Friends:
Yes, I'm still paddling through the Center of the Malenaite Constellation -- back at work but writing poetry every early morning. I will post, quite soon, a new poem and read what you have offered. I tried to write a combination of an incantation and a variation on repeated words, where I worked from different forms of the same root ("relic"). Ah, to be mysterious. . . Hope you are all doing well, and I think there's no doubt we need to have an Alternate Universe Party sometime at Ericka's house (yes, I know you don't want too many people. . .) Take care, all.
Jim
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Latest poem for my fellow Malenaites
Forgiveness Returned for Her Black Sadness
Let me be where I am.
Let this bread, this morning, be their own ceremony.
Let me pass the gilt mirrors without looking.
When the lead mouth of fear clamps onto mine
and blasts her wind of rope and iron filings into me,
let my breath be forgiveness returned for her black sadness.
Let me leave the perfect round stone on the forest trail,
the wet starfish at the shoreline. Let me not forget
my last drink. Let me be kind.
I had a nightmare the sky had been sold for advertisements,
loud, colored beams of Gap and Coke projected onto the clouds.
Let the whole deal crash first. Let us abandon cleverness.
Let there be gentleness for the old bleached blond with her
stapled face, sending back her steak to the restaurant kitchen;
let us understand her deep love for the little dog back at the hotel.
At work, in the car, let me see the white classroom
and blue sky windows of Malena. Let poems
be cups of language made for holding silence.
Nura
Man In The Moon
Man In The Moon
Lamb chops and violins dancing in malcontent rivers
while figs furried mouths tell little white lies
razor sharp secrets beholden to no one
the man in the moon, creating chaotic synergy
Mother nursing lemons
I forgot the sugar–
Won’t you be a dear, and run to Jupiter
While you’re there, pick up a six pack of
Mars bars, and some wheat grass, oh, and
say hello to Aunt Lily, she’s the one with
three eyes and a hole where her heart used to be–
Fingers racing across the chords of time
unable to make sense of anything
stringing together sentences and sentencing
the universe through verse
They came two by two
Archaic creatures, abandoned because
of their religion or color or some such absurdity
This cosmos of creation
where salmons fly freely and cellos make babies
where Uncle Frank has two heads and Cousin James
wears skirts made of purple glazed bologna–
where speaking one’s mind won’t land one in jail
This is the universe I want to know
where I want my unborn babies to grow
Dancing rivers, man in the moon
mothers and brothers, held together by a paper thread
When I put my head down at night, this is what I dream of
special thanks to molly
the suggestion of taking a dream and writing about it as though
it wasnt a dream is fantastic
i've written two that i like and working on two others
my work is usually very concrete and brutal but i have vivid
imagination and can go nuts so this is fantastic! i love it–
i dont remember many dreams but the idea is enough, its just so much
fun, thank you, thank you! hope everyone is well
erika
Lamb chops and violins dancing in malcontent rivers
while figs furried mouths tell little white lies
razor sharp secrets beholden to no one
the man in the moon, creating chaotic synergy
Mother nursing lemons
I forgot the sugar–
Won’t you be a dear, and run to Jupiter
While you’re there, pick up a six pack of
Mars bars, and some wheat grass, oh, and
say hello to Aunt Lily, she’s the one with
three eyes and a hole where her heart used to be–
Fingers racing across the chords of time
unable to make sense of anything
stringing together sentences and sentencing
the universe through verse
They came two by two
Archaic creatures, abandoned because
of their religion or color or some such absurdity
This cosmos of creation
where salmons fly freely and cellos make babies
where Uncle Frank has two heads and Cousin James
wears skirts made of purple glazed bologna–
where speaking one’s mind won’t land one in jail
This is the universe I want to know
where I want my unborn babies to grow
Dancing rivers, man in the moon
mothers and brothers, held together by a paper thread
When I put my head down at night, this is what I dream of
special thanks to molly
the suggestion of taking a dream and writing about it as though
it wasnt a dream is fantastic
i've written two that i like and working on two others
my work is usually very concrete and brutal but i have vivid
imagination and can go nuts so this is fantastic! i love it–
i dont remember many dreams but the idea is enough, its just so much
fun, thank you, thank you! hope everyone is well
erika
Monday, January 28, 2008
After the Phone Company Layoff
... But somewhere between Malena describing her synethesia and my brother damning the flower guy at the club to the most center level of hell, reserved only for traitors, Nixon and Cheney, I couldn't resist and wrote this in the car on the way home...
