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Please welcome Glenda Council Beall to the blog. She was inspired to write a guest post after reading Jeannine Hall Gailey’s post on poetry book reviews last month.

I really enjoy the guest posts on this blog, but they can only happen with your participation. If you have an idea, send it my way at [email protected], and we’ll work to flesh it out. No idea is too big, too small, or too “out there.” Okay, maybe some are, but I won’t judge–and I’ll help you get it under control.

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I enjoyed the recent post by Jeannine Hall Gailey about reviewing poetry books. Instead of reviewing poetry books, I like to interview the poet by e-mail. I write up the interview for our NCWN West blog or my own personal blog.

Readers get a more personal view of the poet, and I’ve found that today’s readers like to feel they know a writer or poet–know more than just what the blurbs on the book tell them. With social media, readers follow their favorite authors and become friends online.

Requesting an Interview

Karen Paul Holmes’ poetry book, Untying the Knot, reads almost like a memoir about the breakup of a thirty-year marriage. The honesty in the poems lends such depth that I wanted to know more and knew my readers would enjoy knowing more about this writer who openly conveyed her pain, her grief and sadness over the loss of her husband, loss of a family, and loss of three decades of what had seemed to be a good marriage.

I asked Karen for an e-mail interview and she was pleased to answer my questions. I believe that good writers must be willing to bleed on the page and that is why I was intrigued with this poet’s story. She held nothing back in her book and I knew she would do the same in an interview.

Conducting the Interview

I like to send the questions to the writer and let her answer when she has had time to think carefully about what she wants to say. If she chooses not to answer a question, that is fine. I am not an investigative reporter. My purpose is to recommend a book and an author to my readers, the same thing I would do if I were to write a review.

I post the interview with my questions and direct quotes from the poet. That way there is very little editing involved. It is raw and innocent of speculation as to what the writer wants us to know.

Here is an example of a candid response from my interview with Karen Holmes:

I didn’t set out to write those poems, nor most of the ones in Untying the Knot; they just happened. One of my friends said, “Oh now that you’ve had a tragedy, your poetry will get better.” I wince at that, but it’s probably true. My poems definitely got deeper emotionally and darker in tone. However, I also believe in trying to stay positive, so many poems have a positive spin. Some are even funny. Like I said, poetry was therapy.

In her own words, Holmes tells us more about her book and why we should read it than I could tell in a review. How can we find humor in this sad theme? The poet did use irony in a few poems, and, like the comedic actor in a drama, it helps move us along without breaking the spell created in this book.

Gracious Poets

For the past eight years, I’ve done e-mail interviews with a number of writers and poets, and I found them to be gracious and appreciative. Only one writer, Ron Rash, told me he would rather have a telephone interview than an e-mail interview and that was because he had trouble with his hands and limited his use of the keyboard.

You can read some of my interviews online. http://netwestwriters.blogspot.com/2010/01/writers-on-radio-with-joan-hetzler-host.html

http://netwestwriters.blogspot.com/2013/03/glenda-c-beall-interviews-robert-s-king.html

http://netwestwriters.blogspot.com/2013/09/author-interview-by-glenda-beall.html

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Glenda Council Beall lives in Hayesville, NC. She is owner/director of Writers Circle Around the Table. She teaches writing in the community enrichment department at Tri-County Community College and began publishing poetry in 1996. Her poems have appeared in numerous print and online journals including Wild Goose Poetry Review, Appalachian Heritage, Main Street Rag, Journal of Kentucky Studies, Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and plenty of other fine publications. Now Might as Well be Then, her poetry chapbook from Finishing Line Press is available on Amazon.com and from City Lights Books in Sylva, NC.

Find her online at www.profilesandpedigrees.blogspot.com and www.glendacouncilbeall.blogspot.com.

Read some of her interviews here:

• Joan Hetzler.
• Robert S. King.
• Maren O. Mitchell.

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Find more poetic goodies here:

• Solving the World’s Problems: Year One.
• Rosemary Rhodes Royston: Poet Interview.
• Wednesday Poetry Prompts: 280.

Please welcome the incredible Jeannine Hall Gailey to the blog! She’s going to cover a topic that I don’t feel gets enough coverage: poetry book reviews.

