Remember:
If you move or change your e-mail address, please notify the Museletter editor. Bulk mail is not forwarded, so you will not receive your Museletters. E-mail is the only way members are notified of Museletter deadlines.

Welcome
to the following new members of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets who have joined since the last Museletter issue.

New member inquiries should be directed to Peter Piaskoski,the credentials chair. Join us!

Fall Conference Info Here & Rotation
Schedule Here.

Keep Your Dues Current
      Please remember that membership dues are payable January first of every year. We no longer offer a "grace period" after nonpayment of dues. Members must be current with their dues to enjoy membership benefits such as:

• the opportunity to be published in the Museletter's "Poetry Page"
• listing of recent publications in the Museletter
• free "chapbook" ad, and reduced advertising rates for other ads in the Museletter
• eligibility to enter the "Triad" poetry contest
• reduced entry fee for the "Muse" contest
• free "member" web page on the Fellowship's web site
• and, of course, the Museletter itself.

Meet Your Poetry Page Editor:

Wendy Vardaman
     I've been writing poetry since a 3rd grade assignment touched off an ode to a duck and several dozen other pieces. My parents are southern, both theater majors—there was a lot of drama in the house. My father started reciting poetry to my brother and me when we were very young. I think I became a poet so that I could read out loud once in a while—he never let us. Although I didn't keep up the initially promising production, I wrote in fits and starts through high school and college, concluding there that I wanted to be a poet, much to my parents' horror, then promptly ceasing to write for the next ten years during graduate school and a job teaching "Interdisciplinary Writing" at the University of Washington-Seattle.
     While I hold a PhD in English from the University of Pennsylvania and an MA from the University of Virginia, I started as a Civil Engineer at Cornell University and didn't formally switch to English until grad school, although I signed up for two concurrent classes my last semester at Cornell—a survey of Southern Literature,very useful for a 1st generation Northerner, and a grad seminar in Linear Programming I rarely attended. I managed to pass the latter—how, I don't know—but can't remember a thing about it! I never held a job as an engineer, but Cornell wasn't a total loss. I took my first and only creative writing classes there, and also met my husband, Tom DuBois, now professor of Finnish and Folklore in the Scandinavian Department at the UW-Madison. Besides living in Charlottesville, Philadelphia, where our oldest was born, and Seattle, the birthplace of our two younger children, we spent two years in Helsinki, Finland.
      I went to grad school with the idea that I'd be able to earn a living as an English professor while writing poetry, but somehow never managed to write much poetry at Penn or at the University of Washington. Between my stint studying engineering, the English PhD, and the years I worked with myriad social studies courses at Seattle's Interdisciplinary Writing Program, however, I've had a little academic training in a lot of fields.
      I started writing poetry in earnest when I quit teaching eleven years ago to stay at home with my children—now 15, 12, and 9. I write mostly formal poetry, which somehow comes naturally, I think, as a means to control the domestic chaos that inspires much of my work. At any rate I enjoy the tension of one pulling at the other, though I admit to an obsession with sonnets that goes back to having them first explained to me in a Junior High English class, and I also enjoy creating forms of my own. I've never quite persuaded myself to go back to teaching or some other paying job, even after the children all became school-aged. I consider myself post-employed. In addition to managing my busy family's schedule, activities and home, as well as writing every day, I volunteer at multiple schools, my parish, the Young Shakespeare Players in which my daughter participates, and our Neighborhood Association's Council.
      I also have a variety of hobbies, mostly self-taught, which I cycle in and out of: cooking, painting and drawing, sewing, knitting, and playing a number of musical instruments. For the last five years I've been teaching myself to play the violin—not so easy as teaching oneself the guitar! Two years ago I became a devotee of exercise—running, swimming, yoga, and weightlifting—which has diminished the time I have for some of my other interests, but benefitted my poetry. I bike and walk a fair bit, too, since Tom and I have never owned a car—something of a challenge with children. And I've always been a compulsive reader. We read out loud to the kids a lot (sometimes they read too!) from Beowulf to Shakespeare to Dickens to Harry Potter. My favorite poets are Hopkins, Dickinson, Auden, Frost, and Moore; I tend to read more canonical than contemporary verse, but am very fond of Kay Ryan and Matthea Harvey. I still like to read about science and math, too, although I take a mostly metaphorical interest in those subjects. Five years ago, my family moved to Madison from Seattle. Shortly after frightening the neighbors by painting our house a variety of bright colors inside and out, I joined the WFOP. I feel very fortunate to make Wisconsin, a state with such an active poetry community, my home, and to write as a member of that community, rather than as a solitary poet; I am grateful to serve as the Museletter's poetry editor which has allowed me to get to know the incredibly varied and inspiring work of many of the organization's members, and has taught me how much I enjoy editing.
      In addition to being the poetry editor, I also write regularly-appearing reviews and interviews for Free Verse, another admirable venue for Wisconsin's poets. Besides the Museletter and Free Verse, I've published poems in Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf, The Wisconsin Poets' Calendar, Cup of Poems, Portland Literary Review Journal, Pivot, and Edge City Review, among others, and have been part of readings in Madison, such as the Olbrich Gardens' Poetry Marathon, the Winter WFOP series at Avol's Bookstore, and the Madison Book Festival. Two of my poems have been recognized in WFOP contests; in 2004 I received an Honorable Mention in the Council for Wisconsin Writers' Lorine Niedecker contest. My ambitions, poetic and otherwise, include experimenting further with form, taking a ballet class, getting to know more of our state's poets and poetry, painting again, running a marathon, writing more reviews, and learning how to ice skate, a very useful skill to have in Wisconsin!

