toadlily press

By Andrea Bates

“Ineffable” is one of my favorite words. Perhaps it shouldn’t be, if you believe (as I do) that poets should be able to write about those things that are typically difficult to express.  These last few weeks there has been no sound of my fountain pen scratching paper or my fingers furiously clicking over the keyboard. I have succumbed to overwhelm. Global calamities and personal sadness intertwine: Tsunami. Nuclear disaster. Ill health of a loved one. War. A friend whose voice I miss hearing. More war. Radioactive particles in the jet stream. Bone-crushing fatigue. Meltdown.

A few days after the disaster in Japan, two thoughts would not leave me:  the memory of one of my former writing students, Tim, and lines from a Marianne Moore poem.

Six years ago, spring semester, Tim was the tall, quiet kid who sat in the back of my freshman composition class. Composed and polite, he paid attention, but he never took notes and he never spoke. He simply listened, attentively, nodding on occasion or resting his chin in his hands. A few weeks into the semester, he had still not said a word to anyone. I tried to draw him out, asking what he was going to write about for his descriptive essay. “Japan,” he said. I mentioned that the entire country of Japan might be a bit too much for a 500 word essay and asked how he planned to narrow it down. “I don’t want to be rude,” he said, looking right into my eyes, “but I try not to speak unless it is absolutely necessary.” He said this so matter of factly, without the slightest hint of playing or getting over. If someone had told me that Tim was going to take vows as a Buddhist monk, I would have believed it. He was that earnest, that forthright, that sensitive. I could see it in his eyes, the ineffable, the thing he could not express, the thing he would not express.

Tim’s first essay was a warm up for what was to come. It was, as I feared, too general in its descriptions of the Japanese countryside, the food, the language. It read like a travelogue that anyone could have written, and I told him so. “You are mysteriously absent from this essay, Tim,” I said, putting the paper on his desk. “Your story of Japan is still untold.” Tim’s response was silence, a slight furrowed brow, a long gaze at the essay he held in his hands. “Don’t be generic,” I continued. “Be yourself. Tell your story.”

Some stories, as we know, are harder to tell than others. I am not sure how difficult it was for Tim to write the next essay, a narrative. I do know it was one of the most emotionally moving experiences I’ve ever had in reading a student paper. Tim’s father, a Marine, had been stationed in Okinawa and as a dependent, Tim went to Japan, too. He told the story of meeting a girl there, of falling in love, of pledges made, of kisses bestowed, of day after day spent together. And then a year after he had fallen in love for the first time, his father got orders to return to the U.S.  Tim wrote of holding his beloved in his arms the last night they were together on the beach, how her hair smelled, how clearly the stars shone in the sky, how they both couldn’t stop crying, how the next day he threw up as he and his father were leaving, how he didn’t eat for a week, how he decided that the only thing he could do was hold on to who he was and how he felt when he was with her. The only way he knew how to do this was to conserve his very essence, his life force, by not speaking. Tim, in response to his personal disaster, took a vow of silence.

I was quiet after reading Tim’s essay – stunned by the profound sentiment felt by one so young and so wise. Tim’s silence was the way he felt he could best honor what and whom he had so deeply cherished.  A product of shock and grief at losing his first love, his silence was also his choice – it was his way to pay homage to all that he had become, all he still wanted to be, all that being in love and losing love had given him.

How wise it is to sometimes be silent in the midst of disaster. How wise it is to take it all in and save the words for later. Marianne Moore agrees: “The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence/not in silence, but restraint.”  How wise it is to enter the moment, to truly feel its power, even when that power can be emotionally devastating. From this, eventually, the poems will come, no matter how hard the story is to tell.

By Andrea Bates

A few years ago, I became intrigued by the life and works of Louise Bogan. What or who lead me to discover her writing, I do not recall, but I do remember the southern summer heat and driving to the downtown library to wander the cool stacks upstairs where it seemed few ever ventured. Fewer still had checked out Ms. Bogan’s poetry books – the last date stamp on the card flap said 1978. I took home Blue Estuaries and her autobiography, Journey Around My Room — and spent the next several nights enthralled by my new mentor.

