M is for Michelle Boisseau:

It's April! Time for the AtoZ Blogging Challenge!

For those who haven't played along before, the AtoZ Blogging Challenge asks bloggers to post every day during April (excepting Sundays), which works out to 26 days, one for each letter of the alphabet. In my opinion, it's the most fun if you choose a theme.

This will be my 5th year participating.

• In 2014, I wrote about evocative words. 
• In 2015, I wrote about my publication journey and the release of my first novel. 
• In 2016, I wrote about my favorite superheroes. 
• In 2017, I wrote about the places of my heart. 

My theme this year is Poets I Love all about some of the poets whose work has touched me over the years.

For my regular readers, you'll see more than the usual once-a-week posts from me this month. I'm having a great time writing them, so I hope you enjoy reading them, too. Be sure to check out some of the other bloggers stretching their limits this month to share their passions with you, too. With over 600 participants, there is bound to be something you'd love to read.

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Michelle Boisseau was my teacher once. She and George Eklund were the two poets on the teaching staff at Morehead State University during my tenure there. 

Michelle lost to lung cancer last year, so can now only teach me through the words she left behind now. 

 Counting was the first of her poems I loved. "After a while, remembering the men you loved/is like counting stars." I think it might have been the line about the lover whose skin still smelled of milk that got me, back then. 

She was always so good at that striking and powerful first line. 

Another one, Eurydice, is my favorite retelling of that particular myth. "It isn't you he wants, but the getting you out." This poem might be why I've become such a lover of back and side door stories, that reinterpret stories I already know and love. 

Michelle was the person who turned me on to Louise Glück, who remains one of my favorite poets. 

The Fury that Breaks with that lovely structure, where the object one line becomes the subject of the next. 

This poem sent me off to explore the work of César Vallejo, for whom the poem bears a dedication. So, even there on the other side of the veil, Michelle is still telling me who to read, knowing just who will speak to me. And she's right, too. I'll miss her. 

L is for Li-Young Lee: Lyrical Loneliness

It's April! Time for the AtoZ Blogging Challenge!

For those who haven't played along before, the AtoZ Blogging Challenge asks bloggers to post every day during April (excepting Sundays), which works out to 26 days, one for each letter of the alphabet. In my opinion, it's the most fun if you choose a theme.

This will be my 5th year participating.

• In 2014, I wrote about evocative words. 
• In 2015, I wrote about my publication journey and the release of my first novel. 
• In 2016, I wrote about my favorite superheroes. 
• In 2017, I wrote about the places of my heart. 

My theme this year is Poets I Love all about some of the poets whose work has touched me over the years.

For my regular readers, you'll see more than the usual once-a-week posts from me this month. I'm having a great time writing them, so I hope you enjoy reading them, too. Be sure to check out some of the other bloggers stretching their limits this month to share their passions with you, too. With over 600 participants, there is bound to be something you'd love to read.

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Li-Young Lee earned his place in my pantheon of poets with The City in Which I Love You, which is both the title of a poem and of one of his collections.

I found this collection during my searching years: my early twenties. A time when I didn't yet know what I wanted, but was starting to understand what I did not want out of life. A time when I sought strange horizons to explore, the better to find myself contrasted in unfamiliar surroundings.

I was romantically lonely, even while with friends, in the same way Lee's poetry was.

Lee's poems pull from both the personal and the political to give a vision of a wanderer seeking home. I'm drawn in by the yearning of the poems, because there's an echo of it in my own heart, still, even now that I am older and much more settled. His work touches the melancholy in me, without dragging me down into depression or burning me in anger. 

Immigrant Blues: 

Persimmons: 

Re-reading his poems now, it is the pathos of these narrative moments that strikes me. The directness, the seemingly emotionless uncolored and stark portrayal of painful moments, made that much more powerful by understatement. Amazing. 

K is for Maxine Kumin: Seeking Connnection

It's April! Time for the AtoZ Blogging Challenge!

For those who haven't played along before, the AtoZ Blogging Challenge asks bloggers to post every day during April (excepting Sundays), which works out to 26 days, one for each letter of the alphabet. In my opinion, it's the most fun if you choose a theme.

This will be my 5th year participating.

• In 2014, I wrote about evocative words. 
• In 2015, I wrote about my publication journey and the release of my first novel. 
• In 2016, I wrote about my favorite superheroes. 
• In 2017, I wrote about the places of my heart. 

My theme this year is Poets I Love all about some of the poets whose work has touched me over the years.

