I was in LA last month for music work, and I think I found something you dropped:

The public. 

So—Maybe you weren’t sure when you lost it, but you seem pretty certain music stole it. Or film perhaps? Or YouTube cats?

Meanwhile, poetry’s stayed alive. It’s been breeding and cloning; there are more of us all the time! (Thank god; someone’s gotta read our poems.) We’re like the Duggar Couple, happy we’ll always have at least our 19 fans.

But for all our liveliness, poetry’s not exactly on speaking terms with the public. By which I mean, we don’t speak to it. Except in English class.

So anyway, when I found your public, it was like, “Idk, I never hear from poetr—Oh hey! I love this song!”
And then I knew: We have to snag lessons from a genre that beats us out for public love. What can we learn from pop music? Here’s a start:

1. Pop Music Loves the Public.

In Poetry Land there’s a myth that art is tainted by popularity: the more eyes see it, the more corrupt it becomes. Said myth is outdated and nonsensical, but survives because it’s a nice stunt double for artistic integrity.
It’s also great for cognitive dissonance: if no one’s reading poetry, it helps to think we never wanted them to. AND it justifies our laziness in connecting with non-poets. Hooray!

But um… The myth is rank, you guys. It creates disdain for the public, shames us for our desires to communicate, and imprisons us in Insular Poetry Land.

So let’s lose that thing; it’s embarrassing.

Pop music has an audience in part because it wants one.
It appreciates, respects, and engages the public. We should, too.

Similarly…

2. No Pop Music Is an Island.

Like poets, musicians sometimes create their own magazines, networks, and events. But their goal is to reach beyond one another—out to a wider public.

Like poets, musicians love to play for each other. But they don’t play only for each other. If they did, they’d cry themselves to sleep at night, then go get a job at Staples.

The lesson here: don’t get so comfy with our private poetry-trading.

3. Pop Music Trusts Itself.

Thinking about audiences while writing could drive ANYONE to madness. But generally desiring that our work connect with people? That makes us better, and more human. Musicians trust this.

While in LA, I attended a conference panel featuring Ne-Yo and Stargate. They wrote the crazy-successful “Irreplaceable,” released in 2006 by Beyonce. There are formulas for successful pop songs, but “Irreplaceable” didn’t follow one. Because of this, it almost didn’t make it onto Beyonce’s album.

In other words, these guys made something true to their crafts—trusting that by doing so, they’d create a song that resonated. They were right; it became a number one single. “Make the music you love,” Mikkel Eriksen (Stargate) has said. “That’s when you’ll have success.”

We don’t have to choose between making great art and wanting people to see it. We’re not that irresponsible. Poets too can trust ourselves.

[I won't deny there are songwriters who follow formulas, copy successes, create for the lowest common denominator. But I might suggest that they too are doing what they love. They're not sighing, "If only I could write a vulnerable chorale—just once!"]

4. Pop Music Waits for No (Wo)Man.

This may be the most self-evident thing I’ve ever written in a blog, but: no one can love a song they don’t hear, or a poem they don’t read. You won’t YouTube “Thrift Shop” or “Do Not Go Gentle…” unless you already know they exist.

That’s why musicians put their work where we’ll find it without even looking: social media, bars, radio, stores, restaurants, TV, movies, commercials, video games, clubs, fundraisers, sporting events. It piggybacks on artists and activities we already love.
It has to do this, and it knows it.

By contrast, poets often expect the world to come looking for US. And when it doesn’t, we blame it on attention deficits, poor poetry educations, an increasingly “Idiocratic” culture. But we certainly won’t blame it on our failure to venture beyond our own front lawns.

[Note: There ARE poets who are venturing and connecting. Please share your links to them in the comments! But these are exceptions, and my point here is to question the conditioning that tells poets we don't want or need cultural connection.]

5. Pop Music Works Its Ass Off.

The most successful musicians spend as much time reaching out to listeners as they spend making music. Those who can’t take this—who prefer to focus strictly on their art—don’t find listeners. (There are exceptions, but they’re exceptions.) No one in music will deny the WORK that goes into getting an audience.

“But they have reason to do it!” you cry. “Music could actually make them a living someday, whereas writing poetry…”
But finding an audience isn’t strictly about finding a salary. It’s about connection, feedback, influence.

Also, in 2013, few musicians make enough to live on. Even “indie-rock royalty” Grizzly Bear can’t afford health insurance.

So, just like poets, most songwriters wear many hats. And still, the average (living-making) musician boasts a mid $30s salary, including all sources of revenue- like giving private lessons. (Be very jealous.)

So I’m calling your bluff. These days, the main differences between a poet and most indie musicians are the freedom to reach out, and a willingness to work at it.

6. Pop Music Assumes It Has Something to Offer.

Musicians are (in)famous for believing that if only people heard us, they’d LOVE us. This is often delusional, but it’s necessary for the work music requires.

Similarly, poets will only do the work of reaching non-poets if we believe we have something to “offer.” We should assume that when poetry goes where it can be found, it can have political, social, therapeutic impact. Because it can.

7. Pop Music Innovates. (Beyond Music.)

Like many poets, beginning songwriters can’t get on the cover of Rolling Stone, or appear on The Daily Show. But they don’t give up and play for one another (see #2)…

They play local venues, partner with local companies, create stories that make the local news. They work with nonprofits, participate in campaigns or fundraisers, tour town to town, make documentaries.

They want to be in conversation with the public. This requires exploration, innovation, and risk-taking, and they do it.

So How Might WE Innovate? (Beyond Language?)

First, we have to stop blaming our culture for failing to seek us out. It’s on us to find ways to be discovered and engaged. (This is good news!)

We also have to stop cowering before the silly myth that going public will destroy us. Reaching out is not artistic heresy. And there’s certainly no artistic virtue in keeping poetry academic, spineless, or relegated to a readership of one another while we climb ladders to tenure.

