In the January/February 2012 issue of American Poetry Review, Kwame Dawes is interviewed by Dorianne Laux and Joseph Millar. It’s a great interview, filled with wide-ranging thoughts, depth, and humor. I highly recommend picking up the issue if you haven’t already read it. One of Kwame’s answers touches on a topic that he and I have talked about before, and his perspective struck me as deeply this time as it did then. Here is an excerpt: 

“I believe when I look at my poetry dispassionately and from a position of distance, I can identify a number of interesting preoccupations and themes. It appears to me that one of the most dominant themes would be the quest for home—a quest marked by my constantly feeling both at home and away from home at all times in my life. It has, I would argue, become an asset for me as a writer, because I believe that the art of empathy (which I regard as essential for writing) is found in one’s capacity to be fully inside a moment and yet outside of that moment at the same time. Being inside and out is the condition of the writer—or at least, it can be. When I was a child in Ghana I always had the sense that “home,” as it were, was where my father was from, namely Jamaica . . . Of course, I did not think for a moment that Ghana was not my home. But I also knew that there was another place that defined me and a place that informed my imaginative sense of home . . . Then we arrived in Jamaica. And quite quickly, my alien status in Jamaica, my foreignness, if you will, became a source of dislocation and discovery. I was now, not a Jamaican, but a Ghanaian—an African. Yet in all of these places I was tasked with the business of trying to find home in these locales . . . My solution was simple: It was all mine. All of it. I owned the past, and I owned the present . . . In this sense, my poetry is about finding home. And it is always about finding home in the midst of dislocation, uprooting, and planting and rooting.” 

Just as when he and I spoke about this issue a couple of years ago, I’m struck again by his choice—despite growing up in this liminal space between and within multiple cultures—to find wholeness within the dislocation, to claim all of it, rather than focus on the flip side: the lack of belonging, the fragmentation that can occur within a self not rooted in a firm sense of place and home. For much of my life I chose the opposite. As a person who grew up between New York, Caracas, and Stockholm, fitting in everywhere and nowhere, adept at observing and blending but unseen at the same time, I focused on how parts of me felt unmet because some of my “home” was elsewhere. I focused more on how I didn't fit in fully anywhere, instead of embracing everywhere as mine. Kwame’s thinking on this has helped me understand and find gratitude for this sense I’ve long had of being inside and outside every moment, this life that quite possibly turned me into a writer and certainly turned me into a seeker. I’m sure it led to my becoming a healing professional, what I did for thirteen years before going back to school for poetry, a profession for which that kind of empathy Kwame mentions, an ability to tune into others from a less “fixed” inner place was essential. I’m grateful to Kwame for reminding me to choose wholeness instead of fragmentation, to continue the work of owning my past and present, the work to root in myself what I find so challenging to experience fully on the outside.

One of Kwame’s poems in the issue really spoke to me, too. Here it is:

In Residence 

For JM

After a while one tires of the talk:
the timing of the square drive—
when must the bat meet the ball?
or the fierce square cut—
does one lean in or out of the shot?
A poet tells of a fat man laid
out on his back holding on
to a guitar like a piece of wreckage
keeping him afloat, and I think
why do I bother with this business
of making songs, this art thing,
when I can’t seem to come
up with something as precisely
true as that. And I spend
the rest of the day jealous
of the poet, while I pretend
to know what it takes to keep
at it, to cut and tuck, to make
my songs glow like worms
in the dark. But I don’t.
Mostly, I am tired of talking.
I want to walk slowly
to my room, turn off the light,
lay on my back, hoping to sleep,
hoping for my beloved’s call to distract
me from the crowding of my failures
thick in the air, but there are
no calls. So I stare out,
into the empty parking lot.
There is a moon tonight,
so I go walking in the dead village,
heart praying for a song
to come to me. It is cold,
then it rains, clouds crowding
the moon. I pray softly,
leaning forward to be heard,
scared to pull back:
my truest song is desperation,
the fear of not being heard.

