“Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.”
                                                                                                                         ~ Allen Ginsburg

International Poetry Day?

"The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation." -James Fenton

It's national Poetry Day, says the Out of Print page on facebook.
I don't know if that's true, but I'll take any excuse to discuss poetry.

This quote by James Fenton, now: When he mentions the reverberation, what is he referring to?
My immediate thought was how I will read a poem and my first thought is always "What does it mean?" even though there's no telling. A poet writes a poem, and the reverberation is the echo from the poem - the sounds that come afterward. The interpretations. The implications. The feedback.

Or maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.
For me, that's the fun of reading poetry - I never know what I'll get out of it.
And the same thing goes for when I write poetry: I never know what I'll end up saying.
In fact, it seems that most of my poems begin with one kind of thought and then end with something entirely different. Being unintentionally about something entirely different than what I had intended, I mean. I go where the words take me.

If you are looking for some poetry to read, or even to listen to, I recommend The Poetry Archive for a start.


http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/home.do

This is where I looked up Fenton, and read

Fenton's unsettling use of traditional form to confront contemporary events, combined with images of comedy and violence is evident in poems such as 'Out of the East' and 'The Ballad of the Shrieking Man'. Nonsense verse has always formed a part of Fenton's output and in these poems he employs its metrical and linguistic energy to explore the nightmarish scenarios of war: "The lice/The meat/The burning ghats/The children buried in the butter vats/The steeple crashing through the bedroom roof/Will be your answer if you need a proof." The jaunty rhythms of Kipling have turned into the hysteria of apocalypse.

I'm sure there are very nice poems about flowers or something in the archives as well.

I Am Aware

I am aware

That I make largely empty gestures

Angry and defiant

At the establishment

The established norm

Even though I have no clue if I am making one bit of a difference.

I am aware

That getting angry

Doesn’t solve any problems

But I do think

It motivates me to try

I am aware

That I am weak

That poverty is a weapon

That freedom is

A state of mind

I am aware

That I can only help

Those in my immediate environment

And that I can’t even do that

If I don’t first help myself

I am aware

That I am trapped inside my own mind

A prison of my own making

And that days go by

When no one knows I’m alive

-- Not even myself

I am aware

That time is inevitable

That change is improbable

That I’m fighting against the current

Fighting for my life

I am aware

That there are children watching me

And there’s my answer

My salvation

Because they can’t see their way out of the forest

Unless I first make a way for myself.

Erin Go Brah!

My son's tribute to the Irish sun god, Luh.

My maternal grandmother was Irish.
I travelled to Ireland a couple of years ago.
Therefore, I feel perfectly justified in getting a little silly this time of year.

My children and I made bodrhas and read Irish mythology and a little Yeats.

There was boiled dinner because that was my own mother's tribute to the holiday when my siblings and I were growing up.

It felt as if I were missing something... Ireland itself, perhaps.

Saint Patrick's Cathedral

"Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you
can understand..."

~ The Stolen Child, Yeats

Joyce's Ullyses
 

Cliffs of Mohr on a rainy day

In My Write Mind

       I get up early every morning and write whatever pops into my head first - three free-style pages of disconnected images and thoughts, snippets of dreams, worries, and random lists of potential activities for the day. I imagine it would be pure drivel at first glance, but it's amazing the things that come of it. I might worry for several entries about a particular situation, only to pop up with the answer one fine morning with no expectation of doing so. Often what I bring to the page is a pressing life choice or change that needs to be made. If I write about it often enough, it seems that the answers do come. Sometimes I will write about a concern in the evening, and my mind has pieced together an answer by morning. I personally imagine dreams to be random bits of memory and information that my mind is sweeping up as I sleep. Upon waking, I sometimes catch a glimpse of something shiny lying along the bottom of the dustpan. My mind is like one of the random houses in my dreams - endless turning corridors with rooms on all sides. Perhaps the shiny object comes from the Memories of Lake Michigan Room, or the room entitled Poems I Have Never Written Down. It landed on the floor, was swept into the hallway by a gust of air, and ended up jumbled into a dream sequence where I'm being chased by something dark and breathing heavily.