“—O remember

in your narrowing dark hours

that more things move

than blood in the heart.” (from Bogan’s “Night”)

I studied the tight lines of her poetry, the adept use of rhyme. In my journal I made a list of “Louise Bogan Words”: Medusa, dipping, alchemist, rocket, bosom, dust, fang, mesh, mouth, obey, cliff, apples, furrow, fortune, snare, pyramid, artery, apologia, curses, confession, tea, abroad, abstinence, career, remnant, shovels, bloated, piano, charm, convent, skull (and many more).

From Journey Around My Room, I copied out choice quotes, including: “Take off your earrings and do some work” and “The mere feel of the pen moving across the paper should be curative.”

And so, on a day to honor women, why not honor the rich history of women writers who have served as our mentors, their words speaking to us across decades, across centuries. Whether we read their words contained within the musty pages of old library books or whether we read their words online, they are there to mentor us, to give us an idea of how it’s done, how it can be done — despite those who would dare to silence us.

For more on Louise Bogan:

Louise Bogan Bio

To read a stunningly diverse collection of women’s voices before 1700, check out Other Women\’s Voices

There you’ll find links to such gems as:

Avvaiyar /Avvai (Bef. 300 Ce)

“…The Subtle Tongues Of Poets Skilled In The Search For Good Words.”

Otomo No Sakanoue & Kasa No Iratsume (700s)

“…Your Thoughts Disheveled Like Your Morning Hair.”

Yeshe Tsogyal /Ye-Ses-Mtsho-Rgyal (Later 700s-800s)

“This Wild Lady Has Done Everything.”

Kassiane /-Ni /Casia /Icasia (C.810-Bef.867)

“I Hate Silence When It Is A Time For Speaking.”

Yu Xuanji /Yu Hsuan-Chi (C.844-868?)

“My Silken Woman’s Dress Obscures My Poetry.”

Lalla /Lal Ded /Lalleshwari /Lal Arifa (D. Aft.1353)

“I Didn’t Trust It For A Moment, But I Drank It Anyway, The Wine Of My Own Poetry.”

Francoise D’aubigne, Madame Scarron, Marquise De Maintenon (1635-1719)

“If I Were To Follow My Own Inclinations….”

I hope these women’s writings inspire you across the ages, as “an overly long sleeve dips its oar/in an ink bottle’s spilling tide” (from “Cardigan-Bound” my poem in homage to Louise Bogan, published in HeartLodge, Summer 2008).

By Andrea Bates

“If the heart wills, the hand gathers the fingers to write a book.” – Rumi

(translated by Camille and Kabir Helmminski)

“I put myself entirely in your hands,” I said to the Indian woman swathed in a golden sari. We sat knee to knee at her booth at the Body, Mind, Spirit Expo in Raleigh, North Carolina.  Bright lights illuminated the poster board of swirling designs – the vines, the scrolls, the suns, the flowers, and the little earthenware pot containing honey spiked with sparkles and a wooden wand.

She took my left hand in hers. Across the back of my hand she moved the tip of a cone, as if she were icing a cake, making fancy scrolls along the edges. Up, down, around, little dots added for effect, and the final flourish – a point resembling a fleur de lis nestled between the knuckles of my ring and middle finger—a work of art in the luscious deep brown color of henna.

“What does it mean?” I asked.

“It is a good luck blessing,” she said, and patted my fingers.

“I like it. The point reminds me of a pen, you know, the nib of a fountain pen.”

At this she frowned slightly.

“No, no, it’s a good thing,” I said. “I’m a writer.”

She smiled. “Then it’s a good luck blessing for your writing. Come back in 20 minutes and I’ll seal it with the honey.”

A rite of passage: my first ever tattoo, henna or otherwise (hickeys and those temporary tattoos found in the Crackerjack boxes of my youth don’t count). I kept staring at it with the same compulsive furor I’ve been known to exhibit the day after I write a poem that I really like, which I then re-read many times, marveling, did those words flow from this pen?

