The Wright choice for poet laureate

The Library of Congress exercised superb judgment earlier this month by selecting Charles Wright to succeed Natasha Trethewey as  U.S. poet laureate. There are few modern giants still standing in the world of poetry -- there's W.S. Merwin, of course, but I have a hard time identifying too many others (I welcome any and all of your suggestions, my friends).

Let's see ... Geoffrey Hill, Paul Muldoon, Mary Jo Salter, Carol Ann Duffy ... ?

Wright is undeniably a part of this group. He's not only prolific; he also practices his craft well within that shimmering notion of a "tradition" that T.S. Eliot described in his famous, foundational essay.

Which made me a little surprised with some of the announcements of Wright's naming, especially in the Washington Post, because they emphasize (and over-repeat) that Wright is a "Southern poet" who was born in Tennessee.

They refer to his Southern background so many times that it seems like they're surprised by it, or else it's some kind of novelty. I can't help visualizing him in some stereotypical way -- as having a drawl or listening to Carrie Underwood (I don't know, maybe he does).

It's not that: It's just that the geographic insistence gives the impression to unfamiliar audiences that Wright is some kind of regional talent, not the bearer of literary tradition in a grander, older context (which he is).

The Wright I know is the admirer (disciple?) of Dante who describes his experience of reading Inferno during a summer in Laguna Beach, Calif., in an essay included in the volume The Poet's Dante (Farrar, Straus & Giroux).

Or else, for me, Wright is the speaker  who has an intriguing encounter in the poem "A Journal of the Year of the Ox":

Who is it here in the night garden, Gown a transparent rose Down to his ankles, great sleeves Spreading the darkness around him wherever he steps, Laurel corona encircling his red transparent head cap, Pointing toward the Madonna?

This mysterious figure has some advice for the poem's speaker about his craft, about life in general:

Brother, remember the way it was In my time: nothing has changed: Penitents terrace the mountainside, the stars hang in their                      bright courses And darkness is still the dark:                      concentrate, listen hard, Look to the nature of all things....

There are many works in which poets describe imagined meetings with other poets. Dante meets Arnaut Daniel in Purgatorio ... Eliot encounters a poet (Yeats?) in Little Gidding ... Heaney meets Joyce in Station Island .... and Wright speaks to Dante in the above passage. There now, do you see it? Tradition.

A full circle.

There's a linkage to the distant literary past that's vitally alive in Wright's poetry, as this passage might suggest, and I'm excited by the Library of Congress' decision for a simple reason: It may give an immensely important poet a chance to become even more widely known.

RELATED:

Paris Review: J.D. McClatchy in conversation with Charles Wright

Merwin the mighty

One of the great privileges of my life — aside from being a husband and a father, of course — was meeting W.S. Merwin. He was eager to get home to Hawaii, to his wife, to his gardens, but we talked for about an hour while he was visiting Claremont McKenna College a few years ago. I had my connections to the college, and my identity as a rep for a large newspaper, and that created the kind of opportunity that only seems possible in a dream. But I was also forewarned that he was leery of interviews and suspicious of reporters because they routinely mangled the currency of his craft and took his comments out of context. I was reminded of that warning after reading a comment included in a Huff Post article about a new film of the poet's life. Merwin sounds like a person whose life is characterized mainly by "I don't...":

"He said 'I'm not going to talk about Buddhism and I'm not going to talk about my writing process,' and on top of that, he's just a deeply private person," the filmmaker says in the article. Merwin  "put some creative parameters on what the film is."

Initially, I felt the same parameters. Especially when he eyed the digital recorder in my shirt breast-pocket. He told me not to use it. What could I do?  I tried so hard to keep up with the flow of his thoughts, but I couldn't scribble fast enough.

I knew his work pretty well, especially his Purgatorio translation and early poetry, and the lovely little book about his years in Provence. I asked him question after question. Maybe that made a difference.

I also started expressing my  frustrations over the fate of a manuscript, and he didn't hide his irritation at the whole marketing process, either. It was a revelation. The whole thing bothered him--Him!--too. When he talked about visiting Ezra Pound at St. Elizabeth's, it felt like a flash-bomb had gone off in my face -- Pound, for God's sake, he knew Pound!

He was as generous to me, and as passionate about his work, as the young Princeton student who once talked poetry with John Berryman:

I asked how can you ever be sure that what you write is really any good at all and he said you can't

you can't you can never be sure you die without knowing whether anything you wrote was any good if you have to be sure don't write

And suddenly I heard those words that I'd never expected to hear. He pointed at my recorder and said,  "ok, you can let it run a little."

RELATED: MERWIN AND ME

• Los Angeles Times: A Q & A with M.S. Merwin
• Call of the Siren: On poets and the poetry presses
• Los Angeles Times: Merwin in the South of France

The myth of summer reading

June is here, and so are the summer reading lists… and, always, as I scan these lists, at my back I hear, Time's winged chariot drawing near .... And I'm bored to tears.