After the Phone Company Layoff
We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by accident, bits of a star gone wrong. -- Sir Arthur Eddington
And what becomes of the man who sells flowers
In the tourist district at two in the morning
After the bars have been shuttered,
And the now emptied streets echo a longing?
Will Ed, the bartender still cleaning,
Offer him fingers of bourbon to oil his bones
In that dimmed bar, curtains drawn against knocking
Of the streetlights? When Ed asks that flower-man
How he came to his vocation,
Will the man remember when he was laid-off
From the phone company, how a once disavowed
Gift returned, and he shouldered that burden
His supernatural sensitivity to love,
A synesthesia which confuses love with a certain brilliance?
Will he tell him how he forded traffic's river
Once they were revealed, glistening among the rest of us?
How he lingered on the sidewalk,
Watched their walking away? How their rooted shadows
Tangled into each other and reluctantly followed?
How the woman smiled up at the man,
Twirled the stem between her fingers, oblivious to thorns?
Or would he fret for that couple he chased two blocks,
Crying out Flowers! Flowers! How they mistook
Insistence for madness? How he prays they won't learn late,
Leave behind a birthed and abandoned shining?
I imagine that he will consider these things yet merely shrug,
Gather up his black plastic pail, slouch toward his car.
He will lurch onward to a low, two-story weekly-rate motel
within a constellation of other cheap motels lining the boulevard
Doors opening outward to the flicker and drone of lightposts.
A woman is waiting for him there,
her arms aching for what is left,
each unclaimed blossoming.
After the Phone Company Layoff
We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by accident, bits of a star gone wrong. -- Sir Arthur Eddington
And what becomes of the man who sells flowers
In the tourist district at two in the morning
After the bars have been shuttered,
And the now emptied streets echo a longing?
Will Ed, the bartender still cleaning,
Offer him fingers of bourbon to oil his bones
In that dimmed bar, curtains drawn against knocking
Of the streetlights? When Ed asks that flower-man
How he came to his vocation,
Will the man remember when he was laid-off
From the phone company, how a once disavowed
Gift returned, and he shouldered that burden
His supernatural sensitivity to love,
A synesthesia which confuses love with a certain brilliance?
Will he tell him how he forded traffic's river
Once they were revealed, glistening among the rest of us?
How he lingered on the sidewalk,
Watched their walking away? How their rooted shadows
Tangled into each other and reluctantly followed?
How the woman smiled up at the man,
Twirled the stem between her fingers, oblivious to thorns?
Or would he fret for that couple he chased two blocks,
Crying out Flowers! Flowers! How they mistook
Insistence for madness? How he prays they won't learn late,
Leave behind a birthed and abandoned shining?
I imagine that he will consider these things yet merely shrug,
Gather up his black plastic pail, slouch toward his car.
He will lurch onward to a low, two-story weekly-rate motel
within a constellation of other cheap motels lining the boulevard
Doors opening outward to the flicker and drone of lightposts.
A woman is waiting for him there,
her arms aching for what is left,
each unclaimed blossoming.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
missing you all
Dear Malenaites,
Home after many hours on planes and in airports with another poem under my heartbelt which I'll post here as soon as I finish tinkering. I loved our time together and felt so helped and well-tended by all of you. Many thanks and I am quite excited here to be writing on the very first blog of my life! (Is that the proper preposition- on the blog or is it in the blog?)
Much love, Nura
Home after many hours on planes and in airports with another poem under my heartbelt which I'll post here as soon as I finish tinkering. I loved our time together and felt so helped and well-tended by all of you. Many thanks and I am quite excited here to be writing on the very first blog of my life! (Is that the proper preposition- on the blog or is it in the blog?)
