For-Words

for-words 05 08 12

2012-05-08T08:51:00.001-07:00

Tuesday, May 08, 2012

VOTE

It comes down to this sunny day, the primary for the recall elections. Most of the postings on Facebook are reminders to vote, some with a word for Vinehout, Falk, or Barrett. One for Doug LaFollette. One FB friend is even a Walker supporter.

Not yet all or nothing. That'll be June 5^th.

The woman in the house across Pryor Avenue works on her garden wearing a short sleeve shirt. It's been a hot, cold, warm, rainy, cold again, warming up month. We'll see if the weather works as a metaphor for Wisconsin politics. So far is seems like it does.

Margaret Rozga

for-words 05 07 12

2012-05-07T20:59:00.001-07:00

Monday, May 7, 2012

Decisions

If I were still a full-time faculty member, I'd be counting down the last few days until the end of the semester. My friends and colleagues are doing this.

Instead I have the same feeling I used to have after a semester ended: how to choose from all the things to do. To choose anyone means not choosing others. It's hard to commit to one of these things as long as feelings about wanting to tackle some of the others still linger.

I sent off a group of poems to Nimrod before their May 1^st postmark deadline. And though this deadline isn't until June, I probably have a chapbook manuscript as ready to submit as it will ever be.

Also this week, I sent comments regarding their new children's book about Father Groppi to the editor at the Wisconsin Historical Society Press. I woke up yesterday morning thinking more deeply about its impression on me: that though people in (and beyond) the Black community admired him deeply, he lost every major issue he tackled. I sent another message to the book's editor suggesting the author might like to see the NOVA high school students' exhibit at the Arts@Large gallery.

So what's next? A house to clean. A garden to prepare. Ingredients for a pie just waiting to come together. Poems to comment on. A vacation in Turkey. Books to read.

How to make the decision, no, not one decision but decisions, about what to do first and then next and next. All of these things look appealing when in the middle of a thorny writing project. But the writing project wrapped up and another one not yet born, they lose their pull.

Even when it's not going well, nothing, at least nothing solitary, is as much fun as writing.

Margaret Rozga

for-words 05 05 12

2012-05-05T19:46:00.001-07:00

Saturday May 5, 2012

No, no way

Maybe it's not the weather. Maybe it's not that National Poetry Month ended without my having written anything near a poem a day Maybe it's not my misgivings about the AWP proposal or my unfulfilled longing to see the lake or the unmade phone calls I should attend to. Maybe the reason for my feeling restless and at loose ends off and on for these last weeks is the endless uphill battle for socially responsible government.

It's too easy, of course, to blame everything on Scott Walker. Of course it's bigger than that. But when I drove to Door County on Friday, I saw thirteen big Scott Walker signs, and we haven't even been through the primary. I have this sinking feeling even as I tell myself it can't be: what if Scott Walker is not recalled?

Margaret. Rozga

for-words 05 04 2012

2012-05-04T08:31:00.001-07:00

Friday, May 4, 2012

Gently Read Literature

I like the whole concept: read gently. Especially applied to reviewing. What every writer wants is a reader who will understand her best intentions in the writing, for the writing. And then of course the writer wants to know what pleases, confuses, falls short of the mark, what the triumphs are.

I also appreciate that editor Daniel Casey devotes his time and effort to getting word out about the literature that is gently read and reviewed. How generous! Applause, applause.

I enjoyed the opportunity to review Peggy Shumaker's Gnawed Bones for the May issue of Gently Read Literature. Here's a link: http://issuu.com/gently_read_literature/docs/grl_may

Margaret Rozga

for-words 05 03 2012

2012-05-03T10:59:00.001-07:00

Thursday, May 03, 2012

Monarch Song

At first I said to myself that you need profound quiet to hear the song of the butterfly. But I no longer think that exactly right.

I was pulled outdoors by the sun in the midst of the cacophony of daily chores calling out, crying for attention. Outdoors the water of the Bay View Iron Well churgled up and into my tea pot or hit the bottom screen on its way back underground and the neighbor's lilacs waved and waved in the breeze, spoke bright purple, only some of them a quieter tone.

