National Poetry Month

My lovely friend Kat is having a super cool National Poetry Month giveaway.  I'm posting my entry here, and I think it would be a lovely thing to do in celebration of NPM for anyone with an inclination.  The line here comes from the poem in my last post. 

Happy poetry.

Quote from Carver, Note from Me

First, Raymond Carver, on writing: "Writers don't need tricks or gimmicks or even necessarily to be the smartest fellows on the block. At the risk of appearing foolish, a writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing--a sunset or an old shoe--in absolute and simple amazement."

And, from me: 'tis poetry month, folks. Time to read (and write) poems! I'm attempting to write a poem every day again, and hoping hard not to fail at it, as I did last year. Wrote one this morning, which wasn't any good, but hey! It exists! Which is what counts for now. I'm telling myself it's okay to miss days (although I'd prefer not to), so if I get 20 poems out of the month, I will be such a happy camper. I'll try to keep you posted on how it goes. I'll try to stand and gape at things in absolute and simple amazement.

Titles Never Used to Stress Me Out

Still writing a poem a day. This probably shouldn't make me proud of myself, but it do. Oh, it do.

I'm re-learning that thing that writers say--that you have to show up for work. That you sit in front of the computer and it seems like there's nothing in the world to say. But if you stay there, something arrives. And the more often you show up, the more the gears get slick and efficient and ideas barrel down the conveyer belt more quickly.

Last night I wrote when I felt really bummed, and it made me feel better. The PhD sort of beat the theraputic reasons for writing out of me, but I remember them now. It wasn't like the sadness went anywhere, I just put it on the page, put it to work. And it abated. I went to sleep feeling better.

Here's what I made, influenced by some useful cutting from Sam, but without real line breaks yet:


Bowing to the Melting Countertop

A black cat sits on the doorstep. When I coo, it runs off. The molten center of the planet agrees I am a disappointment. A volcano yawns.

Somewhere a car wash burns down. An orchid bows to a melting countertop.

“It’s a snap,” insists a shiny ant. “Extend your crunchy pincers and take prey by the thorax.” But it’s a big ant, the rainforest sort, mouth like a tractor. I am small.

I make spaghetti and feel like a failure. Washing dishes, I tell myself I tried. I really tried.

The members of the jury outside my window shake their heads.

The Lettuce in My Fridge is Going Bad

The statement is true, but lettuce is not actually the subject here. I just couldn't think of a title.

In other news, writing poems every day is cool. Hard sometimes, but cool.

Friday I wrote a sestina; yesterday I wrote one about running into my gay ex at the Hare Krishna temple's Festival of Colors; today I wrote one while watching House by stealing lines of conversation and ripping them violently out of context.

Doesn't this sound like more fun than cream puffs? Mmmm, cream puffs. Maybe not more fun than those. At parties in Mississippi when everyone one else was using booze as a social lubricant, I used cream puffs. Fill me with a few of those and I'm fine.

And that, dear friends, is why my jeans don't fit anymore.

Anyway, also wanted to share this quote from a documentary film maker that I loved: "A bad film stops when it's over. A good film starts when it's over."

True of all art, I'd reckon.

One other thing. Learned this on a podcast, from a sound artist man. He took a recording of seals under the water in Antartica, and I swear to you that it sounded exactly like electronic music, only really really good electronic music, better than humans can make. It sounded like outerspace is what it sounded like. Also, walruses clack their teeth under water and it's full of these beautiful, artful cresendos and decresendos. What does this mean?

I think it means this: We humans that think we're artists? Amatuers. Every last damn one of us.

April is the Cruelest Month

It's also National Poetry Month. My goal is to write a poem a day.

Join me?

Here's poem one. Don't think I'll post all of them, but today, sure.


Pretend Today is Yesterday

I write this at a stoplight,
journal propped on the wheel,
bobbing my head to check for the arrow.
All the words are taken anyway,
so what can it matter when or how
I slap these down?

"Was my heart the same color
as the rose?" asks the kid
on the radio.

"How do I tell the bad guys
from the good guys?"
asks the bird carrying a twig
four times its size.

Rose, Bird, I can't say.

When walking,
I pass shattered barbie flesh,
worms on the sidewalk,
a green apple flattened, browning.