Poetry world reels at loss of poet and editor Jon Tribble

“Team Jallison” — the late Jon Tribble and his wife, Allison Joseph

When we’re baby poets, undergrads and just beyond, we often find ourselves looking for mentors or exemplars — writers of stature we can emulate to help us reach our writing goals.

When I was just getting started, I would drive anywhere to see an important poet read, and I stood in countless lines just to exchange a few words and get a scrawled signature in a skinny book. I wouldn’t trade any part of that experience, because it really was a master class in poetry, albeit in bits and spurts.

These exchanges weren’t always the dream experience I’d hoped them to be. Once, in Missoula, Montana, I’d finagled an invitation to an afterparty to meet one of the most anthologized and lionized writers of our time. I happened to come across him alone there, in a dining room where a table had a huge spread of food. I tentatively approached, so glad to have a chance to tell him what his work meant to me — and it did. I had several of his poems memorized, and his words often leapt to mind to define the pinnacle (or nadir) moments of my life.

So I spilled my rambling, nervous sentence to the great man, and his response was a deep “harumph” before he turned his back on me and walked away.

Our heroes aren’t always the people we would hope they would be.

Another time, a little later in my life, I had the good fortune to host a favorite poet for a reading. Her work was astonishing in its depth, its truth and its heart. While it was often arch or damning, there was a great love underpinning it, and I couldn’t wait to spend some time with her.

This poet was a nightmare guest. She refused to carry out some of her commitments as a contracted visiting writer, and in the small city where I lived at the time, no available restaurant was suitable for her palate. My staff and I worked hard to get her the meal she wanted at 10 p.m. on a weeknight (she hadn’t wanted anything at 6 p.m., when food was actually available), and after lots of effort, she didn’t touch the Midwestern miracle we had managed to pull together for her. If you have ever lived in a small town in the heartland, you understand the challenge.

Both of these writers have names you would know, if you follow poetry at all. But yesterday, the poetry world lost a beloved figure whose work you may not have had a chance to hear of.

Jon Tribble was a prominent editor, both of the literary journal Crab Orchard Review and its corresponding Crab Orchard Series in Poetry, which operates through the Southern Illinois University Press.

Upon learning on social media of his death, dozens upon dozens of poets responded with expressions of shock and sorrow. It was astonishing to see how many people Jon had touched within the poetry world — people he encouraged at key times, people he mentored, people whose work he edited and made stronger in the process.

One person, my friend Michael Meyerhofer, posted about an instance where he told Jon about difficulty he was having with a manuscript, and Jon volunteered to look at the loose poems and see what he could do. What he did, it turned out, was to organize the poems “into a proper manuscript,” as Michael told it — “The ordering he came up with was fantastic and ended up being my fourth book.” It was a lot of work, but, Michael writes, “He did all this with humor and nonchalance, like he was just holding the door open for me.” It’s a gesture poets saw again and again from this good man.

As an editor and publisher, Jon Tribble spent many years focusing on the work of others, while his own astonishing poems languished on the back burner. In recent years, I believe at the urging of his brilliant wife, the poet Allison Joseph, Jon sought publishers for his poetry, and the result was three deliciously strong books in three years: Natural State (Glass Lyre, 2016), And There Is Many a Good Thing (Salmon Poetry, 2017), and God of the Kitchen (Glass Lyre, 2018). If you didn’t get a chance to experience the keen sensibility of this rare talent during his lifetime, you still can. Though Jon has left us, his poetry lives on forever.

There are a lot of curmudgeons and brats and lechers and opportunists in poetry, and sometimes you drive miles just to have them scribble on your page. But there aren’t a lot like Jon Tribble, who is remembered today as a generous soul, a talented poet and a kind, kind man. I hope you will give his work a try.

http://ghosttownlitmag.com/jon-tribble

https://themuseumofamericana.net/issues/current-issue-6/poetry/four-poems-by-jon-tribble/

https://www.connotationpress.com/hoppenthaler-s-congeries/2014-07-31-16-08-50/june-2013/1904-jon-tribble-poetry

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=37469

When publishers close: Some ideas for protecting writers' rights

It seems to be happening more and more: A literary press opens, puts out a few good books, gets some buzz, grows … and then one day, with no warning, it disappears.

