Mortal Corkscrew

Not Knowing What to Say, Still Finding a Way to Say it

2011-07-29T10:00:00.005-04:00

Often there are times in my life where I deal with being mute, overwhelmed with all that happens from day to day. I use music and writing to find my way. This helped. Hope it helps you.

And one for my brother:

Reminded

Repetition leads to insanity, but I am grateful

for the shade. Grateful for the colonials

which almost seem planted to shield my face

from the mid-day sun. Oh my brother,

there you are in your cell, again, me in mine.

Wasn’t our childhood fucked up?

We both knew that the red room was haunted,

but never spoke of it.

So isolated,

yet rising together, bubbles in a vat of tar

rolling in the heat of self-pity. Enough of this being together

in our aloneness bullshit. Let’s talk.

I cannot handle anyone being too near, won’t be touched

or held for too long, and even my children’s fingers

on my face or in my hair is unbearable. You always knew

this about me, always gave me safe distance, until now.

A thousand miles and I don’t know how many steel bars

separating us. I can’t call you to ask: Are you safe?

Are you scared? Can you breathe?

Can you sleep at night?

I remember the trailer park and the boys

who hid in the bushes, threw rocks at you.

I chased them down and caught one,

knocked him to the road and rubbed his face in gravel.

The violence was a joy, as close to feeling happy

as I’d ever felt, and I demanded punishment,

told you to stick up for yourself, told you to punch him

or bite him, or kick him,

anywhere, hard. But you, with the bruises rising

on your face, you with your wounded eyes,

looking at me like I had been the one to hurt you,

would not come near me,

would not touch him.

I thought you were a coward. I thought revenge

was justice. I didn’t know it then but you showed me

justice is less about getting even,

and more about just getting through.

Poetry Matters: A List of Loved Poems and the People Who Love Them

2011-05-01T08:09:00.011-04:00

—in no particular order:

1. Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken,” Dennise Westland
2. Mara Eve Robbins, “Sequence 134,340— Phases of Pluto,” Elizabeth Matthew Jones
3. W.S. Merwin, “A Birthday,” and “Separation,” Pamela Johnson Parker
4. James Merrill, “Lost in Translation,” Constantine P. Cavafy “Ithaka” and Robert Frost, “Directive,” Amy Glynn Greacen
5. Chris Haven, “Janis Joplin’s Eulogy to the Graduating Class of Thomas Jefferson High in Port Arthur Texas, 1960,” Judy Swann
6. Louis Bogan “Several Voices Out of a Cloud,” Elizabeth Hadaway
7. Elizabeth Bishop, “One Art,” Sharon Miller
8. Richard Siken, “Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out” Megan Hippler
9. Samuel Becket, “what would I do without this world” and Theodore Roethke, “The Waking,” James Priestley
10. Louis Bogan, “The Night,” Chris Noonan
11. Edward Dorn, “The Sundering UP the Tracks,” Tuli Kupferberg, “Nothing,” Steve Bunch
12. Percy Byshhe Shelly, “Ozymandias,” Ken Thornsbury
13. Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese,” Mara Eve Robbins

How this list was compiled: April was National Poetry Month and I decided to write an article including my own 25 top picks for poems, and then my computer died a horrible death, sending all my writing files to the darker realms of cyber-hell and all my hopes and dreams into the deepest of all abysmal abysses. Abysmal Abysses. Say that ten times fast. Now pretend you are Elmer Fudd and say it. (See, better now, life doesn’t sound so bad when you are lisping.) When rewriting this article, pulling myself up by my bootstraps, figuratively speaking, though literally if I had boots I imagine they would have straps—to the point though, I had an epiphany: I don’t want to know what I already know, I want to know what other people feel about their own favorite poems, or maybe it was just that my fingers started cramping and I got tired, one or the other. Anyway, I posted this question on facebook: “What's your favorite poem, ever? Or right now. Right this minute. Now. No, now. What poem, or lines of, is/are stuck in your brain at this time?” The above list was born from that question. I then gave the participators the chance to participate further, if they so chose, and asked, like I usually do about everything, “Why?” Here are those responses:

1. My name is Dennise Westland and I chose Robert Frost's poem "The Road Less Traveled." I am a student at Virginia Western Community College and transferring to Radford University to get a Bachelors in Biology. I chose this poem because I am at a transitional place in my life; I'm at a fork in the road. Unlike most teenagers my age, I'm 100 percent focused on my studies instead of being in the social scene. I'm taking the path less traveled by.

2. “Pluto—poor, poor, poor Pluto.” Elizabeth Matthew Jones is from Roanoke, VA. She studied creative writing and theatre at Hollins University.

3. From: “A Birthday” by W. S. Merwin (Flower & Hand)

and each waking to you
when I open my eyes you are what I wanted to see.

After only three months, my boyfriend proposed to me, at dawn, with these lines. I'd turned him down six times before, but this time…what an aubade! Ten years later, early one Saturday morning, he repeated these lines to me on the birth of our daughter, Raleigh.

Elizabeth Bishop writes in "Filling Station," that "somebody loves us all." When I recall these lines of Merwin and Harvey's earnest face, I remember who and when and always.

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.

"Separation," by W.S. Merwin (The First Four Books of Poetry)

Last summer, after 23 years of a brilliant marriage, my husband died. These lines of Merwin have held me together, much as the patches of a quilt are held together, by often-invisible stitching. The thread runs true. Even though Harvey's no longer physically here, he still gives my life its color. I've continued to write for this reason.

Pamela Johnson Parker is the author of A Walk Through the Memory Palace and Other Four- Letter Words. A four-time Pushcart nominee, her work is included in journals such as Oranges and Sardines, New Madrid, Ocho, and Anti-, as well as being chosen by Broadsided for its Switcheroo contest. Pamela teaches at Murray State University and lives in western Kentucky, where no Bakelite bracelet is safe from her clutches.

4. Amy Glynn Greacen's response forthcoming. (Hopefully) She loves those poems, ya dig? She’s a busy mom from Lafayette, California. She studied creative writing at Lancaster University.

5. I chose Chris Haven's "Janis Joplin's Eulogy to the Graduating Class of Thomas Jefferson High in Port Arthur, Texas, 1960" because it reached into the Janis Joplin I carry in my bag of myths and resuscitated her. Yes, I read Love, Janis when it came out (though I did not see the play). Once I redrew the Cheap Thrills album art, making it Iowan, like me. At about that same time, when my sister was a freshman, she had a roommate in the dorms, a fencer, who claimed to have slept with Janis and who was nice to me when I, a lowly high school sophomore, came for overnights in the dorm. This girl also later committed suicide. I wish I could remember her name or that she were still here so I could send her this poem. It starts out "You’re not all dead yet but soon will be," and flows from there: the sassiness, the bitterness, the acceptance, the intelligence, all of it. And written by a guy—that just blew me away.

Judy Swann lives in gorgeous Ithaca, NY in a small house painted in Frida Kahlo colors.She writes on the beach. Her poetry has been published in Lilliput Review, Thema, Soundzine, Verse Wisconsin and other places, both in print and online.

6. Elizabeth Hadaway: Louise Bogan’s “Several Voices Out of a Cloud”

Wednesday of Holy Week, I was walking the Stations of the Cross called Greater Morgantown Job Expo. Having a book published, three graduate degrees, and an “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” earworm did not pimp me out at this hiring fair. Thomas Gray kept muttering “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,/And waste its sweetness on the desert air” while I tried to sell myself to HR reps. I’d just spent five years living in a country churchyard “with uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked.” I was missing its yew and hyacinths and my role as Mary Magdalene in the torchlit Passion Play which sometimes caught the yard on fire. In a new state, in a coliseum of people competing to be cocktail servers, Gray proved, all day, a distraction and a deliverance. My view of Bogan was what Rupert Giles said of Emily Dickinson: “Pretty good—for an American.” Yet, asked for a favorite poem, I started chanting “Several Voices Out of a Cloud.”

Both “Several Voices” and Gray’s “Elegy” are about merit that can’t be measured by commercial or communal standards. They’re the “God alone can judge me” tattoos of poetry. I love Bogan’s version more. It’s bracing, with wonderful knobbly mouthfeel. The title-as-stage-direction makes the poem a fragment of Greek drama, its liturgical roots showing—whether comedy or tragedy depends on how much the unworthy have sacrificed for the laurel’s sake. The poem is concise and the rhyme scheme makes it a harsh delight to memorize and perform. So does the meter. Each stanza begins with a long mix of iambs and anapests: “Come, drunks and drug-takers; come, perverts unnerved!” is almost entirely anapestic and goes quickly. The increase in iambs on “Receive the laurel” is a deliberate slowing, a regal presentation, while the anapestic substitutions mark by-the-way reminders that divine and human schedules are not the same. The second stanza goes hypermetrical for the teeming list of “Parochial punks, trimmers, nice people, joiners true-blue” ordered to “Get the hell out of the way of the laurel.” Then we come to the only line break on an unstressed syllable in the whole poem. “It is deathless” threatens for a second to trail off and up in that dippy, ethereal way people who can’t break lines inflect them. Then, in the same anapests as the first stanza’s ending, Centurion Bogan delivers the coup de grȃce: “And it isn’t for you.”

*See more about Elizabeth Hadaway's work here: http://www.carolynforonda.com/Archive/poets_spotlight_Dec2006.htm

7. Mary Oliver and Elizabeth Bishop are on my mind. Yeats, Plath, Heaney, Neruda, Shelley, are not, because it is April in Minnesota and I need honest, manifest, mortal, hands-in-dirt redemption. We had snow on the ground at 5, for several days running this week, and it may be a white Easter. Every view is a Wyeth painting, and the Siberian squill, so faithful, have their collars against the wind like a rock star offstage, their blueberry, hyacinth blue gone gray. I find such solace in Elizabeth and Mary, their words, without sentiment, but with great emotion and compassion, fill that yearning for Mother Nature that makes Eliot talk of April and cruelty. I simply desire daffodils. I read my books in my room, the raindrops with tiny hearts of ice make a bell-like ping on the glass.

Sharon Miller is from Duluth, Minnesota. She studied at The College of St. Catherine and Hollins University.

8. I love Siken, Crush is by far my most worn poetry book.

Megan Hippler is from South Charleston, West Virginia, she currently lives in California.

9. James Priestley: Give it up, and begin anew, is what this pair of poems says to me. I dwell in Yarmouth, Maine, USA. I'm from a distant galaxy, serving as intergalactic diplomat these past six thousand years. Addendum: Progress has been slow, but I am greatly encouraged by recent developments.

10. I just got Bogan's collected - Blue Estuaries - she's wonderful....'Bogan' is a derogative Australianism - i guess the equivalent would be your 'red neck' - or some such - Chris Noonan is from Australia, his work and bio can be found elsewhere on Mortal Corkscrew under the name Chris Noman.

11. “Nothing,” lyrics by Tuli Kupferberg, recorded with many lyrical variations by the Fugs. If I remember correctly, Kupferberg wrote his lyrics to the tune of an old Yiddish folk song about an unvaried diet of potatoes: “Monday potatoes, Tuesday potatoes, Wednesday, Thursday potatoes, etc.” In Tuli’s various versions, which changed with changes in politics and pop culture, he offered up philosophers, poets, rock stars, politicians, social movements, and on and on as just the same old nothing. Some might argue that the song is an expression of post-modern nihilism, but I think its spirit goes back to Ecclesiastes, in which we are told that there is “no thing new under the sun” and “all is vanity.” The version I posted is from “The Fugs’ First Album,” but other versions appear on “The Fugs Live from the ‘60s,” “The Real Woodstock Festival,” and “Golden Filth,” as well as this performance at the memorial service for Tuli last year, with Ed Sanders leading the surviving Fugs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFd3maezlhI

“The Sundering UP Tracks,” by Edward Dorn, is the final section of the long poem “The North Atlantic Turbine.” The larger poem is a freewheeling and blistering dissertation on Western history—ranging from the slave trade to American consumerism to geopolitics and the depredations of capitalism. In “The Sundering UP Tracks,” the railroad is emblematic of all these evils as seen in the American westward expansion. The poet is surprised and disappointed to learn that a black friend coming to visit him in Idaho is staying across the tracks on the black and poor side of town. The tracks divide the country socioeconomically and politically while also being part of the engine that drives capitalism and commerce. I posted the recording of the poem, because Dorn was an excellent reader of his work. The North Atlantic Turbine is out of print, but I think the poem is collected in Way More West: New & Selected Poems http://artvoice.com/issues/v6n28/way_more_west . There’s also a sizable collection of Dorn’s recorded readings at PennSound.

Stephen Bunch lives and writes in Lawrence, Kansas, where he received the 2008 Langston Hughes Award for Poetry from the Lawrence Arts Center and Raven Books. He also is a recent Pushcart Prize nominee. His poems can be found in Autumn Sky Poetry, The Externalist, The Literary Bohemian, Fickle Muses, and Umbrella. From 1978 to 1988, he edited and published Tellus, a little magazine that featured work by Victor Contoski, Edward Dorn, Jane Hirshfield, Donald Levering, Denise Low, Paul Metcalf, Edward Sanders, and many others. After a fifteen- year hibernation, he awoke in 2005 and resumed writing. Preparing to Leave is his first gathering of poems.

12. Ken Thornsbury is a writer living in Virginia.

13. Mara Eve Robbins made the list both as a favorite poet and as a poet who has favorite poems—
go figure. Of Mary Oliver’s, “Wild Geese” Mara says, “Whenever I’ve had a difficult day, like—today, there are lines from this poem which I’ve memorized, that have become a chant, a mantra. It literally helps me get through the day.” Mara lives in Floyd County, VA.

MASH UP:

Here are the first lines from all of the poems. Why? Because I believe in synchronicity and Magical Poetry Talk. Maybe. Also, Robert Hass mentioned something during a lecture…the whole of a poem can be found in its first sentence. Notice there are no quotes around that, memory is its own disclaimer here.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
Astrology is not as much of a cop-out
Something continues and I don’t know what to call it
Your absence has gone through me
A card table in the library stands ready
As you set out for Ithaka
Back out of all this now too much for us,
You’re not all dead yet but you soon will be.
Come, drunks and drug-takers! Come, perverts unnerved!
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
Every morning the maple leaves.
what would I do without this world faceless incurious
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
The cold remote islands
I never hear the Supremes
Monday nothing Tuesday nothing Wednesday and Thursday nothing
I met a traveler from an antique land
You do not have to be good.

The Elementary Spelling Book (Fable I, Of The Boy Who Stole Apples)

2011-03-28T13:18:00.003-04:00

A few weeks ago I went to Pulaski, VA. Pulaski is full of historical old relics, dilapidated railroad stations, empty store-fronts, abandoned factories. Once a city buzzing with commerce, now just a skeleton of what was once a fully fleshed out community. While walking around Pulaski I rambled into a pawn shop and found, next to a stack of graphite records (which I couldn't justify buying, but really wanted to) the above speller. It was just sitting on a shelf, no other books around it, as if someone had just dropped it off there and forgotten it.

When I opened the book and saw that it was published in the 1880's by The American Book Company, my heart started pounding. I imagined the many hands that might have held this book before me. I sat down on the floor, right there, next to the graphite records and started searching through the pages. The words were arranged in columns, with example sentences for grammar purposes thrown in. The language was so archaic, I instantly fell in love.

I sat there, nearly drooling over this book. As casually as I could I got up and approached the counter. "So, how much do you want for this?" I tried to keep the eager gleam out of my eye and the stupid grin off my face. The cashier barely glanced at the book. "Three bucks." He said. I nearly jumped up and down, but I saved that for when I left the pawn shop.

Later on, when I was investigating the history of this book I found out Noah Webster, the father of our modern American Dictionary, was the author. (He was also the very first to obtain copyrights and to promote laws protecting author's rights in the U.S., interestingly enough.) The book was mass published and mass marketed, also known as the Blue-Back Speller and was used in the majority of elementary school classrooms around America.

There are several disturbing images in this book, including a picture of a man being eaten by a bear and a cat being hung upside down by its tail...and a subtext of conformity relating to Puritan Christian values, with God mentioned several times and biblical quotes used as examples of words in context.

