“Homo Erectus Recalls the Better Days of Man” is a good example of a poem that makes its bones on the strength of its last line. I’m obsessed with last lines lately.

Paul Graham, one of the most consistent essayists working today, explains the popularity of the list post, and follows with a cogent explanation of why the typical college essay isn’t an essay at all. Very few lit types of my acquaintance read Graham. This should be corrected. Immediately.

A new blog for your feed reader: Brian Turner, the poet-soldier who authored Here, Bullet, is traveling the world for one year as the 2010 Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholar. (via TR Hummer’s Facebook)

If I were a more poised person, perhaps I would have decided long ago which were my vetted, “safe” answers for interviews, and which were answers to steer from. But instead I tend to answer things on a gut-level. Which makes for quick turnaround. And answers that will possibly haunt me in my old age. Some things I learned from my own Q&A:

-The second section of my book has discernible anger. I’m secretly proud of this, actually. There should be more anger in poems. This also elicited the quotation (on the topic of heightened rhetoric) “I’ve never actually asked anyone to make the bitch of me in a relationship…”

-If you use someone’s proper name in a poem, readers notice.

-Clarity is a good thing. No need to apologize for it. It doesn’t mean your poem is a simpler poem, or a less-beautiful poem.

-My favorites from the book are other people’s favorites.

-If you like my book too much, i.e. multiple re-readings, the cover may split away from the interior pages. Ack. 

-In every audience, there is that one person who really, truly, wants to talk about sonnets and sestinas.

-If they ask if you want a chair, don’t bother. If you start out on your feet, you’ll stay on your feet.

The questions were great, though–quirky, engaged, genuine. When everyone has read a common text you can make very detailed references. To ensure everyone had read the text (no offense, but we’re talking undergrads, just getting back into a school year), the professor had actually given a quiz on my book the week before. A quiz! I suppose the key would be asking for analysis of the objective factual/mythological elements (Orpheus, those barrel-bound folks going over Niagara Falls), versus asking “So, do you think the speaker actually cheated on her boyfriend?”

When the conversation veered toward the dividing lines between private and public narrative, I told the students that any contemporary, American first-book poet who doesn’t admit to the litmus test of “Will this book make my mother cry?” is lying. I also said I hate prompts, rebel against prompts, think that prompts render the poem not-entirely-mine, and therefore useless to me, nine times out of ten. Prompts are the lifeblood of the undergrad workshop. Filter. Must. Learn. To. Filter.   

My payment for the visit was a bottle of water. It is a glamorous life I lead. I came home to see my book reviewed in the latest copy of Allergic Living. That’s right: I’m next to What Else to Eat: The Dairy-, Egg-, and Nut-Free Food Allergy Cookbook. They photoshopped my cover art onto a generic “book” template for the illustration, which means it looks like Theories of Falling came out in hardback. Not that I am complaining. There are thousands of copies of this magazines out there, on the waiting-room table of your local doctors’ offices. Who knows? I could become a Christmas gift.

After touching down to pick up mail from home, it was off an evening titled “Rise Up and Hear: Honoring Abraham Lincoln’s Legacy.” Cosponsored by the NEA and the Poetry Foundation; hosted at the Department of the Interior. Featuring readings by Dana Gioia, Robert Pinsky, Kevin Young, and (this is where it gets surreal) Joan Allen and Sam Waterston. Poems Lincoln either loved–or inspired–by Vachel Lindsay, Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, and so on. 

Free wine. Sculpted, dramatic auditorium. Classy reading. But I have to say, which gave me more buck for my day in terms of poetry? Those 35 students in an Indian-Summer-hot classroom. Bottle of water in hand.

This place has only been open a month, and it has that incredible young-business-owner vibe. Everything is sleek and polished, cool but mellow. They steep everything on the spot, by hand. No blenders, no high-fructose syrups. They fold shapes into the cappuccino foam. They are proud that each of their three international coffees came from a particular farmer in a particular field. They don’t mind that I’m sitting here for hours, writing away, nursing a pot to tea refilled four times over. “That will be three-hundred-and-twenty-one pennies,” the guy said, ringing up my order. And when I bashfully admitted that the poster on the community bulletin board was advertising…me (I haven’t gotten over the gee-whiz of that), he asked for my take on James Dickey and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

I should probably be in on the MARTA train right now, making my way downtown to the High Museum or Art, or the Aquarium. In the theoretical, these two-day trips for readings are a chance to play tourist; I’ve got no one’s whims to cater to but my own. But instead I find myself wanting to find a local coffee or teashop, hole up, and use the time for writing. Maybe this is how one really gets to know a city, one indie business at a time. Absorbing the accent, the style of dress, the little differences in how someone says “thank you” or “excuse me.” The legendary friendliness of Atlantans is no fiction. On the train from the airport, a woman spotted my suitcase and asked if I needed the phone numbers for local taxis. Twice I’ve waited in a line only to have the person in front of me spontaneously say “you go ahead.”

I won’t lie to you. I feel lucky today. I’m in a pretty southern city, getting paid to read poems tonight, sleeping in a hotel on someone else’s dime. I visited an undergrad workshop yesterday and spoke with some degree of (pseudo)authority about how a first book of poetry can make its way into the world. My editor just wrote to say that Allergic Living (that’s right, as seen on your doctor’s waiting room table) has a little review in their new issue, and a university has just written to ask if I will come visit this winter.

But good lord, the juggling. A childhood friend wrote to ask about having dinner, and I looked at my calendar only to realize that I’m totally tied up for the next month. Fourteen days of travel, three classroom visits, three readings. Like every other poet I am eyeing fall contest deadlines–the thing about the second book is, it is even harder to publish than the first–and I need to write two more pages of material to meet the page minimum for a September 30 deadline. I’m overdue on assigning book reviews at my day job as a magazine editor. I’m overdue on sending a column in to the Washington Post. I’m overdue on being a civil, sane human being to the people I love. So I feel lucky but also, overwhelmed. 

Everyone needs a method to their madness. The guys at this shop take a simple, sloshy source of caffeine–something people burn, gulp, take for granted–and make it an art. So I am following their lead. Instead of hitting the “must-sees” of this city I am stopping to unfold my filter, heat my water to just the right temperature, and steep in the quiet of uninterrupted worktime. Wish me luck.