Matthew Guenette

Updates…

Matthew — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:00:54 +0000

All squared for my upcoming residency at the Vermont Studio Center: check.

Nearly done drafting the poem I was asked to write for next Thursday’s Bridge Poetry Series Event at the new Chazen Museum here in Madison: check.

Final student portfolio’s turned in: check, check, check…

CV updated: check.

Methinks it’s a Miller Time…

Sunday Morning Poeming

Matthew — Sun, 06 May 2012 16:21:48 +0000

A good morning. Thunderstorms. And I seem to writing a poem about sex and religion. Okay…I’m listening to this while I work…

Fundamentals: The Jump Stop

Matthew — Tue, 01 May 2012 02:07:51 +0000

My poetry and creative writing students sometimes ask when a poem is done. Hard to say, but here’s when I start to feel done with a poem: soon as I know what it is. The fun, the rush of making is in not knowing where the poem is going. Surprise, the numerous possibilities signalling in the language, the strange turns from one phrase to another, that’s where it’s at…

It’s impossible for me to be interested in what I’m writing if it already seems prefigured. This is why when someone says “write a love poem” or “write a political poem” I feel like a fox caught in a trap.

So when a poem gets to that point where I can see the end of the road, time to stop and head in another direction.

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read…

Matthew — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 19:26:33 +0000

Can we get Jimmy Kimmel (and while we’re at it John Stewart, and Steven Colbert, and…) on the national payroll? I’m bummed that President Obama doesn’t host a White House Correspondents Dinner at least once a month. For those who say there’s little difference between Democrats and Republicans, I say when it comes to humor, when it comes to irony and being intentionally funny, there is a fierce difference. I would also say this difference highlights a worldview that is meaningfully distinct from the ones some Republicans peddle in their one-note, barely disguised pro-theocracy, life-is-a-nightmare scare ads.

Comedy–like poetry–is timing and tying the fitting surprise to a critique (including self-critique) of power. Generally speaking it strikes out from the margins at the center. Not that the President of the United States isn’t powerful and firmly in the center. But this Presidency, like none in recent memory, has been marginalized by racism and a campaign of misinformation and extreme politics.

In the meantime, please: more jokes about Mitt’s middle class fiscal sensibilities (it would probably take me over 100 years to make what Mitt made in 2011) and a GOP more conservative (see: in love with the dark ages) than any in the last 100 years.

Because if Mitt somehow wins the big election…

Under Your Spell

Matthew — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 02:33:54 +0000

Today I taped a note to one of the plastic glow-in-the-dark zombies on my desk. The note said, “I want to pick your brain over a mocha.” Then I took a picture of that and it was good. Then I came home and listened to this song three times in a row. This is what we call, in the world of poetry, billable hours…But who do I send the bill to?

Here’s How It Works…

Matthew — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:15:42 +0000

I have three waves of poems rolling at once. The first wave is the oldest, poems drafted at least a year ago. These are the most fun to work on. Whatever attachments I had have grown impersonal enough so that I can tend to new possibilities, new surprises, whatever inquiries the language is signalling…

Second wave poems were drafted between 3-6 months back. I still have attachments that keep me from making the best choices. But this is also where I begin the experiments–swapping nouns for other nouns, mating two or three (or more, oh my!) poems together, collaging texts from other sources, trying out different forms and rhetorical gestures. Lots of simulating and being influenced by current interests…

Third wave poems are just drafted. They are unruly. They lack perspective. Lots of wipeouts. I should never share them with anyone but, foolishly, I do. I tend to feel too good or bad about these poems,

The point of these waves (and why I share my “wave” outlook with students) is that I can rarely claim to have writer’s block. If the third wave–the one most closely associated with inspiration–isn’t happening, I can always go to the others. There’s always something to work on.

Tomorrow I’m driving up to St. Paul with Adam Fell and Kara Candito to read in the Third Annual Great Twin Cities Poetry Read. Show starts at 7 p.m., at Hamline University. Adam is promising to drive like Ryan Gosling in Drive.

