Weathering AWP

50º ~ doom and gloom skies, although nice temps ~ to remain this way all night and into the morning, then threat of thunderstorms, lightning, and tornadoes as we plummet to 26 during the day

AWP, AWP, AWP, how you are on the mind today.  I've been busy trying to get all my classes outfitted for the week and in shape so that I won't feel an onslaught when I return.  I do what I can, although I know it is a bit futile. 

This year, the pre-conference talk of panels and speakers is overshadowed by THE STORM.

http://www.weather.com/

See where they Y is on "Oklahoma City"?  For anyone not in the know, Little Rock is just a bit to the right of that, and I'm flying from LR to Dallas, which is just beneath the white & pink under "Oklahoma City," and then on to DC.  DC looks poised to be on the southern fringes as well.  Every report I've checked about my airports lists WIND as a delaying factor as we will be on the edge of the front that will be causing such grief to my writer friends north and northeast of me. 

What a mess.  I am not happy about this since I count on being able to connect with folks in person at the conference who I might only see online without it.  I am not happy about this as it has caused a great deal of stress for people I care deeply about. 

So, I will hope that the predictions become more tame in the next 12 - 24 hours and that everyone who is destined for DC has safe travel if not swift.

Friday Draft: Inspiration Cards

38º ~ bright sun, slight breeze, on our way to the 60s today ~ wahoo

I started today with the happy, happy, joy, joy of recent acceptances and publications.  Given that the poem of mine selected by Jonathon Williams and Ash Bowen for Two Weeks: A Digital Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, was one of my cautionary/haunting/fairy tales about a girl from the Midwest, I began my session today by reading over all five of the poems I've drafted in that series.
Cautionary Tale for Girls in Love with Fire (in Two Weeks)
Haunting Tale for Girls Embraced by Snow
Fairy Tale for Drowned Girls
Fairy Tale for Girls Enthralled by the Storm
Fairy Tale for Girls Who Seek to Meet the Horizon

After reading through these poems, I spent some time brainstorming other Midwestern landscape phenomena that might fit the series, but nothing was happening there.

Then, I remembered what I remarked in the last post, that both of the poems accepted by Anti- were first drafted using inspiration cards. (Read about these cards here.)  For anyone keeping score at home, they took "Backdrop for an Archetypal Bloodline" and "Urban Archaeology: Reading the Ruins."  Given this bit of good news, I opened up my folder of cards and flipped through.  It turns out that once I've gotten a poem out of a card, it loses a certain appeal.  Then, I realized that there were four different cards that interested me and that maybe I could find a way to use a little bit from each one.  So, I set the four cards out in a square.

I started in my journal with the words from the blue card: "An ancient wind" and "making heartache sound transcendent."  I also liked the words on the yellow card:  "trying to reclaim language" and "Stamped by history."  The red card says "Prepare to be dazzled by" and "gadgets" and "grace and personality."  The green card says "the industrial Midwest" and "a foreign landscape of small acreages."  This time around, I used a bit of language from each card and at least one image from each of the four cards.  I found that having a multitude of choices kept me going.

In some ways it was a bit of an aimless draft at first because I didn't have the structure of the fairy tale, that narrative, that I'd been working with most recently to hold up the draft.  Really, I was going with gut instinct and collecting lines along the way.  This may be the nature of the lyric poem, I suppose, but sometimes even when I work on a lyric poem, I have a stronger sense of theme, for lack of a better word.

For some reason, the first lines ended up as a tercet and a couplet, so I kept that up.  After I got four stanzas, I wanted a title to help guide the poem.  That's where the green card game back into play, as the title is currently "The Mythos of the Industrial Midwest" and boy that didn't come easy.  I must have tried on five or six titles.  The first one I tried I thought was fabulous but it drove the draft to a standstill b/c it didn't fit the images I was working with.  I'll save that for another day perhaps. 

