NaPoWriMo #1

I have to tell you, it's sort of painful to post these so new. This is right out of the box and was written in a 20 minute spurt. But it counts as poem 1.

I won't be putting all my poems up for PoMo, but the occasional one will make its way in (then probably disappear later.)


Poem to Open National Poetry Month


This poem is bellbottoms and acid-wash denim.
It’s fat sideburns and long thin ties. This poem
shuffles its feet when I ask it to dance. Dumb poem
with its white picket fence, its eggplant trim.

This poem spoke loudly, coughed without covering
its mouth. I said “I need a poem for April, something
fantastic, in stilettos to start the month with a bang.”
The poem went into its closet and pulled out a wig

and a gun. This poem doesn’t work for peace,
it doesn’t pretend to know where it’s going. It’s the
path marked unknown, the stoner who plays pinochle,
the baby-back rib from Chili’s left on the plate.

No, this poem’s not a fairytale, or fable, or poem. Its
the moment of sleep when you turn out the lights.

Happy Valentine's Day!

#14

Every day you play with the light of the universe.
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water.
You are more than this white head that I hold tightly
as a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands.

You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.
The rain takes off her clothes.

The birds go by, fleeing.
The wind. The wind.
I can contend only against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.

You are here. Oh, you do not run away.
You will answer me to the last cry.
Cling to me as though you were frightened.
Even so, at one time a strange shadow ran through your eyes.

Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle,
and even your breasts smell of it.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.

How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the gray light unwind in turning fans.

My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
I go so far as to think that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want
to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.


Pablo Neruda
Poem #14 from 20 Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Questions About Success

Joannie asked some good questions on her blog about writing and how to keep going when you are going through a dryspell or feeling a little down...

Here are my responses to her questions...

How do you find encouragement or validation?

***I return to the friends who are writers and know my previous successes and get a pep talk or even just to talk to them. Get out of my cave and realize that success goes up and down. Some days you're the prized pony, other days you're just pulling the cart.

When my friends aren't around or I don't feel like assigning anyone the role of "friend," I remind myself that I'd be doing this despite publication or awards. I honestly believe there is nothing more important than participating in the creative arts, no matter what they are (did you read Li-Young Lee's interview I posted, he said something similar, though a little more poetic).

If I'm going through a rejection phase or a lot of nothingness (which I am), I just tell myself that it's not my time right now and to keep trying. I just found out I didn't get an Artist Trust Fellowship. I was bummed. But talking with one of the winners I realized that it was her time for this success and not mine. I felt better after seeing how she will benefit more from the fellowship than I would.


How do you measure "success" (on your own, in your writing community)?

***I try not too. If I even find myself comparing myself to anyone, I pull back immediately. I think comparisons are one of the best inspiration killers. I have always measured success in my feeling of happiness, contentment, and fulfillment. Poetry helps fill those categories.

If I thought "Prize X" = success than I would lose track of what I'm doing. I'd be expecting others to validate me as opposed to validating myself by writing. I guess I've begun to care less and less about what others think and external success. My new mantra is "It's not my business what others think of me." Just as I can't let myself be down when I'm not receiving acceptances, awards, publication, I cannot allow them to create my happiness either. Both are subjective. Both require other people to validate me and call me "good." In the end, they are usually one person's opinion.



How do you keep in the top of your mind the real why you write poetry?

***the real *reason?* I write poetry.
For me it returns to that Berryman poem by WS Merwin. I don't know what any of this means, why I do it, or how it will turn out. But I feel I need to do it. I just try to stay focused on the poem and let the other thoughts slip past me.

How do you keep on keepin' on?

***Good question! I think a little faith help and a little desperation. Also, not having many other skills keeps me writing too. ;-)

I just remind myself-- if I had all the money in the world, how would I spend your time?

My answer is always writing (and traveling) so I know I'm doing what I love to do, so I keep doing it.

* * * *

I've posted this here before, but here it is again--


Berryman


I will tell you what he told me
in the years just after the war
as we then called
the second world war

don't lose your arrogance yet he said
you can do that when you're older
lose it too soon and you may
merely replace it with vanity

just one time he suggested
changing the usual order
of the same words in a line of verse
why point out a thing twice

he suggested I pray to the Muse
get down on my knees and pray
right there in the corner and he
said he meant it literally

it was in the days before the beard
and the drink but he was deep
in tides of his own through which he sailed
chin sideways and head tilted like a tacking sloop

he was far older than the dates allowed for
much older than I was he was in his thirties
he snapped down his nose with an accent
I think he had affected in England

as for publishing he advised me
to paper my wall with rejection slips
his lips and the bones of his long fingers trembled
with the vehemence of his views about poetry

he said the great presence
that permitted everything and transmuted it
in poetry was passion
passion was genius and he praised movement and invention

I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can't

you can't you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don't write


WS Merwin

Ode to the Midwest by Kevin Young

Someone sent me this poem today. It's just too good not to share...


