Charlotte Pence

Now Available! The Poetics of American Song Lyrics

2011-12-17T14:24:00.009-05:00

It has arrived. When I returned home yesterday and saw the box by my door, I knew what it was. And I was a bit hesitant to open it. Inside the box waited the finished, the complete, the

My First Chapbook is Now Available!

2011-09-30T13:52:00.005-04:00

I am happy to announce that my first chapbook, Weaves a Clear Night, is now available from Flying Trout Press. I wrote this chapbook one summer after taking two poetry workshops the previous semester. As

Review of Things Come On: An Amneoir by Joseph Harrington

2011-08-29T12:30:00.003-04:00

I’m a member of The Rumpus online poetry book club. All the books are soon-to-be-released, so this sense of discovery is exciting. We also receive an online visit from the author once during the discussion

At the Colony (And Draft of a New Poem)

2011-07-24T20:45:00.009-04:00

This month of July is one of solitude and writing for me. I am in Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica, which is home to the David and Julia White artist colony. Here, we are a forty-five minute bus ride away from the capitol in a little town tucked into the jungly mountains. Since the birds and sun are both so loud, I can’t sleep past 6:00. After a bit of resistance to this fact, I

Review of "Levi Johnston's Blues" by Ben Folds and Nick Hornby

2011-04-18T11:53:00.002-04:00

Last week, I assigned writing a persona poem to my beginning poetry class, which is always an interesting way to explore new material. To help give them a sense of a persona poem, I assigned the classic Browning poem, “My Last Duchess,” a few by Ai, Eminem’s “Without Me,” and a couple of songs off of Ben Folds and Nick Hornby’s latest album, Lonely Avenue, that is all

Some New Stuff

2010-11-08T17:37:00.002-05:00

Here are links to some new work of mine if you're interested. In Kenyon Review Online, I have an essay/poem in syllabics on collective paranoia. The poem talks about the American tendency toward hyper-fear—and the excessive attempts to counteract any harm be it on a political scale down to a small scale such as knowing exactly what to eat to prevent cancer, exactly how to

Review of Frederick Seidel’s poems in latest issue of Paris Review

2010-10-06T12:14:00.001-04:00

The five poems by Frederick Seidel in the latest issue of Paris Review were a bit of a disappointment. Perhaps I should say that in a punnier, over-the-top rhyming sort of way which would be more like his poems. I’m an admirer of his work in Ooga-Booga, and because of that, I was expecting a lot. The rhymes in the new poems such as “Store Windows” seldom move the poem in

Review of One of My Own Poems for a Change

2010-09-20T12:00:00.007-04:00

I rarely post any of my own poems on this blog, but I thought I would make an exception because of the poetry class am I teaching right now. They all just turned in poems to workshop for the first time this past week. So, I feel like they should get a sense of what I’m writing, too. The following poem was published about six months ago in Denver Quarterly Review and begins

Review of “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” by Wilco

2010-09-13T09:35:00.004-04:00

I thought I would follow-up my last blog post on songs and the ghost of the sonnet structure that I sometimes hear. The following song by Wilco is not a sonnet, but it’s a song that I could imagine someone calling a sonnet. We have the Shakespearean rhyme scheme of abab, cdcd, efef, and so on (although the song continues on and on with it). And the rhyme scheme is

Review of “On the Other Hand” by Randy Travis

2010-09-06T10:25:00.005-04:00

I was flipping through a poetry anthology and came upon this definition for a sonnet: “a form every poet will try.” While the definition may not help a beginning poet understand how to write a sonnet, it felt like an inside joke from lexicographer to reader—similar to Samuel Johnson’s hidden gems in A Dictionary of the English Language such as his definition of Monsieur: “a

Poem by Indonesian Poet Laksmi Pamuntjak

2010-08-22T14:46:00.004-04:00

I have now returned from my summer travels and am back to this world of running water, 24-hour electricity—and blogs. Since my husband and I spent six weeks this summer backpacking in Indonesia for our honeymoon, I thought it would be appropriate to open the blog with an Indonesian poet. This idea, however, was not as easy as I thought it would be. Indonesian poetry is

Away, away, away....

2010-06-09T04:15:00.005-04:00

I’m taking a six-week honeymoon to backpack around Indonesia, so I won’t be posting any poetry blogs during that time. I will, however, be blogging about the trip at http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Charlotte-Pence/.Happy Travels to everyone for the summer--and Cheers!P.S. Photo from the wedding reception/pub crawl.