Reach to the Community and Beyond with Your Poetry by Diana Randolph

Whenever you share your poetry there's a potential to inspire others. Besides submitting to publications, try different ways to reach a new audience. Daydream about new venues for sharing your poetry. New ideas may arise first thing in the morning before getting out of bed. If you're in a writing group take time together to brainstorm ways to share your writing in your community and beyond.

Working With Children
Do you enjoy working with children and/or teens? Schools often host visiting writers. Telephone your local
middle school/high school to find out names of English teachers. Mail them your resumé and some poetry samples. They may phone you when a special event comes up where your writing may fit in.

One time during a Dr. Seuss festival I read poetry in my local school's library to two different groups of elementary
students. We then did a writing exercise and some individuals shared their writing aloud.

Another time I lead a 6 week poetry/art club for elementary kids during an after school program. Besides sharing some of my own poetry and artwork the kids wrote and painted. We displayed their poems and paintings in the hallways during National Poetry Month and held a reading in the auditorium with their classmates as the audience.

Some schools have a budget for gifted and talented programs and may pay a small stipend for your visits. If your
local arts council offers matching grants try teaming up with your school and develop a budget for a poetry event. For school visits, bring along bio sheets/brochures about yourself to distribute. If you have chapbooks available for purchase and/or a website include that information.

Town/city librarians may also organize literary events and programs for children. Mail a letter with program ideas and a resumé or brochure to libraries in your region. Don't forget to follow up with phone calls.

Resorts, community centers and museums often hold programs for children. Approach program coordinators during winter before they plan summer activities.

Visit Your Local Chamber of Commerce
Browse through your local Visitor Center for ideas of where you may share your poems. Collect brochures of places, organizations and events. Many organizations or clubs invite guest speakers to their meetings.

Make a list of friends who are members of organizations or clubs. Try contacting them directly about sharing your
poetry during a meeting. If you have chapbooks available for purchase be sure to bring them along to public readings.

Share Poems One on One
Memorize some of your poems so they are at the tip of your tongue to share with others spontaneously whenever the opportunity arises.

