A February/March Update from MEH (Two months for the price of one. Still free.)
My monthly (?) missive on all things MEH
Random Thoughts & Writing Prompts
Comics like this remind me of a lesson I had (lovingly) beat out of me during my MFA program.
Growing up in Massachusetts, with town names like Billerica, Dedham, Gloucester, Leicester, Leominster, and Reading (assume you pronounced that wrong, have been pronouncing it wrong while playing Monopoly) I didn’t believe in meter or scansion when it came to poetry. High school teachers who told me “all of Shakespeare’s sonnet are in perfect iambic pentameter” only made matters worse.
But one day during a one-on-one workshop, an MFA mentor told me that the images in my poem fell apart when the meter became inconsistent.
MEH: I don’t write in meter.
Her: Not doggedly, but you often have the same number of beats per line.
MEH: No I don’t. I don’t writer in meter.
Her: But…you do.
MEH: Meter’s not real.
Her: #%&*! Don’t tell me you’re one of those…!
I was given a chapter from an old edition of Nim’s Western Wind and Mary Oliver’s Rule for the Dance to read and set me straight. I learned how much of a disservice I was done in high school. How I would have loved poetry earlier if I wasn’t met with misinformation.
Telling a class to scan a sonnet and find the iambic pentameter, while never discussing the complexities of the craft, variations, spondees, or trochaic inversions sets a kid up for failure. You’re telling them to find something that is simply not present as you described it. They feel stupid or think you’re crazy. Go read the prologue to Romeo and Juliet and scan it for yourself. Then Google the scholarly fights over how it “should” be scanned. And then remember most kids have had this thrown at them in high school and told “it’s perfect unstressed/stressed all the way through.”
Maybe this post is a metaphor for other types of communication between adults and kids. Or maybe I’m just musing about poetry. It’s probably the former.
I’s now March and my new full-length collection, said the Frog to the scorpion, has been out from Harbor Editions for a couple weeks. Since I’ve only done one reading so far, people have asked what it is about.
There’s a parable about a scorpion who approaches a frog resting by a stream. She asks him for a ride across the waters atop his back. The frog, inching away, is reluctant, afraid the scorpion will kill him. The scorpion assures him that it is in both of their best interests to work together— the scorpion will get a ride and the frog will have made a good ally. The frog agrees and they out. But midway across the stream the scorpion stings the frog. As the frog begins to feel paralysis set in, he asks the scorpion why she has done this: “don't you understand that now we're both going to die?” The scorpion replies, “I couldn't help it. It's just my nature.”
said the Frog to the scorpion is a collection of love poems: the love of a Black teacher in the predominantly white institution of public education, the love of a man in a toxic romantic situation. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which “She/Her” the speaker is referring to in a poem, but both are case studies in honest effort being met with unrequited love.
But they are also a lesson in expectations: maybe the problem is that we are expecting actions and understandings from institutions and people who are incapable of reciprocating. While the public-facing façade is cosmetically appealing, while things look promising on paper, the system is not set up for our flourishing, or a person only cares about themselves. Maybe it’s a waste of time to fault them when we should have known better because it’s just their nature. We’re expecting a scorpion to not be a scorpion.
Thus, the more important question becomes, knowing what we know, do we continue to allow them on our perforated back? Why do we remain, if we remain? Who are we protecting and prioritizing? How long is that sustainable?
Feel free to use those final questions as writing prompts. Lord knows I have.
Poetry Collections I’ve Recently Read
Latest News and Publications
Award News
The Third Renunciation was named one of Fare Forward’s Editors’ Best of 2023. You can read the review here.
Recent Publications
“reflection,” “Black Men and Women in a Tavern,” and “casually and casualty share a Latin root” are three ekphrastic poems published in The Decolonial Passage. Background on the originating work for each is on my website. You can read the poems here.
"...believes all things" was published in 3 Elements Literary Review. Read the whole issue here. I’m on page #20.
Both “found” (a midrash qatan on Luke 15) and “subtlety: an assay” (a midrash qatan on Genesis 3) were published in Vita Poetica Journal. These have (painful) audio of me reading the poems.
“the Prophet confronts his attacker” was published in New York Quarterly . This is one of my theological sonnets that also appears in my full length The Third Renunciation (from New York Quarterly Books, 2023). CW: themes of sexual assault.
I have a guest blog post for A Game for Good Christians website entitled “God Planning Your Pain to Make A Point,” which uses one of my theological sonnets that appears in The Third Renunciation.
Other News
A review of The Third Renunciation dropped from Psaltery & Lyre.
An interview with Mass Poetry is now live.
The amazing Joan Kwon Glass featured one of my poems in her substack (which you should all have signed up for by now!)
I currently have poetry forthcoming in The Windhover and creative nonfiction forthcoming in MAYDAY Magazine (ya boy’s out here writing prose again!)
Upcoming Readings and Events
For March (so far…)
Tuesday, March 26 ~ Newton Free Library (Newton, MA)
Wednesday March 27th, ~ Tidepool Bookshop (Worcester, MA)
Saturday, March 30 ~ Open Doors Center for the Arts (Weymouth, MA)
[Any updates will be posted on my website]
Recent Events
I was honored to read at Grolier’s Poetry Book Shop with Dale Cottingham and April Ossman on Dec. 7, 2023. Watch the reading here.
I participated in the NAWP (Not AWP) virtual reading on February 9th.
On February 10th I virtually joined Mahru Elahi, Marguerite Sheffer, Brittany Rogers, and Davon Loeb on a AWP panel entitled On the Frontlines/School Matters: K-12 Teachers Writing the Classroom
The virtual book launch for said the Frog to the scorpion was on February 22nd. I was wonderfully joined by Kai Coggin and Maya Williams. Watch the reading here.