Recently, several small presses have dissolved. I had close connections to a couple of them. I was on the staff of one, ELJ Publications, and left a few months before it was shuttered. Another press, Hermeneutic Chaos, published my chapbook—a beautiful thing, lovingly designed—but then it seemingly closed down shop without a word.

Several other small presses have also closed recently—some so recently that the word is not yet out. What happens next is a typical set of scenarios, and a sad one.

Writer A is in production, and every day is spent waiting and watching for a box of hot-off-the-press copies that are never going to show.

Writer B’s book just came out—hooray! But when B tries to order a bunch for an upcoming reading, it’s no longer available, and in fact all of the press’s titles have disappeared.

Writer C has been reading and touring for a year now, and sales are brisk. Suddenly, though, the book is out of print—vaporized in its prime, as if it had never happened at all.

I used to think presses and journals closed because dilettante publishers misunderstood the scope of their job—maybe they didn’t know how hard running a press would be, or how much it would cost. I guess if I’m being honest, I still think that’s the chief reason publishing operations fold, but the publishers I know who went through a closure invested a lot of themselves into the often-thankless work of publishing, and closing down their operations broke their hearts.

The market is not easy for small-press publishers. It seems like every year there are more and more publishing houses releasing more and more titles. (It’s hard to tell exactly how many, since the count is pretty wiggly—they don’t all have Library of Congress numbers, they’re not all paper, and some of what they publish are quasi-books, chapbooks/small books, or hybridized publications.) That’s a lot of competition at every level—for quality manuscripts, for publicity/reviews, for readers and market share, for funding. 

It’s a field, too, where unanticipated costs can mount. Producing a physical copy of a book should include a line editor, a copyeditor, a designer, a proofreader, a publicist, and a distributor, if the job is to be done right—and most of these professionals will also be needed for electronic publication to be handled properly. Every step in the process costs money, and small presses very seldom recoup all of their costs through sales.

It has become clear to me that if a writer agrees to sign on with a small press publisher, it is urgently important to have a contract that anticipates possible closure. This is a good idea with any publisher, but it’s vital in an environment where new publishing houses pop up and disappear with such alarming frequency.

I’m no lawyer. My experience working with writers who have orphaned manuscripts has suggested a few necessary considerations, though, and I’d like to enumerate those here. These are some things to think about before your press closes—and let’s hope it never does:

• Who has rights to the manuscript? A contract should specify in writing that rights to the work return to the author upon closure of a press. Rights typically do revert to the author in this sort of instance, but contract language can guarantee this, while also indicating when the rights revert back to the author.
• Who owns the cover? The design of the book is the value added to the manuscript by a publisher—but when a publisher goes out of business, a book may be prominent enough that it is recognizable by its cover. It would be a wise move for a writer to negotiate a way to acquire the rights for the design, including the cover, in the contract.
• May the writer retain copies of the digital files? I would suggest negotiating for a copy of the digital files of the cover and the interior. It would be a shame for a writer to maintain rights to the design without being able to replicate it.
• What happens with the list? If a small press closes, everything it ever published is effectively dead, unless the publisher has established a plan for its titles. When a publisher I was involved with closed, several good literary citizen-presses stepped up to offer to carry the list and handle fulfillment of orders from it. The original publisher declined this offer, effectively orphaning all of the titles. Writers worked hard to find presses that would handle reprints, and many were successful. For others, their book is just a memory now.
• What happens when a publisher goes AWOL? I think it is a very good idea for a writer to put into writing an opt-out trigger. If the publisher declines to reply to a prearranged form of correspondence—say, a registered letter or a set number of e-mails to an agreed-upon address—all rights could revert to the writer. Often, these publishers feel shame when they close their doors, and as a result, they simply disappear, never to be heard from again. It’s very hard to place a manuscript with a new publisher if it’s unclear that rights have reverted back.

