Poetry and Healing: “Waiting for Neruda’s Memoirs” by Laura Boggess

Amy Pinkleberry fears she’s losing her mind. She hears voices, disparaging voices, telling her she can’t make it on her own, that the money her ex-husband gave her will run out, that she can’t land a job. She flees what looks like a promising job interview with a bank manager because the voices are eroding any shred of self-confidence she might have. Her ex-husband may be right; she may very well be crazy.

She’s been waiting for two weeks for the Amazon delivery of Neruda’s Memoirs: Poems by Maureen Doallas. In Amy’s mind, the book has become a lifeline to sanity, because poetry is the only thing that stops the voices. Yes, it may be obsessive-compulsive disorder. Yes, it may be auditory hallucinations, as the doctor suggests. But it was only Emily Dickinson who could stop the voices last year; this year, it’s Maureen Doallas. When she finally checks her order (what happened to two-day delivery?), Amazon shows it as delivered – to a house down the street. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry. 

Maureen Doallas Reviews “Poetry at Work”

Poet and writer Maureen Doallas blogs at Writing Without Paper. Maureen is a writer, researcher, interviewer, and poet, and the author of Neruda’s Memoirs: Poems, published in 2011.

Each Monday on her blog, she has a featured called Monday Muse. And today, Monday Muse took a look at my new book, Poetry at Work. It’s a wonderful review, and you can read it at Writing Without Paper or on Amazon.

Do Reviews Sell Books?

In November, I saw that Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper had posted “Monday Muse Reads ‘The Wishing Tomb.’” If you know Maureen’s blog, you know that Monday Muse is often about poetry. And this one was indeed about poetry, a collection entitled The Wishing Tomb by poet and editor Amanda Auchter. 

This poetry collection is all about New Orleans. Maureen had a long, in-depth review (she never does anything by halves). I read it, clicked through the links to Auchter’s web site and then to her blog. I was intrigued, especially about the fact these poems were about New Orleans. 

So I bought the book. A fine review by Maureen Doallas means a virtually automatic decision. So to answer my question above: Yes, reviews sell books, especially this review. 

And it’s a wonderful collection of poems. Auchter writes about the New Orleans I grew up in – the history (I knew whom Lake Pontchartrain was named for), the casket girls, the fire of 1788 (which resulted in the Spanish rebuilding the French Quarter), Marie Laveau, the Cornstalk Hotel (on Royal Street), the Pontalba Apartments, the cemeteries, Hurrican Betsy in 1965 (I lived through that one).  

But more than the history, her poems have the feel of New Orleans, the soul of a city that I have not lived in for 40 years and yet will still be part of my mental and emotional DNA. 

I liked all the poems in The Wishing Tomb. And I liked this one: 

Down in the 9  

In the shadow of his house, Fats Domino

climbs from broken shards 

of an attic window. His body is flashbulb- 

stunned, humid. The floorboards

give and splinter behind him, open 

to water. Wild 

hair, sweat. For days, the city was song-

sodden, newspaper-inked. For days 

he watched the dark 

flood rise fifteen feet,

did not know that all over the country 

houses burned with the blue 

flicker of television, the missing

poster of his face, or how in Ohio, 

a radio crooned Ain’t That A Shame. 

Up and down the block, he hears

whistles through fingers, then a boat 

under the eaves. Tonight, he breathes 

in the heat of himself, this world

of sewage and snakes, the sea- 

sick waves, a hand 

under the pit of his arm. Tonight,

he steps out into the flashlit dark, 

returns himself to the small explosions 

of light. 

So go read Maureen’s review. If you like poetry, good poetry, and even don’t know or care much about New Orleans, you’ll find The Wishing Tomb an enchantment.

Word Candy Wednesday

On Publishing the Priest

Today, Maureen Doallas (one of the best interviewers I've ever experienced) has a post at Writing Without Paper on "Publishing the Priest." We talk about the writing, editing and publishing of Dancing Priest: how it started as a 150,000-word manuscript, how it met the standard rejections by agents and editors, and how it ultimately found a publicaiton home.

You can read the interview at Writing Without Paper.

A Day Full of News

Today started with seeing an interview of me talking about writing posted the The High Calling: “A Man of Many Good Words.” Maureen Doallas did the interview, and she is one of the best, if not the best, interviewers I’ve come across.

Maureen continued with the interview at Tweetspeak Poetry: Writing the Priest, Part 1.

Then I received an email from the site host that http://www.dancingpriest.com/, my author’s site, had gone live. Thank you, Claire Burge, for designing the site and making it happen.

And then the doorbell rang. It was the man from UPS. In his arms was a box from the publisher.

It was full of dancing priests.

It’s been a day of dancing priests.

Dancing authors, too.

An Interview with Maureen Doallas

I had the pleasure of interviewing my online friend Maureen Doallas about her new book of poetry, Neruda’s Memoirs: Poems. Of course, I get carried away when I’m talking about something I really like or mildly/wildly enthusiastic about. So the interview was fairly thorough, and Maureen was very gracious.

