Author Hop

Look, if you love independent book stores, and want to support them, at all, but especially during the holidays… If you love books… If you read books… If you write books… If you ever think you might want to read or write or touch a book…

If you ever lived or breathed within 100 miles of Kalamazoo, or 1,000, then I encourage you, this Saturday, December 6, to stop in to Kalamazoo Books, an independent book store, a wonderful, magical, welcoming place for readers and writers and the people who love them.

Please stop by. Not just because I’ll be there and would like to see you. Yes, that is true, I will be there along with Lisa Lenzo and Andy Mozina and buddies from Wayne State University Press. But come because, really, this is the best kind of book store, and book stores like this are just so nourishing this time of year. So many gifts for so many people. Generosity oozes all over the place.

Click along, friends, and read all about it. And, I’ll see you there!

Read all about it!

Lifetime Achievement

I would never have hallucinated that the day would arrive when I might be given recognition for a lifetime’s work. Yikes!

A lifetime’s work?

Here’s how that happens. You do what you do every day for some 45 years and then you get an email informing you of such.

Some things, I admit, I did dream about: hitting the game winning home run in the seventh game of the World Series, receiving a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, draining a thirty foot jump shot with time running out to win a championship for my father, seeing Julie well, but what happened a couple weeks ago I could never imagine.

Okay, so what happened? First the Poetry Society of Michigan informs me that they have named me Honorary Chancellor for the next two years. This means so much: these poets work with poetry and poets for all the right reasons: respect for both poet and poetry, support for those who compose work that connects us to one another and to what deeply matters, encouragement to those learning the art, and an affirmation of poetry as crucial to  sustaining all that is humane. They give themselves to bringing out the compassion and understanding that we carry into each day.

Then, along comes a message announcing that the Literary Society of West Michigan has recognized me with one of their four awards given to those who have contributed to enhancing, enriching literacy. I was cited for a lifetime (there it is again) of work restoring understanding of what poetry really is and what it can bring to and do for others.

I feel okay celebrating these two recognitions because they were not something I worked for or dreamed of or hoped for or even knew about. They came as a result of doing what I do. I learned from my father, the coach, to never make “winning” a goal. It should always be a result. I’m even more fortunate than he was. I didn’t even know there was something that would come from, I say again, doing what I’m still doing.

Yes, I was floored when told of these. I will try to believe this was deserved. I’ll try.

PS. Speaking of the Poetry Society–the other day, their anthology, Peninsula Poets arrived. Reading the poems, I was once again shown how important poetry can be to one’s life. Every poem in the collection matters. Each came from what mattered to the poet; each connects to what matters to us all. The editor, Edward Morin, should be named “Editor-of-the Year.” He, James Ahearn, Julie George, and Angela Maloy must have given up half the hours in their days to devote themselves
to creating this edition. Gratitude abounds.

I have, of course, overlooked others who deserve celebration. If you are interested in joining this soul-sustaining organization, contact Cynthia Nankee at cwnankee@aol.com

And now back to earning the right to carry these recognitions.

READING AT THE RED DOCK?!?!

Here’s a venue that will be a great place to have a good time, and the kind of place I’ve never dreamt of for poetry… I mean, like, I’ve read in a castle in Ireland, a coupla coffee shops, in someone’s backyard, in a horse barn, (starting to sound like Green Eggs and Ham, right?). I’ve even read over Skype, but now—–THE RED DOCK!!!?

Yes, wow.

If you aren’t familiar with it, picture a Florida Keys-ish bar and restaurant in atmosphere, beverages, good eats, picnic tables, umbrellas, happy-hearted staff. Owners Tony and Dona Amato are a joy to be around. They flew the French flag for Bastille Day, a Grateful Dead flag for Tony’s birthday. Who knows what will fly when poetry hits the Saugatuck and Douglas waters…

When? August 12, Julie’s birthday!
What time? 5pm

Where is The Red Dock? Take the first right once you cross the bridge heading south from Saugatuck to Douglas, turn just past the Summertime Market. Head down the hill to a big gravel parking lot, and look toward the water for a boardwalk.

