Saturday, July 26, 2014

The One in Contact

Image of the day:  Milky clouds creaming a blue bowl of a sky.


So this is sort of indicative of how my week has been going:  I'm driving my son to his music lesson from our house and I think I've timed it as usual but I'm ten minutes late because usually I'm in the center of town, which is ten minutes away, so of course the instructor has left by the time I get there--and when my husband gets home, who is the one in contact with the instructor, I want to send an apology via email, which he does--only to find out when he checks his email that the instructor had canceled.  Canceled earlier in the day.


My chapbook, Just Beneath Our House I Hide My Other Body, is in the First Ever Hyacinth Girl Press Thunderdome!  Margaret Bashaar, editor extraordinaire, is, instead of just putting up lists of semi-finalists, finalists, and the four winning chapbooks, making brackets instead, and out of hundreds of manuscripts, mine is one of 32 to battle it out.  So that's exciting and very entertaining. 


I think I told you that I was enrolled in what's called a MOOC course, which stands for a Massive Open Online Course, about How Poets Write.  It has been such a great course and I've loved watching the videos.  If you're interested, here's a link to one of the videos on you-tube.   It's about the pleasure of poetry.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6cdVX7RRsk  One of the things the videos have been stressing is ways of using constraints or rules to get you to write a poem in surprising ways. 


And one of the books they suggested reading was Srikanth Reddy's Voyager, which I just bought. He had a whole process about how he wrote this book, using the memoir of Kurt Waldheim, that he talks about here at this link.  It's quite fascinating. 


 


Minotaur
  by Peter Kline     


You wound a ball of twine around my eyes
then pinned the end between my fingers.



You gowned me in white tissue
like a hothouse nectarine.



The furtive door at last unbarred, I was
amazed at the garden's suggestion



throating from vining flower-walls
in breaths that quickened with mine.



How long I lingered beneath
sun awnings and a stone-and-mortar sky,



only you know. For when I found the throneroom
festooned with pelvis bones,



the twin-fingered god on whose nether lip I hung
a kiss, a crape-gartered barb,



was you--you the pursued, yours
the bull's head draped with fragrant lash-black hair.



 









Sunday, July 6, 2014

Inside Their Skin

Image of the Day:  Small green globes of unripe tomatoes, holding summer's juice inside their skin.


I'm enrolled in this free, online poetry workshop and they have these videos of poets talking about the craft of poetry, which is fabulous and reminds me of so much good poets and poetry I need to read and reread and today I was reminded of Robert Creeley.  You should read this poem about love and language here.


So in April, while I was trying to write a poem a day and failing, I did write a few Swedish Fairy tale poems.  I made these completely up but it was fun.  My father's side of the family is Swedish, and I got this book, Jolly Calle and other Swedish fairy tales, but I can't seem to get into them.  So I just made up my own.  Anyway, you can read one of them here, at Rose Red Review.  You should also check out the art work and other writers in there.  And then go write your own fairy tale, using your heritage. 


Yesterday my son and I went to a nearby town's fourth of July parade.  They had, of course, closed off the main street into town and the parade was all lined up as we walked into town past it.  Our own private preview.  It was a great parade but LOUD.  My son dancing and clapping and getting more excited about a packet of carrot seeds being thrown to him rather than all the candy. 


I hope you enjoyed your fourth. 


Mary Ruefle quoting Milosz:  "The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person" (140).




3 am
       


Winter and I am awake again
in the darkness of a moonless night
no light to drive out the black animal
that creeps about my head
tonguing its way around hidden hurts
like an evil mother
licking to life the morbid thoughts
of 3 am.


 Nicki Griffin
 

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Finding a New Place

Image of the Day:  Black fly on your bare back and you can't smack it and your flesh feels like a ripe pear being crushed.




It's hot today.  Hot today, hot yesterday.  And so I took my dog for a walk early-ish today, earlier for me and my son, earlier than yesterday.  And I was all worried about loading my son up with insect repellant, him and me, so I had him jump outta the car and sprayed and sprayed and then sprayed myself and then got the dog out and punched the car door locks, locking the car, turned around and went...oh noNo no no no. Yep.  Locked my keys, my cell phone, and my purse in the car.  And do you know where my extra car keys are?  That's right, in my purse, so that I have my keys wherever I have my purse.  So.  We still took the dog for a walk, albeit a short one, and then walked to the police station and got a nice ride home.  After a very very warm walk.  And then I turned that experience into a rough draft poem. It's gotta be good for something, right?


But it's still hot outside, and since it's hot outside, I have a nice cool poem to blow your way, here, at the gorgeous Cider Press Review.  And I'll be finding a new place for my extra keys, thank you very much.


Poetry Prompt:  Write about your teeth.  Or, write about biting into something.



































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