And finally, we have to ask—patiently—the questions we’ve long feared:

• How can my poetry get read? (Apart from journals only my peers see?)
• How might my poems be inserted into existing public conversations?
• Given the stories, messages, or truths my poetry communicates, where might it help, be relevant?
• With what artists, studies, organizations, ideas, thinktanks, publications could it partner? How?
• With what art forms?
• What poetry am I disdaining/avoiding, that might actually shed light on my craft’s potential role(s)?
  

Join the Conversation! 

How might you answer the above Q’s?
What other questions should we ask?

Post links to innovators—and to poetry + the public!

Comment/share below.

Philip K. Dick.
by Pete Welsch 
CC-BY-SA-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Television culture means that we often lack the depth to deal with ambiguity. The complexity of novels eludes our attention; we often prefer the truncated and clear narratives of sitcoms, where a plot line is fully resolved in forty-three minutes. The beauty of ambiguity, and of the blurred line between reality and divergent reality, is underrated.

Consider alternative mental states, including states of mental illness, which can often feel like occupying another universe. Functional people glide by on their electric Segways outside the space pod of your apartment. Meanwhile, you exist in another space: the world of couch and ennui, late-night TV, and mustering the courage to get out of bed. Your mind constructs this other space, which intersects with reality only at tangents. This construction mimics the world created in science fiction: an alternate universe only in your own mind.

Within one’s own mind—and within a character’s mind—only a psychologist or a reader (read: impartial third party) can determine where the boundary between reality and fiction “really lies”. But the true location of the boundary between mental illness and reality in science fiction is an unknown quantity, an ambiguity. What is real and what is, in fact, imagined?

For a character in science fiction, this ambiguity plays itself out in a lack of clarity as to whether what she experiences is an actual, external facet of reality or whether her experience is created or augmented within her own mind. Science fiction is distinctive in this regard, since occurrences which would be automatically considered hallucinations within literary fiction are well within the realm of plausibility.

Authorial Ambiguity

Most of the science fiction writer Philip K Dick’s novels, including well-known ones like Valis and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, have characters who are navigating, quite opaquely, the boundary between reality and self-induced mental states. Dick identifies as schizophrenic, and was diagnosed as a teenager with schizophrenia, but wrote his books without medication. Within his work he narrated episodes of what he termed “nervous breakdowns” that are, by some accounts, autobiographical.

Dick “saw his fiction writing as the creative attempt to describe what he discerned as the true reality” and often blurred the line between autobiography and constructed fiction. Regardless of how strictly autobiographical his narration was, he wrote his experiences into his work. In Valis, Horselover Fat, the protagonist, is an echo of the author, as is the character Phil.

And because of (not despite) his genre, his books are considered some of the pre-eminent novels of the 21st century. Regardless of where the boundary lay, it was Dick’s pushing at the boundary that gave him such richness and breadth. Ambiguity in his work was not only valuable, it was essential.

Character Ambiguity

Outside of the realm of science fiction, we know to question our experiences when they appear to diverge strongly with reality; we know that something is a hallucination when someone else cannot verify its presence.

Or do we? In some novels, not just science fiction ones, the boundary is blurry. For example, in J. Robert Lennon’s Familiar, the protagonist thinks she has slipped into a parallel world, one where almost everything about her life has changed. The ambiguity and psychological verve are what keep the novel taut, edgy—the protagonist becomes unsure of her own stability and whether her changed life is physical reality or the result of a breakdown.

Yet while Lennon’s characters mostly move in interior spaces (not fighting galactic wars), his novel shares many similarities with Dick’s: a deterioration of mental states, a suspicion within the mind of the protagonist that larger forces may be at play in his or her breakdown, a bleak hilarity.

Sometimes fiction considered ‘genre’ is put out into that ghetto because it’s too ‘out there’: too wonkish about the space wars, too specific in describing alien beings, and full of all the other tropes we associate with “formula.” But these novels, and many others that don’t so easily fall into categories, are also full of ambiguity—which is what makes them work so well.

From Ploughshares:

• Eric Weinstein plans out an “Exit Strategy” for an MFA looking towards imminent graduation.
• Looking back post-MFA, Ian Stansel gives advice on “How to Leave School (Without Leaving Your Writing Behind).”
• As an MFA, you’re most likely faced with the question, “Do I go into teaching?” Eric Weinstein evaluates the options in “Those Who Can, Teach.”

From Around the Web:

• Over at the Poetry Foundation, Jeremy Hoevenaar reflects on his MFA experience and what he discovered after he left.
• Jean Hartig describes the set-apartness of the MFA program, and the need for a writing community afterwards, in her article at Poets & Writers.
• Nicole Nelson at F Newsmagazine addresses the challenges faced by those graduating with arts degrees, specifically the MFA, in “Life After the MFA.”
• The Chronicle of Higher Education has some interesting (depressing?) stats on what writers are doing after they graduate in “What Becomes of an MFA.”

Image 1

If you’ve been following along with this series from the start, you might have noticed a bit of a theme emerging—each of the posts has, in its own way, encouraged us all to take some dedicated minutes away from the distractions of daily life. Focusing on a single task—hello, writing!—is a skill, and one that can be increasingly difficult to master in these heady, tech-y times when a million things seem to be vying for our attention at once.

But establishing new habits can be a slippery process; I know that when I inadvertently stray from a path paved with the best intentions, I can get easily frustrated (then grumpy, then dejected, then then then…), all the while convincing myself I’m not up for the challenge. So! That’s why we’re approaching all these gentle tasks in small doses and manageable chunks. And? No judgement here. If one doesn’t work out quite right, no matter—try the next. Or try something completely different. But keep trying.

Last session’s exercise is a good one to return to when the mental waters get murky; completely shutting out the hustle and bustle for a well-deserved respite. This week? Well, we’re taking the exact opposite approach. It’s time to welcome in a tidal rush of sensory overload.

#6: Stop, Look, and Listen

Even the most mundane, familiar locales can offer a wealth of inspiration—if you’re keeping keen eye out. The smallest detail—say, someone’s forgotten to-do list spotted on the sidewalk, or the strange gait of a three-legged dog—could form the basis for a new narrative, transposed to a completely different environment. All it takes is paying attention.