The most interesting section to me, which I may consider doing a follow up on later, is the Fables section.

For your enjoyment, Fable One:

"OF THE BOY THAT STOLE APPLES.

An old man found a rude boy upon one of his trees stealing apples, and desired him to come down: but the young saucebox plainly told him he would not. "Won't you?" said the old man, "then I will fetch you down;" so he pulled up some turf or grass and threw at him; but this only made the youngster laugh, to think the old man should pretend to beat him down from the tree with grass only.

"Well, well," said the old man, "if neither words nor grass will do, I must try what virtue there is in stones;" so the old man pelted him heartily with stones, which soon made the young chap hasten down from the tree and beg the old man's pardon.

MORAL. If good words and gentle means will not reclaim the wicked, they must be dealt with in a more severe manner."

Now, I wonder, WWJD? Would He have pelted a young saucebox with rocks. Somehow, I think not.

Part Three: "Not here/Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.” – T.S. Eliot

2011-03-16T08:47:00.007-04:00

“We live in a world where bad stories are told, stories that teach us life doesn’t mean anything and that humanity has no great purpose. It’s a good calling, then, to speak a better story. How brightly a better story shines. How easily the world looks to it in wonder. How grateful we are to hear these stories, and how happy it makes us to repeat them.”

– Donald Miller, Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

Spanish vowels make my tongue feel fat. There’s an inflection in the present tense which makes the sounds of “eeyah” and “endo” trip across my lips. Still, the first sentence that I said (which I actually formed and understood before speaking) gave me a feeling of utter elation and accomplishment. I’ve learned more and retained more from my attempt to communicate with my Spanish speaking friend than I have in all the classes I’ve taken. I learned my friend is from Nicaragua (De donde es usted?) and when she told me where she was from the only word I knew to use to ask about her homeland was “Verde?” Although I didn’t understand every word of what she was communicating, I understood the desperation, the trials, as she replied “No Verde,” and then mimicked trying to pump water from a spout as she explained “Ninguna lluvia. Ninguna agua.” (no rain, no water) por seis meses (for six months). “Aqui es moi verde.”

In preceding essays I’ve tried to tackle the task of explaining the value of words, our purpose for using them and specifically, in poetry, why it is so important we understand the worth of words in communicating. The first sentence I was able to formulate in reply to a question in espanol that didn’t sound like it was coming from a 2 year old was,

“Tengo gusto de manzanas verdes con la sal.”

That’s what poetry should be, a question or reply, a conversation, an attempt at understanding, waking people up to a new experience, forming a shared encounter, a connection which promotes empathy, coming to an understanding with the reader concerning the often confusing foreign languages of the inner psyche, or soul.

From T.S. Eliot, four quartets:

II. East Coker V.

Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate - but there is no competition -
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

I’ve noticed a lot of contemporary American poetry seems to get caught up in the expression of the individual, there is nothing wrong with that, however it seems that many writers write to validate themselves as “writers” rather than to validate the human experience. They forget about the soul. I’m using that word when I might mean psyche or self, but “soul” has a deeper historical significance. Let me put that another way, we only ever lose ourselves in what we put on a page, if we attempt to find ourselves there I think the ultimate end is insanity. Maybe that’s hyperbolic, but what are we trying to communicate, and why?

I used to get really annoyed when in a workshop or writing course I would hear statements like,
“But, what does this MEAN?”

My reply was always “Why does a poem have to “mean” anything? Can’t it just be?”

After several years of struggling with this, heck I don’t know what my poems mean until after I write them, I figured out that my annoyance wasn’t so much with the intention of the question but with the word “meaning.”

A poem can express emotion or reveal a truth to the subconscious mind and the “meaning” may not be clear on an intellectual level but on an instinctive gut level there’s communication which occurs. (If the reader allows it.) The question above I think would be better phrased as “What is your intention, what are you trying to communicate and why?” As the intention of a poet can only be guessed at, it requires a certain amount of faith from readers that the intention of the author isn’t just to confuse you, or to make themselves sound smart (although sometimes, yes, I think some poets get caught up in this and some good indicators of getting lost on the page are oblique references to mythology, or in other words name dropping a greek God here and there.) When done well, it works, when used to fluff up the poem…it doesn’t. How can you tell the difference? Intent.

But back to Eliot, before I get lost on the page here—
Four Quartets again,

IV Little Gidding I.
You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid.

Oh so often I’m confronted with statistics about publishing and numbers related to gender issues. I read articles continually berating MFA programs and the academia, or the opposite-- I hear or read negative things said about blogs or online poetry workshops. That’s all bullshit, folks.

I’ve been thinking about turtles. Sea turtles. There’s one type of sea turtle that comes to the beach (the same beach they’ve been coming to for a millennium) and they come alone, sporadically, laying their eggs. When the eggs hatch and the little turtles start to scoot across the sand they are easy mark for the predators, most don’t make it.

The other type of sea turtle comes in a hoard, thousands upon thousands descend upon their beach (the same beach they’ve been coming to for a millennium) at the same time. The nests are all laid at the same time, the baby turtles all hatch at the same time. Millions of scooting turtles surge to the sea, a wave of turtle-ness. In this case, the predators are so overwhelmed the survival rate is multiplied a thousand times more than the above.

If you haven’t gotten the parallel I am making about the writing world and the many poets today (considering how in previous posts I compared poets to ducks, well…now here, we’re turtles.) Let me spell it out for you: It is a GOOD thing to have so many people writing poetry, speaking poetry, interested in poetry. It doesn’t matter if it’s slam poetry, formal poetry, academic poetry, nautical poetry, poetry about oranges or apple pie, good poetry, bad poetry, whatever. There will be survivors. No one knows what is coming next. I can’t watch the news about Japan without feeling sick. I’m not an apocalyptic type of gal, but I do think words will be the salt which preserves humanity (are you following me here, from turtles to salt?) Or maybe not the salt, but time capsules buried in the sand to emerge one day, like those sea turtles…so we might live on, no matter what comes next.

Oh, Eliot says it better than I do: (Quartets again, II)

We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

My only hope for poetry is the statement above “In my end is my beginning”, my fear for it the same-- in the future, may this never be said of us:

III The Dry Salvages II.
We had the experience but missed the meaning

Guest Interview: Melanie Huber Speaks With New York Quarterly Editor Raymond Hammond | Savvy Verse & Wit

2011-03-04T00:25:00.005-05:00

click on post title to find interview, click on Savvy Logo to go visit the home page

And check out the NYQ website. Two NYQ books are on the best seller list for Small Press Publishing.

click here for NYQ website

On the Scene: Into Space--Marginal Arts in Roanoke, Virginia--What in the World?

2011-02-28T23:02:00.010-05:00

This week, 3rd-8th, Roanoke Va. will host the much anticipated Marginal Arts Festival. Participating in the festival, The Unicorn Stables Project is a studio which will be showing a large variety of artists in an unusual promotional venue:

The showing corresponds with the Southwestern Virginia's Premier Science Fiction & Fantasy Convention, ShevaCon, March 3rd-6th. Local established and emerging artists are participating in the art event at Unicorn Stables. Including Cathryn Hankla, Ann Glover, Judith Starchild, J.D. Whitney, Susan Jameson, Morgan Strong and many more. A few examples of Strong’s art are included below:
I

This previous Saturday, Feb. 26th, the The Unicorn Stables Project Studio was a-buzz with activity as Cameron Niedermayer worked on finishing her sculpture:

Niedermayer explained her inspiration for the pyramid comes from the alien associations with monolithic man-made constructions. Although she doesn’t intend for her art to have a political message, she is aware that the work she is doing can be seen in a new context due to the recent upheaval in Egypt. The symbols shown in the picture below have a spiritual significance. On the side not showing in the picture, Neidermayer has painted the Vulcan IDIC symbol from Star Trek. IDIC stands for Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. She was pleased to consider the symbol as applicable in a wide variety of philosophies, both theological and political.

Another artist hard at work and the brain-child behind the project, Tiff Robinette. Robinette explains that the showing will include: installations, live performances, a projection, 2-dimensional paintings, encaustic, sculptures, and sound pieces. Of her own installation piece, which is a womb-like cave space (Saturday it was already filled with pink stalactites hanging from the ceiling, the stalagmites were still under construction) she explains, “I’m interested in female space, perceptions and traditions of gender. My inspirations are mythology and literature, particularly biblical narratives of the end and of fear that comes from above.”

Robinette goes on to share that the imagery found in her art often comes from dreams. As she is the oldest of nine children, only one of her siblings was a boy, it is no wonder her themes relate to gender and variations of this theme are repeated in symbolic motifs through-out her work. “I create mythology,” her artist statement unapologetically proclaims. The picture is a sculptural representation of Robinette’s take on a confectionary tradition called the “tea cake.”

Two other Unicorn Stables artists were busy at work this past Saturday, Julie Schneider with the help of Megan Robinson was preparing her instillation “Contemplations of the Universe at a Slumber Party in New Jersey, 1996”
The alien in the picture is Bob from the planet Bob. He was a donation from Fenn and Jackson Walker, the youngest contributor to the showing at 8 years old dressed Bob in his own clothes for the exhibition.

Another exciting contributor is Urban Artist, Toobz. When entering into the Secret Histories of a Space Age, be sure to check out his sci-fi mural in the hallway. Here’s his work-in-progress space-creature:

A Reading List for the Egypt Crisis - NYTimes.com

2011-02-04T15:11:00.000-05:00

From the New York Times:

A Reading List for the Egypt Crisis

By ALEXANDER STAR

It took only a few days for Egyptian protesters to bring the regime of Hosni Mubarak to near collapse. But it took decades for the conditions for revolt to ripen. A range of widely noted books offer clues to the country’s accumulated discontents and thwarted desires. Max Rodenbeck’s Cairo: The City Victorious is a cultural and social history of the Arab world’s largest city, written by the Economist’s Middle East Correspondent. Mary Anne Weaver’s A Portrait of Egypt examines Egyptian society in the 1990s, with an emphasis on Islamist opponents of the Mubarak regime.

Dispatches From the Book Review

In recent years, scholars have fervently debated the evolution of Egypt’s main opposition movement, the Muslim Brotherhood. Does it seek to drastically remake Egyptian society along strict religious lines, or has it entered a “post-Islamist” phase characterized by moderation and tolerance? The latter argument is made by Carrie Wickham in her study of grass-roots activists, Mobilizing Islam. More jaundiced views of the movement in Egypt and its offshoots elsewhere can be found in a new collection edited by Barry Rubin entitled The Muslim Brotherhood. Even as the Brotherhood moderated its message and perhaps its worldview, some of its former members turned to acts of spectacular violence. Their doings are the subject of Giles Kepel’s Muslim Extremism in Egypt, and Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower, which suggests that Mubarak’s torture cells radicalized Egyptian Islamists such as the future al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, and helped bring about the Sept. 11 attacks. Lee Smith’s The Strong Horse explores the Mubarak government’s cynical efforts to manipulate popular sentiment and maintain power.
Though Egypt’s cultural prominence has faded, it remains the home of important literary figures, many of whom work in the shadow of the late Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz. Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy and Cairo Modern examine the ideological and erotic entanglements of Cairenes in the last years of British influence. Alaa Al-Aswany’s The Yacoubin Building is a popular novel about a Cairo apartment house whose fortunes reflect those of the country at large. Among the most admired Egyptian novels of recent years is Sonallah Ibrahim’s Zaat, which turns an office worker’s aspirations to become a world-class consumer into bitter comedy. A many-layered picture of 20th century Egypt emerges in the novelist Taha Hussein’s memoir The Days, which follows a poor, blind village boy who makes his way to Cairo, acquires an education, loses his university post for his controversial writings on Egypt’s pre-Islamic past, and eventually becomes a cultural hero.
Readers interested in assessing American influence in Egypt might turn to Master of Games by the longtime CIA officer Miles Copeland Jr.. Copeland, the father of Stewart Copeland, the drummer for the Police, and Miles Copeland III, the record producer, relates (and perhaps embellishes) his elaborate efforts to keep General Nasser from slipping into the Soviet orbit. In his classic Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, the historian Albert Hourani looked back further to a time in the early 20th century that seems especially relevant now — a moment when Egyptian and other Arab thinkers steeped in Enlightenment ideals hoped to see a robust democracy emerge from a moribund dictatorship.

Click here for link to book

**Also: Please consider "Letters From Cairo" By Pauline Kaldas
Kaldas offers insight into the complexities of Egyptian culture, alternately taking on roles of linguist and cultural interpreter and addressing everything from class issues and political activism to education and the impact of Western culture. But it is her moving, often entertaining letters and her children’s emails and poems that will charm readers and resonate with devotees of travel narratives and multicultural literature. This book captures the images, character, and passion of an extraordinary country. Marked by spare, graceful prose, drawing on observations and friendships past and present, Kaldas offers a unique lens for observing Middle Eastern societies, one that the reader will not soon forget.

Part Two: "Not here/Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.” – T.S. Eliot

2011-01-30T04:30:00.006-05:00

Words. It occurred to me that in using words to determine the value of words I’ve created quite an impossible fix for myself, one which will be difficult to find my way out of. What are words, exactly? I’m no linguist so I can’t use that kind of terminology to determine their value. Here, these words are no more than pixel bits, lines and loops, dark dotted shapes and shadows of thought illuminated on the face of a plasma screen. I do not know how this plasma screen works. I don’t even know what the plasma consists of, yet I can push some buttons on my keypad and by some force completely foreign to me, the things I think become the words I type and these sentences you now can read.

Reality demands that I acknowledge the fact that words themselves are pretty worthless—

marks on a page, blips on a screen. You can’t smell them, taste them or touch them. I have heard it said many times and have read in several places that “words are food” and “poetry is bread” (for i.e. See Mary Oliver’s Poetry Handbook, which I quoted from in an essay I wrote for NYQ issue 65). They are not. I once thought this was true, but words actually have no nutritional value. You won’t find a calorie count on the back of any book. Words can not sustain a body. You can make a sandwich out of bread. You can spread peanut butter on bread. Try spreading peanut butter on a word. It’s not going to work very well.

So what makes them valuable?

And, at what point does a word obtain its value? Is it in the mind, in the way we construct meaning, how we think in words and images? Does a word only obtain value when it is spoken, or do words become something of value only when they are commoditized or written down? Perhaps (and it may be obvious to some) it is not so much words themselves which have value or not, but what determines their value is the use of them in communication, their role as the nuts and bolts of language
.
So now let's consider what it is about the nuts and bolts in the machinery of language which gives words their value--

A few days ago I was sitting and crocheting at my son’s baseball practice when an elderly Latino woman approached me. This is the second year her grandson and my son have been on the same baseball team, and although I’d smiled at her and said hello each time I saw her, it was clear from watching her interactions with her grandson that she was not very fluent in English and so we never really had a chance to strike up a conversation beyond “hello.” She stood over me and pointed to my sad attempt at a scarf and said a word in Spanish, then used her hands to mimic the act of knitting.
I smiled, and shrugged my shoulders to indicate I wasn’t sure what she was asking.

“Crochet?” I asked.

“Crochet?” She repeated.

When she repeated the Spanish word for crochet she made the motions with her hands again so I attempted to repeat the word back to her. Her face brightened and she giggled as if I’d told her a funny joke, or maybe my pronunciation was so awful that I said a dirty word and didn’t know it. She sat down right next to me, and my Spanish is very bad, but I did remember this at least:

“Hola’ me llamo Melanie, como te llamo?”

Her smile widened even further as she told me her name and then I think she asked me if I spoke Spanish.

“Porquita, me espaniol es muy mal.” I answered.

“My English, too, very bad. We help each, you, me?” She asked.

“Sure!” I replied, “Si!”

I tried to find a way to communicate with her, scanning my mind for what little Spanish I could remember, knowing somewhere rattling around behind a door with very rusty hinges there had to be a word or two I could use. Ding! Te gusta? Me gusta? Found two.

“Te gusta baseball? What is baseball in espaniol?” I asked.

“Baseball.” She answered.

“Yes baseball, in espaniol?”

“Baseball is baseball.”

“Baseball is baseball?”

“Si.”

