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Boston Area Poetry Readings for April and May 2018

National Poetry Month (image with flowers)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Click here for April 2019 listings.

National Poetry Month lives up to its name with a boatload of readings in Boston and environs. Special shout-outs:

Martha Collins and Joan Houlihan in Newton (4/3)
Kazim Ali and Stephanie Burt in Cambridge (4/4)
Robbie Gamble and Helen Marie Casey in Newton (4/6)
Marge Piercy in Boston (4/7)
Louise Glück in Cambridge (4/12)
Anne Waldman and Meredith Monk in Providence, RI (4/13)
Gloria Mindock, Lori Desrosiers, and Dorothy Shubow Nelson in Somerville (4/14)
Layli Long Soldier in Providence, RI (4/26)
Tracy K. Smith in Providence, RI (4/27)
Lyn Hejinian in Cambridge (5/22)

Thanks as always to Daniel Bouchard (reading Saturday, May 12 at the MIT Press Bookstore) for compiling these listings.

Monday, April 2, 12 pm
Ewa Chrusciel
Common Room, CSWR
42 Francis Ave.
Harvard Divinity School
Cambridge, MA

Monday, April 2, 2 pm
J.D. Scrimgeour
Federal Building — Assembly Room
Middlesex Community College
50 Kearney Square
Lowell, MA

Monday, April 2, 7 pm
Catherine Stearns and Nate Klug
Book launch, reading, and reception
Newtonville Books
10 Langley Rd
Newton, MA

Monday, April 2, 8 pm
Gabrielle Calvocoressi and Gabriel Fried
Blacksmith House Poetry Series
56 Brattle Street
Cambridge, MA

Continue reading “Boston Area Poetry Readings for April and May 2018”

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Dispatches from an MFA: Semester One, Final Packet

Read on for the cover letter to the final packet of my first semester at the Lesley MFA program, written to my teacher Sharon Bryan. The cover letter of a packet is meant to be a meditation on your writing and study process over the course of the previous month — a sort of “making of” the finished work that accompanies it:

Dear Sharon:

How strange to think that this is the last packet I will be sending you. The semester has gone by so quickly. I was really worried about being able to finish all the work on time, but it turned out to be possible after all. About halfway through each packet I would get incredibly anxious. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to finish the work on time, and that what I sent wouldn’t be good enough. It’s natural to want to get the most out of a degree program as possible, but it’s also important not to let the perfect get in the way of the good. The fact that the course work is pass/fail helps, but ultimately it’s a question of whether I think I am doing the best that I can. Continue reading “Dispatches from an MFA: Semester One, Final Packet”

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Heather McHugh’s Poetic Music

When I first picked up Heather McHugh’s work[i], I delighted in her witty use of language – the way she was able to pick out a word’s multiple meanings in the course of tightly musical and lyrical verse. Some examples:

From “Spectacles:”[ii]

I don’t move
but the grass in the window
does an utter
smear campaign…

From “Politics:”[iii]

The dog pauses before the fire,
watches, gains
weight, can’t make
light of it, lies
heavy down…

By themselves, these puns and surprising twists of language might suffice, but McHugh combines this wordplay with an unerring attention to the sound and rhythm of her lines as well. Continue reading “Heather McHugh’s Poetic Music”

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Blast From the Past: April 2011

So back when this was more of a personal blog than a poetry-related one, this is a thing I wrote. Sometimes I like to go back and read my own journals. Is that so wrong?

What I Learned During National Poetry Month 2011

  1. Haiku improves with practice.
  2. Poetry is real work.
  3. Sometimes work is gentle, easy, and takes hardly any time.
  4. Sometimes work is hard and grueling and difficult.
  5. Sometimes I forget to do things I said I was going to do
  6. Instead of hating on myself or giving up, I can just start doing them again.[read more]
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Boston-Area Poetry Readings for March and April 2018

Photograph of crocus buds in the snow

NOTE: Find UPDATED April 2018 listings here.

April is National Poetry Month, so readings abound. March isn’t too shabby either. And don’t forget to plan ahead for the Mass Poetry Festival the first weekend of May. Thanks as always to Daniel Bouchard for compiling these listings.

Of particular note: Charles Coe and Marge Piercy at Porter Square Books (tonight!); Layli Long Soldier in Cambridge and Providence; Stephanie Burt at the MIT Press Bookstore; Mark Doty in Acton; Joan Houlihan in Cambridge, Boston, and Gloucester; Ocean Vuong at Smith; Martha Collins and my own teacher Kevin Prufer at Porter Square Books; Kazim Ali and Stephanie Burt at Harvard; a Latinx Poetry Reading in Cambridge; Anne Waldman in Providence; and my fellow poet educator Wendy Drexler in JP and Gloucester.

