Looking for some opportunities to attend to the turns in your poetry?  If so..

On March 23, I’ll lead a workshop focusing on the dialectical argument structure at the Tenth Annual Columbus State Writers Conference in Columbus, OH.

On March 24, I’ll discuss the turn and then lead an extended workshop on submitted poems at the Rhino Poetry Forum Workshop in Evanston, IL.

Over at Iambic Admonit, there is a terrific interview with poet Ned Balbo.  Among the smart, insightful comments Balbo makes, he includes this generous appraisal of Structure & Surprise:

“This might be the time to mention the critical anthology Structure & Surprise: Engaging Poetic Turns, edited by Michael Theune, which examines poetic structure through turns of thought or unfolding ideas rather than through rhythm or meter. Particularly incisive are essays by D. A. Powell (‘The Elegy’s Structures’) and Jerry Harp (‘The Mid-Course Turn’). It’s a great place to start moving beyond the tired ‘meter vs. free verse’ controversies.”

This is incredibly kind, and, if I may, perceptive.  One of the aims of Structure & Surprise is to emphasize a way of talking about what poems are and do that cuts across poetic types and aesthetics.  In “Notes on the New Formalism” (reprinted in Can Poetry Matter? (1992)), Dana Gioia observes,

“I suspect that ten years from now the real debate among poets and concerned critics will not be about poetic form in the narrow technical sense of metrical versus nonmetrical verse.  That is already a tired argument, and only the uninformed or biased can fail to recognize that genuine poetry can be created in both modes.  How obvious it should be that no technique precludes poetic achievement, just as none automatically assures it (though admittedly some techniques may be more difficult to use at certain moments in history).  Soon, I believe, the central debate will focus on form in the wider, more elusive sense of poetic structure.  How does a poet best shape words, images, and ideas into meaning?  How much compression is needed to transform versified lines–be they metrical or free–into genuine poetry?  The important arguments will not be about technique in isolation but about the fundamental aesthetic assumptions of writing and judging poetry.”

Structure & Surprise tries to move this debate–or, perhaps, ongoing discussion–along. Thanks to Ned Balbo for sensing / seeing this connection.  Check out one of Mr. Balbo’s own excellent poems (a sonnet, so expect turns!) here.

J. Allyn Rosser reads and appreciates Denise Duhamel’s poem “Old Love Poems” over at the Best American Poetry blog.  Rosser especially admires how the poem’s “veerings” seem “at first digressive, but Duhamel always finds, and finely renders, their harmony,” and she makes note of “two moves” in the poem that she “could not have predicted.”  It’s a terrific poem, and a fine reading of it, one that focuses on the poem’s thrilling turns.  Check out the poem and commentary here.

A nice write-up of the Voltage Poetry site, which features poems with great turns in it–along with discussion of those turns–can be found here.

Dear Volta,

In the past few years,

you’ve become a huge

part of my life.  I think about you

almost constantly these days,

and that absolutely terrifies me.  For a

while after we met, I thought

you were trying to avoid me.  I felt

like I was constantly searching

for you and had no idea

where to even begin.

Then I started to learn your ways,

and we grew close.

Maybe a little too close.

You started to show up

everywhere, even when I wasn’t

looking for you.  Now it seems like

I can’t get away from you

anymore, and I think I really just

need some space.

It’s not that you’re not great,

I just don’t think I can

keep playing your games.

I feel like you’re just

spinning me in circles and

I’m not sure what you

want me to think.  You invite

your friends over unannounced

when I think it’s just going

to be the two of us settling in

for a cozy night by the fire.  You’ve just

become too unpredictable –

I never know what

you’re going to look like

the next time I see you,

and sometimes you just don’t

make any sense at all.

I’m trying my best to understand

you, but it’s like you just

keep sending me in different directions,

and I can’t take it anymore.

The thing is,

despite all that,

I still need.

I want you.

As much as I complain,

I still look for you constantly –

every time I open a book or go on

a computer, you’re there,

as patient with me as ever.

And when I don’t see you,

everything just seems so

predictable and boring.  Every time

I think I just need to get away

from you for a while,

you show me

a brand new way of looking at things

and I remember why

you fascinate me.

You’ve always been there

when I needed you, and you

constantly give me

new things to look forward to.

Finding you

changed the way I see the world,

and I can’t imagine my life

without you anymore.

And, if I’m being honest,

I can’t get enough of your but.

Don’t ever change.

Love, Emily

–by Emily Susina

*

Emily Susina is a senior at Illinois Wesleyan University, majoring in English (with a concentration in writing) and Greek and Roman Studies.  She serves an assistant with Voltage Poetry, the online anthology of poems with great turns, and discussion of those poems, co-edited by Kim Addonizio and me.  Clearly, the work is getting to her…!

Poet-critic Celia Lisset Alvarez has some very kind words to say about Structure & Surprise over at her blog, “Writing with Celia.”   Among other things, Ms. Alvarez refers to the fact that Structure & Surprise was left off of the Poets & Writers ”Best Books for Writers” list as a “glaring omission,” calling it a “dark horse favorite,” and stating that “[f]ull of examples, this book is not only a great read for the poet who is struggling to find ways to guide a poem to the final draft successfully, but also would make a great textbook….any advanced class that is studying poetry, whether creatively or critically, would find this book eye-opening.”