As for the images, here's the score on which ones I used.   Green card: images of clockworks, blueprints, and Depression glass.  Red card: another clock and the structure of a sign attached to a building.  Blue card: the moth and the map.  Yellow card: the bridge and the weighing receptacle from the scale with the money in it.

Here are the opening lines as they stand right now:

Facing another season of ancient winds,
the echo in the bridge piers making heartache
sound transcendent, I stand here trying

We will see where things go in the round of revisions.  As always, thanks for reading, commenting, and being supportive of the journey.

Oh, and if anyone wants the older cards I'm not using anymore, leave me a message and I'll be glad to send them on to you, as I'm always making more of these.

Happy Addendum to the Day

49º ~ it's dark outside, can't get to the window or door due to two cats holding down my legs at the moment, but the smart phone says the skies are partly cloudy ~ we're in for a super warm up over the next three - four days, wahoo

Just a quick note to follow up from this morning.  Sometimes, the odds pay off.  When I arrived home this afternoon, I found an acceptance from Anti- waiting in my inbox.  Wahoo Wahoo Wahoo!  I've been reading Anti- for several years now and am so happy to be included for a future issue.  I'm also pleased because the two poems that were accepted (yep, two!) are from this past fall's drafting, and both were prompted by inspiration cards.  (Explanation here.)  I'll fill you in when the poems come out.

Also, more happy news, the Two Weeks digital anthology is LIVE, with my poem "Cautionary Tale for Girls in Love with Fire" included.  At $4.99, it's packed with great poems, and I'm honored to be next to some of my favorites.  The whole thing is fabulous to the nth degree.  I am in awe of the editors, Johnathon Williams and Ash Bowen, for their fortitude.  Following their Facebook updates, I know it's been a marathon, but the end result is worth it.  They really managed to showcase how poetry can work on an ereader without sacrificing line breaks, and there is even an audio package with each of us reading someone else's poem as well.

Oh, Happy Day!

Recording Rejections and Reflections

29º ~ a good sun-filled sky, no clouds, wahoo!

This morning has been a morning of details first.  I spent a bit of time recording rejections.  Four different journals sent rejections in the last three days.  I'm guessing they want to clear the decks before AWP, as all of them are participating in the conference.  Several of the rejections included kind notes, so I'm not completely bereft.  I'm just glad I sent out so many submissions this month, which helps me remember the whole thing is subjective and with longer odds than picking the winner of any given horse race.

After recording the rejections, I turned to a sweeter task.  I'm being interviewed by a couple of different people/blogs/journals, and I received one set of questions last night.  Wahoo.  It's always an upper to realize that someone is genuinely interested in the work, that someone has taken the time to look at a poem or the book closely enough to formulate questions about them.

