Blackbird ArchiveWhat is it about singing?
What Is It about Singing?
I was standing in a stairwell on campus the other day, whiling away a few minutes before teaching, when from somewhere lower in the building I heard a voice singing that same part of “Can’t Buy Me Love” that the boy washing windows in my poem, “Blue Boy,” sings.
Why does it follow me? The singing got closer, but I never saw who sang it. It seemed like a sign . . . but of what? That’s perhaps a good metaphor for my creative process . . . I hear a song from somewhere else in the building, and I try to track it and give it shape and meaning as the singing grows louder.
Later in the song, Lennon and McCartney wrote, “I may not have a lot to give / But what I’ve got I’ll give to you,” and during my MFA, that’s how it was with me and poetry; when both of these poems were written, time was bound by a horizon line I never approached—there was always more of it.
Now, the direct line to poetry has shifted, as I’m sure it will again; what I have to give is spread across poetry, painting, teaching, coursework, research, work, love, email, and a million other things that still of course contain poetry, and that’s one of the tricks—to know poetry as more than only ‘po-biz.’ And, so far, after every horizon line, there has been another. The muse is only part of it; another part has been learning to wake up before the sun and go to my desk.
Watercolor has lately been a great collaborator, and the creative process most alive to me right now is combining painting and poetry. In Wallace Stevens’s essay, “The Relations Between Poetry and Painting,” he wrote, “To a large extent, the problems of poets are the problems of painters and poets must often turn to the literature of painting for a discussion of their own problems.” He was far from the first to sniff out this relation; the Greek poet Simonides is thought to have said, “Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.” Or sings?
Michael Bazzett’s debut collection, You Must Remember This (Milkweed Editions, 2014), won the 2014 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry. His verse translation of the Mayan creation epic, Popol Vuh , is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in 2016. His work has appeared in Ploughshares , Oxford Poetry , 32 Poems , Virginia Quarterly Review , and others. He teaches English at The Blake School in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Photo by Leslie Bazzett
Oliver Bendorf’s poetry has been published in, or is forthcoming from, Best New Poets 2012 , Indiana Review , Mid-American Review , Ninth Letter , and elsewhere. His poetry manuscript was a finalist for Milkweed Editions’ 2013 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry. He earned an MFA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he is studying to be a librarian. Photo by Coco O’Connor
Adrienne Celt’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Esquire , Carve Magazine , The Southeast Review , Gargoyle , Yew Journal , and Cerise Press . Her fiction won first place in the 2010 Glendon and Kathryn Swarthout Awards In Writing, and she has received a residency from the Ragdale Foundation. She earned an MFA from Arizona State University and works as an international editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review and a copywriter for Google. Photo by Rosalind Shipley, April 2012
Rodney Gomez’s work has appeared in Fourteen Hills , Denver Quarterly , Nimrod , Devil’s Lake , Salt Hill , Barrow Street , and RHINO , among other journals. He earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Texas–Pan American and a BA from Yale University. Gomez was a 2011 CantoMundo Fellow and has received residencies from the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Santa Fe Art Institute. He sits on the board of Migrant Health Promotion, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the health and well-being of migrants, immigrants, and related populations. Photo by Isaac Chavarria
L.S. McKee’s poetry has been published in Gulf Coast , Ninth Letter , Indiana Review , The Louisville Review , and BODY , among others. She was the 2007 recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in poetry from Stanford University. McKee earned an MFA from the University of Maryland. Photo by Patricia Heys, 2013
Douglas Silver’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review , Epoch , Narrative , Hobart , Notre Dame Review , Passages North , and Copper Nickel , among others. He was a finalist for American Short Fiction ’s 2012 Short Story contest, Narrative Magazine ’s 2011 30 Below contest, and Glimmer Train ’s 2009 Family Matters competition. Photo by Anna Held
Emily Williamson’s poetry has appeared in Waterhouse Review , and her fiction made Glimmer Train ’s list of finalists for their Fiction Open award in September 2011. “Stoney Creek” is her first published work of short fiction. Williamson is pursuing her MA in writing at Johns Hopkins University. She is an editor and literary agent at Chrysalis Editorial in Washington, DC. Photo by Greg Williamson