And then just before I step back inside, then the monarch.

What seems more to the point here is what tune you are looking for, what tune you've already begun to hum.

Margaret Rozga

for-words 05 02 2012

2012-05-02T18:44:00.001-07:00

Wednesday, May 02, 2012

Monarch

The Milwaukee County grounds, or what used to be the Milwaukee County grounds, is on the migratory pathway of monarch butterflies. I wrote earlier this week about Scott Walker's role in disrupting that pathway.

Yesterday morning I stepped out to the Bay View Iron Well to fill up my tea kettle with water, though I already had tea and so had no immediate need of the water. It was a lovely morning, sunnier than previous days. I took time to admire the neighbor's lilacs pulling outward from center, branches heavy with blossom arcing downward.

And then, on the framework of my door, I saw a monarch butterfly. The wings moved ever so slightly inward and with equal delicacy outward again, like breathing. Breathing, a movement of the wings.

Maybe my house is on the monarch pathway. Maybe the butterflies can be seen in the neighborhood most any day, at least this time of the year. I'm half-tempted to see the monarch at my house as more than coincidental, but I also know how simple-minded that might seem.

More likely because I had monarchs on my mind, I could see one when it was there to be seen. Maybe the world is full of marvelous coincidences. Maybe all we need to do is take time to notice them.

Margaret Rozga

for-words 05 01 2012

2012-05-01T17:41:00.001-07:00

Tuesday, May 01, 2012

The Eschweiler Buildings

You can see them off to your right driving north on Hwy 41/45. They rise in the distance beyond a softly rolling hill of green. When Chrissy was home and we headed to Mayfair so she could shop, she asked about them. What were they?

I remember going to a play in one of them, a small auditorium in what appeared to be a school building. I couldn't quite remember what they had been: an orphanage; part of the children's court and protective services; a mental institution? Orphanages no longer exist; children in need now get placed in foster care which often also leaves much to be desired, but that's another subject. The other services are now housed in newer buildings west of the highway.

A Facebook friend posted about the Eschweiler Buildings yesterday. Originally built as a county agricultural School, they were later used as a tuberculosis sanatorium when Milwaukee County was becoming more urbanized. More recently space in them was rented out for a variety of offices. They were designated officially as historic buildings.

When Scott Walker became County Executive he promised he would not destroy them. He also promised he would not open to development the land around them which is important on the migratory path of monarch butterflies. But he evicted the tenants of the buildings and committed the County to a development project for the land. Some preliminary work began and disturbed the butterfly area, but the development project stalled.

Empty, the buildings have fallen into such disrepair that restoring them has become prohibitive. The development project ran into funding and other problems and is in limbo.

Margaret Rozga

for-words 04 30 12

2012-04-30T21:46:00.001-07:00

Monday, April 30, 2012

Relief

One month a year, poetry takes center stage, or at least steps out a bit from the chorus into a featured role. I love to see poetry get this chance. But having signed on to write a poem a day when I was five days behind at the start put me under a lot of pressure. Which I mostly ignored. Still the undercurrent was there: write, write, write, you should be writing.

I think I wrote at least five new poems. And I did a lot of revising of old poems.

Poetry, I enjoyed mornings with you. I hope to see you cast in an even bigger and better role before next year. I hope you'll have fans point you out when you walk down the street and shyly approach you for an autograph when you're having lunch in an out-of-the-way cafe.

But right now I'm mostly relieved that the daily pressure doesn't need to be quite so narrowly defined. I'll write, I'll phone, I'll invite you in for tea. Oh, and let's meet for walks along the lakefront. But if you want some alone time, I totally understand.

Margaret Rozga

for-words 04 29 2012

2012-04-29T09:21:00.001-07:00

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Voces de la Frontera

A beautiful day in Milwaukee, perfect for the annual rally for immigration rights organized by the fabulous folks at Voces de la Frontera. If you're anywhere near Milwaukee, join us. March from the Voces offices on West Washington and South Fifth Street. Or join us at the Rally in Veterans Park on the Milwaukee lakefront, just north of the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Margaret Rozga

for-words 04 27 2012

2012-04-27T12:35:00.001-07:00

April 27, 2012

Poet of the Day: Anna Deavere Smith

Anna Deavere Smith says, "It makes many artists feel nervous, that word 'responsibility.' But for those of us who aren't afraid of using the words 'artist' and 'responsibility' or even 'leader' in the same sentence, we have an opportunity to at least try and make work that questions power."