Answering these questions provides time for reflection that I don't normally take.  I'm always struggling to slow down and breathe more deeply on so many levels.  Much thanks to the people involved for the opportunity today.

~~~~~

AWP is ONE WEEK away...wahoo!

What I'm Reading: Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room

37º ~ solid gray skies today, the sun well-hidden, slight breezes in the branches, a threat of rain

I've been reading Kelli Russell Agodon's blog Book of Kells for so long that I no longer remember how I first "met" her.  I do know that I was lucky enough to be able to follow the entire journey of Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room, from the post about winning the White Pine Press Poetry Prize to the post about cover art, and finally the finished product.  I ordered my copy directly from Kelli so I could have it signed, and she even included a drawing of a kangaroo, just for me. 

I was remiss in not reading this book the second it arrived, but that's the joy of books; they wait and they are patient.

The poems in this collection are brave and brazen, addressing love and loss, questioning God and mortals alike, mixing Dickinson, Neruda, Einstein, and Alice from Wonderland with the deftness of a practiced mixologist.  Here we have a speaker adrift in a world that often feels directionless, a speaker who desires nothing more than connection and yet finds that connection difficult because of the very fact that she is a poet: "the broken ones become artists," says the father in "Letter to a Past Life." 

The father is a key figure woven throughout the book, a figure who influences the speaker when young and challenges the speaker's belief when he dies.  In "Letter to a Companion Star" we see the speaker in the hospital and overhear the doctor.  There is an epigraph from National Geographic about the Hourglass Nebula.  The poem begins, "When the doctor said, / We're only delaying death, // I forgot words and let nebulae / answer." 

Throughout the book, the speaker (who is unmistakably the same speaker throughout) makes declarative statements in an attempt to define herself.

In the opening poem, "Another Empty Window Dipped in Milk," she states:
"Trust me, it's not bitterness I carry

.....in my blood, but the pulse and flow

of ordinary, the white picket fence

.....I like to call my ribcage."

In "Selected Love Letters I'm Still Trying to Write," she claims:
"I am the handwriting of a car crash,
bent metal and adrenalin-filled."

In "Quiet Collapse in the Dharma Shop," we are told:
"I celebrate small things
.......--apples, beetles, faith---"

I love that 'faith' is a 'small thing' here.  Throughout the book, Kelli manages to take the ordinary moments of a woman's life and transform them into the extraordinary, the special, the saved.  She is unafraid to tell the truth about what it means to be a poet as well as a mother, daughter, wife, and lover, and how sometimes those worlds don't always mesh.

Aside from the deft handling of this subject matter, the book is a delight of language.  There are puns and anagrams and metaphors galore.  There is music in the lines and specificity in each description.  This is definitely a book to be read aloud and savored.

Support Poetry / A Poet
Buy or Borrow This Book Today
Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room
Kelli Russell Agodon
White Pine Press, 2010

Submission Sunday, Or, You Can't Win if You Don't Play

48º ~ halfway dreary skies with a hint of light behind the cloud cover, a chance of rain, wintery mix removed from the predictions, looks like we might make a full week of school (knock wood)

Just a quick update on some recent submissions.  I sent out a plethora of poems about two weeks ago (read about it here).  However, I recently received some poems back from a non-simultaneous sub publisher (one of the rare non-SS journals that I send to), and I discovered a couple of journals I've been meaning to try have opened their reading periods again.  So, I sat down yesterday and sifted through the poems that could go out.  To add to my pile, I've spent the last couple weeks fine-tuning several more poems from the fall Friday drafts.

In the bad old days, I used to send poems out to upwards of 15 journals that accepted SS.  Now that I'm a bit more established, I cut each poem off at five or six journals max, given the time withdrawing a poem can take.  The only problem with this is that there are way more journals that I'd like to send to, and being a slow writer, sometimes I just can't send to every journal on my list.

In any case, in the last three days, I've submitted:
One group of five poems to six journals (simultaneous and all accepting electronic submissions).
One group of three poems to one journal (simultaneous, but the poems didn't really fit with the other journals on my list, postal submission).