Supplies:

-one (1) small notebook

-one (1) writing tool of choice

Goal:

Every time you’re out and about or home and alone or anywhere and everywhere, and you have the urge to reach into your pocket and pull out your phone, STOP. Grab your notepad instead. Rather than staring down at a screen, LOOK around. Raise your peepers and observe what’s going on. Scribble about the greasy fingertips of the woman across from you on the bus, who’s messily feeding herself from a paper bag full of french fries that never seems to deplete. Jot about the color of the leaves on the tree—the one that incessantly scrapes along your bedroom window, when its windy and you’re trying to go back to sleep before your alarm goes off. LISTEN to the sound of your coworker, cracking his knuckles whenever your boss speaks from the head of the conference table. Use your senses, and document your weird, wonderful, and painfully banal findings.

An example: The other day I was riding the subway and a man got on pulling a black rollie suitcase; wearing an incredibly full, clearly very heavy backpack; carrying a worn, brown leather briefcase in one hand; and holding a tupperware of water with a goldfish swimming around inside in the other. It was one of the most delightfully bizarre things I’d seen in a while, and I immediately forgot about it until I saw the description on a scrap of paper in my bag. Sure, this may never make it into a story, but it’s on call if I need it.

Time commitment: 

Give this a try any time you’ve got a moment—especially if you find yourself instinctively thinking it’s time to check email for the hundredth time in the span of a minute or so.

Recommended Reading: 

If you’re just joining us here, now’s a good time to catch up on the previous posts in the series.

#5: Take a (Mindful) Break

#4: Go Big

#3: Letters

#2: Prompts

#1: Pencil on Paper

The World’s Strongest Librarian

Josh Hanagarne’s first book, The World’s Strongest Librarian, has so many different hooks it’s enough to make a publisher weep with joy. A 6’7”, weightlifting librarian? Sold. A librarian who suffers from Tourette’s? Sold. A part-Navajo, all-Mormon, Stephen-King-fanboy librarian, who lifts weights and suffers from Tourette’s? They might as well be printing money.

What’s nice about The World’s Strongest Librarian, though, is that it’s not all hook and no substance. If anything, it verges on too much substance, guiding us through just about everything that’s ever happened to Hanagarne: his childhood, his marriage, his Tourette’s, his faith, his job at the Salt Lake City Public Library, his weightlifting, and a few more odds and ends besides. There’s so much crammed in here that it makes the Dewey-inspired chapter headings seem very appropriate—because reading them sometimes feels like wandering, lost, through the stacks.

Like wandering through the stacks, though, you also occasionally happen on a real gem, and here those gems are mainly Hangarne’s assorted vignettes about growing up and living in the Mormon Church. Compared to the more visible, well-publicized representatives of his faith—Mitt Romney, say, or those chatty young fellows with the name badges—Hanagarne’s account, of both the church’s strictures and his own experience navigating them, is equal parts wry, tender, and illuminating. (It’s cheaper than Book of Mormon tickets, too.)

Hanagarne, for instance, went on his own mission, Tourette’s and all, which takes up a sizable chunk of the book’s first third. And while it’s interesting seeing how he balanced his religious duty with trying to control his tics, far more fascinating is simply the normal preparations he describes for going on a mission, in what amounts to a religious take on band camp. It’s reassuring—and somewhat humbling, in an odd way—to learn that those earnest, devout kids you meet on the subway are just as mixed up and confused as anyone else that age.

Then there’s Hanagarne’s later family life, which starts with a traditional Mormon marriage ceremony and quickly becomes a nightmare of failing to conceive a child. That takes up a sizable chunk of the book’s second third, but throughout it all Hanagarne hangs onto—at least in retrospect—a healthy critical distance and sense of humor, even as he and his wife struggle through the church’s bureaucracy. Typical of his take on things is when he attends the first of many classes required before you can even apply to be considered for a kid:

And so began our night of extreme tongue-biting. Our instructor spent the next ninety minutes talking about how grateful we should be that we were adopting. It’s not that I wasn’t grateful that we could adopt, but by the end I felt like anyone who wanted their own biological kid was a sucker. The others in the class, beaming faces every one, whooped and clapped and teared up here and there. Someone made a Family Circus reference and everyone in the room laughed. When someone makes a Family Circus reference and everyone in the room laughs, I’m in the wrong room.

Beyond the Mormonism sections, too, there are other, smaller gems, scattered throughout the book. Particularly charming is a man called Adam, a loopy combination of soldier, weight lifter, philosopher, and savant, who apparently divines the cause of Hanagarne’s debilitating tics (and the key to keeping them in check) after just one dinner together. The relationship the two men develop in the book’s final third defies summary, really, but it’s very satisfying to watch unfold.

In fact, if there are any sections that start to drag, here, it’s the ones where Hanagarne is actually at his job at the library—which become repetitive and sometimes, ironically, a little preachy. And in that sense, I suppose, the book is more hook than substance, because if you buy it looking for three hundred pages of a weightlifting librarian strutting around the stacks and histrionically tearing books in half with his bare hands, you aren’t going to find it. But if you want a candid, thoughtful examination of faith and knowledge—well: you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

(photo credit: steven miller)

The first poetry anthology I owned was How to Eat A Poem: A Smorgasbord of Tasty and Delicious Poems for Young Readers. The title still gives me the giggles, though my amusement is perhaps more nuanced—as a kid, I delighted in the simple silliness of the concept; now, the idea of “eating” a poem seems to me a potent subversion of the establishment, a reminder that the experience of reading poetry can be at once tangible and abstract, silly and serious, nourishing of both body and mind.

For a similarly potent, subversive, and delightful reminder of the inherent deliciousness of verse, look no further than Kate Lebo, a Seattle-based poet and proprietress (or rather, proPIEtress) of Pie School, which teaches pastry-phobics the art of the perfect pie. Other manifestations of her awesomeness include A Commonplace Book of Pie; a “semi-regular semi-secret social” called Pie Stand; an in-progress “lyric grocery” of Wikipedia erasures about fruit; and these kick-ass poems in AGNI, River and Sound Review, and Best New Poets.

After the break, Lebo and I talk pies, poems, poems about pies and much, much more.