True, she isn't a poet in the sense of a person who writes primarily in lines. She is, however, a stunning word artist. An artist, a playwright who writes texts she also breathes in and then breathes out, embodies, enacts. I claim her, name her art poetry, language used most resourcefully.

I found her again. When writing March On Milwaukee, I first discovered her. Mark Lococo gave me his copy of Twilight Los Angeles. Told me, yes, indeed she plays all the roles. Then one of my students told me I could find clips on YouTube. Then I saw for myself. The class saw. She becomes every character she writes and plays. The artist engaged, immersed in the dialogue, in the human situation.

In this interview in an old issue of the Ruminator I found while cleaning yesterday, she quotes other writers saying things like "art gives you new eyes," saying the problem with artists today is that they "have given the study of the human condition over to the sociologists." She says, "We, as artists, need to place ourselves in situations which put our sensitivities about the world in closer proximity to the world."

So these her statements are prose. I can't single out brief sections from her texts that will convey her vision in a way I can carry as a mantra. Her artistry is in the whole which is greater than the sum of the parts. Still I could go to school to her work every day and from her learn so much deeply true about the wellspring of poetic art.

Margaret Rozga

for-words 04 25 2012

2012-04-25T20:43:00.001-07:00

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Anaphora

It's the poet's best friend, I told Andrea's class at UW Waukesha. Right up there with the repeated line, with assonance and alliteration, with the list. This was my third reading in a week, fourth, really, because at Manitowoc I did both an afternoon and an evening event.

Each of the four was different.

Different proportion of reading to discussion.

Different sizes of audiences.

Different interaction and response.

Different me. Looser today than Monday and Monday easier than Thursday. Thursday more intense, tighter.

I read from Though I Haven't Been to Baghdad, gauging again how much to say around and between the poems. Maybe too much story around the poems on Thursday. How to let the poems be, let them tell the story: I think I did it in Michigan. But maybe in the year since then the memory becomes softer, kinder.

It's strange to be at Waukesha.

No parking permit.

No access code to the copier

No connection to a printer from computers there.

No status in emeritus.

This morning I worked on poems, and this evening I came back to these poems. Happy to be back even if they win no prizes, even if I cannot find them a home.

Margaret Rozga

for-words 04 23 2012

2012-04-23T07:05:00.001-07:00

Monday, April 23, 2012

Craft and Compassion

Today I serve as guest blogger for Chloe Yelena Miller who teaches online writing classes and works as a private writing coach and reviewer. You can follow her blog at http://chloeyelenamiller.blogspot.com/2012/04/national-poetry-month-guest-blogger_23.html

In my piece for her today, I wrote today about my experiences at the recent Split this Rock Poetry Festival and what it means to write political poetry, a topic I hope to address at greater length in Verse Wisconsin's fall issue. Without further ado, here's the blog.

Political Poetry: Craft and Compassion

For four splendid March days, during the recent Split This Rock Poetry Festival, I enjoyed being among poets who embrace the possibilities of poetry as a vehicle for expressing the full range of their concerns, including their concerns about public events and policy, their concerns about the social and political direction of our country and world. Readings, discussions of social and literary issues, and craft workshops filled the days and lasted late into the nights.

These splendid four days focused on what some call "political" poetry, and because it's political, some question its poetic quality. Split This Rock refers to the poetry it celebrates as "Poetry of Provocation and Witness," the term "political" being less precise and prompting some of the negative reaction. Still by whatever name, this poetry often has to defend itself as poetry. It is an issue that concerns me because it is the poetry I practice especially in my books, one about the civil rights movement in Milwaukee and the other about the effects of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars I experienced as a mother of an Army Reservist.