Ode to the Midwest
by Kevin Young

The country I come from
Is called the Midwest—Bob Dylan

I want to be doused
in cheese

& fried. I want
to wander

the aisles, my heart's
supermarket stocked high

as cholesterol. I want to die
wearing a sweatsuit—

I want to live
forever in a Christmas sweater,

a teddy bear nursing
off the front. I want to write
a check in the express lane.
I want to scrape

my driveway clean
myself, early, before
anyone's awake—

that'll put em to shame—
I want to see what the sun
sees before it tells
the snow to go. I want to be

the only black person I know.

I want to throw
out my back & not

complain about it.
I wanta drive

two blocks. Why walk—

I want love, n stuff—
I want to cut
my sutures myself.

I want to jog
down to the river

& make it my bed—

I want to walk
its muddy banks

& make me a withdrawal.

I tried jumping in,
found it frozen—

I'll go home, I guess,
to my rooms where the moon

changes & shines
like television.

Poem of the Day - Jane Hirshfield

I was rereading THE LIVES OF THE HEART by Jane Hirshfield and found that I dog-eared page 86.

Here was the poem on that page--

The Poet


She is working now, in a room
not unlike this one,
the one where I write, or you read.
Her table is covered with paper.
The light of the lamp would be
tempered by a shade, where the bulb's
single harshness might dissolve,
but it is not; she has taken it off.
Her poems? I will never know them,
though they are the ones I most need.
Even the alphabet she writes in
I cannot decipher. Her chair --
let us imagine whether it is leather
or canvas, vinyl or wicker. Let her
have a chair, her shadeless lamp,
the table. Let one or two she loves
be in the next room. Let the door
be closed, the sleeping ones healthy.
Let her have time, and silence,
enough paper to make mistakes and go on.


© Jane Hirshfield

And to think I had almost forgotten about this poem.

Poem of the Day - by Wallace Stevens

More poems should use the word "hullabaloo"

*

A High-Toned Old Christian Woman


Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.
We agree in principle. That's clear. But take
The opposing law and make a peristyle,
And from the peristyle project a masque
Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawdiness,
Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last,
Is equally converted into palms,
Squiggling like saxophones. And palm for palm,
Madame, we are where we began. Allow,
Therefore, that in the planetary scene
Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,
Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade,
Proud of such novelties of the sublime,
Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,
May, merely may, madame, whip from themselves
A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.
This will make widows wince. But fictive things
Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince.


Wallace Stevens
from his first book, Harmonium

Forsythia by Mary Ellen Solt - Poem of the Day

Forsythia (1966)

Mary Ellen Solt (1920- )


“The design of ‘Forsythia’ is made from the letters of the name of the flowering shrub and their equivalents in the Morse Code. The text is part of the design.” (M.E.S.)


"Forsythia...by Mary Ellen Solt…[was] typographically concretized by John Dearstyne. In the introduction to Flowers in Concrete, George Zadek writes: “Traditionally the typographer has given form and order to words, thus serving both the writer and the reader. His problem is mainly one of clarity of communication, literary meaning, and hopefully aesthetic contribution to the art of the printed page. When publishing concrete poetry, it is sometimes difficult to draw a line between the contributions, as well as the final responsibilities, of the poet and the typographer. The literary and visual meaning of concrete poetry as conceived by the poet and interpreted by the typographer is somewhat analogous to a stage performance of a play.”

An Anthology of Concrete Poetry , Edited by Emmet Williams, Something Else Press, New York , 1967

Poem (and Poet) of the Day

I've been busy with poetry things--it's National Poetry Month and we have poetry wrapped around our waists, worn like a scarf, poetry hats, and poetry bracelets. It's everywhere breathing hot and heavy on our necks.

Fancy Meeting You Here--
Today while having a lazy day spent PJ-clad and in bed reading magazines, having that little extra time to read all the things I normal skip over I fold open the May calendar in Oprah magazine. The calendar is full of interesting quotes on Having Faith this month and there on May 6th is a quote by my poet-friend Nancy Pagh!

Nancy is the WA state poet who just published NO SWEETER FAT and there's a quote from that book in Oprah magazine! Here's the quote, "I would like to live my way into being/someone who stands back up/and runs toward that holy forest." Nancy Pagh

It's from her poem "I Believe I Could Kneel" from No Sweeter Fat (Autumn House Press) which I'll include below--


I Believe I Could Kneel

I believe I could kneel
in so many quiet places
where the pale sponge of moss
would surely reach above
my hips as I sank down and down
as the deer must in their beds
kneeling once, then once again
to lower themselves front and back
before closing their glistening eyes.

I think I am the kind of person
down on one knee and shifting my weight
my whole life long
but capable of sinking far, and deep,
to the bottom of something
that might replace the religion I discarded
or make me really live in this body
or waste my life.

I would like to live my way into being
someone who stands back up
and runs toward that holy forest.


Nancy Pagh

Poem of the Day - Octavio Paz

Distant Neighbor


Last night an ash tree
was about to tell
me something—it didn’t.


Octavio Paz