This week’s poem over at Linebreak intrigues me. Amy McNamara’s “unnamable fororce in reserve” is seductive in its sounds and there is a deeper “something” lurking beneath the beauty of the words. There is a mystery here that I hope for in my own work.
Enjoy!
Sluggish morning. One of the cats sabotaged my alarm, knocking the tuner from NPR to silence sometime in the night. I woke up 30 minutes late, befuddled by the silence. It’s still gray, but at least the rain has stopped for now.
Today, I wrote a draft, so I’m ahead for the week. Yay! It was an interesting process, and I thought I’d give a few details. I usually begin any writing time by reading a few blogs and then picking up a book of poetry or a journal. I’m the kind of writer who needs transition time to move from the world of doctor’s appointments and cats that need feeding to the world of words. Many people recommend that one not read the blogs before writing, but for me, it settles me into “poet space.” Then, I read poems by others to get the words percolating in my morning-dense mind. Finally, my own words will come, or not, at no predictable interval.
I always begin in ink in my journal…a true mess of bad handwriting and scrawling attempts to bring something out of nothing. After I have a few lines or a stanza, I switch to the computer and finish the draft there.
For some reason, I had Neruda’s Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon (translated by Stephen Mitchell) out on my desk. I started going through it and right away decided I would collect words from the book to use in a draft today. I think I hit on this technique because I used to use Neruda when I participated in Writers in the Schools at the U of Arkansas, and I’d have the students do word banks from these poems. So, I read the poems and captured strong nouns, verbs, and adjective on one page of my journal. When I had 60 of them, I decided to throw in another technique I’ve read about. I numbered the words and then used a random number generator on the internet to form pairs of words. Some of the pairs were awful and uninspiring, but when I’d done this about a dozen times, three sets stood out to me. And they became the first lines of my new draft. I continued to refer to my word bank as I drafted, but I didn’t rely on the pairs or the generator after that. After the poem felt somewhat formed I went back and re-read with a clearer eye. I noticed I’d overdosed on adjectives again. I love Neruda for his lush descriptions, but I’d taken too much here and there and had to trim. The draft is 10 lines right now and titled “Late Aubade.” Late as in autumn and late as in 9:30 a.m. when I drafted it but the light today is very “dawn-ish” since the sun can’t quite make it through the cloud layers.
All in all, I’m thrilled with today’s work. Happy Monday to all.
Some would argue that this persistent gray drizzle is perfect for a Sunday…some would be wrong. Central Arkansas has had its share of rain already. Move along!
I had a hard time getting going due to said rain, but I did manage to read a bit and then tackle one of my “to-do’s” for the day. I just finished sending out six submission packets. I sent out a good number in August, and then September passed by with nary a cast into the slush pile pool. Mostly, this is because I experienced such a silent summer that I’d run out of things to send. I’m happy to say that I’ve built up one packet’s worth of material (sent simultaneously to six journals). Woo Hoo!
So, now I must find something to eat and then read for my classes this week. At least the rain is good for staying in doors.
Bonne chance, mes petits poèmes.
It’s been out for quite a while, but I just now borrowed the library’s copy of Time and Materials by Robert Hass. I read the first poem in the collection in the American Poetry Review two years ago, and I still love it. Here it is in its entirety:
Iowa, January
In the long winter nights, a farmer’s dreams are narrow.
Over and over, he enters the furrow.
So much happens in those two lines, and the feel of the words on the tongue is sublime. I like Hass’ shorter, lyric poems the best. The book is a mix of those and longer, more narrative works, which did not hold my interest as well. This is probably a failing of mine, as I can admire the fine craftsmanship of all of Hass’ work.
Here are some other favorites:
from The Problem of Describing Color
If she tells a fortune with a deck of fallen leaves
Until it comes out right–
Rouged nipple, mouth–
(How could you not love a woman
Who cheats at the Tarot?)
Red, I said. Sudden, red.
from Breach and Orison: 3. Habits of Paradise
If I saw the sleek stroke of moving darkness
was a hawk, high up, nesting
in the mountain’s face, and if,
for once, I didn’t want to be the hawk,
would that help? Token of earnest,
spent coin of summer, would the wind
court me then, and would that be of assistance?
from Time and Materials
Or to render time and stand outside
The horizontal rush of it, for a moment
To have the sensation of standing outside
The greenish rush of it.
from “…White of Forgetfulness, White of Safety”
Ticking heat, the scent of sage,
Of pennyroyal. The structure of every living thing
Was praying for rain.
