Free Lunch: A Poetry Miscellany
Editing Poetry: Time Well Spent
— Ron Offen
Quick Note about this issue: This Editor’s Issue of The Café Review is different from our normal published reviews. We have asked 14 editors of poetry journals from across the United States two complex question: Why do some poems stand out from others? And what is he state of poetry in America today? Their answers will surprise you. We hope this issue will give poets a better sense of what editors look for in poems. You will get the inside scoop about why different journals accept different types of poems. For teachers, this issue will answer questions students have about the dos and don’ts in submitting poems as well as the perennial question of why poetry matter.
Editors are often pressed for time and make snap judgments on the submissions they receive. So, although I can sometimes tell if a poem is going to interest me from the first few lines, I try to hold off judgment until I have read the entire
poem — usually out loud if the poem really seems worthwhile. What does capture my immediate attention in the first few lines is the quality of the language rather than the subject matter.
Poetry for me is more about how than what. Consequently, I almost never accept work that I feel is prose arranged in lines to look like poetry, regardless of whatever attributes it might have.
What I want in a poem is figurative language, which, of course, includes sound. Other negatives for me are excessive modifiers and abstract nouns.
However, I am not convinced that an inferior opening line or lines can doom a poem. After all, if the rest of the poem holds up and is superior (admittedly an infrequent occurrence) the questionable lines can be revised. I often ask for revisions in an attempt to improve such lines. For me, re–writing is an important part of the process. In fact, more than 50 percent of the work that appears in Free Lunch: A Poetry Miscellany has gone through one or more requested revisions.
Of course asking for revisions — and perhaps offering suggestions for the improvement of a poem — consumes a great deal of my time. But, in my opinion, this is not only how an editor should be spending a significant amount of her or his time, it is also time well spent in the interest of poetry. Consequently, I have little respect for those editors who either wait for the “perfect” poem to come to their desks, or accept fairly good poems that contain some questionable qualities because they are too busy to communicate with the poets.
My position regarding revisions ties in with a vow I made when I envisioned publishing Free Lunch. As poet myself, I had long been vexed by form rejection slips that offered no clue as to why my work had been found unworthy of publication. So, I promised myself that I would comment (however briefly) on every poem submitted to me, and that if I ever felt I didn’t have time to do this, I would close down my publication.
Another thing that prejudices me against a submitted poem is when it is presented in the computer–generated form where the lines are centered on the page. Generally, I find no justification for lineation that relies on what seems to me an arbitrary and artificial template. Another negative for me is a weak title. In general, I find most poets to be lazy in choosing their titles; too often they settle for the obvious. A good poem can overcome this problem, but one titled “Grandma’s Garden,” for example, will rarely raise even a frisson of interest in me to read the poem that follows.
As I noted above, the language of a poem is more important for me than its subject. But some poems have subjects that I tend to reject almost out of hand. These subjects are: about writing poems, other poems, poets, poetry readings, etc.; works of literature or art; myths; pets; and religion, when cast in the context of a particular creed. (But if you were to scan the pages of Free Lunch, I must admit you would find poems with such subjects in its pages.)
As for types of poetry to which I am not sympathetic, these include prose–poems and language poetry. I usually find the former to be more prose than poetry, and they tend to be too long, too diffuse, and too detailed. The ideal prose–poem for me would be one of Robert Bly’s very short pieces in this genre. As for language poetry, I find it willfully and annoyingly obscure, as well as somewhat arrogant and elitist.
So, does poetry matters in the world today? I would say that it matters today, and it mattered yesterday, and will matter tomorrow. Rather than provide a lengthy argument to support this opinion, let me merely pose two questions and offer two answers. First, why is it that poets are among the first victims that tyrants and repressive regimes exile, imprison, or execute? Second, why are poems presented by poets or readers at such important events as presidential inaugurations, weddings, funerals, convocations, and various initiation rites?
The answer to the first is that poets, through the ages, have for the most part been outsiders and/or critics of the status quo. As such, their words can be deemed dangerous. Today, however, American poets for the most part — except in response to their country waging its most recent, unjustified wars — appear uninterested in assuming this role. Instead, they seem mostly concerned with themselves (their random thoughts, quotidian experiences, and childhood memories) and the subject of poetry itself.
The answer to the second question is that at such important times (but also in general), poetry satisfies a deep and perhaps innate need in people to hear (or read) their own thoughts and emotions expressed succinctly and artfully by others. Today there is a paucity of such moving or insightful poetry; but, then, this was also true of the past.