 —Kwame Dawes
from American Poetry Review, Vo. 41/No. 1, January/February 2012

Kwame Dawes is the author of thirteen books of poetry and many books of fiction, non-fiction and drama.  His collection, Hope’s Hospice (Peepal Tree), was released in May 2009. Until July 2011, Dawes was Distinguished Poet in Residence at the University of South Carolina. He has recently taken on the Glenna Luschei Editorship of Prairie Schooner at the University of Nebraska, where he is a Chancellor's Professor of English. He is also a faculty member of Cave Canem and a teacher in Pacific University's Low-Residency MFA Program in Oregon. He continues to serve as the programming director of the Calabash International Literary Festival that takes place each May in Jamaica.

As is my practice from time to time, I've interviewed Traci Brimhall about her first book, Rookery, which won the Crab Orchard Series First Book Award, and was one of my favorite books that I read in 2011. Without further ado, here's the interview, conducted via email:

Let’s start with first book questions: Did this book go through many versions before it found its current form? About what percentage of it comes out of your MFA thesis? Did you enter it in many contests before winning the Crab Orchard Series First Book Award?

Like many people who go to graduate school for writing, my thesis was the backbone for my first book. I’d say roughly half of my thesis ended up in my first book, which according to a lot of other writers I’ve talked to is a lot. Sometimes I look at the poems in the first book and feel embarrassed—it’s like my middle school yearbooks are open to the public. I can see how hard I was working in each poem. I hope it’s not as painfully evident to readers.

I double-checked my Excel spreadsheet and I’d entered Rookery in 16 contests before it won the Crab Orchard prize. I’m glad that it won when it did because I’d been considering only sending the manuscript to one more round of contests before retiring it to a drawer.

Please talk about the title, Rookery, and the way each section opens with a different definition of the word that is a prose poem all its own. How did you come to that title for this collection of poems? And the definitions that add so much?

The title Rookery came from a building in Chicago by the same name. I saw it on an architectural tour, and I was enthralled by it. I loved the tension of rough red granite exterior and light, airy, even whimsical interior. I love any good contradiction.

Originally the three sections were divided conventionally with numbers. I tried using a fragment of a line from within a poem to title each section. One of my thesis committee members didn’t like it, so I looked up the definition of the word rookery, and there they were, three definitions that seemed to encapsulate my obsessions—family, love, and violence. The definition poems came about because I was trying to challenge myself to break away from my strong narrative impulses and leap. The freedom of the lyric is often frightening to me. Exhilarating, too.

 There’s a series of aubades, a poem traditionally written to a lover before parting in the morning, that subvert the form in terrific ways, illuminating the speaker’s betrayal by her lover.  Please talk about your use of that form.

I kept returning to the aubade because I was forced to—not because my obsessions led me (because I was certainly afraid of that) but because a friend told me I had to.  I’d been scolded kindly for writing poems without risk. A friend of mine had me return to my most vulnerable poem (originally called “Aubade” and became “Aubade with a Fox and a Birthmark”) and keep rewriting until I’d said everything I was scared of. I think form provides a kind of safety, a set of rules I can play inside that helps me feel contained.  I need to feel safe enough to risk, and form often provides that for me.

  I’m fascinated when poets write an ars poetica. Please discuss yours, and what the writing of an ars poetica means to you.

One of my friends approaches her reading of almost every poem as an ars poetica. I wonder how much of that is true—how the every struggle in every poem is also the struggle to shape it into something beautiful, honest and controllable.

When I lived in Madison, WI, my apartment overlooked a busy street. The day this poem was written, I heard an accident. A car had come up onto the sidewalk and struck a lamppost. It sounded sharp, loud, terribly real. People had already run up to the vehicle and begun trying to help those inside. The sirens started. I watched, but there was nothing left for me to do. I was a witness with no responsibility, and it was awful. I feel that often, that terrible powerlessness. I want to be worthy of the life I’ve been given, and sometimes all I can do is acknowledge the suffering before me.

Here is the poem:

Ars Poetica

It happens as we set down one story
and take up another. We see it—the car,

the skid, the panic, the woman’s body, a stain
on snow like blood in a dancer’s shoe.

