr 1909, but stylish at the same time. I sat down and she began to talk.

It seems to me that Marianne talked to me steadily for the next thirty-five years, but of course that is nonsensical. I was living far from New York many of those years and saw her at long intervals. She must have been one of the world’s greatest talkers: entertaining, enlightening, fascinating, and memorable; her talk, like her poetry, was quite different from anyone else’s in the world. I don’t know what she talked about at that first meeting; I wish I had kept a diary. Happily ignorant of the poor Vassar girls before me who hadn’t passed muster, I began to feel less nervous and even spoke some myself. I had what may have been an inspiration, I don’t know—at any rate, I attribute my great good fortune in having known Marianne as a friend in part to it. Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus was making a spring visit to New York and I asked Miss Moore (we called each other “Miss” for over two years) if she would care to go to the circus with me the Saturday after next. I didn’t know that she always went to the circus, wouldn’t have missed it for anything, and when she accepted, I went back to Poughkeepsie in the grimy day coach extremely happy.