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

Short Shorts and NPR

NPR has announced a new feature called "Three-Minute Fiction." It's pretty much just what it sounds like; they're looking for works of fiction that can be read on air in the span of three minutes (they suggest 500 words or less). So I thought to myself, Hey, I know some people who have short shorts (the microfiction, not the clothing--though more power to you either way). Here's a link to a longer description of the feature: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105685925 The deadline is July 18th.

Feedback and the Hook Up

Hello all. After dabbling in Google Docs for sometime trying to figure out a way to post flash fiction comments there, I've raised the white flag. I'll post some comments here shortly.

On another note, if any of you are interested in reading fiction and/or poetry for Post Road Magazine (now published by BC), let me know and I'll contact the new Assistant Managing Editor.

Visual poetry? Hmmm .... This will take some thought.

Better Blogs & Gardens

How about some summertime sprucing up?

1) Is it possible to post audio files? It would be awesome to hear the works read by the authors and by the readers.
2) Let's set another micro-duel deadline. Let's also give feedback. Though I've already read the wonderful posted micros, I'm going to re-read and post comments this week.
3) Here's my micro-duel idea: visual poetry. Post any combination of words and images and interpretations by next Monday, noontime.

Did anyone else celebrate the summer solstice?

How about West Coast Time?

I decided to take a day trip to California. And if you don't believe that, I'm late for the showdown. On the bright side, if I'm to keep the wild west metaphors going, that probably means the rest of you are dead or injured already, which is good news for me, since I'm a terrible shot with a revolver.

Bam! Pow!

Posted my lunchtime short. If only every other lunch were so productive.

Can't wait to read yours. Hurray for playing!

WWST

I'm unfamiliar with Wild West Standard Time. If I'm a few minutes late, I'm sure you'll pardon me, sheriff.

I've uploaded my nonsense to Google Docs. It says 12 PM. Success?

High Noon

Okay, so it's not quite the moment of atonement yet. But let it be known that I've loaded my quick fiction onto the googledocs account. I'll be on the lookout for yours. Bring on the literary shootout.

Re: The Penultimate Post

Katie Moulton,

I don't know a lot about doing readings, having never done one myself. However, I do know one really important thing about this reading in particular: You'll be just fine.

You've got material. Even if you revert back to some tried-and-true lines from your days of Gasson Hall glory, so what? And hey, slip in a few new lines and see what happens.

Tell your anxiety to shut its filthy mouth and ask your gut a few questions. Is this poem ready? If yes, ask it where it thinks the poem should go. If it says second-to-last, don't ask it why (or even lecture it on expanding its vocabulary with "penultimate"). Just trust it. And if it gurgles in response, that's still the anxiety talking. Take a Tums and try again.

And the bio is just a nano about yourself. If you were a nano, what would you be?

Writer Power,
Tom

About the Author:
"Tom Forsythe, born in a land of deer hunters and pregnant teenagers, has since escaped to Boston where he writes and does 50 pushups each day. Embarrassingly, he has no upper body strength and consistently lies about his ability to do push-ups."

Performance Anxiety

I just got asked to fill in at a reading tomorrow night put on by the lit journal River Styx. It's my first time reading in St. Louis, which now seems very, very far from dear old French Press, Gasson Hall, and Brookline Booksmith. ...and I may be freaking out. Just a little.

I have ten minutes, and now, suddenly, it seems, no material.

How do you decide when your work is ready to be read to an audience, if ever at all? How do you order them? How do you write a two-sentence bio, including one sentence which reveals some tragic or embarrassing element of your nature? (Seriously.)

Please help. S.O.S. (Save Our Sonnets?)

Ok, so it's not Poetry...

I just got a piece in my first paying publication, and wanted to share:
http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/atoz/

(Yay!)

The Quick and the Read

Today, for only the third time in my life, I received a submission response within 24 hours of initially sending my work. It was a rejection, so I'm batting .333 on short turnarounds at present, but I'm not bitter. Instead, I remain in awe of the efficiency and pizzazz of these quickdraw editors. Therefore, in honor of speedy reads, I hereby declare a showdown. I challenge all of us to complete a short-short story (let's say 500 words or less) by no later than this time a week from today (okay okay, we'll say by high-noon on Tuesday for good measure). Bring your six-shooters and your spurs.

Hell Week

An example: my car has broken down every day for four days. And that, friends, is one of the better things that has happened to me this week.

I too had photos to share, but needless to say, the powers that be wouldn't let them upload, no. While thwarting my attempt, the powers that be also erased them and the hundred or so other pictures stored on my camera and noplace else. To me, they are now the powers that be-otch.

I've been thinking about my very-recent writing under the term Living Expenses. I will now spew some barely-formed poetry into the blogabyss.

What kind of karma do you think that will warrant?

Shelter

If we are always in danger
Of being No one, No where,
Then why are our Selves so
Inescapable, like waves spiking the lifeboat,
Towered and internal as nausea,
While we cling to the closest huddled body:
A pink face in a yellow slicker, a finger curling for ours,
Our finger providing the placehold in space
For a Some one who might be Any one, but is
Beside us, for now.



