anapoetics

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)

"attentive connections"

From an interview with Maureen Thorsen (also a lawyer-poet):

[Poems] do start with little notes. I keep cheapie notebooks on me at all times, and will sometimes just stop in the middle of walking somewhere to get a thought down. (I find if I don’t write it down as soon as I think it, it just disappears). I don’t ever really sit down and write a whole poem. I sort of build them up over time, riffing on something I’ve jotted down, and coming back to it over and over and adding pieces or taking them out or rewording them. 

....  It’s about all I can do to keep up with my day job and still write poetry. I mostly write by making use of “interstitial” time—my commute, for example. .... The writing process I’ve developed—that of collaging and remixing notes—has been shaped by time pressure. I don’t really have the luxury of sitting down and thinking about a poem for several hours at a go.

The bold part is so true. I've lost a lot of thoughts by thinking I'll remember them later.  What's worse is when I remember that something slipped away, but I don't know what.

siehl dickinson story

One look and my heart fell into my stomach
like a trap door.
(Caitlyn Siehl)

And hit a World, with every plunge
(Dickinson)

there is the trapdoor          look
(Julia Story)

siehl jones

Our city will crumble so slowly
that we won't feel it
until the kitchen is covered in dust
and we don't dance in it anymore.
(Caitlyn Siehl)

& Harlem was barely awake below us
when a half-broken building

gave in.  First, a few loose bricks,
then decades crashed to the street

just as a bus pulled up. 
(Saeed Jones)

levertov sexton glück

Some events (selected by some interior mysterious process out of all the other minutes and hours of my life) begin to form themselves in my understanding as phrases, images, rhythms of language, [and] demand to be further formed, demand midwifery is one way to put it.
(Levertov)

Those moments before a poems comes, when the heightened awareness comes over you and you realize a poem is buried there somewhere, you prepare yourself. I run around, you know, kind of skipping around the house, marvelous elation. It's as though I could fly, almost, and I get very tense before I've told the truth - hard. Then I sit down at the desk and get going with it.
(Sexton)

I begin to write when a phrase appears in my head—a word cluster, sometimes a single word. The task is to discover the world or voice from which this fragment can speak or elaborate itself into a story or a personality or a mood.
(Glück)

"to say and say and say what more means"

I love and love and love this love poem by Christian Anton Gerard.  It has a lot of Cummings in it.

there are times when time is ours. Hours.
No hourglass exists in your hands.
You are and you are and you are that
that couldn’t not fulfill me.

"unasked for and astonishing"

Only after the fact does your brain check the world to see if its prediction was right. ....  [T]he brain is wired for prediction, and you predict most of the sights, sounds and other sensations in your life. You are, in large measure, the architect of your own experience.
(NYT)

One has, perhaps, to decide whether enough of one's poems have been compulsive, and enough of one's visions unasked for and astonishing ....
(Skelton)

a report on the damage

Last weekend I went to Open Books: A Poem Emporium in Seattle.  It was heavenly.  The proprietor said there are only two other poetry-only bookstores in the whole U.S.  Here's what I splurged on:

George Albon, Fire Break (Nightboat Books 2013)
Hillary Gravendyk, Harm (Omnidawn Publishing 2011)
David Dodd Lee, The Nervous Filaments (Four Way Books 2010)
Li-Young Lee, Behind My Eyes (W.W. Norton & Co. 2008)
Kate Northrop, Clean (Persea Books 2011)
Julia Story, Post Moxie (Sarabande Books 2010)
Tomas Tranströmer, Inspired Notes (trans. John F. Deane) (Daedelus Press 2011)

I had so much fun I had to leave to store to keep from buying anything else.  The first one I read is Clean, by Kate Northrop. The book makes lovely use of recurring words, like private and secret, and has an overall feeling of quiet, with some humor too.  My favorite from the collection is "Dunes."

             In position they shift
Holding the little rain in.  They are still, busy, like the mind
As the mind sleeps.

Tomas Tranströmer, 1931-2015

Dreams and the transitions between different levels of consciousness are suggested by the poet's very name. They are Tranströmer's territory. ....  How impressive it is that he has never compromised on his singular perceptions, and that the resulting poetry is so luminous, and has yielded so much meaning to his readers.
(Carol Rumens)

The great subject of the poetry of Tomas Tranströmer—sometimes it seems as though it is his only subject—is liminality. He is a poet almost helplessly drawn to enter and inhabit those in-between states that form the borderlines between waking and sleeping, the conscious and the unconscious, ecstasy and terror, the public self and the interior self. Again and again his poems allude to border checkpoints, boundaries, crossroads: they teeter upon thresholds of every sort—be they the brink of sleep or the brink of death, a door about to open or a door about to close.
(David Wojahn)

favorite chapbooks of the past 12 months

These are among my favorite chapbooks read over the past year:

Julia Story, The Trapdoor (Dancing Girl Press, 2014)
Jill Osier, Should Our Undoing Come Down Upon Us White (Bull City Press, 2013)
Jessica Johnson, In Absolutes We Seek Each Other (New Michigan Press, 2014)
Kristen Case, Temple (MIEL Books, 2014)
Khaty Xiong, Deer Hour (New Michigan Press, 2014)
Rebecca Farivar, Am Rhein (Burnside Review Press, 2012)
Louise Mathias, Above All Else, the Trembling Resembles a Forest (Burnside Review Press, 2010)
Dawn Lonsinger, The Nested Object (Dancing Girl Press, 2009)

sexton glück

Those moments before a poems comes, when the heightened awareness comes over you and you realize a poem is buried there somewhere, you prepare yourself. I run around, you know, kind of skipping around the house, marvelous elation. It's as though I could fly, almost, and I get very tense before I've told the truth - hard. Then I sit down at the desk and get going with it.
(Sexton)

I begin to write when a phrase appears in my head—a word cluster, sometimes a single word. The task is to discover the world or voice from which this fragment can speak or elaborate itself into a story or a personality or a mood.
(Glück)

coincidence

(Katie Bowler)                           (Louise Mathias)