Finally, as an example of a poem that typifies some of the qualities I look for, I offer the following by California poet David Hernandez:
Happiness Epidemic
Without any warning, the disease
sweeps across the country
like a traveling circus.
People who were once blue,
who slouched from carrying
a bag of misery over one shoulder
are now clinically cheerful.
Symptoms include kind gestures,
a bouncy stride, a smile
bigger than a slice of cantaloupe.
You pray that you will be infected,
hope a happy germ invades your body
and multiplies, spreading merriment
to all your major organs
like door–to–door Christmas carolers
until the virus finally reaches your heart:
that red house at the end of the block
where your deepest wishes reside,
where a dog howls behind a gate
every time that sorrow
pulls his hearse up the driveway.
Calyx: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women
Women Make Their Voices Heard through Calyx
— Beverly McFarland, with AliceAnn Eberman
Quick Note about this issue: This Editor’s Issue of The Café Review is different from our normal published reviews. We have asked 14 editors of poetry journals from across the United States two complex question: Why do some poems stand out from others? And what is he state of poetry in America today? Their answers will surprise you. We hope this issue will give poets a better sense of what editors look for in poems. You will get the inside scoop about why different journals accept different types of poems. For teachers, this issue will answer questions students have about the dos and don’ts in submitting poems as well as the perennial question of why poetry matter.
For 33 years, the Calyx Journal editorial collective has been reading thousands of poems submitted by women from all across the country — indeed, now the world — and making decisions about what to publish in Calyx: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women. I am the journal’s senior editor; however, I am also a member of the volunteer collective and my vote there has no more weight than anyone else’s.
When I first read the poem The Civil War by Stephanie Farrow (after our first two readers had said “yes”), I was enthralled. But other members of the collective were not as enthusiastic initially, and it was held for a second reading and more discussion. Eventually, we all agreed that we should publish it and we did — first in
Calyx in 2002, then in the anthology A Fierce Brightness: Twenty–five Years of Women’s Poetry, 2004.
A narrative poem, The Civil War fulfilled our major criteria: It has both significant, universal meaning transcending the personal, and the poetry is carefully crafted. This layered poem improves with each reading. The tangibles can be dissected. To begin, the word “civil” works on several levels — as a word in the title, in how the soldiers at the protagonist’s house treat each other, and in contrast with the divisiveness of war personified early in the poem: She supposed The War Between the States / would draw shortly to a close, having fought itself to death. The protagonist can see the pain and loss of humanity in the gravestone eyes of the young men. She hears their hesitation, hears their quiet knuckles / at her door, not wanting to disturb but / desperate and she reaches out and takes them in.
Farrow’s descriptions do not apply to just Civil War soldiers. Again and again, we see these young men on our TV screens as uncivil “civil” wars are brought into our homes. This poem is not just about that war in the United States, it is about a world ever at war. The four compass points of the world are delineated: The east side of her wooden house / she kept for soldiers of the North, the west for Southern / boys.
The Southern protagonist is present in the middle of her world at war, as are we all. Her first response is fear: The first time a Yankee called by her door, she’d kept / the pistol by her side. Ultimately, it is her sense of humanity that prevails. She gave to the soldiers and they gave her what they had themselves. The poet suggests that is the only true response to human need in any time, but surely in a time of war.
Maybe it’s obvious, but it’s particularly symbolic that the protagonist, a woman, makes her home neutral territory and nurtures soldiers on both sides of the battle. The poem clearly shows how women/civilians play important roles in wartime, even if seldom acknowledged. The protagonist reminds me of Mother Courage, the central figure in Bertolt Brecht’s play, as the soldiers become like her family.
The piano cover, a gift from the protagonist’s husband, is equally symbolic. She unstitches the cover and carefully saves the thread for re–sewing. The country has been ripped apart carelessly, and now the nation must do as she has done, used / their ragged shirts to measure new.
The poem ends with a lovely, subtle foreshadowing of World War I in the poppies reminiscent of those in John McCrae’s famous rondeau In Flanders Fields, and the reader is left with a clear, moving vision of the men, blue and gray, / walking down the red clay road, the soldiers and their war / disappearing in a field of orange poppies.
The Civil War
Though she couldn’t know it at the time,
it was the last winter and a bitter one.
She supposed The War Between the States
would draw shortly to a close, having fought itself to death.