Much love, Nura
:)
To Post: Once you have logged in, you can post several ways. Immediately after logging in, you can click on the link that says "New Post" on it OR you can bring our blog up and click on the link in the upper left hand corner that also says "New Post." You'll get a new window that has a box in it--write to your heart's content, then click on the orange button at the bottom that says "Publish Post." Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any further questions!
Thursday, January 24, 2008
oh yes, and this, from c.f.
Here's what Carolyn gave me recently--some exercises (my "homework") and some revision techniques:
Try writing poems using these exercises:
1. Write an “epistolary” poem, (the word is the same as the “epistles” or letters from the apostles in the new testament). This is a poem in the form of a letter to another person, often omitting the salutation (“dear....”) but in other respects, resembling a letter. The poet Richard Hugo wrote a number of these.
2. Write a poem in answer to a letter you receive from someone (or, if you read some interesting published letters, try answering one of them in the form of a poem).
3. Write a “persona” poem, in which you become someone else and speak in the poem as that person (Amelia Earhart? a Civil War nurse? a trapeze artist in the circus? Sir Walter
Raleigh?)
4. Choose eight or ten words at random from your “loved words” list and try writing a poem, quickly, in ten or twelve lines, using these words. Then check your list to see if there are any interesting substitutions you can make.
5. Take two poems you have written which are related in some way, cut the lines apart, and splice together a new version, then re-write the poem according to the new version, so that you produce one long poem.
6. Try writing a poem that provides instructions on how to get somewhere or do something (recipe, directions, assembly, or how to recover from a death, a lover, an addiction, etc.)
7. Write a poem that re-tells, or “transforms” a story or myth. (Try biblical stories, classical myths, fairy tales, etc.). Anne Sexton’s book “Transformations” might be a model for this.
8. Write poems “in the style of” poets from your anthology (that is, the private anthology of favorite poems you make as you read). (There should be a little italicized line, indented between the title and the text of the poem, saying “after so and so”.
9. Write a poem in which you tell what happens in a dream (without telling the reader it is a dream).
10. Write a series of short, linked poems, illuminating (without commentary) episodes from your memory of childhood.
11. Keep a travel diary on a trip (jotting down words, phrases, place names, events), and when you return write a sequence of poems which are dated in the form of a diary, and which illuminate your journey in some way.
12. Choose a work of prose that you especially admire, and, pulling phrases from that work, compose a poem from the phrases. Between the title and the text of the poem, insert an indented, italicized “credit line”--from “ “ by so and so”
13. Write a poem in which you begin by situating yourself in a particular place (on the roof of your house, in your room, etc.), describe that place, and then, by association, “travel” imaginatively somewhere else, and end the poem by returning to the place you are. The poem should be long enough that the reader is surprised to come back. John
Ashbery’s poem “Guadalajara” is a good model for this.
14. Write poems based on interesting black and white photographs from the past. Look
at photography books by Atget, Lange, Weston, Bourke-White, Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, etc.
15. Research the history of your current home or hometown, and write a poem based on an interesting historic event you learn about. I once wrote about a fire which burned my town completely in 1872.
Revision suggestions:
1. Read each line of the poem separately, to be sure that it is interesting by itself. Cut words from the end of the line or add words from the beginning of the next line if you think it would improve the inherent meaning of the line.
2. Look at each word in the poem, and see if you can substitute a more interesting, specific word. Tree might become sycamore. River might become the Shenandoah. Bird might become gull, cardinal, finch, vulture.
3. Eliminate unnecessary commentary and description. If you have the word “snow,” then you already imply (and can eliminate sometimes) “winter,” “cold,” “icy” etc.
4. Be careful not to eliminate important articles (a, the, an) or conjunctions (and, but).
Or you your poem will read like a newspaper headline.
5. Check to see if the opening lines and closing lines are necessary. Sometimes the true poem begins most interestingly with the third line, and ends with the third from the last.
