Writing Without Paper: Monday Muse: New Virginia Poet Laureate

. . . one of the important things that all art can do [is]: invite first

the artist and then the audience to reconsider life on different

terms. To the extent that we can imagine ourselves in other lives,

we increase our capacities for compassion and invention.

~ Tim Seibles*

Tim Seibles is Virginia's eighteenth Poet Laureate. His appointment was announced July 15, 2016.

Seibles, who continues in the post through June 30, 2018, succeeds Ron Smith (2014-2016).

Information about the legislatively created post is included in my Monday Muse profile of the late Claudia Emerson (2008-2010). Others who have served include Sofia M. Starnes (2012-2014) and Kelly Cherry (2010-2012).

* * * * *

. . . when I write a poem, I'm imagining anybody
and everybody as my audience (though, surely,
people of different backgrounds will understand
my poems in different ways).*

Self-described "ambassador of the arts", Philadelphia-born Tim Seibles is the author, most recently, of Body Moves (Corona Press, 1988; Carnegie Mellon Classic Contemporaries Series Poetry, 2013) and Fast Animal (Etruscan Press, 2012). The latter was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Award.

Seibles's One Turn Around the Sun is scheduled to publish on February 14, 2017. (Hear him read the title poem.)

The poet's other books include Buffalo Head Solos (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2004), a collection of persona poems; Hammerlock (CSU Poetry Center, 1999), and Hurdy-Gurdy (CSU Poetry Center, 1992). In addition, Seibles has published the chapbooks Ten Miles an Hour (Mille Grazie Press, 1998) and Kerosene (Ampersand Press, 1995).

A poem is an invitation to think hard about the human

condition, to recognize differences in experience and

to see our own struggles in the lives/voices of others. . . .**

. . . The tradition that interests me most is the tradition of

employing language with great care to capture something

essential about our time in the world. . . .**

Among the many subjects that Seibles addresses in his poetry are sexual discovery, love, spirituality, race, poverty, religion, innocence, loneliness, identity, self-awareness, childhood and adulthood, life's fragility, remembrance, power and vulnerability, the African past and present, sports, and animals. He salts his poems with numerous cultural references and allusions, from films to cartoon characters, to Greek and Roman myths, to politics; black vernacular or other slang, and what he describes as "highfalutin words"; and quotations from international poetry and other languages, especially African languages. Seibles's imagery is inventive, sometimes oddly juxtaposed, never stale, often sensual and consciously sexual. ("I try to embrace many facets of the sexual world in my poems," he told a Bucknell interviewer, adding, "This is one way for a poet to oppose those forces in the culture who fear this beautiful and mysterious aspect of our humanity.") His diction can be playful, sparkling with touches of humor, as well as lyrical. Rhyme also marks his work. Though he writes primarily free verse, Seibles also uses traditional forms, such as odes, ballads, and villanelles. He gives attention to line and stanza breaks and where he allows pauses (notice his spacing of words). He excels at poems in long form, which tend to run from 150 lines to 400 lines(!).

Following are excerpts from several of Seibles's poem, which I think are especially notable for their lyricism, beautiful, even startling images, and music. Notice, too, in the third excerpt (from an extraordinary poem) Seibles's use of metaphor, similes, and effective repetition. The energy in his poems is propulsive.

Early day, early summer, liquid sunlight
soaking the city and crape myrtle trees bring back
their pink and purple blooms: how can it happen
again, again—Earth spins and dawn unwraps
the night world as if to say show me a story
and the eyes blink

and hearts turn over—something like engines, maybe
like clocks—and not only in beds [. . . .]
~ from "One Turn Around the Sun"

Dusk in the body
      starlight near the heart.

One half-lit street
      heading into night: now

the insects magnify
      their small vocabularies [. . . .]
~ from "Walk"

Her mouth
fell into my mouth
like a summer snow, like a
5th season, like a fresh Eden,
like Eden when Eve made God
whimper with the liquid
tilt of her hips—
her kiss hurt like that—[. . . .]
~from "First Kiss" (for Lips)* from Buffalo Head Solos

* Hear Seibles read "First Kiss".

Poems by Seibles have appeared in such literary periodicals as The Artful Dodge, Beloit Poetry Journal, Black American Literary Forum, Black Renaissance Noire, Callaloo, Cortland Review, Dark Eros, Electronic Poetry Review, Huizache, Indiana Review, The Kenyon Review, Massachusetts Review, New England Review, New Letters, Ploughshares, Rattle, and Red Brick Review.

Seibles's poem "Sotto Voce: Othello, Unplugged" is anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2013 (Scribner, 2013); his poem "Allison Wolff" is in The Best American Poetry 2010 (Scribner, 2010).

Some other anthologies that include Seibles's work are Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin (Kindle Edition; W.W. Norton, June 2016), The 100 Best African American Poems (Sourcebooks MediaFusion, 2010), Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (University of Georgia Press, 2009), Seriously Funny, and So Much Things to Say (Akashic Books, 2010). The anthologies Autumn House Contemporary American Poetry, Outsiders: Poems About Rebels, Exiles and Renegades (Milkweed Editions, 1999), Verse and Universe: Poems About Science and Mathematics (Milkweed Editions, 1998), E. Ethelbert Miller's In Search of Color Everywhere, New American Poets of the '90s (Godine, 1991), and A Way Out of No Way: Writing about Growing Up Black in America (EdgeBooks, 1996) also feature Seibles's work.

Seibles has been the recipient of a number of awards, among them the 2013 PEN Oakland Literary Award (Poetry), for Fast Animal; the 2014 Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize; fellowships (Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, 1991; and National Endowment for the Arts, 1990), the 2009-2010 post as Poet-in-Residence at Bucknell University; and the Open Voice Award (National Writers Voice Project). He also is the holder of an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Misericordia University. In addition, artist Scott Stanton (a.k.a. Panhandle Slim) painted Seibles's portrait, one of eight decorating the walls of Payne Hall at Savannah State University.

A professor of English at Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia, where he teaches in both the English Department and MFA writing program, Seibles also leads or has led workshops for Cave Canem and the Zora Neale Hurston-Richared Wright Foundation; is a teaching board member of The Muse Writers Center, in Norfolk, Virginia; and teaches in the low-residency Stonecoast MFA creative writing program at the University of Southern Maine. In addition, he visits colleges and universities, as well as middle and high schools, to read and demonstrate his love of poetry, conduct workshops, or lecture. He attends many poetry festivals in the United States and abroad.

Resources

Photo Credit: John-Henry Doucette

All Poetry Excerpts © Tim Seibles

* Quoted from Bucknell Interview (See link below.)

** Quoted from Poem of the Week Interview (See link below.)

Office of the Governor, "Govenor McAuliffe Announces Administration Appointments", News Release, July 15, 2016