Scan barcode
annemariewellswriter's reviews
1096 reviews
On Poetry by Glyn Maxwell
slow-paced
0.0
DNF:
This book is the exact kind of culprit that turns people away from poetry. I am a well-seasoned poet with two published collections, dozens of pieces in literary magazines, I regularly teach poetry classes and workshops, I have a degree in English, and as I'm reading these "craft essays," I can feel my forehead scrunch, and I can't help but to emit an audible, "HUH?!"
Page 34 for example: "Poems deficient in solar meaning are quite easy to spot in the field, because vast trapezoids of critical scaffold have been constructed around them to clank in the wind."
What? I have no idea what he's talking about. I feel like these kinds of arcane commentary are what is found behind the moats of Ivy League MFA programs. If you're smart enough, then you'll get it. If you're not smart enough to follow the elitists' esoteric blathering, then poetry is not for you.
Glyn Maxwell, a white man, has four blurbs on the inside jacket of my copy with reviews such as "should be read by... anyone who's interested in how and why poetry is written... a masterclass in close reading and close writing... this is the best book about poetry I've ever read," and "Maxwell is the best dramatic poet now at work in English." And I wary going into it as I suspected all four of these blurbs were written by white men. Then, upon Googling each byline, my suspicion was confirmed.
Within his pages--and I only read the first two chapters before deciding I was receiving absolutely zero value-add--he mentions more than once the poets "who lasted." I wonder if Maxwell ever bothered to ask himself why these particular poets "lasted" over time. Is it because their work is truly so superior than others'? Is it just coincidence that these "lasting" poets cited through the text are all white men?
Just opening to a random page... page 39, Maxwell cites Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats. Opening to another random page... page 88, Frost and Pound. On the adjacent page, 89, Chaucer. Opening to another, 117, Percy Shelley and Dante. Page 140, Yeats.
Not a drop of diversity. The examples Maxwell cites are all from the dead white man canon, save for the occasional reference to Emily Dickinson. (How white men love to cite Emily Dickinson and then think of themselves as progressive.)
If you're looking for a craft book that favors what the dominant white male historians have shoved down society's throat as to what constitutes "good" poetry, whom poets should be revering, and from whom poets should find inspiration, then this book is for you.
If you're looking for a craft book that references poems outside of traditional meter and rhyme schemes from poets who have not been dead for a hundred years or hundreds of years, then I suggest looking elsewhere.
This book is the exact kind of culprit that turns people away from poetry. I am a well-seasoned poet with two published collections, dozens of pieces in literary magazines, I regularly teach poetry classes and workshops, I have a degree in English, and as I'm reading these "craft essays," I can feel my forehead scrunch, and I can't help but to emit an audible, "HUH?!"
Page 34 for example: "Poems deficient in solar meaning are quite easy to spot in the field, because vast trapezoids of critical scaffold have been constructed around them to clank in the wind."
What? I have no idea what he's talking about. I feel like these kinds of arcane commentary are what is found behind the moats of Ivy League MFA programs. If you're smart enough, then you'll get it. If you're not smart enough to follow the elitists' esoteric blathering, then poetry is not for you.
Glyn Maxwell, a white man, has four blurbs on the inside jacket of my copy with reviews such as "should be read by... anyone who's interested in how and why poetry is written... a masterclass in close reading and close writing... this is the best book about poetry I've ever read," and "Maxwell is the best dramatic poet now at work in English." And I wary going into it as I suspected all four of these blurbs were written by white men. Then, upon Googling each byline, my suspicion was confirmed.
Within his pages--and I only read the first two chapters before deciding I was receiving absolutely zero value-add--he mentions more than once the poets "who lasted." I wonder if Maxwell ever bothered to ask himself why these particular poets "lasted" over time. Is it because their work is truly so superior than others'? Is it just coincidence that these "lasting" poets cited through the text are all white men?
Just opening to a random page... page 39, Maxwell cites Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats. Opening to another random page... page 88, Frost and Pound. On the adjacent page, 89, Chaucer. Opening to another, 117, Percy Shelley and Dante. Page 140, Yeats.
Not a drop of diversity. The examples Maxwell cites are all from the dead white man canon, save for the occasional reference to Emily Dickinson. (How white men love to cite Emily Dickinson and then think of themselves as progressive.)
