Go Back to School

Fall is fast upon us and it's impossible to ignore the feeling that it's time to return to school. The brochures for the community colleges, the adult ed programs, the YM/YWCA are in the malls and barber shops and it's time to wonder which poetry writing course to take this time around, how to pick, what will be the most helpful.
FORGEDDABOUTIT!!!

This fall don't take another writing course. Take a reading course, something as basic as American Literature, the sonnets of Shakespeare, the criticism of Coleridge, Victorian Poetry, modern American poetry. But don't write a goddam thing. Don't study writing, don't learn about writing. Just read and read and read.

We all want to write our hearts, our passions, free our souls and all that good shit. Stuff it. Do the work of learning what the good stuff is, what the great writers wrote. This is where the love of the art begins. And learn how the poems mean, how they get their impact, why formal verse works and how much work it really is. We tend to measure our work by its passion rather than its command of the elements of poetry. Read Aristotle's "Poetics" not necessarily for the way it informs contemporary poetics but for the depth and complexity of poetry, the nuances we so often are unaware of, the attention to the WORK OF POETRY we so often omit from our own efforts.

Go to school to read the good stuff. You'll learn more about writing that way than by writing. DO THE WORK.

So long for now.

Reader's Digest!

Ok, another confession-- Although omnipresent from my earliest childhood and source of some of my longest-standing bits of humor, despite an eighth grade guidance counselor whose brother was on its staff, as an intellectual venue Reader's Digest is a publication I have long (and probably rightfully) snubbed. In fact, the only writers joke I know is about that magazine. So, caught where there was nothing else to read, I thumbed through the June, 2009 issue and was blindsided by a poem by Sharon Olds; the poem is excellent, good poetry, good Sharon Olds poetry-- AND IN THE READER'S DIGEST.

This is a shift in axis, a change in paradigms, a shaking up of the order. A little research reveals that The Wallace Foundation, associated with the Reader's Digest co-founder Lila Wallace DeWitt, may be the connection here but I'm not sure. CAN YOU HELP ME RESOLVE THIS? I would like to know more about the magazine and its association with and support of the arts, especially poetry.

I am also reminded of my own urging to students that they look for poetry in the most unlikely places, open themselves to all opportunities to find exceptional language and exceptional verse. It seems that I have failed to follow my own urgings.

So, where have you found poetry surprises?

I look forward to your comments and help.