The lonely poet working in isolation is an image ingrained in our culture. Writing poetry, it is true, requires concentration, and so it may be solitary. I have also found it true that many young writers turn to poetry after the isolating experience of a failed romance. But these factors do not mean that poetry must be focused on the isolated individual. Poets, like other people, have social networks and concerns: jobs, friends, family, civic issues, and histories. Poets can and do write about individual experiences. They can and do write about falling in and out of love, about the role of art, about facing old age and death.

But if poetry, defined most simply, is the art of using language most resourcefully, then why limit poetry to a handful of subjects? Writing that taps into a wide array of the resources of language ought to be free, will free itself, to explore a wide array of topics. Poetry can be egocentric, but it need not be exclusively egocentric. The "I" may not be the center either of the poet's world or of the poetic world. A poet may find inspiration in others, in action, as well as in solitary contemplation. Rather than be exclusively egocentric, poetry can be community inclusive.

The confessional and the ethereally poetic are scarcely the whole poetic garment. Public and heroic strands, still important internationally, historically have been vibrant contributors to the whole fabric of poetry in the Anglo-American tradition. Consider, for example, the range from the heroic Beowulf, to Chaucer's fallible nuns and priests and pilgrims on their Canterbury trek with all the baggage of their lives, to Shakespeare who made dramatic poetry out of history, to England's tradition of poets laureate including John Dryden, who wrote the political satire "Absalom and Achitophel, and Alfred Lord Tennyson, whose work includes "The Charge of the Light Brigade," to the work of Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Wendell Berry, and Rita Dove, to the surge of public interest in poetry following the September 11^th attacks in New York. To object to the "political" in poetry seems to snip off so much of our literary heritage. It leaves us with a national cultural garment that is thread bare.

Split This Rock continues its work between the festivals it sponsors every other year. You can check their website and blog for discussions. I'll also discuss some of the books and ideas I took away from this year's festival on my blog.

Margaret Rozga

for-words 04 22 2012

2012-04-22T09:33:00.001-07:00

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Poet of the Day - Maxine Hong Kingston

My essay on what's usually called political poetry will appear in the fall issue of Verse Wisconsin. Once I had an idea of how to approach the subject, the writing gathered itself together like children lining up at the end of the day to be dismissed, just waiting for the bell to ring. I felt the exuberance of those children.

Yet an element of the weary teacher hung in there: was I tired after working hard, or was something left unsaid, undone? Were there issues I hadn't addressed? Had I argued with a straw man and missed whatever were the real issues about "political" poetry?

Sarah Busse and Wendy Vardman, editors of Verse Wisconsin, reassured me after they read the draft. They would be thrilled to publish it.

Several weeks and much reading later, I see more clearly. It is a straw man, a giant of a straw man who continually huffs and puffs at those who write and those who read what I prefer to call community inclusive poetry. And so over and over again, we find ways to show what a light weight he really is.

Essays can work. Even better are poems addressing "political" issues that succeed brilliantly as poems. One such work is Maxine Hong Kingston's verse memoir, I Love A Broad Margin To My Life. In the part copied below, Kingston presents and elaborates on a metaphor. The peace demonstration with a line of police arresting demonstrators is likened to ‏a dance in junior high school.

I don't want to keep
living out the myth that men fight
and women mother. We regressed—the junior
high dance. One boy crossed
the wide floor, chose one girl,
escorted her back to the other side, where
he arrested her.

Yesterday Knopf emailed a larger section of this work for their poem of the day. Reading it made me want to read the whole book. It is the kind of poetry that resonates for me, the kind of poetry I want to write.

Margaret Rozga

for-words 04 21 12

2012-04-21T13:11:00.001-07:00

Saturday, April 21, 2012

March for Equality: 200 Nights in Milwaukee

4:00 p.m. was the start time yesterday for the opening of this student-created exhibit on the Milwaukee civil rights movement. I thought most people would not come before 6:00. Wow! Was I wrong! And I was happy to be wrong. The Gallery@Large was buzzing with excitement and with people for the whole four hour gala opening. In fact, when I left at 8:15 p.m., others were still in the Gallery.

