[Jeff Holt]

Hello,

I haven't shown up here in a while--a long while. I've had a couple of kids and other things keeping me busy! But I do want to mention that there is a poetry anthology coming out from Oxford University Press on Nov. 14th that contains two of my poems. The anthology is "A Mind Apart: Poems of Melancholy, Madness and Addiction," edited by Mark Bauer, a Harvard Psychiatrist and metrical poet. Here is the publisher's description and a couple of reviews, the latter review from our friend David Mason:

Description
"Much madness is divinest sense," wrote Emily Dickinson, "And much sense the starkest madness." The idea that poetry and madness are deeply intertwined, and that madness sometimes leads to the most divine poetry, has been with us since antiquity. In his critical and clinical introduction to this splendid anthology--the first of its kind--psychiatrist and poet Mark S. Bauer considers mental disorders from multiple perspectives and challenges us to broaden our outlook. He has selected more than 200 poems from across seven centuries that reflect a wide range mental states--from despondency and despair to melancholy, mania, and complete submersion into a world of heightened, original perception. Featuring such poets as George Herbert, John Clare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Berryman, Sylvia Plath, Ann Sexton, Weldon Kees, Lucille Clifton, Jane Kenyon, and many others, A Mind Apart has much to offer those who suffer from mental illness, those who work to understand it, and all those who value the poetry that has come to us from the heights and depths of human experience.

Reviews
"A Mind Apart is a wonderful book: human, beautiful, and deeply moving. Dr. Bauer, a leading authority on depressive illnesses, has made a real contribution to our understanding of melancholia and madness." --Kay Redfield Jamison, author of An Unquiet Mind

"Almost as long as poetry has been written, it has been associated with madness. As both physician and poet, Mark Bauer is uniquely positioned to explore this field of reality and myth. His superb introductory essay argues that some kinds of unhinging are a benefit to poets, others a disaster. And his selection of poems from the Middle Ages to the present day is one of the most fascinating anthologies I have ever read."--David Mason, University of Colorado

For anyone interested in knowing more, such as checking out the table of contents etc., follow the link below. Thanks!
http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/genera...=9780195336412

Jeff

[Laura Heidy-Halberstein]

Excellent news, Jeff!! Congratulations. The poems and poets included are very impressive.

Nice to see you around these parts again, too!!

Lo

[Jim Hayes]

Excellent indeed Jeff, and excellent also that Wiley Clements,
Golias, also has a fine poem in this impressive anthology.

Congratulations both.

[Golias]

I look forward to reading your poems in A Mind Apart, Jeff.

Thanks, Jim. My particular poem in the anthology is "Military Journalist" which appeared a while back in my "Frost's Footprints" essay at The Distinguished Guest board, if I recall correctly. It's also supposed to appear in the Fall issue of Raintown Review, if there should be a Fall issue

I'm not sure into which of the anthology categories (melancholy, madness or addiction) I fall. Maybe all three---I'm hopelessly addicted to root-beer.


G/W

[Jeff Holt]

Laura, Jim, and Wiley--thanks! And Laura, glad to see you're here, too--long time no talk!

Wiley,

I look forward to reading "The Military Journalist" as well. Actually, I can't wait to see the anthology! I have always been fascinated by poems on madness, despair and such. My poems, "Imbalance" and "The Patient," definitely fall into the "madness" category"--I wrote them during a time when I was working with schizophrenics and I was imagining how the world looked through their eyes.

Cheers!

[R. S. Gwynn]

Great news, Jeff!

[David Mason]

Congrats to Jeff. And I see I now teach at the University of Colorado instead of Colorado College--well, I always did like Boulder...
Dave

[Golias]

I have now received and looked through a copy of this anthology. It contains quite a lot of strong poetry, but I don't think it's poetry many readers are likely to enjoy in large doses.