 

So there's that daily discipline in my life. Harder to fit in is the actual work of focused, deliberate writing. The original ideas alway come hard and fast. The pressure to put them to paper and flesh them out is so intense that I can't focus properly on anything else until I've acted on that urge. I'll write in the margins of my planner, the transaction register of my checkbook, a stray napkin, or the back of a shopping receipt if I have to, and then rush home to press the words out along my keyboard. Afterward the work begins. I have to polish up the ideas and apply some sort of craft to them - descriptive words, sights, sounds, texture, taste... clarify an idea here or there so that a second party can make sense of it. Read. Revise revise revise...

 

When it comes to novel writing, I have to be very deliberate indeed. I sit at the same place every day, listen to the same music I was listening to when I left off, and work at it steadily for a minimum of an hour per day. When the pressing inspiration of ideas are pushing to be released, the work goes fast and I lose all track of time. Other days are dry, and on those days I find myself hung up on petty revision that I shouldn't even be focusing on until I've completed a full chapter, at least, if not the entire thing.

 

Poetry is a lot more fun. Poetry generally consists of just those initial flashes of inspiration and then a short tidying-up period afterward. I don't concentrate at all on structure, a little on syllables, and afterward just a moment or two on what word might be just a bit more expressive of the whole than whatever word I have chosen. I'm quite certain that a better poet would spend more time on craft, but I save that for the novel.

 

I have been writing like this since I was twelve years old. Looking back on some of my work, I'm surprized how good some of it actually was. The rest is just as embarrassing as looking at old school pictures.

 

It makes me wonder sometimes how all the morning journals will hold up. Some day I will leave behind a massive stack of heavy boxes packed with filled and discarded journals. The collection I have so far would take roughly four strong men to lift and cart to the next apartment. They're not as neat as a novel, nor as pretty as poetry - full of raw emotions and immediate thoughts, unedited and lying naked beneath a thin coverlet. I've been writing like that for so long now that I sometimes forget to code-switch when writing elsewhere. I forget that I have an audience to consider, and that not everyone has the background knowledge to comprehend the whole of what I am saying. This is a common concern among students who set out to write formal reports. They write at first in their casual, every day voices, and have to be taught to modify them for the general public. How to describe an elephant to someone who has never seen one before? It is very easy to assume that everyone has.

 

Anyway, the point of all this is that a writer has to write. I believe a real writer has to write. It isn't an option. It has to be done. Put it off too long, and it comes out in my daily life. I find myself shorter-tempered, not quite at the top of my game, less focused, and even kind of boring. It's a sad state of affiars when you are boring even to yourself. I am a better person when I am writing. I am deeper. Life makes sense to me on all manner of levels in ways that it does not when I am not writing. I think I would indeed go mad if I didn't get it all out of my head and into a computer file. That's where the phrase "in my write mind" comes from. I am only in my right mind when I am writing, thinking of writing, or learning from what others have written.

 

 

 



 

 



 

Nothing So Terrible

Was reading an interview with poet Mary Oliver yesterday in which she said it was a shame that the world has Plath as an example of what poetry is, because now they've got a certain impression of the art that doesn't reflect all its facets.

At least, that's my Next-Day interpretation of what I read that she was saying.

It bothered me a little.
I relate too well to Plath.

But what Oliver was trying to say is true to an extent, and from a certain point of view.

The assumption that all poetry is the tortured confessional of a suicidal woman is, like all assumptions, obviously only a facet of the whole. What is an assumption, after all, if not a portion of a whole, as in Saxe's poem about the blind men and the elephant? Is the elephant all of these things or none of these things?

All of them, I'd say.

I don't believe you can write much of anything without bits of yourself accidently getting into it, but it's only confessional if you are choosing to confess something.

Certainly not all poems have to be about something dark, tortured, or insidious.
Mary Oliver is an example of that.
She prefers to see the "bright sides" of things and offer those up to the world as trite solutions or an answer to societal ills.
The way I've worded that sounds highly judgemental coming from a woman who by nature can't help but see the bright side of everything sooner or later, no matter how hard she may try to focus on "reality."
It's all relevant anyway.
Your reality is what you make of it, and the opinions of others doesn't necessarily have to have any effect upon that.

Oliver writes a lot about nature, and draws all of her solace from nature, it appears.
I can appreciate that.
I draw strength from Lake Michigan.
And when my hair fell out at the age of fourteen and I had to adjust to thinking less of physical, material matters, it was comforting to think of nature; of how the leaves return to the trees in their season.
It grew back.
I admit I decided to think of Life in that way, and I dare say that is what has kept me alive through considerable strife - the philosophy that all things pass or resolve themselves, given enough time.

