"No Pause for Breath" Camille Dungy on the One-Sentence Poem

Camille Dungy

No Pause for Breath

I was talking to a friend today about one-sentence poems I love.

By one-sentence poems I don’t mean very short poems like the one-line poems Michael McFee discussed in his Feb. 2008 article in the AWP Writer’s Chronicle. McFee has written a whole book made up of monostich (The Smallest Talk), and so he is likely much interested in the form and its function. That is an interesting line of inquiry (pardon the pun), but not what I’m talking about when I mention one-sentence poems here.

Read the entire post here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/06/no-pause-for-breath/

"Five Canadian Women Eco-Poets" New post by Camille Dungy at The Poetry Foundation

Camille Dungy

Five Canadian Women Eco-Poets

I’m in Canada right now at the biennial conference for Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE). In honor of my host nation, I thought I’d write about a few Canadian women poets whose work I enjoy.

Since I’m at the ASLE conference, thinking about the intersection between poetry and discussions of human impact on the environment, I should start by talking about Di Brandt. Brandt has been concerned about these issues for most of her career. In a review of her collection Now You Care, Jeff Gundy of the Georgia Review writes, “Brandt roams this industrial landscape like a feminist environmentalist postmodern Apollinaire, one who finds beauty and destruction wherever she goes.”

Read the entire post here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/06/3214/

Camille Dungy at the Poetry Foundation

Camille Dungy

Mujeres poetas de Venezuela/Women poets of Venezuela

I received an unanticipated package early this week. Each month, enough packages containing books or journals show up in my box that I tend to be unfazed when an unexpected package arrives. Often, when such books arrive, I take a cursory glace at the cover and the table of contents, register interest, then set the book aside, promising to return to it when I have a bit more time. Lately, I’ve been on the run, with too much to do in too few hours, and I’ll admit I opened the padded envelope without even bothering to see who/where it was from. But this little package was different. It had come all the way from Venezuela, carrying with it the work of twenty-five women I immediately wanted to get to know. Perfiles de la Noche/Profiles of Night: Mujeres poetas de Venezuela/Women poets of Venezuela compelled me to stop all my running, to sit down, to read.

The House Inside

To Poetry

The house needs both my hands.
I must hold up its plaster like my bones,
its salt like my joys,
its fable in the night
and the sun burning in the middle of its body.
I have to suffer the curtains and their seagulls
dead in flight.
Be moved by the garden and its sketched mask of flowers,
the innocent brick accused
of not being up to the mirrors,
and the doors open for new brides
with their sound of rice growing under the veil.
I have to look after its replica of the universe,
the memory of fields in the vases,
the concerted vigil of the table,
the pillow and its likeness of strayed birds,
the milk with dawn’s face under its brow
with the stiff solitude of a lily
simply being born.
I have to love it whole, going out of my hands
with the grace that lives on my dying grace.
And not know, not know there’s a clover village
with the sea at it’s door
and no names
nor lamps.

Read the entire post here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/05/mujeres-poetas-de-venezuelawomen-poets-of-venezuela/

Camille Dungy at the Poetry Foundation

Camille Dungy

What’s the word for wonderful in your language?

Global capitalism is nothing new. Through history, the need to maintain the flow of capital has driven the diasporas of people, languages, and, yes, poetry. Whoever thinks contemporary North American poetry is provincial or isolationist hasn’t read the four poets I discuss in this post.

Read the entire post here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/04/1863/

"The Line: Here" Camille Dungy at The Poetry Foundation

Camille Dungy

The Line: Here

Three of the grand mysteries: What makes a poem? What makes a stanza? What makes a poetic line?

James Longenbach opens his most recent book on the craft of writing with this quote from George Oppen: “The meaning of a poem is in the cadences and the shape of the lines and the pulse of the thought which is given by those lines.” For the next 120-odd pages Longenbach details his opinions on The Art of the Poetic Line.

The first two sentences of the book read thus: “Poetry is the sound of language organized in lines. More than meter, more than rhyme, more than images or alliteration or figurative language, line is what distinguishes our experience of poetry as poetry, rather than some other kind of writing.” He goes on to say (though I am still quoting only the preface): “The line’s function is sonic, a way of organizing the sound of language, and only by listening to the effect of a particular line in the context of a particular poem can we come to understand how lines work.”