Review of "Highlights and Interstices" by Jack Gilbert

2010-06-09T04:02:00.004-04:00

“A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy devices, coming now too late, now too early, by which Society would register the quick motions of man.” This quote by EM. Forster from Howard’s End was one that my mind kept returning to as Adam Prince and I planned our wedding these last couple of months. Yes, the wedding was fabulous, but so much

Review of “What Blues?” by Adam O. Davis

2010-05-04T12:35:00.002-04:00

As I mentioned in my past blog post, issue three of Grist just came out—and with that issue release, I am saying goodbye to a great three years with the journal. Joshua Robbins will be taking over as editor, and I know that this new journal will continue to flourish under his guidance. To celebrate the new issue, I wanted to highlight one of the poems in it.What Blues?By: Adam O. DavisHorseflies

Review of “Helen of Troy” by Charlotte Pence

2010-04-24T13:59:00.003-04:00

Each year our graduate department gives awards for fiction and poetry, and this year I placed first in poetry for this poem “Helen of Troy.” All the award winners are reading this Monday night at 7:00 in the University of Tennessee auditorium. These readings are always stellar, and this year should be no different judging from my compatriots who will also be reading. The

Review of ''Survival Tips for a Parallel Universe, Part One" by Tim Lockridge

2010-03-29T10:17:00.005-04:00

Survival Tips for a Parallel Universe, Part One By: Tim Lockridge (From the Latest Issue of Mid-American Review, Vol. XXIX, No. 2) You wake in a field and you know the feel of this field, the soft glance of grass against your cheek like a wineglass or sweater saying yes, we’ve met, remember, it was years ago and there were arms and arms not yours and in

Review of “Like Having a Light at Your Back You Can’t See But You Can Still Feel"--1 and 2.

2010-03-21T20:07:00.005-04:00

In C.D. Wright’s latest book that I’ve blogged about before, she does something quite interesting. She repeats large portions of her poems. In the second occurrence of the poem “Like Having a Light at Your Back You Can’t See but You Can Still Feel (1),” most of the lines are exact replicas. When my friend and fellow poet Darren Jackson pointed this out to me, I was surprised. I had already read

Review of '“… White of Forgetfulness, White of Safety”' by Robert Hass

2010-02-21T18:11:00.002-05:00

I’m preparing for my final doctoral exam (big yippee-yay there) which is this week, and I have been looking for poems that not only feature free-associating narrators, but passionate ones as well. (In what I read at least, I find more speakers who embrace confusion than who embrace outright joy.) Here’s a Robert Hass poem that some don’t like because they feel the

Review of "Cloud" by Kay Ryan

2010-02-06T10:05:00.009-05:00

Kay Ryan, current U.S. Poet Laureate, is reading at my university next week. Known for her short lines (rarely no more than four words), slant and perfect rhymes that startle in a similar manner to an unexpected image, and avoidance of first-person, she is a poet who sets trends instead of following them. Here’s a new poem just

Review of Frank Stanford's title poem "You"

2010-01-30T12:25:00.005-05:00

“When a writer dies, he or she dies two deaths and leaves two bodies behind, their physical body and their body of written work,” Greg Bacher writes on his blog dedicated to Frank Stanford, a poet who too few readers know. In 1978 at age twenty-nine, Stanford shot himself three times in the heart, leaving behind seven volumes of poetry. Within a year, two more volumes were

Review of C.D. Wright’s “Like the Sun Down There” from Rising, Falling, Hovering

2010-01-23T17:29:00.003-05:00

C.D. Wright’s thirteenth book is a collection of poems that addresses the concerns of the Bush years: Iraq, global trade, immigration, the “occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania” themselves, Hurricane Katrina, consumerism, and relationships. Each poem in this collection links together, repeating characters, refrains, and scenes. Sometimes Wright even repeats poems in almost their

Review of "Last Call" from Beth Bachmann's first book

2010-01-16T09:46:00.011-05:00

Temper by Beth Bachmann won the 2008 Donald Hall Prize in poetry and is a solid debut. The poems in this collection chronicle her sister’s murder from the perspective of an outsider—meaning the one left to wonder where is the sister, what happened, and why?The poem “Last Call” arrives early in the collection and speaks directly to this unknowing. As the title suggests, the poem focuses on the

Changing Up the Blog (which is similar to that impulse when you shake Boggle)

2010-01-07T17:49:00.005-05:00

For the past four years, I have been reading the old stuff, starting with Beowulf and bulldozing onward. Cramming it in. Analyzing it. Call it overcoming a crappy education. Call it inferiority complex. Call it the “historical sense” as T.S. Eliot does. I would agree with the Old Eliot here and say the historical sense was my motivation. Once I decided to really turn my life over to writing

Thinking about New Year’s Eve Poems….The classic “The Darkling Thrush” by Thomas Hardy and the not-so-classic “Ode to Waffle House” by Dave Smith

