From Mark Strand’s Lips to…

150+ lucky ears this weekend. In advance of posting our new-and-improved Lighthouse podcast (with jingle*) of this weekend’s incredible Inside the Writer’s Studio with Mark Strand and Eli Gottlieb, I thought I’d tantalize with a little bit of what’s what. First, on Saturday, 100-plus packed into the Jones Theater and learned that a young Mark Strand shared a glass of gin with W.H. Auden, each of them rotating the glass with each sip so that their lips never touched the same spot on the glass. (CORRECTION: Eli points out that Auden turned the glass so that their lips did touch the same part of the glass, where Mark gamely turned the glass for a clean spot. Thanks, Eli!) Second, Strand’s good friend Brodsky could bring thousands of screaming fans out to venues across the world–like a veritable Mick Jagger of poetry. Third, when Strand gets together with the literati in New York, it’s always for dinner or a dinner party (no more than 8 people), the topic of conversation: gossip or politics, and the meal?  Well, let’s just say those of us in the audience on Sunday’s Tattered Cover event got recipes from the former Poet Laureate of the United States.  One of them involved a raw egg yolk nestled in a bed of steaming pasta.  Enough said.

Here’s a tasty vittle from Herr Eli Gottlieb, who was our uberdexterous interviewer on Saturday at the Jones (and don’t forget–podcast plus jingle* forthcoming!):

Mark Strand is that rarest of things, a great poet who’s contitnued to get better over time.  Everybody with a set of eyes and ears remembers his early books of poems: the stab of their ironies, their uncanny off-kilter relationship to the authorial self.  They performed a kind of emotional chiropractry on readers, and were like the mysterious galleries in the paintings of Giorgio di Chirico in that they obeyed no known laws of physics and yet felt entirely actual and real.  Their terseness hid a world of implication.   And differently from the so-called “confessional poets” who were in vogue when Mark first began publishing, they seemed to take a more jaunty, European or Continental approach to worldly anxiety.  If Wallace Stevens had been baked in the hard American daylight of Robert Frost, they might have produced the wry, sly confection that is Mark Strand.

 

Diligently, over 50 years, he’s continued to write, while—no easy feat—expanding steadily as a poet.   Talent is one thing.   Ongoing creative growth through a life of art is another thing entirely, and far rarer.   I’ve seen his work process, with its scribbled notebook pages, its endless revisions.  The

 

More Strands

Here’s the opening to Mark Strand’s intro to Best American Poetry 1991 (One of the first poetry books I bought, outside of school):

“It is 1957. I am home on vacation from art school, sitting across from my mother in the living room. We are talking about my future. My mother feels I have picked a difficult profession. I will have to struggle in obscurity, and it may be years and years before I am recognized; even then there is no guarantee that I will be able to make a living or support a family. She thinks it would be wiser for me to become a lawyer or doctor. It is then that I tell her that although I have just begun art school, I am actually more interested in poetry. “But then you’ll never be able to earn a living,” she says. My mother is concerned that I shall suffer needlessly. I tell her that the pleasures to be gotten from poetry far exceed those that come with wealth or stability. I offer to read her some of my favorite poems by Wallace Stevens. I begin with “The Idea of Order at Key West.” in a few minutes, my mother’s eyes are closed and her head leans to one side. She is asleep in her chair.”

Has anyone else had a conversation like this? Feel free to post your own as a response….

(My Dad, circa 1987: “What the hell do you want to be an English major for?” His sincere expression of love and concern–and I mean that not sarcastically.)

Cheers,
–MJH

 

Mark Strand. Denver. May 3 and 4.

Picture this: a relatively handsome, bored, long-haired undergraduate boy slouches in a classroom, sometime in 1987 (or so). Contemporary American Poetry, four credits, Tues/Thurs 10 to 11:50 am.

The professor drones on about Adrienne Rich, W.S. Merwin, Elizabeth Bishop. The boy likes these poets. They are interesting. They make him think, and he likes to think. But not too much.

They turn the page to a new decade, a new group of poets. In his red-jacketed anthology, there is a black-and-white photo of a handsome poet-dude, resembling a bit of Chris Reeve, the Superman years.

They begin reading poetry from this guy out loud, this guy whose name is Mark Strand.

