poetry 180: A Turning Back To Poetry

http://www.amazon.com/Poetry-180-Turning-Back/dp/0812968875

Some readers and writers do not like Billy Collin's poetry. They say it is too easy among other things. They write

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/08/books/review/08orr.html

and here

http://poetsonline.blogspot.com/2005/10/trouble-with-poetry-and-billy-collins.html

and here on his recent book Nine Horses

Amazon.com Review

"In Nine Horses, Billy Collins, U.S. poet laureate and author of the bestselling collection Sailing Alone Around the Room, attempts to find beauty in simplicity, but ends up achieving the simply banal. Some poems, such as "Rooms" and "Obituaries," in which readers are given freedom to draw their own conclusions, are memorable, but the language in Nine Horses has little music and thoughts are plainly stated." 

Read the rest of the review and readers' comments.

http://www.amazon.com/Nine-Horses-Poems-Billy-Collins/dp/0375755209

There are days when I find  what the naysayers say about B.C.'s  poetry true. Other days I revel in his writing for the very same reasons. Some days all I want is a warm piece of freshly baked bread smothered with butter or an apple in a poem that is an an apple nothing more.

I am a bit behind on my reading. poetry 180, the anthology and the poetry 180 website  have been around for a while. Read about Collin's poetry 180 project that was created with high school students in mind to make poetry more accessible and enjoyable for these readers and with the intention that one poem could be read or listened to each of the 180 days school was in session that year. http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/

I was curious what kind of poems would be in a Billy Collin's edited anthology. Many are witty and charming as are Collin's poems. Many do not require minutes or hours of reflection but there are poems that ellicit  reflection and that feeling of angst that appears in much contemporary poetry, that feeling some naysayers of Collins suggest is not in his own work.

Among the poets whose work appears in the anthology are Stephen Dobyns, Sharon Olds, Phillip Levine, Charles Simic, David Ray, Rebecca Wee, Naomi Shihab Nye, Lucille Clifton and Daisey Fried.

 These are three of my favorite poems in the anthology

 One is by children's book author Jane Yolen.

Fat Is Not a Fairy Tale

I am thinking of a fairy tale,
Cinder Elephant,
Sleeping Tubby,
Snow Weight,
where the princess is not
anorexic, wasp-waisted,
flinging herself down the stairs.

I am thinking of a fairy tale,
Hansel and Great,
Repoundsel,
Bounty and the Beast,
where the beauty
has a pillowed breast,
and fingers plump as sausage.
I am thinking of a fairy tale
that is not yet written,
for a teller not yet born,
for a listener not yet conceived,
for a world not yet won,
where everything round is good:
the sun, wheels, cookies, and the princess.
~ Jane Yolen

 

My Father's Hat
by Mark Irwin
Sunday mornings I would reach high into his dark closet while standing on a chair and tiptoeing reach higher, touching, sometimes fumbling the soft crowns and imagine I was in a forest, wind hymning through pines, where the musky scent of rain clinging to damp earth was his scent I loved, lingering on bands, leather, and on the inner silk crowns where I would smell his hair and almost think I was being held, or climbing a tree, touching the yellow fruit, leaves whose scent was that of a clove in the godsome air, as now, thinking of his fabulous sleep, I stand on this canyon floor and watch light slowly close on water I'm not sure is there. http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16707     Dog's Death by John Updike She must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car. Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn To use the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor And to win, wetting there, the words, "Good dog!                                                                     Good dog!" We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction. The autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver. As we teased her with play, blood was filling her skin And her heart was learning to lie down forever. Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed And sent to school, she crawled beneath the youngest's bed. We found her twisted and limp but still alive. In the car to the vet's, on my lap, she tried To bite my hand and died. I stroked her warm fur And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears. Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her, Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared. Back home, we found that in the night her frame, Drawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame Of diarrhoea and had dragged across the floor To a newspaper carelessly left there.  Good dog. John Updike, POETSPEAK In Their Work, About Their Work (A Selection by Paul B. Janeczko)

Inspiration

 Definition of inspiration from The Free Dictionary

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/inspiration

1.

a. Stimulation of the mind or emotions to a high level of feeling or activity.

b. The condition of being so stimulated.

2. An agency, such as a person or work of art, that moves the intellect or emotions or prompts action or invention.

3. Something, such as a sudden creative act or idea, that is inspired.

4. The quality of inspiring or exalting: a painting full of inspiration.

5. Divine guidance or influence exerted directly on the mind and soul of humankind.

6. The act of drawing in, especially the inhalation of air into the lungs.

 What inspires poetry? For everyone who writes a poem the inspiration is different. There are those universal inspirations or themes love, loss, beauty, happiness, life, death and birth. Some days these inspirations are too big for me. Some days I don't feel much  happening in these areas. On those days I try to write a poem about a tree or the sky. I look outside me (writing from the outside in)and I can  find words or a few sentences about  a feeling or how something looks or a certain inner dissatisfaction or disappointment but the poem goes nowhere. I have nothing to say. Whatever I saw did not inspire me enough. The poem fizzled. When this happens I might look for a poetry prompt online or write my own. A few lines nothing. I finally realize like a teacher of mine said, sometimes the field needs to remain fallow. So I read  poetry. In this particular dry spell  I've been reading fiction. No threat there. I am not reading a poem hoping my absentee muses will reappear to inspire me. 
 In my recent month or so of feeling totally uninspired I've been reading fiction. I've finished reading Kalfka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. This book was published in 2005. I haven't written a poem related to the reading of this book (yet) but I can tell you this author inspired me.

