Robert Peake

I had a pleasant journey from Ojai to Forest Grove (via LAX, via PDX) and am now settling in to the spare-yet-tranquil accommodations of Vandervelden Hall (the other dorms from the ones I stayed in last time). Dinner was the combo #2 at Pizza Schmizza — greasy cheese pizza and green salad, my version of a “balanced” meal — and some lively conversation about narrative structure. Clearly, we’re hungry for the feast now laid out before us: eight days packed with workshops, craft talks, thesis reviews of graduating students (sniff, sniff) and evening readings from some of the best writers and teachers of writing anywhere in the country (no bias there). This is gonna be good.

In one month’s time, I will be nearing the end of the fourth residency of the Pacific University MFA, preparing to head in to my fourth and final semester of correspondence work. I feel as though I blinked, and suddenly have reached the three-quarters-done mark. And, although I have given close reading to well over sixty works so far, I also feel as though I have just begun to chip away at the tip of the iceberg that is poetry. I am thinking about reading mostly heavy-hitting Modern poets in the coming semester, in an effort to fill in some gaps in my experience of their work. Here is my list so far:

• Yehuda Amichai, Love Poems
• John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror: Poems
• John Berryman, 77 Dream Songs: Poems
• Robert Bly, Silence In The Snowy Fields
• James Dickey, Drowning With Others
• Richard Hugo, The Lady In Kicking Horse Reservoir
• Rolf Jacobsen, The Silence Afterwards: Selected Poems
• Randall Jarrell, The Lost World
• Paul Mariani, The Great Wheel
• Thomas Merton, In the Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems
• W.S. Merwin, The Lice
• Frank O’Hara, Meditations In An Emergency
• Marianne Moore, Complete Poems
• Ezra Pound, Selected Poems
• Adrienne Rich, Diving Into The Wreck
• Jon Silkin, New and Selected Poems
• W.D. Snodgrass, Heart’s Needle
• Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens
• Thomas Tranströmer, The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems
• Richard Wilbur, Love Calls Us To The Things Of This World
• William Carlos Williams, Spring And All
• William Carlos Williams, Imaginations

That’s more than the recommended twenty works (and notice I have deliberately not added any books about poetry) — so, I will have to trim and tinker.

Any suggestions, anyone?

I value concision. I have told myself this value is the reason that I often prefer shorter poems. And I have told myself this preference is the reason that I have tended to write poems under one page (~40 lines) in length. All that, however, is changing.

I now recognize that in my work I have had a tendency to want to end a poem after delivering a few good lines, to “look ahead” to the conclusion and shape the direction toward that end. Reading Marvin Bell’s “Dead Man” poems, which always appear in two parts, helped me recognize just how much can still be said even after the conclusion of the first part of a poem. In some ways, every poem could be said to be just the first part of a poem on that topic.

Reading other longer works has also helped me understand how I might go about resisting conclusions in the effort at arriving in more interesting poetic territory. Being halfway through my third semester in the Pacific University MFA program, I have now read over fifty books of poetry and poetry criticism in the last fifteen months of study. I have learned a lot. Perhaps more importantly, I have absorbed a lot, imbibing poetry as much as analyzing it, and letting it shape my aesthetics from the inside out.

Most recently, I have been reading David St. John’s Study For The World’s Body. I am struck by the success of his longer poems. Comparing his work to another poet whose longer poems I also admire, Li-Young Lee, has helped me to understand some of the qualities of longer poems which I hope to deploy in my own efforts at breaking the single-page barrier.

Foremost among them seems to be a tone that reflects confidence. This sense of confidence about the speaker, and by inference the author, helps me as a reader to give the author permission to dwell on unfolding details, provided they remain grounded in concrete images, interesting language, music, or other elements of good craft. Careful examination of details in this way produces the actual poetry, and gives a sense of focus and precision to the work, despite its length.

The stand-up comedian Billy Connolly is a master at delivering humor through seemingly endless digressions. When he finally comes back to the main topic, long since forgotten in the audience’s mind, he earns not only laughs but trust that he knew what he was doing all along. Good long poems can also function in this way — taking time to deliver poetry through the details, but retaining a sense of focus and direction all along.

In some ways, it seems to me that longer poems do not necessarily have to end on lines as spectacular as those required for the success of shorter poems. A rider who has hung on to a bucking stallion with dignity and tenacity need not necessarily dismount with great flourish to win cheers. The sustained quality and duration of the work is a feat in itself. Such feats I look forward to attempting in practice soon.

I received a phone call yesterday from The Atlantic to inform me that I have received an honorable mention in their Student Writing Contest. I was encouraged to enter, in part, by their listing of Pacific University’s MFA program, in which I am currently enrolled, as one of the top five programs in the nation of its type. Unfortunately, according to a subsequent email, “while the editors will indeed be reviewing several of the winning manuscripts for potential publication in the magazine, there is no guarantee that any submissions will be published.” Shucks. Still, nice to receive a mention, and honorable at that, from our nation’s most intelligent periodical.

