anapoetics

lowell plath

All night I’ve held your hand,
as if you had
a fourth time faced the kingdom of the mad—
its hackneyed speech, its homicidal eye—
and dragged me home alive.
(Lowell)

And I
Am the arrow,

The dew that flies
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red

Eye, the cauldron of morning.
(Plath)

Right now I am reading Robert Lowell: Setting the River on Fire by Kay Redfield Jamison (Knopf 2017).  The chapters all begin with lines from Lowell’s poems.  I’m less familiar with his work than with Plath’s, and I keep being reminded of her.  I love these lines from the same Lowell poem, and I hear still more echoes in Plath’s:

blossoms on our magnolia ignite
the morning with their murderous five days’ white.

Jamison’s book on Lowell is longer than her other works; it goes into far more detail than anyone but the most avid Lowell fans will find interesting. So I’ve been skipping around in it.

lowell plath

if we leaned forward, and should dip a finger
into this river's momentary black flow,
infinite small stars would break like fish.
(Robert Lowell)

The spirit of blackness is in us, it is in the fishes.
A snag is lifting a valedictory, pale hand;

Stars open among the lilies.
(Sylvia Plath)

best poems

Somewhere, recently, I read this:

I run a personal blog series of the top 5 best short stories I’ve read online each month. This has helped me both with my own writing and my submissions to particular journals.

I can no longer remember where this came from, and I've searched for it with no luck, or I'd provide attribution and a link.  Anyway, I'm going to try this occasionally, with recent poems I've read online that struck me in some way.  I may do a post on an individual poem or a group of poems. 

Today, I enjoyed "The Weather in Here" by Allison Paster-Torres, just published in B O D Y.  On a first read I assumed that the speaker was male (an enlightened male who understood when "it was her turn/ to keep speaking"). On a second read I realized the speaker must be female, and the poem changed into a series of slightly different truths about intimacy and "distance." 

hillman strand

I work a lot from intuition. And I do like the look of handwriting, so I’ll copy the poem over and over to allow new material to enter. When it seems very far along I’ll put it on the computer, but not until then because I think the look of print gets people deranged into thinking that they’ve finished something.  It looks finished, and a printed poem looks as if it can’t be fiddled with. 
(Brenda Hillman)

When I read a poem in longhand, I’m hearing it. When I read it in typescript, I’m reading it. A poem can appear finished just because of the cleanness of the typescript, and I don’t want it to seem finished before it is. A poem has already been brought into the world to some extent when it’s typed. I feel more like an editor than a poet after that.
(Mark Strand)

from proofs and theories by louise glück

It seems to me that what is wanted, in art, is to harness the power of the unfinished.
All earthly experience is partial. Not simply because it is subjective,
but because that which we do not know, of the universe, of mortality,
is so much more vast than that which we do know. 
What is unfinished or has been destroyed participates in these mysteries.
The problem is to make a whole that does not forfeit that power.

***

When poems are difficult, it is often because their silences are complicated, hard to follow.
For me, the answer to such moments is not more language.

(Louise Glück)

"somewhere in between the works that I admire"

I work in a desperate collage method. I write in a journal and on a computer and in a desk journal. I then try to pull pieces of these writings together and see if they will talk to each other. If I’m lucky, I’ll also have an idea that I can read about or research that will somehow connect to the poem. If I can find something like that, then the poem can take shape.  (Judy Halebsky)

 

This resonates because finding "pieces of these writings" that "will talk to each other" is what I try to do too.  I have both of Judy Halebsky's books, thanks to my dear friend Linda Collins.  Judy is doing a reading this Sunday afternoon (8/7) in Oakland for Poetry Flash, at Diesel, A Bookstore. 

 

"devastate and startle"

"Be determined about improving your work ....
Collect friends (in book and human form) who support,
inspire, and challenge you." —Matthea Harvey

I collected a few more such (human) friends at the Napa Valley Writers' Conference last week. 