"Murakami is an aficionado of the drowsy interstices of everyday life, reality's cul-de-sacs, places so filled with the nothing that happens in them that they become uncanny: hallways, highway rest stops, vacant lots. Although the dreamlike quality of his work makes the film director David Lynch his nearest American counterpart, Lynch's palette is primarily nocturnal while Murakami's welcomes the noontime sun. No one is better at evoking the spookiness of midday in a quiet neighborhood when everyone is at work.
A lot of things happen in Murakami's novels, but what lingers longest in the memory is this distinctive mood, a stillness pregnant with . . . what? Some meaning that's forever slipping away. The author achieves this effect by doing everything wrong, at least by Western literary standards. Over the years, his prose has become increasingly, and even militantly, simple. Although Murakami is both an admirer and a translator of Raymond Carver, this simplicity isn't the semaphoric purity of American minimalism. Partisans of the beautiful sentence will find little sustenance here."

 From the New York Times review of Kalfka on the Shore by Laura Miller. Read the rest at

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/06/books/review/06COVERMI.html


To me the story of Kalfka on the Shore is poetry and philosophy, evolutionary history and Greek tragedy. I felt suspended in time where time was held hostage didn't move and also where time became urgent, time was running out, a time portal to change Kalfka's fate would close soon. Dreams, alternate realities, fish falling from the sky, talking cats, murder, lost soldiers from WW II who had not aged stuck in a forest time warp, free will vs fate, big questions woven into this strange dreamlike  novel set in contemporary Japan. This novel opened  or stimulated  my "mind or emotions to a high level of feeling or activity." Defintion 1
What it did was take me into another reality, the journey of Kalfka Tamura  a 15 year old  who ran away from home and an old man Nakata who is challenged by an old  head injury. He says he is not too smart but he is magical.  These two characters are drawn together in the end of the story to change reality playing their pre-ordained roles. Lives end, others begin. Time moves on.

No poem yet but I can feel one forming. I think the lesson for me when experiencing a dry spell in writing a poem, is to let the field remain fallow yet plant the seeds of future growth. In my case this time the seeds are reading fiction.

Massachusetts Poetry Festival May 12 -14 - Salem Massachusetts

• The Massachusetts Poetry Festival – a unique 2 day gathering of poets and poetry lovers from across the Commonwealth for readings, workshops, panels, concerts, a small press fair and more
• Taking poetry to people: we sponsor poets to work in schools, senior centers, prisons and communities.
• Assisting more readers to read and reconnect with poetry
• Working with teachers to assist them to work with poetry in the classroom
• Creating a central information center for poets and poetry readers and lovers to find reading series, workshops, MFA programs, and other resources
• Building a robust website to support all of these activities
• Linking together all the dispirit strands of the Massachusetts poetry community to promote more collaboration, respect and communication
•  Read the rest at  about  at  http://masspoetry.crowdvine.com/

A Review of A White Girl Lynching from 2009. What Took Me This Long to Link It? I Have No Clue.

Here is a review at Full of Crow from 2009.  I did not post. Full of Crow features poetry, fiction, art, interviews, audio, ebooks, reviews, and more.

http://www.fullofcrow.com/crowreviews/2009/06/a-white-girl-lynching/

Celebrate! April is National Poetry Month -Write a Poem- Poetry Prompt in This Post, Buy a Book, Watch Poets on You Tube, Go to a Reading.

 The History of National Poetry Month

"Inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, National Poetry Month is now held every April, when publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools and poets around the country band together to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture. Thousands of businesses and non-profit organizations participate through readings, festivals, book displays, workshops, and other events."

 Read the rest

http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/41

 Write a Poem

 Poetry Prompt


Write a poem about what a poem is to you
and or second prompt- write about nuclear energy,
its power, its uses, our responsibilities so that it does not
go Kaboom! A third prompt- Write about an April Fool.

Here is my poem (first draft).

Forks are

One-dimensional pieces of metal

Spoons are

flat.... although

curved in functional places.

Spoons have..... tiny muscles

that ripple in milk,

in particular Wheaties.
They are powerless

Hear their cries as they hit
The bowl

Plate
Cup.

Personification poems about utensils

are not  in now (What is? I have no idea)

Who cares? I do.