I digress here.

I think I only wanted to say that I'm glad of Plath. I celebrate that nothing is so big or terrible that it can't be put into words and then expressed as art, transforming it into a thing of beauty and strength in its own right.

I choose to make that a theme in my life and in my art.

If this had been Oliver's only criticism, I would most likely not have posted this. Additionally, she said that Plath and those of her ilke were mistakenly using poetry as therapy - and, using Sylvia Plath as an example, that obviously the "experiment" was a failure.

Why?
Is the assumption that, because Plath ultimately committed suicide anyway, that her opinion of the use of poetry was rendered invalid?  That her poetry is therefore less valid?
I don't suppose Oliver meant it like that, but that's how it reads all the same, and I think it's deplorable.

Of course poetry is not the same as therapy, and the only purpose for writing it is not that one be seeking solace from some personal torment. Of course not.

But it can be.
And who is to say that it sometimes shouldn't be?
The beauty of the medium is that it can be manipulated any way the writer wishes, and in turn interpretated in any way the reader is able.
A poem can be physical, metaphysical, personal, impersonal, free-range or follow the strictest of codes. The choice is up to the individual. Any judgement rendered by others is somewhat meaningless, unless the author reads what they have to say and realizes that the poem did not accomplish what they meant it to. And guess what? I don't think that makes it any less a poem. Nothing that we write and publish before the eyes of others is our own any more. It is shared and experienced and re-experienced meaning somethingdifferent to every person who reads it, because there are as many interpretations as there are people upon this earth.

Untouched

The woman who never sleeps, 

She loves the early morning hours when fresh light is shining in.

 Trundled in her blankets,

Secure diminutive fetus.

The nightmares leave with obscurities

 Safe sex, they snicker, is an oxymoron...

 They have to take that one last stab

 before the light blocks them out.

Her mind ambles in and out of reality

as effortlessly as stations on the dial of her car.

Therefore, she can feel someone holding her tenderly

telling her everything is all right.

It’s all right, and it’s going to be all right.

 I’m all right.

 More than all right.

I’m a striking, sensuous being

In the early morning hours the ache of my existence is exquisite

my mind stripped of worries, my body bare of apparel

Someone rocking her

Firm hands; words

Fingers trailing through her hair.

 She hungers for the words more than for their touch

Along her temples,

 inside her mind

Echoes, trailing earthquakes along her skin

 It feels so good,

 as so few things do

Lips; whispering

They trace along the length of her form

 in rhythms, consonants, alliteration,

leaving fiery moist darts in their wake

 lit clit literature

The rocking glides into a cadenced dominance

 surrounded by sound; sounding out the words

 They taste good

 She’s not some crazy hypersexual whore,

Not dirty nor low

Beautiful

Powerful

Unique

He must know that I can’t say no to anything

but understands that freedom breeds

Breathes

 She's whispering

Any time; any place

 Crazy, clashing imagery

Any game; any position

 The pauses seem random but are pregnant with anticipation

As hard as you want

 They only seem harsh when they become personal

As long as you want

 broken up by spaces, trailing down the page like fingers

As fast or as slow as you want

 speed poetry, seed poetry, erupting in motion

As often as you want

 She lingers in the words compulsively,

tunneling through her limbs,

a fix shot through her veins

 The stamen forced through,

the soft tactile flames

 bursting into her brain,

a profusion of shuddering red petals

 warm and spreading warmth

Heavy breathing in her ear

It’s morning

I’m safe in the morning

The breaths are defenselessly resilient ,

holding back so much

Holding back the pain

The emptiness

The fear

Solid hands are holding her,

soothing her,

telling her that she's safe

Gentle, persistent,

Leaving tremors in their wake

I’m all right

 Everything’s all right

“Are you there?” he asks.