It’s hard to fathom when the offer of publication is extended, but there may be a day when everything falls apart. It happened to me, and I’ve seen it happen to many writers I admire. It looks to me as though a few items added to a contract, and a few questions about plans to go into effect upon dissolution, can prevent a lot of heartache for writer and publisher alike.

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Publishing books is a long-term commitment

After years of serving as editor-in-chief of a major literary journal, and quite successfully, I had an idea: Why not start a press?

Everything was in place to make the idea work. I had a partner who was motivated and smart; we had a capable staff; we had contacts; we had the necessary skills and technology and know-how in all areas of production.

While I could stand in the middle of the magazine office and look around and see everything needed to make a book, what I couldn’t envision clearly enough was an effective way to get books into the hands of readers. This gave me pause—and considerations like these are the reason I never went into book publishing.

Committing to publish books is so very different from committing to publish a magazine. My first-ever publication was with a now-defunct journal called Farmers Market. I loved that magazine, and I treasure my copy of it. Recently I talked with an old friend of mine, and she said that this journal printed her first poem, too. This is a friend I really resonate with, and our Farmers Market connection felt pretty profound.

When a terrific little journal goes away, people like my friend and I can look back on it with fondness. We remember that magazine, and the good work inside, and the care they took with our work, and we feel nothing but warmth. The world was a nicer place with this journal in it.

But when a press goes away, things are much trickier. Journals are supposed to be temporary—the word comes from the Latin diurnus, meaning “of the day” (think “diurnal”) via the French adjective journal, “daily” (as in the soup “du jour”). It’s OK if something so temporary goes out of regular production and out of print. 

When a press goes under, its books can disappear, too. Books, though, are meant to be permanent. When we love a writer, we want to read everything that writer has ever produced, and it’s very frustrating when we can’t get our hands or our eyes on any single part of that collection. A book is an enduring record of a period in a literary artist’s creative life.

Mind you, there is never any reason in an age of digital publishing and print on demand for a book to become unavailable. A responsible publisher takes care to ensure that a press’s catalog goes on after the press or anyone on its staff is gone. One lovely option happens when another press takes over the catalog of one that is going out of business. Since a defunct press has no potential for profit, there are many examples of presses taking over a publisher’s list at no cost. Small press publishers tend to be in their field for love of literature, and making sure the books endure are the foremost concern of the average publisher who is discontinuing that holy work.

I ultimately chose not to become a publisher, but not because I didn’t believe I had it in me to promote new books, distribute them broadly, and fulfill orders efficiently. My sticking point was that after a thorough gut-check, I couldn’t honestly say that I was interested in entering into publishing for the long haul. And one must.

The fact is that it’s somewhat easier to publish a magazine than it is to publish books. To do it justice, every book contract includes a tacit (or possibly an overt) expectation that press releases will go out and media interviews will be sought; advance review copies will go to the major reviewers and to select minor reviewers with plenty of lead time; the release day will include a social media splash. An excellent distributor will be brought in to get books in stores; in addition, local bookstores will be contacted and readings or release parties will be set up. 

Magazines are released to subscribers and via distribution to bookstores. Often there is a system in place to get into local bookstores by consignment or to notify media via press releases of each new issue. My magazine always found most of its readers at the annual AWP Conference, where it was eagerly snatched up—and bullishly offered to those who tried to pass it by. But that’s it. That’s a journal’s commitment to its authors. An issue’s release should include a pause for celebration—unlike a book’s release, which is a huge occasion.

Because I wasn’t willing to devote my life to a press, I didn’t. And this was the right decision. Sure, there are ways that a responsible publisher can allow for a smooth transition if things happen to fall apart. But without that drive to promote and sustain each book, I had no business entering the field. And that’s why I’ve never regretted my decision to stick to magazines.

Do you review?

What if you threw a party and no one came?

Or what if you published a book and no one read it?

Some of us try for years before finding a publisher for our book, and when we finally succeed, we may think the hard work is over. But the truth is that if we publish with a small or university press, a whole lot of work is just beginning, as we try to make the larger world notice a book’s existence.