Every large, small, medium sized metal object
was created by a man's brain waves

I have empathy for the utilitarian

Like nuclear power plants

That depend on human intelligence

(It is all about us. Always. We create.)

To help them help people

Take a fork 

It was made to keep hands clean and

Not spill hot dogs or textured soybeans
On the floor next to the table
Take a nuclear power plant
It was made to not spill
Radioactive waste in the ground

Or water.

The metal things are powerless
They are our Frankenstein
Al or Shelley for good or evil
For better or worse
In sickness or in health
We are wedded to them
With no life asssurance policy


You Tube- Poet Videos

Billy Collins

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xovLpim_1s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrEPJh14mcU

Stanley Kunitz

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nihqt3Ct2KU

Gregory Corso

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGPDZD7AK5o

Women's Poetry Slam
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Jc6wB8gTRc

Emily Dickinson - I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL08bcQU214

Buy a Book - My Chapbooks  (A little self promotion)

http://elizabeth-inthemoment.blogspot.com/2010/11/cowboy-writes-letter-other-love-poems.html

http://elizabeth-inthemoment.blogspot.com/2008/03/white-girl-lynching-pudding-house-press.htm


Poetry Readings April 2011- Events Calendar


http://www.poets.org/calendar.php/varClear/1

 You can google to find more events in your area.

A Mary Oliver Poem- Wild Geese & Geese by E.P. Glixman

 Geese

© 2000 by Elizabeth P. Glixman

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

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 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.

from Dream Work by Mary Oliver

published by Atlantic Monthly Press

© Mary Oliver

Words Facing East, Poems by Kimberly L. Becker

I'm reading Words Facing East by Kimberly L. Becker. Ms. Becker's love of nature, her investigation of her Indian heritage and  the struggles of her ancestors and their descendants,  her relationship with her son and other significant people in her life create passionate poems of loss, anger, longing, discovery, affirmation and healing.

Shaking the Snow , Come Back to the World  and  Letting Down The Stories  are several poems that I especially enjoyed.  The poems are accessible strong and clear. They are rooted in the earth and human emotion.



 Praise for  the Poems

“How perfectly titled Words Facing East is, for Kimberly L. Becker’s poems reflect the unconquered spirit and eloquence of Eastern Cherokee descendants. Kimberly L. Becker has taken personal Trails of Tears and with her poetry transformed them into Trails of Strong Light and Homecoming.  Here is brave poetry that soars and speaks not just to Indian people but to any human being who is yearning for homeland.”—Susan Deer Cloud

In the Purple and Blue of It

Walking the property

In the late afternoon

In the purple and blue of it

The stand of pines

Fairytale deepness

Past the reservoir

Crunching hulls of black walnuts

Thinking:

This is sacred ground

My eyes devour the view

That I like to claim as mine

But know it’s not, despite the deed

When I return to the anxiety

Of the city

I will long for this land

As a lover for the body of the beloved

I will recall its voice

The trickle of creek

       call of hawks

       rain as it comes up the valley

  Read the rest of this poem.
www.kimberlylbecker.com.

New Poem in Press 1 Literary Magazine

 I have a new poem in
Press 1
Volume 4, Number 3
January-April 2011

This issue is a tribute to the late poet and novelist Jayne Pupek.

http://www.leafscape.org/press1/v4n3/glixman.html

The poetry section includes the work of Jon Vick, Miriam N. Kotzin, Bebe Cook, Barbara Henning and others.

Trailer for ADAMANTINE Poetry by Shin Yui Pai

 

Shin Yui Pai writes on her website" I am the author of seven books of poetry, as well as an oral historian, photographer, and editor. My work has appeared in publications throughout the U.S., Japan, China, Taiwan, The United Kingdom, and Canada." 

I find her work inspiring.See the trailer for her latest poetry book (many poets are making trailers for their books. It's taken me sometime to get used to this). Trailers were for movies or fiction books, why not poetry collections.

ADAMANTINE

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGlAfoJlfE8&feature=player_embedded

 and read a recent interview

 in  the January 2011 issue of Eclectica

http://www.eclectica.org/v15n1/becker.html

 

 

 

Don Paterson - RAIN

 

Rain is a truly important book, not only in the development of this must-read poet, but because it engages with the rough and tumble of life in a way we recognise as true. Read it now, before it becomes famous.—Fiona Sampson, The Independent

 

I am not always a fan of  what is considered well crafted traditional poems. Often they feel dry to me or too controlled.  There is no "pop." I have to work to get the meaning  and when I do I say, hmm. Paterson's poetry in RAIN has that subtle pop and is well crafted.  The "pop" to me is the way the poem shows  how life feels. The poems are a joy to read.  Read The New Yorker review.