[Ploughshares] So poems. So pies. For you as a maker, what do these two genres have in common?

[Kate Lebo] I know that baking and writing both start, for me, with raw material. That’s why I like fruit pie—the fruit, the colors, the textures, the seasonality, the deadlines of rot and fridge decay, their consumability. When I’m done I get to have more, and for me hunger has always been something I experience, as I’m eating, for the thing I’m going to eat next.

In poetry, I think of material as language, of course, but more specifically as the images and observations and quotes I collect every day and let sit in my notebook. I call that my compost heap, actually.

So then when it’s time to make something, whether that’s pie or poems, I have to decide what needs to be used now, what I’m hungry for, what will be juxtaposed in the most interesting way (peaches and raspberries, this image and that bit of rhetoric), what needs to get thrown out, all with an eye towards form.

[PS] You’re also writing a cookbook. What are the demands of that form?

[KL] I keep telling myself that by mid-August 2013 I’ll know how to write a nonfiction book, and that’s cool and all because it’s also terrifying, but so exciting, and thank god I’ve chosen a form that’s measured out in little chunks. Starting this week I’m writing five recipes a week. So that seems like an easy enough task—keep writing one a day and in ten weeks I’ll have a cookbook.

[PS] What does “writing a recipe” involve, exactly?

[KL] Recipes are their own genre that must be obeyed and messed with. I’m learning about this as I go, so here’s what I know: Write everything you remember down. Then make the pie and find out everything you’ve forgotten. Then write that stuff down. Then make sure the instructions are in clear English. Make sure all the ingredients listed are actually used in the recipe narrative. (Harder than it seems!)

And then there are headnotes. The genre of the headnote. I’m still wrapping my head around that one. They’re often autobiographical (“Aunt Ruby taught me this over blah blah blah, fact about rhubarb, source material for recipe, funny personal story”). But for that same reason they’re often superfluous.

This is the thing about food writing that excites me and drives me nuts: it’s super tied to the personal essay, which is great as long as you’re a fantastic writer or famous, so we care about whatever happened between you and your Aunt Ruby. If the writing isn’t great and you aren’t Anthony Bourdain or Alice B. Toklas, it’s hard to care. It’s filler. Any jerk can get a cookbook (including me), and headnotes are, to me, where that fact is most clear.

And so of course I want to write fantastic headnotes that illuminate the origins of the pie, make the reader laugh, get them comfortable with the recipe, and don’t waste time. That’s what a headnote is for! It’s the bit of small talk that invites the reader into the conversation of the recipe, makes them feel comfortable, catches them up on what’s been said before, and then allows them to participate. Just like a good hostess.

[PS] Aha! The usefulness of the seemingly-superfluous headnote is essentially social! Speaking of usefulness and accessibility: how do these issues pertain to poetry? To pie?

[KL] Maybe the best way to answer this is to talk about why pie has been important for my poetry, beyond being its subject matter. There are two things pie taught me about poetry:

1. When I make a cherry pie, I’m not mad that it didn’t turn out to be a blueberry pie. So why would I beat myself up for not writing poems just like Kay Ryan or Sylvia Plath (who loved to cook) or Laura Jensen? Pie gave me an invitation to be satisfied with what I made given the materials I had, and not internalize self-doubt. I eat self-doubt for dessert. Maybe that joke doesn’t make sense. But you get what I’m saying.
2. People know exactly how to respond to pie. I bring a pie, they freak out, we eat the pie, everyone’s happy. Even if I’m two hours late! Everyone forgives the pie-maker her tardiness. A lot of people do not know how to respond to poetry. They approach it with impatience, doubt, fear, annoyance, irony, dismissiveness, boredom. I need to make something that everyone knows how to receive, where the demands of the gift are clear. I need that badly so that I can continue to conquer self-doubt and write and publish and go go go.

[PS] Do you think it’s possible for people to receive poems as they receive pies?

[KL] I try to create poems that walk the line between approachability and mystery, so it’s not that I’m making poems that are totally unreadable to, say, my mother—and I make pies because they’re fun and good to eat, and not just about my poor delicate ego. But yeah, I think the two types of making are symbiotic. The secret mission of A Commonplace Book of Pie is to send a cookbook buyer home with a book of poems. A poetry booby trap! They buy it for the pies and end up with this strange document that delights and surprises, I hope. And makes poetry more palatable.

Also, yes, writing about pies makes them more complex. I’m completely unsatisfied by the clichés that go with pie, but also energized by them. Pie has such a rich web of symbolism around it, and I love invoking that indirectly by baking and directly by writing about it. The cookbook will have six essays that play around with those clichés.

[PS] What are some of those pie clichés?

[KL] American as. Easy as. Sweet as. Grandma’s apron strings. She’s my cherry pie. So patriotism, ease, an innocuous traditional domestic femininity (that I work within and against all the time), matrilineal knowledge, sex.

[PS] Woah. All that stuff is…difficult as pie.

[KL] Totally! But in the end we can just have dinner and enjoy making things and share them and everyone’s invited!

[PS] Last question: who taught you to bake pie?

[KL] So many women taught me how to make pie. But making pie is also related to playing the piano, and related to sewing, sculpting, papercrafts, fimo clay, hemp, crystal beads, all the weird crafty crap I bought at Michael’s during my 90′s youth.

My mother taught me pie as a form—I don’t make her pie crust anymore. In fact, she makes mine! My grandmother can’t bake at all but she’s great at sprinkling sugar on the dough right before the pie goes in the oven. I had a pie mentor for awhile and I did a pie residency at the American Gothic House. The way I make pie is an amalgamation of countless tips and lessons and observations and things I learned by doing.

The most important advice I ever got was from my pie mentor, who said to think of pie as a practice—not like soccer practice or religious practice, but like yoga or piano or kindness. Which is to say making pie can be a lot like learning how to sit down at your kitchen table every day and write poems. If you want it to be. Which I do.

Courtesy of Cowboypoetry.com

“Isn’t that an oxymoron?”

