Donna Hilbert's Blog: Poetry Passion

In the mid-nineties I saw a first-rate production of the musical “Carousel” in London; the interpretation was darker than the fifty’s film version and intensely moving. It was mid-week and the row my husband and I sat in was filled with businessmen in suit and tie. By the scene near the end when Billy returns from death for the dream ballet with his daughter, Louise, the entire row was sobbing.
In talking about it later my husband and I came to the obvious, yet still profound, conclusion that the hunger for redemption in the father child relationship is universal. We all yearn, at least metaphorically, to dance with our fathers.

There is a movement every April to write 30 poems in 30 days. This would be great and I hope that everyone interested can do just that. Another way to celebrate the month would be to write for 30 minutes every day, including weekends, whether or not you think that you have anything to say.
How about submitting 30 poems for publication? 6 packets to 5 different journals or 2 slim chapbooks or 1 fat one would fill the bill.
How about an anthology of your 30 favorite poems discovered since last April?
How about memorizing 30 lines of poetry?
How about devising a new formal structure consisting of 30 lines and whatever else might catch your fancy?
The point is—production and success do not occur in a vacuum. Constant effort is required. If a poem isn’t coming together the way you would like, put it away for a while and read some poetry, or submit to a journal or two. Try a new form. Try a new writing instrument. Have you ever written a poem with a crayon or with your non-dominate hand?
How about having some fun with words every day for 30 days?

Thanks to Lorene Delany-Ullman author of the new prose poetry collection Camouflage for the Neighborhood for tagging me in THE NEXT BIG THING

What is the title or working title of your book?

The Congress of Luminous Bodies

Where did the idea come from for the book?

I don’t work from a set idea or intention; what I have to say is a product of my pen moving across the page, from my hand writing. I write the first several drafts with my left, or non-dominant hand, and then I write a few more drafts with my right hand. Only when I have a serviceable draft, do I move to the computer. Somewhere in this process themes and images start to make sense together and the book begins to take shape.

What genre does your book fall under?

The Congress of Luminous Bodies is a collection of new poetry.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Since the book is a poetry collection, it is unlikely that a movie will be made from it. However, my last book, The Green Season was a companion piece to the documentary about my coming to terms (if one can ever actually do that) with my husband’s sudden death. I played myself in that film.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

Here is a fragment: love, loss, more love, more loss, more love, reconciliation, happiness.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

When I finish one book, everything I write is potentially part of the next book. Each individual poem has probably undergone twenty drafts—some more, some less.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Kevin Patrick Lee, publisher of Aortic Books, asked if he could publish my next book, so that was certainly an incentive to bring the poems together and shape them into a book. When I have thirty to forty poems, I begin to imagine how they might work side by side, and slowly the book unfolds.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

The book cover is from a photograph by Naomi Flecker Gustafson that I find to be mysterious and evocative. When I saw the photo I was determined to get it for the book. Happily, it worked out.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

My book is being published by Aortic Books and should be available from Amazon and from the publisher within the next two weeks.

My tagged writers for next Wednesday, February 27, THE NEXT BIG THING are: Jo Scott-Coe, Elizabeth Oakes, and Stephanie Barbe′ Hammer.

A few days into a three-week vacation September 11, 2001, I was on a train with friends returning from a day-trip to Florence to the house we were sharing in Castellina in Chianti. We had seen Michelangelo’s David, had a fine lunch with wine, and were laughing and talking amongst ourselves when an American woman sitting close-by said, “Obviously, you haven’t heard the news.”

When I went to bed that night, after frantic phone calls home and hours of watching TV coverage in Italian, I longed for the consolation of poetry. I wanted to say familiar words to myself as I fell asleep, but I could only bring up a few lines, incompletely remembered. Among the half-remembered poems, were these words from Auden: About suffering, they were never wrong. / The Old Masters: how well they understood its human position; how it takes place/ while someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along. How perfectly those words captured our own obliviousness to what was going on across the Atlantic while we were having fun.

In the ten years and the many trips that have followed the horrid events of 9/11, the nature of travel has changed. Fees for checked bags, intensive security, and limits to what we may carry on board. I have come to believe that the most important item I travel with are the words that comfort and guide me into the unknown, which is after all, the only place where any of us travel