  

 In “Rain,” what matters is children, friends, and work. What also matters, it turns out, is matter, matter driven by the uncompromising laws of matter. Friends die, work comes to nothing, a child’s pride is undone by “the flutter in his signature.” Imagining people, for Paterson, requires imagining with equal and competing sympathy the enormous latticework of impersonal, indifferent matter that surrounds them. Mentions Robert Frost. The heart of the book isn’t loss, exactly, but, rather, a crisis over how to think about loss.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/04/19/100419crbo_books_chiasson

 

Rain

 Don  Paterson

I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;

one long thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2008/05/26/080526po_poem_paterson#ixzz1AS8kITcs

Don Paterson's biography

http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth206

Rose Black's poem in Eclectica- A favorite of mine. And a link to her new poems.

 

Pedro

All day and all night you keep
looking up at us. Why can't
you lie down? Panting and
staring, you stand on the rug
at the end of our bed. You are
our stubborn mountain dog
and in the past I've said stupid
dog right in front of you. But
now it's 2 a.m. and we can't
sleep with you standing there
and I say Let's go. Right now.
And this time we promise
you we'll fix it, whatever
it is. Stupid first vet. Clearly
not a tummy ache, and if
she doesn't know what it is
she should say so. It will be
two days, two nights, two
vets later, the long trip to
UC Davis, the diagnosis:
collapsed lungs. Why? There
will be the little room all fixed
up to look like a chapel, on
the walls photos of redwoods,
an orange sunset on the ocean.
They will wheel you in on
a metal table. Tubes in you,
a small bag of...something.
We will talk to you and rub
your ears. My hand on
your one white paw. Then
they will take you out. After
we cry, we will go home
and we will not sleep.

http://www.eclectica.org/v14n4/black.html


UPCOMING POETRY READINGS - 2011 Read more about Rose Black and read  several of her latest poems. Also there is a picture of  Pedro on the link and another poem about him written in a similiar style to a Christopher Smart poem.  I think this is the poem. 

http://42opus.com/v4n2/mycatjeoffry

http://www.renaissancestone.com/rose-blackWL.html

Cowboy Writes a Letter & Other Love Poems- My New Chapbook

 
Cowboy Writes a Letter & Other  Love Poems
by Elizabeth P. Glixman

Pudding House Chapbook Series

ISBN 1-58998-932-5
36 pages
Publication November, 2010

About Chapbook

How do I love thee? asked E.B. Browning.

My answer  (to quote 50 Cents) is like a fat boy loves cake.

The poems in Cowboy Writes a  Letter & Other Love Poems are about people who are unfaithful, adoring, contented, reconciled, deluded, infatuated and spiritually transcendent. They are the victims and creators of their confusing and exquisite experiences of love. Emotions that range from cynicism to bliss and back again  appear in their voices. There are husbands and wives who keep secrets, there is the voice of the other woman, the voice of those whose affections are not returned, the voices of parent and child  and there is a woman in love with an actual frog (ribbet, ribbet). New love, old love and all in-between can be found in lyrical, straight  forward and the occasional humorus poem that reveals the power and magnetism of one of the oldest emotions known to man.

Cowboy Writes a Letter & Other Love Poems is part of the Ohio State University Library Special Collections, SUNY/ Buffalo Lockwood Library Special Collections, Kent State University Library Special Collections, Brown University Library, and Poets House/NYC collection.  Cowboy Writes a Letter & Other Love Poems is listed in Bowker/Books in Print.

Husbands, Wives and Chocolate
by

Elizabeth P. Glixman

 

I met my husband the dentist at
A free dental clinic downtown.
He loved my poor bite and eroded bicuspids.
In the pre --nuptial I agreed to not eat candy-
To floss brush more
To get that whiter brighter Rembrandt smile.
In sickness and in health
I agreed that all that would
Be sweet in my life would be him.
He slid the ring on my finger
That was clean of the recent M& Ms
I had eaten in the church’s ladies room.
Today it is the week before Easter
I ate six ears of six hollow chocolate bunnies
I hid in the basement near the freezer
And his wall of books on orthodontics.
I can hear him say
There is nothing I love more than straight white teeth.
My husband is a racist.

I am an addict on chocolate heroin
There is nothing I can do about defacing the bunnies.
I am not Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs.

My husband’s teeth are all crowned.
He is on the city’s campaign
To put fluoride in the city water.
And ban candy bars machines in elementary schools.
If he knew about the bunnies would that be the end?
Would he be Silda Spitzer at my public confession speech
looking at me with ominous eyes?

The polls are out about
A husband, his wife and public humiliation
Concerning chocolate.




Shhh

by


Elizabeth P. Glixman

I smooth silence with my hand
Make it feel like a bed sheet dried in the sun
It is the blessing of relinquishment
After the kettle stops singing
I touch the trail of warmth
Where your hand was on mine
Like the sea and mountains in slow splashing union
I listen to the remnants
Hear the droplets of water fall
The room is white zen silence
I see the morning violet sun
Push stripes of light
Through the plastic blinds
Making a collage across the space 
Where you slept
That is now full of song

Eclectica Magazine: Volume 14, No. 4 - Oct/Nov 2010

 Vol. 14, No. 4
October/November, 2010

 

http://www.eclectica.org/v14n4/toc.html

Read my interview with poet Rick Lupert about his book I'd Like to Bake Your Goods (2006, Ain't Got No Press) and new fiction, poetry, non-fiction, book reviews, interviews and commentary.