Thursday, March 1, 6-8 pm
Jane Brox, Andrea Cohen, and Natalie Shapero
Salamander 25th anniversary celebration and reading
Suffolk University Poetry Center
Mildred F. Sawyer Library, 3rd floor
Boston, MA

Thursday, March 1, 7 pm
Charles Coe and Marge Piercy
Porter Square Books
25 White Street
Cambridge, MA

Continue reading “Boston-Area Poetry Readings for March and April 2018”

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Rainier Maria Rilke’s Use of Imagery

Photograph of a bowl of multicolored roses

In The Discovery of Poetry[i], Frances Mayes breaks imagery into three categories: literal imagery (the thing itself), figurative imagery (images used to describe the thing), and symbols (an image or action that stands for more than itself). A symbol differs from a literal or figurative because of the far-reaching semantic ripples that surround it. The red wheelbarrow is an image; the American flag is a symbol.

Rilke’s work returns again and again to the symbol of the rose.* What sorts of associations does the symbol of the rose evoke? Love, femininity, openness, vulnerability, romantic and sexual love, impermanence. The rose is a symbol for the Madonna in Catholic tradition, and was a symbol for her predecessor Venus. The medieval French poem, “Le Roman de la Rose,” tells an allegorical story of courtly love. At the heart of Dante’s Paradiso lies a rose. On St. Valentine’s Day, lovers give one another red roses as a symbol of their love for one another. “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” says Juliet, exhorting her lover Romeo to give up his family name.
Continue reading “Rainier Maria Rilke’s Use of Imagery”

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Dispatches from an MFA: Semester One, Third Packet

Here’s the cover letter to the third packet I sent to my teacher Sharon Bryan during the first semester of my Lesley MFA.

Dear Sharon:

It was such a pleasure to meet up with you in person last week. Written correspondence is a thing to treasure but there is no substitute for a face-to-face meeting. And it’s always great to have an excuse to sit and chat at the Algiers.

As I said to you via email, I really enjoyed Heather McHugh’s playful approach to language – especially the way that she plays with the multiple meanings and connotations of a single word. Picking her up reminded me that working for an MFA is something I undertook for the pleasure of the task rather than the obligation of the schoolwork. Here’s one example of her wordplay that I didn’t include in my craft annotation: Continue reading “Dispatches from an MFA: Semester One, Third Packet”

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Boston Area Poetry Readings for February and March 2018

Enjoy the thaw while it lasts and go see some poetry before the snow comes back. Thanks as always to Daniel Bouchard for these listings.

All readings are in Massachusetts unless otherwise noted.

New this week:

Anne Waldman in Cambridge (2/15)

Paula Bonnell, Tom Lyons, and Michael Todd Steffen in Somerville (2/20)

Elizabeth S. Wolf in Amesbury (2/27)

Philip Nikolayev and John Hennessey in Cambridge (3/3)

Jonathan Aibel, Ben Berman, and Wendy Drexler in Jamaica Plain (3/9)

Martha Collins and Joan Houlihan in Newton (4/3)

James Whitley and Maria Termini in Roslindale (4/24)

Barbara Siegel Carlson in Roslindale (4/26)

Matvei Yankelevich, Lisa Fishman, and Laynie Browne in Cambridge (5/5)

Continue reading “Boston Area Poetry Readings for February and March 2018”

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Craft Annotation: Poetic Line in the Work of William Carlos Williams

EDITOR’S NOTE: No discussion of WCW’s approach to poetic line would be complete without mention of his notion of the variable foot, or triadic line. While this essay touches upon it, I recommend the following further reading:

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The poet Robert Hass says “the metrical poem begins with an assumption of human life which takes place in a pattern of orderly recurrence with which the poet must come to terms, the free verse poem with an assumption of openness or chaos in which an order must be discovered.”[1] This fundamental shift in the craft of poetry coincides with – and some would say arises out of – fundamental upheavals in Western civilization, most notably the erosion of traditional, rigid class systems that followed the World Wars.

If a poet abandons both rhyme and meter, how does she give a poem shape or music? What elements of craft remain, and what new tools must we create? Without meter, poetic line becomes one of the primary means of affecting a poem’s trajectory.

Continue reading “Craft Annotation: Poetic Line in the Work of William Carlos Williams”

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Dispatches from an MFA: Semester One, Second Packet

Below is the cover letter for the second packet of my first semester at the Lesley MFA program. I was fortunate enough to work with Sharon Bryan that term.

Dear Sharon:

Receiving your feedback on the first packet was inspiring. It managed to set just the right balance between encouragement and challenge. I agree with you that I should focus on free verse line for the rest of the semester. I did want to try my hand at some forms I’d seen in Plath’s and Bishop’s writing – especially the aba / bcb tercets with long-short-long alternations in addition to the rhymes. They were forms I hadn’t worked with before, especially with the use of off-rhymes. It’s so easy to want to emulate the style and voice of the poet one is reading rather than applying some of their craft to one’s own voice.

Continue reading “Dispatches from an MFA: Semester One, Second Packet”