Ah ha!! “Okay! Baseball is baseball! Te gusta baseball?” I repeated

“No, no me gusta, me encante baseball.” She replied, crossing her arms over her chest as if she were giving herself a hug.

“You love baseball?”

“Love? Encante is Love?” She asked.

“Si, encante, love. You love baseball?”

“I love baseball, si” she replied.

The next fifteen minutes I found out her English is much better than my Spanish. She asked me if I studied Spanish in school, I managed to pick out a few words I knew: escribe, libro, la professora, escula. It was humbling to become such a handicapped communicator, forced to use words that a two year old would use. We went over body parts, eye-oho, nose- narisa, mouth- boka, hands- manos. It was wonderful, miraculous even, how simple it was to form a connection…just the naming of body parts enabled us to relate to each other in a way that would not have been possible without the use of words. We giggled like fools as I kept mixing up the body parts, calling fingers hands and hands fingers. Near the end of our conversation she held her shoulder and grimaced dramatically, I did not understand a word in the sentence she spoke to me then but I understood quite clearly that she was telling me her shoulder was troubling her.

Language is more than words, obviously, but without words we simply do not have the tools to survive in this world. Words may not have nutritional value for the body, but at the end of our conversation my new amigo patted her hand over her heart and told me,

“Thank you. Is good— for here.”

I imagine the first spark in the first man (or woman’s) skull when a mark in the dirt or an etching on a rock wall became a symbol of something else. Evolution happened when man began using tools, yes, but this moment, to me, is the true mark of evolution—when man desired to share his thoughts and feelings using the tools of language, words, to project his thinking outside of himself.

Words are what make us human, and it is the way in which we use those words which proves if we are or are not.

But how does this relate to poetry, and what value it has beyond commodity?

Stay tuned for part 3 (Sea turtles and Eliot forthcoming)

Here's a preview of where we will be going on the next leg in this journey: (Thanks to the delightful Richard Bausch for giving me permission to use his quote. He credits Conrad for the premise.)

"Every really good story, no matter how short or how long, carries something of its justification for being and all its attendant parts in every single line. It is a unified created work of word art and that is why it is so difficult to do. So let go of expecting it ever to get easier. It won't. Just get on with it. Be willing to stumble all over yourself trying to be splendid."

Arrowhead Press: Grasshopper by M A Griffiths

2011-01-17T11:47:00.000-05:00

Arrowhead Press: Grasshopper by M A Griffiths:

by M A Griffiths

384pp Paperback
ISBN 978-1-904852-28-5
Published 14th January 2011

£12.00 post free in UK.

Add to cart to buy direct from publisher with your card or by cheque.

Margaret Griffiths (1947-2009) was born and raised in London and lived for some time in Bracknell then later moved to Poole. Rather than seek publication through traditional channels, she was content to share her work with fellow poets on various Internet forums. On the rare occasions she submitted work for publication, it was typically to online venues. Also known by the Internet pseudonyms 'Grasshopper' and 'Maz', she began posting her poetry online in 2001. During the mid-2000s she worked from home, running a small Internet-based business, and edited the Poetry Worm, a monthly periodical distributed by email.
In 2008, her 'Opening a Jar of Dead Sea Mud' won Eratosphere's annual Sonnet Bake-off, and was praised by Richard Wilbur. Later that year she was a Guest Poet on the Academy of American Poets website, where she was hailed as 'one of the up-and-coming poets of our time'. She suffered for years from a stomach ailment which eventually proved fatal in July 2009. Almost immediately after her death was announced on Eratosphere, poets from all over the English-speaking world, from London, Derby, Scotland, Wales, Queensland, New South Wales, Massachusetts, New York, Minnesota, Missouri, Maryland, California and Texas collected her work for this publication.

This publication is intended as an archive of Margaret's work and has been produced in alpha-numeric order. While this may detract from the immediate impression of her work, it was decided upon as an easy reference to individual poems. The book contains 316 poems, some scraps, some work in progress, but mainly finished poems if poems are ever completely finished. The book now resides in the National Archive at the British Library and in the main Copyright Libraries. The intention was to preserve her work, which previously was scattered around the Internet in dozens of different locations. The book will also be available for public access at the Saison Poetry Library in the South Bank Centre, London.

Readers who are interested in finding out more about Maz and her work can find information here.

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Last modified: 10 January 2011

Part One: "Not here/Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.” – T.S. Eliot

2011-01-10T22:27:00.009-05:00

Thanks to C.E. Chaffin for introducing this quote to me.

I saw a picture the other day. It was a picture of an eagle feasting on a mallard. It was gruesome. The mallard’s body was shredded into a mass of blood and feathers. In the eagle’s beak, held by a tenuous bright red thread of flesh, was the only intact part of the duck remaining— its iridescent green head. And its eye, focused on the camera, the eye—that eye was clear and bright. It was beautiful. It was horrible. It was life. It was death.

It was poetry.

Recently I’ve enjoyed a conversation concerning “value” in relation to words and more specifically, poetry. For the purpose of this essay, the picture I described may serve as a somewhat obvious visual metaphor for the mass marketing mentality in the publishing world. There are those who eat, there are those who get eaten. No? Simple fact of life. Knowing this, who is crazy enough to suppose they want to be a writer, especially a writer of poetry? If poets are anything in this scenario, poets are the ducks. So, the question is, are the only roles available to us in the landscape of modern publishing those of predator or prey? I’ll come back to this later.

First of all I don’t suppose to tackle the entire publishing market right now. No way. No how. I’d like to focus this first part on “value” as it relates to the process of writing and the publishing of writing, particularly, again…the value of writing and publishing poetry. Let me throw some facts at you:
According to http://www.bowkerinfo.com/bowker/IndustryStats2010.pdf

11,766 poetry/drama books were published in 2009. That’s up 105% since 2002.*[i]

What to do with all this poetry? More is less and less is still too much?

To quote a friend and fellow poet, Steve Bunch, “Poetry has become a commodity--not as lucrative as hog bellies, mind you, but a commodity nonetheless--and the more of it that gets produced, the cheaper it becomes.”

Others share Steve’s view, claiming that there is just too much poetry out there. In “The New Math of Poetry” published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, David Alpaugh tells us:

"Len Fulton, editor of Dustbooks, which publishes the International Directory of Little Magazines and Small Presses, estimates the total number of literary journals publishing poetry 50 years ago as 300 to 400. Today the online writers' resource Duotrope's Digest lists more than 2,000 "current markets that accept poetry," with the number growing at a rate of more than one new journal per day in the past six months. Some of these journals publish 100 poems per issue, others just a dozen. If we proceed cautiously and assume an average of 50 poems per publication per year, more than 100,000 poems will be published in 2010."

Are we about to be crushed under the weight of all these words? Perhaps the answer is the culling process of contests. Surely a sifting of chaff from wheat occurs there, no? Alpaugh continues his monolithic math equation:

"Fifty years ago, the Yale Younger Poets was the only poetry-book contest in America. If this year's 330-plus contests continue to grow at the rate of just a half-dozen new ones per year, more than 50,000 prize-winning volumes will have been published by the end of this century. Add the hundreds of non-prize-winning chapbooks and collections with similar growth rates, and poetry books will easily top 100,000 by 2100."

Wait a minute. 100,000 poetry books by 2100??!! That’s assuming the ancient astronaut aliens don’t return to take over the planet, or that the meteors supposed to collide with the earth in 2012, leaving remnants of humanity huddling over open fires in caves and using a chisel and stone to write with, instead will glide right by us.

See, Aplaugh is actually being hopeful here!

Eh-hem…moving on. Or moving back, to regard the picture of the eagle and mallard again. Here’s a quote from Raymond Hammond, editor of The New York Quarterly,

“Contests and reading fees within the writing community are nothing more than a form of cannibalism.”

Oh, this just gets worse and worse, not even predator/prey, eagle vs. mallard, but ducks eating ducks??? Say it ain’t so!

You remember those funny signs you would read when you went swimming in the summer.

It seems as if Poetry may have become the P in the publishing pool. Realistically speaking, who cares about poetry besides the poets who are writing it? And do the poets writing poetry only care about their own publishing prowess, what more to the mallard/eagle scenario is there? Duck/duck/goose?

Should the gatekeepers be more selective? How important are words? Do the value of words and poems directly relate to how often those words are read or how well they are understood?

I’ll tackle these questions and more as I continue to, um, dive (oh the horror, the horror, she's punning now) into the “value” of poetry.

Stay Tuned for Part 2 of “Not Here/Not here the darkness, in this twittering world”

[i] Now here we have “poetry” lumped in with “drama” and I’m honestly not too certain why they are lumped together, but we might assume “drama” to mean plays and the like. I do not have data concerning the percentage of increase in published plays, however, looking at the production aspect, there does not seem to be a boom in the world of theatre in terms of extra productions via broad-way or local venues that I have noticed, (admittedly I’m no expert on this.) Still, the growth in this statistic seems more likely to directly relate to the increase of small presses and published poetry books and chapbooks. As I don’t have direct data concerning this issue, I’m going to just go ahead and run with that assumption and if I’m wrong…well, then I’m wrong.

Received/Reviewed Poetry Books 2010

2010-12-30T04:26:00.001-05:00

http://www.amazon.com/Wrecking-Ball-Other-Urban-Haiku/dp/0984411828

Wrecking Ball and Other Urban Haiku, Barry George, Accent’s Publishing SPALDING SERIES
Barry George’s collection honors the ancient tradition of Haiku with careful attention to form. The form lends a tangible feeling of weight to each word and yet the imagery turns and turns again from dense and earth-bound to diaphanous and spacious (quite an achievement for 17 syllables, tiny little 5-7-5 moras). Each haiku in this collection is a work of art set like a painting on the page. In many places George twists the tradition away from its roots in nature to use modern visualizations of average people in everyday life. He creates characters which reflect the universality of living, not to recreate the haiku form, but, I believe, to give homage to the past while drawing it forth into a relevant and vibrant future. Each haiku is gift, a portrait of modern life and the vitality and energy of one of the earliest forms of poetry, syllabics, which has remained vibrant through the ages, is beautifully reflected in these meticulously polished jewels.

*A note on the Spalding Collection, these books are beautifully printed and put together by hand which adds a personal element to each edition not found in many of the larger presses. The interior design is zen-like. Kudos to Accent’s Publishing for valuing the art of bookbinding as well as the crafting of poetry.

http://www.amazon.com/Across-Grid-Streets-Quincy-Lehr/dp/0955534631

Across the Grid of Streets, Quincy Lehr, Seven Towers Publishing
I’ll start by saying I am not of big fan of neo-formalism. I’m not a fan of long poems that rhyme written after, oh, the 18th century because it seemed to me rhyme itself was a cliché’ and historically speaking, formal poetry had been used, not to capture life, truth or history but to encapsulate stories which promoted whatever political agenda (usually misogynistic in tone and patriarchal in topic) was relevant to whatever ruling cast paid the pipers (so to speak.) But okay, then. Where did that chip on my shoulder come from? I don’t know. Anyhow, I got over it. Lehr's talent with story telling draws the reader in and the pacing in his book is equal parts Wordsworth and Wilde, on crack maybe, but I mean that in a good way. Lehr also tackles the urban landscape bringing us face to face with the utter isolation of a singular vision caught up in multiple agonies. Cancer and death are topics delved with raw and unflinching clarity. These are not your momma’s lyrical love poems but the well honed lyricism I surprisingly found fitting to the topics and actually framed them in such a way which made the investment in reading worthwhile.

http://www.amazon.com/Venison-Thorpe-Moeckel/dp/0981968716/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1293700291&sr=1-1

Venison: A Poem, Thorpe Moeckel, Etrusian Press
A book length poem? In couplets no less--what was he thinking!? That’s what I thought when I began reading Venison, doubtful one poem could be sustained through an entire manuscript. Well, I was wrong and pleasantly surprised. Moeckel’s Venison engages in sustainability and substance, not to mention sustenance. On the other hand, let’s mention sustenance. The poem (book) is part reverently meditative, part treatise on the natural order of life and death, predator and prey, part recipe on authentic living. There are sometimes delightful, sometimes humorous, sometimes disturbing revelations which parallel the common activities of preparing food and feeding one’s family. A fascinating journey from hoof to table, from the forests to the kitchen, from regret to gratitude with a tender reckoning of the grace and responsibility involved in each life we come in contact with. Probably one of the most unique poetry books I've ever read.

http://www.amazon.com/Bright-Felon-Autobiography-Cities-Wesleyan/dp/081956916X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1293700421&sr=1-1

Bright Felon, Kazim Ali, Wesleyan Press
I’m not often stunned, but Bright Felon, an autobiography, stuns me. Not because the topic is a difficult one but because of the rare glimpse of torment which is balanced somehow by the ability to express that torment. Heart-wrenching, yes, but there is also beauty, yes there is much beauty here in the approach to the subject matter and in the honest, unflinching look at self in relation to tradition and what happens to the self when all the constructs of tradition began to crumble. A journey into self-acceptance, it isn’t quite clear if the journey is completed as at the end of the book Ali leaves us with the haunting missives:

   Will I find myself or fine myself stopped in the street for stumbling for
             not living in a place, not being bound anywhere to a family,
             nation, or god...

             Are you Muslim or will you love.

             I will not answer.

Declaring himself separate and orphan, isolated and set adrift, there is still a hopeful tone (which I found remarkable) in the concluding two lines:

            Fathered by sound I am.

            Kind mother your kin.

Bright Felon is not your normal autobiography, prose and poetry crafted with precision and passion make this book a must read.

http://www.amazon.com/Cold-Wind-Idaho-Lawrence-Matsuda/dp/0982636407/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1293700508&sr=1-1

A Cold Wind From Idaho, Lawrence Matsuda, Black Lawrence Press
I’m going to gush on this one, but I’ll try hard to restrain myself and be all professional and what not. I grew up in Idaho, was taught the state history in fifth grade. We learned about the abandoned sliver mines, Lewis and Clark, Sacagawea, the Snake River and the commerce of farming; we learned Boise was the capital and the Mormon trail brought several settlers up from Utah. What I did not learn, what I knew absolutely nothing about until receiving this remarkable book was this: Mindoka. A dark secret in my home state that no one talked about. How did I not know about Mindoka??? I didn’t. It makes me feel ashamed, for myself for not knowing and for the community, the government for creating the tragedy and the schools for not even mentioning it as part of the state’s history. Mindoka was one of ten Japanese concentration camps in America during World War II. Matsuda revisits the site of his family’s captivity and reclaims his past. The poems in this book stitch together a family history which creates an epic, or an epistle of timeless importance. Matsuda delves into difficult topics, poverty, isolation, discrimination, family tragedy, with touching humor, sadness, and an elegant brushstroke of poeticism, redemption through language in a very literal sense.

The Long Awaited, Part 2 (Introducing Chris Noman)

2010-12-29T07:21:00.004-05:00

Chris Noman is 20 years old and lives in Melbourne, Australia. His poetry has appeared in several Australian print journals, such as Meanjin, Quadrant, and Blue Dog. He was also a finalist for the 2010 Doris Leadbetter Poetry Cup. As well as suffering from Hypergraphia, he is terribly short-sighted.

SAINT JOAN

‘…May the Lord so keep me...’

1.
Forsaking exile, God
appeared before the child:
consummate light. In her eyes,

the mirrored sun
rose from the depths
of the river –

And a cry arose, as twilight settled
above the hills; panorama
of moon and stars; the epoch
before God –

Thus the child was sworn.

Within the summoned flesh,
the gift at last apparent—
though partial—
as is all fate, all freedom.

2.
So little to be made of youth, of childhood.
In Domrémy the villagers weep, bearing wax candles in a coiled
procession.

And everywhere the lament
of doves, cries,
the ascending arias of inhuman sorrow –
Bells of Coussey ringing off in the distance.

As far away above
the sound of the Seine, the surface of the water tainted,
stained with human blood,
the child kneels, weeping –

What has she seen?

The first rains of spring
pooled in the clear throats of the lilies, deepening
then bleeding
colour from the wildflowers.