Part of the interview can also be read at The High Calling, and part of it at TweetSpeak Poetry.

You’ve dedicated the book to your late brother, Patrick.

Yes. I dedicated the poems to him. As I say on the Acknowledgments page, it was because of him that I took up poetry-writing again. I wrote more than 100 poems about experiencing the disease that took his life. Some of those poems were shared at the NPR OurCancer blog (originally My Cancer), and the people there also had a lot to do with my continuing to write.

Many of these poems come from family experiences -- your brother and father, your son. These poems seem to be a way of both working through family experiences and expressing them, "naming" them or naming the experiences, if you will. A poem like "Twenty-Two," for example, seems to be about a young man's coming of age -- but even more about a mother's realization of the young man coming of age. And yet that's never explicitly stated.

"Twenty-Two" I specifically wrote for my son's 22nd birthday. I also wrote one for his milestone 21st. His birthday came three months after his graduation from NYU last year, something that choked me up quite a bit. There are facts in that poem that are about him - his tats, for example, and the longboard he uses to get around. That feeling of needing to let go, of letting go but knowing there's always connection: I think that's universal among those of us who are parents. But I can't say I tried for that latter effect. I'm not usually conscious of that.

I think the best poems don't explicate. They don't need to. And in the editing for this collection, I learned how much better poems can be when they stay a bit open and don't conclude.

Many of your poems reflect your strong interest in the arts, and that's "the arts" is the broadest sense -- painting, music, literature. It's almost as if you're using poetry to understand and then explicate the work of art at hand -- "Portrait by Matisse" is an example; "The Exile" is about Frederic Chopin and is a poetic look at his life (and, I have to say, it is one of my personal favorites in the collection, but then I have a lot of personal favorites in this collection).

I wouldn’t say I'm writing such poems to understand or explicate their subjects. I view the poems you mention more as responses - to what a painting recalled to me or how it made me feel, to how I viewed a historical event I'd read about or researched. For me there's always a personal connection of some kind, but I've learned not to play that out so personally via the poem that the poem has no meaning for someone reading it.

Several of the poems are about current events -- 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, "Summer Headlines." This suggests that you believe poets have a part to play in helping interpret and understanding these news events.

As you know, I have a piece in the charity anthology Oil and Water...and Other Things That Don't Mix, a compilation of prose and poetry that responds to a theme of conflict broadly and to the Gulf oil spill specifically. In a Meet the Authors post for the anthology's blog, I wrote, "As writers, our most powerful actions sometimes are simply to bear witness through words, to raise our voices to foster awareness, to call out those responsible, to tell our stories to leave an impression and incite others to respond."

Poetry, just like photography or a painting or a news article, can be a way to document, to make a record.

I do write of such events to make sense of them but I also take them as subjects because they're fascinating and a challenge. In the case of the poem for the anthology, the event was so immense and its implications and effects so profound that I had to focus on a particular aspect of it, and what moved me to write were all the images of what was happening to the wildlife.

You've organized the poems in four sections -- Enter, Listen, Exit, Remember. Was this the poet's idea or the editor's? Whoever's idea it was, it works beautifully.

The press has an interesting style, which is to group poems in sections and to head up each section with a short essay that is regional or life-stage. I was not aware of the sections or their names until late in the publishing cycle. I wrote the essays without knowing which poems had been selected; however, I was pleased that they seemed to go well with the section names and subsequent selection of poems. I tried to write the essays with a view to providing a bit of personal information that is also connected with the subject matter of some of the poems generally.

Tell us about the editorial process of creating the book. How did you decide what poems to submit?

I was invited to submit as many poems as might be available for consideration for a collection of 50 to 80 poems. I did withhold some work but sent to my editor well over 150 poems, the majority written in the last two years. I think my editor appreciated having so many poems from which to choose.

My editor and publisher made the selection decision and shaped the overall organization. Last month, I received the compilation of selections with their line edits, and I sent back responses and additional suggestions, so there was exchange of information about some of the poems and ultimate accord about the edits. Once the major work on the manuscript was completed, I worked exclusively with the publisher on technical details (cover, proofs, etc.). I could not have asked for a better editor or publisher. The entire experience of working with both editor and publisher was wonderful.

How was the poem "Neruda's Memoirs" chosen to be the title poem?

The collection's title is taken from one the poems. It's one of my few "old" poems I've kept. It was my response to having read a lot of Neruda's poetry. The publisher loves it, and I like it a lot, too. A friend has created a beautiful video using it.

The cover art, "The Assumption of the Virgin" by Randall David Tipton, is marvelous. How was that particular piece chosen for the cover?

As soon as Randall sent me the image, I knew that would be the one I'd select. And the publisher early on had mentioned seeing the cover as "red." The image was perfect for that. I forwarded it and three other images to the publisher with my priority of choice. We happened to be in sync on our No. 1 choices. Once I saw the mock-up I would have been sore-put to consider anything else. And I think the publisher felt the same way. By the way, a limited edition of the print is available via the artist’s web site.

