Tim Seibles Good to See the Green Earth Coming Back Again
Norfolk poet Tim Seibles, author of Fast Beast, named finalist for National Book Award
NORFOLK, Va. — Poet Tim Seibles, a member of the Erstwhile Dominion University faculty, today was named a finalist for the National Book Award for his recently released bookFast Beast.
Seibles' work has been recognized with an Open Phonation Honor and a NEA fellowship, and his work has been nerveless inBest American Poetry.He teaches in the ODU's MFA Creative Writing Program in Norfolk and at the low-residency Stonecoast MFA in Writing plan at the University of Southern Maine.
Seibles is i of five finalists in his genre. The others are David Ferry,Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations;Cynthia Huntington,Heavenly Bodies;Alan Shapiro,Dark of the Commonwealth; and Susan Wheeler,Meme.The judges were Laura Kasischke, Dana Levin, Maurice Manning, Patrick Rosal, Tracy K. Smith. Winners will be announced on Nov. 14.
I had the adventure to to speak with Seibles at length earlier this year about poetry, music,Fast Animal and its predecessor, the as-astonishing Buffalo Caput Solos. It's a long conversation, just people take been finding the posts over again today, so I figured I'd go out another couple of links, and also link to some readings.
But start here'due south one quote from Seibles, from our earlier conversation:
If people heard more poems, read more poems, I think they would be far less willing to alive without it.
Click here to read the first office of the interview.
Click here to read role two (a link also appears at the end of the first function).
This is "Wound" from Fast Animal:
Additionally, this is a reading Seibles did this spring for the ODU MFA program; the poem is "Ode to Sleep," also from Fast Animal:
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Tagged buffalo head solos, fast brute, national book laurels, old dominion univerity mfa artistic writing program, old rule university, poetry, tim seibles, writing honor
UPDATED: Allan Gurganus, Sheri Reynolds, Tim Seibles in lineup of the 35th annual ODU litfest
John McManus and Tim Seibles, co-directors of this year's Sometime Rule University Literary Festival.
NORFOLK, Va. – The 35th Annual One-time Dominion University Literary Festival kicks off today with a reception for two visual arts exhibits. Readings start Monday with writer, poet and translator Yunte Huang, and the week goes full speed until Friday night, when Allan Gurganus, author of The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, will write an unabridged novel while using only adjectives supplied by audience members.
That'southward right, Hampton Roads — if you always wanted to help a best-selling author modify his nouns and pronouns, this is your year.
And so.
For legal reasons, I must now explain that Gurganus volition not write a novel with your help, merely he will be hither in Norfolk. Probably to read something and talk virtually literature. His call, really.
Sorry that lede got abroad from me at that place, but LitFest! Information technology is great. There are a host of talented artists who will read and talk and then forth.
The full schedule is at the lesser of the mail, and please practise click on this link to visit the festival site.
Novelist and short fiction writer John McManus and poet Tim Seibles are co-directing the festival this year. Both accept been featured hither at the weblog, and, by style of full disclosure, they are my professors at ODU. Seibles, who recently published the collection Fast Fauna, is reading on Friday, and one of my other profs, Sheri Reynolds, who has a new novel out chosenThe Homespun Wisdom of Myrtle T. Cribb, reads on Tuesday. Times and places are lower in the postal service.
I traded emails with Seibles and McManus near the festival this past week. Through the miraculous cut-paste function of modern personal computing, it seems as though I interviewed them together, but that is not true. Don't exist fooled.
Q: What do yous hope people will take away from this year's festival?
Seibles: The main thing I desire people to take abroad from this litfest is a clear sense that language is alive and that poetry, fiction, non-fiction, etc., practise, IN FACT, have something to say to and virtually their lives.
McManus: I hope writers in the audience will go away eager to write in response to the festival guests or in argument with them, and I hope everyone volition get out wanting to read these writers' books and read more in general. That's what happens to me during and after a good reading: I fill up with a sense of urgency at the sheer number of worthwhile books that I haven't read yet, and a sense of urgency to sit downward at my desk and write.
Q: Are at that place any specific artists yous are looking forward to hearing or seeing?
McManus: I will admit to being especially thrilled about M.T. Anderson, whose novelFeed I've read v times. He won the National Volume Award forThe Amazing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, the start volume in a trilogy whose 2d book is partly set in Hampton Roads during the Revolutionary State of war. 2 of my colleagues, Sheri Reynolds and Tim Seibles, are reading during the festival; it will exist a delight to hear them both. I love both Dorianne Laux and Allan Gurganus. And I'm very excited most Alice Randall.
Seibles: I retrieve all of the guests will be a skillful rush for the soul, but I am peculiarly excited almost Sean Thomas Dougherty, Jamal Mohamed, Robin Becker, and Yona Harvey.
Q: What was I too dumb to ask but should have asked? And will you lot delight answer that question?
Seibles: The answer is 'nosotros swim in linguistic communication – we drown or we stay alive in the language nosotros think and speak.'
McManus: You lot're a professional announcer and there'south aught you lot're likewise dumb to enquire, but if you'd asked whom nosotros're bringing in 2013, I'd accept answered that I intend to transport invitations to famous recluses similar Cormac McCarthy and Thomas Pynchon and Charles Portis and then that I can frame copies of my invitation messages to them and likewise because why not, and if you'd asked where I find all the smart, modish clothes I wear to the festival, I'd have answered that Dillard's has an amazing 75-percent-off sale every year in the terminal weekend of September, which is why the festival happens at the beginning of October.