As I wandered the exposition hall, I thought of that wonderful book, The Hand of the Poet: Poems and Papers in Manuscript, given to me by a dear friend. I thought about the hands of the poet James Merrill and his companion David Jackson, poised upon the plastic planchette of the Ouija board, channeling the spirit Ephraim, who dictated the material for The Changing Light at Sandover. I thought of the hands of the poet Longfellow; how difficult it must have been for his scarred fingers to hold a quill after the burns he suffered in trying to put out a fire that consumed his wife’s voluminous skirt and, tragically, her life. I thought of the hands of the poet Emily Dickinson, covered in flour as she kneaded the dough for bread, stopping to write a line on the back of a grocery receipt. And, of course, how could I not think of Keats:

This Living Hand

This living hand, now warm and capable

Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold

And in the icy silence of the tomb,

So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights

That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood

So in my veins red life might stream again,

And thou be conscience-calmed—see here it is—

I hold it towards you.

Twenty minutes later, I returned to the booth and held out my hand for its preservative seal of honey balm with iridescent sparkles. “Thank you. It is so lovely,” I said, and the Indian woman nodded her head in agreement.

I half expected her to quote Keats, “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” Instead, she said, again, as if I had forgotten: “A good luck blessing for your writing.”

Long after the henna has faded and disappeared, that warm wish will remain — deeply embedded into this poet’s living hand. Look at all the heart is willing to gather; “See how,” Rumi says, “the hand is invisible while the pen is writing.”

Both of these movies are on my must-see list for 2011:

Howl Trailer

Poetry Trailer

Shall we share a large buttered popcorn?

–Andrea Bates

A friend tells me:  “A carrot is kind of hard for a horse to turn down. And if you put a bushel in front of them, they’ll gorge themselves until they get sick.” Many writers are as fond of quotation books as horses are fond of carrots. Put a book of wit and witticisms in front of us and we’ll gorge ourselves, too, delighting in the delicious crunch of a well-turned phrase, a profound comment on human nature, a striking example of figurative language. How can something so yummy possibly be bad for us?

In a Poets & Writers interview (Nov/December 2005), poet Sarah Gridley warns: “…Go in fear of epigraphs. “ I wrote her advice in my journal, as I have been overly fond of famous bon mots to begin a poem.  Gridley cautions against them due to the time and money it takes to obtain permissions. But I wonder if this is really the thing to worry about.

There is another way to interpret Gridley’s cautionary advice. Perhaps we should go in fear of epigraphs if we’re looking to that epigraph to grant us permission to write about a particular topic. If that is its primary function, then it is just a prompt, a tool to get us writing, and may not deserve its place beneath our poem’s title. Robert Smith Surtees wrote, “There is no secret so close as that between a rider and his horse.” I would add: There is no secret so close as that between a writer and her poem. Do we really need someone else’s words to permit us to ride? We do not require anyone’s permission—not even that of some great sage whose wit has been anthologized in gilt-edged, leather bound volumes—to say whatever it is we want to say in our poems.

Frosty in Vermont

Some horse experts say you should never hand feed your horse carrots, as he will then expect one every time he sees you. Then, if you show up without one, the disappointed horse may bite. Perhaps it is this way, too, with epigraphs. If we rely on them too frequently as the carrot of promise dangling beneath a poem’s title, they may lose their effectiveness to surprise. Epigraphs are perhaps best as an occasional treat, a supplement to the hearty, substantial fare our own words should feed the reader.

Still, epigraphs are kind of hard for me to turn down. But lately I’ve been approaching their use in my poetry the same way I have approached my aunt’s horse in Vermont.  My aunt has taught me that the best way to feed a horse a carrot is to toss it at his feet once he’s put his ears forward and head down as a proper sign of respect. Otherwise, if you feed by hand and don’t keep your palm flat, a horse can bite through a finger or two—right down to bone. Feeding a horse, like feeding a poem, requires some restraint. Gorging on carrots or epigraphs just leads to bloated bellies and bloated poems.