3.
Neither punishment,
nor sacrifice. The trivial flesh unburdened;
As against bare stone
the abstracted body

of a woman –

Now the true sun sets.
In the hushed courtyard, the Bishop kneels
before the Blessed Virgin,
meaning to pray. Perhaps for forgiveness,
perhaps for pity.

Nothing stirs. Only the wind rises;
indistinct whispers issue from the dark trees –

Beyond the courtyard,
arpeggios gutter from the dented throats of stone angels –

4.
So the virgin child swore:
‘A premonition: I foresaw my death’ –

In the cell’s darkness,
it was as though a soul appeared,
at once transfigured:

Fire will know no such brilliance
before the consummation
of your body.

So the maiden swore:
‘My body: all that remains of my childhood’ –

At the barred door, in whispers,
the armed guards strip themselves of all armour –

5.
‘Lord, who granted my solitude,
before the pyre, I ask that my body
be transformed to nothing human:
to be neither living nor dead.

By Your grace I would kneel again,
I would kneel again beside you –

How my body
rose in that blaze, leaving

no ash scattered in its wake.'

Analee Struggles to Understand Diversity (1st Grade)

2010-12-02T02:16:00.002-05:00

*Another excerpt from my Inspiration Journal which I kept a few years back in Cathryn Hankla’s Image and Word course at Hollins University. *

“Do we celebrate Hanukkah?”

“No.”

“Why? Because we’re not Irish?”

“No, because we’re not Jewish.”

“Do we celebrate Kwanzaa?”

“No.”

“Why? Because we’re not Jewish?”

“No.”

“Do we celebrate Christmas?”

“Yes.”

“Do Jewish people celebrate Christmas?”

“No.”

“Why? Because they’re not Irish?”

Analee doesn’t wait for me to answer but starts cheerfully singing “Light the Menorah” and then closes with this final question:

“What’s a dreidel?”

John Sweet, "More Words in Short Choppy Lines" + Photography

2010-11-26T02:02:00.001-05:00

broken hand w/ mirror

in this world where

almost everything is beyond

your control and your

choices are limited to false

god, slave, impotent king

vote or don’t vote

shoot or don’t shoot and

either way

the starving continue to starve

grow old

then

die

eat handfuls of dust

send postcards back to

your loved ones, to

your enemies

let them see you

finally

for the empty threat you

always were

the refusal

shoot the doctor in the

back as he walks away then

tell him he’s a coward while he

dies at your feet

it’s an addiction,

like humor

it’s a punchline

you capture the soldier, a

boy of fifteen or sixteen, and

then you torture that fucker

until he’s on the floor in a

pool of his own shit and blood

this is how wars are won

make your children

understand this

tell them how much you hated

your own father,

how much he hated you

show them the scars

explain how they can only

grow up to

repeat your mistakes

blue skied surrender

you near an ocean

not my own

and what we have between us

is silence

choices are made

absences explained

you tell me not to tell you there was

never any hope

but what does it matter?

i have these pictures

and my faith in sunlight

the train tracks here

echo the curve of the river

men with the heads of carrion birds,

with fangs and claws,

live in the trailers up in the hills

money is power and

power is god

death is death, but there are

better and worse ways

to approach it

i choose running away

choose willful blindness

have only ever been brave

when there was nothing

valuable at stake

pythagorus, dismantled

and grey skies and

almost rain

no need to worry

no pain no

fear when the pills

take hold

woke up alone on

the living room floor

feel asleep with no

need for god

thought i had enough

money,

but the children

were gone

thought i had enough

food, but my hands

just kept bleeding

the bottle was empty

fought through the

past to reach this

moment and then found

out there was no

way back

a man hung of his

own free will

can never be a nation

darkness offers

no safety

boil up whatever

splintered bones

you can find and let

this last meal we

share be a feast

postcard to california

and you and i like

forgotten kings cutting wires,

like ghosts in empty fields

you and i staring

blindly into the sun

drowning, but slowly,

five years and then ten,

blood turned to amber,

empires to dust and

then you and i like

open flames

you and i like ashes

all of the years we will

spend growing cold

splendour

grow up fearing

men w/ answers

grow up fearing

growing old

reach the age at

which you are

no longer any use to

anyone

sit beneath the

dull yellow heat of

august skies and

consider suicide

consider sleep

the fear of dreams

of waking up

one day closer to

winter

of not

waking up at all

the obvious

you, still w/ the

taste of poison coating

your mouth

still w/ the need to write

these meaningless goddamn poems

about metaphorical deserts

so what if you’re lost or

if you’re never found?

so what if the middle is

worse than the end?

we’ll all be dead and

forgotten soon enough

into view

not blindness

but the sky gone dark

porch lights

bitter wind

in any story, you

are only the sound of

dead leaves down

sleeping streets

in any dream, i am

only the moment

of despair

you wake up

sweating and see with

absolute clarity how

all of our kingdoms

will fall

just kill yrself a little,

maybe, just to see how it

feels, just to be able to still

step back out of that room

into pale april sunlight

just to have something to

talk about when your

lover starts to turn away

untitled, grey on grey

and you can feed your children

the poison or you can wait

for someone else to do it for you

and, beyond this, you

have no choices

beyond this,

your life is good

Mid-November

2010-11-15T07:21:00.004-05:00

”It’s Red Berry Day!” the children said to me

when I asked why. I didn’t know they would forget

the reason they avoided the holly tree

where they had buried their pet.

When I asked, “Why?” I didn’t know they would forget

how they feared the holly tree would die,

where they had buried their pet.

The fear faded as the years went by.

How they feared the holly tree would die,

its roots stabbing deep into the rabbit’s skull,

the fear faded as the years went by.

They gathered holly berries by the bucket full,

its roots stabbing deep into the rabbit’s skull,

and scattered them on our trampoline.

They gathered holly berries by the bucket full,

the dirt scoured the rabbit’s bones clean,

and scattered them on our trampoline.

The reason? They avoided the holly tree,

the dirt scoured the rabbit’s bones clean.

“It’s Red Berry Day!” the children said to me.

This is part two of a poem/story sequence that I've been putting together for Flocoimo. Read more about Floyd County Imagination Month and see what some wonderful writers and artists are doing here: Ad Hominem

and here: Jacksonville Center for the Arts

Here's the first part of the story:

My Children Picked the Berries from The Hollytree Bush

They saved the rabbit from the creepy cat,

Then brought it home in hopes that I might tend

The wounds, and help it heal. Though I knew that

A promise would not change how this could end.

It was too small, so they chose a strong name

A name which would repair, a name to mend

The broken bones, and heal what would be lame.

It seemed to work at first. Leonadis,

Destined to be the King of Rabbits, fame

Of his miraculous life, his near miss

With death, would spread to all of the warrens!

Each night they sent him to sleep with a kiss,

Then said a prayer that he might hop again.

And though we loved the best we could, one day

We found him cold and still, and then— and then

Revelations, More or Less

2010-11-03T08:58:00.011-04:00

I’ve always thought of revelation as a divine manifestation of truth which comes in some dramatic form, a combustible bush, a tub-thumping, thunder rumbling voice from above, a moment extremely dramatic in nature which elevates its place in time beyond the present moment. A- GONG- of eternity if you will, a wind chime echo into forever, not just the pebble dropped to ripple in the pond but the pond in the ripple. All-encompassing. Rare. Special.

But maybe not.

Maybe revelations are more like leafs falling off trees, so ordinary and plentiful that unless you look closely and pay attention you don’t notice the patterns of sun and shade, the prism of light caught in the morning dew clinging to the last stubborn maple leaf-clinging to the tree, or the way the wind turns a pile of them into a tornado of color. You laughed at this when you were younger, do you remember?

Do you still laugh? Do you see each leaf, or just a pile of waste?

Hope is a frightening thing. When we kill wonder we don’t have to worry about hope.

Several years ago when my family was still new and small we went camping in Kentucky. It was early fall, the fields were freshly harvested and plowed. The earth smelled clean in a way that it can only smell when the air is so cold the inside of your nose twinges a bit when you breathe it in.

Our friends told us they often went arrowhead hunting when the fields were freshly plowed and this seemed like a splendid idea to me. Not to my husband. While I spent, oh at least a half a day walking the fields, keeping my eyeballs to the dirt, he preferred to stay in camp. I was annoyed at first that he didn’t care to join me on my quest but I got into my imagination and thought of who might have left arrowheads there, what they were doing, what happened to them. I began to say silent prayers, humming what I imagined was a Native American way of humming, hey ay ay ay, ho ay ay ay, softly to myself as I bent to pick over yet another clump of-looks-more- like- a- rock-dirt.

I lost track of time, I felt the sun begin to heat my face and arms and I wrinkled my nose up at it. Ouch, yup. I was getting fried. I was determined that I would absolutely not leave that field until I found an arrowhead. There was one there, I could feel it. I got into some kind of zone. Time didn’t mean anything. I ignored the rumble in my stomach. Forgot all about the people I was camping with and imagined the field in which I stood as it had looked a few hundred years ago.

“If I were an arrowhead, where would I be?” I found some rocks that were more granite and obsidian than dirt-clods and every time I found one my heart would pound and I would think, this is it. Each rock was THE ONE. This is it. No, toss. THIS is it. No. Toss. This one. No, this one. I lost myself completely in the process.

I finally found one. It was a beauty, too large to be only an arrow, it looked more like a spear tip. It was a deep gray and a contradiction of itself because although it was very sharp with hard edges it was butter smooth. It felt like magic. I felt like magic because I found it.

Fast forward twelve years. Our family is much larger. Five kids. We’ve hopped around a couple states and settled in Virginia. I didn’t have much time for things like hunting arrowheads, or showers for that matter. My husband and I were coaching a soccer team. It was a new soccer field and the grass was sparse but the rocks were plentiful. We were gathering as many rocks off the field as we could to make the area more safe for running when he found one. Just like that. He wasn’t even looking. He brought me over this beautiful white quartz triangular shaped rock.

“Hey! Is this an arrowhead?”

I took it my hands. A moment of intense jealousy reared up from somewhere deep. It was absolutely gorgeous. The edges were very thin, slightly chipped. It wasn’t as smooth as mine had been and much smaller. I doubt I would have recognized it for what it was if he hadn’t of placed it right in my hands. I recalled the effort it took for me to find “my” arrowhead. Why did he get to find one just like that, no hard work, no hours put in combing the ground, just bending over picking up rocks and there it is? That’s so not fair!

“Yup.” I said dryly, handing it back to him.

“Cool!”He said, “You keep it. I know you like that kind of stuff.”

I held it in my hands feeling slightly ashamed. Didn’t he understand what he’d just done? Didn’t he know how difficult finding one of those could be? How unique? How special?

He went off, gathering more rocks and tossing them off the field and I put the arrowhead in my pocket and stared after him, bemused.

I've thought about these two moments a lot over the years and I used to think that maybe he and I were just on different paths that led to the same place. I didn’t understand his way and he just didn’t understand mine. Maybe finding that arrowhead wasn’t so special or momentous. I worked, I looked I found it. He wasn’t looking and he found one and didn’t think much about it.

Lately these moments have come to my memory again and again but for some reason it’s finally (after so many years!) come to me, more of a –ping- than a –GONG-, and it’s a lesson I’ve learned before and seem to have to keep re-learning, maybe that’s what a revelation is, more or less, a full understanding of something we’ve not understood before.

What occurred to me was that my husband was just doing what he normally does, no one asked him to clear rocks from the field. He saw that there was a possibility that a child could get hurt so without thought to what was in it for him, or what he could get out of the situation, he just started picking up rocks and making the place safer. He wasn’t asking to be blessed, he wasn’t asking for anything. He was just paying attention and doing what needed to be done. While in my case I was most certainly expecting a blessing, looking for something, certain I’d find it. I’m not sure one way is better than the other because I know that when I found the arrowhead I was transported, in awe, it was a profound almost mystical moment for me. I held the arrowhead in my hands and felt the history, imagined the ghosts of the past whispering in my ear, approving my find. For him, it was an arrowhead, a rock on the field, a pretty trinket his wife might like.

His only joy in the find was in giving it to me.

So perhaps recognizing a blessing is like recognizing a revelation, it doesn’t matter if we look or not, it doesn’t matter if we feel it or understand it deeply to the core of our being…and it is silly to worry too much about it, it just is.

photo by Mike Moro

A Mountain I'm Willing to Die On

2010-10-22T14:34:00.002-04:00

Thank you Guest Blogger Glennon from Momastery for allowing me to feature this:

Along with every other concerned mama, I’ve been watching America’s response to the bullying related suicides closely. People seem to be quite shocked by the cruelty that’s happening in America’s schools. I’m confused by their shock. I’m also concerned about what’s not being addressed in their proposed solutions.

The acceptable response seems to be that we need to better educate students and teachers about what bullying is and how to react appropriately to it. This plan is positive, certainly. But on its own, it seems a little like bailing frantically without looking for the hole in the boat through which the water is leaking.

Each time one of these stories is reported, the tag line is: “kids can be so cruel.” This is something we tend to say. Kids these days, they can be so cruel. But I think this is just a phrase we toss around to excuse ourselves from facing the truth. Because I don’t think kids are any crueler than adults. I just think kids aren’t quite as adept yet at disguising their cruelty.

Yesterday I heard a radio report that students who are most likely to be bullied are gay kids, overweight kids, and Muslim kids.

Hmmmmm.

I would venture to guess that at this point in American history, gay adults, overweight adults, and Muslim adults feel the most bullied as well.

Children are not cruel. Children are mirrors. They want to be “grown-up.” So they act how grown-ups act when we think they’re not looking. They do not act how we tell them to act at school assemblies. They act how we really act. They believe what we believe. They say what we say. And we have taught them that gay people are not okay. That overweight people are not okay. That Muslim people are not okay. That they are not equal. That they are to be feared. And people hurt the things they fear. We know that. What they are doing in the schools, what we are doing in the media - it’s all the same. The only difference is that children bully in the hallways and the cafeterias while we bully from behind pulpits and legislative benches and one liners on sit-coms.

And people are sensitive. People are heart-breakingly sensitive. If enough people tell someone over and over that he is not okay, he will believe it. And one way or another, he will die.

So how is any of this surprising? It’s quite predictable, actually. It’s trickle-down cruelty.

I don’t know much. But I know that each time I see something heartbreaking on the news, each time I encounter a problem outside, the answer to the problem is inside. The problem is ALWAYS me and the solution is ALWAYS me. If I want my world to be less vicious, then I must become more gentle. If I want my children to embrace other children for who they are, to treat other children with the dignity and respect every child of God deserves, then I had better treat other adults the same way. And I better make sure that my children know beyond a shadow of a doubt that in God’s and their father’s and my eyes, they are okay. They are fine. They are loved as they are. Without a single unless. Because the kids who bully are those who are afraid that a secret part of themselves is not okay.

****

Dear Chase,

Whoever you are, whoever you become. You are loved. You are a miracle. You are our dream come true.

Chase, here is what would happen in our home if one day you tell your father and I that you are gay.

Our eyes would open wide.

And we would grab you and hold you tighter than you would be able to bear. And while we were holding you we would say a silent prayer that as little time as possible passed between the moment you knew you were gay and the moment you told us. And that you were never once afraid to tell us. And we would love you and ask you one million questions and then we would love you some more and finally, I would likely rush out to buy some rainbow t-shirts, honey, because you know mama likes to have an appropriate outfit for every occasion.

And I don’t mean, Chase, that we would be tolerant of you and your sexuality. If our goal is to be tolerant of people who are different than we are, Chase, than we really are aiming quite low. Traffic jams are to be tolerated. People are to be celebrated. People, every person, Is Divine. And so there would be celebrating. Celebrating that you would be one step closer to matching your outsides with your insides, to being who you are. And there would be a teeny part of my heart that would leap at the realization that I would forever be the most important woman in your life. And then we would tell everyone. We would not concern ourselves too much with their reactions. There will always be party poopers, baby.

We just wanted you to know this, honey. We’ve worried that since we are Christians, and since we love The Bible so much, that there might come a day when you feel unclear about our feelings about this. Because there are a few parts in The Bible that discuss homosexuality as a sin. So let us be clear about how we feel, because we have spent years of research and prayer and discussion deciding.