People bend over, afraid to touch her
in case she might rise, a bird startled to find

there wasn’t more light on the other side
of the window. The body in so much pain

the soul can no longer keep it. This is how
it happens—something in the earth awakens

and summons us. You feel fingers on your neck
and say, Take me to the snow, and it takes you.

 Please talk about how gender figures in Rookery, the way love and power intersect in relationships within and across gender lines.

I’ll admit I love strong women (who doesn’t?). While I’ve loved several men very deeply, my relationships with women have been one of the great joys of my life. I’m not totally sure how explicitly that love and those relationships (with men or women) inform the book. I do know that last fall when I was doing a class visit at a local college a young man told me that the gaze of the speaker in the poems made him uncomfortable because of the female speaker’s sensual view of the male subject(s) within the poems. He said it made him realize how uncomfortable women must be under the male erotic gaze. That wasn’t an intention I had when writing the poems, but it is a pretty satisfying result.

Some of the poems in Rookery seem to point toward the direction your work heads in your forthcoming book, Our Lady of the Ruins, which features a chorus of female speakers wandering an apocalyptic landscape looking for something, or someone, to worship. Lines from Rookery like, “God is a ghost / we inherit. God, hanging from a beam in the attic.” from the poem “Restoration of the Saints,” and “All I know of heaven is the fragile heat between / two bodies.” from the poem, “Requiem with Coal, Butterflies and Terrible Angels” and even some of the titles, like “Fiat Lux” and “Discipline with Lines from First Corinthians” all point to this tension between an apocalyptic view and the reach toward the divine in some form. Please talk about the movement of your work from book one to book two, the connections and differences between them.

I’m really fond of using relationship metaphors when talking about creative work and often say that I broke up with my first book but my second broke up with me. I knew I was tired of my first book. I spread all the poems out on the floor, put them in three sections, and then broke up with each section by writing a break up poem. I tried to have it out with my obsessions, and the final poem in each section is my break up poem with the ideas in each section.

I knew I was onto the second book when the way I was writing felt different. It felt different the way a new love feels different—mysterious, new, exciting. Of course my obsessions followed me, even though in many ways I tried to consciously move away from them. I knew it was over with book #2 when I couldn’t write the poems anymore. I tried. I loved writing those poems. It was awful to feel shut out of that imaginative space I’d written from for a couple of years, but just like the fate of love sometimes, the spark was gone.

 What are you working on now?

Since I finished Our Lady of the Ruins, I’ve tried a handful of things (you know, dated around lyrically), looking for what sparked next. I think I know when I’m onto something new when I find an imaginative space—questions, speakers, language—that are compelling to me, that resist me a little, that make me excited and a little afraid to sit down and write again. Lately, the poems I’ve been writing have taken place in or near Puraquequara, Brazil, where my mother was born. My obsessions are there in the river, there in the jungle, there in the animals, food, myths and language. I don’t know what it will amount to—if anything—but for now I’m enjoying making a big, thrilling mess.

Thank you so much for doing this interview with me, Traci. It’s such a pleasure to feature your book here at Frontal Junkyard and I can’t wait for Our Lady of the Ruins to come out in the spring! 

Traci Brimhall is the author of Our Lady of the Ruins (W.W. Norton, forthcoming), winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Rookery (SIU Press, 2010), winner of the Crab Orchard Series First Book Award. Her poems have appeared in Kenyon Review, Slate, VQR, New England Review,and elsewhere.  A former Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, she’s currently a doctoral candidate and King/Chávez/Parks Fellow  at Western Michigan University. 

What a wonderful New Year's gift! I got my advance copy of Villanelles yesterday, shortly after learning that it's already available for pre-order on Amazon.

What a journey, from reading over 500 villanelles in the spring of 2009, while I was completing my thesis for my MFA program (I graduated in May, 2009), reading another hundred more between 2009 and 2011, to holding this gorgeous book in my hands. 

Thank you, Annie Finch, co-editor. Thank you, contributors. Thank you, Diana Secker Tesdell, editor at Everyman's Library who took it and shepherded the book through its final stages.

Here's the jacket copy:

The first of its kind--a comprehensive collection of the best of the villanelle, a delightful poetic form whose popularity ranks only behind that of the sonnet and the haiku.
 