Recently at my doctor's office I heard that she had started writing poetry. When I asked my doctor about this she
beamed and recited me a poem written for a friend's birthday. The poem sent tingles up my arms (a friend of mine calls them affirmation tingles). I told my doctor it was a great poem and encouraged her to submit it to a publication because it would inspire many other people.

Who Is Your Audience?
Look over your poems and group them together in themes. Perhaps you have a stack of winter poems. Then your
audience may be people who love winter activities. If you specialize in nature poems share your poetry at a natural history museum. Do many of your poems include animals? I once read aloud several poems of mine about my dog for a local animal shelter fund-raiser. Perhaps your poems would fit right in to the opening ceremonies of a bike or ski race, an art festival or a winter festival.

Reach Beyond Your Community
Several years ago while attending a writer's conference one of the presenters, Jane Arnold used the word REACH during her presentation. She encouraged writers to REACH out with their work by submitting to online markets. Two she recommended were: woodenhorsepub.com and directory.google.com/Top/Arts/Writers_Resources/ Markets. "Your writing has universal themes; therefore, people around the world will be able to relate to it. REACH by taking risks and by writing about unique things," she said.

For example, she mentioned my poem "Tracks in the Snow," from In the Heart of the Forest, which I had read aloud for the open mic the previous night. Arnold explained that the death of a beloved pet is a universal theme. Referring to the description of my dog's footprints in the snow, she said, "Notice the details of the world around you."

On Air and Email
Would you like radio listeners to hear your poems? Make a list of your favorite public radio stations and announcers. Write to an announcer directly and include several poems. Every April I send 4 poems to Eric Schubring of WOJB-FM in celebration of National Poetry Month. It's fascinating to hear poems read by someone with a distinguished radio voice.

Schubring interviewed me on the radio by phone after hearing about the following experience: Last fall I had started to write a poem to a friend who was depressed after the presidential election. I planned to title it "Beacons of Hope" and started by including hopeful images from his surroundings. I then came across a fascinating article in the December 2004 issue of Astronomy magazine. It described an Iraqi in Baghdad who began stargazing as a child during the Iran/Iraq War when city lights were extinguished and the stars above became visible for the first time. Even in the midst of bombing in the current war this Iraqi named Ra'ad, who is now a civil engineer, climbed once again to his rooftop with a telescope between bombings to gaze at the stars which became beacons of hope.

That story inspired me so much that I included Ra'ad and his star-gazing in my poem. After sharing the poem with my depressed friend, on a whim I emailed the poem along with a note of appreciation to Astronomy magazine. Within several days, the copy editor forwarded my email and poem to the writer of the stargazer article. The writer forwarded it to Ra'ad in Iraq. Ra'ad forwarded it to a dozen of his friends and one, a woman who lives in upstate New York, sent me a reply. Since then, I've received several emails directly from Ra'ad who has escaped to Switzerland with his family after being kidnapped and held hostage in Iraq.

By sharing your writing via email, you may reach audiences in unexpected places and form new friendships. Poetry has the potential to bridge gaps between cultures. Don't hold back. Reach to your community and beyond with your poetry.

Diana Randolph lives in rural Drummond and is author of In the Heart of the Forest (Savage Press), a chapbook of her poetry and landscape paintings. Her paintings are included on the on-line gallery www.portalwisconsin.org. "Planning and Promoting Poetry Reading" will be her next column. You may contact Diana at oiabms@cheqnet.net.