Support Poetry! Buy or Borrow a Book of Poems Today
Time and Materials
Robert Hass
ecco: An Imprint of HarperCollins, 2007
PS: This book is definitely in the running for best cover art and design I’ve seen this year.
I was a little worried if I would be able to draft a new poem this week, given all the grading and school tasks I had to do. I missed my writing time on Monday and Wednesday, and so that left today. My usual process is to begin to settle my mind by reading someone else’s work and then see where that takes me. Lately I’ve noticed that the first few poems I read might be getting the short end of the stick. It takes me a while to shift from the world of my to do list to the world of reading and writing. In any case, I hadn’t even begun to think about drafting this morning, and I’d barely settled into Lynne Thompson’s book Beg No Pardon, when all of a sudden, I knew what I wanted to draft today. Strangely, the poem turned into a prose poem, I think. Those familiar with my work will know that this is not my typical form and so I’m quite unsure of it at the moment. Still, it was good to get the words going again. Hopefully, I’ll do a better balancing act with my teaching load so as not to miss many more writing hours.
Adding sunshine to plentiful sunshine, after withdrawing the poems that were accepted earlier this week, I received an email from Allison Joseph of Crab Orchard Review accepting the last poem still available. The submission packet originally included four poems, and all of them have been taken, which is an amazing and wonderful thing. As most of you know, I have nothing but love for Allison and Jon Tribble and the great journal they produce. I’m thrilled to say that this will be my third appearance there. Wow. I’m humbled by their support (and that of the students who work on the journal) and eternally grateful. On a side note, it looks like their website has been redesigned. Check it out.
Also, because the universe knows the ego must remain in check, there was a rejection in my inbox as well. And so it goes.
Linebreak‘s poem this week is awesome. “Devotion: Hawk” by Dennis Hinrichsen just blows me a way. I definitely plan on checking out more of Hinrichsen’s work. As a treat, Stacy Kidd reads. It’s always fun to hear a slightly different take on how I read the poem first for myself.
Sometimes good things happen just at the right moment. Today, I had a series of frustrating conversations with four different people. These are the kinds of conversations that make me wonder if I’m speaking English because the other person involved seems determined to misunderstand what I’m saying. These are the kinds of conversations that make me want to poke a pencil in my eye to stop the pain radiating from my brain.
And then, I received an email from Bethany Reisner, senior poetry editor at The Pinch. She accepted two poems for future publication. I’m always happy to receive this kind of email, but I’m doubly happy about this one because The Pinch is housed at the University of Memphis, which makes me feel like their neighbor. Thanks so much to Bethany and all of the other folks just down I-40.
Also of good fortune in the mail: contributor copies of Copper Nickel and Cave Wall. In Copper Nickel 12, you can read four of my poems: “The Interior Weather of Tree-Clinging Birds,” “The Mortician’s Wife,” “The Mortician’s Daughter,” and “And Sweet Were the Uses.” In Cave Wall 6, you can read the poem “Glacial Elegy I.” These two journals couldn’t look more different (CN is large and multi-genre: CW is petite and poetry-only); however, both are packed with AWESOME lineups. I can’t wait to delve in there. Also very cool is that in Cave Wall, my poem is next to an amazing print of a frog by Deborah Mersky. Thanks to Jake Adam York and Anisetta Valdez at CN and to Rhett Iseman Trull and Jeff Trull at CW! Wonderful editors, all. Thanks also to the staffs at those journals, often unsung as well.
I’m basking in the good-fortune the universe bestowed upon me today.
FYI: I’ll be “gone grading” for the next few days. Look for new posts by the middle of next week.
A draft! A draft! I wrote a new draft!
I gave myself one hour and vowed words would make it through the printer in some shape of a poem. (I’m trying for one new draft a week, despite papers to grade, meetings to attend, laundry to be done, and fevers.) It took 37 minutes…27 of those were hair-pulling, teeth-gnashing, I can’t do this, I want to be a dentist! minutes. Then, in desperation, I opened my “in progress” folder and found something I started last week that never breathed any real breath. I saw the turn that needed to be made and then…the lines poured forth from my Uni-ball Vision Elite in blue-black ink.
Praise be!