Sometimes poetry makes things happen

Robert Pinsky relates a resonant example of a poem that had consequences. [here]

Restrained

The fantasy of grape stained rage
Died in the transistor radio
While playing the oldies

One more time than he cared
To snap his fingers or necks
Of chicken like

His hard mannered grandma
Would do behind
The raspy gray tool shed

I Am

Back from a Writers Workshop
What did I buy – you ask
In a random sort of way
As if maybe you care and maybe not

I bought myself back from linoleum
And I am now vertical
The food was –
Well it was

But the sun hid for while
And time was what it always is
Approximation of something taught to us
But what if it isn’t at all

What if the war were to eclipse time
Would it matter if one fell face down dead in the dirt
Or if 32 hundred and change came home boxed in memory
To families that could not reset their watches and make it go away

Words coagulate to prove
The math backwards
And if I write – I am

A Kiss

A stone can masquerade where no heart is
And virgins rise where lustful Venus lay:
Never try to trick me with a kiss.

~Sylvia Plath from Never Try to Trick Me With A Kiss

Burrrrr..........

First Draft: It's Official...

Congratulations are in order to Kelli Russel Agodon. Atlantic Monthly even...

Another poetry quote for the day...

"Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words." ~ Paul Engle

I am patiently waiting the delivery of 100 broadsides from the printers for distribution for Poetry Month. OK, I'm not very patient, but I am waiting. That counts! Even if I don't have a choice. Hopefully they will arrive Monday in time for my KC Metro Verse meeting the following evening.

It's turned cold here. I mean the really cold, like the leaves on our bushes were young and green and healthy are bitten by the bitterness. Tulips which were in full bloom appear stripped and tortured with dry ice. This is not a good thing. Spring is under attack.

NaPoWriMo first draft

At Last

“How did someone come at last to the word for patience
And know that it was the right word for patience”
~ W.S. Merwin

No subtle breach of taxation
Deliberation that grew moss up the north side
Persistence before we knew what

It isn’t without end though it may seem
At last it would be in short supply
At some point we all find ourselves

Hanging by that last red nerve
When you reach that point
You just know



* note:

I had intended to post all of my poems for NaPoWriMo on a separate blog linked here but have decided not to. Anything written and posted the dame day is likely a best a draft. Some of these may very well have promise and some not. Clearly it is unlikely any would become a full fledged poem in a single day. It has happened to me but it is rare.

I am posting these on a forum, but otherwise, I'll perhaps give you one every few days or some bits like I do from my journal. That seems to me to be the best course for me to take. As always, your comments are welcome...

What constitutes poetry anyway...

"A Poetries Symposium" April 5-7 at the University of Iowa hopes to expand the public understanding of what constitutes poetry.

"Poetries" will encourage participants to think of poetry as a wide range of cultural and language phenomena, not just the masterpieces one might study in English class. Poetic texts exist in unexpected places:

• like greeting cards
• scrapbooks,
• on posters
• or in messages read at weddings

" Such poetry has value, even if it wouldn't make a poetry anthology or a discussion of great art," said Mike Chasar, a UI graduate student in English and co-organizer of the event.

More information and event schedule here

Geometry

Brave topography heaved heavenward
With each refreshing breath
And I could not but help notice
Though it was not as if I set out to
But more as one might stare
In contemplation of a creation
Of Henry Moore if you were to find it
Stark naked in the middle of your backyard
One morning when you let the dog out.

It has occurred to me that God
Like a sculptor must have envisioned
Such appreciation of the simplicity
Of smooth curve lines that intersect
Man’s eye and pull him along
The contouring waves to become himself
A partner to this masterpiece
In the same way a poet makes the reader
A part of his every poem.

untitled draft 2-14-07

Night was lost
In the fall through nowhere cracks
Separated by a tired,
Protracted strangulation
That squeezed the neck of all want
Till the last blood drops puddled below.

A spatula flipped the side over
The splatter of day
Crackled and sizzled
Opening wide-eyed A yellow yolk.

The Year 2006 In Words

From my project I started on December 31, 2006



In all, the red and blue states were not so static—
As a sagging democracy, we have a lot to learn
About spreading it. And why
Do we want others to have it, yet emigrants are a code word
Rioting through our heads in fear— grabbing up our food
Crashing our schools and hospitals stealing what jobs
We still have in this global economy of circular motion?
The more things change for the worse, the more we hear “stay-the-course”
We need a plan, all of us, to deal with it all…
Gruesome body counts, stock market, crude oil and health care costs
Ascending rugged terrain of news charts—
Who are the terrorists? The lines are blurrier than ever.
Neocons fashion themselves as saviors.
Religious extremists chant with fervor.
A jihad in denomination is still a jihad.
A global warming to the sounds of war is calling us to redeploy
And some what withdrawal now!
Where are our battles? Who? What do we fight?
Illegal aliens? Civil Union? Stem-cell research?
What really ticks the clock of doom? Any of these?
Or nuclear tests by a nation teetering on instability
While another thinks proliferation their birthright
And we beg to argue from the weakness of a hypocrite.
We talk about the issue of bilateral verses unilateral discourse
Yet the critical issue might as well be the unidentifiable liquid
Upon the moon. Insane as is was 2006 is history.

Nothing to Embrace

Nothing to Embrace

A tin can that rattles of air
A limp sting with no kite
A battle with no one
The war is over

They’ve all gone home.

I’d wring my hands
Of this blank space in time
But how, and where
Would I hang my head?