National Poetry Month!

Again this year, I will celebrate National Poetry Month in Chicago. This means that as I walk down the sidewalks without my winter coat and breathe in the springlike air, I don't really see the effects of National Poetry Month. No one can be seen wearing berets, carrying bongos. I don't hear an overabundance of metaphors. To put it simply: I am disappointed.

At Hope College, where I received my undergraduate degree, NPM is starts with a bang--or, a blitz. As a combined April Fool's Day/NPM event, students wake up on April 1st to find the campus sprinkled with poems: taped on doors, windows, sidewalk squares, or tied to trees and bikes. Little elves have been hard at work all night long to make sure that even non-English majors at Hope College can experience Billy Collins or Walt Whitman or even their fellow students' poetry. Janitors have contacted English professors, telling them that they sat around during their lunch breaks reading the print-outs, keeping them tucked next to their mops and buckets.

So, what will follow over the next month will be a (small) poetry blitz of my own. Enjoy, and I only wish you could have stumbled upon these treasures hanging from a tree or maybe in your mailbox.

L. Stacks

(Note: this post is a repeat of a post from a year ago, but in order to explain my intentions, I decided to repost it. Why try to say it again, when I already explained it best?)

It's here!!

After months and months of anticipation, my first publication is finally out!

Yesterday before class, I ventured over to Barnes & Noble and inquired about Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25, and after a bit of a wild goose chase, I held the sleek, bright book in my hands for the first time.

It was so exciting to see my name in print for the first time, and to finally read the other poetry that Naomi Shihab Nye chose to include in the anthology. Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks that Nye put together an awesome book, because the anthology received a starred review in the School Library Journal, shown below.

Pick up your own copy at Barnes & Noble, or on amazon.com or through Harper Collins' website!

L. Stacks

Poetry Inspiration: "The Shoe"

The Shoe

[Kathryn Starbuck]

Each time I relived it, after the worst

was over, I’d say to myself, as if my fate

would solace me,

”at least I’ll never have to do this again.”

It is true that I’ll never have to kiss his

dying hands, now dead. I’ll never have

to find where he left his coffee mug, now mine.

I’ll never have to wash his hair or repair

his typewriter or stock the medicine stand.

I’ll never even have to find places

that can use his clothes because

some friend-I don’t remember who-

did that for me when I could not. I

distributed his portrait, I picked up his poems.

I thanked friends and children for helping me

hold on. I made braids out of dead funeral

flowers to border the rooms where

once he breathed and took on the heavy

chores, gladly, of loving me. I sprinkled

one teaspoon of his ashes on our bereft bed

and slept with them. They scourged my body.

But when that single shoe, the mate I thought

had got sent off with its partner, showed up

today, alone, crouching behind the couch, alive

with Effie’s opulent Turkish angora fur, I knew

solace was something I could neither seek nor

find. Oh beloved! I know I am an old woman.

But I cannot live in your shoe.

---

Things are busy over here today, so I just thought I'd leave you all with a poem that I read in Best American Poetry 2009, and that has resonated with me since. Enjoy!

L. Stacks

Submitting!

To hold myself more accountable to submitting more often (because how else can a writer get published except by constantly, constantly submitting?), I am going to share with you all the contests and such that I'm planning to submit to in the next few months.

February 15th (this Monday!!)

Chicago Tribune's Nelson Algren Award

For this contest, I am going to submit a short story, "Stick Shift," that I wrote two years ago now, and that I've been sitting on since then. I wanted to wait to send it out, to see if any insight would flash before my eyes, to make sure I knew it was "done." And for the past two years I simply have not thought of even one single thing that could change this story, the main character, or the ending. So, I think it's ready.

February 26th

National Society of Arts and Letters Competition in Short Story Writing (Illinois Chapter)

NSAL requires each writer to submit a short story written in first person, and another written in third person. I'll be honest: I'm not positive what first person story I'll turn in (I might have to search through the archives) but for the third person story I'll probably try to send out a chapter of my novel. Luckily, I have a couple weeks to figure this out.