6. Check to see if all the stanzas or strophes are necessary. Sometimes you can cut the whole stanza, and strengthen the poem.
7. If the poem is in stanzas, sections, or parts, cut them into individual pieces and play with their arrangement. Sometimes the poem is better if arranged a different way (while keeping all the sections). Sometimes this is how you discover whether any can be cut.
8. Subject all adverbs to intense scrutiny (as to whether they are necessary) “ran quickly” might be better expressed as “hurried.”
9. Subject all adjectives to strong scrutiny (as to whether they are necessary) “white snow” is redundant. “Snow” would suffice all by itself. (“Black wind” , however, is interesting, because unusual, unexpected...)
10. Read the poem aloud several times, and mark with a highlighter pen those places which were more difficult to read (tongue-twisters). Examine them and see if you can improve them.
11. If you are not certain whether your poem is in proper syntax and is grammatical, type the poem out as prose and check the sentences for completion and proper usage, then re-line.
12. Check to see that the sentences within the poem (which might go on for several lines), are, in fact, complete sentences (or have a good reason why not).
13. Try writing the poem in a different “person”— switch from “he” to “I” or vice versa.
14. Check the verb tenses to see whether they are consistent and/or correct.
15. See if compound verbs can become simple verbs (for compression) “I would run” might be able to become “I ran”, etc.
16. Check for spelling errors.
17. Check for consistency in spacing between lines.
18. Check to see whether the poem is well placed on the page.
19. In sending poems out to be published, always send clean, correct versions.
20. Break any of the above rules except #19 if you think it is necessary to the poem.
Try writing poems using these exercises:
1. Write an “epistolary” poem, (the word is the same as the “epistles” or letters from the apostles in the new testament). This is a poem in the form of a letter to another person, often omitting the salutation (“dear....”) but in other respects, resembling a letter. The poet Richard Hugo wrote a number of these.
2. Write a poem in answer to a letter you receive from someone (or, if you read some interesting published letters, try answering one of them in the form of a poem).
3. Write a “persona” poem, in which you become someone else and speak in the poem as that person (Amelia Earhart? a Civil War nurse? a trapeze artist in the circus? Sir Walter
Raleigh?)
4. Choose eight or ten words at random from your “loved words” list and try writing a poem, quickly, in ten or twelve lines, using these words. Then check your list to see if there are any interesting substitutions you can make.
5. Take two poems you have written which are related in some way, cut the lines apart, and splice together a new version, then re-write the poem according to the new version, so that you produce one long poem.
6. Try writing a poem that provides instructions on how to get somewhere or do something (recipe, directions, assembly, or how to recover from a death, a lover, an addiction, etc.)
7. Write a poem that re-tells, or “transforms” a story or myth. (Try biblical stories, classical myths, fairy tales, etc.). Anne Sexton’s book “Transformations” might be a model for this.
8. Write poems “in the style of” poets from your anthology (that is, the private anthology of favorite poems you make as you read). (There should be a little italicized line, indented between the title and the text of the poem, saying “after so and so”.
9. Write a poem in which you tell what happens in a dream (without telling the reader it is a dream).
10. Write a series of short, linked poems, illuminating (without commentary) episodes from your memory of childhood.
11. Keep a travel diary on a trip (jotting down words, phrases, place names, events), and when you return write a sequence of poems which are dated in the form of a diary, and which illuminate your journey in some way.
12. Choose a work of prose that you especially admire, and, pulling phrases from that work, compose a poem from the phrases. Between the title and the text of the poem, insert an indented, italicized “credit line”--from “ “ by so and so”
13. Write a poem in which you begin by situating yourself in a particular place (on the roof of your house, in your room, etc.), describe that place, and then, by association, “travel” imaginatively somewhere else, and end the poem by returning to the place you are. The poem should be long enough that the reader is surprised to come back. John
Ashbery’s poem “Guadalajara” is a good model for this.
14. Write poems based on interesting black and white photographs from the past. Look
at photography books by Atget, Lange, Weston, Bourke-White, Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, etc.