–Andrea Bates

One of my favorite poem titles is Richard Wilbur’s “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World.” It’s a phrase taken from St. Augustine, and on this day of Saints and Valentines, it seems an especially appropriate idea to contemplate. Who or what is calling us? Are we listening? Are we answering?

As I read Wilbur’s poem, I imagine the persona lying in bed on a sunny morning. The window is open and the laundry from the previous day is still hanging out on the line. In that delicious rising toward fully awakening, the persona imagines the wafting linens as angels adrift on the breeze. The laundry angels call with the flapping of wings. Sun glints through the trees, dappling its light across a face, a pillow. How will we respond?

A calling is a strong impulse or inclination. On Valentine’s Day, many people feel a calling to savor fancy chocolates, to wear red, to stop and smell the roses (and perhaps bring some home), and to express their love in verse. For many, this is their annual, singular visit of the Muse – richly tasting and smelling of cocoa, vibrantly arrayed in crimson silk, tossing rose petals, penning lyrics. But for poets? Every day is Valentine’s Day. Every day we are called to open mysterious doors, track a scent across a room, take up our pens and open our notebooks to the angel of all lovely things. As poets with our love of words and image and dream and light, how could we not?

And so when the editors of Toadlily asked if I would contribute to the blog, I answered and joyfully opened that door. How could I not? Toadlily’s mission of developing a community of writers is one close to my own heart, and I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the realization of that goal. Like my blogging predecessor, fellow Toadlily poet Matthew Nienow, I’ll be writing regularly, so please subscribe with your favorite RSS feed if you haven’t already.

Wilbur writes, “…let there be nothing on earth but laundry.” I would say: let there be nothing on earth but poetry. This is my Valentine’s wish for you—that every day you are called to the red, ripe, juicy world of poems. That every day you listen – and respond – in light and in love.

–Andrea Bates

There is a fascinating essay by David Biespiel in the current issue of Poetry magazine. The tagline reads: “As go America’s poets, so goes American democracy.” I’m still trying to wrap my head around the complex issue of civic engagement in and out of poetry, and the comment chain complicates this even further. Is it enough to be politically engaged in one’s writing? Or does true civic engagement require something more?

Last night I had the good fortune of reading alongside my friend, the amazing poet, Todd Boss. Here’s an account of the evening:

“Located in the center of the universe,” as the store’s tagline lovingly puts it, Fremont Place Books is a cozy little independent shop that feels very much the center of something. The store is divided into a couple of rooms, lit with great displays and a wonderfully diverse gathering of books. To be certain, the space isn’t really designed for author readings, which, in this case, strangely made for a more intimate evening. Among other endearing quirks, a bookshelf runs down the center of the main corridor splitting the “audience” neatly in two. Todd and I sat on a nice little elevated nook backed by children’s books while people got comfortable in a few chairs, on the floor and everywhere in between.

Over thai food earlier in the evening, Todd suggested we abandon the traditional poetry reading model where one poet reads and talks, covering their entire set before passing the torch on to the next performer. I agreed. So, after a brief introduction by the incredibly kind store owner, Henry, Todd and I set the space. We would read back and forth, a few poems at a time, attempting a conversation in verse. Poems could call to each other directly or tangentially. We could banter a bit and improvise often. It’s a model Todd uses regularly in the reading series he curates back in Minnesota, aptly titled Verse and Converse.

The structure allowed us to respond to the room, looking up at the scattered faces—to customize the shape of the evening on the spot. It seemed to keep the listeners more animated as well, never allowing them too get to comfortable with one approach or voice. Sometimes Todd would stand to read his poems or recite them from memory. He also passed a stack of his books out to the audience so they could read along and feel the work of the words on the page. I sat, leaning forward on my knees, reading from a binder clipped manuscript of newer poems, knowing fewer of them by heart.