March 31st

The Poetry Foundation's Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship

I'm actually pretty excited to apply for this fellowship. This submission is limited to poets between the ages of 21 and 31 and must include 10 poems and a 250-word essay about the poet's work. I am crossing my fingers that my inclusion in Nye's 25 poets under 25 anthology will be a nice publication to have on my resume for this fellowship.

Wish me luck!

L. Stacks

The Countdown Begins!

So it's been almost a year since this post, and finally it's almost time for my poems to come out in Naomi Shihab Nye's anthology Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25. The book will be released later this month: on Tuesday, February 23rd!

Each of the 25 poets represented in this anthology is represented by 4 poems, a short bio and a picture. My poems include "Rain, Snow, and Other Weather," "Macaroni Love," "Evolution of a Writer," and "Please Stop Sending."

The back of the anthology reads:

They are inspiring talented stunning remarkable wise

They are also fearless depressed hilarious impatient in love out of love pissed off

And they want you to let them in.

To support me and 24 other young poets, pre-order it here!

L. Stacks

ACM #50 "Another Chicago Issue:" Call for Submissions!

As many of you know, I have been interning with the award-winning literary magazine Another Chicago Magazine for the past six months, helping with editorial selections, organization, and slush-reading. ACM's #49 "Bestiary" was released mid-summer, and we are well on our way to produce another great issue in early 2010.

ACM #50 will be a Chicago-themed issue, "Another Chicago Issue." To be considered for publication in this issues, you need not submit a piece specifically about Chicago (although feel free to, if you're so inclined) rather, you need only to live in Chicago, and to represent what we feel to be true Chicago-writing style.

About ACM: "Above all, we prefer diversity and an eclectic variety of work, which in some way diverges from and chafes againt preconceived ideas of genre, technique, and form, as well as work that may be a particularly distinguished example of more conventional modes. We believe that our content continues to encourage the reading of contemporary literature that is not only outside the most popular “mainstream,” but somewhat outside the “literary mainstream” as well. In other words, we hope to strike a more adventurous path from our peers and we hope to break new ground in our consideration and inclusion of multiple aesthetic and social viewpoints. Over the past four decades we feel we have largely succeeded in achieving this vision."

Submissions must be postmarked by January 5, 2010 and addressed as follows:

Another Chicago Magazine

Jacob S. Knabb

2608 W. Diversey

Apt 202

Chicago, IL - 60647

Re: "Another Chicago Issue"

I'd love to see submissions from you all--and please feel free to spread the word, as we have always been a magazine that is interested in publishing quality writers regardless of their previous publishing experience.

L. Stacks

Zoom Zoom

This weekend, the midwest is taking off her winter coat and warming up to the 60s. I'm going to spend plenty of time outside at this site, watching my little brother run in the Michigan cross country State Finals. Kyle (see his speedy picture below) is ranked first in his division, and so is his high school team. I'm warming up my vocal chords and tying up my dusty running shoes in order to zip from place to place in order to cheer him on.

[Track State Meet Spring 2009]

I've been thinking about my little brother a lot lately, trying to send him good ju-ju during all of the cross country meets I've missed this season. And I've realized something: Kyle is the only member of my family that I have yet to write a poem about. It's not that I don't think my brother is worthy of a poem, or that I don't want to write something about him--instead, it's more that I don't think that I can quite pin him down enough (nor do i want to) in order to write a poem about him yet. He's in the midst of making college decisions, trying to run his heart out, and being an eighteen-year-old boy. I don't want to try to make sense of him yet, to put that out into the world until he's made sense of himself.

So instead, I'll just cheer hard, and cross my fingers for him. Go little brother!

L. Stacks

Writing in the Morning

This morning, I was up early and walking home in a morning sprinkle shower. It was 6 a.m. I had goosebumps and hadn't had my morning coffee, and yet, somehow, a whole poem came to me and settled in my head all in just a matter of a few seconds. One of my writing professors love to proclaim that good writing comes while we are in our dream-state, and this morning, I would say that I have to agree.

