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Welcome to the Antrim House Seminar Room. Click on the appropriate link below.
Edwina Trentham’s Stumbling into the Light
1. Consider titles—of the book, of its three sections, and of individual poems such as “The Way the Dark Opens Out into Light,” “Falling,” and “Stone.” Look at the titles of your own poems and find one that might be more suggestive, simpler, or less obvious. 2. For you, how do the book’s epigraphs relate to it? What epigraph or epigraphs would you choose for a collection of your own poems? Try ordering a group of your poems for a chapbook of 15-25 pages. 3. Consider line breaks when reading the poems in Stumbling. In what ways do those line breaks help to add meaning, interest, or resonance to the poems? Find one line break you find particularly interesting. Now go through one of your own poems to see if different line breaks might improve it. 4.
Do you consider “Beach Song” a fitting first poem? How
do you interpret the last five lines of the poem? (Note: a “waterbottle” is a sort of “sea grape”
found less often these days than when the author lived in 5. What clues lead you to an understanding of the situation in “Photograph”? (Note that the photograph in question is the one that appears at the beginning of the book’s first section.) Try writing a poem based on a photograph of you as a child, perhaps pictured with one or more members of your family. See if you can imply more than you state in the poem, perhaps some sort of family dynamic. 6. It is interesting to look at “The Short Way to the Beach” from at least two points of view: a) its relationship to the book’s title and overall theme, and b) its use of form. What is the essence of that form? You might want to read a formal translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy (Robert Pinsky’s, for instance) to see a rather famous use of the form. Do you know what it is called? For another use of the same form, read Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Now try your hand at this form, perhaps in a poem that describes a child’s perilous journey, short though that journey might be. 7. Consider the ending of “Souvenir” in which a “gentle sway of blue” vanishes “into the flowered meadow.” What, for you, is the psychology of the child’s act? What leads you to that interpretation? Try a poem of your own in which a child (perhaps you, perhaps not) performs an act inspired by the same sort of feeling present in “Souvenir.” 8. “My Father’s Heart” is breath-taking in its combination of strong emotion and strict form. It is good to read the poem at first without attention to its form, then allow that form to become more evident on additional readings. How would you define the form? Now compose a poem of your own using the same structure, perhaps a poem in which you depict a relationship with one or both parents. 9. In "Solace," the author uses another strict form--a canzone, which repeats five end words in a complex pattern--as a way of exploring her father's life in the context of a scientific theory. How does the use of this form enhance this exploration? How does the author vary the end words and what is the effect of that variation? Think about a scientific theory that connects in some way with your own experience, and use that as a metaphor to explore your experience. If you are feeling adventurous, read about canzones. Strong Measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional Forms, edited by Philip Dacey and David Jauss, has a clear explanation of the form and some good examples. Now try writing a canzone. You might want to keep in mind that forms like this one often lend themselves more easily to story-telling than to philosophizing, although like all rules about writing, this one is made to be broken. 10. The sonnet is another form used frequently in Stumbling, although the author favors loose sonnets marked by slant rhyme and syllabics (in which each line contains the same number of syllables), rather than meter and full rhyme. For examples see "The Summer I Decide Who I Am" and "Snake Song." Some poems of fourteen lines, also in syllabics but without a strict rhyme scheme also have the feel of a sonnet, as in "The Way the Dark Opens Out into Light" and "The Harbor." What is gained by the different uses of the sonnet form in these poems? Try writing a poem in free verse. Then revise the poem into fourteen lines, then into syllabics, and then into slant rhyme, following either the English or Italian sonnet rhyme scheme. How do these revisions change the poem? (For a survey of sonnet forms, slant rhyme, etc., web-search “Poetic Forms.”) | ||||||||||||
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Joan Joffe Hall’s In Angled Light