Have you read Erika Meitner’s beautiful “Elegy with Jack Daniels, maps, a lemon tree, female aquanauts, in which the ghost of Adrienne Rich appears and doesn’t vanish”?

Have you read this incredible essay, “What We Hunger For”, by Roxane Gay?

You’re welcome…

Too many shadows, whispering voices, faces on posters, too many choices…

Matthew — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:17:20 +0000

I bet this happens all the time, that schizophrenic feeling writers feel about their work…

The last few weeks I’ve been in a groove, re-shaping old poems, drafting new ones. Work has mostly felt alright, the new manuscript finally has a concept to focus it, but last night, re-reading poems, I felt that pang of “oh man, I stink…”

My thoughts pendulum…But the truth is, new poems are rarely as good as they seem when we draft them, nor should we think of them as terrible when returning to them a short-time later. In the middle, there’s usually good news: what I have for my efforts is plenty of material to cart off to the Vermont Studio Center in June.

In the meantime, I’ve been trying to keep pace with some hard-working Wisconsin poet friends who are writing a poem a day for NaPoWiMo. One of those poets, Jacques Rancourt, has a piece on this challenge in the Potomac Review.

I’ve rediscovered a classic. First time I heard this I was 13 years old, on a train to Poughkeepsie, New York…

It’s Official!

Matthew — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 14:45:10 +0000

…I finally received my “No Guggenheim For You!” email. Serious bizness. My two favorite things are…

The subject line, which read, “An Important Message From The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.” Wasn’t that a little misleading? Shouldn’t it have read, “An Important Rejection…”? Did all those words–even “from” and “the”–really need to be capitalized?
A PDF copy of the exact, 2-sentence email message, on official “letterhead”, for my “records”, with a genuine Edward Hirsch signature. Who or what exactly should I be saving this rejection for? I feel a poem coming on. Maybe a sestina. Something where the snake gets to eat its tail…

Out of 3000 applicants, 181 Fellowships were awarded. Most no doubt to struggling writers, marginalized writers, writers not already in positions of relative privilege in the world of creative writing, writers who haven’t already won the prizes, fellowships, residencies, awards, etc. In short, writers who could really use the cheddar. I’m done being a baby now…

But I’m still going places. Next Saturday (April 21) I’ll be one of 30 poets reading at the Third Annual Great Twin Cities Poetry Read. I love Minneapolis, the crown jewel of the upper Midwest. For a little back-story on this event, click here. The ever-charming, ever-energetic Matt Mauch brings this reading to life. Check out the monster flyer below. And that line-up! Oh my! Many hearts.

I don’t care what you say Guggenheim Committee of Selection… I’m still a lucky man…

Meet me in St. Louis

Matthew — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 02:41:41 +0000

Wednesday morning (9-9:50 am) I’m reading from American Busboy at the Meramec Writing Festival (this year’s theme: humor!) hosted by St. Louis Community College. Many thanks to the ever-gracious Pam Garvey (check out her killer chapbook Fear) for thinking of me and extending the invitation. My inner-busboy is buttered and ready…

Wednesday night (6-7 pm) I’m reading with fellow Saluki MFA-alum Travis Mossotti at The Wolf Public House in Ballwin, MO. Read his poem “Crossing the Gap” over at Rattle. Then do get your hands on his Swenson Award winning (and very wise) book, About the Dead.

I hope everyone’s National Poetry Month is off to a booming start. I’m writing a poem-a-day with some fellow Madison poets. Yesterday’s poem: so-so. Today’s poem: so-so-so…

Tomorrow’s poem?

Speaking of amazing books…

Matthew — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 15:39:00 +0000

“I read Matt Hart’s latest collection, Sermons and Lectures Both Blank and Relentless (Typecast Publishing, 2012), straight through on a two-stop flight from Madison, WI, to Manchester, NH. The whole time I felt like TSA had messed up: They let me through with an incendiary device.

Is anyone writing poems like this? Is anyone even close?…”

Read the rest of my review here, via “First Takes” over at the Southern Indiana Review…