A very big thank you to Content Bookstore, especially to reading organizer Ellie Ray, and to all the friends who attended my first reading from Geranium Lake last Thursday evening.
Despite the torrential downpour that began half-an-hour beforehand, it was a really good crowd, both in the store and on Content’s livestream via Facebook. I was buoyed up by all of your friendly faces and your excellent questions and comments afterward.
Thank you!
LESLIE
I have just learned that tomorrow evening’s reading at Content Bookstore in Northfield, Minnesota will be livestreamed, and anyone can be in the audience long-distance, as it were. To join me, simply click on this link: https://www.facebook.com/ContentBookstore tomorrow evening (Thursday, October 24, 2024) at 7:00 p.m. Central Daylight Time. The event will last about an hour.
Wishing you a splendid week,
LESLIE
“Poetry,” W.H. Auden famously asserted, “makes nothing happen.” Well, I am not so sure of that.
On Monday, May 20, a capacity crowd gathered at Content Bookstore to hear readings from five of the poets laureate whose work is included in Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureates on Social Justice, edited by Ron Riekki and Andrea Scarpino (Michigan State University, 2019).
Ken McCullough, James Armstrong, and Emilio DeGrazia, all of Winona, Minnesota; Sheila Packa of Duluth, Minnesota; and our own Rob Hardy of Northfield, Minnesota shared their contributions to the anthology as well as other poems. The group reading was followed by questions, informal conversation, and book signings.
This thoughtful and bold anthology presents work that stands at the intersection of personal vision and collective voice in order to document various forms of current and historic injustice. Politically pointed and aware, while remaining poetically adept, the poems of these seventy-three poets–of all ages, from many backgrounds–who have been honored by civic office speak up, cry out, seek to raise awareness and indignation, and stir readers, too, to break voicelessness and take action.
To that end, the structure of Undocumented is well suited. Using the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Ten Ways to Fight Hate: A Community Response Guide” as the organizing principle, the editors have arranged poems in sections titled “Act,” “Unite,” “Support Victims,” “Do Your Homework,” “Create an Alternative,” “Speak Up,” “Lobby Leaders,” “Look Long Range,” “Teach Tolerance,” and “Dig Deeper.” The table of contents includes a short summary of various ways for individuals to take action, and most of the biographical notes on contributors include at least one recommendation for an effective organization to amplify action.
Providing an array of poetic voices and points of view, this collection encourages everyone, poet or not, to confront the silence that allows injustice in all its manifold infestations to flourish, and provides examples of witness and protest lyrics for our own time.
Undocumented, as well as other titles from these fine poets, are available from Content Bookstore, which can be browsed in person or online! Special thanks to Bonnie Jean Flom for permission to use her photographs of the poets.
Pushcarts in January are in short supply in small Minnesota towns. Local readers might recognize the iconic “Book Bike” in the new atrium of the Northfield Public Library, parked under Rob Hardy’s engraved lines celebrating the spirit of our community. I share this image to celebrate another manifestation of community: I learned in the early days of this year that one of the poems I published last year was nominated last autumn for a Pushcart Prize.
When your work is nominated for a Pushcart Prize you know two things absolutely: first, that there is at least one professional out there who truly believes in what you’ve done; and, second, that the odds against actually winning are steep–Rocky Mountain steep. Himalayan-steep. (In poetry, for example, for the 2015 (the 39th anthology, and the one I have consulted) more than 4,000 poems were nominated but only 31 were prize winners. (A further 25 cited for Special Mention but not reprinted.)) My own poem made it only to the first level of nomination.
Both of these facts make each year’s Pushcart Prize announcement a very big deal to writers, celebrating as it does the incredible wealth of fine and inventive writing (poems, fiction, essays) that is published each year in the United States by small presses. Established in 1976 (the year I stumbled onto life-changing volumes of poetry by Howard Nemerov and Sylvia Plath in the Beloit Public Library,) the Pushcart Prize is the brainchild of a disillusioned Doubleday Editor, Bill Henderson. His enduring idea has been to identify each year some of the best work published by non-commercial presses in the previous year. Nominations come from a legion of editors (each journal is allowed a total of six across all genres) and from former Pushcart Prize recipients. The founding editors included such diverse sensibilities as Buckminster Fuller and Anais Nin. Nominations for 2017 closed on December 1, and the 2018 anthology is already available through Amazon or better yet, through your favorite Indie Book Store! Mine is Content Bookstore here in Northfield. Proceeds help to fund the next year’s project.
By creating an anthology of prize winners, as well as a non-profit structure to support it, Henderson continues to draw attention to vibrancy, diversity, and vigor of the good writing we all are doing. Part of the fun of each anthology is archival, for each includes a comprehensive list, alphabetized by last name, that includes the winning genre, title, and year. Last year, I spent months reading aloud all 500 of Amy Clampitt’s poems, and I like knowing that her work is represented by two poems, “The Reed Beds of the Hackensack” (VIII) and “Grassmere” (X). Similarly, Richard Wilbur, another poet whose work has influenced my own, is represented by “Hamlen Book” (VIII). One can’t help noticing who else is not here, truly fine poets Here is a summary, with some quotes from Henderson, published by Poets & Writers three years ago, titled “Pushcart Prize Turns Forty.”
Knowing full well the great leap required to move from “nominated” writer to “prize winning writer,” I am savoring this unexpected validation. In the past forty-two years, something like 250,000 pieces of writing have been nominated. According to my humble and statistically unsound calculations, tens of millions of other fine essays, poems, and stories were not. (I have my own list of work I would champion retrospectively if I could, and surely you have yours. Perhaps that could be the subject of a future post.) But…They were written. They were published. They were read. It is thrilling to realize that excellent work is all around us, waiting for us to discover it.
My nominated poem can be accessed through the post I did in June (which includes a link to the issue of The Orchards in which “To a Former Friend, Whose Affections Are Withdrawn” was published.)
Wishing you a surprising day of joy, LESLIE
At a recent visit to a key Northfield literary hub, Content Bookstore, it was exciting to see my new book, Still Life with Poppies: Elegies displayed on their shelves during National Poetry Month.
To have my own work mere inches from such literary luminaries and personal heroes as Pablo Neruda and Mary Oliver was a delight I shall not soon forget.
Next week, I will be the featured reader on Thursday, May 5, at Content Bookstore’s monthly poetry series. I hope you will be able to come. The reading starts at 7:00 p.m., but if you are early there are plenty of enticing books to browse and comfortable places to sit. After my reading, there will be an open mike period when you are welcome to read one of your own poems, and I will be signing copies of my book.
Also, tomorrow (April 30) is Independent Bookstore Day, and Content is celebrating in style. They have a whole day of special events planned for readers of all ages. Why not plan to stop by and share in the fun? It’s on my calendar!
Happy Reading,
Leslie