I’m enjoying the guest posts on this blog, but they can only continue with your participation. If you have an idea, send it my way at [email protected], and we’ll work to flesh it out. No idea is too big, too small, or too “out there.” Okay, maybe some are, but I won’t judge.

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I recently had just this conversation over coffee with a colleague: Why do you write book reviews? I’ve been reviewing poetry books for almost a decade now, mostly (luckily) books I’ve loved, a few books I’ve been indifferent about, and very few books I’ve hated.

Does it benefit you in any way? Does it help your writing career? What do you gain from it?

All perfectly valid questions, and, easy to understand. Most of my reviews are unpaid, though I’ve been paid for a portion of them. It’s a lot of time and effort to spend lifting up someone else’s work, without a lot of reward – I mean, very few authors or publishers write me happy notes, saying “Thank you so much for that thoughtful review!”

Why Review Poetry Books?

The reward, I started to say, was being part of the larger critical conversation, where, let’s face it, not enough women are being heard. Reviewing teaches you to be a close and careful reader of books by writers I admire and respect, tests your aesthetic preferences and prejudices, and encourages you to slow down and pay attention to the poetry world around you, what’s being published, and by whom, what isn’t being published and why.

For instance, Copper Canyon Press and Wave Books are both Northwest publishers, but they have very different aesthetics. You learn something about publishers and publishing trends that might help you when you start sending your book around.

But even more than that, someone said to me in my late twenties, “If you want your poetry book to be reviewed, then you’d better review other people’s books.” In the spirit of paying it forward, we writers need to give back to our literary communities in real, concrete ways, and writing reviews is one of the ways we can do that.

In the same way that volunteering to edit at a literary magazine helps you understand the process of rejection and acceptance, reviewing helps you understand why your own book may or may not be reviewed.

How Do I Know If I Can Write Book Reviews?

Another question I’ve gotten a lot comes from a different angle: “How do I know if I’m qualified to write a book review? I mean, I have an MFA, but…” I hear this all the time.

How do you start writing literary criticism? I started out getting a lot of practice, starting at NewPages.com reviewing literary magazines, and from there I just kept practicing, writing for more and more outlets, some more chatty, others more academic.

If you want to learn how to review a book, read the reviews in some of the literary magazines you already enjoy, but also pick up The New York Times Review of Books, The Women’s Review of Books, Poetry Flash, The Review Review, and The American Book Review. Find and read the reviews from some of our best poetry critics, like Stephen Burt, one of my particular “critic heroes.”

Check out some of the more lively online review venues, like The Rumpus, to see what the hipsters are reading and reviewing (but full disclosure: I review for The Rumpus and cannot, strictly, be called any kind of hipster). After all that reading, you’ll have a good feel for what’s required, so just try your hand, practice, and send out some queries!

There are never enough good poetry reviews out there, and despite my aforementioned lack of poetry review thank-you-notes, authors will be grateful!

Jeannine Hall Gailey

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Jeannine Hall Gailey is the former Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington, and the author of three books of poetry, Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, and Unexplained Fevers.

In addition to being a great poet and supporter of poetry, including a guest judge for the 2014 April PAD Challenge on Day 27, she wrote a very generous review of Robert Lee Brewer’s debut collection, Solving the World’s Problems, in the most recent edition of Crab Creek Review. And Robert is very grateful!

Learn more about Jeannine (and buy some books) at her website: www.webbish6.com.

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Find more poetic goodies here:

• Wednesday Poetry Prompts: 274.
• List of 50 Poetic Forms for Poets.
• WD Poetic Form Challenge: Madrigal.

This is the final installment of a three-part series on nature and poetry by guest Daniel Roessler. If you’d like the opportunity to be a guest on this blog, send your ideas (and a little about yourself) to [email protected].

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This is the final post in our three-part series on how to freshen up our nature poems. In the first post, we discussed how the changing role of nature in our lives and world could bring a fresh perspective to our poetry. Next, we talked about paralleling nature themes with other components such as human, social, and urban topics.

Today, we discuss how scaling in nature poems can make them distinct.

Macro vs. Micro Level

When we view the world, we can do so on a macro or micro level and our choice greatly influences what we see. We will use trees as our example to illustrate the power of scaling. If we write a poem about trees, there are many options.