With its intricate rhyme scheme and dance-like pattern of repeating lines, its marriage of recurrence and surprise, the villanelle is a form that has fascinated poets since its introduction almost two centuries ago. Many well-known poets in the past have tried their hands at the villanelle, and the form is enjoying a revival among poets writing today. The poems collected here range from the classic villanelles of the nineteenth century to such famous and memorable examples as Dylan Thomas's "Do not go gentle into that good night," Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art," and Sylvia Plath's "Mad Girl's Love Song." Here too are the cutting-edge works of contemporary poets, including Sherman Alexie, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Rita Dove, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, and many others whose poems demonstrate the dazzling variety that can be found within the parameters of a single, strict form. 

Here's the link to pre-order: Amazon

In the last Page Meets Stage of the year, veteran Page Meets Stage reader Jeffrey McDaniel meets Amber Tamblyn. We can't wait for this pairing! 

Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery, $12/$6 students. Starts at 8 pm sharp.

Thank you to all our supporters and readers for another amazing year of poetry. We will resume on January 18th with Afaa Michael Weaver and Willie Perdomo!

The recipient of an NEA Fellowship, Jeffrey McDaniel is the author of four books of poetry, most recently The Endarkenment, published by University of Pittsburgh Press. Although he is no stranger to poetry slams in the mid to late 90s, he is one of the few slam poets to have successfully “transitioned” into the academy.  He teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College.

Amber Tamblyn may be best known as the Emmy and Golden Globe Award-nominated actress of “Joan of Arcadia” and such films as “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” but she also has an established career as a performance poet. Tamblyn is the author of Bang Ditto (Manic D Press) and has self-published two chapbooks of poetry, Of the Dawn and Plenty of Ships. 

Top Five Regrets of The Dying
December 1, 2011 By T Kelly 

For many years I worked in palliative care.
My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared.
I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives. 
People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. I learnt never to underestimate someone’s capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed though, every one of them.

When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it,
it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.
It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. 
Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.

2. I wish I didn’t work so hard. 
This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.
By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.
We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. 
Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.
It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip. But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It is all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks, love and relationships.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier. 
This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.
When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.

Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness.

Source: http://www.activistpost.com/2011/11/top-5-regrets-of-dying.html

I just returned from an underwater photo course around Komodo, Indonesia, on the Komodo Dancer, with fun teachers Mike and Mike. I dove in Bali for a couple of days before boarding the boat, which is where I saw the elusive mola mola (sunfish) being cleaned by yellow fish at a cleaning station!

Here's the link to the album. Enjoy! 

I've been focusing on my gut a lot lately, both the healing of it with probiotics and dietary changes and tuning more into "gut feelings," that level of instinctual knowing underneath the mind. I found this article interesting because of the ubiquity of antibiotics in our culture and their far-reaching effects beyond killing what they're taken to kill.

Fat, Sick, and Depressed:
The Dark Side of Antibiotics

Next time you have a sore throat, let your immune system perform its duties and skip the antibiotic your doctor might persuade you to take or you might be tempted to ask for.

Antibiotics can make you fat, sick, and depressed. They might also permanently eradicate the beneficial microorganisms you carry around in your gut. You’ve gottons of these good guys, which vastly outnumber your body’s trillions of cells. Friendly flora perform numerous duties like fighting cancer by breaking down carcinogens and boosting your immune system.

In the past, doctors believed after you finish antibiotic therapy, your good gut flora automatically repopulates, and a natural balance of good and bad bacteria resumes. Not necessarily, argues Dr. Martin Blaser, chairman of the department of medicine at New York University Langone Medical Center, in the journal Nature.

“Antibiotics are miraculous,” he says. “They’ve changed health and medicine over the last 70 years. But when doctors prescribe antibiotics, it is based on the belief that there are no long-term effects. We’ve seen evidence that suggests antibiotics may permanently change the beneficial bacteria that we’re carrying.” What’s more, antibiotics are killing those beneficial bacteria before scientists fully discover their benefits.

Blaser fears that humans have already lost some “ancestral organisms” that help protect us. “I think we’ll soon be inoculating babies with these lost bacteria,” he says. “Antibacterials are everywhere. We might be harming ourselves out of a lot of benefit.”