Maybe I'm getting old, or too jaded from compiling lists like these for the Times for many a season, but nothing seems to spell tedium or wasted time more than the lists that media outlets want you to use to fill up your vacation time.

To borrow from another myth, I'd rather roll a boulder up a hill and down again, and then up again and … you get the idea.

What these tiring (and tiresome) lists and random sets of suggestions remind me of is something else:  how the old cyclical nature of publishing is completely gone.

Traditionally Spring and Fall have been the big seasons for the book business. That didn't mean that Winter and Summer were dark -- only that the titles with the greatest chance of spectacular success, financially and intellectually, usually didn't appear then.

I know what you're thinking: There are more windows of opportunity now. A writer who didn't appear in the Spring/Fall now has a better chance of finding an audience. You're right. I couldn't agree more, especially since I share that hope.

But what I'm simply responding to here is how dull and dry the summer reading lists look this year! Various newspapers, magazines, and online publications are telling us to indulge this season in wild, juicy, carefree reading like it's an adulterous affair or a drug habit.

The problem is, most of the lists that I've found -- aside from J.P. Morgan's interesting "billionaire's" list leaked recently -- seem far from offering anything wild or, more important, worthwhile. If you're a Stephen King fan, I suppose you have to read "Mr. Mercedes" -- but what I recommend is shunning the summer lists altogether. Do some research on your own. Search the smaller presses for something admirable that would otherwise fall below the radar and plunge into it when you're not plunging off a diving board or a dock.

And that gives me an idea for my next post: a list of small presses worth your time and consideration. Maybe some titles, too? Coming soon!

I'm sorry for the curmudgeonly tone, my friends, but what do you think? Am I overlooking any forthcoming titles that I should treat like the crack of the literary world?  Let me know. Onward!

RELATED:

• The Wall Street Journal on what the billionaires will be reading this summer 

Reading now: Tolkien's Beowulf

In the years since Hemingway's death, many books have been found among his papers and published so that it feels like he's never left us. The only other writer who impresses me more with his posthumous prolificity is Tolkien. Of course he's had some help from his son Christopher, who's served as an astounding guardian and editor of his father's work (I've got to devote some blog space to that), but that doesn't detract from the accomplishment.

Case in point: Beowulf. Yesterday's mail brought yet another work by Tolkien that's never been published before -- his own rendering of the Anglo-Saxon epic that has tortured most high schoolers for eons. Visit here to read more from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt about the book's release.

I'm so excited about it, and I'm not the only one -- Slate offers an expected comparison in a new article (which is better, the version by Heaney or Tolkien?); while the Christian Science Monitor reserves judgment, simply noting its arrival and summarizing some of the reactions, which are surprising.

One scholar says Tolkien would have tossed it into a shredder if he'd known it would be published. (Really?) Christopher Tolkien is quoted in a way that oddly makes him sound like he's against the publication even though he's the one who made it possible.

Bizarre.

Whether or not it ranks as Tolkien's "best" work, does it really matter? It's a contribution to scholarship, and to our curiosity -- maybe in the same vein as C.S. Lewis' "Aeneid" translation.

I'll give you a report soon, my friends. Reading now.

The Writing Life: Something from Mary

Just two brief things to relay, courtesy of novelist Mary Gaitskill, on the writing life. I sat down with her not long ago (she’s a visiting professor this semester at Claremont McKenna College) and I’ve just now returned to my notes to see what she said. No surprise: She definitely didn’t disappoint.

The two comments that I want to share with you, my friends, are things that you probably already understand. Still, to hear them from a contemporary master is powerful. If you’ve been struggling with criticism or self-doubt, her two comments are most definitely for your ears.

The first, on how to handle negative feedback, suggests that everyone needs to be able to wear armor sometimes, but FYI: Make sure that you remember to remove it.

Be prepared for rejection. It took me six years before I finally sold something. You need to have a very thick skin. But not all the time. When you’re out in the world, wear that thick skin. But when you’re back home and you’re writing, you have to take it off.

The second point suggests that there’s actually a positive side to negative feedback. Who knew?

If you want to be a writer, you’re going to have to tolerate hearing all kinds of things said about you and your work. But that’s if you’re lucky. In most cases, what you may encounter is a towering wall of silence. Indifference is much harder.

Indifference -- which is why I'm very glad to have a blog ... and you, my friends.

Keep working. You're almost there.

AND DON'T FORGET...

• Alistair McLeod's attitude to writing (at Call of the Siren)
•  Patricia Highsmith on writing (at Jilanne Hoffmann)
• Ghosts of the Kanza and more (at The Task At Hand -- you want to see a true modern-day practitioner of myth? Go here!)