None of us who agreed to help with this project back in November could have imagined how the exhibit that students created would surpass all of our expectations. Rave reviews by all who attended, including Milwaukee School Superintendent Gregory Thornton. But the most important people there were the students from NOVA High School who took on the project, bought into it with their minds and hearts and hands, and achieved all we dreamed for them and much, much more.

One particular highlight for me was the work of student poet Neosha Hampton. Two of her poems were featured in the exhibit, one about Vietnam Veteran Ronald Britton's unsuccessful attempt to rent a flat in a white neighborhood. The other imagined Kosciuszko Park, site of resistance to the civil rights marchers in 1967, as a transformed place where peace reigns.

May Neosha continue to write poetry that moves us from what our history has been onward to a better world.

Margaret Rozga

for-words 04 20 12

2012-04-20T12:32:00.001-07:00

Friday, April 20, 2012

Lakeshore Road

On my way to the University of Wisconsin – Manitowoc, I followed directions from Mapquest. Exit the interstate at Exit 144, Hwy C , turn right and proceed to Lakeshore Road. Turn left. Lakeshore Road becomes 10th Street. The campus will be on your right.

In the light of noon, these narrow, mostly rural roads were beautiful. Lakeshore Road was aptly named. I could see Lake Michigan stretched on my right as I traveled north. No other cars travelled these roads, so I kept an easy pace, alert to landmarks so that I wouldn't feel anxious about driving this same route on the way home after dark.

The reading and discussion in Jessica Van Slooten's afternoon class went well. Students got into the act, reading a couple of the two-voice poems from Two Hundred Nights and One Day. Students had lots of questions, mostly about my writing process, several of these students serious about becoming writers themselves.

In the evening, I read the poems in Though I Haven't Been to Baghdad. I've read them before, but last night something touched me. Something in the poems themselves and then something in the discussions with a couple of students afterward. One student picked up on a detail I inserted in between poems, about a young person killed in a snowmobile accident; he thought he might know the person who had been killed. Another student had a brother about to be deployed for the third time. She wore a Wounded Warriors sweat shirt with the name of one soldier printed on the hood. His name is Eamon. I did not see the last name. And around me people were talking about Amy Krueger, who lived in Manitowoc County, and whom I remember in my poem "Beyond Fort Hood."

This morning I woke up with lines of the poem that seems to carry the emotional burden of everything I feel about Matt's deployments. It's not overtly an emotionally charged poem. It simply lists the steps in Matt's journey home, ending with "The Sheboygan County Sherriff's Department just met their buses at the County Line."

His homecoming, his almost being there. So like an arm outstretched toward someone you love who's still just beyond reach.

I don't know why this reading impacted me in such a deep way. All the emotions I let myself partially feel, writing writes them into manageable form, but language fences and the construction of compartments in the mind sometimes cannot hold.

It was a long stretch of dark road on the way back to the interstate. And it was raining. It was a long stretch of dark road from 2004 to 2009 and even into 2011. And mapquest cannot provide a set of directions for that road.

Margaret Rozga

for-words 04 18 2012

2012-04-18T16:23:00.001-07:00

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Prologue and Epilogue

A flurry of last minute touches to the civil rights exhibit opening at the Arts@Large Gallery this Friday, April 20^th. One of them: how about a decal affixed to the way with words from one of my poems? Exhibit coordinator Linda D'Aquisto asks if I am okay with this. She sends me a copy of the text. It reads:

Milwaukee.

An epilogue may be in your steps.

maybe the other side of the long expanse

of bridge you think you can't cross.

Margaret Rozga,

From Prologue to Milwaukee, 200 Nights and One Day

Not only am I okay with this, I'm deeply honored. And I can't wait to see the whole exhibit, March to Equality: 200 Nights in Milwaukee.

If you're even remotely near Milwaukee, join in celebrating this work of students from NOVA high school. Gallery@Large, 908 South 5^th Street, Milwaukee. Friday, April 20, 2012, 4:00 to 8:00 p.m. and Saturday, April 21, 2012, 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

Margaret Rozga

for-words 04 17 12

2012-04-17T20:43:00.001-07:00

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Verse Wisconsin

Let me change up a bit here. From the push uphill to applause for those pushing up hill.