Almost half of women get antibiotics during pregnancy. What ensues, according to Blaser, is that “each generation… could be beginning life with a smaller endowment of ancient microbes than the last.”

Let’s look at one example. Antibiotics, he argues, might be responsible for declining rates of the stomach bacterium H. pylori, which creates gastric ulcers. Sounds good, right?

But in 1996, Blaser proposed that H. pylori helps regulate stomach acidity and can be potentially beneficial.

Doctors see less gastric ulcers these days, due to decreased H. pylori. There’s only one problem: esophageal cancer has skyrocketed. Turns out that Blaser knows what he’s talking about.

Furthermore, kids who don’t acquire H. pylori have a greater risk of developing allergies and asthma. By time your kid turns 18, her or she will receive up to 20 courses of antibiotics. See the connection?

There’s more. H. pylori also negatively affects your body’s production of the hormones ghrelin and leptin. Ghrelin tells your brain to eat now. Leptin, on the other hand, helps you put your fork down after three bites of brownie a la mode.

Remember I always tell you weight resistance isn’t your fault? Here you go: a recent antibiotics treatment might be one reason you can’t keep your hand out of the bag of Saulsalito cookies. Besides obesity, antibiotic overuse contributes to problems that have doubled in some populations, such as type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, allergies, depression, and asthma.

Even the bad bacteria are revolting to antibiotics. Doctors, in fact, are almost out of antibiotic replacements, and onlytwo new antibiotics have come out over the past 10 years.

Blaser proposes a solution: doctors should focus on the infected area rather than blast the whole system. He also suggests scientists find new ways to destroy bad bacteria without harming the good.

Doctors complain patients often demand antibiotics, even when they’re not warranted. They argue patients often fail to understand the repercussions of over-prescribing antibiotics. Now you know some of those repercussions, you have no excuse to not avoid antibiotics whenever you can.

Three steps to build good gut bacteria

Avoiding antibiotics whenever possible is one step to attain optimal gut health, but you also want to build the good guys. Here’s how.

1. A high-quality probiotic. Probiotics provide your gut with naturally occurring friendly bacteria. Sorry, but those health-store brands don’t cut it. You want a professionals-only probiotic that contains billionsof organisms and guarantees gut delivery as well as shelf stability. Probiotics help improve food and nutrient assimilation, inhibit harmful bacteria, and boost your immune system. Antibiotics, stress, and a bad diet can all destroy your friendly flora, which makes supplementing with a super-premium probiotic essential.
2. Fiber. Your friendly intestinal bacteria can convert fiber to short-chain fatty acids (SCFA), which help nourish intestinal cells and maintain optimal colon pH. Fiber helps reduce pathogenic bacteria growth, and cleanses toxins from your colon. You should aim for 50 grams a day, which means you’ll probably need to supplement with a fiber powder.
3. Prebiotics. Inulin, a fructan derived from chicory and other root vegetables, is a fibrous carbohydrate known as a prebiotic that resists digestion in the upper GI tract. In your colon, inulin stimulates growth of healthy intestinal bacteria. Inulin has a mildly sweet taste and works great blended into your morning smoothie.

Sources:

www.wired.com

Martin Blaser Antibiotic Overuse: Stop the Killing of Beneficial Bacteria Antibiotic Overuse: Stop the Killing of Beneficial Bacteria 2011 August ?Department of Medicine, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, New York 10016, USA.

© 2011 JJ Virgin & Associates, Inc. Celebrity Nutrition & Fitness Expert JJ Virgin is the best-selling author of Six Weeks to Sleeveless and Sexy, creator of the 4X4 Workout & co-star of TLC's Freaky Eaters. Visit her at http://www.jjvirgin.com to take the quiz & find out if Your "Healthy" Habits are Making You Tired, Bloated & Age Faster?

I had a great week diving off the coast of Hawaii on the Kona Aggressor live aboard. I won the trip in a photo contest, which made it especially sweet. Here's a link to an album of underwater photos I took during the week. Try the slideshow option and enjoy!

Album