I’ve heard this phrase uttered by a number of people—students, coworkers, friends, academics, random drunk party guests—anytime I mention one of the following: wearing comfortable stilettos, being a vegan Texan, or enjoying cowboy poetry. The juxtaposition of those pairings proves too much for people to process, but cowboy poetry is especially baffling.

Perhaps it is because they see each individual element of the phrase “cowboy poetry” in its most clichéd light: the tortured poet, rumple-haired and sad-eyed, like some disheveled Precious Moments figure; and the Stetson-topped cowboy, squinting in the sun, bow-legged and oblivious to the rules of grammar and hygiene. In comparison, comfy heels and rejecting meat in the land of steak seem downright logical.

Maybe the inability to take cowboy poetry seriously stems from the belief that cowboys are too masculine or “real” to indulge in something as abstract as poetry. The student naysayers I’ve encountered instantly smirk at the idea, suggesting things like Howdy Haiku and Six-Shooter Sonnets. One did a pretty slick impression of John Wayne reciting “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”: “Well do I eat a peach, Pilgrim?”.

Academics likewise have trouble contextualizing it. Writer Dana Gioia has argued that cowboy poetry is a blip in the “New Bohemian” movement of the past few decades, part of the rejection of the stuffy poetry tradition in the transition from print to digital, where slams and rap have mainstreamed. While this is a reasonable interpretation, it marginalizes cowboy poetry and the cowboy as artist. As with most poetry, it’s highly subjective. Thus I present a Quick and Dirty guide to its unique voice.

It’s Been Around

For Waddie Mitchell, one of the great living cowboy poets, the genre “was always there.” Cowboys may have called it other things, like storytelling or songs, but the intention existed long before it was named. Granted, in the grand scheme of literary history, cowboy poetry is relatively young, at a little over a hundred years old. Following the Civil War, real cowboys on the trail mixed traditional ballads (see below) with war songs to create their own storytelling style as they passed lonely hours. One of my favorite cowboy poems is “The Walking Man” by Henry Herbert Knibbs, written in 1914 (roughly two years after The Virginian).

So while the cowboy flourished in fiction, dime novels, magazines, radio, television, and film, he was as prevalent in poetry. And if that poetry was perhaps less mainstream, several cowboy poets have nonetheless attracted media attention. Mitchell, for example, appeared several times on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

Of course, it might be that Carson’s interest was merely of the oddity variety—what kind of oxymoron is cowboy poetry—but Mitchell was able to perform poetry on a late night talk show. How many poets can list that on their resume? How many writers for that matter? Meanwhile, Wallace McRae, another cowboy poet, was awarded the National Heritage Award in 1990 from the National Endowment for the Arts. Even in this literary form, the cowboy is still part of the cultural conversation.

It’s Friendly with Traditional Poetic Forms

Courtesy of Cowboypoetry.com

Much of cowboy poetry uses the traditional English Ballad closed form with ballad stanzas (quatrains) and rhyme schemes (some use couplets; others may use ABAB or a similar variation). Several include iambic pentameter or other forms of meter, such as tetrameter. For example, the opening stanza of Knibbs’ “Make Me No Grave” uses iambic pentameter with the ABAB scheme.

Make me no grave within that quiet place
Where friends shall sadly view the grassy mound,
Politely solemn for a little space,
As though the spirit slept beneath the ground.

Note also the use of nature imagery. In many ways, cowboy poetry seems to be the descendant of Romanticism, with its focus on the natural world and the common man. The connection is not that farfetched if we remember Romanticism was a reaction to political and economic turmoil, much like the creation of the cowboy character. Also like the Romantics? Closed form is only a jumping off place. Only the imagination sets limits.

But, It Isn’t Just The Same Old Thing

Perhaps more than literature or film, cowboy poetry is more realistic in its presentation of the West. Rather than deifying or deconstructing, it more often seeks to capture the real working West instead of the cliché. Frequently absent is the romanticized image of the cowboy as the knight of the West, or the soul-seeking gunslinger at the end of an era.

Instead, the poems often tackle elements of the practical working life of the cowboy, focusing on the loss of a horse or the comradery of the cattle drive. Though sometimes employing humor, they avoid tired jokes or obvious, Hollywood views. Cowboy poetry is perhaps the most truthful literary home of the cowboy because it is made for a community rather than the masses.

Robert Fletcher’s “The Belled Coyote,” for example, plays with dialect as a form of word manipulation while discussing the annoyance of coyotes.

Aint no one loves a coyote
That I ever heard about.
He aint nuthin’ but a pestilence
Requirin’ stampin’ out.
A sneakin’, thievin’ rustler,—
A gray, ga’nt vagabone
Whose locoed vocal tendencies
Are lackin’ depth and tone.

I particularly love his construction of the word “vagabone” for its playfulness and auditory resonance, and the inclusion of the Spanglish “locoed.” To me it’s witty without being smug, rural without being hokey. Perhaps I’m biased because I too find coyote howling irritating. When people talk about them singing, I assume they are from out of state. Wolves may howl or bay or some other mournful, poetic word; coyotes yip, shriek, and generally cause a ruckus.

Gatherings are a Big Deal

It has been suggested that cowboy poetry is an oral tradition; however, most of the early cowboy poets, such as Knibbs and Badger Clark, were published. The return to the oral tradition took seed with the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering held in Elko, Nevada (generally known as Elko), first held in 1985. Many writers, like those dissenters I often encounter, are perplexed by the event, questioning the purpose, the appeal, and the authenticity. Whereas poetry readings are more often than not small affairs, gatherings are annual events that bring in thousands of fans and performers. Gatherings are participatory, involving everyone from seasoned performers like Baxter Black and Tom Russell to novice poets braving the microphone for the first time.

Over the years Elko has grown and, by some accounts, mainstreamed, although the impact of the increased profile has mixed reviews. Some say it has become too based in entertainment and marketing—and these critiques make it sound, to me at least, like it has replaced the Wild West Shows of the past, where a lifestyle is manifested into an experience for sale and consumption in the form of memorabilia.

But others hold it as the standard for gatherings, the place to experience the vast variety cowboy poetry has to offer. Beyond Elko, annual gatherings include National Cowboy Poetry Rodeo, Monterey Cowboy Poetry and Music Festival, Heber Valley Cowboy Poetry, and the Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering.