A schedule follows. Please double bank check the litfest site. Garage parking is complimentary for on-campus events. Events are free, except for the staged reading of 8, as noted below. Virtually events are in Norfolk, though one talk is in Virginia Beach. A campus map is at this link.
- Woman, Epitome and Art & Photographs With Teeth : Visual arts reception. 3 p.g., Sun, Sept. xxx @ The Baron and Ellin Gordon Art Galleries, 4509 Monarch Fashion, Norfolk, Va. Betwixt W. 45th & W. 46th streets. Some paid street parking nearby. (Further details on both exhibits below.)
- Dustin Lance Black's 8 : Staged reading. 8 p.grand., Oct., three-v; 12:xxx p.m., Oct. 3-four @ Old Dominion University Theatre, 4600 Hampton Blvd., Norfolk, Va. General access $20; students $xv. Proceeds benefit ODU Out & The American Foundation for Equal Rights.
- Author, poet and translator Yunte Huange. two:30 p.m., Monday, October. 1 @ Chandler Recital Hall, Diehn Fine and Performing Arts, 481o Elkhorn Ave., Norfolk. Near W. 49th St.
- Poet Yona Harvey. 4 p.yard., Monday, Oct. i @ Chandler Hall.
- Poet Robin Becker. 7:30 p.k., Monday, Oct. 1 @ Batten Arts & Messages Building, 43rd Street & Hampton Boulevard, Norfolk.
- Author Sheri Reynolds. 12:30 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. two @ Batten Arts & Letters.
- Poet Patrick Rosal. 2:30 p.g., Tuesday, October. two @ Learning Commons, 1st Flooring, Perry Library, 4427 Hampton Blvd., Norfolk, Va. Well-nigh W. 45th St.
- Screenwriter and playwright Dustin Lance Black. 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 2 @ North Cafeteria, Webb Middle, 49th Street & Bluestone Artery, Norfolk, Va.
- Photographer Karolina Karlic, 12:thirty p.thou., Midweek, Oct. 3 @ Gordon Fine art Galleries
- Poet Sean Thomas Dougherty. two:xxx p.grand., Wednesday, October. 3 @ Chandler Hall.
- Poet Dorianne Laux. 4 p.1000., Wednesday, Oct.iii @ Chandler Hall.
- Author M.T. Anderson. 7:30 p.yard., Wednesday, October. 3 @ Chandler Hall.
- Poet Jan Freeman. 12:30 p.m., Th, Oct. 4 @ Virginia Beach Higher Educational activity Center, 1881 University Dr., Virginia Embankment. Surface parking nearby.
- Percussionist Jamal Mohamed. 5:thirty p.chiliad., Thursday, Oct. iv @ Chandler Hall.
- Poet and playwright Merle Feld. 7:thirty p.m., Thursday, Oct. 4 @ Chandler Hall.
- Poet Tim Seibles. 2:thirty p.m., Friday, Oct. five @ Chandler Hall.
- Alice Randall. four p.m., Fri, Oct. v @ Chandler Hall.
- Author Allan Gurganus. 8 p.m., Fri, Oct. 5 @ Chandler Hall.
And these longer-term events:
- Woman, Paradigm and Art: Visual Arts. Runs through February. x @ The Businesswoman and Ellin Gordon Fine art Galleries, 4509 Monarch Style, Norfolk, Va. Betwixt W. 45th & Due west. 46th streets. Some street parking nearby. FMI click this link.
- Photographs With Teeth: Photography past Yunghi Kim, Cori Pepelnjak, Karolina Karlic & Greta Pratt. Runs through Oct. 14 @ Gordon Art Galleries. FMI click this link.
Please keep your adjectives to yourself – unless they are superlative.
Look, that was just a half-hearted grammar joke. Delight do not shout out adjectives at Allan Gurganus.
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Tagged eight play, alice randall, allan gurganus, dorrianne laux, dustin lance black, jamal mohamed, jan freeman, john mcmanus, karolina karmic, m.t. anderson, merle feld, norfolk, norfolk va, odu literary festival, old dominion univerity mfa creative writing program, onetime rule university, patrick rosal, robin becker, sea thomas dougherty, sheri reynolds, tim seibles, virginia beach va, yona harvey, yunte huang
Writing Arts and crafts, Vol. X: Poet Tim Seibles, author of Fast Beast (Part Two)
The poet Tim Seibles on Colley Avenue, Norfolk, Va., in May 2012. His nigh contempo volume is Fast Animal. Photo past John Doucette.
NORFOLK, Va. — This is the second part of a craft talk with the poet Tim Seibles. His latest book, Fast Animal, is now on auction via online and brick-and-mortar booksellers. Such equally Prince Books – say, those guys are all right.
Seibles is a professor in the Old Dominion University MFA Creative Writing Program. As regular readers of the blog know, I'1000 a educatee on the fiction side.
Every bit with the first role of the talk – click here to read it – this has been edited downward quite a chip for length and, in a few spots, clarity. It contains developed linguistic communication, but it's nothing you didn't hear that time in boot military camp. No, non that time. Yeah, that one.