For my regular readers, you'll see more than the usual once-a-week posts from me this month. I'm having a great time writing them, so I hope you enjoy reading them, too. Be sure to check out some of the other bloggers stretching their limits this month to share their passions with you, too. With over 600 participants, there is bound to be something you'd love to read.

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I first found Maxine Kumin in her prose, in particular a collection of essays and stories called Women, Animals, and Vegetables which centers around her experience in transplanting her family from an urban to a rural setting. I felt a kinship with the woman I found in these pieces, a woman seeking a life of meaning, a woman drawn to nature, with an underlying whimsy in her thoughtfulness. Like me, she seeks connection.

A poem from that collection remains one of my favorites by Kumin. The Word. It describes an encounter with a doe while on a horse ride and captures some of that joy and longing that such an encounter can elicit, a feeling of awe intermixed with more complex emotions like jealousy and loss. A feeling of being lucky and wanting to be that lucky again.

My favorite lines are in the middle:

Part of why I read poetry is for that feeling of recognition, when a poet articulates something I have also felt but could not explain, even to myself, nearly so well.

J is for John Donne: Spiritual Matters

It's April! Time for the AtoZ Blogging Challenge!

For those who haven't played along before, the AtoZ Blogging Challenge asks bloggers to post every day during April (excepting Sundays), which works out to 26 days, one for each letter of the alphabet. In my opinion, it's the most fun if you choose a theme.

This will be my 5th year participating.

• In 2014, I wrote about evocative words. 
• In 2015, I wrote about my publication journey and the release of my first novel. 
• In 2016, I wrote about my favorite superheroes. 
• In 2017, I wrote about the places of my heart. 

My theme this year is Poets I Love all about some of the poets whose work has touched me over the years.

For my regular readers, you'll see more than the usual once-a-week posts from me this month. I'm having a great time writing them, so I hope you enjoy reading them, too. Be sure to check out some of the other bloggers stretching their limits this month to share their passions with you, too. With over 400 participants, there is bound to be something you'd love to read.

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If you ever took a British Literature survey course, as many high school students of the United States have, then you've probably read some John Donne. A deeply serious poet, concerned with matters of the spirit and of morality, he has the distinction of having written one of poetry's oft-quoted lines: Death be not Proud. It comes from one of his Holy Sonnets:

It's a poem I've taken comfort in, when mortality is knocking louder than usual on my peace of mind. I also deeply admire Meditation 17, which includes the immortal lines "No man is an island" and "ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." Meditation 17 is maybe not a traditional poem in structure, but in feel and sound, it certainly is poetic. 

But, what I love about Donne is the chance he gives me to contemplate G-d and spirituality, separated from politics and particular religions. He approaches these topics as an individual person, with passion and anger and seeking of peace. And in that, I find more connection than in the words of someone who no longer grapples with the big picture. 

I is for David Irwin: Nostalgia in Smells

It's April! Time for the AtoZ Blogging Challenge!

For those who haven't played along before, the AtoZ Blogging Challenge asks bloggers to post every day during April (excepting Sundays), which works out to 26 days, one for each letter of the alphabet. In my opinion, it's the most fun if you choose a theme.

This will be my 5th year participating.

• In 2014, I wrote about evocative words. 
• In 2015, I wrote about my publication journey and the release of my first novel. 
• In 2016, I wrote about my favorite superheroes. 
• In 2017, I wrote about the places of my heart. 

My theme this year is Poets I Love all about some of the poets whose work has touched me over the years.

For my regular readers, you'll see more than the usual once-a-week posts from me this month. I'm having a great time writing them, so I hope you enjoy reading them, too. Be sure to check out some of the other bloggers stretching their limits this month to share their passions with you, too. With over 400 participants, there is bound to be something you'd love to read.

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When planning out my list of poets, I often had to choose between six or seven beloved poets for a single letter, but there were a few letters where I couldn't think of anyone. The Letter "I" was one of those. With a little research, I found a few: David Ignatow, Isaac Rosenberg, Holly Iglesias, Isaac Watts,  Ingrid Jonker. But the truth is, that none of these were poets I already knew and loved, not like the rest of the poets I'm writing about in this series. 

At first I was frustrated, but then I realized that I had just handed myself an excuse to read a bunch of new poets and find out who spoke to me. Turns out it was Mark Irwin. I've still only read a few of his poems, but I'll be seeking out more. 

This one is my favorite of what I've read so far: "My Father's Hats." 

It captures that feeling of your dad is someone epic and strong and large that some of us experienced as children. In that way, it reminds me of Theodore Roethke's poems about his father, in particular "My Papa's Waltz." I love the part about smelling the inner silk crowns of the hats. So intimate. And what the smell evoked for the speaker. 