If you're looking for a craft book that favors what the dominant white male historians have shoved down society's throat as to what constitutes "good" poetry, whom poets should be revering, and from whom poets should find inspiration, then this book is for you.
If you're looking for a craft book that references poems outside of traditional meter and rhyme schemes from poets who have not been dead for a hundred years or hundreds of years, then I suggest looking elsewhere.
Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
My therapist recommended that I read this book ages ago, but I was waitlisted at my library FoReVeR. I finally read it this month, and it truly was eye-opening. I, for one, love a good narrative nonfiction book that takes the reader on a journey with the author to discover what their is to discover. In this case, author James Nestor, wanted to understand the scientific mechanisms behind breathing, specifically, how can it be (how has it been) manipulated in order to benefit health? You would think that breathing is breathing, but it's not. Breathing can also be trained in order to have better lung capacity and overall well-being. If there was only one take away, it was to breathe through your nose as much as possible. Mouth breathers might be saying "I can't! I'm a mouth breather" but nose breathing can be trained just like any other exercise training program, and the health benefits are STARK. From asthma, allergies, longevity, emphysema, sleep apnea, changes to the mouth structure, cavities, crooked teeth, high blood pressure, chronic migraine, depression, and more. Even while exercising now, I focus on *shutting my mouth* and breathing through my nose as much as possible. There's so much more to this book as well. I highly recommend. 5 stars.
The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
2 stars because I finished it to the end, but really I feel very 1-star about it. Lots of tropes pitting woman against woman with an overall message that a woman could "deserve" intimate partner violence. Very yuck. There was the additional storyline of the jilted woman who falsely accuses a man of rape in revenge. He ends up serving prison time during which he is attacked and left paralyzed for life. This perpetuation of the idea that women falsely accuse men in revenge hurts all women and is the reason why 98% of rapes and sexual assaults end up with the perpetrator going free and the only consequence is the retraumatization of the survivor. The entire book the authors want to paint this picture of the "awful" woman who gets what she deserves, the reader is encouraged to find justice in someone fearing for their life at the hands of their spouse. I don't find this to be okay, not even for entertainment's sake. If it is just for one woman to wake up with a gun to her face, then how are those boundaries drawn? What makes one woman bad enough or good enough to deserve or not deserve a psychopathic partner? I know that a sequel is already set for release this year. I hope the authors spent time to weave a storyline without misogyny at its core.
Viva, by Definition by Larissa Freitas
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
5.0
Larissa Freitas' debut poetry chapbook is a tribute to her late grandmother. At 22 pages long, its a brief but impactful read.
Though her words mourn her family's matriarch, they come to life on the page, pulling the reader in with their timelessness and sentiment. From the first lines of the first poem, Bença, "My grandma's skin / is my favorite weighted blanket," Freitas shows us what we, those still living on this Earth, should strive to live up to: living a life so full of love and meaning that our children or grandchildren feel called to write such a loving homage to our legacy.
"When minha voinha's rocking chair stops creaking,.../ the first thing I'll miss / will be the ground under my feet."
Just beautiful.
Though her words mourn her family's matriarch, they come to life on the page, pulling the reader in with their timelessness and sentiment. From the first lines of the first poem, Bença, "My grandma's skin / is my favorite weighted blanket," Freitas shows us what we, those still living on this Earth, should strive to live up to: living a life so full of love and meaning that our children or grandchildren feel called to write such a loving homage to our legacy.
"When minha voinha's rocking chair stops creaking,.../ the first thing I'll miss / will be the ground under my feet."
Just beautiful.
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? Yes
Art of Poetry Writing by William Packard
I purchased my copy of this how-to craft book after attending a writer’s conference during which a workshop facilitator (a middle-aged white man) said it was essential reading for any serious poet.
Because I purchase almost any book recommended to me, I immediately pulled out my phone to order. After sitting on my shelf for five months, I finally cracked it open to absorb all the poetic wisdom this poetic ancestor could instill.
Outdated information
Flipping through the “Nuts and Bolts” chapter, if a writer hopes this book will give insights on how to publish poems in literary magazines or apply for grants, I will not say this book is useless, but it has not aged well. One would not in our modern age search a reference library for a list of grant prizes available to writers and poets, for example. So, those chapters really have no modern use unless one has no access to the internet. (But if one has access to a library, they have access to the internet.)