Wisconsin Book Festival Call for Participation in "Wisconsin Publishers Showcase"
      Following D.C.'s National Book Festival, September 24th, where Wisconsin participates in the Pavilion of States, coordinated by the Library of Congress-Centers for the Book, Wisconsin authors, poets, and publishers will share words, art, and books with the public for three hours as part of the state's book festival in Madison. Mary "Casey" Martin, president of Wisconsin Center for the Book (WCFB) worked with Shoshauna Schey, (aka poet, Shoshauna Shy) publisher of Woodrow Hall Editions and an employee of Wisconsin Humanities Council, for another Wisconsin literary event slated for Friday, October 14th. Publishers, authors and poets interested in participating in the state event should contact Shy (for poetry) at: sschey@wisc.edu and Martin (other genre) at: casey@homebrewpress.com. Other WCFB board members and Shy teamed up to coordinate "Wisconsin Publishers Showcase" from 3:30–6:30 p.m. at Memorial Library, located at 728 State Street, which is the main library on UW-Madison campus and the state's largest library.
     Woodrow Hall Editions is hosting an Open Mic for poets who want to read a poem that inspired them and the subsequent poem that was inspired. This Open Mic will take place on Saturday, October 15th at 1:00 PM at Michelangelo's Coffee House, 114 State Street as part of the Book Festival.

Wisconsin Writers Conference Seeks Participants
      The Wisconsin Writers Conference is seeking participants for its June 9 & 10, 2006 conference at UW-Baraboo/Sauk County. You may participate by attending, presenting a paper, reading your creative writing (poetry, fiction, drama and non-fiction), and/or by organizing panel discussions about the culture and literature of Wisconsin. We would especially like to hear from high school English teachers who wish to speak about teaching young Wisconsin writers. Students, both graduate and undergraduate, are also invited to participate.
      Please plan now to attend and/or to submit paper proposals. Sessions are one-hour long and are generally comprised of three presentations along with a question-andanswer period OR three fifteen-minute papers or readings. Deadline for submissions will be October 31, 2005. Submission guidelines will be available September 1, with selections made before the end of the year. The conference will begin at 9 AM Friday, June 9th and end at noon, Saturday, June 10th. Participants from across the United States attended in 2004 and took part in sessions with some of Wisconsin's finest writers and educators.
      The conference is co-sponsored by UW-Baraboo/Sauk County Continuing Education Extension (CEE) and the August Derleth Society. Call CEE at (608) 356-8351, ext. 234 or visit www.baraboo.uwc.edu/community for more information or to get on their mailing list.

Proposed Policy
WFOP Sponsorship of Literary Events
     The WFOP exists for the creation, promotion and dissemination of poetry in the state of Wisconsin. To that end, it is appropriate for the Fellowship to sponsor events of a literary nature. Such events may serve as fundraisers, or may be used to promote other literary goals. Ordinarily, the Fellowship will only commit its funds to such sponsorship after consideration and approval by the Board of Directors. Occasionally, a sponsorship opportunity may become available before the next scheduled Board meeting. If such opportunity clearly promotes the goals of the Fellowship, and requires commitment of Fellowship funds before the Board can reasonably meet, the following procedure may be used: The event promoter will contact the Fellowship president and request sponsorship of the proposed event. The request will include, at a minimum

• the locations(s) and date(s) of the event;
• the speaker, instructor, or other featured guest, with a biographic sketch;
• the cost to the Fellowship; or, if a fundraiser, the potential for loss;
• the degree of interest among likely participants;
• the cost to the participants; and
• the significance of this event to the poetry community, if not obvious.

     If the president agrees with the request, (s)he will communicate with the other officers (vice president, secretary, treasurer) and the affected regional vice president either by telephone or email. If a majority of officers available agree, the Fellowship may commit funds to sponsor the event. Such sponsorship will be reported at the next regularly scheduled Board meeting. The Board will be asked to affirm the sponsorship decision. If the Board elects not to affirm the decision, an alternate disposition for the event must be decided at the same Board meeting. This fast-track procedure will not be used to commit more than one thousand dollars ($1,000.00) of Fellowship funds.

Board Considering Several New Policies
At the summer Board meeting, several proposed policies were slated for consideration at the fall conference. We welcome members' comments and questions. Please feel free to direct comments/questions to your regional vice president.