We can write about all trees everywhere in general terms at an extremely macro level, a certain forest, a specific type of tree, an individual tree, or an exact branch on a given tree at the most micro level. Selecting one of these resolutions shapes our poem’s voice and any of them can be appropriate depending on our poems context.

Scaling is a powerful tool and by varying our choices, we can make our nature poetry distinct. For example, the opening line of our poem might be, “A forest of trees waved hello to me.” Alternately, the flavor of the poem changes if we start it, “The mighty oak greeted me with open arms.” And again, even more specific, “The crooked branch just off my porch welcomed me by caressing my face.”

All of these are somewhat similar opening lines but also invoke considerably different images for us. The more precise we get, the more unique our poem tends to become. However, the micro approach isn’t always the best choice because we can get so specific and personalized that it takes away from our readers’ ability to relate to our poem.

Use Scaling to Freshen Perspective

When we feel that our nature poems are becoming stale or unoriginal, using a micro or macro approach is a great tool to help freshen them up. Another effective method is to use scaling within a given poem. We can begin at a micro level and expand it to a macro level as the poem proceeds, or alternately, start at a macro level and shrink it to a micro level within a given piece.

Our poem might begin with us spotting a rose garden from a distance that looks like a fallen rainbow. By the end of our poem, maybe we hone in on a single red rose bud about to blossom into splendor.

Ultimately, nature has been and will continue to be one of the most beloved topics in poetry. There are many ways to introduce unique elements into our nature poems and we have only examined a few in this series.

So keep writing and when you are stuck, try some of the techniques we have discussed to freshen up your nature poems.

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Daniel Roessler

Daniel Roessler is an author and poet who recently placed 4th in our Writers Digest SIJO competition with “Drowning” and 5th in our Triversen competition with “The Eulogy”. He is also the author of one non-fiction book, seeking representation for his recently completed novel, and has two poetry chapbooks in progress. For more information on Daniel, visit his website at www.danielroessler.com.

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Find more poetic goodies here:

• WD Poetic Form Challenge: Golden Shovel. (Deadline: July 20)
• Wednesday Poetry Prompts: 271.
• Jason Tandon: Poet Interview.

This is part two of a three-part series on nature and poetry by guest Daniel Roessler. If you’d like the opportunity to be a guest on this blog, send your ideas (and a little about yourself) to [email protected].

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In my first post of this series, we investigated how to freshen up nature themes in our poetry by focusing on the changing role of nature in our lives and world. Another way to bring a unique perspective to our nature poems is by considering parallels with human, social and urban themes.

For example, have you ever had a boss who slithered into your office like a snake and spewed venom your way? Okay, maybe that example isn’t the most pleasant, but it gets the point across that nature offers great material for us to compare with other aspects of our life experiences.

Nature and Human Emotion

One of the most obvious examples is human emotion. Who hasn’t felt the joy of a sunny day warming their heart? Or been angry and lashed out with the fury of a thunderstorm? Or after a long week at work felt as free as an eagle soaring across a cloudless sky when quitting time arrives on Friday?

Even if we haven’t felt these specific things ourselves, we can still see how they make sense. While these may be simplistic examples, they highlight the point that many elements of nature are easily relatable on a basic human emotional level.

Nature and Social Interaction

This is also true of how we as humans relate to one another in social interactions. For example, we might describe a schoolyard bully as a tiger stalking his prey. Or we may compare a parent’s love to fertile soil that allows a child to take root and grow like a Redwood.

The possibilities are endless and our relationships with others often mimic connections that occur in nature.

Nature and Urban Themes

In a similar vein, urban themes can bring distinct elements to our nature poems. Maybe we liken a salmon swimming upstream to a man racing against the flow of sidewalk traffic in New York City. Rather than a simple comparison, we might even consider writing a poem with a back and forth exchange between an urban component and the natural environment.

For instance, we might live in a small studio apartment that has no windows, which we describe in one quatrain, then depict a natural cavern in the next, and so on. This method allows our readers to alternate between an urban and nature world, empowering and compelling them to draw the comparisons and contrasts themselves.

We have discussed a few methods and examples here but there are many more. Nature topics are not limited to natural resources but also include topics like weather, wild animals, etc. The wonderful thing about nature is that it is a tremendously broad canvas.

However, bringing human, social and urban themes into our nature poems can infinitely expand the boundaries of our work to create something wonderfully unique.