This section deals with how Seibles began writing, his love of Jimi Hendrix, and the kinds of societal changes that remain unfulfilled ethics.
We pick upward after Seibles discussed how people can come to notice verse, something they may non have known they were missing. Seibles is a captivating, expressive reader, and I asked most that.
Q: Is that one reason you put and so much endeavour into your performance of poetry?
You know, it'south funny that yous ask that. Human, from the time I read poems, that'southward how I read them. It's e'er felt similar a physical matter to me. … I'chiliad not only reading some poems but I'yard reading from my toes up, you lot know? So information technology'south not a witting thing, exactly. I don't remember ever thinking I should non be that way. And my favorite poets, the ones I've been lucky plenty to see … the linguistic communication was bursting through them.
Q: And people who haven't seen you read [should know] this isn't circus stuff.
No. I promise not.
Q: You have this real clarity in your reading. In that location's emotion, only in that location's clarity. When I read, I go real nervous. It's letting the words land. Does that make sense?
Yes. And I hope that your sense of it is what most people have, because information technology isn't something I'm trying to deed. I don't rehearse my poems. There's a certain fashion I hear them in my caput. There's a certain way they come through me. I don't make any conscious decisions about how I am with them. In part, that poem "Ode to My Hands' is partly an examination of that, actually. Your easily practice live in a sure way. I have no thought why my hands practise what they practise. Maybe people recall I'k trying to do it, simply I'm not.
Q: Maybe performance is the incorrect word.
Merely it's performance. It is performative. It certainly is not rehearsed or choreographed. And so it'due south different than a trip the light fantastic performance. … It'due south not just the language. It's rhythms. It's sounds. They need a physical response from me equally a reader. The body just kind of goes with it. Not dissimilar watching a guitarist, a saxophone player, a pianist. The fashion they rock back or fall to the side or tilt. It's a felt affair. The music demands a certain thing of them. Language is very like to that. English is my instrument, my primary musical instrument.
Q: Yous and I accept talked most this before, but when I was an undergraduate at Virginia Wesleyan, you came to our campus and did a reading.
It was a while back.
Q: I heard you read, and was similar, "Ohhhh." Not that writers take to read [aloud], but I think that's something young writers don't call up about – how you read, what you choose to read does something to potential readers. It can either plow them on –
Or off. I agree. I mean, I dear poetry anyway, and I loved reading lots of poets before I ever heard them read. Certainly, when you lot run into somebody embody the work a sure way it gives you lot a clearer sense of the full range of feeling that accompanies the words. Poets and artists are bearing witness to forces within us that are largely not defined and not attended to in the larger society. So when you lot play the dejection and yous fall on your knees during the solo, you're not but saying, 'Look, I can play on my knees!' [Laughter.] What you're trying to say is in that location is something then much larger than my own affair that I can't stand up and agree the music in me. … When y'all're reading, you hope at that place's something similar in the performative moment regarding the vocalism in poetry. The language is a marker of a sure level of emotion or feeling, but it'southward not the whole of it.
I hope people are thinking: 'Words are amazing. Words do things to people. … I run across what they're doing to him. I see how the words are living in his existence and I want the words to alive in me, too.' When I offset saw Hendrix on film … I already loved his music. I already was a total Hendrix freak. I was just riveted by what the music meant in him. The mode his body bore witness to its power.
Q: I wanted to enquire you lot well-nigh bloodshed. … I keep coming back to clocks, representations of clocks, someone mispronouncing thyme, the spice, and looking at the wall, and people not telling [a narrator] what time does. The verse form "Afterward" – "Early, information technology used to be early on all the fourth dimension." And and so there's this really striking photo of you as a young man.
I'm glad they included it, because this book is actually nearly the transition from that young guy to the guy on the back encompass. That's really what this book is. It's a portrait of sorts, a portrait over time of age 16 to fifty-vi. That's what the book wants to be. Of grade, it'due south not an exhaustive portrait, but hopefully the quintessence of being basically a kid-adult to beingness a middle-aged man.
Q: When you lot thought it was early on all the fourth dimension, what did you call up you would do with your life?
I think what I'm trying to get at, in that line, is the thought that there was a certain kind of open-endedness to 1'southward life that was felt at a certain historic period that is no longer truthful. Of form, I promise to live until I'yard 80 or something, but to me I'm xx-four years from being eighty and that feels to me like a pretty clear cease line. A year is a long time. It doesn't feel similar a long time, but a lot can happen in a year. … But there's a sense that there are certain decisions that I have fabricated that have shaped my life. Thinking certain thoughts, imagining the earth in certain terms … and it has made my life a particular thing. Earlier in life, I felt I could be near anything. There are things I loved, football game, music. I thought, 'Yes, I'll be a guitarist, a football game player. I'll be a novelist. Maybe I'll just travel the earth and accept a beautiful lover in each country on earth. [Laughter.]
Q: By the manner, had my guidance counselor mentioned that ane to me …
As one of the options? Amen.
Q: I didn't do well on standardized testing.
Me neither. [Laughter.] Only that's what I'thou trying to become at – there was an open-ended sense of things that I no longer have. That's non to say I feel like I'm finished. I don't. Simply there are certain choices I can't make whatsoever longer. I have great organized religion in the possibilities of self-transformation at all stages, but there'south a sure level of anxiety I seem to live with now that I didn't have as a immature man.