One group of three poems to one journal (a BIG one that doesn't accept SS and reports fairly quickly, so I'm willing to risk it, postal submission).

All of this backs up my philosophy on publishing poems in lit mags: submit, submit, submit and submit some more.  I do keep meticulous records to avoid any major mistakes like re-publishing a poem already accepted and such, and I think that is important if you take the "overwhelm them with numbers" approach that I do.  Some folks may think I should be more discerning or narrow my focus to the upper echelon of journals that take ages and ages to report back on non-SS submissions.  They may be right, but for now, my competitive nature prefers a method that seems to work more in favor of receiving the happy email rather than the sad, thin envelope.

Finally, a bit of good news.  I'll have a poem in the digital anthology Two Weeks, being put together by the editors of Linebreak.  Wahoo.

Friday Draft: One More Fairy Tale

23º ~ at least there is a return of the sun today, an inch and a half of snow stubborn on grassy areas, nothing on the streets, although early release yesterday during the worst of the snow, supposed to warm above freezing but not into the 40's today, more winter weather on the horizon for Sunday/Monday ~ the Kangaroo does not approve

Dear Reader, I hope you don't tire of stories about drafting fairy tale/cautionary tale poems.  It seems I'm enamored of them lately.

A confession: I forgot to think about drafting a poem last night before sleeping.  It was a lot harder to get going this morning.  Did I psych myself out once I realized I hadn't "prepped" for today?  Who knows.  Just an observation.

My friend and former student, Suzi, commented on my word bank post from last week and mentioned that she found herself gathering mostly verbs.  Ah ha, I thought, a new twist on the prompt.  I decided to start today by gathering only verbs from Kelli Russell Agodon's latest book, Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room.  This is a book I've had for several months and just hadn't gotten to.  It is next up on my reading pile.  I already know it's going to be awesome because as I was combing it for verbs, I kept getting caught up in the poems (a danger to the exercise and perhaps a reason to use a non-poetry book for gathering your words!).  In any case, I created my word bank of verbs.

Then, I veered from the prompt.  I thought I might try another fairy tale, so before I started with the words, I thought about what prairie icon I hadn't used yet.  I have used: Fire/Drought, Snow/Freezing, Lakes/Drowning, and Storm/Tornadoes.  As I stared out into the snowy wilds of the backyard, a picture from our summer trip to Jamaica was on my computer screen.  It happened to be one that was a long-distance view out over the ocean on a clear day.  The horizon line was amazing, and then ker-pow, I had it:  "Fairy Tale for Girls Who Seek to Meet the Horizon."  (There's a lot of commonality between the ocean horizon and the prairie/plains horizon.  Of course, the poem is about the prairie.)

I started off somewhat with my own lines and trying to mix in some of Kelli's verbs whenever I could.  This draft did not fall easily to the page.  There were many stops and starts.  (I wonder if this is because I didn't do the random word pair since I had all verbs.)  At first the girl of the poem was born mute and I went off in one direction for half a page.  As I transferred that to the computer, I realized the girl was becoming a little too much of a cliche, so I backtracked.  Now she is just 'quiet.'  Another interesting observation comes from form.  When I started off the poem I was trying to write without stanza breaks and using shorter lines but also lines of more varying lengths.  In reading poems lately, I've noticed that there are some poets who use the varied line length with great results and I tend to be someone who gravitates toward more universal line lengths within a poem.  So, I started the first round trying out the varied line lengths and no stanza breaks.  When I backtracked, I ended up reverting to form and using couplets with long, long lines.

Something to continue to mess with in future drafts.  When is the comfort zone a part of voice/style/identity? And when is the comfort zone just a crutch?

PS: And now, on proofreading this post, it comes to me that this poem DEMANDS long line that mirror the horizon.  Yes, form is something I've studied and something I think about, but not at the moment the draft is emerging (unless I'm going for a sonnet or a pantoum or another formal structure).

Miscellany

36º ~ gray, gloomy, dense out there ~ hold onto your weather hats, predictions of more 'winter weather' tomorrow to arrive mid-day...what will the schools do with that forecast?  stay tuned

Today, my brain seems unable to latch onto any one poetry related activity and hold.  It's turned into a day of flitting.