Related:

Maureen talks more about the poems and her background at The High Calling.

She also discusses her background and training at TweetSpeak Poetry.

My review of Neruda's Memoirs at TweetSpeak Poetry.

Diane Walker, a friend of Maureen’s, reads the title poem in a video she created for the book.

The Assumption of the Virgin by Randall David Tipton is the art used for the cover of Neruda’s Memoirs. (It’s also available as a limited edition print.)

Maureen blogs at Writing Without Paper.

The Poems of Walter Bargen

Walter Bargen, who just this past month completed his two-year appointment as the state of Missouri’s first poet laureate, had written several volumes of poetry, included a new collection just published. Today, Maureen Doallas has published an article on him on her blog, Writing Without Paper, and I’ve posted a review of his Days Like This Are Necessary: New and Collected Poems over at TweetSpeak Poetry. Take a look and let us know what you think.

Saturday Good Reads

My list of “good reads” today is shorter than last Saturday’s, and they were all posted before Tuesday evening. Then came the almost simultaneous labor for my daughter-in-law and head injury requiring surgery for my son, the father-to-be. Life is slowly returning to normal, or becoming a “new normal.” And I’m already becoming a bore on the subject of my new grandson.

Poetry

Phoenix-Karenee’s poem, “Wordless Vision.”

Maureen Doallas’ beautiful poem "Anne," about Anne Frank.

Laura Boggess’ poem in her Sunday Sermon Notes.

The End of Innocence by Justinian at Discount Verbiage.

Shadow, Jezamama’s walk along a lake, a story and a poem.

Prose

“It is Home,” by Marty Duane at Coffee with Marty.

“A Gun, for Goodness Sake,” by Jeff Jordan at To My Children, If They Are Listening.

“Should the Message be Hidden?” A guest post by author Randy Ingermanson at Brandilyn Collins’ blog.

“Engagers of Separatists?” by Mike Duran at deompose

Columbia Journalism Review: “Who Says? Narrative Authority in a Fragmented World.”

Author Travis Thrasher on criticism: “Everybody’s a Critic.”

And finally…

While this isn’t a post about me, I do want to call attention to an article I wrote for the High Calling Blogs, which was published Friday. It’s about a business called Transformational Threads, owned by my friend Maureen Doallas (yes, the poet) that is all about a passion for art.

The Fourth Day of Christmas: Maureen Doallas

I think of Maureen Doallas as the Renaissance lady.

I met Maureen like many are met on the web – via blogs, comments and web sites. She operates a business called Transformational Threads, which licenses images of original fine art for rendering into embroidery “paintings,” also known as thread or needle paintings. She officially retired in 2007 from a job as writer and editor, but you wouldn’t know it from the sheer energy she exhibits when it comes to the arts and poetry.

She’s into all things art. She loves art, and you can see and experience her passion by reading her posts at her blog, Writing Without Paper. She’s introduced me and a lot of others to artists all over the United States. She keeps tracks of what’s going on with exhibitions, gallery openings, theatre, dance performances, concerts and movies, mostly in but not limited to the Washington, D.C., area, and she shares them on her blog in what she calls “All-Art Fridays.”

How she finds all the art-related videos on YouTube is beyond me, but when she posts one, it’s always worth watching.

And then there’s her poetry. Maureen has been writing poetry for a long time, has published some, and regularly posts her poems on her blog. She’s also a faithful contributor to our poetry jams on Twitter, which we publish at TweetSpeak Poetry. She writes beautiful words and lines – raising the bar for the rest of us. Take a look at the one she wrote for the One-Word-At-A-Time Blog Carnival on grief, or her three-part Christmas poem. Moving, simple, elegant.

She also does occasional interviews of people. And speaking from experience, she’s the most intelligent interviewer I’ve ever run across (and I’ve been interviewed by 2,000+ people in the course of my career). Likely reflecting her background as a researcher and writer, she spends an enormous amount of time researching her interview subjects, and then developing insightful, meaningful questions. I was blown away.

Maureen’s happily married (except, apparently, when it comes to fighting for space on bookshelves) and the mother of a son. She has four sisters and two brothers, and family is important to her – that comes through in all of her writings.

So read Maureen’s blog. Follow her on Twitter. She may have officially retired, but as she says on her blog site, “I’m not done yet, as you can see.” And you’ll be glad for it, too.

(Over at the High Calling Blogs, we’re celebrating the 12 days of Christmas by highlighting a blog or web site of someone besides ourselves during this season of Advent and Christmas.) (Which is what we should also be doing the other 353 days of the year.)

Interview with a Speechwriter/Poet

I was interviewed (via email) by Maureen Doallas, one of my online blogging and tweeting friends who joins us for the Twitter poetry jams (plug here for TweetSpeak Poetry).

When she sent me the questions, I was surprised by how much research she had done -- Maureen knows how to do an interview right (and she has a lot to teach working journalists about this).

You can find the published interview at Maureen's blog, Writing Without Paper.