She could see it in the ones who came: the young
men with gravestone eyes, the old ones with their gap–
toothed gums. The soldiers rapped with quiet knuckles
at her door, not wanting to disturb but
desperate. The east side of her wooden house
she kept for soldiers of the North, the west for Southern
boys. The first time a Yankee called by her door, she’d kept
the pistol by her side. Her skirts were loose — she’d thinned
by then — so the gun tucked easy in the rippled folds. But
the Yankee’d only said “I’d be grateful
for a night’s rest, ma’am. I have an egg.”
She fried it and he snatched it bare–handed from the skillet,
cramming it, blistering and whole, into his mouth, A single bead
of yolk drizzled down his jaw. He scooped it with a fingertip
and placed it on his tongue with such delicacy — curious, him
so rough and hairy — that she’d fried him some cornmeal and
with the quilt her mama’d pieced, fashioned him
a pallet on the porch. The Yankee’d melted into mist
at dawn, but that afternoon she found an earthy turnip propped
against her door.
After that the soldiers came more
often, like birds migrating in their first year, never having
made the journey but knowing her house to be a slim oasis
on the long route home. She cooked for every one, digging
In forgotten places for dried persimmons, shrunken onions,
preserves. They gave her what they had themselves — greens,
squirrel, if they were lucky, coon or possum; some trolled
the creek for cat. They slept there on her porches too.
In the dark inside, alone, she listened to their murmurs, soft
as the batting of summer moths. Some cried out
like children in their sleep.
They needed
food, they needed rest, they needed clothes.
She stripped the cover from the square piano, exposing
the cherrywood case, the ivory keys, to the mold
and mice. The cover was broad and the cloth elegant — poppies
on a green background. Her husband’d bought it
in New Orleans before he left. She unstitched the cover’s
seams, careful to wrap the thread around the stub
of an old cob for re–sewing, then used
their ragged shirts to measure new.
Sometimes
in her dreams she saw them, blue and gray,
walking down the red clay road, the soldiers and their war
disappearing in a field of orange poppies.
Since Calyx exists to nurture women’s creativity and provide a forum for diverse viewpoints, we look for poems that ask readers to transcend traditional boundaries. Our pages reflect themes important to women and, indeed, all people: life and death and love; nurturing the sick and the dying; equality regarding race, gender and jobs; artistic expression; war and peace. Our collective decision–making is an inherent part of our mission, reflecting diversity of perspective in helping all women’s voices to be heard.
The Café Review
Poetry as Process and Product
— Steve Luttrell
Quick Note about this issue: This Editor’s Issue of The Café Review is different from our normal published reviews. We have asked 14 editors of poetry journals from across the United States two complex question: Why do some poems stand out from others? And what is he state of poetry in America today? Their answers will surprise you. We hope this issue will give poets a better sense of what editors look for in poems. You will get the inside scoop about why different journals accept different types of poems. For teachers, this issue will answer questions students have about the dos and don’ts in submitting poems as well as the perennial question of why poetry matter.
We live in a time fertile with new poetic voices and abundant with new outlets for poetry. Poet Robert Duncan once said, “I find it healthy that there are just lots of different kinds of poetry. Most of the time, having heard something once I won’t want to hear it twice.” As publishers of small–press poetry, we know exactly what he means. Given the vast variety, we must have criteria by which we make our selections and recognize that every editor brings to the process some sort of subjective bias. To deny this fact is to be untruthful.
I have always thought of the poets and artists included in The Café Review as an extended family of creative people, correspondents to the publication itself. With that in mind, when sending out work, a poet should select publications that print poems similar in tone and style to those he or she writes. My own bias favors a poetry of delight, of exuberance and play; a poetry that celebrates the sheer joy of language and its possibilities. The true pleasure of making a poem (even a dark one) should be conveyed in the energy of the poem. The experience of the poem is delight.
In addition to solid criteria, a publisher should have an agenda, a way to promote poetry that gives the publication a distinct personality and a unique approach. Poet Charles Olson characterized the poem as a “high–energy construct.” With that in mind, I tend to regard each issue of our publication as a gathering of such constructs and believe the combination of these energies defines the impact of the issue. I feel this principle gives The Café Review an organic base to its process and product.