I flitted around the blogs.

I flitted around iTunes trying to find some sound that would ground me.

I flitted around Facebook.

I flitted around my spreadsheet recording yesterday's dreary rejection from one of my all-time favorite journals.

I flitted around the AWP schedule, discovering more panels and events to add to my list.

I flitted around my email account and submitted some poems to.... don't want to jinx it.

I flitted around the house in an attempt to tidy up the place a bit (hah!).

Now, I suppose I shall flit off to school and try to focus on classes. 

PS:  I doubt anyone in the world has ever really called me a flit.  This is quite out of character.

What I'm Reading: After the Ark

35º ~ rain in the early hours, just gray and heavy skies now ~ near calm in the branches

Luke Johnson is a fine young poet who I've come to know solely through the blog-o-sphere.  I began following his blog, Proof of Blog, several years ago and have found a kinship in Luke's poetry as well. 

Just about a week ago, Luke's first book, After the Ark, hit the shelves of bookstores and the desk of the Kangaroo.  As many of you know, I've been reading it all week.  A complex elegy on a mother's death, this is a book that must be read slowly, and given recent conversations about reading straight through or dipping in and out (here and here), I would advocate for reading this one front to back, as the progression of the speaker seems paramount to experiencing the book as a whole.

The speaker throughout the book is the son of two ministers, and in the acknowledgments, Luke thanks his parents for "their love, their bookcases, and their level-headed pulpits," identifying them both as reverends.  So, the reader assumes the close confessional nature of the poems.  The book is divided into three untitled sections, with each section being introduced by a triolet.  I'm in awe of this tactic, as the triolet is not often connected with funereal themes in my mind.  However, these three triolets do a fine job of setting the tone for each section. 

The first, "Nor'easter," has as it's second and final line, "the highway buried, sky a grave."  And we begin, then, with an image of death.  The poems in the first section, take the reader through the illness of the mother, memories of youth, memories of a split in the parent's marriage that was healed, and the death; however, not in chronological order.  This circular time line is crucial to the entire book, as it mimics the fluidity of time during a long illness, a death, and the aftermath.  We begin with "Moving Day," a poem filled with ordinary domestic images as the speaker clears away "boxes of sermons / collected in her study" ... "prayers ready / to be gathered and stored away."  He notes "the weight of her words" and that weight filters through every poem in the rest of the book.

The second section is formally interesting as well as being filled with more poems attempting to reconcile the grief of the son.  There is the triolet and then a series of sonnets.  There are nine sonnets, but between the fifth and the sixth is one that is purposely unfinished, "Box Kite" at only eight lines.  That gaping space where the sextet is supposed to be becomes the formal metaphor for the grave and the unsayable fact of grief.  The speaker of these poems has much to reconcile: his mother's death, his own residual anger with her over a fracture in the parent's marriage, his position as the child of two ministers, how to help his father cope, and how to move through the world now as a motherless son.  In "Vulture Tree," the sonnet opens "We were never so holy, and apples / in the ministers' orchard rot the same."  Of all professions, perhaps we believe ministers, and by extension their families, most capable of dealing with the great tragedies of life, and yet, these poems reveal that human nature is human nature no matter a person's profession or calling. 

Finally, in the third section, the poems become wider, deeper, more exploratory as the speaker moves out into the world after the death.  The poem "Manse" begins "It might be easier to blame the dead / for disrepair... ."  This honest admission floors me as it also hints at the ease with which we often blame our parents for our own faults left unrepaired.  The speaker, though, resists this, still searching for a way to make sense of human nature.  The section and the book conclude with the title poem "After the Ark," which weaves together the religious questions and the familial ones that have embedded themselves throughout the book.  In this poem, the speaker contemplates the Ark story, and how "scores of sinners" ... "would've drowned in what my mother showed me // of God's love, the ever-lasting compassion / too definite / to be human... ."  He struggles with this:  "how // my mother left my father and I still don't know / how to forgive her, if I need to -- Genesis // missed these unpaid fares... ."  The poem ends with a devastatingly true couplet:

It's up to us to grow gills, to learn to breathe

here where the flood has become the body.

I applaud Luke's generous work for managing to be both religious and domestic, without being high-handed or overly sentimental.  Above all this book is an honest account of difficult love.

Support Poetry / A Poet
Buy or Borrow This Book Today
After the Ark
Luke Johnson
NYQ Books, 2011

AWP Dance Card

36º ~ another day of nothing but gray-white skies ~ oppressive weather ~ many lamps burning

Dear Reader, I'm stunned to realize AWP is just two and a half weeks away!  Wowza!  Being my neurotic self, I've just mapped out the panels that draw my interest.  I know it's a Type A thing, but it's the only way I can get a grip on the overwhelming flood of activities and humanity.  All that being said, my dance card is now open for breakfast/lunch/dinner/coffee/drinks/and etc.  Feel free to email at gmail or on Facebook if you'd like to meet or just exchange cell phone numbers in case we don't cross paths at the Bookfair.

Say Hello to Earnestine

53º ~ that super sun keeps powering on ~ watching the last patches of snow diminish

My wonderful and talented friend, Anne Greenwood, is an artist and agreed to create a logo for me based on the antique brooch of the kangaroo that I bought last year.  The kangaroo has since been named 'Earnestine' in honor of my earnest nature.  And now, she lives on in my new logo, from which I've just designed and ordered new business cards.  They should arrive just in time for AWP, woo hoo.  But now, the star of the show:

What I'm Reading: Lucille Clifton in The Writer's Chronicle

45º ~ super sun that I bow down to for bring back the 'normal' range of temps, snow still in the shadow places, but melting fast

When I took the latest issue of The Writer's Chronicle out of the mailbox this past week, I teared up a bit to see Lucille Clifton's face gracing the cover.  Her passing leaves a hole in the poetry world and in my world.  I cannot claim to have known her well; our meeting was brief and lasted only a few precious days back in 1993 or 1994.  But anyone who knew her, knows her spirit is/was huge.  I felt welcomed by her presence and she offered such great advice about my work at that early, early age.  Her poem "won't you celebrate with me" has gotten me through some of the worst times.

From The Book of Light, Copper Canyon, 1993

won't you celebrate with me

what i have shaped into

a kind of life?  i had no model.

born in babylon

both nonwhite and woman

what did i see to be except myself?

i made it up

here on this bridge between

starshine and clay,

my one hand holding tight

my other hand; come celebrate

with me that everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.

In her life, "Ms. Lucille" faced many hardships; this poem always reminded me of the grace with which she faced those difficult times and gave me a model.  Now I see her theme goes on and expands with her death.  While she has passed from this earthly life, she still beat all those things that "tried to kill [her];" she passed on her own terms, it seems to me.  Still showing me an admirable way for myself, still giving.

But, back to the magazine.  It contains an interview between Remica L. Bingham-Risher and Lucille Clifton, conducted in 2006 and 2007.  Dear Reader, I hope you will read the whole interview, but here are the bits that jumped out at me.

Clifton's parents were both avid readers, and while her father couldn't write, he, and her mother, surrounded her with words from her infancy.  Clifton says, in the interview, "I just like to read things that help me to know and try to understand the world."  Me, too, and that's the kind of poetry I love to read and that I want to write, a poetry that helps the reader 'to know and understand the world," to make sense of the often senseless world we live in.

I laughed when Clifton explained why she lost her full-ride to Howard University.  "I felt no reason to know chemicals.  I loved writing, but I was wild and young, and I didn't see why I had to know about chemicals.  I did very badly in Chemistry...," she says.  Hear, Hear!

One of the reasons I admire Clifton's work so much is that each poem is a straight shot of the TRUTH, no matter how hard that truth might be to say.  When asked about how her family reacts to these difficult poems, including one where the speaker confesses having tried to abort her daughter, Clifton is resolute.  She says, "I never tell anything but the truth.  My daughter knows that I tried to get rid of her."  Wow.  Clifton understands how secrets fester and scar, how brave to be so open with the world.