Phew…  What can I say?  Music to my ears.

Especially as this comes from a poet who knows how to engage a turn–just check out Ms. Alvarez’s poem “What It Takes to Be Lois Lane.”

Here is a terrific (and frightening) new elegy inspired by the discussion of the elegy in Structure & Surprise.

Thanks to D. A. Powell for such a fine essay on the elegy; to Patrick Phillips for such a lovely, haunting poem (here is a cool version of it); to Kim Addonizio for her support of the turn (at the retreat, and elsewhere, including teaming up with me to co-edit Voltage Poetry); and, last but not least, to Claudia Mills for her own new, strong poem.

–by Aaron Crippen

*

Aaron Crippen is a poet and educator.  He is the translator of Nameless Flowers: Selected Poems of Gu Cheng (George Braziller, 2005), a project for which he received an NEA Literature Fellowship, and for which he received a PEN Texas Literary Award for Poetry.  His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Verse and the Beloit Poetry Journal.

For more on emblem poems, click here.

It’s been my great pleasure over the past few years to be associated with Spoon River Poetry Review–as a reader, and now as the review editor.  Spoon River for a long time has been a strong journal, but under the leadership of Kirstin Zona it’s becoming something really special, featuring some truly amazing poems–check out Arielle Greenberg Bywater’s “The Wicker Man,” or Austin Smith’s “Aerial Photograph, Glasser Farm, 1972″–by amazing poets–among the recents: Josh Corey and Linda Gregerson–and some great thinking about contemporary poetry and poetics: each issue, Spoon River features an extended review-essay that tackles an issue in contemporary poetry and considers three to five books of poems in light of that issue–reviewer/essayists include the likes of Andrew Osborn and Joyelle McSweeney.  You can read excerpts of these review-essays here.

I also contributed a review-essay a few issues back.  ”Raising the Net” is a review-essay that uses Christina Pugh’s ideas about “sonnet thought” to consider the fate of the turn in some contemporary books of sonnets, including The Reality Street Book of Sonnets (a glorious mixed bag), Iteration Nets (in terms of turns: there are none), Nick Demske (interesting, if problematic), andSeverance Songs (pretty great).

I state in “Raising the Net” that “I revise Robert Frost’s idea that writing free verse is like ‘playing tennis with the net down.’  Writing formal sonnets, it turns out, is not too difficult; it’s the writing of sonnets without great turns that’s akin to a netless game.  In contrast, crafting sonnets with an eye toward their turns as well as a critical approach that can account for them not only raises the net but also raises the bar on what we expect from sonnets.”

The above is just a teaser to get you to read the whole introduction, which can be found here.  And this, of course, is a teaser to get you to explore and enjoy the recently-launched Spoon River Poetry Review website, itself an enticement to get you to subscribe to the journal.  And you should: it’s fantastic.

Voltage Poetry…is…alive!!  And you should check it out.  If you like the Structure & Surprise blog, you’re going to love Voltage Poetry.

As noted on Voltage Poetry’s “About” page, in “Lyricism of the Swerve,” Hank Lazer asks, “Is there a describable lyricism of swerving?  For those poems for which the swerve, the turn, the sudden change in direction are integral, can we begin to articulate a precise appreciation?”  Voltage Poetry strives to undertake this important articulation and appreciation.

Co-edited by Kim Addonizio and yours truly, Voltage Poetry is an online anthology that collects essays written by some today’s most exciting poets and critics about poems with great turns them.  Right now, the site features six essays by such luminaries as Kim, Glenis Redmond, Michelle Boisseau, Christina Pugh, Charles Harper Webb, and Annie Finch on some amazing poems by Jean Valentine, Jackie Earley, Mark Jarman, Michael Ryan, Thomas Lux, and Claude McKay.  And each week approximately three new essays will be posted.  As we currently have over 80 contributors, the site’s conversation about the turn will continue to evolve at least for the next six months or so.  However, submissions also are accepted (interested? click here for information)–so the conversation may continue.  In the months to come, I look forward to further reflecting on the turn here at the Structure & Surprise blog by examining ideas and questions raised in and by the essays on Voltage Poetry.  I hope others also may be inspired by Voltage Poetry and begin to think and write more about the poetic turn.

Voltage Poetry has been a collaborative effort from the start.  It has been a deep pleasure to get to work with the site’s contributors–a group of truly amazing poets and critics.  Additionally, many poets whose poems are featured on the site offered gracious assistance when it came to attaining permission to reprint their poems.  And numerous permissions and publishing professionals have been generous and supportive of this project.

It’s been a treat working on this project with Kim–whose energy is unflagging and whose insights and ideas always are revelatory.  Voltage Poetry has benefited greatly from the work–the organization, attentiveness, and care–of our editorial assistant, Amy Fairgrieve, who has done the bulk of the work (from permissions to proofreading) to make the ideas of a poet and a professor take shape and be realized.  Others have assisted, as well.  Student assistants Emily Susina, Al Maiocco, and Erica Kucharski have helped with proofreading.  Consultants Rick Lindquist and Karen Schmidt have helped with technology and copyright issues, respectively.  And Christopher Bray’s photographs have helped to make the site visually striking.  My heartfelt thanks to all involved with this project…

Including you!  Thank you for reading–explore, and enjoy!