Here's praise all those who are creating lively poetry and poetry communities. Two of these wonderful poets are Wendy Vardaman and Sarah Busse who edit and publish Verse Wisconsin. The exciting new issue of Verse Wisconsin is just out. Take a look at the online version. You'll see that it delivers.

In a recent posting to the WOMPO email listserv, Wendy described Verse Wisconsin. It is

"a space where a diverse array of poets can interact. So many of the poets we publish don't have academic connections, or work at community colleges. Some of them have very successful non-academic careers--as business people, doctors, lawyers, etc. Others work in non-profits, secondary education, social work, and other lower paying service careers. Others are trying to free lance or live on less in various ways. Some are incarcerated. Some are retired. What they have in common is that they are excellent writers".

Take a look at it online: www.versewisconsin.org

You'll see how good it is and want to subscribe to the print version which is similarly themed but with some different content. Subscribe and support Verse Wisconsin as it contributes our enjoyment. It contributes moreover to the cultural life of Wisconsin and beyond.

Margaret Rozga

for-words 04 16 12

2012-04-16T14:51:00.001-07:00

Monday, April 16, 2012

Better than Two

Re-reading my journal entries, I find that sometimes even on the days I thought I wasn't saying much, the days I thought I was writing without feeling, mechanically, merely keeping up my practice whether or not the practice was meaningful, even on those days, I wrote more than I knew I was writing. I might have been thinking of what emerged in a surface sort of way, but looking at it a second time, it seems to suggest possibilities, maybe being placed like another color or shape over the textured background of an ongoing poetry project: I see, oh, look! It might fit! It might be waiting to cozy up and fit right in.

On two days of this national poetry month, I wrote poems and knew it. On a few other days, I wrote and needed time away from the writing to see the poetry of what I wrote.

Margaret Rozga

for-words 04 15 12

2012-04-15T17:43:00.001-07:00

Sunday, April 15, 2012

The Sixties

No, not the 1960s. Not the political decade. The personal one. The age of retirement for some, maybe most, people. The age of beginning for some, I hope most, people. But beginning again is not in the cultural narrative. It should be.

To celebrate my sister Sue's 68^th birthday, we went to the Milwaukee Art Museum yesterday to see the current exhibit, Accidental Genius. This show presents artists who did not take the route of formal art education to come to their art. What Sue noticed in reading their brief biographies posted near their works was that some of them did not start making art until they were in their 40s; even more of them were in their 60s. One man had some of his early drawings thrown away by his sisters. Several others were institutionalized. Some were orphans and so their early years were in orphanages. Several others were imprisoned or in mental institutions.

One man, said to have some "mental retardation" was in institutions most of his life. Only when he was in his late 60s did those working at the institution notice he liked to draw. His story caught my heart. So did his work. He filled the paper with large swaths of color, like a bank of multi-hued clouds. Then over this background he drew fluid lines, sometimes with text though the words were sometimes invented.

Because we joined in the afternoon's "Sketching in the Galleries" program before taking in the exhibit, we were particularly moved by all this work. Here we were, in our sixties, trying to draw and finding ourselves ever more aware of how hard this is, how much one has to see, how attentive one needs to be both about details and about grand design.

We celebrated Sue's birthday and all the possibilities of new beginnings in the 60s.

Margaret Rozga

for-words 04 14 12

2012-04-14T19:10:00.001-07:00

Saturday, April 14, 2012

National Poetry Month

So I signed on to a web group that promoted writing a poem a day throughout April, national poetry month. I signed on late, already well into the first week of the month. This past week I wrote my first two poems. It's kind of like my monthly exercise goals that seem doable even if I get behind early in the month. I have time, I tell myself, to catch up.

I'm now reaching a point where I doubt I'll catch up with the poem-a-day program. But those were two absolutely glorious days of writing. Though I have commitments that'll keep me on the go these next two week, maybe I can squeeze in a few more poems before April is over. It's not the mountain top. At least for now I'm out of the valley of doubt about how to write a poem.

