Really System Issue One published a poem of mine!

New poem published at Really System: http://reallysystem.org/issues/one/stasis_in_ragtime/

The journal has a great, friendly editor who asked that I encourage all my writer friends to submit their work for issue 2, so get to it guys!

This is an interesting piece for me: it’s the first I wrote after finishing my first book and taking several months off. It’s a rondeau, an underutilized form, in my opinion. Paul Laurence Dunbar (Dayton’s native son) has a famous one, We Wear the Mask: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173467

Another famous one, probably more well-known, is In Flanders Field by John McCrae: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19464

I’m happy with this poem, and after it was written I read it at Bess Embers’ poetry circle (at that time at Kettering’s Library on Far Hills). That June Saturday afternoon another poet there asked what inspired it, saying she was especially moved by the image of the horse in the air. I said I had been watching the news around the time of the Moore, OK tornado this past spring, and I felt, as a poet, one of my tasks was to “bear witness to my time,” and “testify” to present and future readers. It was going to be a theme behind my burgeoning, inchoate second book, bearing witness to current events, etc. Well, that poet really liked the idea, and came back with a sonnet of her own based on that image and idea the next month. (I remember a friend’s reaction, having been present for mine and hers: “Whoa.”) She’s an award-winning poetess, so I recommend checking out this month’s Mock Turtle Zine (http://mockturtlezine.com/online-issue/) if you want to see a fine example of sonneteering. The title may clue you in.

And on a sort of random note, while we’re talking poetry, there’s an interesting article on the Poetry Foundation website by Ruth Graham this month, about a certain trend that emerged in 2013: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/247130

(I feel compelled to mention the other poet's piece so that when mine is read it isn't presumed I heard the image from her, as mine was the second to be published. The feelings are only mildly hard, as intimated by the timely Poetry essay.)

Quick addition to the "falling in love" post

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”

This is a great Elie Wiesel quote (first heard by me in a Lumineers song). I think if one is viewing art in a form they aren't accustomed to - i.e. almost everybody's experience reading poetry, even some people who write it - then the best way to gauge whether it's "good" or not is 1) how much it "grabs" you (catches your attention and holds it), or, the other end of the spectrum, 2) how much it leaves you indifferent to it, that is, how little your mind returns to it, or how quickly it discards the sensory data (information, art object) and moves on to something different. 

So my advice to novice audience-members of any art form is - just go with the flow; experience the art. If you can't escape it afterward, if it resides in your mind after you're no longer viewing it, it's 'subjectively' (you being the subject) "good"; if you forget about it, it was "bad." 

What irks me is hearing other poetry writers / readers laud every poem they see...not EVERY poem they see, not the poems people they know have written, but the poems on websites or in books or journals, because they assume some authority has deemed it a "good poem" and that they, the readers, aren't good enough yet to tell what is good on their own. It took me a couple years to learn there is no such thing as an objectively good poem; the poems that live on are considered "good" by a vocal and powerful few, and then are accepted as good by the unwitting or naive majority (namely college students or retirees). Fortunately, if you stay with poetry, you'll see some of these vocal and powerful few were actually right, or their tastes agree with yours (I often find myself agreeing with Bloom on matters of aesthetics; if I were a critic I'd champion Crane, Stevens, Ashbery and Dickinson, too), but first you have to stop thinking everything is great. Poetry is like TV, Hollywood movies, pop music - 99.9% of it is CRAP. (See Sturgeon's Law.) 

For me, what's attention grabbing is still what's new, so I think the only critic who's ever remained valuable to me is Pound; fascist, anti-semitic Pound. If you want to know how to read, read http://www.amazon.com/ABC-Reading-New-Directions-Paperbook/dp/0811218937

Three New Poems Published...

Great journal. Includes my play on the abecedarian (look where the letters are :) ), a sonnet for one of my best friends (just engaged) in a sonnet form I invented, and some Sapphics I wrote for my nuclear family (pets included!):

http://www.foliateoak.com/jacob-sheff.html

Two new publications

A poem I wrote almost exactly two years ago when I was still finding my footing:

http://www.cricketonlinereview.com/vol9no2/17-jake-sheff-okay-with-obsolescence.php

Three poems I wrote this past year:

http://thehouroflead.com/issues/issue-1/jake-sheff/

(Shared 21 times on Facebook! Exciting :) )

Viewing great art is falling in love

I don't know that the supposition in my header is true, but it seem rational based on a couple of principles I've accepted, some ideas that I gathered from my experiences.

The first idea, that I've stated here several times, is that great art is the art which captures our imagination. To say that another way, it holds our attention, it's visually catchy. It's infectious.

The second idea is a truth I've become aware of just recently: That the act of giving attention is the (one of the?) essential act(s) of love. As a parent, pet owner, friend, I realize what separates whom I care about from strangers is that I pay attention to their lives, AND it's their attention I want. Often a pet will do something loud - cry, make something fall off a ledge - and when I look I see them looking at me, and I say, "Emma, I see you," as if I know that's what they wanted. For me to see them. And what child does not look to see, while playing a toy drum for example, if their parent is watching them? Or while spinning until they fall, will not peek to see if mother sees them being silly? The child and pet depend on the mature person, and they want to know they're loved by feeling their attention. I'd say adults do this with each other to - having another's attention makes you feel cared about, important to someone other than yourself. We want someone other than ourselves to pay attention to ourselves. Hence Facebook, hence blogs ;)

I think I fall short of arguing adequately for attention being an act, possible the act, of love. But in my experience this seems true. And applying this knowledge to my daily interactions at work and home has strengthened my relationships recently, I think. It's practical. That's why I'm a stickler for empirical knowledge lately.

So if idea one and two are true (they may not be for you - they seem very much so for me), then the act of viewing something that holds your attention (great film, great song, great painting) is sort of like love at first sight, the sensation / feeling of it. And who doesn't say about their favorite anything, "I LOVE that movie / song / etc!"

It seems so obvious, but spelled out like that, it's pretty interesting.

Two Poems up at Mock Turtle Zine

Great journal for local poets here in the Dayton, OH area, run by the inimitable, immaculate M.T. Birdsall. Here is a link:

http://mockturtlezine.com/online-issue/

Poem up at Exercise Bowler Issue 15

Check this link to see my poem, The Ankh of Newfoundland.

http://www.exercisebowler.site90.net/issue15.htm