Chase, we don’t believe that homosexuality is a sin. Your parents are Christians who carefully choose what we believe and follow in the Bible. Some will tell you that this approach to Christianity is scandalous and blasphemous. But the thing is, honey, that the only thing that’s scandalous about this approach is admitting it out loud. The truth is that every Christian is a Christian who picks and chooses what to follow in the Bible.

Several years ago I was in a Bible study at church, and there was some talk about homosexuality being sinful, and I spoke up. I quoted Mother Teresa and said “When we judge people we have no time to love them.” And I was immediately reprimanded for my blasphemy by a woman who reminded me of 1 Corinthians 6: 9-10. But I was very confused because this woman was speaking. In church. And she was also wearing a necklace. And I could see her hair, baby. She had no head covering. All of which are things that are sooooo totally against the Bible Rules. * And so I just assumed that she had decided not to follow the parts of the Bible that limited her particular freedoms, but to go ahead and hold fast to the parts that limited other people’s freedoms. I didn’t point this out at the time baby, because she wasn’t a bad person. People are doing the best they can, mostly. It’s best not to embarrass people.

What I’m trying to say is that each Christian uses different criteria to decide what parts of the Bible to prioritize and demonstrate in their lives. Our criteria is that if it doesn’t bring us closer to seeing humanity as one, as connected, if it turns our judgment outward instead of inward, if it doesn’t help us become better lovers of God and others, if it distracts us from remembering what we are really supposed to be doing down here, which is finding God in every human being, serving each other before ourselves, feeding hungry people, comforting the sick and sad, giving up everything we have for others, laying down our lives for our friends . . . then we just assume we don’t understand it yet, we put it on a shelf, and we move on. Because all I need to know is that I am reborn. And here’s what I believe it means to be reborn:

The first time you’re born, you identify the people in the room as your family. The second time you’re born, you identify the whole world as your family. Christianity is not about joining a particular club, it’s about waking up to the fact that we are all in the same club. Every last one of us. So avoid discussions about who’s in and who’s out at all costs. Everybody’s in, baby. That’s what makes it beautiful. And hard. If working out your faith is not beautiful and hard, find a new one to work out. And if spiritual teachers are encouraging you to fear anyone, watch them closely, honey. Raise your eyebrow and then your hand. Because the phrase repeated most often in that Bible they are quoting is Do Not Be Afraid. So when they tell you that gay people are a threat to marriage, honey, think hard.

I can only speak from my personal experience, but I’ve been married for eight years and barely any gay people have tried to break up my marriage. I say barely any because that Nate Berkus is a little shady. I am defenseless against his cuteness and eye for accessories and so he is always convincing me to buy beautiful trinkets with our grocery money. This drives your sweet father a bit nuts. So you might want to keep your eye on Berkus. But with the exception of him, I’m fairly certain that the only threats to my marriage are my pride and anger and plain old human wanderlust. Do not be afraid of people who seem different than you, baby. Different always turns out to be an illusion. Look hard.

Chase, God gave you the Bible, and He also gave you your heart and your mind and I believe He’d like you to use all three. It’s a good system of checks and balances He designed. Prioritizing can still be hard, though. Jesus predicted that. So he gave us this story. A man approached Jesus and said that he was very confused by all of God’s laws and directions and asked Jesus to break it down for him. He said, “What are the most important laws?” And Jesus said, “Love God with all your heart, mind and soul, and love others as yourself.” ** When in doubt, Chase, measure all your decisions and beliefs against that. Make damn sure that you are offering others the same rights, courtesies, and respect that you expect for yourself. If you do that, you can’t go wrong.

Chase, you are okay. You are a child of God. As is everyone else. There is nothing that you can become or do that will make God love you any more or any less. Nothing that you already are or will become is a surprise to God. Tomorrow has already been approved.

And so baby, your father and I have only one specific expectation of you. And that is that you celebrate others the way we celebrate you. That you remember, every day, every minute, that there is no one on God’s Green Earth who deserves more or less respect than you do, My Love.

“He has shown you what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” ***

Love, Mama

PS. We thought we should mention, honey, that if you’re straight, that’s okay too. I mean, it’d be a little anti-climactic now, honestly. But your father and I will deal.

PPS. All of the above holds true if you are overweight or Muslim too. No problem on either count.

PPPS. As daddy read this essay, I watched his gorgeous face intensify. He teared up a little. Then he slammed the letter down on the kitchen table and said emphatically and without a touch of irony, “DAMN STRAIGHT.”

Which, when you think about it honey, is really the funniest possible thing daddy could have said.

Love you Forever.

Cosmic Constructions

2010-10-15T08:57:00.002-04:00

The moon’s romance was wasted
on the dust of the first moonwalker’s feet.
Science is its own religion. What the hell
is anti-matter anyway? Likely the origins
of all things polyester.

What happens when we are brave
or stupid enough to measure lightning
with a ruler? Oh Vitruvius.
De architectura. Consider
the ruined columns of the temple.
It’s not easy to be as incorruptible
as stone.

Galileo got it wrong.
Galileo, who in the Dialog of the Ebb
and Flow of the Sea,
called out the moon for folly,
became Galileo, the man in chains.
No one would hear. No one would see.
His terrestrial telescope, broken.

Does revelation have a surface
or a center? Look elsewhere.
Look through.

Tonight, the sky is missing a moon.
Orion inclines over the earth,
his belt buckle rides the horizon.

Photography and Poems by John Sweet

2010-10-11T20:32:00.003-04:00

John Sweet 2009

one for j

wake up heavy with the
idea of suicide on some bright
blue july morning and
                  then what?

you need to look in all
directions here

you need to consider hope
                                      vs
      the possibility of hope

your children as a
form of salvation

salvation as a concept that
might
actually have some meaning

ash wilderness

the edges of cities
where the bodies are buried

the sides of hills and
the scrubland on either side of
the highways

and it matters that i love you
but not enough

it makes its own grey logic
that the killers need
to be killed

ask any parent
how old their child
would've been and then
look at their hands when
they answer

look at your own

use them to dig out
whatever space you can find
between anger and despair

a forest

growing up quietly,
invisibly,
or this is what you thought

growing up without limitations
and then dying

write your name
backwards
in the book of crows

hang a cross in
front of every mirror

religion, yes, and then
superstition
and then genocide

all acts
are acts of greed

all apologies are
acts of violence

baby just lies there bleeding
and all you can do
is keep saying i’m sorry

the village, on fire

my youngest son crying over
the idea of my death and i
have no idea how we’ve
arrived at this point

i have no more reasons
to hate my own father

feel nothing but fear when
i consider the future

five years and then ten and
then twenty tied down by
the need for money.
               for shelter,
               for food,
               for money again

day one in the
age of addiction

white sun in a silver sky

houseful of broken windows,
of leaking pipes and
unread books

my youngest son in tears,
which is suddenly
the source of all pain

notes on finding religion

We were silent while the
boat sank. I think I’ve
mentioned this. Land in the
distance off to the west, blinding
sunlight, and it wasn’t
enough just to be in love

and it never is

and we never were

and the boat was sinking

miro was dead

Couldn’t understand why none
of the things I had spent my
believing in never really
mattered in the end.

on the occasion of giving up completely

wake up after the rain in
the same place you’ve always known
and wait to feel clean

time is not your friend here

you are only loved by those
who get something in return

think about your father here
and then think about
the emptiness he left behind

is it smaller than you expected?

can it be cupped gently
in bleeding hands?

listen

fear is a given in
any equation

the next storm is already forming
just over the horizon

doesn’t take a genius to see
we’re all fucked,
but it feels so good sometimes
to just sit back and
close your eyes

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication transmitted in any form and by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without prior consent of the publisher or author, is an infringement of the copyright law.

Turtles and Kindness

2010-10-08T10:05:00.007-04:00

Inspiration Journal 2006
from Cathryn Hankla’s Image and Word course, Hollins University

I think I love turtles because they are green. I once saw a turtle just sitting in the center of the road, neck extended—almost questioning, worshipful, testing the air, defiant even. As the cars passed over top of him he didn’t try to move. He didn’t retreat into his shell. He just stood there, head lifted high, until the road cleared. Then, slowly, methodically he walked across to the bushes on the other side and he was gone.

I found a turtle in a field near my home. A creek runs outside my house. I couldn’t help but take his appearance to be an invitation of some sort. I picked him up and brought him inside to meet my kids. I let the turtle and the kids get to know each other. The turtle stayed in his shell for a long time while my children touched his leathery feet and smooth shell. He smelled rather funky so Analee kept her distance preferring to just observe. After they were done exploring the outer texture they set the turtle down on the floor. The turtle decided to poke his head out and get a look around. When he discovered he was surrounded by a bunch of faces ogling him, as fast a turtle can possibly run, he ran, hit the bricks, tried to get away.

I wondered what the turtle would take from this strange encounter—what it thought about being poked at and prodded. Oh, he was loved, instantly, and he could have become something cherished—at least for a week or two before they lost their awe, got used to him, and he became something common. Though the children begged to keep him I convinced them to take him back outside, to his real home.

They sent him off with a happy, “Good-bye, turtle, thanks for
visiting!” I think, in this way, Mr. Turtle will never become too easily familiar and there-by, too easily forgotten. I hope they learned to love and respect the creature and by letting him go, felt something of what it means to consider the needs of other above the needs of self.

If I teach my children anything—if they take anything from me—I hope it is this: Kindness is the most important, valuable thing we have that we can give.

Thems the Goodest

2010-10-01T00:31:00.004-04:00

"There are only two rules you must obey as a writer: You have to use words, and you have to be interesting. Everything else is wide open." Richard Bausch (Blatantly Thieved from Facebook.)

So, writing has rules. I've read several different books about these rules. Robert's Rules for Writing,101 unconventional lessons every writer needs to know, Eats,Shoots, and Leaves, The Bedford Handbook, just to name a few. I don't have much to add to all of the blah blah blah other than to say: Them rules is a good idear. All writerly types should foller 'em, and don't never use no double negativers. Ifn' you do, do it in triplication.

Also, YOUR, YOU'RE or THEY'RE and THEIR and THERE should always be replaced with the more eloquent: You-ins and y'all and thems.

Considering the origins of the English Language...The southern dialect is actually closer to Old English. If you are the cracker, be the cracker. Don't be a cracker trying to a cheese puff.

Anti-academic rants, Anti-Camp rants, Technique vs. Content and blah blah blah

2010-09-27T21:21:00.006-04:00

As of late I've been reading and hearing a lot of disquiet and out and out anger towards specific groups of poetics, or specific "camps"…for example "Academic poetry lacks soul." Another complaint "experimental poetry exists for the sake of the experiment and not the poetry."

The only thing I can come up with is a big SO what? We have wars. We have poverty. We have children starving. How does poetry deal with these issues? Critical discussions are beginning to drive me insane. Two days ago, down the road, a man shot his wife and then shot himself leaving behind two children. Would a soulful poem have saved the lives of these two people? No.

"Intelligence is not a gift it is a cracker jack prize

a wash off tattoo, or likely just the nuts that settle

to the bottom during shipping."

Whilst poets sit around discussing various types of camps and which camp is better than the other camp the whole world goes to hell. What's the point? There is none.

What makes poetry "vital" is its living aspect. Yes, a poem lives. Or it does not. If a poem is not alive it is not worth the paper or pixel wasted on it. Bitching about what is or is not happening in the Po Biz is wasted effort. And here, I've subscribed to that "camp" the camp of eternal bitching… and here I must shut myself up. A poem lives or it dies and the world goes on without noticing. And yet the one poem when it connects to the one reader can save a life.

It has mine. More than once.
Hopefully, in turn, I can use that which poetry has given me to continue to survive in this place, simplistically speaking, not only to survive but to find joy with the hope of blessing others in some small way. Words and poetry bring me joy, a comfort I try to share when I can.
AND...that's really all any human can hope for.

That's enough.

SO:
Here I offer a poem which you may decide to live through, with, or not at all.

Wild Geese

You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Mary Oliver

And,

From: Demothenes' Legacy (A book everyone should read.)
Jonathan Munroe

Question

Scattered among passages, choice remains. Exposed to
good measures, they disallowed a higher meaning--"the
better to lie among the stars." That was a choice the
choosing made. What a difference a sound makes. A pass-
ing phrase. In stages the crew disassembled the scaffolding.
Hung from the rafters, the authorities caved.

Metonymy

Inside this tent you'll see again. Wonder of wonders.
Miracles. Some ghosts survive, and thriving, save. Salvation
slaves our very host. A parasitic crowd draws near, resur-
recting old foliage. Blank slates soon follow, whispering
sweet nothings. Diffuse directions storm intentions.
Muttering masters cancel threads.

The White Buffalo

2010-08-25T22:41:00.000-04:00

Books vs. E-Books: 8 reasons to love or hate either.

2010-08-18T19:17:00.010-04:00

Good Things About Books:

1. They have sexy spines, esp. when they are all lined up against each other in a library.
2. Marginalia could not exist without them.
3. You can take a bath with one.
4. When feeling uncomfortable in a crowd, you can hold them to your chest. This wards off evil.
5. When you hold a book you hold the entire history of printing and paper in your hands.
6. If you leave random piles around your home, when people visit, they can be used as conversation starters, and also end tables.
7. A backpack full of books makes a good weapon against potential muggers.
8. If you read books, butterflies will fly out of your brain.

Bad Things About Books:

1. If you carry more than fifteen at a time you will develop a hunchback.
2. They get old and turn yellow. Like some people. But that isn't funny. Not at all.
3. They can be damaged by: dogs, little children with teeth, (little children without teeth too) water, fire, and bookworms (though I've never seen one.)
4. You have to kill trees to make books. Someday we may need those trees.
5. Publishers and the politics of publishing. In general and not specifically.
6. Unrequited desire. No matter how many you have, you can never have them all.
7. Sometimes, they smell kinda funny. Like some people. But this isn't very funny either.
8. They can make your head explode. Really. And this is actually disturbing. There should be studies done.

Good Things About E-books

1. If you own a kindle or an iPad or a nook you are automatically uber-cool and tech savvy. And there is a possibility you will develop super powers.

2. You don't have to worry about becoming a hunchback because a kindle is not very heavy.

3. You can read in the dark. (With Super-vision.) And that's just silly. Silly, but true.

4. You can read as many books at the same time as you want to and never lose your place again.

5. Cheap, fast, easy, instant gratification-book porn, free online books are everywhere.

6. Did I mention that if you own an iPad, nook, or kindle you are awesome?

7. No more danger. Painful and potentially deadly paper cuts are history!

8. Memory capacity almost equal to the Mind of God. Brings literature to the masses. Very alturistic.

Bad Things about E-books

1. If you wanted to take a bath with one, you probably could, but you would die to death if you accidentally dropped it, (metaphorically speaking.) Or, okay, maybe literally also. (electricity + water = bad)

2. If attacked by a mugger, a backpack full of a nook ain'ta gonna do-a you-a mucha good.

3. Frankly, they are just ugly. Little aesthetic appeal.

4. Likely hosts hidden spy software from which the government seeks to implant electrical impulses to control your brain.

5. If you want to high-light or underline something using an actual writing utensil, well, too bad.

6. Can not be used to prop up a wobbly table. And even if you had like a hundred of them, you still could not use them as end tables either.

7. If you buy a kindle, nook, or iPad this month, by next month they will have a newer, better model.

8. They are not books.


Book of Hours

(this is a book)

"The Power of Books" photographs by Mladen Penev

Shiva's Arms Book Review and Author Interview

2010-08-14T21:13:00.002-04:00

Shiva’s Arms may not a book for everyone as Cheryl Snell’s first novel expects a lot from the reader. Being a fan of Cheryl’s poetry for years now, I was familiar with her work and knew to look for a depth of hidden associative meanings. Shiva’s Arms provides that depth as it tackles cultural and gender roles within the construct of intimate family moments. In this book one finds meanings behind meanings. For example, the relationship between the mother-in-law (Amma) and daughter-in-law ( Alice) illuminates expectations within a caste system and the conflict when two cultures become entangled within one family. This relationship, which is a central focus of the book, points towards Hindu beliefs regarding Shiva, the conflict of creation and destruction, light and darkness, male and female forces. One of the most surprising characters Cheryl constructed was Amma’s biological daughter, Nela. Nela, a less than perfect woman, serves as a foil to Alice. As both women strive to live an authentic life, Amma is a force of nature, ever present in the back ground. Although some of Cheryl’s transitions from chapter to chapter might feel a bit disjointed to readers, this book is well worth a read.