Also, there was a certain constant faith I had in human beings that I don't have exactly whatsoever more than. That's not to say I think everyone is fucked up or anything. I'k not that kind of cynic. You just realize there are people who are a certain fashion, and that's what they are. It's non like they're trying to be mean. Information technology's non like they're trying not to be attentive. They notice themselves in a life that has shaped them a sure mode, and that's what they are. I call up realizing that as a homo in my forties for the first time, I thought, 'Wow, human, you can't really set the world exactly.' …
Something it's just people who do not know do non know that they do not know. … People who think, 'Nah, fuck information technology. I'm going to purchase the biggest auto I can because in that location is no global warming.' Because it's inconvenient to remember almost global warming.
Q: Tim, nosotros're never going to run out of dead dinosaurs.
[Laughter.] Exactly. Why didn't I meet that?
Q: We'll brand some more dinosaurs. Nosotros'll melt them down.
In many cases evil is not being perpetrated past people who are trying to be evil.
[A mild digression ensued.]
Q: Post-obit this interview, we're going to become over a list of things non to say while a tape recorder is running.
[Names deleted] – I volition never punch them in the face.
Q: And, to my wife, I do not want a lover in every land.
I'thou sure you have other questions.
Q: Actually, this office of my notes is "wander way off field."
[Laughter.] Okay. Nosotros're doing exactly what you lot want.
Q: When did y'all know you wanted to write?
Even as a trivial child, I wanted to write. I still have some lilliputian notebooks filled with stories I wrote equally a little boy. I was unaware that was not normal.
Q: Your dad was a scientist though. Did you remember you were going to exist a scientific discipline guy?
No, I didn't. He took me to the laboratory. He was a biochemist for the U.S. Section of Agronomics. He took me to the laboratory a couple times and showed me stuff that was going on there. He showed me an early on computer as big as this room. … He always wanted me to be my ain boss, quote-unquote. 'Be a lawyer. Be a doctor. Be an architect.' … My passions as a kid were ultimately football and writing. I actually discovered writing seriously in higher. I took a workshop.
My mother read to me and my brother, and she was a great reader, very dramatic. She gave each graphic symbol a different voice. I accept no doubt that the way I read is wrapped upward in her voice. I retrieve my interest in literature in general came from her reading to us. She used to read the "Billy Goats Gruff" and do all the voices. And, you know, Little Black Sambo, The Three Little Pigs. I have no dubiousness that that was when my heart first opened to words.
I thought everyone loved stories. I institute something in writing I couldn't detect anywhere else.' The freedom of it was something I always loved. You could say whatever you felt similar saying, you know? These were non stories I was assigned. I wasn't turning them in. Mainly, no i saw them.
Q: What would be a story?
Science fiction. They were all science fiction. Robots from Venus. The grasshoppers that took over the earth. Yous know, the giant ants visiting Jupiter. I would come up with all these crazy things. Some of them were like 6, vii pages long. Some were like twenty pages long. Handwritten, not typed.
Q: I still desire to option one of them.
I was similar all about, 'The grasshoppers went there, and they ate all the people, and so they went there. They knocked over a edifice. …' Man, I was into it.
Q: I like that grasshopper one. I call up it'due south got legs.
They were pretty vehement, man.
Q: When did you know, 'I'm going to exist a poet?'
The kickoff workshop. The first part of the semester was fiction. The remainder was poesy. I went into the workshop thinking, 'Okay, I'm going to write novels.' I dear novels and short stories. So, 'Poetry sounds cool. I'll write poetry.' I didn't think one style or the other nigh it. And then nosotros were doing the stories, and it was cool, and then the other role of the semester was poesy and the guy educational activity the class was a poet. He was Michael Ryan who won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. And he's reading these poems, human, these wild-ass poems, these daring poems, sexy-ass poems, and I'm like, 'Y'all can do that shit? I think I want to write poems.' And I couldn't write worth a damn. I could speak English, just I couldn't write poem worth a nickel. Just human, information technology didn't hateful I didn't have the fever. I had to make myself end writing poems so I could exercise my other homework. I had the fever. I wasn't doing much adept, but it had me. I was nearly xix. That was all because of Ryan. I wanted to be that emotionally nowadays.
Q: What did your folks retrieve?
Well, they just kind of shrugged their shoulders. My mom was an English language teacher, of course, and so she said, 'Well, that's overnice.' But did they remember, 'Y'all don't really need to get a chore; try poems?' My father was proverb stuff like, 'Well even with a BA in English, you lot can nevertheless get to constabulary schoolhouse.'
But my parent's dreams, particularly my dad's, died pretty difficult. Being a black man of that era, they had many kinds of limitations. He, like many of the blackness folks of that particular age, killed themselves to make a fucking statement well-nigh their capacities and their worthiness. And so I recollect he was thinking that the side by side step would be have sons that would be doctors, build buildings, you know, exist great lawyers, famous all over the land. …
Ultimately, I call back they detect some satisfaction in my success every bit a poet. My father reads all of my books, cover to comprehend. Non my mom, who is an English teacher, mind yous. My father, the biochemist, reads them cover to cover.
Q: He's probably really proud.