Read the entire post here:
http://poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/03/the_line_here_1.html

Camille Dungy at The Poetry Foundation

Camille Dungy

"For oh, I fear"

I’ve spent at least eight hours of each of the past four days reading other people’s poems. I am attending to word choice, comma placement, the arrangement of lines on the page. I am remembering, in this process, how vulnerable we poets make ourselves each time we take first the risk of writing poems and then the subsequent risk of sending these poems out into the world. This can be a terrifying prospect, writing and then sharing poetry. What I like to read, now and again, are poems that speak directly to the perils of this art.

I thought of this idea when I ran across this poem:

"Poetry"

Sometimes I tremble like a storm-swept flower,
And seek to hide my tortured soul from thee,
Bowing my head in deep humility
Before the silent thunder of thy power.
Sometimes I flee before thy blazing light,
As from the specter of pursuing death;
Intimidated lest thy mighty breath,
Windways, will sweep me into utter night.
For oh, I fear they will be swallowed up—
The loves which are to me of vital worth,
My passion and my pleasure in the earth—
And lost forever in thy magic cup!
I fear, I fear my truly human heart
Will perish on the altar-stone of art!

Claude McKay, from Harlem Shadows (1922)

Read the entire post here:
http://poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/03/for_oh_i_fear.html

Camille Dungy Featured at "Poetry Daily"

Featured Poet

Camille Dungy

Camille Dungy is the author of What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison. Dungy has received fellowships from organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, and Cave Canem. She is associate professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University.

View the featured poem here: http://poems.com/poem.php?date=14271

Read the entire piece here: http://poems.com/feature.php?date=14271

Podcast of Camille Dungy's Reading at City Lights Available at "from the Fishouse"

Fishouse Live at City Lights

On May 17, 2007, From the Fishouse and City Lights Books were pleased to present a reading by poets Barbara Jane Reyes, Matthew Shenoda, Camille T. Dungy, Maria Hummel, and Shane Book at City Lights in San Francisco, California.

Read more and listen to the entire event here:
http://fishousepoems.org/archives/poems/fishouse_live_at_city_lights.shtml

Listen to Camille Dungy's reading here:
http://www.fishousepoems.org/archives/camille_t_dungy/camille_t_dungy_full_reading_at_city_lights.shtml

Camille Dungy to Read on December 13th with Damon Brown at "Writers with Drinks"

Camille Dungy and Damon Brown @ Writers With Drinks

	The Make Out Room, 3225 22nd. St., SF
	December 13, 2008, 19:30 to 21:30
	$3-$5 sliding scale
	Charlie Jane Anders

Award-winning reading series "Writers With Drinks" returns, with an extra nerd-tastic lineup of science fiction, fantasy and video games. Plus amazing poetry and deadpan comedy.

When: Saturday, December 13, 2008, 7:30 to 9:30 PM, doors open at 7:00 PM
Who: Jay Lake, Cat Rambo, Damon Brown, Steve Ferris and Camille T. Dungy
Where: The Make Out Room, 3225 22nd. St. between Mission and Valencia, San Francisco
How much: $3 to $5 sliding scale, all proceeds benefit the CSC.

Read the entire article here:
https://secure.ocf.berkeley.edu/~qrc/event_detail.php?eventid=379

Camille Dungy to Read on December 3rd with Oscar Bermeo, and DeWayne Dickerson

Poetry reading by Camille Dungy, Oscar Bermeo, and DeWayne Dickerson
FREE! (Please BYOB)
Wednesday, December 3rd, 7:30pm
Books & Bookshelves
99 Sanchez Street, SF
(415)621-3761
booksandbookshelves.blogspot.com

Camille T. Dungy is the author of What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison (Red Hen Press, 2006), a finalist for the PEN Center USA 2007 Literary Award and the Library of Virginia 2007 Literary Award. She is assistant editor of Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade (University of Michigan Press, 2006). Dungy has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Virginia Commission for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Cave Canem, the Dana Award, and the American Antiquarian Society. A graduate of Stanford University and the MFA program at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, her work has appeared in The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, The Crab Orchard Review, Poetry Daily, and other publications. She lives in San Francisco, Calif., where she serves as an associate professor in the Creative Writing Department at San Francisco State University. A co-founder of From the Fishouse, she is currently president of the board of directors, and co-editor of From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great (forthcoming in spring 2009 from Persea Books), edited with Jeffrey Thomson and Matt O’Donnell.

Read the full release here:
http://bjanepr.wordpress.com/2008/11/30/books-and-bookshelves-presents-camille-dungy-oscar-bermeo-and-dewayne-dickerson/