For more information see: http://shivasarms.blogspot.com/

Interview with the Author Cheryl Snell

Questions: Shiva’s Arms

For people who have little knowledge of Indian traditions and culture, the book may pose some difficulties, in particular, to fully understanding the complex mother-child relationships, one needs to have a basic understanding of “samsara.” Could you explain the samsara concept and tell us how you used it develop the characters and the conflict/resolution of the complex inter-cultural relationships?

In a Hindu Brahmin’s life, samsara, or the ‘householder’ stage, is the most chaotic. The word refers to the continuous flow of the cycle of birth and rebirth, and the drowning sea of domesticity. I set my characters in that stage to underscore their conflict, and imply a larger unease –the divided loyalties that come with cultural assimilation.

Let’s talk about the title for a moment. When one reads the book one might assume the mother-in-law is an embodiment of Shiva’s arms. How does Alice’s character balance this assumption? When constructing these two characters what aspects of Shiva did you attempt to attribute to them in their relationship with each other and their family?

I named Amma (Shiva Laxmi Sambashivan) after the god of Creation and Destruction partly to give her something to live up to. She is a symbol of ambiguity. Dualities are carried through the narrative in many ways: siblings Ram and Nela stand in for the male and female aspects of Lord Shiva as avatars of the same god, for instance.

Alice only sees Amma’s destructive qualities, but once she steps back from their tangled relationship and recognizes Amma as a fully human woman in need of help, their relationship changes. Creation! Amma is capable of transformation, after all.

Like Shiva, whose every footfall is said to be felt across the world, the old girl does throws her weight around, but she truly believes that she is the gatekeeper of sacred tradition. Since Ram and his sibs have been taught to regard their parents as gods, she is hard to argue with!

I happen to know that you write poetry also, so this may be unfair of me to pick your brain this way…But…

Do you feel you used poetic techniques in constructing this novel? If so, were you aware of those techniques when you were writing or did it become apparent to you afterwards? (For example some of the transitions seem abrupt for a prose-flowing book, and seem to be more stylized towards imagery then plot.) Can you tell us about this choice, and why you made it?

One of the hallmarks of a literary novel is language. As a poet, I appreciate that! I thought lyrical elements fit in with lush Indian sensory details. The plot is intimate, played out against a larger backdrop of the momentous act of immigration. I had to restrain myself with the poetic language sometimes, but I did want the imagery to startle. I needed phrases that would contribute to the feeling of choppy samsara seas.

A question unrelated to the story line, but related to your work as a writer. As your first novel, have you been happy with the publishing process? Can you share some words of advice to hopeful writers concerning finishing the task of writing and staying inspired?

The road to publishing a novel is hard and long. I respect the fact that the publisher made a large investment in this book, and I am very pleased with the finished product. Shana Johnson designed a lovely cover, and I’m grateful to have such a well made book.

I’d tell the hopefuls that inspiration is mostly made of effort. Stay connected to your story while you’re doing other things and soon you will stop counting your daily quota of words written, and begin to enter fully into the work. And that’s the real reward.

Calligraphic Art, Margaret Shepard

2010-08-03T22:03:00.002-04:00

"Mouse" e.e. cummings

http://www.omniglot.com/gallery/calligraphicart/index.php?start=1

Sewanee Writer's Conference 2010

2010-07-26T12:21:00.005-04:00

Here is a letter I sent the Professors who wrote me recommends. Thought it summed up the experience so I'd share it rather than try to repeat the entire thing for those who've been asking: "How'd it go."

Dear (Hollins Folks)

First of all, thank you SO MUCH for taking the time to write recommends to Sewanee for me. I’m sure that had a lot to do with my being awarded the Tennessee Williams Scholarship. Secondly, I thought you might like to hear how it went so I wanted to share with you a few things about my experience, which was completely amazing and life altering. I was in a writing workshop directed by Robert Hass and Claudia Emerson. (I am embarrassed to admit that I didn’t even KNOW Robert Hass or anything about his work before I was accepted into the workshop!)

Also in the workshop were some really first-rate poets. A “goose-bump” moment came when my workshop team-mate, Beth Bachman (an emerging poet who won 2008 Donald Hall prize for her first book Temper) gave a reading. She mentioned that the very book she was holding in her hand had its genesis in the workshops she attended when she was a scholar at Sewanee the previous year. I hope this is not annoying, but I do want to share at least one more class member. They were all remarkable poets, but Jehanne Dubrow made quite an impression on me also. She has three books of poetry out and has also won several awards (her latest book is Stateside and it’s amazing.) So, now you kinda get a glimpse of the quality of work I was surrounded with. Needless to say I arrived on campus and felt as if I were, in this company, something between a garden gnome and a gnat.

The craft lectures were probably one of my favorite things to attend. Jill McCorkle and Padget Powell gave talks about writing which about cooked my brain. In a good way, I mean. Powell spent the first ten minutes of his talk going around in circles and explaining why a talk about craft was simply ridiculous. Which, when one is giving a talk about craft one would think one shouldn’t call one’s own talk ridiculous, but who knows? It seemed to work and turned out to be not quite as ridiculous as he had insisted it was even though he began by saying: “My Jesus wears a pink panther suit” and I’m not sure any context will help you out when considering whatever subtext about exposition he might be implying there.

McCorkle likened the act of writing and revision to the internal parts of the body. My favorite comparison was that of the large intestine to “editor.” Also the statement “we will never be as smart as our subconscious,” made me really stop and think, and then after I stopped to think I realized I had to think about stopping to think or maybe it was exactly the opposite…I had to stop thinking about what I was going to be thinking. Or I had to stop thinking. Or something like that.

It was around this time my brain started to obtain the consistency of oatmeal.

Although I think I loved every minute, the first workshop was rough as the first poem I’d selected (The Bookbinding Lesson…I’m not sure if that was one I wrote in any of y’alls workshop or not…) anyway…no one quite got why I juxtaposed bookmaking terminology with average descriptions of a girl walking in the snow. Many in the entire class seemed befuddled and in some cases…annoyed.

So, I wandered back to the dorm after workshop. (Got lost on the way.) Wandered around until I found the way…went to my room…which luckily was easy enough to find. Cried. Felt really good and sorry for myself. Felt closer to gnat size than gnome size for a while. Then, I got myself up and got over it. Moved on. ..

A few really remarkable people I should mention meeting are David Yezzi, (New Criterion) David Barber (Atlanta Monthly) and Don Share (Poetry.) David and David sat on either side of me on the couch during one of the after parties and took turns playing a guitar and singing. In the midst of breaks from the singing (No, I didn’t sing.) we talked. We discussed the ghost of Emily and the future of publishing. Not sure what one subject has to do with the other but somehow it all made sense. (And no, we were none of us sloshed. Or not completely sloshed anyway.)

This is probably going on a bit too long at this point…with (as my children like to say) TMI.

Moving on…okay, I should probably share the most humbling and yet uplifting experiences at the same time *helped me get over the gnat feeling anyway and move beyond gnomish also.* Anyway, the second poem I picked to workshop was called Loom(ing). When Hass gave his craft lecture “The Roots of Being” (which was brilliant) he had the crowd literally singing at the end…anyway, I digress, back to the point…(he somehow managed to show how rhythm and poetry are genetically related. As in…poetry is not IN the genes…it IS the genes…) I don’t know how he did it, but he did…wait, I digress again.

What was I saying? “Rhythm, out of what music does it spring forth?” OH! Yeah, he was talking about this and (a lot more) then he expressed the thought that poems could usually fall into one of two forms: liturgy or lament.
He quoted (from memory) some passages which expounded the idea of rhythm/form as “lament”
(which I did not write down quickly enough so unfortunately I can’t remember.)
THEN! *knock your socks off moment coming, hold on to them…* All right, maybe not so much for you then, for me…I’ll hold on to mine. This still blows me away.

To give an example of a form of liturgy he read my second workshop poem!
I mean, what? I turned to the girl who was sitting next to me whose face and name I no longer remember and I said. “Holy shit. Robert Hass is reading my poem.”
I wasn’t sure what to do with my face. I think it had fallen completely off.
I have to say that again. Pardon me. I hope this doesn’t seem gloating or crass but, Holy Shit. Robert Hass read my poem in a craft lecture.

AND Here’s where I must remark on the excellent teaching at Hollins and how without all of you, well I simply would never had been able to say *third time* Holy shit. Robert Hass read my poem. Aloud. In front of like, people.
(TJ Anderson III, Richard Dillard, Cathryn Hankla, Pauline Kaldas, Thorpe Moeckel and Jeanne Larsen!) How could I forget Jeanne of the Manchu Palaces, Jeanne of the Willow, Wine, Mirror, Moon, Jeanne of the Adv. Studies in Poetry class who had her students create the "Poem without Words"

What’s next? I don’t know. Hass invited me to check out Squaw Valley? I think it is. I know I definitely want to do this writer conference type of thing again!

Speer Morgan, editor of Missouri Review apparently saw me read. He’s invited me to submit a partial manuscript to his magazine.

And…that’s all I can think of.

I’m so glad to be home, but so grateful, humbled, overwhelmed…to have had this experience so I guess I should say this again. THANK YOU. Please give my love to everyone in Swan. Well, give my love but not in a literal way, unless it is a hug, and then you can be literal when you give love from me to everyone.

XXOO
Melanie

PS I DID sing some bluegrass with Claudia and Kent. (Just one song.) I also did a ten second clog routine with her outside the library.

PSS *you are sworn to secrecy on this one.* Jenny Sheridan Pecoraro came to visit me. I took her on a tour of the campus. We went to the library. I got us lost in the basement of the library. I found a long hallway leading to what seemed the only way out of the basement of the library. Neither Jenny nor I noticed the note on the door which read, quite plainly:
Alarm WILL sound if you open the door.

Jenny then gave me this very, very good advice. Which I shall never ever forget.

“If you run, you look guilty.”

Introducing Chris Noman Part 1

2010-07-01T12:17:00.001-04:00

A U B A D E, O C E A N G R O V E

We sat on the beach at high tide
when you finally turned to me, your hands buried
in the sand, asking, like a child, if I saw how far out you went,
the spray

of the Pacific becoming tears upon your worn face.
With a broken shell I drew a white line
down the brown skin of your shoulder,
and said nothing.

Tonight the beach is still. My clothes are scattered on the sand.
Slowly the waves come forward, and the remote lights
of the coast tremble
across the water; red, and deep amber. If once you
could have seen yourself;

the lone figure in my dream

diving so swiftly through the waves
I believed the four seas gathered to ferry only you.
Sometimes, in the dark, I hear you, Brandon,
calling my name, wanting me to follow———

I lie awake
and believe more than anything you are holding me again;
how on nights like this, we’d lie side by side, not moving,

our bodies uncovered in the dark, waiting for a sign;
the taste
of salt on your palm as you covered my mouth,
the last desperate cries gradually silenced by flesh———

Beyond the row of tide markers, the sun rises. Assassins
scale the carved rock at the base of the promontory, and the
waves mount, relentless against the shattered breakers.
You understand, I never wanted either of us
to be saved———
the sky strangely light at this hour, the gulls overhead,
cryless in the wind.

UNBORN CHILD

How quiet you are, how still——
I think you must be waiting.

Sometimes
I believe you were always there

in my body; maybe like the way light
enters our eyes
and hides in us forever———

It’s the closest you’ll ever get
to having a soul: when a child’s dead
inside you.

Last night I dreamed someone
fucked me as I slept.

For all I know, it wasn’t a dream;

I pretended to sleep, maybe I never
opened my eyes———

What death claims it abandons.

Look at me. What do you see in me
that is not surrender? I am
ruined. We both know

I’d give my body up to you again.

Could a Small Independent Publisher Be Right For You?

2010-06-10T00:15:00.006-04:00

Introducing Author Susan May

photo by Stephanie Kay

Getting the attention of a publisher can be very frustrating for a writer. But thankfully not all publishers are created equal. There are only five or six major publishing houses and with these it is often difficult for an author to get in the door. Editors at these houses tell of enormous slush piles and many times require that an author have an agent to represent the work. A small independent publisher is another avenue that an author can purse to have their work published. There are numerous small presses, each offering their own special brand of publishing. Many manuscripts have found a home in one of them.

Nick’s New Heart, my nonfiction book about my son’s heart transplant experience was picked up by a small press. It’s not only a book about my son but also about my family. I did shop it to the big guys and numerous others also. I’d received a large number of rejections but also enough encouraging ones to keep me submitting. I send it to a small independent publisher who saw its value and contracted me. It was the best publishing decision I could have made for Nick’s New Heart.

The personal aspect of working with a small press is what most appealed. I not only wanted, but needed personal attention. Being asked what I thought should be done with Nick’s New Heart was important because this book wasn’t only about my baby (my manuscript), but the book was about my real baby and family. I needed to have some control over how it was presented, the title and the direction.

This was my first book and I wanted to understand step by step what was happening. By having a small press, I had someone who listened and answered my questions. I didn’t just hand my manuscript over to a group of committees to make all the decisions. I was asked about what I wanted to see on the cover and had a chance to okay it. I got to discuss length, font, paper quality and whether or not it should be hard back or soft cover. Most of these items were decided for me but I did get to feel like I had some input.

A small press can offer the uneducated writer publishing knowledge that a large house doesn’t have time to give. The editing process and setting of pages are things easier shared when working with a small publisher. Staying in contact can sometimes be easier because the number of authors isn’t so great. My email and phone calls were always answered in a timely manner. If a writer feels the need to be involved in their book all the way through the publishing press, I would recommend a small press.

Often independent presses are more open to story ideas and submissions that large press who will pass on them for any number of reasons. The large publishers may think the book idea is good, but that it doesn’t make good business sense. Small press can have less of a slush pile to wade through, meaning a response time is shorter. The author isn’t waiting around for months to hear whether or not the press is interested in their work. Waiting six months to a year to hear back from a large publisher isn’t unusual. In my experience, six weeks to a month is a long time for a small press to hold on to a manuscript.

There are many reputable independent presses that use the same business model as larger publishers but do it on a smaller scale. They offer editors, some give the author a minimum advance, while others don’t but pay higher royalties. Many small presses don’t offer high amounts of promotional money but then at a large publishing house a new author might not get a lot of attention in that area if they aren’t already well known.

Small independent publishers can be found at http://www.writersmarket.com/ and http://www.newpages.com/book-publishers Also Google-Small Independent Publishers for even more outlets.

One word of caution, small presses, like large ones need to be researched and their guidelines for submission follow. Just because a press is small doesn’t mean that they publish every genre or type of book. Treat submitting to a small press with the same professionalism as a larger one would be given.

If it is important to you that your opinion at least be considered, valued and your voice heard think about submitting to a small publisher. The best thing I ever did for Nick’s New Heart and for me as an author of the book was to sign with a small press. My baby was treated well and so was I. http://www.susancmay.com/index.php

Susan May’s love affair with books began when she was in the sixth grade and made a bad grade on her report card in math. (She still doesn’t like math.) Not allowed to watch TV for six weeks she filled her extra time with reading.

Her first book, Nick’s New Heart about her son’s heart transplant experience is available now. She is currently working on a her fifth romance novel about a strong, rich man and the woman that loves him, a nonfiction about a WWII flight surgeon and another about her summer trip to Europe with her four teenage children.

She often speaks to nursing groups, civic groups, and high school health classes about the importance of organ donation. She leads workshops on promotion, rejection, time management, finding the right writer’s conference, collaging and memoir writing.

When her head isn’t in a book, hers or someone else’s, Susan is either traveling, cross-stitching or reading. Visit her at www.susancmay.com.

It’s The Bees’ Knees!

2010-06-04T10:12:00.013-04:00

Meet Guest Blogger Nicelle Davis

What is your vision for Bees' Knees?

My vision for The Bees’ Knees Blog is to create an interactive space where poets can explore language. The blog is divided into three components: Writing, Reading, and the Biz of Poetry.

