So this is the new year | 2014

“For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.”

 - t.s. eliot, four quartets

resolutions: 

1.       Lose the baby weight

2.       Write 20 new poems

3.       Pay off half our loans 

things I want to work on:

1. potty training zu
2. organizing a few readings to promote my book
3. beginning homeschool for zu in the fall. 

things we’re praying for:

 for bryan to find a new job with better hours.

 {and last year's--completed!--goals}

~

What are your resolutions, hopes, and prayers for the new year?

~ contests

1\ Cider Press Review Editor's Prize: June 30 deadline, $25 fee
2\ Crab Orchard Review First Book Prize: July 6 deadline, $25 fee
3\ U of Wisconsin Brittingham / Pollack Poetry Prize: September 30 deadline, 60-90 pgs, $30 fee 
4\ Philip Levine Prize in Poetry: September 30 deadline, 48-80 pgs, $25 fee
5\ Arkansas University Press Contest: October31 deadline, 60-90 pgs, $25 fee
6\ Yale Series of Younger Poets: November 15 deadline, 48-64 pgs, $20 fee
7\ Walt Whitman Award: November 15 deadline, 40-80 pgs, $30 fee
8\ Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry: November 15 deadline, 50-80 pgs, $25 fee
9\ White Pine Poetry Press: November 30 deadline, 60-80 pgs, $20 fee 
10\ New Issues Poetry and Prose Prize: November 30 deadline, 48-80 pgs, $20 fee 
11 \ Richard Wilbur Award: December 1 deadline, 50-100 pgs, $20 fee 
12\ Tupelo Press Dorset Prize: December 31 deadline, 48-88 pgs, $28 fee 
13\  New Southern Voices Prize: April 1 deadline, 48-120 pgs, $25 fee
14\ The Backwaters Prize: May 31 deadline, 60-85 pgs, $25 fee

essays

i've been compiling some select reading for my poetry class this fall, and i thought it might be useful to keep a catalog with links to the essays here. some i use for teaching and some i just like. the list will grow, but for now here are a few of my current-favorite essays on poetry, writing and the poetic life:

the four temperaments by gregory orr

why we wear masks by jeannine gailey

fear of narrative and the skittery poem of our moment by tony hoagland

notes from syntax and line, the sound of poetry, by robert pinsky

the most silent hour by cate lycurgus

against sincerity by louise gluck

disruption, hesitation, and silence by louise gluck

fragment, juxtaposition, and completeness by tony hoagland

a teaching philosophy by carolyn forche

the temperaments

i just finished reading a book of essays on poetry (Poets Teaching Poets, edited by Ellen Bryant Voigt and Gregory Orr) and the essay that i found to be the most interesting just happens to be available to read online { here }.

according to Orr, to be a poet you must be born with a gift for one of the four temperaments of a poet--Story, Structure, Music, Imagination--and to grow in your art you must develop whichever one you were born with further but also expand your range by growing in the other three.

His definitions:

the limiting qualities:
Story: dramatic unity, conflict resolution
Structure: measurable patterns

the limitless qualities:
Music: rhythm and sounds
Imagination: flow of image to image, thought to thought

my work is much more concerned with the limitless qualities--Imagination and Music (in that order). Orr thinks that to have a balanced poem, you need some limiting qualities to balance out the limitless (and vice versa), and for me the grounding force is typically Story (a narrative--many of my poems tell stories), Structure, particularly very formal structure, being what i am least interested in. i tend to feel like Pound in the quote Orr uses--"don't put in what you want to say and fill in the vacuums with slush"--since my attempts to write in form are typically that way--its not an extremely fair view though, i've read some very lovely and skillfully written form poems (a few of my mfa classmates were particularly talented at this).


i am glad i came  across this essay; it has helped me to better understand poets who write very differently from me (i've in the past particularly had a hard time appreciating new formalist poets, unless their work is structured but heavy with one of the limitless qualities that i'm into), and to think about how i can push myself further as a writer. not that i plan to delve into formal writing any time soon--its just not an interest for me--but maybe to think more on how i structure my free verse, lineation, stanza breaks, repetitions. reading criticism and essays always gets me so pumped up to write! i hope i'll have some time to edit and write and read this week, as Zuzu allows!