1. “The Envelope” (p. 17): What is the envelope? Is it one thing, or many? What is the role of the sun in this poem? What are the qualities of light in the poem? 2. “Driver’s License” (p. 57): What do you think of the ending of this poem? Does it fit the rest of the poem? Are there serious elements in this very humorous poem? If so, what is the effect of balancing humor and seriousness? Try writing a poem (or story, essay, letter, dialogue…) in which you describe some particularly frustrating experience. Consider mixing the humorous and the serious, and see if you can incorporate a general truth in your writing, as Hall does at the end of “Driver’s License.” 3. In “Autumn Roads” (p. 65) Hall juxtaposes seemingly unrelated ideas—the arrival of fall and the Roman invasion, cracked acorns and cracked skulls. In fact, her poems are full of abrupt changes or contradictions. Find some other examples. Do they work? Write a poem in which the first section moves in one direction, and the second section in a completely different direction. This could mean a shift in style or form, or a chance to explore an issue on which you are divided; for example, two sides of the self might address each other as in a debate or dialogue. 4. “Red” (p.59). Usually it is a small thing that brings back memories of our childhood, in this case an abundance of red cars (and, later, an abundance of black-and-white television ads). What brings you back to your childhood or to a time when the world seemed very different? Concentrate on specific details that are personal to you. Draw connections between memory, the world you lived in, and the things that trigger memory involuntarily. Write a poem describing a memory and what triggers it. Remember to involve the senses, presenting details of what you saw, heard, smelled, touched and tasted. 5. Consider Hall’s thoughts on children and parents in poems such as “Seed Sack” (p. 7), “Parenthood” (p. 8) “The Aperture (p. 9),”Conversations with the Dead” (p. 14), “Kansas, Sunstruck” (p. 16), “Envelope” (p. 17), “Red Moon” (p. 26), “Fowl” (p. 45), “Matthew at Thirteen” (p. 47), “Our Last Winter” (p. 49) and “The Pool” (p. 50).Ê What elements do you find in the poet’s attitude toward children and parents? Do you see any ambivalence or contradiction? Try composing a poem in which you reveal your own attitude(s) toward a parent, a child or a sibling, perhaps focusing on a single incident or a series of related incidents. Bear in mind that ambivalence is often the hallmark of truth and that it is usually better to be specific, to show rather than tell. Don’t be afraid of anger. Or of love. 6. After reading “A World Infested by Potential” (p. 4), write about a childhood event or series of related events arousing strong emotion in you—fury, joy, frustration, jealousy, regret, love… 8. Read the series of love poems on pp. 31-44. What sorts of attitudes towards love and lovers does the poet reveal? Do you agree with her? Try writing about a) an apparently slight “love-moment” which speaks volumes, as Hall does in “You Out There” on p. 33 orÊ b) about a rendezvous, as in “Raspberries” (p.31) and “Grass” (p. 38). Another possibility: write about a lust or a crush, as in “Courting the Muse” (p. 34) and “Crushes” (p. 37). Or write a letter/poem to a lover, ex-lover or would-be lover, as Hall does in “Letter to 9. “In Praise of Swimming Pools” (p. 51). Here, Hall delivers a eulogy concerning one of her favorite sites. Do the same for a place or thing you relish. 10. Write a “persona poem” as Hall does in “Weddings” (p. 83)—that is, a poem in which you speak in the voice of someone else. Assuming another’s personality and voice, as Mark Twain did in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and J.D. Salinger in Catcher in the 11. In “Gradually” (p. 97), Hall may be writing about an ex-husband. What makes the poem so moving is the degree of empathy it shows. In a poem about someone who may have hurt you or with whom you have had a falling out, see if you can achieve the same sort of empathy by imagining yourself into the life of the other person. 12. What do “Driving” (p.99), “Turn” (p. 100) and “Ice Cream Cones” (p. 102) tell you about the poet? Do other poems in the book show a similar quality or qualities? Write a poem in which you describe behavior in yourself that typifies you. It is probably best to focus on a particular incident or pattern of incidents. 13. “Still Life” (p. 104). Write a poem in which you or someone you describe is “released from the slicing of time” and exists for a moment “between what was and what will be.” 14. What role do diamonds play in “Swimming through the Perseids”? What would you say is the theme of this poem? Write a poem with a similar theme, perhaps one describing an event from your own life. 15. “Amy Lowell” (p. 109). Poems like this based on the lives of literary, artistic or cultural celebrities—people who have lived “on the edge”—can allow a writer to explore the sort of extreme behavior or startling event that throws light on the true nature of life. Try writing such a poem, perhaps doing some research to bone up on the life of a celebrity who intrigues you. |
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Pit Pinegar's The Physics of Transmigration
1. This is one of those rare poetry collections that reads like a novel. Each poem builds on the one before it, so we urge you to read the book straight through, from start to finish. In the end, it will be interesting to consider the ways in which the title might be construed. 2. “Setting the Record Straight” (p. 13) is, in one respect, a “catalogue poem” in the tradition of Walt Whitman. You might want to try your hand at a poem that catalogues a variety of things or events. How about a “how do I love (hate, fear…) thee, let me count the ways” sort of poem? 3. “Intimacy” (p. 17). Just as this poem begins with a quotation that the poem contradicts, you might compose a poem that begins with someone’s statement then takes issue with it. The statement might be a saying of a parent or teacher, a line from a song, something overheard in conversation, etc. It should be a statement that infuriates you or rouses some sort of strong emotion. Let ’er rip. 4. “Light” (p. 18). Try a poem in which you describe the early stages of a love when all is bright and shiny, perhaps a first rendezvous or meeting, a first getaway, etc. Play with the possibility of sustaining a metaphor, image or theme, just as Pinegar plays variations on the theme of Light. 