Small–press poetry has its roots in offering an alternative to establishment publishing. Historically, editorial authority has been with the academy, which has presided over a limited body of work, slow to admit anything new or fresh, anything risky in subject or speech. Moving beyond small presses, inexpensive self–publishing and the Internet have markedly altered the landscape of contemporary poetry. They have created a new freedom to produce and distribute, bypassing the steps of submission and acceptance or rejection. Hence, editorial judgment has been democratized, passing from the elite establishment to the individual. In this atmosphere of freedom and dissemination of the new, it is important that a small–press publication know itself and be able to adhere to its determined criteria, carry out its particular mission and yet avoid pedantic, academy–like discrimination.
Poet Robert Creeley once counseled that the only reason to write poetry is because you have to. Perhaps we could say the same about publishing poetry. We select the poems and assemble each issue out of a love of poetry, grounded perhaps in a certain idea of what poetry is and why we need it. In order to develop our criteria and define our agenda on the practical level, we need to mine the deeper, organic level of poetry itself, though a slippery task it may be.
The trick, it seems, is to get a handle on the poetic process and its apparent place in our collective consciousness, its value as such, and its ability to mirror our time. I am most drawn to poems that contain the universal in the particular, such as Li–Young Lee’s poem Fire Enthroned, published in our Spring 2003 issue:
The dove’s voice
is a sodden bed of leaves.
My mother’s voice
an unheated room in autumn.
Or is that my voice, after all,
at the window? Or has my dead brother’s
shirt collar begun to yellow?
A dove’s peeled breast
could barely feed a soul. The hunger it tolls
is my own inheritance.
Or have I dreamed too long
under my mother’s pear trees?
Have I traded my mother’s tablecloth
for a shadow
of the falling petals,
my voice for the voice
of the conquering dew,
my portion of time
for a seat somewhere between
finished earth
and the speaking fire
alive inside each thing
woven of dust and yearning?
The dove’s tremors
are lapsed echoes
of that native voice, the fire enthroned.
The dove’s flying away casts a shadow.
Now a bridge, now a gate, now my hands
parting the curtain to find the rest of the day.
In this poem, the poet seems to draw from his personal experience and create a much larger set of images for the narrative. The poem issues from his consciousness and is, literally, expressed. It takes its power from the very center of his being while referencing the universal.
In his book Day Book of a Virtual Poet, Creeley describes this dynamic by saying, “Poetry depends on the moving relations within itself. It is an art that lives in time, expressing and evoking the moving relation between the individual consciousness and the world.” In other words, a poem reflects back the poet’s mind, just as the tremors of Lee’s dove echo his voice and cast a shadow of their own.
The function of poetry, at least in part, should be to explore the possibilities of language, to be engaged with language in a special way, a way that pushes the limits. Language as a flow seems to surge at times and become relatively flat at others. Language is a system–less system. “We’re surrounded by language,” Duncan says. “We take what of it we can use.” A poet finds his or her voice continually. Voice is a very fluid thing. It is a dynamic function. As any art form requires experimentation, it is necessary to “try on” many voices in order to reach the one that most reflects one’s ground of consciousness.
For a person aspiring to write true poetry, it is crucial to read as much of the poetry of others as possible. One should search out the poetry of other times, other cultures. One should explore the seeming boundaries of speech and find the subtleties of feeling in forgotten forms. In this way, as an architect of language, a poet develops personal criteria and sets about following an authentic agenda.
The Broome Review
What Makes a “Good” Poem?
— Andrei Guruianu
Quick Note about this issue: This Editor’s Issue of The Café Review is different from our normal published reviews. We have asked 14 editors of poetry journals from across the United States two complex question: Why do some poems stand out from others? And what is he state of poetry in America today? Their answers will surprise you. We hope this issue will give poets a better sense of what editors look for in poems. You will get the inside scoop about why different journals accept different types of poems. For teachers, this issue will answer questions students have about the dos and don’ts in submitting poems as well as the perennial question of why poetry matter.
When authors query The Broome Review before submitting their work, one of the most common questions I am asked is, “What kind of poems are you looking for?” It would be all too easy and trite to answer that I’m looking for the “good ones.” But, of course, that’s what all editors look for — the best possible work they can get their hands on.
Authors despair, of course, at such a generic answer because the qualities that make a poem “good” are extremely subjective. If I think a poem is good, another editor might think it needs quite a bit of work, and vice versa. To make matters even more complicated, tastes change. We grow, evolve, and adapt as readers/writers/editors.
The following guidelines are my attempt at applying some kind of general code of quality control over the poems that have a chance of making it into an issue of Broome. These, of course, come with the caveat that they are not 100 percent infallible, that there are always some exceptions, and that they can change over time.
