5.29.15

It's funny how things are simpatico sometimes. I pulled this poem, Farrow, from my poem-a-day email and thought, how rich and lush and inward it is, so much like Dark House by Sylvia Plath. I thought I'd do a comparison, but before I went to pull it up, I noticed the next poem email was Self Portrait with Sylvia Plath's Braid by Diane Seuss, and it was too perfect not to use. So, I give you these, cheers to kismet.



Farrow


Kimberly Johnson



Full in the fat wallow of me,
Superfluity
Even to the marrow—

Blood plumping along in a red swell
Of venules
Blushing my most unabashed

Skinpatches: nosetip, earlobe, wristshallow. O
This mother
Is a crush of too-muchness,

A malady of my baffled self awash.
Accomplished
Finally the days, will I find

My bones I lost, will my sharps and edges
Hedge this fleshy
Habit I’ve made of excess?

Already my heartracing startles
In another’s
Twitches, my dinner hiccups

Another’s diaphragm. Already and almost
I swear I feel
The protein creep of me, cell

By splitting cell, into another’s life.
This mother-grief
Sorrows not for the heart-close one

I’ll lose from me at my delivery
But for my own
Soul overboiling, unbound, bound

To a stranger’s groans, undone by his hurts
And remorses
To the third and fourth

Generations. What I’m birthing is my own
Diffusion.
Never again mere. Never again my own.






Self Portrait with Sylvia Plath's Braid


Diane Seuss




Some women make a pilgrimage to visit it
in the Indiana library charged to keep it safe.

I didn’t drive to it; I dreamed it, the thick braid
roped over my hands, heavier than lead.

My own hair was long for years.
Then I became obsessed with chopping it off,

and I did, clear up to my ears. If hair is beauty
then I am no longer beautiful.

Sylvia was beautiful, wasn’t she?
And like all of us, didn’t she wield her beauty

like a weapon? And then she married,
and laid it down, and when she was betrayed

and took it up again it was a word-weapon,
a poem-sword. In the dream I fasten

her braid to my own hair, at my nape.
I walk outside with it, through the world

of men, swinging it behind me like a tail.

I guess that leaves me thinking about the things that are part of us but not, like hair or a child growing, and how those things shape our identity. Not far off would be clothing, body art like tattoos, scars, and such. If we could borrow the shape of someone or something else, would it change us? Do you like to write from such a perspective?

5.21.15

Poetic interlude to prove I am not dead.



Fable

Nicole Callihan



Our paper house sat
on the banks of the red river

and though mother
wasn’t like other mothers

I was like other girls
trapped and lonely

and painting pictures
in the stars. I was slick

with old birth or early longing,
already halfway between

who I wanted to be and who I was.
Our floors were made of flame

but there was no wind
so we were as safe as anyone.

When spring came,
I walked for a very long time

up I-35, and at the end of the road,
I found a boy who placed earphones

onto my head and pumped opera
into my body. I can feel it still.

Underneath that treeless sky,
I was as changed as I would ever be.

Not even mother noticed.

It reminds me of My Antonia by Willa Cather.

5.12.15

I have noticed lately that when I see poetry in the wild (as opposed to hearing it), it takes a specific form. All lower-case, bell hooks style, and in fake typewriter font. Is this the form that designates it as poetry for easy recognition? Is this cover-signalling style, like in fiction? It's very interesting, but I notice that when I see said font, I pretty much tune out. 

Tyler Kent White is an example of this. and Tyler Knott Gregson. I guess you also need 3 names and to be named Tyler, (sensing a theme here, hah hah). These writers appear to use actual typewriters for their originals, but the ones that caught my eye were definitely reproduced in "meme" format via facebook, with the typeface that comes on your PC to mimic the typewritten characters. 

I am getting bits from my searches stating the enjoyment of the noise, premeditation needed to compose, following in the footsteps of previous writers like Hunter S Thompson, E.E. Cummings, or the Beat poets; the added visual aesthetic, etc. 

I have a memory of seeing an all-female poetic performance group, perhaps as a middle-schooler. They had typewriters and bells and horns and such, and you'd pick a slip of paper with a topic, and they'd bang out a poem about it, ding some bells, and you got to keep it. Pretty interesting, but I always placed that pretty squarely in the realm of performance poetry. 

In my searches I'm having a hard time distinguishing between those who use this medium for any of the above reasons and the ones who are on the bandwagon. It's mildly amusing to see someone like this poet who publicizes his hand-typed poems via images on social media. My following question is, is poetry inherently pretentious? Are poets? How does this affect how we are seen by non-poetry people and poets alike? 

And so it's an equal-opportunity target, I write my poems longhand. Then type them so there is a copy on the cloud, in case of fire. (I don't know if that's a reasonable fear but I am afraid of it)

Thoughts on fads in writing/art/etc?

5.7.15

I just got back from New York, which was great. I didn't do anything poetic or inspirational, though. Here's something that I so relate to, literally and metaphorically. 




Mending



Hazel Mendez



Here are old things:
Fraying edges,Ravelling threads;And here are scraps of new goods,Needles and thread,An expectant thimble,A pair of silver-toothed scissors.Thimble on a finger,New thread through an eye;Needle, do not linger,Hurry as you ply.If you ever would be throughHurry, scurry, fly!Here are patches,Felled edges,Darned threads,Strengthening old utility,Pending the coming of the new.Yes, I have been mending …But also,I have been enactingA little travesty on life.




And because I haven't written anything new in ever, here's something old:

3/2/11

Today I sailed away

From the memories of music

And, for a moment, felt.

Five variations on someone and Lazarus—

Never played by me—

One step down from full achievement.

My tendons buzzed,

My flesh unknit,

My bones resonated with an unknown story.

One component of ours is that we were once one

And gloriously so;

Making up the colorful set

Of resonance.