"Inscription"

My poem "Inscription" was poem of the week this week at West Trestle Review!  After this week, it will be available on the journal's archive page (scroll down).  Many thanks to Patricia Caspers for selecting my work -- my first real published poem! -- and for supporting women poets. 

limón mathias

Maybe my limbs are made
mostly for decoration,
like the way I feel about
persimmons. You can’t
really eat them. Or you
wouldn’t want to.          
(Ada Limón)

It's no longer the heft of persimmons
that wreaks her heart.
(Louise Mathias)

leithauser tranströmer

               As the plane descends, its shadow runs
ahead, widens, spreading like a bruise,
              (Emily Leithauser)

The sun is scorching. The plane comes in low,
throwing a shadow in the shape of a giant cross, rushing over the ground.
(Tomas Tranströmer, trans. Robin Robertson)

staples tranströmer

Simmer and mist, a pre-thunder rumbling
till the bones come clean as whitened souls.
(Catherine Staples)

At four in the morning
life's clean-picked bones
engage in brittle repartee.
(Tomas Tranströmer, trans. Robin Robertson)

spaar bitting

                                            I know hell
is freezing over, but still, the seasons--.

Winter is of course a mistake.
(Lisa Russ Spaar)

                      Some seasons prove
more hazardous than others
(Michelle Bitting)

"I was elsewhere"

There is a beautiful poem by Leanne O'Sullivan in the most recent issue of Poetry.  The first section, in particular, reminds me of Neruda -- a unique form of Neruda in which the loved one is unwell.

"He could not complete the poem. The pattern eluded him."

 Sylvia, on the other hand, though patently a poet of her "self," was more a surrealist of internals, seeking to reveal the archetypes and patterns working within or behind them.
(Anne Stevenson)

[Her method] was to collect a heap of vivid objects and good words and make a pattern; the pattern would be projected from somewhere deep inside, from her very distinctly evolved myth.
(Ted Hughes)

"The poet's task ... is to recognize pattern wherever he sees it, and to build his perceptions into a poetic form which by its urgency and coherence will persuade us of their truth."
(Robin Skelton, quoting C. Day Lewis)

neruda wing södergran

and no one saw the moon that bled in my mouth
or the blood that rose into the silence.
O Love, now we can forget the star that has such thorns!
(Neruda)

land upon the bed post, on the dresser mirror --
                      standing guard
                      with their tiny swords.
                             (Michelle Wing)

Don't go out on the grass with bare feet,
my garden is filled with splinters.
(Södergran)

chapbooks from Napa

At least four of my twelve workshop-mates at the Napa conference last month have published poetry chapbooks! 

Laura Christina Dunn, Spider Blue (Dancing Girl Press 2015)
Bonnie Long, Spine Still Holding (Finishing Line Press 2015)
Crystal Mazur Ockenfuss, The Hobo Alphabet (Dancing Girl Press 2013)
Dave Seter, Night Duty (Main Street Rag 2010)

I am now the happy owner of three of these titles, and I'm looking forward to receiving the fourth very soon.  It was a privilege to work with these authors and everyone in our wonderful workshop with Mary Szybist. 

neruda wing

and no one saw the moon that bled in my mouth
or the blood that rose into the silence.
O Love, now we can forget the star that has such thorns!
(Neruda)

land upon the bed post, on the dresser mirror --
                      standing guard
                      with their tiny swords.
                             (Michelle Wing)

neruda ryan

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
(Neruda)

I can't wait until Tuesday means the same
for both of us again.
(Declan Ryan)

recently read

Not listed in any particular order:

Caitlyn Siehl, What We Buried (Words Dance Publishing 2014)
Mary Szybist, Granted (Alice James Books 2003)
Saheed Jones, Prelude to Bruise (Coffee House Press 2014)
Jess Feldman, Call It a Premonition (Boaat Press 2015) (pdf download)
Lisa Marie Basile, war/lock (Hyacinth Girl Press 2015)
Rainer Maria Rilke, The Roses & The Windows (trans. W.D. Snodgrass) (Graywolf Press 1979)

I loved all of the above books.  What is especially awesome is that I will be working with Mary Szybist at the Napa Valley Writers' Conference starting in a week!

three ways of seeing it

Sometimes poems that would not stand alone in a magazine can work in a book. ....
They might provide needed texture and contrast, or provide links
between sets of longer, more challenging poems.
(Katrina Vandenberg)

Not all of my poems are at their best when taken out of the context
of the manuscript they are a part of.
(David Dodd Lee)

Weak poems. You know which ones. Don’t “hide” them inside the manuscript.
Don’t include them. Period.
(Jeffrey Levine)