2009-12-31T20:46:00.005-05:00

The Darkling Thrush by Thomas HardyI leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-gray,And Winter's dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day.The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lyres,And all mankind that haunted nigh Had sought their household fires. The land's sharp features seemed to be The Century's corpse outleant,His crypt the cloudy

The Mega-List: My Favorite “Best of” Albums, Films, Books, TV, and Lies Lists

2009-12-20T09:50:00.005-05:00

If there is a disorder that involves loving to write and read lists, then I have it. And this time of year is a double dose of joy for my lovely neurosis because we have the end-of- the-decade lists AND end-of-the-year lists. Can I girl get much happier? I’ve been reading way too many of these and thought I would write the mega list: my list of my favorite lists. And please feel free to add your

Modern War

2009-12-11T10:20:00.003-05:00

I read this past Saturday at an “art share” hosted by Meredith McCarroll and Jeff Christmas. The idea behind it was for North Knoxville artists—which included dancers, musicians, painters, and writers—to come together, meet each other, and perform our work as a way to see what we do in a broad sense of exchange between all arts. Not only should I thank Meredith and Jeff for such a great night,

One of the First

2009-11-25T21:57:00.007-05:00

Dorothy Allison recently read at University of Tennessee and then came over to my house for a little reception afterward. She is best known for her work Bastard out of Carolina, and in fact, that was one of those books that made me want to be a writer. Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons was another. The poems “Those Winters Sundays” by Robert Hayden, “Alone” by Jack Gilbert, and finally “Hook” by James

Calls for Submissions

2009-11-18T20:35:00.001-05:00

I usually don’t do this on my blog, but I have two calls for submissions that might be helpful to a couple of you here. First, the journal that I edit, Grist, features a genre in each issue that is often overlooked. For the last issue, we published an excerpt of a graphic novel written by Adam Johnson, Tom Kealey, and the Stanford University Graphic Novel Project. And for issue three, we are

What Pat Pattison Has To Say

2009-11-11T18:09:00.006-05:00

Pat Pattison, songwriting professor at Berklee School of Music (who also teaches poetry there and has a background in literary criticism) just spoke in an interview about the differences between writing for the page versus writing for the ear. (He’s in my book and will be writing on all of this in more detail.) It’s a wonderful interview and hits upon craft and measure in ways most people

One of my Favorite Poems for Fall

2009-11-03T20:54:00.002-05:00

Here is a poem I wanted to share that I remember each fall. It’s a prose poem by Russell Edson. The Fall by Russell Edson There was a man who found two leaves and came indoors holdingthem out saying to his parents that he was a tree. To which they said then go into the yard and do not grow in the livingroom as your roots may ruin the carpet. He said I was fooling I am not a tree and he dropped

Something Old, But New for Me

2009-10-27T08:45:00.003-04:00

I read this last Friday with a great group of poets and tried something new. I memorized a poem. Now, this is such a been-around-the-block idea that I’m surprised I haven’t tried it before, especially considering that some of my favorite readers have been Marilyn Kallet and Yusef Komunyakaa who both recite some of their work. And that’s partially what’s striking to me. Although I’ve been told for

I Heart Abrams

2009-10-21T22:39:00.007-04:00

This week I have been restructuring my first poetry manuscript. Or rather, I’ve taken a bomb to my manuscript and am seeing where the pieces fall. Sandy Longhorn’s blog recently turned me on to something that Victoria Chang posted on problems she sees as a contest judge for first books. This blog is worth a read to any one wondering how to organize their first books. You can check it out at:

Good News

2009-10-13T11:53:00.001-04:00

I have some good news to share. I heard over the weekend that the University Press of Mississippi received final approval to publish a book that I will edit on the poetics of song lyrics. This has been a project in the making for a few years, and I can’t say how happy I am to see it come into being. As I had mentioned in an earlier blog, this book idea began when I started

Hearing Richard Buckner

2009-10-06T10:47:00.001-04:00

Adam surprised me with a trip to Asheville this past weekend to hear singer-songwriter Richard Buckner. From his first album Bloomed to his latest one Meadow, his style has changed from alt-country to this more husky, slurred, indie-rock thing. The album The Hill, which is Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology set to music, is a pivotal album change for him. That album

Exam

2009-09-26T22:30:00.000-04:00

I'm taking an exam all this weekend, one of three that I need for my Ph.D. program. The first exam covered the genre of poetry, and this one covers 19th century British literature. Two things should be apparent here. One: you will be having a much more relaxing weekend than I am. And two: these exams could be improved if we could trim the categories just a smidge. I’m not