The boy in the classroom feels a charge, and his mind begins to awaken, somehow.  Something in these poems seeps its way into his unconscious, and the poems, while they have meaning on their face, underneath lies a seething mass of emotion, idea, phobia, desire. For example:

SLEEPING WITH ONE EYE OPEN
  
Unmoved by what the wind does,
The windows
Are not rattled, nor do the various
Areas
Of the house make their usual racket–
Creak at
The joints, trusses, and studs.
Instead,
They are still. And the maples,
Able
At times to raise havoc,
Evoke
Not a sound from their branches
Clutches.
It’s my night to be rattled,
Saddled
With spooks. Even the half-moon
(Half-man,
Half half dark), on the horizon,
Lies on
Its side casting a fishy light
Which alights
On my Floor, lavishly lording
Its morbid
Look over me. Oh I feel dead,
Folded
Away in my blankets for good,
and
Forgotten.
My room is clammy and cold,
Moonhandled
And weird. The shivers
Wash over
Me, shaking my bones, my looses ends
Loosen,
And I lie sleeping with one eye open,
Hoping
That nothing, nothing will happen.

 

This sounds hokey, but when the boy first heard that poem, the hair on his arms stood on end. Really. (Or as the young kids say nowadays, For Reals.) And Strand’s poems still have that effect. (Okay, so the boy was me, when I had hair. When I was a bored, low B-average college student, blah, blah, blah….)

Come get your hair stood up at the Lighthouse Writer’s Studio weekend. May 3 and 4.

Oh, and check back daily as I will be violating copyrights and posting more of Mark’s poems here.

Cheers,
–MJH

 

 

 

Dateline Boston: Gary’s Report from the Hem-y Awards

Boston, MA, John F Kennedy Presidential Library, Sunday March 30, the 2008 PEN/Hemingway Award 

In the early spring of that year we sat in the auditorium and looked across the bay to the city.  On the shore there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and blue in the shipping channel.  On the podium, Patrick Hemingway stood and read aloud and it was a fine reading, clear and strong, and the sun sparkled off the water, and…..

Sorry, I got a little caught up in the moment.  In truth, being just a bit of a cynic (in a healthy, good natured way) I feared Poppa’s son reading from the opening to A Farewell to Arms might come off as hokum.  But his voice really was clear and strong, and the audience of between 300 and 400 did get caught up in the cadence and rhythm of the piece. 

Sherri and I were in Boston over the weekend of March 30^th to attend the 2008 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for “distinguished first works of fiction,” and for the L.L.Winship/PEN New England Awards (kind of like our Colorado Book Awards).  My book, Migration Patterns, was selected an Honorable Mention, and we had Mileage Plus credits stacked up, and what better excuse to visit a great city?  The ceremony was held at the JFK Presidential Library overlooking the bay and the city skyline.

 

 

The ceremony itself featured short readings not only by Patrick Hemingway but also by Joshua Ferris and the poet Ann Killough, winner of the L.L. Winship poetry award, and a feisty, short (yea!!) keynote by Alice Hoffman.  But the real fun of the weekend was in attending the Saturday night reception at Beacon Press (see pic below) in the heart of the Beacon Hill district, about a block from the state capital, and the

 

Good things afoot

Lighthouse instructor Janis Hallowell’s new novel, She Was, comes out later this month. 

Guess who’s already read it? He kind of likes it.

I read this beautiful and compelling novel straight through in one sitting. Janis Hallowell writes with great compassion about the heart of the heart of our country and of our culture. She Was brings back the Vietnam era and elucidates our current wars and tribulations. The story is a family novel that touches all of us. Amazingly, it is also a shocking thriller that is impossible to put down. The writing is clean and honest; the message moved me. It is one of the best novels I have read in years.”
—John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War

 

Big get for the Lighthouse Lit Fest 2008

Exciting times for the Lighthouse Lit Fest.  We just confirmed that agent Betsy Lerner will be attending, offering workshops and guidance to our writing community.  Here are the details about Betsy.  Save the date, everyone!  June 6-21.

Betsy Lerner worked as an editor for 16 years at major trade publishers including Simon & Schuster, Houghton Mifflin and finally as Executive Editor at Doubleday. She joined Dunow, Carlson & Lerner as a partner in 2005 after agenting at The Gernert Company for five years. She mostly works with non-fiction writers in the areas of psychology, history, cultural studies, biography, current events, business and the hard to categorize. She also represents fiction; her taste is eclectic, literary, dark, funny, voice driven. Lerner was the recipient of the Tony Godwin Publishing Prize. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and is the author of Food & Loathing and The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers.

 

Novelists Strike: time to support our people…

For my part, I’m going to “set aside” writing the novel I quit three years ago. 

