National Poetry Month

I'm participating in the poem- a- day challenge for the month of April. I've not decided if I will post them here, but at this time I'm leaning against it. Writing a poem-a-day is really the exercise of creating a new draft each day. Rarely do I ever complete a poem in one day so these have to be considered in the context of a very rough draft. Some may go on to become poems while others simply will not survive the process or may become part of an entirely different poem. Still, the exercise is a good one for any writer to undertake, and I'll keep you updated on how I'm doing, and maybe share a line or two now and then.

There will be other poetry month stuff posted here over the next 30 days as well.

Risk

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.  ~T.S. Eliot

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Eskimo Pie

I want an Eskimo Pie.

I want it cold

and hard as marble.

 

I want to peel the chocolate layer off

in two                 halves.

 

First eat the vanilla inside.

Hold the chocolate clothing;

admire its sheen.

Afterwards consume it-

 

until we are one

and the rush of dopamine flashes

inside my arcade head

sending me round and round

in a ball of worked up heat

wanting more and more.

 

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Zealous and vibrant...

Thursday night I was fortunate enough to be in the audience at a Kansas City reading by Aimee Neshukumatathil.  Aimee read from her book Miracle Fruit, her latest book titled At the Drive-In Volcano and from a newer, yet to be published manuscript.

Aimee's writer voice is not the particularly powerful voice that I usually am drawn to. Nor did she quite seem to meet the template for an academic poet. She is perhaps more in the style of Naomi Nye… a gentle voice, a voice of knowledge, a voice that is zealous and vibrant, a layered mingling of her pedigree and contemporary American culture. Among my favorites from the reading, Corpse Flower, Swear Words, and Fishbone.

She’s a very relaxed reader who commands the audience attention with a balance of humor and casual storytelling in addition to her poetry. Her tone of voice when reading is a pleasant and reassuring one.

I enjoyed reading through Miracle Fruit last night and today. Her poetry is tight and neat and relies upon a wide range of knowledge of the plant and animal kingdom as well as ethnic and cultural insight.

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On a sad note...

As news of this has trickled out to the mainstream media slowly, I'm sure some of  have perhaps heard that Nicholas Hughes died on the 16th of this month at his own hands. Nicholas was of course the second of two children born to Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.

He was in 46 and made his home in Fairbanks Alaska when he was a prominent fish biologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Not surprisingly he inherited his fathers fondness for fishing and nature.

His passing might have only made the local papers, but the the word of his suicide made the news around the U.S. and across the Atlantic in Europe as well.  He was after all the son of Sylvia and Ted.  There is so much tragedy associated with the family already and this will only rekindle the debates about his mothers death.

Nicholas was less in the limelight than his sister Frieda who like her mother wrote poetry and and painted as a serious artist herself. In a statement by Frieda released as she departed for Fairbanks she noted that her brother had been battling depression for some time.

Already I've seen stories that have popped up talking about a "suicide gene." There is statistically a high percentage of suicides among individuals who have lost a family member to suicide, but so far not real scientific evidence that links the act directly to genetics. It is true that the conditions, both environmental and by some predisposition to depression may increase the tendency but that linkage is more indirect.

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heartwarming story

I want to make note of a video my daughter Meghan passed along to me and some of you may well have seen it, but for those who haven't it's an uplifting story, the kind that toughs at the  heart.

 

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collaborative poetry

I've not really had any experience with collaborative poetry in the context of shared writing. I always consider poetry to generally be a collaborative between the poet and the reader, but that's another whole matter.

I suppose it requires a special temperament for two artists, both poets, to work together to produce something that is a joint creation.  C.D. Wright in a symposium I attended earlier this month, spoke of collaborating with photographers on work. That seems to me to be a particularly beneficial arrangement given the tenets under which both art forms develop.

Mutating the Signature (great name by the way) is a relatively new blog of two poets who have been actually collaborating for a while now. The poets Dana Guthrie Martin and Nathan Moore have certainly put an interesting light upon such work.

Nathan for example has explained a part of the benefit of this shared creative process this way,'"Collaborative poetry offers a respite from the struggles of solitary work. My poor, overworked ego is given a break as process and product are shared, voices are melded. It’s a fantastic feeling to be partner to the creation of a voice that’s greater than your own.'" I think any of us who've written for a while are certainly aware just how solitary the work can become.

Dana seems to derive an energy from seeing the twists and turns that can develop when two are working to meld their voices. She is quoted on their site as explaining it like this... '"The surprise of the poems we’ve written. Oh, the unforeseen turns the writing takes. Going in and not knowing where you’ll come out, or when or how. The way we each respond to the words and phrases the other person contributes. How a piece that in one moment seems like it’s headed nowhere fast can, in a word or two, find its way somewhere startling, strange and gorgeous.'"

As I've stated, I've not really worked except in the simplest terms, like at a workshop of people joining to create a poem, and that was more for fun and hardly a serious collaborative venture.  I'm curious about the experiences of others, be they positive or negative. Any takers is this discussion? What's it like and perhaps you can share a bit about any rules or secrets of making it work that you'd like to share? 

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