L. Stacks

[photo by dani920]

Losing Season Scores a Win

I just finished reading the poetry collection Losing Season by Jack Ridl--named by the Institute of International Sport as one of the most influential sports educators in American. Jack was my poetry professor at Hope College, and I was so excited that his book was being published (CavanKerry Press) because I loved his last collection, Broken Symmetry. Losing Season follows a high school basketball team through their terrible winning drought, and is told through the voice of the Coach, the bench-warmer, Coach's wife, the assistant coach and the equipment man.

One of my favorite parts comes in the poem "Scub," which is about the bench-warmer:

Sometimes, after practice,

I walk home slowly, and I

think about letting the ball

bounce away. Then I'd

sit down, let my mind

open up wider and wider,

so wide the sky would

come inside, the stars

would light it all.

Ridl's focus on the small things--walking home after practice, the memories people keep, feeding the birds or coming home to one's wife--is what keeps this collection moving. While at times, the topic is bleak (the team is losing! losing! losing!), Ridl's clear, concise poetry keeps the book from getting muddled with despair. It's a great read, even if you're not a big sports fan (like me!), because this book is about more than sports: hope, living up to expectations, perseverance, letting people down, and holding on to the moments that mean the most.

Follow Jack Ridl on twitter.

Listen to Jack read from Losing Season on NPR's Only a Game (around 25:00).

L. Stacks

"Up North": The Ever-Elusive Poem

I spent the labor day weekend this year "up north" (any Michiganders out there will understand this to mean anyplace in Michigan north of, say, Mount Pleasant, the middle knuckle of Michigan's mitten). "Up north" is a place that I hold dear, it is a place that reminds me of family, of solitude, history and a place I always considered to be my favorite place ever since I was young.

[The view from the cottage porch--feet up, rocking chair]

That said, I've been spending the last two years trying to put into words what this place means to me--most specifically, my grandparents' cottage near Cheboygan, about 20 minutes from tourist-y Mackinaw City. The cottage sits on chilly, clear Lake Huron, yet is tucked away by a winding dirt road, thick pines and bushes. For two years, I've had pieces of a poem playing in my head, with talk of beach grass like snakes, birch trees unwrapping like the paper on a present, and the springs that trickle from the woods into the rocky lake.

[Clear waters, smooth stones]

But still, still, I can't seem to catch the poem. I've written out numerous drafts, started from scratch, and had workshops and helpful comments. The question keeps coming down to: what is this poem about? why do you want to share this place? what does it mean to you that makes you want others to know?

And I can't put my finger on it.

Maybe the poem is meant to convey the calming lullaby that the scenery of "up north" is to me. But, still, the cottage is "Kabibanoka" (the cruel north wind) and the cold, refreshing, harshness of the cottage, of "up north" is something that needs to be conveyed as well. But, how can something be a soothing lullaby and harsh and cruel? How can I explain this to people who've never experienced Lake Huron's white sands, and freezing creeks, its wildflowers sprouting on the beach, and the dark runoff that looks like amber?

I guess I'll keep trying. Maybe this poem just isn't meant to be written yet. Maybe, for now, I need to let it sit, let it bob like a piece of driftwood, let it get smoothed down like the broken bottles on the beach until it turns into beach glass. Maybe then, the poem, and I, will be ready.

[Sandy beach, wooded trees]

L. Stacks

Recognition

Jack Ridl shared his love of poetry with me, and now I want to share this great article about him with you.

L. Stacks

Simmering Poems

The Great Poem [Lawrence Raab]

from Nightsun and Best American Poetry 2006

The great poem is always possible.

Think of Keats and his odes.

But you shouldn't have to be dying.

What I'm writing now is not

the great poem. After a few lines

I could tell. It may not even be

a particularly good poem, although

it's too early to decide about that.