Boring examples
Two aspects of Packard’s writing in particular made finishing this guide challenging: The first was the examples he used. Almost all come from the standard long-dead-white-man’s club of Blake, Whitman, Poe, Wordsworth, Milton, Shakespeare, etc. The occasional Anne Sexton or Langston Hughes example was thrown in for good measure, but you could count those examples on one (perhaps two) hands out of the entire collection.
Moreover, so few poets of the modern millennium (that I have read, anyway, and I read a lot), write in rhymed and metered verse. I certainly don’t. So, reading examples with all the “doths” and “thys” and stilted syntax in order to make a metered rhyme didn’t move me in any way. These examples are the reason people outside the poetry world think poetry is dead. They only know poetry as what they learned in their high school English classroom. They “don’t get it” because these poems weren’t written for them, in their time, in their language/dialect.
I love poetry. My life revolves around poetry. And I was bored a lot reading this book.
Packard is kinda… a dick…
The other aspect of Packard’s writing that I struggled through was his “Kids These Days”-esque judgment, particularly in regards to poetry readings. Slam poetry, perhaps not having as big of an influence on the poetry world at the time of his writing, but he essentially ridicules poets who enjoy stage performance.
For example he wrote, “…[T]he great majority of modern poets preferred the page to the stage; it would be difficult to imagine Emily Dickinson giving a poetry reading, or Charles Baudelaire, or Hart Crane.”
Is Baudelaire who died in 1867 considered a “modern” poet? Was he considered so in 1992?
Throughout his book, he also chastises the idea of “careerism” but doesn’t specify his exact definition of what that means. Should no one take into consideration their career when producing work? That seems very unrealistic if one wants to eat every day and/or have a place to live. Maybe in an ideal world where we don’t live our lives navigating a capitalist hellscape with skyrocketing rents and inflated costs of goods, one could completely not consider how their work might build their career. But then, one could argue that Packard himself had a literary career … so, is there only one correct way of achieving and maintaining a career from poetry? Should no one aim for a career in poetry, but if a career just happens to fall into their lap, then great? If one does write to further their career, does that then make them less-than? Lack integrity? What, William?
He wrote “…[M]ost of the poets out there… their cover letters boast of prestigious grants, cushy academic jobs, numerous publications in trendy mags, all the while they’re raising cute nuclear families and holding onto their secure tenure tracks… Well as the man said, you can’t serve two masters at the same time. You can’t live bunny lives and write tiger poetry, simultaneously. If anyone out there wants to write with originality and honesty and recklessness, then he or she may have to change a lot of things about the life they’re living before they can turn out the kind of poetry that we’d be interested in seeing.”
You heard it here first, folks! Abandon your children and your jobs if you want to be a true *French accent* artiste.
Contrary to this criticism of “careerism,” the lines of thought I am constantly met with in the present literary world are: “Will publishers be able to sell what you’re creating?” “To whom will they sell it?” “Who is your target audience?” “What is your marketing plan?”
That is… if you’re not, like, Chekov (whom Packard sites as an ideal example of not pursuing “careerism”) and you’re not a medical doctor who then also writes great literary works on the side. (Reminds me of all the trial lawyers who dream of writing crime novels, but who don’t actually have the time or energy because they’re too busy making money from a career that brings them no joy or fulfillment.)
If I was supposed to have a different career that then funded my writing so I didn’t fall victim to wanting to strategize a career from my writing, then… whoops! Sounds like that was written by a privileged man who wasn’t also responsible for child bearing/rearing or caretaking for elderly parents or any other responsibility that would make having a full-time career ON TOP OF writing possible.