The Writing:

I post a monthly workshop, poetry prompt, and contest. Poets are encouraged to post their work and give feedback in the comment sections of these monthly posts. The poems submitted at The Bees’ Knees should be in a state of making—in other words, not polished ready for publication poems, but works still in the process of becoming. This is ultimately a place for poetic exploration.

The Reading:

Reading is a large component of The Bees’ Knees Blog. There is a book club that looks at three books over the course of three months: a book on craft, a book by an established author, and a chapbook by an up-and-coming author. There is also a salon where poets can post their favorite poems for an open discussion on why the writing is so good—why it works—how words remake us as we read them.

I also feel very compelled to help promote work that I find fabulous. Poetry is something I want to share. If I read a good book I want to scream from the tops of buildings, this is a very good book and you all should read it. In some aspects the Bees’ Knees is that very tall building, so when I find something good I start yelling about it like a cheerleader drunk on a six-pack of soda-pop.

*RUDE NARRATIVE INTRUSION BY THE AUTHOR OF MORTAL CORKSCREW*

*Speaking of really good poetry: Check this out!*

Nicelle’s poetry at:

*click to enlarge*

AND NOW BACK TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAM

The Biz:

In addition to writing and reading I want to provide information about the business of poetry. The word business tastes bad when placed so close to the word poetry—like peanut-butter and pickles—but I haven’t a better word to describe the emotional rollercoaster that is the act of submitting poems.

So here is what I know about peanut-butter and pickles:

Editors are not monsters, they will not kick you, or call you names. They are word lovers to the fullest extent of the word love. An editor is someone who has decided to dedicate their time, money, and heart to provide a place for someone else’s words. I think this information is very important for the poet who is just beginning to submit work to journals. I run a monthly spotlight on editors / journals in order to demystify the process of submitting work. Ultimately, I believe that poetry, like song, is a social animal. It wants friends, cohorts, family, and the company of other poems. The Bees’ Knees wants to be that coffee shop / bar / office / classroom where poets can meet and bond over a cup of great words. A place for community is my hope for the blog. I hope on it and hope on it as though it were my wishing star.

--Nicelle Davis

Quote of the Day:

...The poem demands the demise of the poet who writes it and the birth of the poet who reads it.

-Octavio Paz: Alternating Current

For Those Who Carry On

2010-05-31T10:49:00.003-04:00

Memorial Day

Remembrance. Today was set aside to think of the fallen. To pay respect to those who have carried guns in defense of ideals, in defense of other people, in defense of their comrades or their own lives. There are many stories being told about courage today. The courage it takes to leave home, to travel across the world into a foreign country and face hatred, to deal with a battle with no clear way out, without knowing when it will end or how long you will be called on, or even if you will be the one who is sent home in a pine box. To choose to live the life of an American soldier shows a strength of character which should be recognized with respect and gratitude. Military service, at the most basic level, is a self-less act. The willingness to sacrifice one's life for others, regardless of the politics or the ideals surrounding the military, is a noble desire.

The military is why we have the security we do. (It’s not the lawyers or politicians, that is for sure.) Men and women have sacrificed their lives for an ideal; the ideal of human equality and the right to exist with dignity and to respect each other without resorting to violence, even when we don’t agree. It is a wonderful thing that we can say whatever we want to say in America and not get punished for disagreeing with those in power. We are a blessed country and a lucky people to live in a place which allows us to express discontent or disagreement without our own military being used against us. Certainly, it goes without saying that it is not a perfect institution and mistakes have been made by individuals in the past and mistakes will be made in the future, no man and no man made institution is perfect. But at the heart of the majority of individuals serving in the armed forces is a person who believes in service, a person who believes one individual can make a difference, a person willing to die for others.

But there are some heroes who do not carry a gun, they simply carry on. There is of a different kind of war going on today and it is a war within the households across the world. Today, while I honor the fallen I would also like to honor the living. Please note, the images following will be disturbing to some.

WORLD IN A SNAP | Interesting images from around the world

Terrorism that's personal (12 images)

EDITOR'S NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT

Text by Jim Verhulst, Times' Perspective editor | Photos by Emilio Morenatti, Associated Press

We typically think of terrorism as a political act.

But sometimes it’s very personal. It wasn’t a government or a guerrilla insurgency that threw acid on this woman’s face in Pakistan. It was a young man whom she had rejected for marriage. As the United States ponders what to do in Afghanistan — and for that matter, in Pakistan — it is wise to understand both the political and the personal, that the very ignorance and illiteracy and misogyny that create the climate for these acid attacks can and does bleed over into the political realm. Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times op-ed columnist who traveled to Pakistan last year to write about acid attacks, put it this way in an essay at the time: “I’ve been investigating such acid attacks, which are commonly used to terrorize and subjugate women and girls in a swath of Asia from Afghanistan through Cambodia (men are almost never attacked with acid). Because women usually don’t matter in this part of the world, their attackers are rarely prosecuted and acid sales are usually not controlled. It’s a kind of terrorism that becomes accepted as part of the background noise in the region. ...

“Bangladesh has imposed controls on acid sales to curb such attacks, but otherwise it is fairly easy in Asia to walk into a shop and buy sulfuric or hydrochloric acid suitable for destroying a human face. Acid attacks and wife burnings are common in parts of Asia because the victims are the most voiceless in these societies: They are poor and female. The first step is simply for the world to take note, to give voice to these women.” Since 1994, a Pakistani activist who founded the Progressive Women’s Association to help such women “has documented 7,800 cases of women who were deliberately burned, scalded or subjected to acid attacks, just in the Islamabad area. In only 2 percent of those cases was anyone convicted.”

The geopolitical question is already hard enough: Should the United States commit more troops to Afghanistan and for what specific purpose? As American policymakers mull the options, here is a frame of reference that puts the tough choices in even starker relief: Are acid attacks a sign of just how little the United States can do to solve intractable problems there — therefore, we should pull out? Or having declared war on terrorism, must the United States stay out of moral duty, to try to protect women such as these — and the schoolgirls whom the Taliban in Afghanistan sprayed with acid simply for going to class — who have suffered a very personal terrorist attack? We offer links to smart essays that come to differing conclusions.

• In August, Perspective published a New York Times Magazine piece that followed up the story of Afghan sisters Shamsia and Atifa Husseini, who were attacked with acid simply for attending school. If you wish to refresh your memory, you may read the original article.

• Two very smart, informed observers come to opposite conclusions on the proper U.S. course of action in Afghanistan:

1. In his “Think Tank” blog at NewYorker.com, Steve Coll argues why we can’t leave — “What If We Fail In Afghanistan?” Read the essay in full.

2. In an essay entitled “The War We Can’t Win” in Commonweal (also reprinted in the November issue of Harper’s), Andrew J. Bacevich makes the case that we are overstating the importance of Afghanistan to U.S. interests. Bacevich is a professor of International Relations at Boston University and the author, most recently, of The Limits of Power. A retired Army lieutenant colonel, he served from 1969 to 1992, in Vietnam and the first Persian Gulf War. He was a conservative critic of the Iraq war. Several of his essays have run before in Perspective. Read his essay in full.

• Read the original story about acid attacks by Nicholas Kristof.

Irum Saeed, 30, poses for a photograph at her office at the Urdu University of Islamabad, Pakistan, Thursday, July 24, 2008. Irum was burned on her face, back and shoulders twelve years ago when a boy whom she rejected for marriage threw acid on her in the middle of the street. She has undergone plastic surgery 25 times to try to recover from her scars.

Shameem Akhter, 18, poses for a photograph at her home in Jhang, Pakistan, Wednesday, July 10, 2008. Shameem was raped by three boys who then threw acid on her three years ago. Shameem has undergone plastic surgery 10 times to try to recover from her scars.

Najaf Sultana, 16, poses for a photograph at her home in Lahore, Pakistan on Wednesday, July 9, 2008. At the age of five Najaf was burned by her father while she was sleeping, apparently because he didn't want to have another girl in the family. As a result of the burning Najaf became blind and after being abandoned by both her parents she now lives with relatives. She has undergone plastic surgery around 15 times to try to recover from her scars.

Shehnaz Usman, 36, poses for a photograph in Lahore, Pakistan, Sunday, Oct. 26, 2008. Shehnaz was burned with acid by a relative due to a familial dispute five years ago. Shehnaz has undergone plastic surgery 10 times to try to recover from her scars.

Shahnaz Bibi, 35, poses for a photograph in Lahore, Pakistan, Sunday, Oct. 26, 2008. Ten years ago Shahnaz was burned with acid by a relative due to a familial dispute. She has never undergone plastic surgery.

Kanwal Kayum, 26, adjusts her veil as she poses for a photograph in Lahore, Pakistan, Sunday, Oct. 26, 2008. Kanwal was burned with acid one year ago by a boy whom she rejected for marriage. She has never undergone plastic surgery.

Munira Asef, 23, poses for a photograph in Lahore, Pakistan, Sunday, Oct. 26, 2008. Munira was burned with acid five years ago by a boy whom she rejected for marriage. She has undergone plastic surgery 7 times to try to recover from her scars.

Bushra Shari, 39, adjusts her veil as she poses for a photograph in Lahore, Pakistan, Friday, July. 11, 2008. Bushra was burned with acid thrown by her husband five years ago because she was trying to divorce him. She has undergone plastic surgery 25 times to try to recover from her scars.

Memuna Khan, 21, poses for a photograph in Karachi, Pakistan, Friday, Dec. 19, 2008. Menuna was burned by a group of boys who threw acid on her to settle a dispute between their family and Menuna's. She has undergone plastic surgery 21 times to try to recover from her scars.

Zainab Bibi, 17, adjusts her veil as she poses for a photograph in Islamabad, Pakistan, Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2008. Zainab was burned on her face with acid thrown by a boy whom she rejected for marriage five years ago. She has undergone plastic surgery several times to try to recover from her scars.

Naila Farhat, 19, poses for a photograph in Islamabad, Pakistan, Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2008. Naila was burned on her face with acid thrown by a boy whom she rejected for marriage five years ago. She has undergone plastic surgery several times to try to recover from her scars.

Saira Liaqat, 26, poses for the camera as she holds a portrait of herself before being burned, at her home in Lahore, Pakistan, Wednesday, July 9, 2008. When she was fifteen, Saira was married to a relative who would later attack her with acid after insistently demanding her to live with him, although the families had agreed she wouldn't join him until she finished school. Saira has undergone plastic surgery 9 times to try to recover from her scars.

Segue into Video: Melissa Broder (I just wanted an excuse to use the word "segue" because it is a really cool word,) Also, Poetry and Sock Puppets are AWESOME!

2010-05-26T06:47:00.000-04:00

Dear Aging Anarchist / Melissa Broder from Leigh Stein on Vimeo.

Say Hello to Poet Melissa Broder a.k.a The Gefilte Fisherwoman

2010-05-25T07:44:00.002-04:00

Author of WHEN YOU SAY ONE THING AND MEAN YOUR MOTHER

Well that’s not really her but that is her book and this poem is really by her:

Summer Soldiers

by Melissa Broder

This was the game: we would gaze down the barrel
of our lipsticks, waiting for you to finish
band practice. Stalk you in the 7-11 lot.
Where the boys were. Boys. Sparrow spirits on skateboards,
bottles of Tahitian Treat, Rose's Cola,
and blue raspberry Slurpees laced with liquor.
I had the blues 'cause I wanted to be you:
all shit-beers and stars, pentagrams instead of Temple.
Old-school kick flips—no purses—under the low-hung moon,
and you could skin your knees and you could give me
carpet burn all evening in somebody's basement,
trying to lick my nothing-tit, a baby lion
cleaning a china plate. Calluses and nipples,
bass guitars. Cinnamon gum will turn him on,
said the wise women of Seventeen magazine.
What kind of kisser are you? Timid? Sexy? Strong?
Once I opened my eyes and he only had one eye.
He kept his mouth sealed shut. Is there something wrong?
Then you'd heel-flip your Simples, ollie higher
over gutters, down suburb sidewalks, to your mothers
and we'd go tongue the mirror in your honor,
apply silver eyeliner, make scars out of pimples.

http://delsolreview.webdelsol.com/dsr15/poems-melissa.htm

I may just have to dance on potato chips

2010-05-24T01:25:00.001-04:00

I'm s'mad I can't sleep. At present I'm sitting here in my living room looking over the wreckage. Today my husband took the kids to play laser tag and to hit some baseballs, and to just goof off in general supposedly to give mom some "time alone." Translation…"Mom plans on cleaning house today we better get the heck out of dodge."

Okay, fine. Often it is easier for me to just roll up my sleeves and get things done than to direct the traffic of who should do what, where and why.

"BUT Mom, I cleaned the bathroom LAST time."

Yeah, last MONTH. If you call running a rag over the sink "cleaning the bathroom."

BUT MOM, why should I pick up the living room, I didn't make the mess in here. That's not fair."

I never thought I'd be the kind of mom that would ever say: "Because I said so."

But now I say it. BECAUSE. I. SAID. SO.

My favorite excuse from my nine year old son.

"I can't. I think my legs are broken."

So, my family comes home from their day of lollygagging and within ten minutes…probably not even that…what I'd worked ALL day to clean was destroyed.

They decided to watch movies. Good end to a nice day.

Well bully for y'all. I thought to myself and I decided to just sit back and wait and see if anyone would bother to pick up a thing, one thing, before they went to bed.

The mess statistic as of 1:00 a.m. Sunday night:

8 pairs of shoes in my living room. That is sixteen individual shoes. Not even piled in front of the door, no, like easter eggs they're scattered all willy nilly about the place.

2 cups under the couch, 1 cup beside the couch.

1 granola bar wrapper shoved under the couch and some other stuff, but I'm not going to see what it is.

1 batting glove.

Some sort of tool which says Dewalt on it.

Two bowls and one spoon.

A box of art supplies.

Socks. (single of course, not matching.)

X-box games (two) gaming control (one)

A blanket (looks like someone spilled something and used the blanket to cover it up.)

And that's just the living room.

In the kitchen---Oh god. I don't even want to talk about the Kitchen!!

Half eaten bags of chips left open. Left OPEN. Are they trying to drive me mad? I think they are.

I am having this really strong desire to dump ALL the chips on the floor in the kitchen and just dance on them. Two step, boot scootin boogie, stomp…whatever. Dance, dance, dance on potato chips and just leave them there and when the kids wake up in the morning and ask what happened I'll pull out some of their own lines on them:

"What? What mess? Where? I don't see anything. Oh…that….I didn't do that. Don't worry about it, it's not a big deal, why don't you just CHILAX sheesh, you'd think you'd never seen potato chips on the floor before."

:: maggie taylor ::

2010-05-22T23:07:00.001-04:00

"Messenger"

Great artist, fascinating work, Southern Gothic, click to visit her website.

:: maggie taylor :::

Born on a blue day

2010-05-20T14:34:00.005-04:00

To adopt to chaos the mind might recite π for hours

two is yellow, six a void, five a clap of thunder

the rosetta stone

profound talent/profound disability
are divided by a thin line

Not even an eyelash.

Each hair on the human head has a number
the sparrow falls without counting.
Intelligence is not a gift it is

a cracker-jack prize, a wash off tattoo
a plastic compass
the candy coating on the pop-corn

or likely just the nuts that settle
to the bottom during shipping

What is a baby goldfish called?
Where do iatrophobes fear to go?
When is a nightshade a vegetable?
'Hands' are a part of what religion?
What is the collective noun for collective nouns?

Wisdom, on the other hand, is a wonderful peculiar

pebble

*Italics are author/autistic/savant Dannel Tammet's words, used with permission. Photo by John Sweet, also used with permission. After the fact of the post, but still, it counts.

Bad Luck, Good Luck: “I Shouldn’t Have Been a Pirate Whore.”