In his introduction the editor discusses several patterns of mental unease evidenced in the poems. My poem appears among those in which he sees a pattern of post-traumatic stress disorder. I can't say that classification is wrong since for a while after accompanying various Army and Marine units on the ground in the more active stages of the Korean War I did go through a rather bad patch emotionally, but the symptoms were not debilitating and they faded after I left the service and entered upon a more normal life.

One of Jeff's poems is an excellent villanelle spoken by a severely afflicted mental patient. The other is a skillfully made English sonnet.

However,few if any of these poems, not excluding mine and Jeff's, fill E.A. Poe's prescription for elevating the human soul. Poems about depression and melancholy tend to be depressing, however much we may admire the skill with which they are written.


G/W



[This message has been edited by Golias (edited November 25, 2008).]

[Jeff Holt]

Thanks Dave! That's too bad they didn't get your college right...

Golias, thank you for your kind words on my work. I greatly enjoyed your poem as well.

And actually, despite what you said about the majority of the poems in the anthology, including yours, being unlikely to elevate the human soul, they do elevate mine, unless I am going through a time of particular grief or anxiety. Because, for me, reading works by other poets writing from the heart of despair, or at least from the heart of deep strife, helps me to connect with them. I have always written from struggle, ever since I was writing what I would only refer to as juvenalia now. Even when I am writing comic verse, it usually begins with some sort of internal struggle.

Many, if not most, of the poets on this site, draw from a wider range of emotional inspiration, I suppose. Often people have questioned why I do not. Some friends have even challenged me, stating their impression that I am very talented but that I simply "refuse" to write about more cheerful matters. To them, I offer A. E. Housman's "Terence, This is Stupid Stuff" in reply. It is not that I only choose to write from melancholy; it is that the various forms of melancholy, and the various forms that mental instability play out in characters, are what inspire me to write.

Rhina Espaillat, whom I consider my "poetry mother"--which would make me her dark offspring, obviously, given her extremely wide range!--has advised me that I may write from a broader emotional point of view as I get older (I'm 37). She may be right. But for now, the darkness in human life is my muse. And, consequently, it is what I primarily find beautiful in the work of other poets. Not that I cannot admire a skillfully written poem on any subject. But at the gut level, the poems in this anthology, as well as poems by other truly masterful dark poets that were not included such as James (B.V.) Thomson and Thomas Lovell Beddoes are what grab my attention. Currently I'm deeply engrossed in the poetry, and life, of Sylvia Plath, another of my favorite poets.

So, perhaps there is a readership for this anthology, but not a "typical" readership. Readers who are fascinated by madness and melancholy, and with the field of psychiatry, and who are also curious about poetry...

Btw, when did you receive your anthology? Mine has yet to arrive. I have read nearly the entire anthology simply because my parents bought one and I borrowed it almost immediately!

[Golias]

I understand your attraction to dark poetry, Jeff, but I much prefer verse that's uplifting. Rhina is probably right---as one grows older and the shadow of mortality approaches encouragement becomes more welcome.

Neither have I received the promised copy of the anthology from OUP. I think it's because the person who asked for the reprint permission and who said she would send me a copy,a Ms. Christine Gibson, is no longer at OUP (NY), and her replacement probably knows nothing about the matter. I think the new person's name is Blackburn (or something like that). The direct telephone number to that desk is still 212-726-6145. I went ahead and ordered a copy online. It was only about $15.

It was nice to see myself smack between Robert Bly and Anne Sexton, two fairly good poets IMHO. I note that you are the second youngest poet in the anthology, the youngest being a 22-year-old whose contribution is a piece of gutter garbage.

The poem I enjoyed most of all in the book was this one by E. St-V. Millay:

I know a hundred ways to die.
I've often thought I'd try one:
Lie down beneath a motor truck
Some day when standing by one.

Or throw myself from off a bridge---
Except such things must be
So hard upon the scavengers
And men that clean the sea.

I know some poison I could drink.
I've often thought I'd taste it.
But mother bought it for the sink,
And drinking it would waste it.

____________________________________________

---and a very merry Christmas to one and all!

G/W