I think so. I think they both are. But he'south the simply one who is willing to read them embrace to comprehend. My mom is afraid she'll find something that is too erotic, as well off. It gets her nervous. My male parent, he's likewise the one who said, 'Son, this is jazz. Check this out. Listen to this. This is Yusef Latif. This is Wes Montgomery. This is Les McCann … This is classical music. Peter and the Wolf, you know. This is the blues.' He had artistic impulses, I think, just he … suppressed them for the sake of practicality. I think he wanted to be practical. Get a job he could depend on. …
You may take noticed in Fast Fauna a number of references to consciousness. … Consciousness itself has been heavily infringed upon by the imperatives of the civilisation. What nosotros might imagine ourselves to be has been sharply limited, shrunken by the imperatives of a business culture. You ultimately want just full man liberation. … Someone has to say yes to a larger idea of our lives. William Stafford said 'I'g the one to hum until the world can sing.' That may sound melodramatic, simply in the context of the poem it is not at all.
Q: Do you feel at some point y'all're simply running out of time to express what needs to be expressed?
[Laughter.] Not nevertheless. My parents are both still alive in their eighties, and unless I become striking past a machine or shot or something I think I accept some time to say other things that I'd like to say. Merely I imagine, unless I'm really lucky, that I will dice with poems however left to write.
Q: I didn't hateful to say I recall yous're getting old. It just seems like there's then much to do.
Oh aye. Exercise I experience squeezed all the fourth dimension. Oh man, I'g battling tooth and nail for oxygen to write in. All the time. This four-hundred line poem I've been working on for the final four months. Maybe more. I mean, that jam took a lot of time. At first I'm thinking, 'Just permit information technology flow.' Then the writer in you kicks in. 'I'll practise a couple of revisions.' The side by side affair y'all know and you've revised it over and over and over. It takes a long time to go through 400 lines. …
There's naught I wouldn't do to make room to write. For two reasons. 1 is I dear to write. The second is, if I don't write, I start to get crazy.
Here'due south an encore of Seibles reading "Wound" from Fast Animal:
And thanks to rocking Virginian-Airplane pilot scribe Mike Gruss, a friend of the weblog, for turning me on to this reading, and for recommending the poem at 5:25 or so:
And, playing united states of america out:
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Tagged blade, buffalo head solos, fast creature, jimi hendrix, sometime dominion univerity mfa artistic writing plan, old dominion university, poetry, political verse, tim seibles, vampires
Writing Arts and crafts, Vol. 10: Poet Tim Seibles, author of Fast Creature (Part One)
NORFOLK, Va. — The poet Tim Seibles recently released his latest book, Fast Animal, a drove you should buy and read now.
Back already? Great. I first heard Seibles read about 15 years ago at Virginia Wesleyan Higher, and it was merely amazing. I bought a couple of his books, and accept been a fan ever since. Hither's a taste of Seibles' voice, from a quick reading he did on his deck the evening we spoke. This is "Wound" from Fast Beast:
Seibles' work has been recognized with an Open up Voice Award and a NEA fellowship, among others, and collected in Best American Poetry. He is a professor in the Old Dominion Academy MFA Artistic Writing Program. Past mode of full disclosure, I'm a student on the fiction side.
This was a long talk, and information technology has been edited down quite a bit for length and, in a few spots, clarity. In case Mom figures out that Interweb doohickey, I should annotation that the following conversation contains some potty-mouthery, which is totally a existent hyphenated phraselet, which is, in and of itself, wordish. Maybe I'1000 not selling this. Point beingness: linguistic communication.
Seibles was incredibly generous with his fourth dimension, which I capeesh. He also may be the tallest interviewee yet. That's an implied milestone right in that location. Wicked.
Earlier nosotros get to the interview, here's some quick housekeeping. I've been wrestling with my thesis the past few months, so the posts have been less frequent. Notwithstanding, I have some talks planned through the spring and into summertime around my work schedule. Say, did you know that, if you subscribe, the posts come correct to y'all? In the night, baby. When y'all really demand them.
Additionally, the 2012 Fortune Cookie Fortune Writing Contest is underway. Why not come with an entry of two and email them to jhdouc@verizon.net? That should assist you fill up that hole in either your schedule or the awesomeness generator you phone call your soul. And there are prizes, including signed editions of Fast Animal. What synchronicity.
Meet how this works? When you provide me with complimentary (hopefully) amusing content, everybody wins. Not after third place, actually. The General Counsel to the Imaginary Board of Trustees want me to stress this. What I mean is almost everybody, but still.
Back to Tim Seibles. This portion of the talk deals, in part, with perceived limitations imposed upon art, writing compelling verse through personas such equally the title grapheme of the comic book and film Blade, and connecting with readers.
Q: You opened the book prior to Fast Beast, Buffalo Head Solos (Cleveland State Academy Poetry Middle, 2004), with a preface that talks about … your feelings on limitations. I hoped you could only talk near what you experience when people impose limitations on art.
At that place are the literal limitations of language. There are all kinds of places you probably tin't get with words. That's why at that place'south guitar and saxophone and sculpture and painting. Just in terms of the civilization we live in … I don't know that the fact that we're non a wildly, intensely well-read lodge really changes how I write. It seems articulate that you may not reach equally wide an audience as you lot'd like to with poetry, so y'all're express in the kind of affect you might have in terms of sheer number of engagements with people. But I think about some of the not bad musicians over the years who played Woodstock and other gigantic festivals, and just having lots and lots and lots of people listening doesn't really add significance to what you've done.