Any other poets starting with "I" (first name or last) that I ought to check out? Let me know in the comments! 

H is for Langston Hughes: America Singing

It's April! Time for the AtoZ Blogging Challenge!

For those who haven't played along before, the AtoZ Blogging Challenge asks bloggers to post every day during April (excepting Sundays), which works out to 26 days, one for each letter of the alphabet. In my opinion, it's the most fun if you choose a theme.

This will be my 5th year participating.

• In 2014, I wrote about evocative words. 
• In 2015, I wrote about my publication journey and the release of my first novel. 
• In 2016, I wrote about my favorite superheroes. 
• In 2017, I wrote about the places of my heart. 

My theme this year is Poets I Love all about some of the poets whose work has touched me over the years.

For my regular readers, you'll see more than the usual once-a-week posts from me this month. I'm having a great time writing them, so I hope you enjoy reading them, too. Be sure to check out some of the other bloggers stretching their limits this month to share their passions with you, too. With over 400 participants, there is bound to be something you'd love to read.

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I didn't find Langston Hughes until I was a teacher and in my early twenties. 

I discovered his work alongside my students through verses like "Dreams," "Theme for English B," "Mother to Son," and "I, Too." 

My students at the time were mostly Y'upik, and I'm a white woman from Kentucky, but we found that the struggles of race and place in the world spoke to all of us, even though we were years and miles away from the Harlem he knew and wrote in. 

Most of Hughes work is short and to the point and written in very accessible language, a real selling point when introducing poetry to people who don't normally read it. You don't have to untangle what Hughes is trying to say, but it is deeply affecting and will stick with you a long time. 

Just a couple of months ago, I was able to attend a multi-media show at the Carolina Theatre of the Langston Hughes project. The show, Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz,  combined live jazz performance with readings of Hughes's verses, against a backdrop of images of the time period. It reignited my interest in this poet and his work. 

In fact, I have a dream poetry anthology project that stems from Hughes poem, "I, Too." "I, Too" is a response to Walt Whitman's anthem "I Hear America Singing" pointing out the America that Whitman didn't hear singing back in the 1800s. 

I'd love to get other poets to write their own "I, Too" poems, elucidating the other songs Whitman didn't hear that make up our nation now. Maybe someday when I'm rich and famous, that's something I can fund. 

G is for Louise Glück: Detached Subjectivity

It's April! Time for the AtoZ Blogging Challenge!

For those who haven't played along before, the AtoZ Blogging Challenge asks bloggers to post every day during April (excepting Sundays), which works out to 26 days, one for each letter of the alphabet. In my opinion, it's the most fun if you choose a theme.

This will be my 5th year participating.

• In 2014, I wrote about evocative words. 
• In 2015, I wrote about my publication journey and the release of my first novel. 
• In 2016, I wrote about my favorite superheroes. 
• In 2017, I wrote about the places of my heart. 

My theme this year is Poets I Love all about some of the poets whose work has touched me over the years.

For my regular readers, you'll see more than the usual once-a-week posts from me this month. I'm having a great time writing them, so I hope you enjoy reading them, too. Be sure to check out some of the other bloggers stretching their limits this month to share their passions with you, too. With over 400 participants, there is bound to be something you'd love to read.

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Louise Glück was suggested to me by one of my college professors when I was taking a poetry writing class. I don't remember what my professor thought I would like about her work, just her saying, "You should check out Louise Glück."

The book I found was The Triumph of Achilles, 
published in 1985 and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. Thematically, the collection could maybe best be called "archetypal" in that it explores ancient Greek mythology, fairy tales, and Biblical themes alongside personal insights, often reinterpreting the stories you think you already know in a new light. It begins with a poem called "Mock Orange" and these lines:

My professor was right. I was going to like this poet. In fact, I followed her work for quite a long time, until poetry drifted out of my life for a few years. I see she's released more books since I last looked, so I'll be back to see where her words took her.

I loved and still love the dialogue feeling of this poem. Though we don't get any details about "you" in the poem, we do get the feeling of the relationship, the defensive antagonism, the "don't patronize me with your sympathy" anger in the speaker. I feel like I jumped into the middle of a circular argument, often tread by the people in this relationship. There's enough ambivalence that I'm not sure if the speaker is being gaslighted, or if there's something else entirely going on.

Reading her poems always makes me want to write, to fill in the details Glück chose not to, to imagine the surroundings of the moment, the backstories of the characters, to discover what happened afterwards. The writing feels intensely personal, and at the same time detached, like trying to describe emotional truths in intellectual language. In that way, they are participatory for me, evoking my own imagination and emotions and leaving me thinking deeply.