How long has Portage been going at Arc? How had I missed this portal to all kinds of poetry organizations and events until now?

“Self-consciousness in writing, as it does in life, open up a kind of delay between impulse and action, between thought and word. That pause—as these examples show—offers the opportunity for calculated intensifications and angularities that would never occur in “natural,” uninformed speech.” — Tony Hoagland [via Brian Campbell]

Sonny Williams in Contemporary Poetry Review talks about various collections of Mary Oliver and how the unflagging optimism makes for one note that fatigues the way Easy Listening can. She creates amiable closeness through questions and second person. The tone is conversational, in the sense of sitting down with tea speaking in iambic rounds, even if her line breaks later shifted to break the rhythm somewhat. She writes rather prosaically.
He feels she doesn’t stretch herself but then, she’s a best seller of not verbal aerobics, but comfort. Criticism of her on this count is common but her niche is that; soothing ideas people want to hear. But beyond that she is making a conscious choice. She counters the glum gloom and clever clip of speed other writers and media offer. She refuses to play. This gets poet people agitated.
Is this a matter of what David Orr said in the February 4, 2007 NY Times article, Frost on the Edge [requires Bugmenot]

Sometimes this acrimony stems from a genuine aesthetic disagreement that is serious and important and (as one might say in Poetryland) worthy of a Panel Discussion, Followed by a Short Reception. Other times, though, it’s just a matter of writers carping at each other because they realize that if they didn’t, people would have a hard time telling them apart.
The longest-running feud is probably the low-intensity border war between so-called experimental poets and their “mainstream” brethren. Since the distinctions can be hard to parse (to most people, saying “mainstream poetry” is like saying “mainstream tapestry-weaving”), it’s helpful to turn to the experts.

He’s just being quippy. (And make me laugh til I tear up until he gets to the earnest part about Frost’s notebooks). What he gets at is the divergent aims: are words the vehicle to get to intended meaning or are words themselves the meaning?
Making Poetry by the second direction, I suspect, isn’t Oliver’s primary aim. By that I mean life and living well comes first and after that communicating the message, not perfecting the means reigns. She seems to want to step clear of the whole debate of wordsmithing. And yet apparently she has won heaps of awards.
I’ve read excerpts and browsed her books now and then. I tried sitting down with her Why I Wake Early for a week, having heard so many people tout her, but it didn’t reach me. I glazed over and skimmed and kept waiting for something she doesn’t do.
Although I do find it rather pleasing that she is lesbian without feeling a need to make it the central politics of her writing. She can be 70 without poems moping about aches. She can be American without ranting against Bush. She can be in grief while reaching for hope and security instead of making an art form of hytrionic wallowing. She writes in the rhythm of walking and talking. She reflects the realities important to her. What more could one ask of a poet?
She allows other aspects of her life to take precedence, and with her it seems to be the feeling of being centred in fuzzy abstracts of benevolent nature/god in an extremely ordered world. Cynicism doesn’t gain admittance, which is her call as guardian of her head. Flares of wit would distract from the hundreds of hues of foliage. It isn’t my taste but its hers and many. As she put it in After Arguing Against The Contention That Art Must Come From Discontent

I remember they said it would be hard. I scramble
by luck into a little pocket out of
the wind and begin to beat on the stones
with my scratched numb hands, rocking back and forth
in silent laughter there in the dark–
“Made it again!” Oh how I love this climb!
— the whispering to the stones, the drag, the weight
as your muscles crack and ease on, working
right. They are back there, discontent,
waiting to be driven forth. I pound
on the earth, riding the earth past the stars:
“Made it again! Made it again!”

Ooh, Susan Constable’s got a page at this newest issue of Simply Haiku. She’s so skilled at writing and getting her works out to market. (She’s from Internet Writing Workshop mailing list. Always room for more there.)

Something else of interest to check is is the Maine listserv of women’s poetry

At this wonderful non-commercial poetry site called Ubu editions [pointed out by rob mclennan] there are pdfs of works that made ripples through poetry world, that are outstanding in their subset of modern styles that should be more widely read.
One of the links is to to The Relative Minor a book of 83 pages of poetry by Deanna Ferguson who is said to “manages the turn from the personal to the civic that is a hallmark of Kootenay School writing”.
I like that I have no idea what she’s talking about or what to do with it when I first see something. It gives me a headache and it prevents my scanning on from jist to jist.
I am forced to take my time in her use of word with ambiguous reading for meaning like tear in Cut Opinions
>cut opinions tear tasteful
>hungers huge ground swell
>partisan have-not thought
>green opinions hidden slide
>hub from sprung in
>weather yah
>bold erect tender
>perfect term transparent till
>I two minute topless formed
>A necessarily sorry sloppy strands
>hot opinions oh like an apple
>a lie, a liar kick back
>filial oh well hybrid opinions happen
>not stopped
I like her flit thru registers of talking about class thought which is relatively complex and then throw in “yah”. Folksy and formal against each other with non-standard grammar and “quiet-like” and (later) muskeg that aren’t usually permitted in poetry except to be placed in someone’s mouth as a quaint voice is brought to sit with hydrant or tyrant as equals in validity and same person.
>father was off, sent some notes though
>“go back and kill moose”
>he writ me, I didn’t writ him.
>snide hose slid under her seat quiet-like
>public made the ebb, and she rose, hydrant
>or tyrant Ascension.
It looks at history but not in archival language. The stories are historical but phrasing and laying on the page and parsing is all modern. She seems to swoon through her sounds
>chemistry pioneered the lured call
>of lavish not slavish
>smoothing out the appearance of lines from
>the moment optical diffuses
>focus features an invisible jewel, bringing to secret
>its remove from a cellophane-threaded stain
It builds a momentum but breaks itself deliberately with “wrong” parts of speech or unexpected turns of words.
>Skip Town
>function emulation does / as if a TV could grow / atop another, shearing / strain occurs body / subjected to shear stress /change of shape we /
yipped and whooped / for an alabaster rupture / at least to intervene / involuntarily I read / or sing along
I like also how the female isn’t exclusively present and isn’t invisible. There’s a politicalness without a preachiness. It gets an algabraic sort of net effect. a + b + c = 17. How did it get to 17? One has to go back and find out how she got that whole from those pieces.
>Only biography. Face as close (memory)
>An incident in the park called.
>Epoxy Police. Kid on the swing yells
>Ronnie scribbles, Ronnie enters a world
>embarrassed. The woman with glue left,
>indifferent to, and, doesn’t smoke, got away
>so to speak. Not a loose transcription but languaged
>events. The end pulled through and the distance
>allows telling. This not the business of telling
>but the ever expanding entering the world (middle).
Poetry response from this point to that:
funereal relief relives
kids pulls sticks from dad’s
jenga arguments just listen
both sturdy excuses said so
understanding fades in dye
sofa
no good not what they picked
dad by seat of pants,
discipline hope he hopes
lopes years as superman
can’t girl boy see he
ro
hard row to hoe
merrily verily say unto hymn
do church as I did
it is what I do
your age is stage not decade
steam palm drawn cotton
pickin minute mockery
marquetry of word
unmarked heard going faster
than light speed
in old rage they see father each