Poets' Calendar Sales on Amazon.com
We are looking into the feasibility of offering the Wisconsin Poets' Calendar for sale on the amazon.com website. There are discounts and postage charges to take into consideration. Our Calendar business manager, Michael Farmer, is gathering details. Anyone with experience dealing with amazon.com will be welcome in the discussions. Please let us know if you've had good or bad experiences with this vendor.

"Scholarship" Drawing
     One of our members suggested we hold a drawing at every conference, in which each new member has one chance for a "scholarship" (free registration) at the next conference. The Board liked the idea, but wanted to expand the pool of "names in the hat" to include both new members and everyone who did an "early registration" for the conference. We haven't decided whether to implement this yet. We welcome comments and criticisms.

Treasurer Bonding
     One Board member proposed that we use Fellowship funds to bond the treasurer. Simply put, this is an insurance policy of sorts. In the event that Fellowship funds are lost due to the treasurer's misdeeds, the Fellowship is protected financially. We haven't had any quote on the price yet. We hope to have one by the fall conference.

PayPal Payment Options
     Another of our members suggested that we set up an account with PayPal. This is an online payment-handling firm. Having such an account would let members make online payments for dues, conference registration, and merchandise such as mugs and T-shirts. The Fellowship would have funds deposited directly to our account. There is a fee for each transaction. We'll gather quotes and consider this at the fall Board meeting.

Event Sponsorship Policy
     The Fellowship recently sponsored several classes by noted poet Louis Jenkins. Each was a success, and the Fellowship made a tiny profit from them. However, the organizer needed Fellowship backing, as they could not afford to take on this financial risk alone. The problem was that the class had to occur before the next Board meeting, when such a proposal would ordinarily be considered. In order to avoid such a problem in the future, the Board is considering an event-sponsorship policy that speaks to this kind of decision-making. It is published elsewhere in the Museletter. We welcome your comments and suggestions.

Where to Put the F in Comma
F.J. Bergmann

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds …
      —Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803–1882)

     … but the proliferation of incorrect punctuation, misspellings, typos, and other basic grammatical errors is, nevertheless, distressing. Weird spellings and grammar used to be the defining attributes of spam, but are increasing rapidly everywhere, with journalists and copywriters as the worst offenders. Sadly, this has begun to penetrate poetry publications as well. As the person responsible for retyping and formatting the Calendar poems this year, I'd like to mention the most frequent bugaboos, as well as other dislikes and "cringe factors" mentioned by writing instructors and editors of literary journals.

Yikes to Watch Out For
      Many poets dispense with punctuation, capital letters, and other conventions of the written language. Feel free to omit punctuation if you like, but watch for altered meanings. Conversely, commas are frequently inserted unnecessarily: "eats, shoots, and leaves." And whether you punctuate or not, be consistent. It drives editors (and readers) crazy trying to figure out why, in a poem with reasonably ordinary sentence structure, some stanzas or lines are correctly punctuated and others are left partly or completely naked.

Capital Crimes
     A similar consistency is preferred for capital letters: you can use normal capitalization, capitalize the first letter of each line, or have no caps at all, but there ought to be some rationale behind a desultory sprinkling. The William Blake school of Random Capitalization is Passé. Note that capitalizing Spring, Autumn, and the like is also archaic. CAPITALIZING EVERY LETTER IN YOUR ENTIRE POEM, UNLESS YOU ARE BEING "EXPERIMENTAL," IS TRULY OBNOXIOUS. Many novice poets are enamored of the lower-case first-person nominative singular pronoun "i"; many poetry consumers perceive this as either affected and overly-precious or disingenuously self-effacing, and best left to e.e. cummings.

Serial Killers
     Remember that series, "one, two, and three," correctly have commas following each element; the one preceding "and" may be optional, but its inclusion is never incorrect. Its omission, on the other hand, can have interesting results—as in the dedication To my parents, Ayn Rand and God (!) When you have a series of phrases with internal commas, use semicolons between the phrases instead of commas for clarity. Commas do not replace conjunctions; semicolons replace conjunctions.