Follow the boardwalk all the way to the end, and there you will be, right on the harbor, ready to order up and take it easy.

I will have the opportunity to read with Lauren Camp, a fine, fine poet from New Mexico. Tony tells me Lauren is a dynamo (laurencamp.com).

Boaters are welcome to tie up at the dock. Come early to grab a paddleboard, though you can’t drink beer while paddling. There are SOME rules at the Red Dock.

Come be with the people you like to be with, stay for the poetry.

TEDx Macatawa: The Perfectly Imperfect

A TEDx Talk.

I was asked to give a TEDx Talk.

These talks bring new ideas to the world, or at least ideas that have been overlooked. The last time I had a new idea, it was defeated in a faculty meeting.

Well, it wasn’t exactly a new idea. Actually it was a very old idea, an ancient idea, and one I’ve continued to promote through retirement and onward. So, what new idea could I come up with? I came up with a chair. TED talkers walk around the stage. I walk my dog, or follow as he sniffs,  a rather uncoordinated, random walk. I am quite good at sitting. It’s how I’ve always done my best work.

TEDx and TED Talks are stunning, flawless, perfect, excellent. I’m very uncomfortable with stunning, flawless, perfect, excellent. When I taught at a nearby college, people were constantly pursuing excellence. Like Charlie our dog doing his sniffing. “There! Nope…. Maybe over There! Nope.”

I never had any idea what in this or any world Excellence was or looked, sounded, tasted or smelled like. But everyone  seemed to know it was there, somewhere. I knew that it was used in conversation: “Like, ya know, that’s excellllent!”

Really? Excellent? When I asked, I was told it meant “doing or making a thing better than most everyone and everything else.” At what cost? And how do you know when you’ve arrived? Merely by measurement?

Only that can be excellent which can be measured? There is a reason standards have lowered from reaching for wisdom or inspiration to spelling all the words correctly. Reaching for perfect measures is the new black.

Not being much of a fan of it, what could I talk about if I couldn’t talk about excellence? This gnawed my bones for a long time before it came: I would talk unexcellently about other things worth pursuing. Or I chose to state the positive: I would suggest that a thing is worth doing even if you don’t do it well.

In fact, most things worth doing have more important reasons for doing them than doing them well. And so I sat in my chair, promoting The Perfectly Imperfect*

I TEDx Talked about the virtue of not focusing on doing things well, or even doing them well at all.

And my microphone fell off my ear.

And I went 34 seconds past my allotted time.

And my chair squeaked.

*The title came from our daughter, who at age 7 said to me when I hung holiday lights up one side of our front door, across the top, and 1/3 of the way down the other side, “Daddy! Let’s leave them up this way. They are perfectly imperfect.”

Alcona Arts Retreat

http://www.inspirationalcona.org/2013ArtsRetreatHome.html

REALLY looking forward to four days in the beautiful Alcona lakes and woods, facilitating a poetry workshop among workshops in painting, music, dance, photography, needle arts. Check out the retreat and the location. And then, why not join us? The perfect way to knuckle down to work!

Dombrowski

 

It’s the day after reading with my former student Chris Dombrowski at Horizon Books in Traverse City. I asked Chris to read first because, as I told the audience, “I wanted Chris to read first, because then you might be thinking what an amazing teacher I am. If I read first, after Chris, you would be thinking, “Well, he most certainly must have learned in spite of his professor.”

On April 3, at the former Literary Life building, 758 Wealthy in Grand Rapids,  I’ll get to give another reading with Chris Dombrowski. Chris will be reading from his new collection, Earth Again, from Wayne State University Press. I’ll be reading a few poems from Practicing to Walk Like a Heron, also from Wayne. Yes, Chris and I have collections out at the very same time from the very same press.