Softly

He knows that she needs him to ask

She needs to be there

I want to be there

I don’t have to float fearfully from my body

Hovering cold and alone above

There's nothing broken here;

 I can connect like this, cling to this

Touch it taste it smell it feel it free it be it

 allow myself to feel this, to enjoy this -

Shaking, quaking with searing intensity

in the effort to maintain control

for fear her mind will explode

with urgency in the moment

Because he’s on to her,

covering her

Clever enough,

patient enough

to sense when she's leaving,

to hold her close and tell her that he’s there

 to rock and to read another line

And she adores him for it

 a stanza

For grounding her,

pressing her into the covers

whispering

Touch me

Touch me here

 Short, rapid breaths singing,

A pant

A sigh

 Denying entry of the fear

Filling her with floral arrangements

 No room for the thorns

 Tell me

Teach me

Reach for me

Quivering

I burn like a phoenix

Birth like Eve

Believe

Just tell me

Movement by movement,

describe the steps of the dance

 For she hungers for the words as much as for the touch

I learn quickly

My mind and body open

early in the morning

where the nightmares stand at bay.

Never Intended

The plate glass window glints along the main street
winking
I am drawn in by the images beyond its sheen
Beautiful objects are piled within
random, erratic visions of delight
I see them
I want them.
I can't afford them.
The price is too dear
I can never have them
might as well never touch them
Not through the glass
Ads on signs beckon from within
They are for anyone to see
certainly none are directed to me
Theirs is a public face
intended to promote the objects on display
product placement
I am displaced
I want to touch them all the same
How worthy are they to possess?
The ads do not really say
I pull a marker from my pocket
its tip squeals erratically along the surface
I write about the things I see,
what they mean to me
Glancing up, I see my own face looking back
a trick of the light
a happenstance reflection along the glimmer of the glass
The glass is smooth, impregnable.
It is calm
It reflects the light
It says, "It was never my intention to be a mirror."
Never its purpose.
So I step back.
And I walk away

My life is a series of beautiful images and half-eaten thoughts
and some nights I shiver with emptiness as they pour onto the page.

The Raven: Read by Christopher Walken

It's the anniversary of the date when this poem was published in 1845.
I'm sure there's better readings of the poem, but I have a preverse fondness for the esteemed Mr. Walken.
It's a little family in-joke.
One of my younger sisters even thanked Christopher Walken in her graduation speech.
In our defense, we weren't the only ones who laughed.

To Richard

I see you there still

little vacant winter nest

stagnant, clinging stubbornly 

to the crook of that diminutive tree

 

How did that bird ever fit inside?

Did she have to squeeze herself flat 

huddled in that hard, cold minute space 

Imagining comfort there?

 

Still you hang on

empty inside 

is it worth it

what you lost in your pride?

 

Where is the bird who once lived there? 

Did she outgrow you, stretch her wings and soar? 

She is flying out farther 

than you have ever seen before

 

While still you hang tight 

dry and spare 

your empty spaces 

exposing the emptiness there.

Throbbing Song

Brooding Sunday nights in the neon glare of McDonald's with Peppermint Hot Chocolate and freshly baked cookies, feverishly probing for solace within the luminosity of my ersatz time and space travelling device.

Alone can be brittle.
Joyful
Complete
Utter
Full
searching
searing
empty
Content
Questioning
Careening
Carefree
naked
lost
Free
Liberation
a throbbing song
unlikely delight
a burden
liquid
burning
reaching
Seeking
Finding
I find myself,
come to terms with who I see
always seeing still more
so much more to do and to be

Every Sunday night
I suspect there are coffee grounds in the dregs of my cocoa
an emptiness that the cookies cannot fill
the caffeine spike falls flat
the light flares against the rim of my glasses
echoes coldness against my retina
beautiful eyes wasted against the
flat, glaring screen.
It never looks back.
Words wink and sparkle like eyes
warm the mind
touch the soul
kill the time...

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
They made me memorize this poem by Dickinson when I was twelve years old.
I have never been sorry.

Ten Minutes

In ten minute's time my outer life ends.
My body will turn to repetitive, meaningless tasks while my mind roams abroad in search of a star.
Perhaps I will go back to Scotland, Ireland, or Japan - visit Paris or London...
When midnight strikes my voyage will not end with a pumpkin.
I will ride upon magical wheels to live in victorious abandon and blind hope.
The world is so beautiful in pieces.
It breaks apart into shards of images - the stars shining outside the sweep of my windshield until the garbaged-bagged window obscures them - the smile of a man with a dimple in his cheek - a girl with Audrey Hepburn's eyes - The rainbow glow of factory lights against the clouds...