I recollect every author wants to practice his or her best work and offer it as generously and equally ofttimes equally possible, you know, without losing your mind, and let the resonance be what it is to whomever. You don't know who you're going to attain or how securely. Yous don't know what they will make of your piece of work if they're writers. They may write something they might never have otherwise written because of one poem you wrote. …
I guess all writers are, in some sense, composites. The people who influenced me – like West.S. Merwin, certainly Langston Hughes, the Black Arts poets, certainly Gil Scott-Heron, Pablo Neruda, Anne Sexton … they had no thought what their work was going to exercise to me. However they did the all-time work they could and they let the impact be what it was. And then hither I am, simply one of their progeny.
Q: You talk in that essay almost poets maxim some of these things, and that seems nigh like a self-marginalization before you've even washed the fine art. There are four concerns you talk near in the essay, and one is this idea that verse shouldn't exist political or argumentative. I can't think of any way poetry could exist other than that.
I concur, but people I've had conversations with – some of them have been teachers of mine when I was a younger writer – who have felt that poetry should – capital Due south – should assume a certain position in relation to the larger society, a more than contemplative, don't-want-to-seem-too-upset kind of position in the civilisation. Fortunately, I've heard all kinds of poets with a huge range of perspectives. Certainly the Blackness Arts poets were heavily focused on political outrage, for better or worse. That tin can be a limiting affair, too. It tin can actually put a stranglehold on your bailiwick matter. A writer of whatsoever genre has to accept room to go anywhere.
Not only do I disagree that poetry has to stay in a particular place or play nice … but I recall all of the arts take to have their way of peeing on the carpeting, as a friend of mine used to say, or demanding a certain kind of attention through rage or even only pure mystical astonishment, I simply think poetry, like all the arts, shouldn't exist jump by any particular kind of etiquette. If a verse form is rude, let it be rude. All I care about is if it feels like what has been written comes from an honest place. If someone is shocking me just for the hell of shocking me, if someone wants to write 'shit' or 'fuck' 40 times, I wouldn't intendance much about that.
Q: I was talking to a friend [who writes verse] and he said one of the things he forgets to do is write in a way that remembers the discussion is spoken. I think one of things people who have experience y'all reading understand, there's a wonderful ability for these poems to exist spoken.
I sure hope so, man. I like to think that when I'm writing I'm hearing the poems. I'yard not sure I can explain information technology exactly, only the lines come to me every bit spoken things. I hope they accept a life on the page, but I'1000 also thinking about how they might hitting the ear, how they might live in someone's ear.
Q: I wanted to ask about the tertiary thing [in the essay] which is poems that are "too imaginative," and that this is a complaint some might accept. I remember people pick upward your book, they'll encounter the form of the verse form on the page. Some are lean and some our stout and some move and alter … simply also within the words sometimes you write the word non the mode it appears in a listing in a dictionary, only in a mode that you want the reader to feel the discussion – or that the character would say the word. Could you talk about why you do that?
For the well-nigh part, I utilise the linguistic communication in a relatively conventional way. Now, what I say may not be conventional, only in terms of syntax and meaning for the most part 'green' in a Seibles poem is that color of grass. When I'm angle things or trying to tilt the language a little, I'g hoping it will jar them just a fiddling bit, enough to make them kind of snap out of the trance of normal thinking. I'm hoping that with a particular bend in the linguistic communication that you lot tin pull someone upward brusk and make them attend in a different way.
It's the same thing, for example, with the apply of similes and metaphors. You're hoping for a kind of heightened moment that really reestablishes their considerateness to the text. I don't recall a poem can be a shock and a surprise every second. I don't retrieve any art does that. You want at that place to be enough unpredictability, surprise in a slice to go along a reader or a listener on border. …
I know, for case in Buffalo Caput Solos, no one is expecting to hear from [the persona of] a cow. … I desire to invite people in with a tempting promise and then I want to sustain their involvement by rewarding their attention with fresh ideas, discussion music, etc.
Q: Particularly the 'persona poems,' it's about you giving the phonation to something that doesn't take a vox and talking in a lot of ways – I keep coming back to marginalization, merely you talk about creatures that are used, that are consumed, or consume and then little, and are punished for doing it.
I hope to be giving phonation to things that often have no voice, simply also playing out my ain strange sensibility. I would never work with a persona that had nil to do with me. Any information technology is, whomever it is – cartoons, moo-cow, virus, whatever – if I'grand trying to develop a persona, that means I'1000 finding sure aspects of my own voice within that vocalism. Certain things just compel me. What would a cow say well-nigh its predicament? How is the predicament of a cow like the predicament of a person. … My inspirations are necessarily connected to my life equally a man being. I don't have any reason to speak in the vox of, y'all know, a doily. I'1000 not moved to speak equally a doily. A doily does non know pleasure or suffering.
Q: They've got it rough.
