What prolongs anger through dispensation of subdermal shocks.
What longs to scrape callouses along the inside of another.

What calls hunger ravening and calls ravening entitlement.
What hangs by hooks in its back for hours without wincing.

What spreads pine needles to mark boundaries.
What burns like bread in the oven.

What sets down an orderly account amid chaos.
What gives the gift of tongues.

What removes ingrown toenails.
What reinstates the punctured hymen.

What feeds on ink and spits out words like cud.
What offers proof with databases and spreadsheets.

What batters the papier-mâché heart.
What grows three heads then must decide which will live.

* * *
Process Notes

This is my latest draft poem at Mutating the Signature. Visit the site to see the rest of the process section of the Untelling Stories issue that Nathan Moore and I are working on.

I took this oath last week. I’m not so hot on the “America” part, since I would like to think more globally than that, but hey. It’s AmeriCorps. It’s not WorldCorps, after all.

AmeriCorps Oath of Service

I will get things done for America, to make our people safer, smarter and healthier.

I will bring Americans together to strengthen our communities.

Faced with apathy, I will take action.

Faced with conflict, I will seek common ground.

Faced with adversity, I will persevere.

I will carry this commitment with me this year and beyond.

I am an AmeriCorps member, and I’m going to get things done!

Tao Lin at Copperfield’s Books from Melville House on Vimeo.

(If you are reading this post through an RSS reader, you might need to click through to the site to see the embedded video.)

:: The good poet

Do we really pursue MFAs just to be called “good” over and over? Is this what students, and mentors, expect from the learning process and from graduate-level study?

In the last packet I turned in for a low-residency MFA program I was once part of, I literally received only four to seven words in response to three different pieces. One was a poem, the other a critical annotation and the third a poem coupled with a personal annotation.

What’s worse is that several of the words and comments were repetitive. On my critical annotation, the responses were: “Good — I agree,” “Good point” and “Yes, good.” (And that’s not even an excerpt of the responses I received on the piece. Those are the comments in their entirety.) For one of the poems, the only response was: “Good use of lists.”

I did the math. Given the cost of the program and brevity of response, I paid more than $30 for each word shown in the image above. That would be fine, I suppose, if I were paying that much for the right words. But it’s not fine when I am paying for words such as “good” and writing more than 1,000 words in some instances only to get four to seven back in reply.

For my stop on September’s Read Write Poem Virtual Book Tour, I interviewed Maya Ganesan, author of Apologies to an Apple, the collection featured in this month’s tour. My stop is the last one on the tour. You can take a peek at all the other stops by checking out the main tour post on the Read Write Poem site.

Your birthday was Sept. 24, and you said on your blog that “… it was bittersweet to see the sun fade on my last day of being eleven.” You’ve had such a memorable year, including having your first collection of poems published. What do you anticipate and expect during your 12th year?

I honestly don’t know! There are a lot of things that I might consider doing — I’m leaning towards the idea of writing a novel, actually. I have no idea what’s in store for me, but I’m going to love every moment of it. I’ve established myself in such a great place, and I hope I’ll be seeing some very cool opportunities come up. I think it’ll be a good year — I have a very, very positive feeling about it.

Katherine Grace Bond says that you don’t like to let a day go by without writing poems. What is your daily writing ritual — do you set a time aside for writing, or do you incorporate writing fluidly throughout your day?

I don’t set aside a time for writing because I never know what the day’s going to look like. I write when I come up with something, which can be at odd times of the night, while eating, or during any random time of the day. I’ve also been known to write when I’m trying to put off some dreaded task. So, in theory, I don’t have a “ritual” for writing — it’s very spontaneous.

You wrote your first poem when you were 4 years old. Do you remember that poem in its entirety, and would you mind sharing it?

Yes! Yes! Yes!

Mixed-Up Figures

I see a shadow,
Could it be a figure?
Mysterious?
Silly?
Crazy?
I don’t know!
Could you take a look?
I know a shiver is
crawling up my spine!!
I am very scared!
Are you?
Seems to be a friendly
figure, is it?
Horses always look like
this, but is this a mummy?
Looks like one from a
King!
Haha!
It’s just me!!
It’s my look from
a black mirror!

I love it. It’s cute and absolutely adorable and fantastic and it’s one of my all-time favorite poems. I still have the little diary where I penned out all my little rhyming poems about cats sitting on mats wearing hats and eating rats, and days in the sun having fun eating a bun.

I’ve been studying early literacy and family literacy education, and I’m struck by how young you were when you starting composing poetry. You must have been read to a lot of poetry at a very young age. What was your family reading to you?

I actually didn’t read any poetry before 4. It still amazes me to this day that I could sit down and know what a poem was, and know how to write it. And until I was about 5, I didn’t like to read, so I didn’t read very much myself (except for a handful of fairytales and Disney stories). I wasn’t read to much, either, so I guess you could say I had very little exposure to books before then.

Up until last year, I was just writing my own poetry without reading much of it. I mostly pulled inspiration from fiction I read, life experiences, the people and places around me, etc. — and I still do today!

You talk about how supportive your family has been, both your parents and your sister, Priya. Can you talk a little bit about that support, and about what role they play in your writing?

All my first poems were written for my parents. I remember them telling me they loved every single one, and that was most of the reason that I kept going. If I hadn’t shared my poems with anyone I probably would’ve just quit, saying there was no point. But writing new rhymes to entertain my parents was a blast.

My parents and sister love reading my poems and always look forward to reading my newest pieces. They’re incredibly supportive and encouraging, and I’m so glad they’ve always been there for me.

What has it been like working with poetry mentor Katherine Grace Bond? Are you two still working together?

It was great to be able to work with someone with a lot of experience. I was just a girl who’d been writing poems for most of her life and I had no idea what “good poetry” was or how I could get published. Having someone there to help me along and show me how to revise and put my book together was really helpful.

We aren’t working together anymore, but I’m immensely thankful for her assistance and especially for her bearing with my constant edits. She literally had to tell me that I couldn’t keep editing till the very end. At 9 pm one night I was frantically trying to make every poem perfect, and she went along with my revisions. I don’t know anyone else who would be that patient.

Who are your favorite poets?

Kelli Agodon, who was the first reviewer on the tour, is most definitely on my list, as well as Natasha Trethewey and Mary Ruefle. Poets who aren’t afraid to experiment and are very contemporary and out-of-the box are my favorites, too.

What are your favorite poems?

“A Mermaid Questions God,” Kelli Russell Agodon
“Green-Striped Melons,” Jane Hirshfield
“Waiting on the Sun,” Didi Menendez

What advice do you have for anyone, at any age, who wants to either start writing poetry or become a better poet?

Pay attention to every little detail around you. Being observant is definitely a key part of my writing — it’s usually a small thing that blows up into a poem.

If you’re interested in improving your writing, there are so many online podcasts or videos of poets reading their work. Watching and listening to those helped me a lot while I was putting my collection together — it put new ideas in my head and gave me a feel for the kind of raw simplicity that some poems tend to have and the complexity of others.

One of my greatest inspirations for Apologies was Borders’ Open-Door Poetry series, which is chock-full of really great pieces; plus, there are writing advice and transcripts of the poems so you can follow along while you watch the video of the poet reading.

Do you have any new poems that you are working on? Would you be willing to share one of them here?

I just finished up one yesterday called “Eliza.” It’s lonely and very reflective, and it’s definitely one of my favorites I’ve ever written. Unfortunately, as I’m submitting it to a journal, I’m unable to share it.