SS: Poetry

The theme at Sunday Scribblings this week is Poetry. Incidentally, Sunday Scribblings prompts tend to yield bits of silly verse from me. Here's what I got this time with an explicit assignment to write a poem:

There once was a blogger named Twit
Who fancied herself quite the wit.
When told to write a poem,
She let her mind roam,
And the result was this verse of shit.

Limericks are fun :).

National Poetry Month

April, I note at its near end, was/is National Poetry Month. I've been getting a poem a day in my e-mail, and so far, this has been the best one:

How to Read a Poem: Beginner's Manual
by Pamela Spiro Wagner

First, forget everything you have learned,
that poetry is difficult,
that it cannot be appreciated by the likes of you,
with your high school equivalency diploma,
your steel-tipped boots,
or your white-collar misunderstandings.

Do not assume meanings hidden from you:
the best poems mean what they say and say it.

To read poetry requires only courage
enough to leap from the edge
and trust.

Treat a poem like dirt,
humus rich and heavy from the garden.
Later it will become the fat tomatoes
and golden squash piled high upon your kitchen table.

Poetry demands surrender,
language saying what is true,
doing holy things to the ordinary.

Read just one poem a day.
Someday a book of poems may open in your hands
like a daffodil offering its cup
to the sun.

When you can name five poets
without including Bob Dylan,
when you exceed your quota
and don't even notice,
close this manual.

---
If more poems were like that, we'd likely have fewer people having allergic reactions at the prospect of poetry. My stance toward poetry is a lot like my perspective on any genre literature, like sci fi or fantasy--there's a lot of crap out there, but the good stuff is very fulfilling and makes up for the lesser quality dreck. It also, ideally, shows a slightly different way of thinking of the world and at its best, illustrates the many-faceted thing that is human nature.

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Now playing: Strung Out - Vampires
via FoxyTunes

SS: Coffee

Though I am sporadic in following Sunday Scribblings prompts, I knew I simply could not pass up this week's prompt... for reasons which should be made amply clear momentarily.

I present a bit of whimsy, delivered in verse form.

I dearly need my coffee,
that potent morning brew--
it wakes me up and helps me
get done what I need to do.

It empowers me with its aroma;
its taste is rich and full.
Without it, I am exanimate,
and the world seems dank and dull.

It's a truth I will own up to,
and I won't hesitate to admit--
I may be fond of caffeine,
but I am every inch coffee's bitch.

Tentative titles included "Don't call it an addiction" or the more 19th-century-sounding "Reflections upon a weeklong separation from my dearest beverage."

...On second thought, perhaps "Coffee's Bitch" could do the trick.

If this ain't poetry...

...please tell me what is.

I speak in many tongues to many men;
Argue with angels and I always win,
But I don't know the first thing about love.

I prophesy and know all mysteries;
All hidden things are opened up to me
But I don't know the first thing about love

I have the keys to open any door;
I give all of my possessions to the poor,
But I don't know the first thing about love

And moving mountains ain't nothing to me;
I've faith enough to cast them to the sea,
But I don't know the first thing about love

But all other things shall fade away;
While love stands alone and still holds sway
All other things shall fade away;
Into the ground into the grey.

I give my body up unto the flames;
And never once have I denied your name
But I don't know the first thing about love.
--Thrice, "Moving Mountains," off The Alchemy Index, Volume IV: Earth

The music it's put to is amazing as well. But these lyrics just grabbed me. And it's still National Poetry Month.

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Now playing: Thrice - The Earth Isn't Humming
via FoxyTunes

National Poetry Month

This former English major dropped the ball in terms of announcing National Grammar Day last month. I won't neglect to announce April as National Poetry Month. Poets.org has some suggestions for celebrating. I've already subscribed to their newsletter, and it's easy to get spoiled by a poem a day in my inbox. Here's one that tickled my fancy.

Don't get caught up in "I don't like poetry" or "I just don't get it." Just read the words, take them in, and enjoy.

Just
by Alan Shapiro

after the downpour, in the early evening,
late sunlight glinting off the raindrops sliding
down the broad backs of the redbud leaves
beside the porch, beyond the railing, each leaf
bending and springing back and bending again
beneath the dripping,

between existences,
ecstatic, the souls grow mischievous, they break ranks,
swerve from the rigid V's of their migration,
their iron destinies, down to the leaves
they flutter in among, rising and settling,
bodiless, but pretending to have bodies,

their weightlessness more weightless for the ruse,
their freedom freer, their as-ifs nearly not,
until the night falls like an order and
they rise on one vast wing that darkens down
the endless flyways into other bodies.