15. Research the history of your current home or hometown, and write a poem based on an interesting historic event you learn about. I once wrote about a fire which burned my town completely in 1872.
Revision suggestions:
1. Read each line of the poem separately, to be sure that it is interesting by itself. Cut words from the end of the line or add words from the beginning of the next line if you think it would improve the inherent meaning of the line.
2. Look at each word in the poem, and see if you can substitute a more interesting, specific word. Tree might become sycamore. River might become the Shenandoah. Bird might become gull, cardinal, finch, vulture.
3. Eliminate unnecessary commentary and description. If you have the word “snow,” then you already imply (and can eliminate sometimes) “winter,” “cold,” “icy” etc.
4. Be careful not to eliminate important articles (a, the, an) or conjunctions (and, but).
Or you your poem will read like a newspaper headline.
5. Check to see if the opening lines and closing lines are necessary. Sometimes the true poem begins most interestingly with the third line, and ends with the third from the last.
6. Check to see if all the stanzas or strophes are necessary. Sometimes you can cut the whole stanza, and strengthen the poem.
7. If the poem is in stanzas, sections, or parts, cut them into individual pieces and play with their arrangement. Sometimes the poem is better if arranged a different way (while keeping all the sections). Sometimes this is how you discover whether any can be cut.
8. Subject all adverbs to intense scrutiny (as to whether they are necessary) “ran quickly” might be better expressed as “hurried.”
9. Subject all adjectives to strong scrutiny (as to whether they are necessary) “white snow” is redundant. “Snow” would suffice all by itself. (“Black wind” , however, is interesting, because unusual, unexpected...)
10. Read the poem aloud several times, and mark with a highlighter pen those places which were more difficult to read (tongue-twisters). Examine them and see if you can improve them.
11. If you are not certain whether your poem is in proper syntax and is grammatical, type the poem out as prose and check the sentences for completion and proper usage, then re-line.
12. Check to see that the sentences within the poem (which might go on for several lines), are, in fact, complete sentences (or have a good reason why not).
13. Try writing the poem in a different “person”— switch from “he” to “I” or vice versa.
14. Check the verb tenses to see whether they are consistent and/or correct.
15. See if compound verbs can become simple verbs (for compression) “I would run” might be able to become “I ran”, etc.
16. Check for spelling errors.
17. Check for consistency in spacing between lines.
18. Check to see whether the poem is well placed on the page.
19. In sending poems out to be published, always send clean, correct versions.
20. Break any of the above rules except #19 if you think it is necessary to the poem.
What happens when I leave and where I go
Contact information: Tanya.Jarrett@gmail.com
Blog info: http://mathilde.vox.com/
LINES FOR HANK WILLIAMS
by JOE BOLTON
The way his high voice would break and break down,
Beautifully lonesome, lost…who once wrote
A song at gunpoint in a hotel downtown,
Fingers shaking to hold the simple chords.
The world was one long night, endless Nashvilles,
A jambalaya of women, whiskey, and pills.
At the Opry they poured coffee down his throat
Backstage before the show, and he’d cough
And rise, trying to remember his own words.
And once, driving through the dark of the night
In a Cadillac with Minnie Pearl, he broke
Into “I Saw the Light,” then broke it off,
His voice losing volume as he spoke:
“There ain’t no light, Minnie. There ain’t no light.”
He plays with the form a bit in this one, but this is the one I could find. The book I can find in print is Last Nostalgia. His work manages to repay me for every ounce of attention that I give it; I can't recommend it enough.
Blog info: http://mathilde.vox.com/
(Regrettably, I haven't really blogged much at all this year, but there's about a year and some change of archive which is personal, and sometimes farsical and funny... )
This is probably the best place to post a copy of the Joe Bolton poem I mentioned earlier. Being from Nashville, this one is close to my heart.
LINES FOR HANK WILLIAMS
by JOE BOLTON
The way his high voice would break and break down,
Beautifully lonesome, lost…who once wrote
A song at gunpoint in a hotel downtown,
Fingers shaking to hold the simple chords.