Keep going, I say. See what happens.

But trying hard is one of the problems,

since it shows in the lines as a strain

or struggle that reminds the reader

too much of the writer, whereas

most readers want to listen alone.

The great poem, I think, will arrive

when I no longer care. Perhaps

I'll have abandoned art altogether,

and I won't even want to write

the poem down. But then I'll remember

what I once would have given

for this moment, and I'll go back

to my desk. And I'll write the poem

as though I were another person,

someone I will never be again.

---

Like I've said over here, on my twitter account: A poem is swimming around in my head; his fingers just aren't pruney enough for him to quit splashing around in there yet. 

I write poetry differently than I write prose. I don't have a method, I don't follow any rules, I generally don't even put anything down on paper until I'm able to practically recite the whole thing to myself from memory. 

Generally, something just comes to me. Sure, sometime I force it a little; like two nights ago when I realized that it had been months since I had last written a poem, so I started to muse a bit. Within minutes, I had a memory locked into place, and a general feeling of the thing. But that doesn't mean that I start writing yet. Instead, I let the poem simmer, to soak up some flavor. I think about what it's saying and how I can say it. I let my head whisper small sentences and fragments. 

And somehow, I don't forget any of it. I've had weeks where I've walked around with a poem in my head, and I'll get stanzas put together simply by chanting them like a mantra as I walk home, or before I go to bed, or at red lights. I do this, because as soon as my poem is down on paper, as soon as I've changed some line breaks and added some adjectives, it's out of my head. And I forget about it. 

It's like it has been pulled from the stove, cooling, and it never feels right to add extra ingredients. Once, my roommate made caramel-swirl brownies, but forgot to add the caramel swirl before she put the pan in the oven. Halfway into their cook time, she pulled them out, tried to swirl the caramel on top. It was a disaster. 

So I'm going to let this one simmer some more, let it take as long as it needs. I'm in no hurry, and like Raab says, "The great poem, I think, will arrive when I no longer care."

L. Stacks

April is flying like the birds back to Chicago.

With just over a week left of poetry month, and my little blitz here looking a little more like a light sprinkling, here are two poems for your reading delight. These poems were written by a poet who I owe my whole poetry career to, the most kind-hearted person I've known. It's a good day when I find an email in my inbox from this poet, Jack Ridl. These are my two favorites.

Traveling Back

[Jack Ridl]

After his wife's funeral,

he pulled his car off

the back road, stopped

beside Wilson Lake and

watched the fog over the

water. It was a place

he knew well, a place where

the fog always came, a tired,

good dog sleeping at his feet.

He wondered what

grief was and why

it sat in him like the

stars. She had been

an empty glass, summer,

a quilt at the end of the bed.

She had been the words

he never said. There

was no moon. The night

was a mute savant. He

wanted to fly. He 

wanted to go home.

Living in the Twenty-First Century

[Jack Ridl]

Long before there was this day

another day came. Maybe it rained

or there was a little sunlight. People

got up and did what they always do.

Birds sang and the cats wanted out,

or in. You and I weren't here,

but the world didn't know. Trees

grew and nobody noticed. Someone

was cruel. Someone else

tried not to be. Maybe the weather

shifted unexpectedly and plans

had to be changed. This morning

we watched our day begin. We

wondered if it would be good,

wondered if it would rain.

L. Stacks

Drip, drip.

It's a dreary day in Chicago. Overlooking the city, Buckingham fountain, and Lake Michigan from my favorite spot in RU's library, everywhere I look it is wet, wet, wet. 

Walking to school, I was annoyed. My umbrella turned inside-out, people were taking up too much room on the sidewalk. I was cold and I didn't wear rainy-day shoes. 

But now, in the soft, golden glow of the library, warm and dry, I feel better. I feel like writing. I have a creative nonfiction piece simmering in my head, in my fingertips, about fathers and daughters and about crying. Looking outside, I know that today is the day I should start that piece. 

