Mark Pawlak was born and raised in Buffalo and has lived in the Boston area for most of the past 40 years. He is the author of five poetry collections, most recently, Official Versions(2006). His work has appeared in The Best American Poetry 2006, New American Writing, and Exquisite Corpse, among others. He is editor of four anthologies, most recently, Present/Tense: Poets in the World, an anthology of contemporary American political poetry. He also co-edited Shooting the Rat: Outstanding Poems and Stories by High School Writers, drawn from Hanging Loose magazine, of which he has been an editor since 1980. Pawlak is Director of Academic Support Programs at UMass Boston, where he teaches mathematics.
Dos and Don’ts
Steal from one person and it's plagiarism. Steal from everybody and it's research.—Frank Sinatra as told to Tony Bennett
“Keep a strict eye
dyslogistic adjectives,”
Lewis (C.S.) advised
Tynan (Kenneth).
“They shd diagnose
(not merely blame)
& distinguish
(not merely praise).”
“Almost any noun is better
alone than chaperoned
if it is the right noun,
and very few can stand
two adjectives” --Pound
to Parker Tyler, ‘35--
“‘Unsettled dream’
is stronger than
‘unsettled white dream’.”
Precision and economy of language
are virtues this author recommends
when writing poems,
but finds difficult
to put into practice.
“It’s more important,”
Ornette Coleman once said,
“to play the correct
feeling
than the correct note.”
“Some of the time,"
to quote Chuck Close,
“you know you’re cooking;
the rest of the time,
you just do it.”
Or as the handbook
on improvisation
for church organ advises:
“Do not be afraid
of being wrong;”
just be afraid of being
uninteresting.”