Where the Writer Things Are

Is unrhyming, unmetered poetry anything more than slow prose?

Are there more people writing poetry than there are people to read it?

Are we writers if we're not writing?

Is white chocolate really chocolate?


p.s. Chris Lydon's series of "Proustian" interviews with poets: http://www.radioopensource.org/
My favorite is C.D. Wright.


p.p.s. New spew on google dox (not that anyone but me remembers how to access them). Also long-overdue comments (soon) for Colin's latest story post.

First Post in a Month, Apparently

Hey all,

Posting a new story to Google Docs. I hope everyone's having a good summer!

-Colin

so it's been a while

and i figure the best way to crack back in is to drop a poem or two and run. But I'll be back soon -- i'd love it if someone could give me a refresher as to how to access the g-doc posts w/ comments. Powell525@gmail.com

Ars Poetica

Through the 66’s line,

the rain-fog persisting

its glaze on my glasses

and beard, first in my bag

then my calves

the inexorable lightness –

until my heels lose

their soggy click, the asphalt

an oil-slick of offhand

metaphor subjected also

to this inexorable lightness –

I recall poems of a woman

gone wholly into the air

and report them now

with a journalist’s deadpan

I will be another casualty

another police report: a rather

conspicuous man broke

into an abandoned cinema

2:00 am Saturday

and now floats

in self-imposed stasis

over the pike

bridge without the presence

of mind even to light

a cigarette. He is sentenced

thus far to rearrange the faces

of rush hour commuters

into a more reasonable expression

of collective regret

and expectation.

Agreed?

The Voyeur in Love

A siren in the rain. The pacing thread

of a neighbor cleaning.

Water in pipes,

running its white music,

drowses you.

Screen door, a yellow-lit

frame two floors up.

A woman in pig-tails

instructs a child. The child

has ironed her hair.

Your room has one bed, and one desk,

and one window.

They leave and return,

cradling baskets

of linen. You rub your chin.

The pig-tailed woman

unknots her hair.

You scratch your scalp.

She inches her skirt up.

You’ve been told you have a heart

for nothing

and believed it. The girl

has thrown darts

and hit wall.

The neighbor has finished

cleaning or fallen asleep.

You are alone again, surrounded

by more books

than you will ever read.

The women have taken

the child and the light

remains on. They fill

cereal bowls, somewhere –

they coddle one another

to prime-time TV.

Suppose you’d have anything

and for that will

have nothing.

Suppose the window has opened

and you’re lost

to the breeze. Suppose

you’re being watched.

I Wish "Nouning" was a Verb

Writers,

I've plopped some comments on your nanos/short shorts/micro-duel-number-ones, or whatever we're calling them these days. Actually I plopped them in a separate document in your respective folders.

Plop is a funny verb.

Verb is a funny noun.

Okay, bye.

Key Largo

Recognize a hurr’cane first / by the absence of birds

Sudden forgetting what / s’already been forgot

Do limes color branches / does moss cover manses

Can the trees and stonewalls / keep them, their itching palms

Til the storm smothers dawn / blacks out dusk, splits the yawn-

-Ing world back on its jaws / hinging there on its aw

Ful moon, uvula ball / “It’s your head and your whole

Life against you, McCloud” / the weepers are low-bowed

Seminoles on your porch cry / for someone other than you

Sheltered shivering in the white cold eye.

Here's the deal...

I simply don't have time for the visual poetry assignment, which is a shame because Tom's stuff is great. As I type, I'm procrastinating a paper.

I was wondering if you lot could help me with something. I endeavor to get into a graduate-level writing workshop here at BU for the fall. The professor is the head of the creative writing department at BU, Leslie Epstein. (He has a Wikipedia page and everything.) As the class is mostly for MFA students, I've been informed that someone like me is admitted into the class "ONCE IN A BLUE MOON," pending review of a forty-page manuscript. So, I want to get feedback from as many fellow writers as possible. Basically, you're it.

Please comment on this post if you can see yourself reading and responding to a couple of stories in the next couple weeks. I'm posting them to the Docs page now.

Thanks in advance!

Quick Draw