And You Can Quote Me
     Quotation marks (" ") are used in actual quotes, of course, but also to indicate the writer's disbelief in the cited claim: a "delightful" surprise. In this country, terminal punctuation precedes the quotation mark. A quote inside another quote takes single quotation marks (' '). Within quoted material, a mistake in grammar or spelling that you know better than to make and want to draw attention to is indicated by [sic]—Latin for "thusly"—following the offending expression.

Compounding Mistakes
     Anyone is one word; no one is two. Any more was two words in recent memory, but seems to have become one flesh these days, without passing through the hyphen'd state. Anywhere and anybody are not, nor are everywhere, everybody, whatever, whenever, however, forever, evermore, and nevermore. All right is two words. With two Ls. Already is one with one. Many others are in limbo; as two-word terms get older and wrinklier, they seem to first become hyphenated, and then coalesce into one word. Go with your spell checker, spell-checker, or spellchecker, your favorite dictionary, or your tastes. Hyphenations not only indicate compound words, but are always inserted when using a phrase as an adjective or noun (state-of-the-art, how-to).

Dashing Through the Slush
     Dashes are not hyphens! Dashes come in two flavors, em- (—) and en- (–). An em-dash may be indicated by two hyphens (--); an en-dash is not indicated by anything other than itself, and is only used for numbers (1–10) and dates (1885–1887). An em-dash is used to indicate an aside, or a hesitation or break longer than that indicated by a comma, semicolon, or colon—a very pregnant pause, so to speak. It is also frequently used by inexperienced poets to embellish every other line break.

Speak On, Sweet Ellipsis
     Ellipses … what would novice poets do without a myriad of these to insert not only at line breaks, but also at the slightest provocation? Fortunately, the supply eventually gives out and neophytes have to start using mundane punctuation, unless they are practicing for time-travel to the 19th century. Ellipses are used to indicate omitted material or an unfinished sentence, and are correctly used … with a space fore and aft. They can easily be achieved by Option-; for you Mac fans.

Adjective Viewpoint
     When more than one adjective modifies a noun, the use of a comma between them is determined by whether the adjectives all modify the same thing to the same degree. If all the adjectives can be omitted without changing the essential point of the sentence, there should be commas between all of them, but any adjective critical to interpretation should not be preceded by a comma, e.g. The small, dirty children cried every night vs. The small, dirty orphaned children cried for their mother. If all the adjectives are required for clarity, no commas should be used: lower-case first-person nominative singular pronoun.

For Your Protection
     Misplaced apostrophes are my pet peeve of all time—outside the political arena, that is. Apostrophes indicate a possessive or a contraction. Instances of misuse are so bountiful as to make samples unnecessary, but for a plethora of read-'em-and-weeps, see the Apostrophe Protection Society, a laudable institution that deserves your support. I'm only going to say that 's at the end of a word makes it a possessive or a contraction of _______ is, not a plural; that 'til and till are the only accepted variations of until—you may not have your double L and apostrophe too; and that it's is not, never, a possessive: it is only, now and forevermore, a contraction of it is. Remember that no possessive pronoun ever contains an apostrophe—their is a possessive, they're is a contraction of they are, and there is somewhere else.

Recommended Reading
     The Well-Tempered Sentence, The Transitive Vampire, The Deluxe Transitive Vampire, Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness, and anything else by Karen Elizabeth Gordon
     Eats, Shoots & Leaves* by Lynne Truss
     A Manual of Style (I've got the Chicago Twelfth Edition, Revised, but any of them should do just fine)
     A dictionary—the bigger, the better; the ne plus ultra being the OED

* Regrettably, the jacket of Eats, Shoots & Leaves itself contains (in my opinion) two errors, which demonstrates Murphy's Law of Finger-Pointing: any letter, essay, or book about errors will itself contain at least one glaring example of the type deplored within. When you find mine, gloat to your heart's content.