From The Onion:  

Novelists Strike Fails To Affect Nation Whatsoever

LOS ANGELES—The Novelists Guild of America strike, now entering its fourth month, has had no impact on the nation at all, sources reported Tuesday.

The strike, which scholars say could be the longest since 1951, when American novelists may or may not have voluntarily committed to a six-month work stoppage, has brought an immediate halt to all new novels, novellas, and novelettes from coast to coast, affecting no one. 

Nor has America’s economy seen any adverse effects whatsoever, as consumers easily adjust to the sudden cessation of any bold new sprawling works of fiction or taut psychological character studies.

“There’s a novelists strike?” Ames, IA consumer Carl Hailes said. “That’s terrible. When is it scheduled to begin?”

The strike kicked off last fall when the NGA announced it had hit a roadblock in negotiations with the Alliance of Printed Fiction and Literature Producers, failing to resolve certain key issues concerning online distribution, digital media rights, and readers just not getting what writers were trying to do with a number of important allegorical devices.  Read article here.
 

 

Holy bag-o-doughnuts!

Just received this note about our very own Lighthouse short story workshopper Gary Schanbacher’s first book:

Dear Mr. Schanbacher,
 
On behalf of PEN New England, congratulations!  I have the pleasure of informing you that your book, “Migration Patterns ”, has been selected as one of two Honorable Mentions for the 2008 Hemingway Foundation/ PEN Award for a first work of fiction.
 
The Hemingway Foundation/ PEN Award winner this year is Joshua Ferris for “Then We Came To The End”.  There were two finalists: Ravi Howard for “Like Trees Walking” and Rebecca Curtis for “Twenty Grand”. Two other books received honorable mention:  Margot Singer for “The Pale of Settlement” and your boo k. The judges this year were Ana Castillo, Jennifer Haigh, and Ernest Hebert.

With this honor, Schanbacher gets a one-month residency at Ucross in Wyoming.  He’ll hardly notice some of us stowed away in his luggage.  What an honor, and what a deserving recipient.  Buy his book if you haven’t yet, folks.  You won’t be sorry you did!

 

 

Spring, Fully Loaded

Okay, that’s a bad pun (Potential Energy? I need some of that!)

I got a D in Physics 101. Which is my disclaimer for this post.

But seriously, there’s a lotta energy going on these next coupla months. Such as:

The March Writer’s Buzz, where we’ll all chat about slush piles (what’s the coefficient of friction for three poem stuck into a #10 envelope?), the state of lit journals, and such. March 22, 2008, 10 to noon PM at Tattered Cover, LoDo. Free for Lighthousers. The rest need to pony up $10. Or, heck, get a membership.

And a second Buzz: Your Writing Career: Publishing, Marketing, and Honing the Craft in 2008, on Saturday, March 8, 10 AM to 11:15 AM, at the Mayor’s Expo on Building Creative Businesses. Should be fun!

Then, a fantastic performance with lighthouse and Telling Stories—called “Voiceovers”—at the Mercury Café, April 4.Yours truly (Mike Henry), Shari Caudron, Jennie Dorris, and Janine Fritz will be performing original works with musical accompaniment. Starts at 7:00 PM. Patchouli, that person who speaks to you inside your head (classic Freudian voiceover to be sure), tin flutes and/or tubas suggested, but not mandatory.

Crud. That means I have to write a new essay about that.

Last, and hoppy-good not least, our Denver Poet Laureate Chris Ransick is hosting a special night of poetry and brews called Liquid Poetry at the Wynkoop Brewery, Friday, April 11, at 7 p.m. It will feature live music, door prizes, a beer-themed poetry contest, and readings from featured poets Mike Henry, JD Frey, and Joy Sawyer.

Crud. That means I have to write a new poem about beer. Hiccup.

–MJH

 

The Mayor’s Awards

It was a grand night, and we came home with a heavy glass object that could certainly be used by Colonel Mustard in the study to bludgeon a whole host of miscreants. And I got to read a poem dedicated to our illustrious mayor:

The Red-Tied Mayor

So much depends

upon

the red-tied mayor
glazed with icy streets and parking meter issues

beside the
small but cheerful arts organizations.

Here’s a pic from good friend Chris Ransick. His title is brilliant:

PYRAMID AND DOME.

Of course, he can write that—he’s got a full head o’ hair.

And here’s one of Andrea and I—a rare picture of the two of us, I think, since one or the other is usually running around schlepping and/or taking pics ourselves.

Thanks to everyone for all your support, good vibes, and inspiration

–MJH