5. There are many ways of rendering a portrait. In “Portrait” (p. 20), Pinegar can’t get past the beloved’s eyes, because he once said, remember us this way—/to your last breath. Think of a portrait you would like to write. What specific memory (or memories) and details intrude on the rendering of your portrait—making it both spectacularly true and not a whole picture?Ê Consider writing a portrait of someone you care or have cared about: parent, grandparent, child, friend, lover, spouse, et al.Ê Consider writing a whole gallery of portraits. 6. “Where There’s Smoke” (p.30) is an example of the use of synesthesia to create unexpected images. Imagine describing sound visually or what music might feel like. If you could hear color, what would it sound like? Write a poem in which your senses respond in unexpected ways to the world around you. 7. Pinegar writes about the power of imagination in poem after poem—the power of imagination to heal, to transform, to create a new reality by imagining it first. Look at “Imagination” (p. 31), “Before the Longing” (p. 52), “Your Death” (p. 54), “Distance” (p. 72), and “December’s Dying Light” (p. 79). Consider how imagination functions in each poem, how it shapes the poem, how imagination might also shape the life of the poet. Try writing a poem in which you must imagine something—the presence today of the mother or father, sibling or child who died many years ago; the child you didn’t have; the path you didn’t take. 8. The reader may not always be able to make the distinction between what Pinegar calls imagination and what she might call metaphysical reality. In many of the poems in the second section of the book— “ 9. The Physics of Transmigration is a love story, but it does not follow the usual prescriptions that Hollywood and the media generally set forth, since the love she describes does not end neatly with “and they lived happily ever after” and since she asks questions that we are not accustomed to asking: What if love is not so much about what we receive but about what we learn about our own capacities to love?Ê What if love is a multi-faceted adventure of the spirit? What if love always enables us to be more loving, as long as loss or fear of loss doesn’t cripple our capacities to be generous? Try writing a poem about what a “lost” love, a recalcitrant child, an impossible family member, a former close friend taught you about your own capacity to love. Make an effort to write your way past whatever barriers you might have constructed to mitigate the pain of loss or disappointment. |
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Norah Pollard's Report from the Banana Hospital A few thoughts.... When I was first called upon to give poetry readings, I would often preface the poem by explaining—rather defensively—that the poem was true. It happened. I could prove it. Part of the reason for this habit was my misguided notion that, if the poem were true, the audience could not criticize it. For how can you criticize the truth? I was dumb, of course. You can criticize the art of a poem. In fact, feel free to criticize the fact of it, too, if it's boring, or tasteless, or boring. Or boring. The other reason for telling the audience my poem was true was because my poems are true. I've tried writing poems about paintings or about subjects suggested by books on writing, but they have always been bad poems. They come out sounding flat and composed. And I don’t get the “high” from writing them. If it's someone else's idea for a poem, I’m like a toad attempting to suckle a mourning dove. I can't adopt it. Once I tried writing a play, and all the characters sounded like the same person—me. They were all talking to each other, and it was like one actor holding forth in front of one of those department store three-angled mirrors. Same person, different angles. Boring as hell. I might be a narcissist—all this writing about myself and my life—but I rather think it's that I lack the ability to invent. I can paint a real scene or recount a real situation, but I can’t create. I record. I transcribe my world. Sometimes I condense or combine the literal truths. In the title poem, “Report From the Banana Hospital,” I have changed two names. Also, Dr. Grimakis is a combination of a nurse and a doctor (who, hopefully, have found new careers). Sometimes I have added a detail, like the hooker's little dance at the end of the poem. But she did say what I wrote down she said. Milton was there. And the beautiful Cuban pianist. And Henry. I did take the bus home because I had no money. I did do a stint in the looney bin. I did have to fend off Milton. I did, I did, I did. I wrote "The Banana Hospital" because I wanted to record that experience in my life. I keep a diary (day-to-day stuff), and I keep a journal (ideas, opinions, observations), and I write down any dream that might provide me with a helpful insight if only I could figure it out. I have a writing compulsion. One morning a few years ago, public radio hosted an interview with a man who spent his time recording