Losing my Voice

2009-09-20T20:31:00.001-04:00

Voice. I lost mine this week. I loved losing it. Granted, I felt drab since I had to nod and smile as if I possessed no thought other than agreement. My dog indulged her scatological cravings since I couldn’t yell for her to not eat whatever deadness she found in the yard. And the flu-snot that caused the voicelessness of course created a general feeling of grodiness. But

Workshops and Woodchucks

2009-09-14T13:58:00.000-04:00

Classes have begun in full, and I’ve decided to audit one last poetry workshop. That word “workshop” has always tugged at me partly because of its similarity to “woodchucks.” Once I think about that, I start creating asinine substitutions to the woodchuck tongue twister such as: How much work would a workshop shop if a workshop could shop work? And then I wonder if that's

"Adultery" by James Dickey

2009-08-27T08:23:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I worked on poem titles, and the only good ones I could come up with were those by other poets. Here’s one of my favorite titles and first line combinations: “Adultery” by James Dickey. “We have all been in rooms / We cannot die in.…” How can a poet not be envious of that beginning? I admire a lot in this poem, but what I especially admire is the fallible speaker.

Mail Call

2009-08-15T18:40:00.000-04:00

What does three months of mail look like? Three bloated, rapacious, blobbish creatures—otherwise known as three brown shopping bags. Ugh. I didn’t start at the top and work my way down, but began by pawing through the bags for literary journals that had arrived over the summer. And I found a couple of surprises. One, I had three poems published in a journal who didn’t ask

Back in Amurika

2009-08-08T14:52:00.000-04:00

After about three months of traveling around, I’m back in the States—or Amurika as my Auntie A calls it. I’m slowly re-entering to this pace and first stayed a week with my boyfriend and his family out in California—in Orange County no less. And, yup, I’ve punched my Big Mac Card, strolled about Fashion Island, and indulged in the beach, feeling rather Americany. And here’s

Is a Song a Poem?

2009-08-04T15:00:00.000-04:00

Carrie Brownstein recently posted a music blog on NPR about how songs rarely translate well to paper. http://www.npr.org/blogs/monitormix/2009/07/drowned_in_sound.html In other words, she's saying words aren’t quite enough; a song, unlike a poem, needs the musical accompaniment and singers to fully deliver it. Undoubtedly. These discussions over whether or not songs can be

"There's a Hole in the Bucket"

2009-07-25T21:18:00.001-04:00

The other night, I began singing to Adam, “There’s a hole in the bucket, Dear Liza, Dear Liza...." (Full-force twang on bucket, of course.) We started scrambling to remember how the song went and eventually pieced it together. You need straw to plug the hole, an axe to cut the straw, a stone to sharpen the axe, water to wet the stone—and alas—a bucket to carry the water for the stone. In the end,

"The Lesson of Plenty"

2009-07-18T09:40:00.000-04:00

Being in Malaysia, I can’t help but sniff around for Malaysian poetry. I’ve always loved the Malaysian pantoum—that slippery, muscular, eel-in-the-hands form that is as much about repetition as resistance to the repetition. I mean, even when a line is repeated, it takes on a slightly different meaning because of what has come before it (if it’s done well). Admittedly, I’m

Ashram of the White Album

2009-07-06T19:12:00.000-04:00

I’ve been in India for the past two weeks—hence the lack of any postings. I’m not going to try to describe the experience in such a short amount of space, but I’ll just say that I’ve never had all of my senses and all of my thoughts so barraged. (Tsk, tsk: smelled like an attempt.) My friend Tiggy and I kept seeking out some quiet, so we went to Rishikesh. This is a town

Attention K-Mart Shoppers: Way to Avoid Fate is Available

2009-06-20T06:08:00.000-04:00

I’m not saying anything unusual when I say that as a poet I harbor an unhealthy relationship with my mailbox. Right after my first cup of tea, “it” begins, and I start peeping about for Karen (my mail carrier who manages to wear the shorts into November). Since I receive my mail around 3, sometimes around 3:45, and once at 5:04, I have plenty of time to reel through all the places that might

After Reading Sex at Noon Taxes

2009-06-12T08:47:00.001-04:00

Since I’m backpacking for three months, I hem-hawed for weeks over what books I could bring. Answer: four pounds of them, nothing more. In the end, I decided on Lonely Planet, Lolita (that I can trade for another novel at a book exchange), a Victorian anthology since I’m taking an exam on this subject in September, and two gloriously slender poetry books from first time

First Blog

2009-06-04T02:37:00.000-04:00

Ahh, my first blog. A lot of mental hoop-la went into thinking about doing this, and now posting, it’s much more akin to a whimper than a bang. I’m getting started here, so bear with me as I manage and mangle my way through all this. This summer, I’m writing as I travel throughout Malaysia. Sometimes traveling can result in zilch for writing. So far, this hasn’t been the