The Real McCoy

Kathleen McCoy on Poetry

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I’m a poet, a professor, a mother, a wife, a bit of an activist, a lover of the word at https://kathleenmccoy.wordpress.com. Poetry books include Ringing the Changes (Finishing Line Press, 2019), Green and Burning, Glas Agus a Dho (Word Tech, 2016) and More Water Than Words (chapbook, Finishing Line Press, 2017). Books are available from the publishers or Amazon, or order from your local bookseller.

  • McCoy reads from new poetry title, “Ringing the Changes” on March 24

    Thanks to the Adirondack Center for Writing for their support of writers in the Adirondack region. Here is their article on my forthcoming publication.

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    Kathleen McCoy will read from her upcoming book Ringing the Changes (Finishing Line Press) on Sunday, March 24, 4:00-5:30, at First Baptist Church of Glens Falls, 100 Maple Street, Glens Falls, NY 12801. Poetry reading and food are free. Preorders are $19.99 plus shipping and will be shipped on June 7th. Here’s what reviewers David Graham and Frannie Lindsay had to say about the book:

    Kathleen McCoy’sRinging the Changesis a multifaceted and generous-hearted exploration of mystery in its many forms. With a splendid variety of subject and poetic form, with mature and seasoned command of her craft, she speaks the fullest truths of her engagements with matters of spirit, dream, and art. The foundation is deeply Christian yet open to other faiths. In poems that are musically engaging, honest about doubt and failure, spiky, and complex, she beautifully manages to speak what almost cannot be spoken.

    –David…

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  • Ringing the Changes

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    Update on forthcoming title Ringing the Changes: Preorder ship date has been moved to June 7th if you get your preorder in by April 12th.

    I’m deeply grateful to Finishing Line Press for publishing my second full-length collection, a decade in the making. I’m also humbled by the generous reviews of Ringing the Changes from poets David Graham and Frannie Lindsay. Here’s a brief taste, the poem “Grace”:

    That recurring dream
    where you pour yourself
    a paper cup of arsenic

    thinking it is water but
    pause to question
    before drinking and

    watch the cup
    melt before
    your eyes can blink. — Kathleen McCoy, Ringing the Changes (publication date May 3, 2019)

    Preorders are available at /http://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/ringing-the-changes-by-kathleen-mccoy/. #poetry #poetrycommunity

  • Planning the Writing Year

    I’m starting my writing year with ideals.

    I’ve decided my strategy for accomplishing my multiple goals will rely upon my old three-legged stool: the sacred space-time of writing, the support of my family and writing group, and a newly revised set of ideals.

    If thinking about your writing goals for the new year evokes feelings as distinct as squirreliness and torpor, if you approach new work with excitement and review old work with a tinge of disappointment or self-doubt, if thrill and dread are vying for your heart, this post is for you.

    As I begin a deeply appreciated and long awaited sabbatical, I find myself swinging from ice-glazed branches, happily surveying the fresh white of land and soul and blank pages. I write, read, clean, catch up with friends virtual and real. I contemplate creating a schedule with its challenges and threats of internal resistance. I dread the planned mini-separations from the beloved spouse to do my research and writing. I also look forward to them. I sigh and reach for a chunk of dark chocolate.

    I’ve decided my strategy for accomplishing my multiple goals will rely upon my old three-legged stool: the sacred space-time of writing, the support of my family and writing group, and a newly revised set of ideals. Not just goals, but ideals.

    To create an ideals chart to guide your life this year without tearing out too much of your own hair, grab a pen and a fresh journal page, sheet of paper, or make a chart or spreadsheet. Create a column for each main area of your life (I have five categories: Mental, Spiritual, Physical, Poetic, and Homey.) Then write a word or phrase to guide your activities in that area of your life. Some words may cross categories: for me, cultivating “love” and “patience” applies in every area, from dealing with demands on my time to my own relationship with the literary world. I can challenge myself and support deeper thoughts, new approaches, new psychic and literal material for writing when supported by a rededication to my own ideals.