his life—every minute of it in minute detail—so that he no longer had time for anything else. He wrote and wrote and wrote, with no time to live or work or even think too much. This sounds humorous, maybe, but the man obviously had a sickness. I warn myself about this, so I won't end up in the booby hatch recording how many swallows of coffee it took me to get down how many little blue pills at what exact time in the a.m. and what the weather was doing when I swallowed them. Anyway, all this is to say that "The Banana Hospital" is true, critique it as you will. When I finally got through the depression—five years after it had begun and about a year after my hospital stay—I felt a messianic zeal to educate the world about depression. While I was depressed, both a relative and one friend suggested that I enjoyed my pain. Another told me I must "Get over it." And I see how a healthy person could want to say these things to someone who seems to refuse to see that life is so beautiful. What I was wanting to do after I came up out of the darkness was to climb up on a soapbox and give a speech. But what would I say? And to whom? Describing depression and despair is impossible because despair and depression are indescribable. Even the great William Saroyan in Darkness Visible could not capture it. Several years later I decided to make a record, a poem about my hospital stay. I decided to make it humorous so that it would be palatable, and also because it was humorous. (I can see Woody Allen being me.) Friends have told me I did not succeed in this, but I rather think that is because they know me and feel bad about the whole affair. I think if it were about someone they didn’t know, a fellow named Ralph Roisterdoister, say, they might grin now and then. I guess if I did get to make my speech about mental illness now, I would tell people that the cruelest adage in the world is, "God does not give you more than you can bear." Because, of course, some folks are given more than they can bear. And they crack up, or swallow ant traps with a quart of gin, or murder the plumber. It's not a character flaw that we do not prevail at all times. Everyone has a breaking point. Everyone. And so we must have compassion and tenderness for those who break. And if you want to point to a person who’s been through hell and has come out of it intact, and if you are inclined to say, “But, see! He bore what got dished out,” remember that he has just had not reached that circle of hell that would break him. There. See. I would be a terrible mental health speech giver, because beyond saying that everyone has a breaking point and therefore we should be compassionate towards those who have reached theirs, I have only this to say: The human spirit is an incredible thing. It can subsist on so very little. It can come back from the dead. It can also leave you absolutely. Wandering back to my theme of True Poems, "Lucy Dancing" and "The Seal In the Wave" are the only "untrue" poems in the book, though the men in "The Seal in the Wave" are certainly men I have known. And the seal is living with me now. I don't know where "Lucy Dancing" came from. A true aberration. Do I contradict myself? So my poems are a selective record of my life and what I've seen. My depression lasted from 1978 to 1983. It was in 1983, at the age of 43, that I started writing. I wrote, in part, because my fine therapist had said that the dreams I wrote down for him were well written, and that made me feel I could do something beside make a plausible meatloaf. And I wrote in part because coming out of the blackness into the blindingly beautiful world made me want to write and write about it, in terms both black and bright. |
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Rennie McQuilkin's Private Collection
Many of the images which inspired the writing of these poems are well known and can be found on the internet. Others are unknown and can be found here.
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FIRST MEMORY Author’s Note: This poem really is about my earliest memory: I must have been two or three years old. I had climbed up onto the sink in the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet, taken out my mother’s lipstick and was trying to apply it to my own face when my grandfather caught a glimpse of me. He probably mistook the lipstick for blood and rushed forward to rescue me. Large and alarmed, he was a frightening figure. What interests me about the memory are the themes of beauty and transformation and their link to danger. Writing: What are some of your earliest memories? They are sure to have emotional power. Select one and try writing about it.
WORMS Reading: Does the child narrator’s misconception about the origins of the worms she sees after a rainfall reflect anything about her attitude toward life? How does her attitude differ from that of her friend? Writing: If you are looking for a topic to write about, think of some of the misconceptions you had when you were very young; put yourself back in that frame of mind, and see what kind of writing results.
HOOLIGANS Reading: Notice that this poem begins with an open window and ends with an open door. Why do you think Connors structured it that way? Which parts of the poem are in the present and which parts are in the past? (How often we travel from the present to the past and back to the present, with sometimes a side trip or two into the future.)