Service

This is what I am talking around.
The pile of speckled ice and the plastic cup
Around it. Another example: the stewardess’
Hand on the lip of aluminum, and yours
On the other end. How her eyes don’t
See yours, how you notice.
Though you keep the window shade
Pulled open, its oval slot of light
Her eyes stay wide
Buttons unbuttoned down her front jacket panel,
While you have always found it hard
Not to blink in others’ faces.
Look again, look harder
When she sweeps the aisle soundless
In recycled air, and just so,
Just so, reproach yourself
With remembering how she harkened
To every ding of every blue vinyl-back seat. For two hours
She is your mother overhead
And don’t you think she gave you all
She could? After all
Ginger ale
is fine, please,
Thank you.



Misplaced Rib

I handle the baby like I’ve caught him
mid-fall. Fingers spread like
a glove, careful with his right
half-shoulder, the tiny red patch
where they told the mother
she’d broken his collarbone.
Careful not to touch, to protect
without touch, to circle the memory of
Your deep-creviced shoulder
blades, fingerholds
in the wooden fence.
He’s lived through four days now.

My palm cradles his skull,
soft as old peaches you’d
toss for impromptu batting practice:
a branch, your gathered hands,
juice streaming over the backfence.
I held your head this way
and tried to feel us growing,
that first April, in borrowed beds.
Fingers mapped the pitch of bone,
walked the chalk lines inch by inch,
traced curves through your dusting
of hair, tried to feel where I’d fit.
I was new. And then

I was new again.

The baby’s not mine
until I hold him, then
I’m ready to steal
anything he cries for
over the wall, through the stand
of pine to the opened-up ground
where I hear they play ball now,
and his little up-down chest
cleaves into mine. There between us
is your breath falling and your breath
rising, your pleated canyon,
your misplaced rib
(did you give it to me? did I lose it for us?)
and baby, the sun is shining
on all the scars we were born with.

My writing Desk. Bother.

Greetings, Attic Office.

I've tried countless times to upload a video tour of my writing desk. Those attempts being fruitless, I thought to myself, "Hey dummy--this blog exists primarily for writing, does it not? And this desk is also, potentially, designed to be written on, yes? So, why not write a poem, or some such thing, about my writing desk?" I bet you all wish you'd thought of it. But you didn't. Or maybe you did, and were too lazy; or maybe you actually wrote a piece, but determined that it was mediocre and, in defiance of Kim's impetus to share everything, kept it yourself; or maybe you simply decided that such self-indulgent behavior was frivolous and not worth anyone's time. Well, the first describes my delay; the second, a road (evidently) not taken; and the third--well, that one never occurred to me in the slightest. So, here it is.

The Desk: An Arrangement of Wood and Metal, or the Crux of All Man's Creative Endeavors? (Probably Somewhere in the Middle.)

This room--this one, right here--

Used to be wallpapered

In typical juvenile fashion

Germane to a time of fluff

And the deeply unsettling knowledge

That there is something wrong

First with pink and blue toy soldiers

Expressions: vacant

Mouths: nonexistent

Then with athletes and non-sequiturs

(RUN! STRIKE! HIT!)

Outlines: Indistinct

Logos: Unfamiliar

But how rude of me

The desk is what concerns us

I guess the afore(was)mentioned

Because that's how things used to be

But not how they are

No NOW

The walls are khaki

The comforter: also

And the desk: black as two coats

of semigloss can get

Except where daylight comes through

On chipped corners, worn edges

The things that call it home

(Now this is where it gets mundane 

But also enlightening

That's what I hear this poetry bunk

Is about, after all)

Are as follows

An unpredicated list

Of objects collected and acquired

(That's what I hear this poetry bunk

Is about, after all)

A cork board

(Well it isn't made of cork

But you get my meaning)

Supporting a framed facsimile

The good ol' family crest, Ryan

The silvery disembodied heads

Of three griffins

Malo mori quam foedari

A motto suited

For my pelt-clad ancestors

Though more of a novelty to me

A calendar, free

In some anonymous issue

Of a not-quite-girlie mag

Some hardworking latina miss

Or maybe just pretty

In elaborate stilettos

I'm not sure how she's helping here

(But hey, want is want, m'I right?)

And, obeying gravity

The device on which I "write"

A tool of versatility

Both in use and in cause

Of headache

An IKEA lamp

Adjustable angle and brightness

A necessary evil

Or perhaps just inescapable

And, ah, the cup of pens

With a souvenir letter opener

From Toledo, where Spaniards once went

For all their decapitating needs

And pencils, let's not forget them

After all, there was a time

When we were encouraged

To say what we felt

Until we said what we meant

(That's what I hear this poetry bunk

Is about, after all

[Hey, it works here too])

To our right, a stack of yearbooks

Taking care of nostalgia and regret

Seventh grade timid and pencil-necked

Eighth grade bolder

Though with even less fashion sense

Ninth's an odd one

Snapped hastily in front of a white wall

And apparently none too excited

(But I won't bore you

Suffice it to say

I grow handsomer and handsomer)

There are other books, too:

Man's Search For Meaning

Outdated travel guides

Novels by Vonnegut and some guy

Who went to Princeton

And here's one I don't recognize

101 Best Cover Letters

A pinch, a prod

From my mother

Who wants the best for me

But is still lousy at subtlety

There's stuff in the drawers, too--

But that's another poem, people

Did I mention my desk talks?

If not I should have

He says and I quote

In an acidic baritone

(Perhaps unbefitting its appearance

But what do I know about that)

"My name is Colin's workspace, desk of desks!

Look on my hard, flat surface, and despair!"

He's not very original, you see

With any luck

I can help him with that

Though you'll forgive me

For being skeptical

-Colin Ryan