Finally, the end of the interview made me a bit more sad.  The topic of the Pulitzer Prize comes up and the fact that Clifton was a two-time nominee.  The interviewer, Bingham, asks, after naming a long list of awards Clifton had won, "Do you think you've managed to become 'extraordinary' yet?"  Clifton answers no because she has never won the Pulitzer.  Expanding on that, she admits that she would like to win the Pulitzer but doesn't need it.  She says, "After some time, you want to feel validated for your work.  I am very much validated by my readers; I just want to feel validated by my peers.  Because you know how much you have doubts.  For a long time, I was the 'Grandma Moses' of the bunch because I wasn't educated in that way.  So I would like to feel that I have their respect."

Oh, wow.  That certainly puts my doubts in their place and reminds me that those doubts are all a part of living the writing life and even winning nearly every major award there is to win won't put them to rest.  Bless Ms. Lucille for another lesson, another passing on of wisdom hard-earned.

Random Word Bank

46º ~ the beautiful sun has been hidden by an expanse of gray clouds, but the temps are staying up, so it's hard to complain, the melt begins

Thanks to Josh's comment from my process notes earlier today, I thought I'd walk y'all through one random word bank experience that resulted in a poem that has since been published, "Late Aubade."  

First:  I began with Pablo Neruda's book Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon, translated by Stephen Mitchell.  Neruda's word choices are divine, and Mitchell does a fabulous job holding true to that in translation as far as I've been told.  (I took French.)  I flipped through some of my favorite poems (the book is well dog-eared) and jotted down lists of words that jumped out at me.  Then, I numbered the words.  Here's the page from my journal.

After I had the list, I went to Random.org and used their random number generator.  I created pairs of words based on the roll of the dice, so to speak.  Once I had a healthy number of pairs, lines began to form.  The part that's a bit hard for me is to really keep the pairs random and not to force things.  If I force things, the draft usually ends up stunted.  There's something about the random smashing together of words that sparks lines in my head.   Here's that page from the journal.

You'll see that the second word pair is 'undulate' and 'foxes,' if you can read that mess.  I was probably ready to start drafting right then, but I kept listing the pairs and more sparks resulted.  The first three lines I have here in the journal are:
The foxes undulate
through the ditches filled with
cattails dense and wounded.
You might notice that 'cattails' came up in two different pairs, once with 'dense' and once with 'wounded.'  Having words come up more than once used to bug me, but that's the nature of randomness, and it worked out well in this poem.  Of course, everything gets fine-tuned in revision, so it's all about mindset at this point.

Finally, I was so inspired that I went right to the computer.  Usually, I draft more lines than this in the journal first.  To see the resulting poem, which went through several revisions, please go to the Connotation Press site and read, "Late Aubade."  You have to scroll to the bottom; it's the last poem on the page.

Thanks again, Dear Readers, just for being out there.

Friday Draft: Word Bank Propechy and Another Fairy Tale

27º ~ good sun that promises to have some teeth today to chew through this everlasting snow and ice ~ the roads are largely clear, but houses, yards, decks, etc. still thick covered ~ a forecast that calls for temps in the low 40's so a huge melt off is in store...welcome back to MUD

Today has been a gift of drafting, and I actually completed two drafts in the last hour, something quite rare for me.  Again, I've gone to bed thinking about poetry.  Erin over at Being Poetry has been writing about staying focused and I feel a kinship to what she wrote recently about simply thinking about writing even when she wasn't writing as a way to focus.  She says it better here. 

When one of the cats woke me up at 3 a.m. and left me unable to get back to sleep, I started thinking about poetry some more and lines began appearing.  Miraculously, I remembered them when I woke up (after drifting back to sleep around 3:30).  However, once I put them down, I realized they had no spark in the light of day.  So, I turned to creating a word bank and used Luke Johnson's new book, After the Ark.  I've read the first of three sections and am blown away.  Will post about it soon.  In any case, I scanned the poems I'd already read and noted down the strongest words, working up to about 55 words.  Then, I used Random.org to generate random couplings and wouldn't you know it, a poem began to show itself after about six pairings.  If you know Luke's work (and if you don't, go read it now), you know that there is a lot of religion going on in there, so I had some power-packed words to begin with.  There are also lots of down-to-earth domestic words as well.  I ended up with a poem I'm unsure of but that I'm calling "Prophecy" until something better comes along.  The first tercet is: "Soon the city will learn to live / crowned by dangers, / the air marked by blackbirds,"  And no, the blackbirds don't fall from the sky, even though that epic flock death at New Year's happened just a hundred miles from here.