[Laughs.] Nosotros concede this, their struggle. In terms of persona, I'k drawn to sure characters – animate or inanimate – because they allow me to chew on a predicament that concerns me. I have that poem ["Ambition: Virus Confessional"], which is trying to get at a kind of insidious and secret consumption of life. Culture – it doesn't matter what culture you're in. All cultures want to use their members to propagate and promote the culture as information technology is. That's why radicals are not welcome. That'due south why people who don't bow to the imperatives of the civilization are often marginalized.
So when I'm writing in the voice of a particular persona, I'm often trying to get into territories in that, if I were to try to address them strictly in my 'own' vocalism it would seem maybe too – It wouldn't exist naval gazing exactly, but it would constantly wrestle with certain problems as though my predicament was the key outcome. … No one cares virtually my alienation, y'all know? People who read poems are more than interested in how my sense of breach or marginalization or joy or erotic insanity speaks to their own fascinations.
Q: Let's motility to Fast Animal, where you take poems about Blade. You read recently at Prince Books in Norfolk, and talked a fiddling bit near some things that were going on around 2007, 2008. What was going on with you so?
I thought 2000 to 2008 was the nearly disturbing era, socially and politically speaking, in my adult life. Equally a young human, of form, the 1960s would take been wildly volatile, but in the '60s y'all had people actively engaged in trying to overturn a repressive and generally fucked up club. There were heads butting and people yelling, challenging complacency in the face up of what was considered a really well organized evil – racism, sexism, militarism are bad for humanity on a massive scale.
Q: And poetry was part of that.
Yes.
Q: Even from The Black Panther newspaper to –
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
Q: – to "revolutionary fine art."
Yes. 'The Revolution Will Not be Televised' by Gil Scott-Heron.
Q: Which you reference.
Yes. 'Ego Tripping" by Nikki Giovanni. That stuff was all about 'Hey, you can non concord us downwardly, goddamn information technology.' You know? What I found most difficult about the Bush era, was that the assistants was clearly unethical simply people just played along. It's not that people didn't care. I knew enough of people who cared, but it felt equally if all resistance was existence overrun, carried in the current we hated.
I thought Bush and visitor were but bloodsuckers of a kind, a psychic kind. Blade, you lot know … When I saw the first moving-picture show, I idea he had a certain purity of intention, a recognition that there are sure evils that cannot be tolerated, that must be confronted directly. … I mean, there had to be some place I could go with the kind of acrimony in my gut. And with that first verse form, 'Blade, The Daywalker,' I thought, 'Yes, this is the mind I tin stride inside that volition allow me to say what I mean with a kind of controlled fury.' I mean, I am non going to kill anybody.
Q: At least, don't put it on tape.
[Laughter.] Right. But Blade will, Bract has, and knows exactly why. I don't desire to promote violence. Violence doesn't seem similar a corking help. At times, possibly it's necessary, only to be avoided if possible. … When I was using Blade as a persona, I wanted to get at a certain kind of anger that I couldn't articulate otherwise.
Now at that place's a verse form in Buffalo Caput Solos, that verse form called 'Actually Breathing.' That'due south in a vocalization that people might consider my voice – that is certainly non a persona. That poem also is about a kind of rage. Information technology's got playfulness, as well, but it's a really stormy voice that is lament and pointing fingers and taking names. The Blade poems let me a kind of purity of vocalism. He kills vampires. There are no literal vampires in the world, but nosotros are consumed. We are fed upon in various ways by ideologies and institutions that are not especially humane.
Q: Blade is an outsider, every bit a grapheme, but Blade is a very successful comic book that was turned into a very successful movie with, at the time, 1 of the biggest stars in the land. Made a lot of money, sold a lot of popcorn. And information technology is a slice of popular culture. It'south an entertainment. It'southward to be consumed. Just what you've washed is taken that figure and used it to express something else, and I recall that'south interesting.
I hope so. There was a kind of clarity of purpose in that graphic symbol. I mean, even if I merely wanted to run around and dial anybody I thought was evil, I'd either be dead or in jail in a few minutes. But Blade could develop a life around fighting evil. Does Blade have a job? No. Blade doesn't have rent due or credit cards to bargain with. Blade is someone who fights evil. That'southward what he does. Blade doesn't have vacations. He doesn't say, 'Boy this is getting former. I think I'll go to Six Flags this weekend.' [Laughter.]
Even if at that place's no way to defeat an enemy, you still accept to fight. That's the way I feel near it as an artist. You have to sing your song, whether it'due south to one person or a m. At times, I endeavour to utilise poetry as a shield and as a bract.
Q: I was trying to think of things I come across repeated in your poems, because I'm unproblematic that way.
No. In this volume, you may have noticed information technology, certain phrases recur in different poems, in different contexts. I'm consciously trying to knit the volume together. It's really congenital [the drove] to make sure patterns emerge, certain thoughts and arguments between the poems.
Q: I go on thinking about, you lot know, it'south meaningful what'southward on TV and you come back to "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." And so it strikes me, in that location's this idea in your previous drove [Buffalo Head Solos] in "Visions." It's a poem about a man and a conversation with his cat, and and then in the cease he's killed.
He's killed intellectually, spiritually.
Q: And they notice him. The Boob tube's on.
Basically he's paralyzed staring at the boob tube, and the nonsense that's on.
Q: So what do you lot think of TV?