---

My blitz for the day:

Rain

[Raymond Carver]

Woke up this morning with

a terrific urge to lie in bed all day

and read. Fought against it for a minute.

Then looked out the window at the rain.

And gave over. Put myself entirely

in the keep of this rainy morning.

Would I live my life over again?

Make the same unforgivable mistakes?

Yes, given half a chance. Yes.

L. Stacks

National Poetry Month

This year, I celebrate National Poetry Month in Chicago. As I walk down the sidewalks without my winter coat and breathe in the springlike air, I don't really see the effects of National Poetry Month. No one can be seen wearing berets, carrying bongos. I don't hear an overabundance of metaphors. To put it simply: I am disappointed. 

At Hope College, where I received my undergraduate degree, NPM is starts with a bang--or, a blitz. As a combined April Fool's Day/NPM event, students wake up on April 1st to find the campus sprinkled with poems: taped on doors, windows, sidewalk squares, or tied to trees and bikes. Little elves have been hard at work all night long to make sure that even non-English majors at Hope College can experience Billy Collins or Walt Whitman or even their fellow students' poetry. Janitors have contacted English professors, telling them that they sat around during their lunch breaks reading the print-outs, keeping them tucked next to their mops and buckets.

So, what will follow over the next month will be a (small) blitz of my own. Enjoy, and I only wish you could have stumbled upon these treasures hanging from a tree or maybe in your mailbox. 

Making a Fist

[Naomi Shihab Nye]

For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,

I felt the life sliding out of me,

a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.

I was seven, I lay in the car

watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.

My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

"How do you know if you are going to die?"

I begged my mother.

We had been traveling for days.

With strange confidence we answered,

"When you can no longer make a fist."

Years later I smile to think of that journey,

the borders we must cross separately,

stamped with our unanswerable woes.

I who did not die, who am still living,

still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,

clenching and opening one small hand.

L. Stacks

A Poetry Influence: John Rybicki

In the best poetry class I ever took, during my senior year of college, my professor, Jack Ridl, brought in about a dozen local Michigan poets to visit our class--a visiting writers series of sorts. The required books for the class were each poet's chapbooks, and let's just say that those books are certainly ones that I did not sell back to the bookstore during exam week. John Rybicki came to class with his beautiful, late wife and they marveled us all with his eccentric energy, and her cool, quiet composure. Meeting John and Julie was a look into a life of love, both through their interactions, and their poetry. 

I hope we could all be so lucky to live a love like theirs, and to show the world like they did--even just in meeting the them once, it was obvious. 

John Rybicki's poetry has a stream-of-consciousness feel, and he pulls delightfully strange things out of thin air and then makes them fit in a way that never ceases to surprise me. While some poetry editors think that poetry needs to have less personal experience and more metaphors, I think that Rybicki's poetry is proof that personal experience, and love poems are not taboo yet.

The following is my favorite poem of Rybicki's, and a short excerpt that I can't ever quite get out of my head from a longer poem.

---

Julie Ann in the Bone Marrow Unit, Zion, Illinois

Ah Dame, I don't know how else to love you

so I just start juggling. I'm on the street

three floors below your hospital window,

lofting fish or birds that graze against my hands

and fly off, juggling cancer cells and carnations,

slipping in the bowling pin

we snuck out of that alley in Maine. Then I'm juggling

freight trains, and angels, and elephants,

dropping them all. I don't care. So long as you

can stand near your high window and laugh,

so long as you stand near your hospital bed

clapping your hands.

---

[Excerpt from] Me and My Lass, We Are a Poem

When we lie down in the earth,

we'll need coffins with holes bored

through their sides: we'll each have

one arm hanging out

so I can take hold of her

hand, even while we're in the dirt.

---

I hope these examples touch my readers as much as they've influenced me. And I hope that everyone could experience a hand-holding-in-the-dirt kind of love, like John and Julie's.

L. Stacks