    Doing this relatively quick but meaningful reflective activity saves me a lot of angst. Emphasis on ideals keeps my focus on being more than on doing. My own drive and life will provide activities and goals. It’s through ideals that I can look forward to taking the inevitable rejections and challenges of the year along with the quandaries and joys in stride. It’s all progress. As Maggie Smith reminds us daily on Twitter, keep moving–to which I add, be still and centered, my soul.

  • Puzzles & Playthings

    303cc52b-fb54-4574-ab41-61905af2c14b.jpegAt a recent retreat with my intrepid writers’ group, I was advised that my prime directive in writing for the remainder of the year would be to “Play.” (This was uttered by the beloved poet to whom I’d given identical advice a few years ago when she was the one stressing over a precipitous deadline, so I had to admit the advice fit me this time.)

    How do I “play,” I’ve been wondering, when preparing a poetry book on a publisher’s deadline (which for me involves completely rethinking and swapping as well as rearranging and rewriting) while toying with a full-length play and committing to several other significant and true-to-my-purpose initiatives in the next couple of months?

    And did I mention there’s one month of summer left in which to reacquaint myself with my mercifully independent-yet-loving family and rewrite my courses? (Sorry, stressing again.)

    If my quandary resonates with you, look at your cat. Or dog. Or horse. I can’t speak for birds or reptiles, but most any domesticated mammal will do, including  kids (the kind that bleat or the kind that throw fits with pudding fingers; I’m not picky here). If you have none of the above, entertain or visit one for a few minutes.

    It’s not a big commitment to witness another sentient being’s hilarious commitment to playing. No material proves inadequate. Anything is ripe to be pounced, bounced, ruffled, tousled, nibbled, crunched, mulched, munched, spat out, sat upon, twirled, scribbled, scrambled, or served. As luck would have it, this was precisely what I needed to do with my poems—taste them with and without epigraphs, with deeper embodiment here and more stripping-away there, with a new point of view in this case and tighter or looser form in that case. And, of course, with the kind of rearrangement play that involves scooting actual sheets of paper all around the floor, though it’s a more involved and engaging game than 52 Pick-up. The enticement is irresistible.

    The world is, after all, a playground. Or so Zack the Cat says.

  • These Winter Sundays

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    Mini-chapbook by Marilyn McCabe

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    Yes, these are really our socks

     

    These winter Sundays, when snow mounds, temperatures plummet, and spirits sag a bit, I renew my appreciation of spirit lifters, chief among which are the Women of Mass Dissemination, my writers’ group of the past decade. We meet monthly, go on a weekend retreat twice a year to write, and hold each others’ multicolor sock-toed feet to the metaphorical (and this year, literal) fire. In the past decade the six of us have published more than I can count (books, poems, video poems, novels, reviews, and essays, with plays in the works), but only after months and years of drafting, rewriting, sharing, critiquing, debating, informing, and exploring. We write collaboratively, try out or create writing  prompts, debate literary standards, test the water-worthiness of our rafts of words. We take two drafts forward and three drafts backwards. We mutter, we admonish, we ask, we suggest, we redirect, we inspire, we bless, we curse, we wonder, we wander, we read, we retreat, we return, we succor, we savor, we paint, we review, we write, we blog, we brand.  We expand each other’s reading lists and hone each other’s literary taste. (Of course, chocolate and pot pie are often involved.) We worry, we plan, we learn, we teach, we share, we fuss, we fix, we applaud. But mostly, we write.

    Here’s to the Women of Mass Dissemination,* without whom I’d be sitting in a barn somewhere wondering where all the poets are, wondering too what happened to the poet in the mirror. And here’s to you, writing at your desk, on your bed, on your train, in your barn. Here’s to your tribe, whether you’ve found them yet or not.

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    *The Women of Mass Dissemination (WMD for short) are Lale Davidson, Elaine Handley, Marilyn McCabe, Mary Sanders Shartle, Nancy White, and yours truly. (In the photo above right, standing: Marilyn McCabe, Mary Sanders Shartle, Elaine Handley, Nancy White; seated, left to right: Lale Davidson and Kathleen McCoy.)