Some presses do a better job with promotion than others do. There was a time I contemplated starting a press myself, but I made a decision: Unless I could guarantee strong distribution and promotion, I had no business taking on the sacred trust of publishing a writer’s work.

Truth is, anyone can print up a book. It’s publishing that’s the real trick—a word that means “making public.” The most beautifully produced book is of little worth if it fails to end up in the hands of readers, and every ethical publisher must understand that a book isn’t published until the public knows about it.

One way we try to find readers is to have a book reviewed. Better publishers send out ARCs, advance review copies, either in print or electronically, to people who might be willing to weigh in on a new collection. It’s hard to get the attention of reviewers, and there are a lot of ways to try. 

Here are some ways publishers attempt to get attention for their writers:

• Craft a news release and media packet to send to electronic and print media outlets associated with the writer’s hometown, current city, alma mater, etc.
• Send copies to people who are known to review books regularly.
• Send copies to litmags that review books.
• Contact national media outlets that feature writers and writing.
• Send copies with suggested pages marked to places that feature daily poems—e.g., The Writer’s Almanac, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, etc.

But then again, publishers may choose not to do any of these things—and then writers are left to their own devices to drum up interest.

I recently had a discussion with some writer friends about how to get reviews for books. A suggestion that came up—and it is one I hear rather commonly—was to exchange reviews in a you-do-me-I’ll-do-you kind of way. 

As a former journalist, with a degree in the subject, I just can’t sign off on this plan, which sounds perfectly practical and solves a problem, because from a journalistic perspective, it is inherently flawed.

Reviewers don’t answer to the people they’re reviewing. Instead, as journalists of sorts, they are fully responsive to their readers. The expectation in doing a review is that the reviewer is unbiased and truthful—and a tit-for-tat interview is simply not trustworthy.

The poetry world is different than, say, the restaurant world. When a reviewer enters the hot new bistro to write an assessment of it, that reviewer is almost never a restaurateur, and the readers of the reviewer’s outlet likewise don’t own restaurants. The reviewer is supposed to have some expertise or understanding in the field, from restaurants to movies to books, being reviewed. But impartiality is presumed, in any field that is subject to review besides small-press literature.

When we read the “Tables for Two” feature in The New Yorker, we trust that the person who finds the ceviche to be zingy isn’t besties with the chef, or that the person who loves the latest Star Wars incarnation isn’t Felicity Jones’ dad.

When we read a review of a poetry collection, we understand that about half the time, the reviewer is pals with the author and is awaiting a review in return.

I’m not sure what the key is to finding audiences for new literary titles. What I do know is that one has to either work hard or be incredibly lucky. It’s not even enough to be talented. Excellent books are ignored all the time. We’re ignoring countless excellent books right this minute.

A lot of creative work vies constantly for our attention. If we love the arts, maybe the kindest thing we can do is share what we love. With literary arts, it may be as simple as a Goodreads review, a social media recommendation, or, the kindest gesture of all, prolonged attention—positive or otherwise—in a careful, detailed review.

Getting with the times: On not republishing old work

My perm, 1985

Writers at all levels often ask the same question about their older publications. Why can’t they publish the work again?

It’s a reasonable question, and it’s doubtful that the larger literary world would ever know if work a writer published in a tiny campus publication or on a now-defunct small web journal is republished in another venue—almost certainly a small venue itself.

But published work is published work—and I think it’s much healthier to move on than to try to wrong a second life out of a piece of writing. I’ll explain this momentarily.

It’s the rare journal that publishes reprints, although I’m sure a lot of magazines unwittingly do so when writers take a may-as-well attitude about the matter. It can be extremely difficult to take an honest route toward second publication—unless that is via a method everyone approves of, which is through the publication of a writer’s collected works.

If that hypothetical campus publication I mentioned had a print run of fifty copies, of which thirty were picked up for free from a table in the English Department and twenty are slated to sit on a shelf for a dozen years and then be recycled by an unsentimental assistant professor on a cleaning tear, then surely no harm can be done by sending them to a print journal, right? After all, the typical print journal has a press run of a few hundred, selections of which may be featured on a seldom-visited website. Overlapping audiences could not be less likely.