The world was one long night, endless Nashvilles,
A jambalaya of women, whiskey, and pills.
At the Opry they poured coffee down his throat
Backstage before the show, and he’d cough
And rise, trying to remember his own words.
And once, driving through the dark of the night
In a Cadillac with Minnie Pearl, he broke
Into “I Saw the Light,” then broke it off,
His voice losing volume as he spoke:
“There ain’t no light, Minnie. There ain’t no light.”
He plays with the form a bit in this one, but this is the one I could find. The book I can find in print is Last Nostalgia. His work manages to repay me for every ounce of attention that I give it; I can't recommend it enough.
me, online
I just wanted to let you know about a few places where you can find me online. I'll probably put up a sidebar where we can find each other, but it seems kind of silly to just have me right now:
- my homepage
- my day-to-day blog
- my poetry blog
Also: You can see "Harry Houdini" here and purchase your own copy of the postcard here.
I especially wanted to call attention to my poetry blog because of the sidebar. I have a ton of resources listed in the right hand column, many of which I hope are useful to you! I also have put up links to New Pages, where you can find wonderful resources for literary magazines, MFA programs, etc. and a link to Shaw Guides, in case you are interested in another workshop experience, just in another geographical location. Also in the sidebar are links to writing retreats (which I am dying to go on... we have one right in Red Wing called the Anderson Center, and I highly recommend you look into it, especially since you'll have a tour guide right there in town!), grants and fellowships (which we all could use!), etc. It's certainly a work in progress, but I hope it's helpful.
- my homepage
- my day-to-day blog
- my poetry blog
Also: You can see "Harry Houdini" here and purchase your own copy of the postcard here.
I especially wanted to call attention to my poetry blog because of the sidebar. I have a ton of resources listed in the right hand column, many of which I hope are useful to you! I also have put up links to New Pages, where you can find wonderful resources for literary magazines, MFA programs, etc. and a link to Shaw Guides, in case you are interested in another workshop experience, just in another geographical location. Also in the sidebar are links to writing retreats (which I am dying to go on... we have one right in Red Wing called the Anderson Center, and I highly recommend you look into it, especially since you'll have a tour guide right there in town!), grants and fellowships (which we all could use!), etc. It's certainly a work in progress, but I hope it's helpful.
Welcome!
Welcome all, to our poetry blog. I hope this is a good way to get in touch with one another, find out how everyone else is doing--send each other good links and whatnot.
If you have any questions on how to post, please let me know. Once you've logged into Blogger, you should see a screen where you can "view blog" or create a "new post." (You need to log in to post.) Simply write what you wish and click on "publish post" when you are done! It's fairly easy.
If you want to create a link, then you simply highlight the text you want to have linked and click on the green button that has always reminded me of a turtle head with glasses (if you hover over it with the mouse, it will say "link") and type in the web address. If you want to upload a photograph, you can click on the button between the spellcheck (abc with a check mark) and the film strip (which I haven't used yet, but I think that's pretty self explanatory). To leave comments, which everyone loves, you click on the part of the post that says "0 comments" (or 1 comment or whatever it is) and you can type in a response to the post.
If you think of anything you'd like to see added to the sidebar, please let me know!
I look forward to hearing from everyone. :)
If you have any questions on how to post, please let me know. Once you've logged into Blogger, you should see a screen where you can "view blog" or create a "new post." (You need to log in to post.) Simply write what you wish and click on "publish post" when you are done! It's fairly easy.
If you want to create a link, then you simply highlight the text you want to have linked and click on the green button that has always reminded me of a turtle head with glasses (if you hover over it with the mouse, it will say "link") and type in the web address. If you want to upload a photograph, you can click on the button between the spellcheck (abc with a check mark) and the film strip (which I haven't used yet, but I think that's pretty self explanatory). To leave comments, which everyone loves, you click on the part of the post that says "0 comments" (or 1 comment or whatever it is) and you can type in a response to the post.
If you think of anything you'd like to see added to the sidebar, please let me know!
I look forward to hearing from everyone. :)
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