Damon McLaughlin @ Best New Poetry--Runnin' Down a Dream

. . . is it possible such habits—such things as routine exercise, diet, routine sleep patterns, and so on—can affect not only our ability to imagine but also our ability to write? They must, but—I mean—what if there’s a recipe for good poetry, and it includes things like—50 sit-ups and push-ups daily, preferably before breakfast, which should be comprised of 1 mango and a cup of Greek yogurt, preferably with a drop of honey, and one 8 oz. cup of medium roast coffee, preferably a single-origin bean from Latin America, all of which should be consumed within 12-15 minutes for optimal imaginative prowess, and so on, and so on throughout the day, each ingredient and the ingredients in tandem resulting in a specific mental effect. What if—worse—that recipe is like a baking recipe, which can’t really be fiddled with or you’ll the ruin the cheesecake, the custard, what-have-you. I know there’s a growing science on creativity and on how genes and the environment interact and on how such interaction affects the brain. What if these researchers discover a formula for the muse? The diet-exercise plan for sonnets? The Shakespeare diet? The Billy Collins Diet? The Ashbery Plan? What if the success of your craft was as dependent on the other mental processes as it was on those related to poetry?

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Damon McLaughlin @ Best American Poetry--Form for Thought

In his initial discussion of tone languages in Music, Language, and the Brain, Aniriddh D. Patel writes briefly of the Chinantec, an indigenous people of southern Mexico, who utilize a whistled speech in addition to their tonal, spoken word. They use whistle combinations “of tone and stress distinctions to communicate messages with minimal ambiguity.” And he’s not talking about a hey! or an over here! or some ridiculous catcall. He’s suggesting they actually have a whistle language. . .

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Damon McLaughlin @ Best American Poetry-- Cameron Scott asks...

A few days ago, poet Cameron Scott sent out an email that asked “What role should ‘the self’ play in a poem? In other words should a poem be about the self as little as possible, or what the heck, it’s all about me?” He’s a contributing editor for CheekTeeth, the blog for Trachodon Magazine, and is looking to incorporates responses into a future post. With his permission, I asked that I respond here at Best American Poetry.

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Damon McLaughlin @ Best American Poetry--Thank You, Brenda Hillman

I was listening to a lecture at the Poetry Foundation the other day when I jotted down this little Brenda Hillman tidbit: “For the lover of poetry, there is a disequilibrium between himself and the world that nothing satisfies but poetry.” For one of my posts here, I was going to write about the manic state, itself an imbalance, into which poetry can thrust me, the effects of such a state, and to discuss that state in terms of writer’s process. Then I heard Hillman and was like—that’s it, that’s what I was hoping to say. My wife, who is not a lover of poetry, agrees with Hillman’s declaration—at least for the strange case of her husband. At her gentlest, she says I’m in my head; at her most honest, she says I’m not living in reality. But I doubt that’s the case, right?

Read more @ the Best American Poetry blog, where I am the guest blogger this week. Look forward to posts about the "self," oysters, the mind-body connection, and Emily Dickinson -- that's the plan anyway. On any given morning, who knows what will happen?