There is a very common way that published work disappears, too, and becomes, for all effects, unpublished. Sometimes on social media, I see writers complaining that the online journal that accepted their work just disappeared one day. Maybe the editors were dilettantes who only had a year or two of effort and commitment to offer. Maybe someone forgot to pay for web hosting. The writers probably presumed that their work would always be there, and in their disappointment with finding the work has disappeared, their thoughts turn to finding a new home for it.

I understand the disappointment when a good poem, story, or essay doesn’t get maximum reach. Disappearing web publications feel especially sad, since there remains no artifact that the work was ever published at all.

I do hate it when writers lament publishing in small venues, like a local zine or a printed campus litmag. After all, publishing in a venue like that is a nod toward community—a way to participate and bond with other writers who share a ZIP code or an alma mater. I have participated in a lot of local ventures like this, always with my best available work, and I have never regretted “wasting” good work on a  small audience. Instead, I’ve been proud of each publication, and each trip to a mic at a release party. Publishing a poem is nice. Publishing a poem and getting some free cheese and cocktail sausages in the company of like-minded people? That’s even better.

There is nothing inherently wrong with trying to get a larger audience for a piece of writing, provided a submitter is honest. A cover letter can just admit that the work was in a local zine with a print run of twenty. The average editor won’t bat an eye at considering the work—but as an editor myself, I have to admit: I would.

The joy of publishing writers’ work is in the unveiling of it. As an editor, I have always loved the pure glee of introducing new writers to the world, or of pulling back the curtain on bold new work that no one has ever seen before. This is the big payoff—the reward of being involved in publishing.

I’ll admit up front that I’ve made practically no money in my life from editing literary journals. Oh, occasionally I was able to take home the cheese and sausage from a public event if I perfectly timed the pulling of plasticware from my tote bag in the moments after the crowd left and before the catering staff came to clear the platters. And I love cheese. But as payment goes, that’s not really sufficient for the effort.

What is sufficient is the feeling I get from helping to propel the ship of American letters. And republishing some old poem, essay, or story? Well, that’s a poor propeller—and choosing to reprint work from among a submission pool of hundreds upon hundreds of unpublished pieces is an activity that holds little appeal to me. The unveiling is the thing. The re-unveiling? That’s kind of meh.

I repeat myself a lot in this blog I think, but that’s because I repeat myself frequently in my thinking about what it means to be a writer and publisher. And I know I’ve mentioned this before, and recently—but writers should focus on writing. If I won’t print your essay from when you were a junior in college (and I won’t), I hope that compels you to write something brand new.

An acquaintance of mine is always trotting out the same essay. She is a wonderful writer, and she has sent this short-form essay to dozens of outlets. No one has snatched it up, and so she keeps revising it, and keeps asking people like me to read the latest version and weigh in.

I’m tired of that essay. My friend is too talented to stop at just one, and I feel a little vexed to see it again and again. What’s more, it’s probably over-revised—I believe it’s possible to polish the spark away. I’m hardly the first to note that there is an energy to rawness—like in the beginning of “Comfortably Numb” by Pink Floyd, when it’s possible to hear David Gilmour’s finger rub across the string to produce an involuntary enharmonic tone, and to hear another person, I’m not sure who, cough once in the background. I know it’s possible to attain a cleaner version, but I listen for the rub and the cough. They’re my favorite parts.

Work a piece too hard and we lose the edge. I believe this. But I also believe that if we work a piece too hard and too long, we’re ignoring all of the work that waits to be written. And that’s the real tragedy of doting on our past publications.

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Simultaneous submissions: A horserace

It’s time someone attempted to explain the ethical horserace of simultaneous submitting.

I am a big believer in simultaneous submitting—that is, submitting the same work to multiple outlets at the same time. It’s the only reasonable way for a writer to operate in today’s publishing environment. Thirty years ago, a few dozen journals considered postal submissions from a much smaller pool of writers, but today, new journals are created all the time, and all typically receive thousands or even thousands of submissions per year.