A Little Guitar Never Hurts (But It’s Not Country Music)

Poetry often treads the line between song and literature; cowboy poetry is no different. At gatherings, many cowboy poets perform with guitar in hand, singing or speak-singing their words. Yet unlike popular songwriters who are classified as poets (Bob Dylan comes to mind), these cowboy poets are not lumped into the mainstream world of country music. One of things that fascinates me is that our culture embraces a spectrum of folk and country style music, such as the Blues, Bluegrass, Nashville and Texas country (which are different, ya’ll), yet the cowboy poet disconnects from cowboy songwriters in popular discourse.

Anyone Can Play

At gatherings, the persona aspect of the performers is akin to the country music performers of the past—to be a cowboy poet, one should dress the part. That being said, a poet need not be a cowboy to write cowboy poetry, particularly since performance is only a small part of the community. The poet can adopt the cowboy persona or elect a third-person approach, as long as the topic is in some way related to the cowboy or his way of lifestyle. While it seems logical that cowboy poets would be working cowboys, the ranks of cowboy poets are a numbered with a range of writers. There are also female cowboy poets, such as Susan Parker, Sharon Carpenter, and Barney Nelson (a former professor of mine). Cowboy poetry is democratic as long as you’ve got a story to tell.

Next time we’ll ride into the sunset with my cowboy story, discussing space cowboys and other modern interpretations. Until then, enjoy Waddie Mitchell reciting Henry Herbert Knibbs’ “The Walking Man.”

There’s a difference, I tell my students, between thoughtfully omitting “place” for the sake of the story line and simply ignoring it. Do you know how many television shows are filmed without any kind of setting? Zero. Yes, literature is a separate medium from television. No, we can’t include everything that a television set designer might. But we also can’t deny the power an evocative setting possesses to swiftly transport a reader into an imagined or remembered world.

So where do we start? Character templates are common, but how about one for setting? With the help of NBC’s “Parks and Recreation” and its expertly crafted small town of Pawnee, Indiana, I’ve compiled five “pillars” of place that can help transform a competent novel or memoir into an unforgettable one.

1.      Position

First, and most simply—where is your setting? Is it remote, urban, mainstream, rural? What roads (or waterways) lead into and out of town? What about landscape and landmarks?  How has it shifted over time, or how is it shifting?

“Position” also encompasses social hierarchies. What is your town known for by outsiders, and what is it loved and loathed for by insiders? For example, in the “Time Capsule” episode from Season 3 of “Parks and Recreation,” Deputy Director Leslie Knope recounts a list of about a dozen town slogans that have been used since Pawnee’s inception. It begins with “Pawnee: The Paris of America” and ends with “Pawnee: First in friendship, fourth in obesity.” Not only do we get Pawnee’s lively backstory in list form, we also see the ways in which the townsfolk hope to be perceived by the rest of the world and future generations, which circles back to the episode’s main plot point.

2.      Economy

Often a town’s birth, life, and potential death rely on how the residents are able to sustain a living. Is yours a “company” town, a rural stretch of farmland, or a transient hub of local shops? What connection lies between the economy of your setting and its position? Who, or what, is in charge?

As the founder of Pawnee’s “Sweetums” candy factory, the dynastic Newport family isn’t just responsible for supplying local jobs. It’s also responsible for the exponential rise in diabetes. See the connection here between Pillars 1 and 2? Often, “economy” determines “position” or vice versa, and in Pawnee’s case, that dynamic provides continual episodic plot lines as well.

This kind of creative commitment makes a parody authentic, but it also extends that authenticity to other genres, too. Consider Justin St. Germain’s memoir, Son of a Gun, which will be out from Random House in August. Much of the narrative is set in Tombstone, Arizona—a place that would have been a ghost town were it not for the legendary gunfight at the O.K. Corral and the resulting boom in tourism. St. Germain doesn’t just describe the town so familiar to him; he employs it as a narrative tool to both complicate and illuminate the story behind his mother’s fatal shooting, which occurs in a nearby town without any beloved (however violent) folklore to resuscitate it: 

Nobody famous had ever lived or died or killed anyone in Gleeson, so when the mines shut down it became what Tombstone would have if it weren’t for the Wyatt Earp legend: a real ghost town, one of hundreds rotting in the rural West…

St. Germain’s vivid sense of place recasts what was once an evening news headline into a resonant personal narrative that also problematizes ghost town inertia and the lure of American myth. That’s the power of setting.

3.      Young vs. Old

What’s the newest thing in town, and what’s the oldest thing in town? What gaps exist between generations, and what’s the root cause? In Pawnee’s City Hall, the blatantly racist murals depicting the sad history of the local Wamapoke tribe are routinely vandalized by Pawnee youth, as is the statue of Mayor Percy every year on Halloween. The infinitely malleable friction between change and stasis is often deeply connected to our sense of home—the ways it changes and remains the same, and more pointedly, the ways we do.

What do the young (and old) do for fun, and do the young skip town when they come of age? Justin St. Germain captures the inner conflict of his generation when he decides to leave the town that raised him:

I knew this place, loved it, and wasn’t sure I wanted to leave, but knew I had to. Everybody in town had been telling me that my whole life…

What I find so beautifully haunting about this line is that the people of Tombstone have hope for their children but resignation toward themselves (as if the town itself has bound them), a shared sentiment which also leads us to Pillar #4.

4.      Greek Chorus

Yes, towns and cities have narrative arcs, and they have collective psyches, too. What, as a group, do your characters remember, and what do they choose to forget? What town lore exists, and who are the hometown heroes, like Pawnee’s favorite mini-horse Li’l Sebastian? What are the “town” documents, i.e. newspapers, television shows, etc.? Where and when do people gather?

“Parks and Recreation” puts a comic spin on the traditional function of the Greek chorus every time the city hosts a town hall meeting. The townspeople always attend in droves, lobbying for the Twilight series to be included in the time capsule, demanding the annulment of a same-sex-penguin-marriage, and proving how much they love the town in which they live, even if it is—or perhaps because it is—the home of the world-famous Julia Roberts lawsuit.