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Daniel Roessler

Daniel Roessler is an author and poet who recently placed 4th in our Writers Digest SIJO competition with “Drowning” and 5th in our Triversen competition with “The Eulogy”. He is also the author of one non-fiction book, seeking representation for his recently completed novel, and has two poetry chapbooks in progress. For more information on Daniel, visit his website at www.danielroessler.com.

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Find more poetic posts here:

• Contemplating Nature’s Changing Role in Poetry.
• Wednesday Poetry Prompts: 270.
• WD Poetic Form Challenge: Golden Shovel.

Thursdays will be guest post days going forward on the Poetic Asides blog. Daniel Roessler will kick things off for the guest posts with a three-part series on nature. The other two parts will run on the 10th and 17th.

If you’re interested in writing a guest post, please just send me an informal e-mail at [email protected] with your idea (or ideas). Also, please include a note about yourself.

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As someone who loves the outdoors, I’ve always been partial as both a reader and author to nature themes in poetry. However, it sometimes feels like a daunting task to create original work when the subject of nature has been so prominent in poetry throughout history.

How am I going to say something more insightful or eloquent than William Wordsworth or Robert Frost?

Whenever I’m struggling with how to create original poems, I ask myself questions. Here’s one I recently considered: Is the role of nature in our lives today changing and can that lend itself to new twists on nature poems?

I’ve found that the answer is unequivocally yes.

Rural v. Urban Landscape

When rural life was predominant, nature was central to the lives of a majority of the population. For example, farmers were outdoors from dawn until dusk and nature was a means to an end. Even those who didn’t work outdoors often lived on acreage and were in steady contact with nature.

This translated to intimate daily encounters with the natural world, which the poetry from these periods often reflected. As populations have increased in urban areas and decreased in rural areas, for many, nature is no longer an essential element of their daily lives. While it obviously still provides our food and water supply, a detailed knowledge of nature in this way is less prevalent.

For many in urban areas, nature encounters have transitioned from work activities to weekend hikes or strolls through the park. This difference is significant because it shifts the perspective of nature from a fundamental life-sustaining element to a recreational refuge.

While this isn’t true on a universal basis, it’s one example of how nature’s role has shifted in our society over time.

Other Natural Shifts to Consider

Another point to consider is how changes in our communities have affected nature. For example, write a poem from the vantage point of a bird whose home has been destroyed by the construction of a new shopping mall, or poem about a dog’s take on living inside a high-rise building rather than on a fifty-acre farm.

Alternately, consider how the supply and demand on natural resources today has influenced the environment around us.

In the process of exploring nature in my poetry, it has become clear that we all share common experiences with the natural world. Our poems should not fear this commonality but instead celebrate it as a primary reason that nature poetry resonates with so many readers. However, the natural world is ever changing and focusing on these transformations can be a great source of fuel for bringing unique and original aspects to you nature poems.

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Daniel Roessler

Daniel Roessler is an author and poet who recently placed 4th in our Writers Digest SIJO competition with “Drowning” and 5th in our Triversen competition with “The Eulogy”. He is also the author of one non-fiction book, seeking representation for his recently completed novel, and has two poetry chapbooks in progress. For more information on Daniel, visit his website at www.danielroessler.com.

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Find more poetic posts here:

• Wednesday Poetry Prompts: 269.
• WD Poetic Form Challenge: Golden Shovel.
• Jason Tandon: Poet Interview.

In the opening poem (“matters of great importance”) of my collection, Solving the World’s Problems

At least, the question starts off simple enough, but then it continues to spiral out into giving thanks, stocking chairs, delivering chairs, managing systems, and so on. But there are times when I waste time worrying about which really is more important. There are times when I wonder, “What am I doing here?”

Here being writing poems and devoting a tremendous amount of time and energy to a poetry blog. After all, there’s not a lot of money in writing poetry–even for a publisher like Writer’s Digest Books. But there’s more to measuring value than dollars and cents, isn’t there?

Why Am I Saying Any of This?

Every so often, there’s some kind of “death or uselessness of poetry” post or article that runs all viral on the Internet. So I’ve been meaning to write a post on why I think there’s value in poetry for a long while, but it was still simmering in me until I received this message on Facebook from Aleathia Drehmer, a poetry advocate who lives in New York:

Robert,