2010-05-18T01:22:00.009-04:00

You ever wake up with an epiphany? Words flowing from you like St. Elmo’s fire, ( y’know not the creepy red puppet, but the legend) and you pick up whatever writing utensil is at hand and whatever scrap of paper, box of tissue, back of a receipt you can find and write it down as fast as you can, and then set it aside, pleased that you have captured brilliance, that exact moment of divine reckoning where Truth (capital T) has been revealed to you. So you fall blissfully back to the cushions, sigh a contented sigh and embrace sleep only to wake abruptly and realize that on that massive pile of paper and books surrounding your bed…

you’ve lost your treasure. That precious, nay, sacred gem is buried somewhere deep within the folds of chaos, and like blinking right before the picture... you know you've been caught with your eyes closed, and you'll never figure out where you put that damn scrap of paper, and you don’t even know what that paper looked like, or what color of pen, pencil, crayon you used for the text because you didn’t even bother to turn on the light before you began penning your serendipitous verse down?

No?

Maybe it’s just me.

Anyway, this post is about luck. Why some people seem to have good luck, and some people seem to have bad luck. My oldest daughter seems to have the worse luck of anyone in the family. She’s been to the emergency room more than all my children combined. She trips, a lot. She hits her head on things, a lot. She’s dealt with the suicide of two close friends. On reflection, she’s come to a point where she’s developed a healthy does of sick humor to cope. .

Now when something bad happens, like she hits her head or stubs her toe or cuts her finger somehow on a box of cereal (really, how does one CUT their finger on a cereal box?) she says: “Dang it! I shouldn’t have been a Murdering Pirate Whore!”

and we laugh.

Now there’s Ben. He has found so many four leaf clovers in his life we stopped counting after a hundred. One time the child found twelve of them, all at once, during soccer practice. (What he was doing looking for clover rather than practicing, I can’t tell you.) I find them too, every once in a while, only one or maybe two at time. But almost every time that child goes outside, viola’ there’s a clover. My other children have invested time in attempting this feat. The youngest two will try on and off to find them. They’ll spend twenty or thirty minutes looking before they give up and Ben will come up, bend right over in front of them and pluck it out of the bunch.

I asked him how he did that.

“I don’t know, I just sorta feel like there’s one there. When I feel like there’s a clover there, I just go over and get it.”

Now, I wonder can our expectations MAKE bad things happen and good things happen when we want? Does Ben believing he has the power to find four leaf clovers, give him that power. Does Halee believing (somewhat) she must have done something bad to have bad things happen in turn make bad things happen?

I don’t claim I know. All I know is that, for my own part, my luck would have it that the epiphany I was going to share in this post is likely lost forever.

Dang it. I shouldn’t have been a pirate whore.

From Schole’: “Pied Beauty”

2010-05-16T01:17:00.001-04:00

Glory be to God for dappled things –

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare and strange;

What is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; dazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.

by Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poet-Priest, 1844-1889

Legacy of Pennies. Remembering Gary

2010-05-15T04:01:00.003-04:00

Today is the one year anniversary of Gary’s suicide. But rather than dwelling on how he left us, I’d rather dwell on what he left us with.

Pennies.

More to come…

***

You know. I wanted to make this positive and uplifting. I wanted to write, everything’s all okey dokey now. We have our memories and that’s enough and things will all work out in the end. But, perhaps a year isn’t enough time. Perhaps this isn’t the right space to show the under-belly of a horrific event. Perhaps silence is the best gift you can give.

But, I can’t be silent anymore. Gary was gay. A group of kids (mostly Jocks) were very unkind to him. I don’t know much about his home life other than his mother was supportive of him. I know my daughter would come home and tell me about the latest escapade on the bus where the ridicule and torment were getting so bad one time that she stood up and yelled “SHUT UP!!!” and actually physically went to smack a football player upside the head, or wherever she could reach. Now, my daughter is a pacifist, she’s the oldest of five and has played the role of peacemaker her entire life. She doesn’t yell. She doesn’t get mad. She doesn’t like to hurt anyone’s feelings, ever.

The WHY of what happened doesn’t matter. The HOW doesn’t matter. What matters now is honest reflection. In this community tolerance towards homosexuality is pretty much at a zero. I don’t care what religion you are, but from what I understand about Christianity Jesus said, “Love God with all your heart, mind, and might, and love thy neighbor as thyself. On this hangs all the law of the prophets.”

LOVE, not judge, not condemn, not exclude, not preach to, convert, LOVE.

Unconditionally.

This community is full of churches, a church on every corner. Yet the high-school has one of the highest rates of drug use and pregnancies in the valley, three suicides in almost as many years.

Gary had a smile for every person. The awkward outcast, the shy girl who no-one spoke to, the boy who was smaller and weaker than others…He was KIND.
Since he’s been gone I’ve been finding pennies everywhere, where-ever I go. He used to call himself “King of the Pennies.” People who knew him, loved him. It’d become a tradition for his friends to give pennies to the king of pennies. A standing joke, here’s a handful of worthless change, ha ha. Here’s a down payment for your car, ha ha.

No one knew he kept each and every penny. He saved them to give to a teacher who in turn, gave them in service of the homeless, the hungry.

By itself, a penny isn’t much of anything. A penny is a waste of space. A penny won’t buy you anything.

But whenever I see a penny now, I think of him. I pick it up. I put it away. I don’t know what I’m saving it for. I don’t know that I have as much hope or faith as Gary did, that a few pennies here and there gathered together can make any amount of difference, but God knows…if he left us in this place without him, and there are only these pennies left to remember him by, then, we have to try.

Across a Great Wilderness without You - Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More

2010-05-14T11:37:00.000-04:00

A "must read" poem, found via Stephen Bunch (thanks for sharing) Across a Great Wilderness without You - Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More:

If you are on fire, do not run.

2010-05-13T13:56:00.004-04:00

How many poets does it take to write a poem? None. Obviously a poem can write itself. Ha!

The past few days I've experienced the awkward side to the creative process: Publishing. I was invited to contribute to a book with three other poets. It was a simple question really, do you want to be published or don't you? But, I wasn't fond of the collection title. I jumped right in to the ring and started swinging. Why that title, why not THIS title?

( Simple? Asking four poets to agree on one thing, simple?) Ha! again.

If I didn't get a better title, I thought to myself, one that truly represented me and my work, why, I might just take my poems and go! *stomping my feet.*

I realized, on some level, my reaction was purely instinctual (and somewhat childish). Why was I feeling so overly protective towards my work? Would a title diminish what I'd spent so much time and energy creating? Was it the fact that I didn't get to pick the title myself, was I a control freak?

I wasn't sure.

I asked my husband: "Would you say I'm a difficult person?"

He didn't even say anything; he just gave me a look.

Reality check—Duh. Yes.

"Gee, thanks a lot."

My husband laughed. "Difficult, but fun, wouldn't want you any other way."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you don't always listen. It's very frustrating. You already have your mind made up before a conversation or debate even begins."

"No, I don't."

"Yes, you do. When you make up your mind about something, you won't change it for anything."

I contemplated this for a moment. I have changed my mind about some things, very drastically in the past ten years in fact. But was it true that I didn't listen? I considered the discussions we've had about politics and religion…

"I don't change my mind because I'm RIGHT." I told him.

He laughed again. "See, that's what I mean."

"Fine."

"Don't be mad. You asked."

"Fine."

I've always considered myself open-minded, aware of others points of view and empathetic towards those views. But, was I—really?

I reviewed my position on the title of the book and I took myself out of the debate, got out of the way of others who have their own vision concerning the name, and threw my own ego out the window. This allowed the universe to approach me with a measure of grace. Almost.

Ha! So there. ..see! I can change my mind.

To boil what I learned from this experience down to one sentence, I'll quote a writer friend of mine who suggested in situations like this I should just go with the flow and:

"Be grateful, not grating."

100 Extraordinary Examples of Paper Art | Webdesigner Depot

2010-05-12T22:44:00.001-04:00

100 Extraordinary Examples of Paper Art | Webdesigner Depot:

Two things: SOL tests and Stoopid Parents

2010-05-11T07:56:00.004-04:00

Part One.

This morning I got to witness first hand the benefits of SOL testing. My daughter, Analee, woke up five minutes late for school. Immediate snot-flinging ensued.

“Great! I’ll never make it! The teacher said not to be late because if we’re late we can’t take the test!” (tears)

The general “freak out” lasted about ten minutes before I was able to calm her down and assure her we still had time to get her ready.

“But I won’t even have time to eat breakfast!” (more tears)

I reminded her that eating a bowl of cereal could be done in five to seven minutes, tops.

“But where’s my coat!” (and more tears)

Got her coat,

and out the door.

Having had five children go through the public schools systems I’ve seen about every reaction to testing there is. None of it good.

Okay. So, I DO understand the need to measure the effectiveness of teaching but the standardized tests and the “No Child Left Behind Act” (while good in theory and a really lovely ideal) are two of the most ineffectual laws put into use today.

The result of turning learning into a product and not a process:

Overstressed, overwhelmed teachers.

Overstressed, overwhelmed students.

Cookie cutter curriculums which force individuals onto a collective middle ground leave little room or time for differential teaching techniques geared to the more advanced or the learning challenged child.

People. Children are not all the same. Some bright politician decided the “Core” curriculum for a third grader should include a large section on Greek Architecture.

I'll say that again because it’s so flabbergasting.

A 8-9 year old needs to learn about the different types of columns on the Parthenon? Why? So the next time they build a Greek temple they'll be sure to use the correct columns having learned the important aesthetic of ruffled marble?

That’s stoopid.

Here’s an article:

Why parents should be concerned about the SOL's

Part two later.

The Art of Jim Denevan

2010-05-10T15:54:00.002-04:00

Epic.

The Art of Jim Denevan:

Good morning sunshine, the earth says hello.

2010-05-10T11:27:00.002-04:00

Get used to tacky quotes if you visit here. You’ll see them often. Ashley, my sixteen year old often wakes in a very foul mood. This one comes from my ten year old daughter, Analee, who nicked it from her friend Cameron, our next door neighbor. Where he got it from I don’t know. It’s become something of a tradition for Analee to say this to someone when that someone is particularly grumpy.

I have to admit being kind to a person who is not returning the favor can be hard, but it can also be rather funny. Next time someone is being spiteful or negative, try the quote on them. It works. (It works even better when you say it while plugging your nose and crossing your eyes. )

Tonemah

2010-05-09T12:12:00.002-04:00

World of Mine Tonemah Live at the Kennedy Center

EdKo | MySpace Music Videos

Free! Online Books, Poems, Short Stories - Read Print Library

2010-05-08T18:45:00.000-04:00

Online Books, Poems, Short Stories - Read Print Library: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Hey look, you dropped your pocket.

2010-05-07T08:10:00.002-04:00

Nah. It's just a poem.

Look up

into the whorl, into the star-fed sea

shell of an ear, a colossal cochlea,

home of the bell-bones

which tremble in weightlessness.

Out there

the sun sounds like a sandstorm,

Saturn’s rings crackle

and beyond the static God

runs a thumb along the lip of the universe

as if tuning a water glass—

Disturbing, whimsical, tragic, in your face. Art.

2010-05-06T17:18:00.001-04:00

Mark Jenkins // Street Installations

R. H. W. Dillard, Blackbird

2010-05-06T09:19:00.003-04:00

An interesting essay about writing.

R. H. W. Dillard, Blackbird

Because Mortal Coil was already taken.

2010-05-05T09:58:00.002-04:00

I know why I'm here. But why are you here? For some reason you've stumbled into the spiral. So now that we're here together let's spin a story shall we?

I'll begin with my grandmother. She passed away over a year ago. But, this isn't about grief. She came to visit me. Yes, I know that sounds crazy but I don't care. I was about to fall asleep when I felt this overwhelming feeling of joy, a dizzy feeling. It wasn't coming from me because I had just been fretting over the dishes I decided to leave in the sink for the night, feeling guilty and a bit sorry for myself thinking about how bone tired I was taking care of the five kids, dog, and grandpa who lived with us at the time.

Then I heard/felt a snicker, or not a snicker, more of a snort-gufaw. I knew it was my grandmother, the same way you know from the smell wafting through the house in the morning that someone is up and about cooking bacon and eggs and putting on the coffee.

"What are you doing?" I asked aloud. My husband was sleeping.

"Practicing," she replied.

She didn't die that day. I later found out from my mother she had slipped into a diabetic coma and Frank (her husband) gave her a priesthood blessing and brought her back.

My Grandma Betty had been a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints all her life. One of the practices of the religion is a laying on of hands and anointing of consecrated oil for the healing of the sick.

Grandma Betty had been in a lot of pain, struggling with her health for quite some time. Before she died she told my mom she was tired of living and wanted to go on but,

"Every time I get ready to go, that dang Frank gives me a blessing and keeps me here."

When Frank was else-where, she passed away sitting up, reading a western, caught in the world of a Louis L'amour book.

I don't even know the title.

But I wonder what chapter, what line, what word it was that she crossed over with.

Mortal Corkscrew

Not Knowing What to Say, Still Finding a Way to Say it

Poetry Matters: A List of Loved Poems and the People Who Love Them

2. “Pluto—poor, poor, poor Pluto.” Elizabeth Matthew Jones is from Roanoke, VA. She studied creative writing and theatre at Hollins University.

3. From: “A Birthday” by W. S. Merwin (Flower & Hand)

The Elementary Spelling Book (Fable I, Of The Boy Who Stole Apples)

Part Three: "Not here/Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.” – T.S. Eliot

Guest Interview: Melanie Huber Speaks With New York Quarterly Editor Raymond Hammond | Savvy Verse & Wit

On the Scene: Into Space--Marginal Arts in Roanoke, Virginia--What in the World?

A Reading List for the Egypt Crisis - NYTimes.com

A Reading List for the Egypt Crisis

Dispatches From the Book Review

Part Two: "Not here/Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.” – T.S. Eliot

Arrowhead Press: Grasshopper by M A Griffiths

Part One: "Not here/Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.” – T.S. Eliot

Received/Reviewed Poetry Books 2010

The Long Awaited, Part 2 (Introducing Chris Noman)

Analee Struggles to Understand Diversity (1st Grade)

John Sweet, "More Words in Short Choppy Lines" + Photography

Mid-November

Revelations, More or Less

A Mountain I'm Willing to Die On

Cosmic Constructions

Photography and Poems by John Sweet

Turtles and Kindness

Thems the Goodest

"There are only two rules you must obey as a writer: You have to use words, and you have to be interesting. Everything else is wide open." Richard Bausch (Blatantly Thieved from Facebook.)

Also, YOUR, YOU'RE or THEY'RE and THEIR and THERE should always be replaced with the more eloquent: You-ins and y'all and thems.

Considering the origins of the English Language...The southern dialect is actually closer to Old English. If you are the cracker, be the cracker. Don't be a cracker trying to a cheese puff.

Anti-academic rants, Anti-Camp rants, Technique vs. Content and blah blah blah

The White Buffalo

Books vs. E-Books: 8 reasons to love or hate either.

Shiva's Arms Book Review and Author Interview

Calligraphic Art, Margaret Shepard

Sewanee Writer's Conference 2010

Introducing Chris Noman Part 1

Could a Small Independent Publisher Be Right For You?

It’s The Bees’ Knees!

For Those Who Carry On

Segue into Video: Melissa Broder ***(I just wanted an excuse to use the word "segue" because it is a really cool word,)*** Also, Poetry and Sock Puppets are AWESOME!

Say Hello to Poet Melissa Broder a.k.a The Gefilte Fisherwoman

I may just have to dance on potato chips

:: maggie taylor ::

Born on a blue day

Bad Luck, Good Luck: “I Shouldn’t Have Been a Pirate Whore.”

From Schole’: “Pied Beauty”

Legacy of Pennies. Remembering Gary

Across a Great Wilderness without You - Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More

If you are on fire, do not run.

100 Extraordinary Examples of Paper Art | Webdesigner Depot

Two things: SOL tests and Stoopid Parents

The Art of Jim Denevan

Good morning sunshine, the earth says hello.

Tonemah

Free! Online Books, Poems, Short Stories - Read Print Library

Hey look, you dropped your pocket.

Disturbing, whimsical, tragic, in your face. Art.

R. H. W. Dillard, Blackbird

Because Mortal Coil was already taken.

Segue into Video: Melissa Broder (I just wanted an excuse to use the word "segue" because it is a really cool word,) Also, Poetry and Sock Puppets are AWESOME!