Notable quotes
All of this being said, what I did enjoy from Packard’s book was the plethora of notable quotes from mostly other writers that are peppered throughout the work. A leave those here:
“Most of the Romantics shared a common view: they believed in a reverence for Nature and a belief that the child was Nature’s priest, who had innocence and primal consciousness unconditioned by civilization. — Packard
“You know now the sorrow of continually doing something that you cannot name, of producing automatically as an apple tree produces apples this thing there is no name for.” — John Ashbery
“I know with the poems that I thought were most private, most unshareable, the ones I would not show, would certainly not print, later when I have shown them, they were the ones that people have gone to.” — Muriel Rukeyser
“Ut pictura, poesis” [As in pictures, so in poems] — Horace
“Every line of poetry can be divided into separate ‘feet’ — the ‘foot’ deriving from the Greek chorus in tragedy, where chorus members would stamp out long and short rhythms with their feet.” — Packard
“The strange word, the metaphor, the ornamental equivalent, etc., will save the language from seeming mean and prosaic, while the ordinary words in it will secure the requisite clearness.” — Aristotle
“Nihil est in intellectus quod non primus in sensus” [Nothing is in the mind that is not first in the senses.] — Aristotle
“The universal exists for, and shines through, the particular.” — Aristotle
“Laborare est orare” [To work is to pray] — Latin proverb
“Without ceasing Practise [sic] nothing can be done. Practise is Art. If you leave off you are lost.” — William Blake
“The most that a good teacher can do is to try and create a climate of approval, a generous spirit of permission, so that his class can experiment and explore and engage in word play for its own sake. A student should be encouraged to feel that any impulse that comes to him is worth developing and elaborating and bringing to a skillful realization.” — Packard
“There are so many self-appointed critics of creativity who are so adept at ridiculing the inept, there is no reason for a teacher of poetry to join in this chorus of scorn” — Packard (hypocritically, he writes this right after writing “The housewife with her sentimental sonnets to the sunrise, the student crusader with his social protest poems, the pompous philosopher with his endless epigrams on existence — these must all be confronted and show the triviality of their ways.” Yuck. Talk about pompous judgment. )
Lastly
and ironically, I enjoyed this quote from Vladimir Nabokov: “Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader.”
I say “ironically” because I will not be rereading Packard’s manual on poetry. It will find a new home in the closest Free Little Library to my apartment.
medium-paced
2.0
In 1992, William Packard’s The Art of Poetry Writing hit bookstores via St. Martin’s Press. Among his list of accolades in the literary arts, Packard published six volumes of poetry, founded New York Quarterly, and was the vice president of The Poetry Society of America before he passed away in 2002.
I purchased my copy of this how-to craft book after attending a writer’s conference during which a workshop facilitator (a middle-aged white man) said it was essential reading for any serious poet.
Because I purchase almost any book recommended to me, I immediately pulled out my phone to order. After sitting on my shelf for five months, I finally cracked it open to absorb all the poetic wisdom this poetic ancestor could instill.
Outdated information
Flipping through the “Nuts and Bolts” chapter, if a writer hopes this book will give insights on how to publish poems in literary magazines or apply for grants, I will not say this book is useless, but it has not aged well. One would not in our modern age search a reference library for a list of grant prizes available to writers and poets, for example. So, those chapters really have no modern use unless one has no access to the internet. (But if one has access to a library, they have access to the internet.)
Boring examples
Two aspects of Packard’s writing in particular made finishing this guide challenging: The first was the examples he used. Almost all come from the standard long-dead-white-man’s club of Blake, Whitman, Poe, Wordsworth, Milton, Shakespeare, etc. The occasional Anne Sexton or Langston Hughes example was thrown in for good measure, but you could count those examples on one (perhaps two) hands out of the entire collection.
Moreover, so few poets of the modern millennium (that I have read, anyway, and I read a lot), write in rhymed and metered verse. I certainly don’t. So, reading examples with all the “doths” and “thys” and stilted syntax in order to make a metered rhyme didn’t move me in any way. These examples are the reason people outside the poetry world think poetry is dead. They only know poetry as what they learned in their high school English classroom. They “don’t get it” because these poems weren’t written for them, in their time, in their language/dialect.
I love poetry. My life revolves around poetry. And I was bored a lot reading this book.
Packard is kinda… a dick…
The other aspect of Packard’s writing that I struggled through was his “Kids These Days”-esque judgment, particularly in regards to poetry readings. Slam poetry, perhaps not having as big of an influence on the poetry world at the time of his writing, but he essentially ridicules poets who enjoy stage performance.
For example he wrote, “…[T]he great majority of modern poets preferred the page to the stage; it would be difficult to imagine Emily Dickinson giving a poetry reading, or Charles Baudelaire, or Hart Crane.”
Is Baudelaire who died in 1867 considered a “modern” poet? Was he considered so in 1992?