First, a poem has to have a strong beginning. It has to grab you. It has to, as in a good introduction to an essay or a piece of fiction, pull you into the “story.” It has to make you want to continue reading. Take for example the first stanza of Stephen Dunn’s poem, The Gasoline Sportcoat, published in our No. 1 issue:
At parties, women with skirts
slit up to their thighs
have been known to touch it,
These first three lines make a good beginning because they work on multiple levels — which is the mark, in my opinion, of any great piece of writing. First of all, they make a flawless and smooth connection with the title. The “it” in the third line clearly refers to the “sportcoat” in the title. On another level, they contain a concrete image that grounds the vague and abstract reference to “it.” The women with skirts/slit up to their thighs provides a solid visual element that automatically draws the reader into the picture or story. This same image carries with it the dual quality of being a double entendre.
The second quality I look for in a strong poem is consistency.
If it starts out “good,” then it must continue to do the job from beginning to end. Even one or two weak or misplaced/misused images in the middle of a poem can ruin the entire piece. This is often due to a careless mistake, or a “rush job” that can be fixed with a few strokes of the keyboard. However, in the literary–magazine business, editors seldom truly edit. On only a couple of occasions have I taken the time to ask a writer to revise, and both times the changes were minimal. If a poem needs major revisions such as a completely different beginning or ending, I will pass on that poem regardless of how good the rest of it is.
A third critical aspect of a poem for me is the ending, which has to be just as strong if not better than the beginning. I often encounter poems that read smoothly until the very end and then the last one or two lines will simply ruin the poem. “Bad” endings come in several forms, including proclamations; generalizations; outrageous statements where the author is trying to make a point; and flat–out dropped endings where the poem doesn’t really end and begs for a resolution of some sort. My best advice when it comes to endings — and this approach can likely be applied to other parts of the poem — is that understatement is often the more effective approach. It helps you avoid clichés. Let’s look at the ending to Dunn’s poem:
it’s influencing the sweaters on the topmost
shelf, it’s becoming
its story, the story I’m now telling.
Notice the continuity in this last stanza with the first stanza. The ubiquitous “it” refers clearly to the “sportcoat” but by remaining understated and a bit vague, the “it” takes on a more universal quality that helps the reader step into the poem and associate with the subject matter. We all have an object, place, or person that gives us that extra boost of confidence to get through the day, to do things we normally would not be able to because we are shy, uncomfortable, afraid, etc. Yes, the poem is about Dunn’s sportcoat, but it is also about our sportcoat, our get–me–through–the–day talisman.
The Broome Review’s strict editorial vision is necessitated by the sheer volume of work received. Out of more than 3,000 poems considered for the last issue, the staff accepted less than 30 poems (the rest was prose). Having to make decisions on what poems are publishable and which aren’t is not an easy task. It involves much discussion and haggling between editors.
It is also important for writers to understand what is probably the hardest part of an editor’s job — having to reject “good” poems. Even after all of the best poems were selected and vetted down, some of them still did not make it into the final volume. The principle applied here is the same one that dictates what poems make it into a chapbook or full–length poetry collection. All of the components must work together effectively. An author sometimes has to make difficult decisions to cut a poem out of a collection, and similarly a magazine editor must at times reject “good” poems if they simply do not work in the overall scheme of the publication.
The Gasoline Sportcoat
— Stephen Dunn
Slow? He so fast he run through hell
in a gasoline sportcoat, and live to tell about it.
— Cassius Clay on Sonny Liston
At parties, women with skirts
slit up to their thighs
have been known to touch it,
and men of all kinds turn suddenly alert
in its presence,
seemingly envious or wary.
I call it my gasoline sportcoat,
my live–to–tell–about–it
antidote to what’s shy in me.
With it on, I’m able to challenge
those who Jesus us
beyond all sympathy, laugh at others
who, in the glare of daily atrocities,
say it’s hell
having this ache, this head cold.
Without it, when I walk into a room
it’s as if Anonymous
has preceded me and stolen the spotlight,
his amazing fame on everyone’s mind.
A man like me needs help
to get through a day and the long slide
into evening. Which is why at home
I push its hanger
deep into the closet as if it might gather
strength there, in darkness, be ready
for a next time.
It’s mingling now with my ties and shirts,
it’s influencing the sweaters on the topmost
shelf, it’s becoming
its story, the story I’m now telling.