"How many people write poetry on their honeymoon? I know one person who did: poet Rick Lupert author of 12 books of poetry, founder of the online poetry resource Poetry Super Highway, and the host of the Cobalt Café Reading Series in Canoga Park, California."

 Read the rest

http://www.eclectica.org/v14n4/glixman_lupert.html

Poetry Prompt Six- Seeing the Brilliance in Dullness

   all photos  by  E.P. Glixman cannot be used without permission

So far this year the fall foliage is not  inspiring where I live. I  think peak leaf season is here or about here. This poetry prompt is to see brilliance in things that don't appear brilliant. Even though the trees are not producing amazing leaf colors, there is a brilliance in the process, in the way of change. Write a poem with  this in mind. 

The world is how you see it.

 What is it you see especially in moments where things have not worked out as you had hoped?

Poetry Readings. Do you prefer reading poetry on a printed page, the computer ( a kind of printed page) or listening to audios or live performances?

I enjoy in person  poetry readings but I prefer reading a poem, savoring it, without any external embellishments the first time around. After I have read it I like to hear a poet read his or her work. I find that a person's voice often influences my reaction to a poem. I am influenced  by sound, perhaps even prejudiced by it one way or the other. I want to get over  my sound preferences when I hear a poet read a poem and my first reaction is no don't like it or wow fantastic. Hearing  a poem and listening to a poem are two different things in my opinion. If you'd like to share your view, please post a comment.

A  link about attitudes toward poetry readings.

 The Peril of the Poetry Reading: The Page Versus the Performance- Poets.org 

 http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5913

Poetry Prompt Number Cinque- The Unexpected

Write a poem about a noun that is black and or white. You can use adjectives that are also black and or white. 


Black

White 

 With 
 A little

 gray

 if you'd like.

 Make it drab 
 and  or
 gloomy
 sorrowful
desolate 
like a pounding rainstorm
 in the ocean
 you witness
from a a sail boat that
 is taking in water
 and there is  no land in sight
 and 
 then

 
Add a spot
of

 Pink .
 Could be  another boat come to your rescue or a bottle with a message from a long lost loved one 
 from another century that lands on the deck.

Love Poem by Paul Hostovsky- Verse Daily Archive

http://www.versedaily.org/2007/lovepoem.shtml


More about this poet.


http://www.paulhostovsky.com/bio.html

Poetry Prompt Numero Cuatro- The Big View and a Detail

Last September I took this picture. I aimed my camera toward the trees wanting to capture the changing color of the leaves. After I took it I saw that the car was in the picture. Surprise. I didn't notice the car while photographing the leaves. You can call me spacey or oblivious or a bad photographer! I like to think I was  so intent on capturing those orange yellow leaves  that I didn't see the forest from the trees. Whatever, I missed seeing something right in front of me that was part of the landscape.

Today's prompt is to  find a physical landscape (interior or exterior) and look twice, once at the overall  image of what you see, and then scan the landscape again to look at a smaller detail you did not notice at first.

Write a poem that incorporates both the landscape and the detail.

Book Expo America-Book and Author Breakfast- Condoleeza Rice, John Grisham, Mary Roach. John Stewart Host.

http://www.amazon.com/Confession-Novel-John-Grisham/dp/0385528043

 I can't wait to read John Grisham's new novel The Confession. He talks about it on this video.

Book and Author Breakfast

May 27, 2010


BookExpo America

"From Book Expo America at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City, a panel of authors discussing their upcoming books. " Watch C-Span Book TV video


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMg-3MnHDV8

or

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/293831-2



                                      

Poetry Prompt- Numero Deux

 To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.

 Ralph Waldo Emerson

photo copyrighted- Elizabeth P. Glixman

My  Wise Warrior Feet  

Blessings to my all knowing feet. They repeat mantras.
Can you hear them?

"The journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one's feet."  

Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu Chinese philosopher (604 BC - 531 BC).

Prompt- Numero Deux

What "burns and sparkles with light " in your life? What or who do you love because of its primal light, its consciousness? Is it a bird or a plane or superman or is it your fork, perhaps your fingers or a favorite hat? Is it the whole of a "thing" or a part?  Is it everywhere?

As “American Beauty” begins and I eat popcorn swimming in butter, the camera pans across the suburban landscape where middle aged Lester Burnham, actor Kevin Spacey, the protagonist lives."

 The Oscar winning movie “American Beauty” made its debut in 1999. It was written by Alan Ball who wrote “Six Feet Under,” the darkly comic HBO series. IMO Mr. Ball has found the secret (or maybe one of them) to living a life where you are not periodically contemplating jumping off the nearest bridge. I think mystics would love Alan Ball. Of course they would. They are mystics (they love everybody) but what I mean is they would embrace his belief.  Mr. Ball writes

“Beauty is in the strangest places. A piece of garbage floating in the wind. And that beauty exists in America. It exists everywhere. You have to develop an eye for it and be able to see it.”