I think its purpose is lark. I call up people are invited to watch television receiver so they will be less aware of the things that are chewing upward our lives. It tin can besides be a legitimate source of entertainment. We cannot nourish to the difficulties of the world every waking second. Our heads would just blow up. I do retrieve for most people it's a substitute for actual thinking and feeling. …
This kind of idea that we can just consume the world, and we'll always take more stuff to build and purchase and sell to other people, in that location's just a fundamental wrongheadedness nigh that approach to our lives. [TV] is constantly saying, 'You will find meaning by consuming. In fact, the only real meaning is consumption.' I think that's a terrible way to subvert man beings and the impulse – the better impulse – of the human heart. …
Y'all promise, because it seems that we have the potential for a certain kind of compassionate attentiveness that we accept notwithstanding to discover the institutions to back up it, enact it. I similar to call back that poetry is a vehicle for compassionate attending. It matters that we feel grave despair and groovy delight and great longing and that we're stunned by beauty, that we're not just paychecks and auto loans and mortgages. We're these complex creatures that tin can do better, come across more than conspicuously, live more than heartfully, and hurt each other less.
This is non a culture where people are beating themselves up to go to a gallery or read poetry or hear jazz or Bach. This isn't a civilization where people are killing themselves to get to a reading, you know? Almost people don't know that poetry tin can be something that triggers a larger grasp of the earth they live in. …
If people heard more poems, read more poems, I recollect they would be far less willing to live without information technology.
The talk continues at this link.
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Tagged blade, buffalo head solos, fast creature, old dominion univerity mfa creative writing program, old dominion university, poesy, political poesy, tim seibles, vampires
Poesy that recognizes the struggle confronting sexual assail
Breaking the Silence, Speaking for Peace, a poetry reading to raise sensation of the struggle against sexual assault, volition be held Monday, April xi, at Quondam Dominion University in Norfolk, Va.
The reading features several ODU poets, including Luisa Igloria and Tim Seibles. They volition read poems that speak to survivorship, peacemaking, healing from trauma, or the struggle against sexual set on.
The event is sponsored by the MFA Artistic Writing Program at ODU and the ODU Women'southward Center. The reading is from noon-1:30 p.m, Monday, April 11, in the James Lynnhaven Room, Webb Center, Norfolk. Access is free.
Past way of total disclosure, I'grand an MFA student at ODU.
Igloria, director of the MFA program, said via electronic mail that she had been looking for an consequence to commemorate National Poetry Month. Wendi White, graduate assistant with the Women'south Center, approached Igloria virtually property a joint project.
White works with the eye'due south Sexual Assault Free Surroundings, or Condom, an educational program on sexual violence and relationship problems. She's in her first year with the MFA poetry program.
White, via email, said the poetry event will aid enhance awareness about sexual violence and help people preclude it – with attention, of course, besides paid to the issue of sexual assault on college campuses. Regarding the connectedness between poet and audience, White added:
This is a very powerful transaction that can transform how the reader sees the world, and therefore, the world itself. … (P)oetry tin can create empathy for survivors and lift upwardly the possibility of peace in a way that moves people to action.
Serving the Former Dominion University community since 1976, the Women'due south Center is the oldest center of its kind on a Virginia college campus. Our programs and services accost the special challenges and opportunities women students encounter every bit they pursue their bookish goals. Also, recognizing the critical office that both women and men play in creating a world that is free of gender bias, our goals include promoting healthy relationships and a safe and equitable environment that is gratuitous of barriers to all persons.
Said Igloria:
When folks hear of either one – poetry, or women's/gender issues – I call back that it may yet very well exist the general perception that these are 'fringe' types of topics but that couldn't be farther from the truth. …
This reading consequence is open to the university, also as to the general public. Folks can participate by being part of the audience and coming to hear groovy poesy read, or by reading one or two short poems. Information technology can be either their ain original works or by some other poet, as long as the poems selected address the general topics of violence against women or our struggles in general to create peace in our world.
It may seem like this is a broad umbrella, but I call back this makes information technology possible for unlike voices to participate in the activity.
Featured readers include Til Cox, Tyrice Dean, Travis Everett, Jennifer Graham, Igloria, Renee Olander, Noah Renn, Seibles, Marion Charlene Thomas, Cesca Janece Waterfield, and White.
For more information or to participate, reach White via wewhite@odu.edu or (757) 683-4160. Members of the public who want to read must contact White earlier Midweek, Apr 6, to sign upward.
Igloria wrote that she'southward still determining what she'll read.
Thinking about and preparing for it makes me think of how very central and very important language is in shaping the realities of our lives, globally as well as where we are; and I think poetry has this capacity for making u.s. aware of the furnishings of language, and for speaking very intimately to us every bit well as addressing concerns that are universal.
When I heed to (or read) a poem, I experience very much in the presence of a very homo experience; poetry makes me experience like a witness to man events that are of import and real, no matter how 'small' they may exist. Perhaps that's why I recently ranted (a bit) almost the way National Verse Month is being 'celebrated' in some popular venues.
A link to that post at Igloria's blog tin can be found here.
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Tagged artistic writing, equality, gender equality, luisa igloria, mfa, national verse month, norfolk, norfolk va, odu, odu women's center, former dominion univerity mfa artistic writing program, one-time rule university, poetry, sexual assault sensation month, sexual assault prevention, tim seibles, wendi white, women'south rights
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