I am heading into the third semester at Pacific, where in lieu of ongoing commentaries on individual works, I will be writing a longer critical essay. At this point, I am thinking about writing about Seamus Heaney, and in particular how he successfully navigates numerous dialectic elements in contemporary poetry, such as:

Narration	Lyricism
Free verse	Meter & rhyme
Meaning	”Precious Nonsense”
Stichic	Stanzaic
Plain Speech	Elevated diction

In addition, I will continue to read widely from a variety of sources. Here is what I am thinking about adding to my reading list:

On Poetry

• Fredrick Smock, Poetry And Compassion (thank you, Mr. Carter)
• Dorianne Laux and Kim Adonizzo, The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry
• Stephen Berg (ed.), Singular Voices: American Poetry Today

Poetry

• Umberto Saba, Songbook: Selected Poems from the Canzoniere of Umberto Saba (trans. Stephen Sartarelli)
• Marvin Bell, The Book Of The Dead Man and Mars Being Red
• Paul Muldoon, Horse Latitudes
• Jane Mead, The Lord and the General Din of the World
• Ron Silliman (ed.), In The American Tree
• Patrick Kavanagh, Collected Poems
• Eavan Boland, Selected Poems
• Seamus Heaney, Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996
• Seamus Heaney, District and Circle
• Medbh McGuckian, Selected Poems: 1978-1994
• David St. John, Study for the World’s Body: New and Selected Poems
• Tony Curtis (ed.), The Art of Seamus Heaney
• Paul Celan, Poems of Paul Celan: A Bilingual German/English Edition

Ideas For Poetry Book Structure

• Issa, The Year Of My Life (trans. Nobuyuki Yuasa)
• Basho, Back Roads To Far Towns (trans. Kamaike Susumu and Cid Corman)
• Robert Lowell, Life Studies
• Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments (trans. Richard Howard)

This is only a cursory sketch for now. Any suggestions?

The following email arrived this morning:

Dear MFA Students and Alumni,

I just discovered last night that the latest Atlantic Monthly magazine has listed Pacific University as one of the top five low-residency MFA programs in the nation! Jeannine Hall Gailey casually told me this in an email (a post script, no less) and I dashed out to buy two copies of the “Special Fiction Issue 2007.” In there is an article called “Where Great Writers Are Made” and there, in the last sidebar, is our program. We are included with the most venerable low-residency programs in the nation: Antioch, Bennington, Vermont and Warren Wilson.

Building a program is never easy. But it has truly been a group effort and the faculty and students are the ones who have helped make it happen. You are a talented, hardworking and passionate community and I hope you take as much pride and joy in this news as I do.

All best,

Shelley

Shelley Washburn, Director
MFA in Writing
Pacific University

Not bad for a program that has only graduated two full classes so far.

Obviously, I didn’t choose Pacific for its reputation, since it effectively didn’t have one when I applied. But clearly I’m not the only one who sees the means to work so closely with such great faculty as a rare opportunity and privilege. The beyond-the-call-of-duty helpfulness of the staff, beautiful residency settings and challenging-yet-manageable academic structure go further in making this a great experience so far. Hats off to all involved.

Another whirlwind MFA residency has come and gone - this one my first on the beautiful Pacific University campus. Thanks to all who made it such a spectacular event. Here is a parting taste of the campus:

Christopher Howell of Eastern Washington University Press gave an excellent overview of publishing options this afternoon - including vanity presses, self-publishing, cooperatives, small, independent, university and corporate publishers. Above all he encouraged right motivation: to publish [He put forward the idea of publishing] as means to enter the larger literary conversation, and encouraged the practice of detachment in both acceptance and rejection.

Strangely, I have sometimes heard that academic programs can be adverse to talking about the nuts-and-bolts realities of modern literary publication. Yet with the explosion of MFA programs in this country, one’s publications become a kind of secondary credentialing — not to mention, as Howell remarked, the means to have a larger and more lasting conversation with — and effect upon — the literary world. So, I was grateful for yet another straightforward and level-headed look at publication, and see it as enrichment to a program that is nonetheless fundamentally about writing, no matter what becomes of the work.

On the flight over, a family of three was seated in front of me. Actually, the father was assigned a seat a few rows up, so when the rightful occupant came down the aisle, he politely asked if they could switch so he could stay with his family. No dice. The woman specifically booked that seat so she could be across the aisle from her friend. The purpose? So they could pass People magazine back and forth, making catty comments on, for example, how quickly Britney Spears’ hair has grown (“Do you think it’s a wig?!”). The one bit of knowledge I acquired from this sterling journal of contemporary culture that is now ironically applicable to my own life is that apparently Paris Hilton’s jail cell measures 12’ x 15’.

By my reckoning, my own dorm room here at Pacific University measures about 10’ x 8’. Even counting the 1’ extension by the window and the 2’ extension by the door that makes for an uncovered closet space, that still makes my place of educational residence nearly half the square footage of Ms. Hilton’s place of incarceration.

Still, the simplicity and beautiful surroundings appeal to my monastic side (I did, after all, live in a seminary for nearly four years) - and there is an incredible moss-covered tree right outside my window. Plus, a space this size in the center of Paris (the city) would probably cost hundreds of euros per night - and you’d still have to go down the hall to the toilet.

Joking aside, I’m here for the workshops and lectures. We kick off our time before lunch with a bit of a general welcome, then go right into a craft talk by Marvin Bell. Not a bad way to spend a morning, indeed.

I’m leaving for Forest Grove, Oregon tomorrow for the second residency of the Pacific University MFA in Writing. The first time around was intense, profound, wonderful. Looking forward to round two, and hoping to jot the occasional tid bit here as time permits.