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/

My Poems in Frigg May 2010 Spring Issue

http://www.friggmagazine.com/issuetwentyeight/splashpages/ElizabethGlixman.htm