It’s hard to swim to the top of a submission pile when dealing with those numbers. Response times are frequently slow, if responses are offered at all—more and more journals seem to be adopting the “no news is bad news” model of submission responses—and serial, rather than simultaneous, submissions could mean a lot of wait time.

But there are right ways and wrong ways to simultaneously submit, and there is a cardinal rule that ethical writers must follow: The first journal to accept a piece wins.

To a savvy submitter, this cardinal rule should suggest a few practices for sending out work. 

* First and foremost, aim high. The only practical place to start with a submission is the top. I guess the top varies from writer to writer, but when I invoke the term, I mean to reach up, over our own head. I’ve been in Poetry, which is an excellent journal and a publication I’m very proud of, so for me the top is higher than that—maybe The New Yorker, if the top is determined by the number of readers.

* Also, aim equally. It would be the height of folly to submit simultaneously to The New Yorker and a brand-new, unknown journal. Submitting should be a patient practice, governed by the idea that we’re trying to get each piece into the best possible journal, and for my money, that means the journal with the biggest readership. With all else being equal, I want my poems, stories, and essays to be widely read.

* Aim reasonably. When I was first starting to submit, it made sense to send the same work to, say, eight different journals. I made progress quickly; at first there were more rejections than acceptances, but then my success turned—with a few good credits in my bio, probably, but also with more experience and growth as a writer and submitter. I gradually lowered my simultaneous submission rates to six or four or three journals, and I must confess that these days, I’m pretty lucky with poetry submissions, and I no simultaneously submit in this genre. (Fiction, my weakest genre, is a different story—I still simultaneously submit those few stories I send out because these aren’t as readily accepted by journals.)

* Remember, it’s a horserace. If we submit to multiple journals, and we were careful to aim high and to target journals of similar prominence, we should be prepared to allow the first journal to accept our work to print it. This is one of the main reasons we submit to similarly tiered journals; in the example above, if The Podunk Journal accepts our work on Monday morning and Poetry accepts it on Monday night, we’re honor-bound to go with Podunk. That’s the journal that won the race. Acknowledgement of any acceptance should be immediate, and so should withdrawal from other journals. We must drop everything to take care of this crucial piece of business, mainly so that editors won’t waste time on unavailable work.

* Know the journals you submit to. It’s best to obtain or view a full issue, but most journals have sample contents online. A lot of precious time can be wasted by writers who send poems to fiction journals or traditional work to experimental journals. Investigating the market helps writers to submit respectfully.

* Thank an editor. Respect should be the name of the game when submitting. Editing a journal is hard work, and most of the time editors are either uncompensated or poorly paid. I definitely think the respect should go both ways, and I have a dim view of disrespectful correspondence from editors. But both parties have to make an effort to achieve a positive atmosphere in publishing. No one wants an antagonistic relationship among people who operate within our field.

* Follow journal guidelines to a T. A journal announces its rules and intentions, and writers should abide by them or avoid them. There are enough journals that we don’t have to submit to journals whose policies we dislike. This is especially true for simultaneous submissions. Some old-guard journals don’t allow simulsubs, and that’s their prerogative, to an extent. (They don’t actually have a right to tell writers what to do with their work, but it’s the principle of the thing. There’s no reason to send to a journal with policies we don’t like.)

Beyond all of these rules and best practices, the most important part of submitting is the writing part. One reason I gave up simultaneous submissions for poetry is that it prompted me to finish and refine more work and to keep my creativity going.

Submitting should be a deliberate and thoughtful process, but it’s not a writer’s main job. When publishing is our primary focus, our writing suffers, and we become something other than an artist.

Writers write. And then, in their non-writing time, they work to find an audience—the largest and best one they can.

Will write for "likes" and shares

Publishing in a journal is a pleasure. Publishing a book is a dream. But publishing should not be the primary goal of the creative writer.

This statement may sound strange coming from someone who regularly maintains that writing isn’t finished until it finds an audience. But I can’t help but feel that we rush to find our audience prematurely sometimes—and that readers would benefit more from our sustained thought and our deliberative revision more than our speed of production.

