Blackbird ArchiveThe Poem as Balm
The Poem as Balm
To me the poem is a testing place for delight. So the result of writing may seem the result of a stochastic process. Where is the sense? I trust that the mind can discover its own sense just as it can create it. The task of my writing (right now and in the recent past; it may be something else in the future) is to discover the blissful point of the language. Too much delight and you get a riddle; too little and you get philosophy. The tools are dead ends, bits and pieces, fragments. So I keep a supply of raw materials in journals, on the phone, in loose paper squares. A poem lacking surprise cannot possibly be exciting. Surprise is the apprehension of novelty. Without novelty a poem is simply redundant—its essence can be discovered elsewhere. There's a lot of trust required in the test. You have to trust that the language can be transparent to any willful application of the understanding.
Meaning is mostly a secondary concern, if a concern at all. Things like grant proposals and budget analyses—the materials of my daily work life—carry with them intentional meaning: dreadful, lifeless things that kill off delight. They exercise only the brain and not the heart or the spirit. The poem, if it's anything at all, is a balm. To come at its creation thinking that meaning must also accompany the act is criminal to me, and the results are often as lifeless as its cousins in the business place. I try to let the reader construct the meaning, and so construct her own place of delight. Is the act of creating a poem just chiromancy then? Maybe. And so what? There are too many science experiments, too many logical arguments already.
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