5.      Lexicon

Words are tools, so let’s put them to work. In The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides never needs to explain that this Michigan town is buckling beneath the weight of a cracking automobile industry. Instead, the “felt presence” of decay presides over the entire novel, appearing like a specter in the scum that chokes the lake, in the gangrene that seems to cover a laminated picture of the Virgin Mary, and in the sickly elm tree in the Lisbon girls’ front yard.

I said earlier that writers can’t include every detail that a set designer might. This restriction requires us to choose, to let go of the “good” for the sake of the “best.” How diluted Eugenides’ imagined world would be if “gangrene” were replaced with “dirt,” and how loveably quirky Pawnee becomes when we see a town full of people so devoted to the vocabulary of their own infrastructure: budget-cut-battle-royales, task force exploratory subcommittees, and environmental impact studies galore.  The language itself is a byproduct of the earnest, waffling bureaucracy that runs the town. The words we choose will always point to preoccupation, and preoccupation will always point to the ways our characters interact with the world around them.

Remember this: People both reflect and defy the places they are from. It’s our job as writers to make place matter. What will you do with yours?

Blu was born on July 3, 2006, and he is a good boy.

It just so happens that my birthday is also July 3^rd, but we are bonded over much more than that. Blu is a Yorkshire Terrier and he is my first dog. Before he came into my life I was a confirmed cat person but all that changed.

I had never wanted a dog, and I didn’t want this one. When he arrived at our house, Blu was no bigger than a guinea pig and I wondered how he would ever be able to go up and down the stairs. The first walk we took him on, he couldn’t make it up onto the curb by himself.

The rule was that I was not responsible for this puppy. The other rules were: No sweaters. No toys. Well, just a couple toys. But no sweaters!

My step-daughter Sage had wanted the puppy. She had recently come to live with us at age 15 and was heading into a difficult time in her life. We thought the puppy would help ease the transition. Soon, that difficult time sent her away from us again.

I remember the moment when my husband and I, swimming in sadness and confusion, looked down and there was this tiny, tiny dog standing on its little legs in the middle of our kitchen floor, looking at us looking at him. I remember saying, “Oh right. We have a dog.”

Soon, I was throwing tiny twigs to the tiny guy, teaching him to fetch as he hopped like a bunny maneuvering the grass in our yard. Soon, he saw my lap as home. Soon I bought him sweaters. Of course I did. And treats.

Now he is a whopping 9 pounds, and we are co-dependent Cancerians, spending our days together writing and chewing on bones. When I say sit, he sits. When I say no, he sometimes listens. When I say, give me a kiss. He does. Every time. Without hesitation. When I say Bubby, he looks at me with all the hope in the world and then he barks his head off.

Sherrie Flick is the author of the flash fiction chapbook I Call This Flirting (Flume) and the novel Reconsidering Happiness (Bison Books). Her flash fiction appears in many anthologies including Norton’s Flash Fiction Forward and New Sudden Fiction. Her stories have appeared in journals such as North American Review, Ploughshares, Quarterly West, Northwest Review, Prairie Schooner, Puerto del Sol, and Booth. She has received grants and fellowships from Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Ucross Foundation, 

One nugget of interest entering this penultimate round is that Emily Dickinson, the winner of Powell’s Poetry Madness bracket, which wrapped up last month, has already been selected! Manager Benjamin Samuel may have made a prescient pick by adding the poet to his roster as a wildcard Events Coverage blogger. He has, in effect, stolen top talent from this round. Let’s see if that affected any of the bloggers.

Editor: Robert Silvers
Fiction Writer: Donald Barthelme
Philosopher: Iris Murdoch
Nonfiction Writer: Marguerite Young

With the twenty-fifth pick in the Ploughshares Leave it to Cheever selects Paul Carroll:

Justin Alvarez on his team’s selection:

Not all “players” bask in the spotlight; some shine in the background, a supporting castmember—great in his or her own right—that cheers from the bench. (Because what is a star without its champions?) Paul Carroll may be best remembered for the writers he championed—Burroughs, Kerouac, Ginsberg—but his passion for poetry was fervent, not only in founding the Poetry Center of Chicago, and his teaching, but also in his own work. Whether his poetry was published or not, according to Carroll’s wife, “he kept on writing, rocking and rolling with the words”—he wrote poetry every day until his death in 1996. Carroll is not only someone you can trust, but someone that will always have your back.

Leave it to Cheever continues its selection of strong players with extreme commitment to their genres. Carroll is a great addition to this team: nothing could keep him from putting out poetry that needed to be published, first in the Chicago Review and then in Big Table when administrators balked at the content of the Winter 1959 issue.

Editor: Toni Morrison
Fiction Writer: Ben Lerner
Gossip Columnist: Jeffrey Eugenides
Nonfiction Writer: William Gass

With the twenty-sixth pick, Buckle Your Corn Belts select Rita Dove:

Managers Joumanata Khatib and Marty Kezon explain their draft rationale:

For our Poet Pick, we have decided to choose Rita Dove. We admire how effortlessly Dove can hit home—and not simply because (as a native of Akron, OH) she truly could not get much closer to our own home. Her work has consistently showcased a commitment to finding the individual in the face of history, and we believe this powerful and sensitive attention will help us find voices dealing with what it means to be a person in history right now. As Poet Laureate, she worked to expand public interest in literature—and she was one of the first Laureates to see this as her main function. Still deeply involved and invested in the ever-changing literary world three decades after her first book of poems and two decades after her laureateship, Dove has declared her lasting presence. She knows what she is doing, and we are excited for the experience and ambition that she has to offer.

