Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
I am writing to you about writing from a writers conference. How meta!
I’ve been attending the San Francisco Writers Conference for the last 15 years. I’ve made a ton of good friends here, met some best-selling authors (such as the iconic authors R.L. Stine and John Lescroart – hi John!), and learned much about writing and the publishing industry that I’ve shared with subsequent clients and students.
But I really keep coming back for the poetry. My friend Brad Henderson and I used to run most of the poetry panels for the conference, but in recent years the conference has established a poetry track that reflects the deep poetry roots of this beautiful city.
Running the track this year is the current San Francisco poet laureate, Tongo Eisen-Martin. Tongo appeared on my radio show earlier this year, as well as reading in my reading series when I was on Zoom. Wielding a rich and allusive imagination that leads him to fresh and surreal juxtapositions of phrases and imagery, Tongo has one of the most original voices that I’ve heard in a live poet.
And because attending a writers conference or working on a writing project leads me inevitably to my favorite Margaret Drabble quotation (“Sometimes it seems the only accomplishment my education ever bestowed on me was the ability to think in quotations”), I thought I would devote much of the rest of this week’s newsletter to a few of the comments that Tongo Eisen-Martin made in his long introduction to poetry and to the poetry panel this morning at the San Francisco Writers Conference:
Poetry can be a strange sort of hegemonic autopilot.
The internal journey is crucial, too. I hate to be a hippie about it, but you have to blow your own mind first.
Duke Ellington said that “Every musician gets a shot.”
The bourgeois-derived poetry world remains behind closed doors.
Remember that in every room you visit as a poet, there is someone who can help you. A blues guitarist once told me, “Don’t turn down any gig. You never know who is in any room, and every gig gives you a chance to practice.”
I write two to three hours a day, regardless of whether or not I have something to say. I just put a timer on, and I keep at it. When I do this, I don’t sit down to write an individual poem – I sit down just to write. Then I have miles and miles of material to shape poems from.
Your poems should move cooperatively with your own interests in becoming a better human.
Reciting a poem from memory connects the mind, body, and soul, especially if you can imagine waking up to a line of your own poetry. When you let go of your own personal vendettas, your own personal territory, then everything becomes acute.
To find a poetry community, go to where all the underdogs are.
The true journey is the journey to your own voice.
Tongo shared so much other wisdom that I happened not to jot down. Like my UC Davis students taking their favorite lecture-captured courses, I look forward to watching the video even though I was there to hear Tongo Eisen-Martin speak.
I invite you to share with me the names (and occasions) of speakers who you’ve seen who really impressed you with their wisdom and authenticity. Meanwhile, please do watch some video of Tongo Eisen-Martin performing while I rush back to the conference.
Also, enjoy the photo collage that my wife Kate made of her adventures with our boys and Margot while I was masked in a hotel conference room.
Be well!
Dr. Andy
I had to finish this week’s Pub Quiz early, because I performed 15 questions from it at the Friday breakfast of the San Francisco Writers Conference. As a result of that target audience, the questions are more bookish than usual. Expect questions on topics raised above, and on the following: San Francisco, short names, notable patients, Agatha Christie, greenery, Davis elementary schools, South America, old names, top-grossing films, dystopias, fountain pens, Las Vegas, Versailles, Puerto Rico, neon fleabags, The Grateful Dead, memoirs, titles with colors, boring beetles, American heroes, fancy terms for rocks, super bowls, proponents of levitation, islands, notable parks, airports, shipments of phones, current events, and Shakespeare.
An increasing number of authors are turning to Patreon as a way of circumventing traditional publishing. Thanks to all the supporters on Patreon who make all this happen, especially the Outside Agitators, the Original Vincibles, and Quizimodo. I’m always grateful to players who pledge for their entire team. I so enjoyed performing in person this week, and hope to do so for you again sometime!
Dr. Andy
P.S. Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:
- Mottos and Slogans. Although a pub is not forever, what company uses the slogan “A Diamond is Forever”?
- Internet Culture. What Hollywood actress is known to some as the mother of Wi-Fi?
- Religiosity. According to polling done from 2014-2018, for only one state in the United States do more than 75% of those polled answer “Yes” to the question asking if “religion is very important in their lives.” This state’s name is found in the first 25% of the alphabet. Name the state.
P.P.S. “An apt quotation is like a lamp which flings its light over the whole sentence.” Letitia Landon