One way to write a poem is to re-read journal entries. Another is to put some words on paper until the words begin to talk back.

Maybe these are the same way, just a difference in timing.

Margaret Rozga

for-words April 13, 2012

2012-04-13T07:12:00.000-07:00

Friday, April 13, 2012

More No than Yes

A colleague sifts through the pros and cons of her situation. She loves working with students, she enjoys her marriage and being a parent, she's grateful to have a job, some financial security, and health insurance, happy to live in a community with outlets for her creativity and yet, yet somehow the next steps don't seem to be a matter of lifting one foot after the other. What next? How to get there? What of this dailiness? What of the fact that the grant application, the sabbatical proposal, the manuscript submitted, the new course envisioned are respectfully read but then declined? What of the fact that you get more replies with more no than yes? Be happy for the acceptance of a single poem?

So I write to her:

I don't know if you'll find this helpful, but when I began to doubt if I'd ever publish a book, I found out that Amy Clampitt published her first book when she was 63. I carried that fact like a torch to light my way. Lo and behold, I published 200 Nights.

Another writer I met when I had a residency at Ragdale is actually the person who connected me with a publisher--someone she knew who was looking for social justice themed books and not finding what he was looking for. I couldn't have gone to Ragdale when my children were young--no husband, no grandparents. So it ended up enjoying the residency at 50-something and the book at something near the Amy Clampitt benchmark.

Not that Ragdale is everyone's magical connection, but I've come to the conclusion that you never know how word gets around and how connections are made, so I believe in talking with anyone who'll talk with me and anywhere I can find them--at conferences, readings, Facebook, wherever. Sometimes I email people I hardly know to ask if they'll guest blog or if I can use something of theirs I've already seen, and so far I've never gotten a no. At least on guest blog requests.

Mostly it seems that the proportion of no to yes stays pretty much the same, maybe because as the yeses add up, I seem to try bigger challenges. But the important thing is to keep trying so that the yeses can add up. One sure way to have no yeses is not to try at all.

for-words April 11, 2012

2012-04-11T14:30:00.001-07:00

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Jessie Alone

After weeks filled with travel, giving and attending workshops, writing recommendations, writing essays, doing taxes, visiting with Chrissy who is home for her spring break, babysitting, thinking about proposals for next year's AWP meeting, and promoting first We Are the Drum and now the NOVA March for Freedom exhibit at Arts@Large, I thought I'd lost some of my poetry writing momentum. At times I feared it disappeared altogether. Maybe I'd have to learn again, scrapping my way toward learning yet once again how to write a poem.

But thank all that is good, thank the mysterious urge to praise writing for being wonderful, thank my own dogged commitment to writing practice, a poem, nearly a miracle, happened for me this morning.

I picked up with the phrases I jotted down for Phyllis yesterday in the poets' meeting at Sven's and played around with them, trying to remember what I said after "dark against dark," what action verb: was it rush, or sweep or pull? But I wasn't anxious about it. I felt calm, methodical. I numbered each try, short entries that counted toward the thirteen observations for the day. I could see the night clouds, their movement, in my mind's eye.

Then like those clouds came a sweep across a textured sky of my own: my own flitting from this image to the page to a painful past moment to a generalization to the Jessie Benton Fremont writing project that was in danger of drifting away from me to opening my computer and typing It is not painful any more.

Soon I saw the pattern wanting to take shape. He… he, he…he, he…he and I…I, I…I, I…I, I…I

A form invents itself. Almost accidentally. Except for the fact that I could recognize how line breaks were making something interesting happen.

Margaret Rozga

for-words April 10, 2012

2012-04-10T09:06:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

LIST POEMS

In my workshops on writing community inclusive poems, I begin with list poems. It's a way to write about what you see, hear, taste, feel or smell around you and include images of or allusions to public events, concerns or issues without shouldering the sometimes too heavy weight of writing a "political" poem. Anaphora can get the list going in a rhythmic way. More on both those topics another time.

Today, I want to share a link to a list poem done with such precision images that you become absorbed in them and lose all sense of mere listiness. (My computer thinks I want to say lustiness!)

