Poetry Beat

Literary tiffs: an early spring update

Literary tiffs aren't what they used to be back in the days when Mary McCarthy famously said of Lillian Hellman that every word she wrote was a lie, including the articles "a," "and," and "the," or when Norman Mailer threw a drink in Gore Vidal’s face and sucker-punched him, only to have Vidal to rise from the floor with the taunt: "Once again, words fail Mr. Mailer."

That said, the dust-up caused by poet and New Yorker staff writer Dana Goodyear's long, withering piece on the effect eccentric pharmaceutical heiress Ruth Lilly's $200 million bequest has had on Poetry Magazine and the Poetry Foundation in the Feb. 19 and 26 double issue has certainly set tongues wagging across the literary world.

If you didn't catch the piece entitled "The Moneyed Muse: What can $200 million do for poetry?" here is a link:

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/070219fa_fact_goodyear

In the March 11^th issue of The New York Times Book Review, the Times new poetry columnist/reviewer David Orr attacked Goodyear’s piece, questioned her motives and that of the New Yorker, and defended John Barr, the former Wall Street executive who has set up a new regime at Poetry. 

As a longtime reader of all three publications, I’ve shared some of Goodyear’s concerns since Joseph Parisi, the longtime editor of Poetry, resigned less than year after the Lilly bequest was announced.

Goodyear’s piece is worth reading just for Billy Collins’ tongue-in-cheek proposal on how to spend the entire bequest: “I suggested that the Poetry Foundation buy a ship, an Aristotle Onassis-type, hundred-and-ninety-foot luxury cruiser. You’d call it the Poetry Boat, and take it around the coast of the world, then back it into the harbor in Saint-Tropez and I could give a reading on the stern.”

The Poetry Page Chronicles, Vol. 1, No. 1

I recently marked my 20^th year selecting the poems that appear on the first Sunday of each month in The News’ Spotlight section.

 While there have been several changes in the format of the page and in the nature of contemporary American poetry over the past two decades, one surprising thing that hasn’t changed is worth noting.

February, while the shortest month of the year is invariably the month we receive the most submissions to the Poetry Page. I’m sure there must be some rational explanation for this involving climatology or circadian rhythms, but frankly, I’ve yet to figure it out.

I still remember the first overstuffed satchel of envelopes that I picked up at The News one cold afternoon in February of 1987 and hauled back to my car.

What have I gotten myself into here? I thought aloud. I should have brought a wheelbarrow. A few of the envelopes spilled out of the overfilled satchel, and I bent over in the snow to retrieve them.

Then I thought of William Carlos Williams’ poem “The Red Wheelbarrow”:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

I looked around. It was snowing. There weren’t any chickens in sight.

I stepped back into my hideous K-Car, the moniker for which a young woman poet I had once dated suggested stood for “Kosher.” Then I drove off into the whiteness.

Here, dear readers, is where I’d welcome your thoughts. What is it about February that makes Buffalo area poets so prolific? Is there any one period of the year that you find yourself more productive as a writer and if so, why?