Our styles, both in presentation and on the page, played well together. Todd saved me from the trap of heaviness by reading some lighter poems, of which I don’t have too many. He also read the best sex poem I know of—a spicy piece—and everyone was blushing because it was that good. Even with our different voices, we both favor a rich musicality in our poems, something that, I like to think, makes us poetry cousins.

The evening began as a good conversation should—naturally and with something to say. And as we wrapped up it felt as though we had come to some understanding, some new ground. Todd graciously ended—or tried to end—with a new poemrecited from memory. He blanked on the last two couplets and we all laughed as a room of friends. The space was absent of the pomp or ego I often feel at other poetry readings (if not from the poet, then from the host or members of the audience). Sure, there was reverence on occasion, but with pretension removed the poems could do their talking a little more easily and it seemed that everyone had a better time.

The Sarah Lawrence Poetry Festival, the largest free poetry festival in New York State, runs from April 16-18. Two Toadlily authors will participate in panel discussions during the festival:

On Saturday, April 17, 1 PM, Toadlily editor and poet Meredith Trede will moderate a panel discussion entitled “Conversation: Maintaining the Poetic Self” (
Heimbold Auditorium) with panelists 
Ada Limón, 
Lynne Procope , and Brian Turner.

On Sunday, April 18, also at 1 PM, Toadlily editor and poet Myrna Goodman will be part of a panel on Publishing in the 21st Century. Other panel members are Zachary Schomburg of Octopus Magazines and Books and Sarah Gambito of Kundiman.

Hope to see you there!

Star-struck isn’t something I feel too often. Fondness, respect, admiration—these are regular parts of my life as a reader, in particular. But with a few folks I can’t get past that feeling that the legend of the person overshadows any chance I might have at a normal interaction with them. I love Jim Harrison’s work, but I think I could sit down to a gourmet meal with him and shoot the shit. If Larry Levis were still alive I’d buy him drinks and offer to light his smoke. But Sherman Alexie. I don’t know how I would talk to him.

I’ve written him many letters over the years, but I have never sent a single one. I just wrote another one this morning and this time I’m determined to put it in the mail.

Like many other writers, I just returned from this year’s AWP conference in Denver where, among other amazing things, I saw Sherman Alexie read at a Beloit Poetry Journal event. During the conference, I met up with old friends, made some new ones, chatted casually with Pulitzer-prize winners and many fabulous writers. I stayed out too late and had fun doing it. But Alexie’s reading made all the extra costs and slight discomforts, the feeling of being a lonely anonymous shape among 8,000 other mostly-lonely-anonymous shapes, worth all of it.

So what is it? What puts the twinkle in my eye when I speak of him? What makes him different?

I’ve been reading his books—poetry and prose—for years and they were some of the first books that really gave me the sense that I could do anything with my own writing. Not that I already had the skill or means to make anything work, but that I didn’t need to feel so confined in certain ways of approaching the world.

I think there is a sort of one way intimacy that makes a possible personal interaction strange and uncomfortable. From his words, I feel I know his mind. Even if it is a trickster mind. Inside the words I forget that he doesn’t know me. To chat with him would be like talking to a best friend with Alzheimer’s. “You mean you don’t remember anything about me?”

Okay, maybe that’s stretching it a bit far, but I think I’m getting closer to understanding what it is I mean to say. Perhaps it is because in his writing, Sherman wears so many different, but very convincing masks, that I’m not sure who I would be talking to. I think, without knowing for sure, that I can see Jim Harrison in his words. The same is true for Levis and countless other writers I care deeply for. Even another trickster like T.C. Boyle.

To resolve this rather complicated non-issue I have waited a long time to make sure that what I have to say is something of substance. I’m glad I haven’t gone up to him at a reading yet just to offer the same bland comment—however heartfelt—he hears all the time. I’m also glad I didn’t chase him down in Denver to ramble and stutter about his work (his work!) striking him as a crazy person to be avoided or forgotten. No, I waited. And now I’ll send a letter that says what I have long wanted to say, so that if we meet someday I can at least pretend he knows me a little, too.