My friend and colleague Sheila Llanas sent the link to me after I shared my directions for a list poem with her. Thanks to her, and now for you the link to Laura Kasischke's "Near Misses."

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22198

Margaret Rozga

for-words April 9, 2012

2012-04-09T20:58:00.001-07:00

Monday, April 09, 2012

NUMBERS

Among the Split This Rock workshops I particularly enjoyed was one on using numbers in poems. Presented by JoAnne Growney, Dennis Shaw, and Katherine Silkin and titled "Counting On," this workshop showed multiple examples of poems using numbers and gave us time to draft one of our own with, if we chose, numbers about political issues we might want to write about. My poem tried to get inside and ahead of the statistic about the incarceration rate of young African American men. Others in the workshop praised what I had and encouraged me to keep going.

I have kept going, not so much with my own poem (which I have temporarily misplaced, arrgh!), but with the idea of weaving numbers into a poem. I suggested to the students in my poetry workshop that they try using numbers. Except for the fact that I read "Facts@Home from Though I Haven't Been to Baghdad that's as much direction as I gave them.

One student traced her family back ten generations. Another wrote "Song for Seven Shovels." A third created a week of numbers.

I'm amazed.

Margaret Rozga

For-words 04 06 12

2012-04-05T10:39:00.000-07:00

Thursday, April 05, 2012

Welcoming Andi

On this Holy Thursday, I'm immensely proud to feature Andi Cumbo as a guest blogger on for-words. Andi speaks to a topic dear to me, White people writing about race. I look forward to the publication of her book about the plantation in Virginia where she grew up. Here's her story of how she embarked on this book project.

To follow Andi regularly, check out www.andilit.com

And now here's Andi!

My Story in the Arc of History: Learning to Speak about Race

"The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice." – Martin Luther King, Jr.

My story, their story, our story – that's what I'm writing in this book project – our story. I'm writing about the people who were enslaved on the plantation where I was raised and about my process of getting to know these people and the legacy of slavery in our country. I'm writing about history; I'm writing about now.

When people ask me how I came to write this book, I can't point to some specific moment when I came to the idea. I didn't have that kind of Joyceian epiphany that would make for a great story. Instead, what I had was a creeping awareness that I was missing something crucial in the understanding of my life and this place that I called home.

What I can point to is my ignorance.

I studied history in college. I knew the dates of the Civil War, and I had the most rudimentary understanding of chattel slavery. I knew who Dr. King was, and I'd read The Autobiography of Malcolm X in an African-American lit class. I was like most Americans, underinformed and ignorant of this fact.

But that arc of history did bend toward justice, to the awareness that justice requires. Just after college, I started dating a man whose mother was deeply devoted to issues of racial reconciliation. She talked to me about her work, about the importance of listening, about the crux being understanding what we do not understand.

In time, I moved to San Francisco, a place where integration, while not perfect, certainly belied the superficial façade that uses that term in my home South. I started working at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project at Stanford, and I realized just how very little I understood of Jim Crow and Civil Rights and the pain of racism in the U.S. My ignorance almost made me silent, but I was reading about role models – Stokely Carmichael, Fannie Lou Hamer, Julian Bond – who did not stay silent. I had to learn to speak what I saw.

Then, I took a teaching position in a county in Maryland where people took a kind of perverse pride in being the state home of the KKK. It became imperative to me that we talk about race and race relations, that we pour out our prejudices and stereotypes on the table so that we could rework them and see how badly they fit us as individuals. Teaching students to talk openly about race required that I learn how to do that myself. The climb up the arc continued.

A few years later, I came home to the plantation. Back to where I walked for years without realizing the stories buried in the land and carved into the buildings here. I am still so ignorant, but I will not stay that way. I have learned that I have to bend with the arc of history if we are going to reach justice.

Maybe we are moving toward justice a bit now, but I'm not sure – tragedies like the murder of Trayvon Martin make me doubt it. But I'm here, writing this story – my story, their story, our story – because if I have learned anything on this journey it's that words change things – for better or for worse.

Andrea Cumbo
www.andilit.com