 Who could dispute this idea? We all need to develop an eye for beauty, however we define it, (the beauty in us, other people and our environment) in this changing world unless we want to be perpetually miserable. Seeing this beauty does something to our souls. “American Beauty” is also a comment on how we as Americans live. I choose to focus on the “ big” idea in this movie of finding peace in life regardless of where you live.

My complete thoughts on "American Beauty"  or what I call Lester Burnham’s Magical Mystery Tour.

 

We are all cartons of milk with expiration dates. Someday we will curdle and that will be the end.  Are you thinking I’d rather not hear this?  I’d rather watch American Idol or listen to Wayne Dyer on PBS or go get a drink or wash the dishes, fold the laundry, go bowling, call my mother, go to the gym. I don’t need an existential crisis today. My Prozac prescription ran out. Hey, listen, there is hope in the face of each of our eventual demises. I mean this sincerely.  Take a deep breath.

When we are in our prime and we feel invincible, do we keep putting off the important things believing time will never end?  Okay time may go on for infinity but as humans  there is an end date. What happened to Lester Burnham the narrator of “American Beauty” a darkly comic film (winner of an Oscar in 1999) written by Alan Ball (he also was the writer for the HBO series “Six Feet Under”) snapped me out of my complacency about time and how I viewed what is important in my life. And I actually felt hopeful. See there is a silver lining at the end of that tunnel or behind the cloud.

 As “American Beauty” begins and I eat popcorn swimming in butter, the camera pans across the suburban landscape where middle aged Lester Burnham, actor Kevin Spacey, the protagonist lives. We hear Lester talking. He is dead. It is a bit startling to hear a dead man talking. He tells the story of what happened in the few weeks that lead up to his death. 

What happened? Lester’s mid-life crisis peaked like a tsunami. He quite his job of 14 years, blackmailed his boss, bought the car he always wanted, got a menial job at a fast food restaurant, smoked dope. He became infatuation with his teenage daughter’s seductive girlfriend and started to work out to attract her (she liked muscular men). He became everything a middle-aged man is not supposed to be according to the American Dream and he became happier than he had been in years.

 As the movie continues we see the people in his life: his realtor wife Carolyn played by Annette Benning  (she is obsessed with success and appearances and values her $4,000.00 silk sofa in the living room more than her husband; Lester’ daughter Jane (who hates her father) and develops a romantic relationship with Ricky Fitts, the highly sensitive young man next door who is a documentary filmmaker and drug dealer; Ricky’s emotionally rigid father an ex – Marine colonel who is homophobic, paranoid and obsessed with keeping his son drug free. Every 6 months, Ricky his to give his dad a urine sample. How embarrassing for Ricky.

Everyone in this film has their own version of reality, something that energizes them and gives meaning to their lives, but the characters’ real needs are often concealed and in conflict with each other. They are all leading lives of longing and  despair. There is someone among these characters whose despair and torment gets out of control. He kills Lester for a secret Lester learns about him. After Lester is killed in a shocking and disturbing way and the movie comes to its end, we hear the voice of dead Lester again. He says,

“I had always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die. First of all, that one-second isn't a second at all, it stretches on forever, like an ocean of time... For me, it was lying on my back at Boy Scout camp, watching falling stars... And yellow leaves, from the maple trees, that lined my street... Or my grandmother's hands, and the way her skin seemed like paper... And the first time I saw my cousin Tony's brand new Firebird... And Janie... And Janie... And. Carolyn. I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me... but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst... And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life... You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry... you will someday.”

Just when Lester found happiness, his life was cut short by a senseless act.

Why was Lester Burhnam grateful for what he called “his stupid little life?” Because in the end his stupid little life taught him about beauty and love. I think Lester realized like mystics and rock and roll singers that

 “You don’t always get what you want you get what you need.”

When I think about this often disturbing film, I come away feeling hope.  I wasn’t lying. There is that proverbial light in the darkness. There is a great beauty, exquisite beauty to experience in this magical mystery tour, something so immense about the way things are,  our connections to others and how it all works out. For Lester, the awareness of the meaning and grandeur of his life came as he was checking out.  That doesn’t have to be our experience. Let Lester and this movie be a teacher. Experience what is important to you, what makes you feel full (besides popcorn, a message to myself) before you are taken off the shelf.

2010 Inglis House Poetry Contest Winners & Wordgathering.com

 2nd place category 1

Teddy Norris

FOR MY DISENGAGED INTRO TO POETRY STUDENT

I watch you in my early morning class:
twitchy with boredom, the yearning
for the opiate of your I-pod written on your face;
I can almost feel your fingers’ itch
to text someone, anyone, on your waiting cell.
This, while I yearn to have you understand
how even half a poem might knit a heart, explode
a head, memorialize the very hair of the dead,
of be the breaking news. 