Strong pick here. Dove took down James Tate, Tony Hoagland, and Li-Young Lee before being bested by Mary Oliver in the Poetry Madness bracket. She should have no problem helping Toni Morrison balance the boys on this team. It doesn’t hurt that she was also the youngest poet ever to be chosen Poet Laureate. She also appears to be making some poetry covertly on Twitter:

The door to the taxicab waits. This suitcase, the saddest object in the world. #growingupishard #exit

— Rita Dove(@dovelyrita) November 23, 2012

Editor: Dave Eggers
Fiction Writer: William Faulkner
Cultural Critic: Roxane Gay
Nonfiction Writer: Michel Montaigne

With the twenty-seventh pick, The Holden Caulbabies select Elizabeth Bishop:

Manager Michael Nye on his pick:

Looking over the literary canon, there comes a point, usually around the war (I say this and I always mean World War II, which is what other people seem to mean; when will this stop?), when there is less certainty about what is “good” and what should be read. When it comes to poetry, The Holden Caulbabies want profound over prolific, and in conversations about contemporary poetry, I’m not sure any American poet is better. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the national Book Award, Bishop is a private, vulnerable, sensitive person, which provides wonderful balance for our team. Her poetry is majestic and enthralling, the details perfect, the rhythm and diction precise.

Bishop was another strong performer in Poetry Madness, upsetting Wallace Stevens and taking down Adrienne Rich before being defeated by Yeats. And the addition here to the Caulbabies feels like an excellent move since Bishop’s language and metaphors can become “frighteningly clear,” a nice contrast with the Faulkner pick.

Editor: George Plimpton
Fiction Writer: Kurt Vonnegut
Events Coverage: Emily Dickinson
Nonfiction Writer: Werner Herzog

With the twenty-eighth pick, The Mighty Duck Palahniuks select Melissa Broder:

Benjamin Samuel on his team’s selection:

Writers need better marketing. For instance, we’ve mostly dispelled the perception of fiction writers being cast in tweed, only to now view them as figures forged in MFA programs. Poets and playwrights suffer from stereotypes of their own—angst bound in dark clothing and confusing sentence structures. But Melissa Broder is a different kind of writer. She’s a poet and a publicist. A soldier and a general. I doubt you’d find her at a poetry slam, but you’d be fortunate to find her on your side in a street fight. Melissa shatters that old paradigm of the reclusive, delicate, and misunderstood poet, but classy enough to make Bukowski feel ashamed of himself. She is grit and truth. She is savage and insightful. She is my poetry draft pick.

Another bold pick for the Ducks, this time a savage, insightful, and prolific Tweeter of striking images and concepts, and a well published poet to boot. Broder is the most internet savvy poet picked thus far and the first for this team as well, which should pay off in the competition.

Editor: Max Perkins
Fiction Writer: Virginia Woolf
Advice Columnist: Cheryl Strayed
Nonfiction Writer: Roberto Bolano

With the twenty-night pick, Vonnegut to the Chopper! selects Langston Hughes:

Manager Brenna Dixon on her selection:

Langston Hughes, a leader of the Harlem Renaissance, championed jazz poetry—the kind of rhythmic, improv poetry that lived on in the Beat poets and exists today in hip-hop and slam poetry. With the creation of jazz poetry, Langston Hughes changed poetry and music and performance art forever. He removed poetry from the confines of structure and allowed it fluidity. In other words, let’s just go ahead and thank Mr. Hughes for inspiring the “founding fathers” of rap music. Without Langston Hughes there’d be no Ginsberg, no Kerouac, no Biggie Smalls. We’d be living in a world that never knew Tupac. Think about it: No Langston Hughes. No Tupac. Or who knows. Maybe he would’ve gotten famous rapping in villanelles.

Although Hughes was not the first “social poet,” he definitely recognized the ability of art and “adventure” to create change in the world: “…when poems stop talking about the moon and begin to mention poverty, trade unions, color lines, and colonies, somebody tells the police.”

Editor: John Martin
Fiction Writer: Boris Vian
Social Media Director: Dorothy Parker
Nonfiction Writer: Geoff Manaugh

With the thirtieth pick, What the Chuckin’ Buk?! selects Kahlil Gibran:

In a strange way, the Internet is an ideal spot for poetry consumption. It’s a place where perfectly composed snippets and memorably phrased knowledge nuggets can be seen and shared in an instant; oftentimes, a well-timed, well-put verse can provide a much-needed “aha!” or “ahhh” moment amongst all the rest of the online noise. Lebanese philosopher, artist, and writer Kahlil Gibran’s thoughtful insights and deep meditations on the mysteries of life and love gave his work a spiritual twist that has resonated with readers for almost a century, and modern souls searching for a hint of insight or fulfillment would no doubt appreciate the man’s deft way with words, while parsing the complexities of our strange, shared existence.

This is a savvy pick. Adding the third best-selling poet of all time (behind Shakespeare and Lao-tzu) nicely diversifies this team and gives them a personality that would be able to draw in the masses: Gibran’s death in 1931 was a worldwide event, memorialized in Boston, New York, and his home country of Lebanon. Manager Jordan Kushins is right when she notes his insight—take his thoughts on love, for example: “When love beckons to you follow him, / Though his ways are hard and steep.”

The commissioner does not feel quite at home in this genre as he did in others, but he’s done his damnedest to pick out some of the poets who didn’t make the teams. Here are five who were left behind:

5. Dr. Seuss – The commissioner warned you that he was out of his league with this genre! But if Seuss’s wordplay came packaged with his cartooning, then this could have been a strong pick—all blogs benefit from images to break up the text, and Seuss could make some great ones.

4. Li Bai – Along with Du Fu, Li Bai is considered one of the all time great Chinese poets and was a member of the group of super-poets and booze-buddies, the “Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup.”

3. T.S. Eliot – “Old Possum” himself, a poet who was at home with cats or more Modernist stylings. This is how the blog ends, with a comments section so we may Disqus.

2. Dante – The geographer of the underworld. If only he could get royalties every time someone referred to a certain “circle of Hell” being reserved for X or Y. He would be one rich poet.

1. Mary Ruefle – I had to go contemporary and flexible here, and Ruefle’s lovely verse and striking lyric essays would fit perfectly on a blog format. Take, for example, some of the erasure books on her website. They are striking.

Do you agree with the commissioner and the team managers here? Which poets would you have chosen? Feel free to lash us with your poetic rage in the comments below. And check back in next week for the final round of picks, another wildcard round.