  • Book Fair Season

     

    22nd-Chronicle-Book-FairTo smell damp leaves, feel the crisp cheek-brush of November breeze and enter a grand old hotel full of books–poetry, novels, children’s books, travel books, regional books, genre fiction and more–well, it’s difficult to think of a better way to spend a weekend day. Especially in a small town. This Sunday, November 5, join award-winning poets and novelists like Barbara Ungar and Mary Sanders Shartle between 11:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. at the Queensbury Hotel (did I mention I’ll be there too?). We’re reading 12:30-1:00 in the Saratoga Room, talking with folks and selling books all day, and your presence will make our day. It just might brighten yours as well. #Chronicle Book Fair on Twitter; Glens Falls Chronicle Book Fair on Facebook. Click here: Chronicle Book Fair.

    Green&BurningCover     More Water Than Words     Lily Martindale.jpg Barbara Ungar Immortal Medusa.jpg

  • When To Say No[t]

    IMG_7984Angela Nardin sings “The Nearness of You” by Ned Washington and Hoagey Carmichael at Hudson River Music Hall on September 17, 2017

    It’s not always the evanescent wonder of words that entices readers. It’s just knowing when to say “no[t].”

    It wasn’t just Hoagey Carmichael’s ear for a tune that made “The Nearness of You” a hit in pre-WWII America; it was lyricist Ned Washington’s use of litotes, the figure of speech that turns a negative into a positive: “It’s not the pale moon that excites me, / that thrills and delights me, / oh, no. It’s just the nearness of you.” The negation of beauty is paradoxically enhanced by the understatement of a positive. This technique is useful for poets–actually, for sane and savvy folks of all stripes these days.

    Paradox makes for fine poetry, particularly when prose falls prey to prevarication.

    When current events fuel your ire, or when you just want to praise someone you love, take a stab at litotes. And enjoy this short clip of SUNY Adirondack music student Angela Nardin at vimeo.com/240616709.

  • 100 Thousand Poets for Change: Global, Grassroots Arts and Social Advocacy

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    This is regional event I organize and host every year. It is part of a global grassroots movement to call attention to the arts and social justice: 100tpc.org.

  • CALLING ALL POETS, WRITERS, ARTISTS AND MUSICIANS: We need your most passionate work by Jamie Dedes

    Jamie Dedes's avatarJamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine

    We invite you share your most passionate works expressing kindness and human connection and the ways that together we might heal the degradation and devastation of wars and genocides; the heartbreak of refugees living in limbo; the desolation of hunger and famine and environmental catastrophes; the insanity of extrajudicial murders; and the disappointing growth in the West of racial and religious tensions and efforts by various administrations to chill dissent.

    Please take this opportunity to join hands and hearts in peace and love: TEAM WITH US for The BeZine 100TPC online “live” event this September 30th (our 6th year) to address peace, sustainability, and social justice through poetry, music (videos), art and anything artistic that can be posted online and accessed through a url link or by responding in the comments section of the event post. The BeZine 100TPC is one of hundreds of events that will be held around the…

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  • Local Event: 100 Thousands Poets for Change

    It’s time again for 100 Thousand Poets for Change. Don’t we need it.

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    09/30/2017 – 2:30pm to 5:30pm
    Poetry/Fiction/Creative Nonfiction
    Reading/Performance

    100 Thousand Poets for Change is a global grassroots movement to celebrate the arts, social justice, nonviolent resistance, peace, and environmental sustainability. SUNY Adirondack will host a reading/performance including local published poets at 2:30 and Paul Pines (poet/multi-genre writer) and Dan Berggren (singer-songwriter) at 4:00 p.m. Free of charge; all are welcome.

    SUNY Adirondack
    640 Bay Road
    Dearlove Hall – Visual Arts Gallery

    Queensbury, NY 12804

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