Trethewey and Linked Poems

I just read Natasha Trethewey's Native Guard and it was remarkable. I'd read poems from the collection before, but this was my first time reading it straight through, which was a completely different experience. Trethewey's poems are in four unnamed sections (including a one-poem section that functions as a prologue) that are introduced by telling epigraphs. However, they could easily (to the detriment of the collection) be named Prologue, Mother, Mississippi, and My Life in Mississippi because the sections themselves are so cohesive.

This cohesion (and the cohesion of the book itself) led me to think about the propensity for books of poems to contain an overarching narrative. I often enjoy books that employ this method, because it leads to an even greater meaning and to reading ease. I think that if the poems can stand alone (and these certainly can), having a book of linked poems can increase the reader's joy because it is a continued unfolding instead of a segmented or choppy read (as is sometimes the case with books of poems that have no narrative or stylistic link).

I could be wrong, but I think books of linked poems are a relatively new phenomenon (perhaps begun by some of the confessional poets). There have always been book-length poems that have a continuous narrative, but that is really not the same thing. Linked poems are similar to a novel in which each poem constitutes a chapter (though linked poems tend to be less linear than novels and can repeatedly discuss a single aspect of a subject in a way that would stunt a novel's movement).

To be honest, I don't think that I could create a book around this model. I am working on a chapbook of How to Break Up poems, but I think a book-length manuscript from that same material would be boring to read (of course, the HTBU poems don't have as much power as Native Guard in either subject or skill).

I wonder, however, if books of linked poems will become the new standard in poetry books. I know that there are contemporary books that do not follow this model, but I think that linked poems are becoming more and more prevalent — and are also very well-received. What do you guys think? Are linked poems the future?

Catching Up

About a month ago I started a new job. I'm now an editorial assistant in the English editorial department at Bedford/St. Martin's. And yes, I'm writing this blog at my desk in my cubicle that I have decorated with 8 pictures of my cats and one picture of my girlfriend and baby nephew. Yes, I love my cats.

So far at my new job I've been coordinating review programs while we decide how to revise current books for future editions, or whether to even have future editions. I hate trying to find professors to take the questionnaires, but I like talking to those who say yes, reading their completed reviews, and keeping track of it all with a color-coded spreadsheet. I also use color-coded maps to insure geographic diversity in my reviews. I love to color-code almost as much as I love my cats.

A few weeks ago, I gave a lecture at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education on the poetic influence of Wordsworth and Coleridge on each other and on poetry in general. The lecture was only an hour long, so I kept it limited mainly to their use of nature as a holy entity and to their reduction of formality. The audience chimed in about imagination, nature as educator, etc. Needless to say, I was impressed by their knowledge and willingness to share. It helped me get through the lecture (I have semi-debilitating stage-fright). I was able to leave the lecture knowing I had done a good job, which in itself is an improvement. Usually after a round of public speaking, I remain agitated for hours and never think I did well. Ever. So, I was proud that I could recognize my own accomplishment.

Yesterday, The National Gallery of Writing went live. Bedford/St. Martin's is involved, so I wrote a short piece about a bookshelf that I used to discuss poetic tradition. I was going to include "Narcissus pseudonarcissus," but the line about masturbation is not terribly appropriate for the high school kids expected to be the main audience. I wanted to use the poem because I thought it was a clear demonstration of my point: taking something old (a myth) and making it new (a vapid punk-rocker). I didn't really have time to find something else, so the write-up went in poem-free.

I never know how to end these things. It feels like a conversation or a letter, but I never know who (if anyone) is reading. Do I say, "Hope all is well with you" or "Better get back to work now"? How's this: Blogging is awkward.