Nothing will make you less afraid.

I do quite like the idea of writing poetry on the sidewalk, though...

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Now playing: Hot Water Music - The Ebb And Flow
via FoxyTunes

Sunday Scribblings: Out of this world

This week's Sunday Scribblings theme is "Out of this World."

Here's what I've got: a bit of verse for a change.

Can pollen survive in zero gravity?
I'm kinda thinking not.
And so, to escape my allergies,
I'm going to be an astronaut.

No more pollen, no more spores--
no more uncontrollable sneezes.
I'm hitching a ride on a rocket
until the onslaught eases.

Of course I'll miss the flowers,
and seeing the verdure of spring,
but, oh, to have one day of peace,
I'd give up 'most ev'rything.

So good-bye earth, and mom, and dad,
good-bye warm sunny days.
I'm not sure when I'll be back,
but for now, I'm off and away.

It doesn't have the smoothest meter ever, but give me a break--my sinuses are killing me this weekend.

Re-charging my batteries

I went to a poetry reading tonight, and it did me a world of good. Why? Because it puts a human face to the daunting concept of "writer." I can read words on paper and in electronic media, thousands of words, millions of words, and they're wonderful. I enjoy poetry and finding poetry buried within prose, little gems of descriptions and breathtaking metaphors that leave me saying, I could never do that.

But to see a writer in person, telling about the inspiration behind a poem or set of poems, hearing them read the words the way they sounded in their heads when they composed them, is humanizing. One of the poets tonight wasn't one of the best readers I've heard, but his poems had some playful humor and interesting recurring themes. He even brought a visual aid for one. He seemed nervous, barely pausing between poems and explanations of poems.

The second poet, more well known, was slightly absent-minded and not quite over the recent burst of fame that has come his way. He read well and had interesting anecdotes about the inspiration for and previous reactions to the poems he read. He explained one poem, an anecdote involving a quote attributed to Dennis Hoffman, then remembered another poem he intended to read, after which he would return to the originally intended poem. In his absent-mindedness, he was as human as the nervous poet.

It was more than their minor foibles that encouraged me, though. I was listening to their subjects and wordplay. I could do that, I thought. Often, poetry involves the mundane, presented in a new way, a scene from a small town, perhaps, or an incident from a childhood game. In poetry, moreso than prose, I think, there's license to play with the words and embellish details, to let fancy unleash a series of surreal or even downright bizarre imagery.

It's all a matter of being open to those opportunities and recording them. My biggest barrier is sheer laziness. But I've been thinking lately, and in the midst of a burst of inspiration that's resulted in the beginning of stories and poems, I realized that whatever I do professionally needs to relate to words in some way or else provide me with enough fodder to scribble words on my spare time. There's this nagging little impulse that says to get back to writing more seriously and go on for more grad school, get a terminal degree, succumb to academia's talons and teach writing in some capacity. I don't know. There are other paths, but this one shrieks the loudest.

It all goes back to words, and tonight's poetry reading added more fuel to the fire of the writing impulse I can't--and don't want to--shake. There are too many unfinished documents on my computer and far, far too many documents that have yet to be started. I may not be the world's best writer, but like any other carbon-based humanoid, I have potential if I work at it.

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Now playing: Hot Water Music - She Takes It So Well
via FoxyTunes

Sometimes poems come along at just the right time

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

--"The Laughing Heart," Charles Bukowski

[Bio] [More poems]

"And Yet the Books"

A poem from Scanning the Century: The Penguin Book of the Twentieth Century in Poetry, edited by Peter Forbes.

"And Yet the Books" by Czeslaw Milosz, translated by Robert Hass

And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings,
That appeared once, still wet
As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn,
And, touched, coddled, began to live
In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up,
Tribes on the march, planets in motion.
'We are,' they said, even as their pages
Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame
Licked away their letters. So much more durable
Than we are, whose frail warmth
Cools down with memory, disperses, perishes.
I imagine the earth when I am no more:
Nothing happens, no loss, it's still a strange pageant,
Women's dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley.
Yet the books will still be there on the shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.

More of his poems are available here.

And now for a bit of whimsy

From the depths of my creative writing portfolio, I bring out this. . . er, gem of a poem. It's nearly five years old; I submitted it for workshop on November 26, 2002.

"Writer's block"
I feel my fingers itch with the urge,
The words are on my fingertips.
The thoughts come in a rushing surge--
And then they quit.

That's one of the few creative pieces that made it past my summertime, post-graduation manic cleaning streak. Here's what happened to the rest: