Dancing with the Gorilla is on hiatus this week because I’m spending the next few days with my three lovely granddaughters. Not to leave readers high and dry with not scene storm word list, here is this weeks list a few days early, taken from my memory of some of my favorite children’s books.  See you next week!

bloom

coat

boat

hat

cat

pop

top

stallion

fringe

penny

Today’s Five and Ten list comes from one of my favorite poets and a great friend, Michael Chitwood. Raised in Patrick County, Virginia, we hail from close the same stomping grounds, and met when we both lived in Chapel Hill, NC, where he and his family still reside. Chitwood received his BA from Emory and Henry and an MFA from University of Virginia, and claims George Wright as a major influence.

When I read Chitwood’s poetry, I hear the familiar sound, the intelligence, and the music of rural Virginia. Like novelist Larry Brown, Chitwood doesn’t not trade on stereotypes, but writes with respect about the lives of the working class. More recently his work has been more personal, as in my favorite of his collections, From Whence (LSU, 2007). His other collections include: Salt Works (1992), Whet (1995), The Weave Room (1998), Gospel Road Going (2002), and Spill (2007). He also has written two collections of essays: Hitting Below the Bible Belt (1998) and Finishing Touches (2006) Continue Reading »

As an award-winning poet, I never feel I know enough about poetry. I’m always trying to learn more, get a better purchase, push myself to new territory, try forms I’ve never tried before, or return to poetic forms to try again when success in that form has eluded me. I turn to other poets for their insights on poetry as well as the excellent modeling in their poems. Here are just three poets (in alphabetical order) whose commentary on poetry has directed my learning, spurred my deeper engagement with this genre, and urged me to consider poetry’s place in my work and in contemporary culture. Continue Reading »

My song writer crush, Marshall Chapman, wrote an essay called “Crush.” I think that’s the title, and I’d link to it, but I can’t find it. In it, though, she writes about how we walk around having crushes on people and things all the time. These crushes are about chemistry, affinity, cellular recognition; these crushes don’t have to be sexual. Of course I don’t want to rule that element out, since I have about 30 kinds of crushes on my husband.

As for a poetry crush, you never know when or where a poetry crush will strike. So keep your eyes and ears open; be ready at all times. Maybe you suddenly have a crush on a street corner, say 5th and Charlotte in Nashville, for instance, and it becomes a poem. Maybe you spot a thin volume on the bookstore shelf and your hand is drawn to it, as if by magic spell. Sometimes you just hear someone read a poem they’ve written, and wham. It can happen with fiction too, any kind of writing really. But poetry is so compressed, so intense, that a poetry crush just slaps you upside the head. Continue Reading »

Some readers and writers are intimidated by poetry or think they don’t like poetry because of the poems they were made to read in school. Metrical poetry can also be intimidating because of the time we spent in high school English class scanning the poems in our literature text books. While I love to read Shelley and Yeats and Blake and Dickenson and TS Elliot, I would hate to think my impression of poetry was limited to that experience.

My collection of poems, for instance, is in some ways a collection of teeny tiny stories. Yet many of those poems have a formal structure: sestina, pantoum, cinquain, tanka-senru-haiku combinations, and so on. I wanted to portray spoken language of a place and still use form. For me, in that book, if my form shows in the reading of a poem, it is like my slip is showing. Continue Reading »

Born and raised in Kentucky, Maurice Manning won the Yale Younger Poets Prize for his first book Laurence Booth’s Book of Visions (Yale University Press, 2001). His other collections include A Compainion for Owls: Being the Commonplace Book of D. Boone. Long Hunter, Back Woodsman, & c. (2004), Bucolics (2007), and The Common Man (2010) all from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.  Manning  teaches creative writing at Indiana University and in the Warren Wilson College Low Residency MFA Program. Manning is one of the most interesting poets and essayist writing today. If you have read his work, go get some of it and read it.

Here’s Maurice’s list. He sneaks in a couple of novel recommendations, then his list of five collections of poetry, including another recommendation for The Late Wife, the Pulitzer Prize-winning collection from Claudia Emerson. Continue Reading »

In his new book from LSU Press, Six Poets of the Mountain South, poet John Lang writes about Fred Chappell, Jim Wayne Miller, Robert Morgan, Jeff Daniel Marion, Kathryn Stripling Byer, and Charles Wright. For more info, visit: http://www.lsu.edu/lsupress/bookPages/9780807135600.html

DVD you don’t want to miss: The Poet’s View: Intimate Film Pofiles of Five Major Amercian Poets: John Ashbery, Louise Gluck, Anthony Hecht, Kay Ryan, WS Merwin.From the cover: “Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Mel Stuart, this collection is an insightful look at the personality, life, and work of five influential American poets.” I use this DVD in my teaching and sometimes I sit and watch a poet’s segment while I eat my lunch! Continue Reading »

For several days I have been listening to and singing theKyrieas performed by Les Troubadours du Roi Baudouin, arranged by Father Guido Haazen. You may remember it from the end of the movie The Singing Nunstaring Sally Field. I’ve posted it on Facebook and Twitter. Kyrie eleison, a pre-Christian plea, is part of the Catholic Mass. Continue Reading »

I’m ushering in National Poetry Month by sharing a list sent to me by my good friend and the former North Carolina Poet Laureate, Kathryn Stripling Byer.  Kay grew up in North Georgia. She received her MFA from University of North Carolina at Greensboro. For years she’s lived in Cullowhee, NC. Her books include: Catching Light (LSU Press, 2002); Black Shawl (1998); Wildwood Flower (1992), which was the 1992 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets; and The Girl in the Midst of the Harvest (1986), which was published in the Associated Writing Programs award series.

 Kay’s other claim to fame is that she’s my husband’s favorite poet. Now let’s think about that a minute, shall we.

When I asked Kay if she wanted to say anything about National Poetry Month, since I was osting her list at the beginning of April, her response went like this: “Poetry shouldn’t be enjoyed for only one lousy month, even if it is April, the cruelist month–why poets like T.S. Eliot like it, I reckon. Every month should be poetry month.”  Continue Reading »