*************************************************

Read the rest of this winning poem, the other winning poems and honorable mentions.  These poems and many others submitted to the contest will be published in a chapbook.

My poem " The Interior Decorator" received an honorable mention.

 http://www.wordgathering.com/winners.html

Wordgathering

A Journal of Disability Poetry

Volume 4     Issue 2     July 2010

Hey All you Poets- Poetry Prompt Numero Uno

I am going to post a poetry prompt on my blog each week for a month and see how it goes. I'll post on Thursday.

 And here it is Poetry Prompt Numero Uno


 Water. We drink  it. We  bath in it. We wash things with it. We pollute it. Thank you BP.

 Think about the phrase " dying of thirst." Write a poem.

Jane Kenyon OTHERWISE: New and Selected Poems

Jane Kenyon  was married to the poet Donald Hall. For twenty years they lived in New Hampshire. She died in 1995 after a year long battle with leukemia. With the help of  her husband she embarked on this book. In the book's Afterword Donald Hall writes about Jane Kenyon's work on this book, how he helped her and the way she revised her poems during the final days of her illness.

As I understand it Jane Kenyon struggled with depression her whole life. I don't find her poetry depressing even though the theme of despair is evident in many of the poems.  Her spiritual awareness, her inquiry, her earthiness, her attention to detail, to objects and the exquisite craft of her poetry transcends any darkness for me. Whatever she went through  her poems capture the humanness of "it." In that for this reader there is hope.

 

 Here is  a poem from OTHERWISE

Having it Out with Melancholy
by Jane Kenyon
If many remedies are prescribed for an illness, you may be certain that the illness has no cure. A. P. CHEKHOV The Cherry Orchard 1 FROM THE NURSERY When I was born, you waited behind a pile of linen in the nursery, and when we were alone, you lay down on top of me, pressing the bile of desolation into every pore. And from that day on everything under the sun and moon made me sad -- even the yellow wooden beads that slid and spun along a spindle on my crib. You taught me to exist without gratitude. You ruined my manners toward God: "We're here simply to wait for death; the pleasures of earth are overrated." I only appeared to belong to my mother, to live among blocks and cotton undershirts with snaps; among red tin lunch boxes and report cards in ugly brown slipcases. I was already yours -- the anti-urge, the mutilator of souls. 2 BOTTLES Elavil, Ludiomil, Doxepin, Norpramin, Prozac, Lithium, Xanax, Wellbutrin, Parnate, Nardil, Zoloft. The coated ones smell sweet or have no smell; the powdery ones smell like the chemistry lab at school that made me hold my breath. 3 SUGGESTION FROM A FRIEND You wouldn't be so depressed if you really believed in God. 4 OFTEN Often I go to bed as soon after dinner as seems adult (I mean I try to wait for dark) in order to push away from the massive pain in sleep's frail wicker coracle. 5 ONCE THERE WAS LIGHT Once, in my early thirties, I saw that I was a speck of light in the great river of light that undulates through time. I was floating with the whole human family. We were all colors -- those who are living now, those who have died, those who are not yet born. For a few moments I floated, completely calm, and I no longer hated having to exist. Like a crow who smells hot blood you came flying to pull me out of the glowing stream. "I'll hold you up. I never let my dear ones drown!" After that, I wept for days. 6 IN AND OUT The dog searches until he finds me upstairs, lies down with a clatter of elbows, puts his head on my foot. Sometimes the sound of his breathing saves my life -- in and out, in and out; a pause, a long sigh. . . . 7 PARDON A piece of burned meat wears my clothes, speaks in my voice, dispatches obligations haltingly, or not at all. It is tired of trying to be stouthearted, tired beyond measure. We move on to the monoamine oxidase inhibitors. Day and night I feel as if I had drunk six cups of coffee, but the pain stops abruptly. With the wonder and bitterness of someone pardoned for a crime she did not commit I come back to marriage and friends, to pink fringed hollyhocks; come back to my desk, books, and chair. 8 CREDO Pharmaceutical wonders are at work but I believe only in this moment of well-being. Unholy ghost, you are certain to come again. Coarse, mean, you'll put your feet on the coffee table, lean back, and turn me into someone who can't take the trouble to speak; someone who can't sleep, or who does nothing but sleep; can't read, or call for an appointment for help. There is nothing I can do against your coming. When I awake, I am still with thee. 9 WOOD THRUSH High on Nardil and June light I wake at four, waiting greedily for the first note of the wood thrush. Easeful air presses through the screen with the wild, complex song of the bird, and I am overcome by ordinary contentment. What hurt me so terribly all my life until this moment? How I love the small, swiftly beating heart of the bird singing in the great maples; its bright, unequivocal eye.

 Read about Jane Kenyon and listen to her poems at poets.org where I found
Having it Out with Melancholy
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/361


 Here are a few lines from her poem Happiness, one of my favorite poems in the book .

