the dead poet gets paid

In her book about poets, remarkably few lines of poetry are quoted. Ada Calhoun explains by doing some accounting for us:

[F]or permission to share … six lines [by W. H. Auden] I had to sign two contracts and pay $285.37. … [Breaking it down further she says] to use these six lines in the audiobook and in print for countries excluding the US, Canada, and the Philippines, I paid Curtis Brown, Ltd., $195.37. For print rights in the U.S., Canada, and the Philippines I paid Penguin Random House $90.”

That’s pretty good scratch for six lines, no? Too bad Auden isn’t alive to enjoy it. Auden didn’t leave behind kids or a spouse, so I wonder what heir(s) get a cut?

source: 

Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, my father, and me

Ada Calhoun

2022. Grove Press, New York NY

being a ghost

There are different kinds of writers. Ada Calhoun is one I’m not, that is, she’s a professional. She writes in order to pay the bills, so she writes to order. She is able to write to please people who will cut her a check. In her new memoir about failing to write a Frank O’Hara biography Calhoun describes some of her projects:

A few years ago, I got a call from my agent telling me that a celebrity needed someone to redo the twenty thousand words the first ghostwriter had done and then to finish the hundred-thousand-word manuscript in five weeks. The book came out and hit the New York Times bestseller list.

A couple of years after that, I sensed that a memoir on which I was the ghost might be in jeopardy. The celebrity was making sounds about the pages not sounding quite right, a red flag. I asked for a sample of writing that worked. Then I spent hours mapping the grammar of that sample, line by line, onto each story I’d been told. That book came out on time, and it, too, hit the New York Times bestseller list.

I wouldn’t be able to do this. I could probably mimic a preferred style for a page or two. Even then it would be torture. I remember back in the 90s when I was going to UC Berkeley, Fodor’s created a new travel guides imprint to compete with Lonely Planet. The Berkeley Guides were going to be hip and happening, man, and Fodor’s was going to take advantage of Berkeley’s rep for being counterculture, which Fodor’s definitely wasn’t. Fodor’s set up shop on or near campus — and began advertising for writers and editors. I took out an application, pored over it, and ultimately realized it was not for me, neither as editor nor as writer. I just can’t crank out copy. I can write, but I can’t write like that.

source: 

Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, my father, and me

Ada Calhoun

2022. Grove Press, New York NY 

tornado lucky

I don’t think there are any disaster-free zones on this planet. I live in earthquake country. Florida gets lashed by hurricanes. Tornadoes tear through the plains states. But then, being an Ozophile, twisters have that extra romance. In his short story “Monsters” David Franke writes about tornados from a kid’s perspective:

The weatherman came on again to say we were no longer having a tornado watch but that it had turned into a tornado warning. His voice became both flatter and more excited. … The weatherman named roads and landmarks, saying a funnel cloud had been spotted southwest of town and was moving northeast at about thirty miles an hour. We got information at school about this. You are supposed to make sure there are no yard tools lying around; they can cause injury in high winds. Do not sit near glass windows. Flying pieces of broken glass can blind you. If you are in car, park and crawl into the nearest ditch and lie down and wait, which sounded like fun. My dream was to crawl up under a bridge abutment when a tornado came so I could watch it come close, and all I’d have to do is hang on. It was supposed to roar like a train. Some people got sucked up in a tornado, as in The Wizard of Oz. You never know when you’re going to get lucky.

source:

Colorado Review, v.48 n.1, Spring 2021

events to which no one came

I have scheduled events to which no one came. I have been scheduled for events to which no one came. 

One odd night at the San Francisco series I was co-hosting, Poetry & Pizza, the two featured poets did not show. Fortunately (?), no audience did either. 

For Clearly Meant, the reading series I host out of the Berkeley Public Library’s Claremont Branch, there was one reading with a total audience of one. Because he was intelligent and lively in the discussion and talked in an interesting fashion about his own poetry, I later scheduled that audience for his own reading. 

I have probably hidden memories of some of my own empty/singular audience readings. There was that one at a cafe in Cotati where the coordinator couldn’t make it. A friend filled in for her. But there was a table near the door that talked louder as I read, as though they weren’t going to let any dumb poetry reading interfere with their good time. No one shushed them. Why was I there? I asked myself. But I carried on like, I imagined, a professional. Besides my co-reader, a friend I’d brought along from Berkeley, and my husband and the host, there was maybe one person, or two?, that looked like they might be paying attention. 

I don’t know whether it’s reassuring to hear from others who have had similar experiences, or sad. 

Fanny Howe writes about reading for the St. Mark’s Poetry Project in New York City: 

I have read there a few times — always in atrocious weather (hailstorms, blizzards, and gales) — and have had a wonderful audience nevertheless. Once, however, when I was giving a talk, no one came. Ron Padgett recorded me as I read to him alone, and then a mad woman roamed in from the wet streets and tore my talk to shreds.

source:

Out of This World: an anthology of the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, 1966-1991

edited by Anne Waldman

1991. Crown Publishers, New York