Like most writers, I can pound out something pretty respectable right now. It’s no great accomplishment to write a nice little poem. As a former journalist, one of my chief skills in life is writing four to six competent inches that will inform or entertain an audience. I worked in a daily newspaper so small that on a few occasions I had twenty stories in an issue, some bylined and some not, all written from 7 to 10:30 a.m. I wrote; I found an audience. It was all in a day’s work.

But a newspaper is a product (albeit a disappearing one), and its value is in having lots of reliable information. Go to a whole day’s worth of county commissioner’s meetings on Tuesday, a school board meeting at night, and it’s not too hard to fill a front page with a simple record of what happened.

Likewise, a little poem can faithfully record some small thing—the news of the poem being that my son’s hand looks and moves like a starfish, or that I saw the reflection of my eyelashes in my coffee and thought I saw a spider. I can write about these moments, and indeed I have written about both. If I stop at these simple observations, a memorable poem might result.

A small poem that makes meaning of simplicity is a pleasure to read, and nearly all of my favorite poems begin in this way; a lyrical poem often has some moment of observation as its jumping-off point. The poems that feel the most meaningful to me move past observation to arrive at a deeper understanding, though. In Mary Oliver’s “White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field,” that snowy owl is “beautiful, and accurate,” 

striking the snow and whatever was there

with a force that left the imprint

of the tips of its wings—five feet apart—

and the grabbing thrust of its feet,

and the indentation of what had been running

through the white valleys of the snow—

It’s a thing that happened, and she recorded it faithfully. Had the poem stopped right there, I would have felt rewarded by the reading. But Oliver goes much further, into the metaphysical—“the river / that is nothing but light.” She writes,

maybe death isn’t darkness, after all,

but so much light wrapping itself around us —

as soft as feathers —

that we are instantly weary of looking, and looking,

and shut our eyes, not without amazement,

and let ourselves be carried [….]

It’s such a beautiful experience when art feels familiar, when it seems like it’s giving language to our own half-realized thoughts. This poem by Oliver expresses my spiritual viewpoint perfectly. This is my conception of life and death, and of what we become when we’re through with our bodies. I would not have had such an astonishing sense of connection had Oliver not engaged in deep reflection. I don’t know where this poem came from or how it evolved, but doesn’t it feel like the result of deep reflection in the moment of composition, on top of what feels like Oliver’s quiet, introspective spirit? 

A very small poem I admire a lot is William Stafford’s “The Little Girl by the Fence at School.” In only seven lines, Stafford offers a reflection on the nature of death. In this poem, the grass has one idea about forever and the sky has another:

THE LITTLE GIRL BY THE FENCE AT SCHOOL

Grass that was moving found all shades of brown,

moved them along, flowed autumn away

galloping southward where summer had gone.

And that was the morning someone’s heart stopped

and all became still. A girl said, “Forever?”

And the grass. “Yes. Forever.” While the sky —

The sky — the sky — the sky.

In so many ways, this small poem speaks for itself. The grass says “forever,” but the sky (the sky, the sky, the sky …) is an authority on forever, and it is noncommittal on the subject. While the poem takes up very little space on the page, it doesn’t have the feel of something that was dashed off. I just retyped the poem in less than a minute of time—so why does it feel like it took a very long time for Stafford to make it? But it does.

As I see it, there are two factors that point us toward the kind of writing that stays at the surface—that doesn’t reflect contemplation, that avoids deeper waters. One factor is a capitalistic system that forces artists to work for this week’s pay, rather than giving them space and time to create something lasting, or even eternal.

The other factor, possibly influenced by the first, is our rush to publish. The beautiful thing about publishing is finding an audience and completing the circuit from the deep understanding that happens in our notebook to the communication of that insight to others.

But we also rush for other reasons—to show our worthiness for employment, to fill a tenure file, to amass social media “likes” or shares, or to gain a higher stature as an artist.

I do it, too—I have no good reason to rush into publication except to share work and establish a little bit of a community within the relative isolation of my days—so I’m really preaching to myself here. I’d like to go deeper—maybe produce less, and maybe even end up with poems that are less pithy and that require more from a publisher. I think I’ll appreciate the results, even if I miss the instant satisfaction of the share.