Throughout his book, he also chastises the idea of “careerism” but doesn’t specify his exact definition of what that means. Should no one take into consideration their career when producing work? That seems very unrealistic if one wants to eat every day and/or have a place to live. Maybe in an ideal world where we don’t live our lives navigating a capitalist hellscape with skyrocketing rents and inflated costs of goods, one could completely not consider how their work might build their career. But then, one could argue that Packard himself had a literary career … so, is there only one correct way of achieving and maintaining a career from poetry? Should no one aim for a career in poetry, but if a career just happens to fall into their lap, then great? If one does write to further their career, does that then make them less-than? Lack integrity? What, William?
He wrote “…[M]ost of the poets out there… their cover letters boast of prestigious grants, cushy academic jobs, numerous publications in trendy mags, all the while they’re raising cute nuclear families and holding onto their secure tenure tracks… Well as the man said, you can’t serve two masters at the same time. You can’t live bunny lives and write tiger poetry, simultaneously. If anyone out there wants to write with originality and honesty and recklessness, then he or she may have to change a lot of things about the life they’re living before they can turn out the kind of poetry that we’d be interested in seeing.”
You heard it here first, folks! Abandon your children and your jobs if you want to be a true *French accent* artiste.
Contrary to this criticism of “careerism,” the lines of thought I am constantly met with in the present literary world are: “Will publishers be able to sell what you’re creating?” “To whom will they sell it?” “Who is your target audience?” “What is your marketing plan?”
That is… if you’re not, like, Chekov (whom Packard sites as an ideal example of not pursuing “careerism”) and you’re not a medical doctor who then also writes great literary works on the side. (Reminds me of all the trial lawyers who dream of writing crime novels, but who don’t actually have the time or energy because they’re too busy making money from a career that brings them no joy or fulfillment.)
If I was supposed to have a different career that then funded my writing so I didn’t fall victim to wanting to strategize a career from my writing, then… whoops! Sounds like that was written by a privileged man who wasn’t also responsible for child bearing/rearing or caretaking for elderly parents or any other responsibility that would make having a full-time career ON TOP OF writing possible.
Notable quotes
All of this being said, what I did enjoy from Packard’s book was the plethora of notable quotes from mostly other writers that are peppered throughout the work. A leave those here:
“Most of the Romantics shared a common view: they believed in a reverence for Nature and a belief that the child was Nature’s priest, who had innocence and primal consciousness unconditioned by civilization. — Packard
“You know now the sorrow of continually doing something that you cannot name, of producing automatically as an apple tree produces apples this thing there is no name for.” — John Ashbery
“I know with the poems that I thought were most private, most unshareable, the ones I would not show, would certainly not print, later when I have shown them, they were the ones that people have gone to.” — Muriel Rukeyser
“Ut pictura, poesis” [As in pictures, so in poems] — Horace
“Every line of poetry can be divided into separate ‘feet’ — the ‘foot’ deriving from the Greek chorus in tragedy, where chorus members would stamp out long and short rhythms with their feet.” — Packard
“The strange word, the metaphor, the ornamental equivalent, etc., will save the language from seeming mean and prosaic, while the ordinary words in it will secure the requisite clearness.” — Aristotle
“Nihil est in intellectus quod non primus in sensus” [Nothing is in the mind that is not first in the senses.] — Aristotle
“The universal exists for, and shines through, the particular.” — Aristotle
“Laborare est orare” [To work is to pray] — Latin proverb
“Without ceasing Practise [sic] nothing can be done. Practise is Art. If you leave off you are lost.” — William Blake
“The most that a good teacher can do is to try and create a climate of approval, a generous spirit of permission, so that his class can experiment and explore and engage in word play for its own sake. A student should be encouraged to feel that any impulse that comes to him is worth developing and elaborating and bringing to a skillful realization.” — Packard
“There are so many self-appointed critics of creativity who are so adept at ridiculing the inept, there is no reason for a teacher of poetry to join in this chorus of scorn” — Packard (hypocritically, he writes this right after writing “The housewife with her sentimental sonnets to the sunrise, the student crusader with his social protest poems, the pompous philosopher with his endless epigrams on existence — these must all be confronted and show the triviality of their ways.” Yuck. Talk about pompous judgment. )
Lastly
and ironically, I enjoyed this quote from Vladimir Nabokov: “Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader.”
I say “ironically” because I will not be rereading Packard’s manual on poetry. It will find a new home in the closest Free Little Library to my apartment.