Well, "Prophecy" slid out onto the page pretty quickly and yet I felt like I had more to give today.  "Prophecy" also ended one notebook and I got to get out a new one!  Woo Hoo!

Yesterday, I received some really great feedback on "Cautionary Tale for Girls in Love with Fire."  I have my three fairy tale poems from last fall, but I knew they weren't quite right.  I just couldn't find the final tweak to set them straight.  It turns out I was over-writing the endings.  Jeez...how long have I been doing this and I'm still making beginner mistakes!  I beat myself up for a minute and then took the lesson in stride.  I was able to look at all three poems this morning and see the revision shimmering there, waiting for me.  With that good vibe feeling, I decided to try for another one this morning.  I opened up the fresh notebook and thought about what other prairie element I could tackle (I've done Fire, Blizzard, and Lake).  It came to me suddenly: "Fairy Tale for Girls Enthralled by the Storm." 

Here's a picture of the process.

If you can read these words, please don't steal them!

I started in the journal on the page before the one pictured.  I wrote three lines of landscape description and found myself off track.  Then, I remembered that the others all start with 'the girl,' so I started with her again.  "Once there was a girl who loved the prairie wind," and I was off and running.  I got about half of the poem into the journal and then switched to the computer for the rest.  (You can see Luke's book at the top of the picture as well.)

So there you have it, Dear Reader, another day of drafting that I get to put in the Win Column!  Thanks for reading and commenting and following the process.

Unplanned Linkage

17º ~ the temp actually went down 1 degree in the last hour, what's that all about?  ~ the forecast says we won't break 30 today, the snow remains on grassy areas on day 3

My reading chair on the deck.

I hadn't planned today to be a day of links, but that's what's happened.  Three links today, but they are mighty links.

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I've mentioned Nic Sebastian's blog/project Whale Sound before.  Poets, editors, readers can all submit any poem that has been previously published online.  If a poem is chosen, Nic produces a podcast of her interpretation.  The voice alone is to die for, but the careful handling of the poems is a close second.  In any case, Monday, Joshua Robbins' poem "Theodicy" was the feature.  Do yourself a favor and listen to the poem right now.

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The editors of one of my favorite online journals, Linebreak, are embarking on a lightning fast foray into the world of producing a book of poetry for e-readers, Two Weeks: A Digital Anthology of Contemporary Poetry.  Here's a bit from the announcement:

For years, ebooks have been ignored by most poetry publishers. Today, the few poetry ebooks available are little more than cut-and-paste versions of their print counterparts. And many fail to preserve line breaks and other basic formatting.

They are accepting submissions until January 19 and will sell the anthology they create on the 25th.  Holy Lightspeed Turnaround, Batman!

I had my first look at a book of Emily Dickinson poems on an e-reader over the holidays.  I was so sad to see that several of the line breaks in each poem had been destroyed, and she has some famously short lines.  One reason I haven't purchased an e-reader is that I read so much poetry and so little is available in e-format.  Now that I see how it is being presented, I'm doubly glad not to have bought one yet.  


Click here for the announcement.

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Finally, like most of the nation, I've been struggling to make sense of the shooting in Tucson.  The fact that the shooter had attended the area community college and had been expelled due to mental instability struck home with me, especially when commentators began to say that the college should have done more (we heard this same refrain of Virginia Tech, so it isn't limited to cc's). 

I'm thankful this morning for fellow poet and cc instructor/administrator, Kristin Berkey-Abbott's post about the subject.  I hope you'll read it and think it over. 

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We're finally going to start the new semester, two days late due to snow and ice conditions.  I find I'm ready to rise to the challenge again.  Onward.

Take care and tell the ones you love how much they matter.