 "There's just no accounting for happiness,
 or the way it turns up like a prodigal
 who comes back to the dust at your feet
 having squandered a a fortune  far away."

 Read the rest  of this poem at poets.org

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16898

The Lovely Bones -Hmmm

I've decided to go on a summer marathon reading binge reading many books (fiction and poetry) I've wanted to read but never have. I was at the library last week and found myself standing in front of the books on tape shelf coming face to face with the audio of  Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. What to do? Is this a book I want to read considering I have a long list. I had read the  glowing reviews of this book but also knew that it was about the brutal murder of  fourteen year old Susie Salmon as she walked home from school and Susie's view of  her murder and her family and their  grief and transformation told to us  from Susie's new home in heaven.

 Recently in Massachusetts where I live, there was a  murder ( Mortimer/ Stone murder). A father killed his wife, his mother-in-law and his two young children ages 2 and 4. The  story was on the news. It was disturbing. I was not sure I could take reading a book where a family was torn apart by the murder of a young girl by someone she knew. Young children being killed was too much for me, but I reluctantly took the audio version telling myself I could turn it off or tune out the awful scenes if I had had enough. I took the audio home. There is something like ten CDs  to listen to. Books on tape are now often CDs.

 I am on  disc 2 and still having a hard time listening to the story.  The thing that keeps me going is Sebold's way of storytelling, of unfolding the story. I keep hearing moments that  create a feeling of compassion in me and I want to  hear more. I want to hear that the family is healed and Susie is okay.  I  wonder if and when the murderer will be caught. What will the parent's reaction be when they find out who killed their daughter? Will forgiveness be part of their journey? So I listen.

Read others opinions of the book under customer reviews.
http://www.amazon.com/Lovely-Bones-Alice-Sebold/dp/1402532903

NO BOUNDARIES, Prose Poems by 24 American Poets

This is a terrific anthology  filled with the writing of many well known poets, many icons in contemporary  American Poetry including Mary Koncel, Robert Bly, John Bradley, -Killarney Clary, Jon Davis, Linda Dyer, Russell Edson, Amy Gerstler, Ray Gonzalez, Maurice Kilwein Guevara, Juan Felipe Herrera, Louis Jenkins, Peter Johnson, George Kalamaras, Christine Boyka Kluge, Nin Andrews, Morton Marcus, Harryette Mullen, Naomi Shahib Nye, Liz -Waldner, Gary Young, Karen Volkman, Campbell McGrath, Charles Simic. 

I couldn't put  this anthology down.  Each poem was a surprise. The poems  are funny, profound, magical, relevant. They are lyrical, experimental, "formal." Something for every taste.

From the introduction of NO BOUNDARIES by editor Ray Gonzalez

" In his long out  of print anthology, The Prose Poem (Laurel, 1976), poet Michael Benedikt defines a prose poem as 'a genre of poetry, self-consciously written in prose, and characterized by the intense use of virtually all the devices of poetry, which includes the intense use of devices of verse. The sole exception to access to the possibilities, rather than the set priorities of verse is, the line break.' "

 Benedikt goes on to list the special properties of prose poems.

" 'attention to the unconscious and its logic
    accelerated  use of colloquial  and everyday speech
    patterns,
    a visionary thrust
    reliance on humour and wit
    an enlightened doubtfulness' "


 Here is the first line from one of my favorite poems "Involving the Use of the Word America" by John Bradley


 "In America, Kafka began and paused, staring  at the peeling gray planks
on the front porch. In America he began again, but lost his way in the enormity
of the phrase."


Another favorite

 The poem "The Gulf"  by Campbell McGrath is particularly relevant  in the face of the BP oil spill. McGrath captures the magic of the gulf focusing on seashells and the creatures that live in the water.  The poem is sound magical.


 "Floating in the gulf, on a hot June day, listening to the seashells sing.

 Eyes open I watch their migration, their seismic shifts and tidal seizures, as I am
 seized and lifted, lulled, and hushed and serenaded.  Eyes closed, I drift amid their
 resonant sibilance, soft hiss and crackle in the tide wash...."

"-flop,whoosh-a fine wash of shells and shell
bits and shards, a slurry of coquinas and scallops and sunrays, coral chunks, tubes..."

 More about NO BOUNDARIES
From Amazon editorial review
""As more poets write prose poems, one of the most common reasons they give for turning to them is that their fluent composition offers a 'freedom of expression' lined poetry often restricts. To many, this sounds like a contradiction stemming from the eternal belief that any kind of good poetry has no boundaries. Yet those that write prose poems insist the act of placing their poems into sentences and paragraphs gives them a fresh approach to content and form."" -- From the introduction by Ray Gonzalez.


http://www.amazon.com/No-Boundaries-Ray-Gonzalez/dp/1932195017

 NO BOUNDARIES was published by Tupelo Press in 2003.

http://www.tupelopress.org/