Okay, yeah, for nearly 40 years I’ve given readings. What’s another one? As William Stafford said in reply to one of my students asking him if he was nervous before a reading, “Oh no. Not at all… Resigned.” Well, with these readings, I am nervous and joyful because Chris is a former student. I wonder if, unless you are a teacher, you can fully feel, understand, what it means to be up there reading with someone who was 18 when you first met in a classroom. Teachers are fond of saying that they learn more from their students than their students learn from them.

What did I learn from Chris? I learned how to work with Chris. When he came to the college he was already knowledgeable about the artistry of composing a poem. He already knew the work of a remarkable range of poets. What was there for me to offer him? I brooded. And then I realized that, of course, the best thing I could do was stay out of his way, be an attentive reader for him, and kick him back on track if he started being unknowingly disloyal to his vision.

So can you imagine what it was like for me to open this year’s catalogue from the Press and see on facing pages Chris’s collection and mine. I wonder if there is any teacher out there who has had this happen? If you know, let me know.

Several times with the launch of our books, Chris and I will share the podium. I won’t go sappy here about this (too late?), but I feel as sappy as any proud “Uncle Lou.”

One other time I was invited by a former student to read with her. Sally Smits, who was teaching at the Indiana University campus in South Bend asked me to “share the stage.”  I had no idea how much it would come to mean to me. Quite a lot, it turns out.

September and October Readings and Workshops

Some late-posted, fresh-off-the-emails stuff coming up:

Everything you wanted to know about Jack’s Fall lineup on his page for that:

https://ridl.wordpress.com/appearances/

March 3 Workshop News

Jack has finished his preparation for the Learning from Some Masters Workshop on March 3, and thought the following description might help you know more clearly what we’ll be doing.  And yes, there are still openings.

We will begin with you recording an important memory or you can bring a poem about a memory. I’ll then show how you work with that memory in other ways than narrating it. We will take what you have written see what happens, how it is enriched, how even more discoveries and realizations can come for you by applying the following: Personal Mythology, Catalogs, Personal History, Sestina, Pantoum, Found works, Collage, Address, Observation and Reflection, Surreal imagination, Persona, etc.

The poets whose works we will be working with include Gerald Stern, Nancy Willard, Linda Pastan, Lynn Powell, Li-Young Lee, Naomi Shihab Nye, Deborah Digges, Billy Collins, Christine Rhein, Mark Doty, Richard Jones, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Charles Simic, Conrad Hilberry, Teresa Scollan, and Bob Hicok.

Contact Collette for help with registration, directions to the workshop location, and all that good stuff.

Spring 2012 Workshops

We are finally getting the word out about Jack’s spring workshops. We are mid-move from the lovely old monastery to a lovely new place in Douglas, Michigan, but this does not stop the wheels of high poetry from spinning!

Check in on his Readings and Workshops Page, to catch the details, but the upshot is this: There is a new Learning From Some Masters workshop, with all new Masters selected, SOON. March 3 to be exact. Signup deadline is upon us and there are still some seats available for this always popular workshop. You read, you notice, you gather new skills. All in a lovely Lake Michigan setting. What could be better?

The really new news this year is Jack’s One-on-One sessions. A collection of offerings that will give you the individual attention you may want or need or prefer. Do read on for details about this offering, and Contact Jack if individual help is what you need.

Hope your winter is wintery enough or spring is springy enough. More details on the move when we’ve completed it, long about April.

 

Workshops Updated!!

We’ve been lax on updating the Workshops page. But it is all shiny and new and updated and correct. As always, more detailed descriptions of all of these workshops, along with pricing and registration deadlines are available by writing to Colette at comewritewithme@gmail.com.

Special note: The poetry workshop for absolute newbies is running October 8, and word has it a few seats are opened up there, so grab them while they are hot.

Two new workshops: One a get-away day for writers who never find the time. Just a day on the beach, writing your heart out. You will be offered writing prompts, if you want them, food, sustenance, and lots of lovely seats to choose from.  The other is a day-long book-making workshop for writers. Learn to make three book forms you can use to give to your favorite writer, or to hold your own writing.

Look on this page, and then contact Colette to learn more and grab your seat!