LEGACY Reading: What kind of legacy has the narrator received? Writing: Think about family legacies and try writing about what you have received. If you are a parent, what kind of legacy do you think you are passing on? What legacy would you like to leave?
WE ARE CIVILIZED Reading: What is the significance of the title? How does this poem relate to the previous one (“Legacy”)? Writing: It’s a special challenge to write about the things that are not said, the actions that are about to happen, the things unseen that influence what is shown before us, all the borderline area between two states…but this is powerful territory.
HUNGER Reading: Try to imagine what might have happened to the woman in the poem before the scene described and how it has influenced her approach to life. When she encounters the bear, she is afraid of it and yet there is an instant in which she recognizes some kind of kinship with it. What could this woman and the bear possibly have in common? Writing: Try writing a poem about what comes either before or after the events related in “Hunger.” Or write your own poem about an unexpected encounter with an animal. Think about what the animal may represent.
ENTERING THE FOREST Reading: What might the forest represent? If you are familiar with the motif of the Hero’s Journey in mythology or classical literature, you might try comparing it to the journey in this poem.
THE TURN Reading: Much of this poem is about sleeping and dreaming. What else is it about? What is the significance of the first two stanzas?
THE SWIMMER Writing: This is an active poem. List all the verbs in it. Think of a scene or event you would like to write about. Start by making a list of possible verbs to use. Then write your poem.
BARBARIANS IN THE KITCHEN Reading: How does this, the title poem, relate to the theme that Connors states is the impetus of many of the poems in this book? (In the Afterword she talks about the intersection of wilderness and civilization as an inspiration for much of her writing.) What is the source of the narrator’s ambivalence as she tries to get her children to interact in ways that are more acceptable?
A RELATIVE STRANGER Reading: Have expectations, spoken or unspoken, conscious or unconscious, ever interfered with your ability to relate to someone else?
TRACKING THE BEAR Reading: What kind of journey are this mother and son taking? What’s going on in the last two lines of the poem? Writing: In this poem, the boy is compared to a bear. Think of a person that you would like to portray; what animal could represent him or her? If you want to write about someone, try working out the animal comparison and weaving it into your poem.
DAUGHTER, SIXTEEN Author’s Note: This poem was written as I observed my daughter practicing leaving. As college and then adulthood loomed closer and closer, she practiced distancing herself from us. I had to practice the same thing. But when I looked at her, I saw someone terribly young, beautiful and vulnerable; thus the spring imagery.
MY SON TURNS TWENTY-FOUR Reading: What would the poem be like if it were written from the son’s point of view? Writing: Take a poem or story you are familiar with and retell it from a different point of view. It would be interesting to take a piece you yourself have written and rewrite it from an alternate point of view.
A HUSBAND’S REFUGE Writing: What is your refuge? What about the people around you?
NO OTHER LIGHT Reading: What is the tone of this poem? There are several polarities in this poem; for instance, intimacy and separateness. What other polarities do you notice?
AMONG THE HALF-GROWN Author’s Note: This poem is dedicated to the students and staff of Sedgwick Middle School.
ANTHONY AFTER SCHOOL Reading: Compare and contrast this poem with “Barbarians in the Kitchen,” “My Son Turns Twenty-four,” “Seizure,” or any other poems in the collection that seem to connect to it in some way. Writing: This poem relates a failure in communication. The narrator meant to give one message, but it is not what came out. Have you ever had a similar experience? Or can you imagine one? Write about what you said and what you actually meant to communicate.
LOST, LEFT BEHIND, DISCARDED Reading: Compare and contrast this poem to “Among the Half-grown.” Especially consider tone.
ANOTHER SCHOOL SHOOTING Reading: In most of Connors’ poems, she uses standard punctuation. Why do you think she eliminates all but the final period in this poem? Writing: This poem is a persona poem. You might find that writing in the voice of your subject is an effective way to find greater understanding of the person.
PIERCED Reading: According to the poem, what is the girl battling? What is the mother’s response? Does this poem remind you of anyone you’ve met? Do you think the poem oversimplifies the mother, the daughter, and the situation? Compare and contrast this poem to “A Relative Stranger.” Writing: Connors uses this poem and “Another School Shooting” to try to begin to understand some young people who have made negative choices. Think about the people or situations that worry or mystify you. Write for understanding.
GIVE ME TOMORROW Author’s Note: This poem is dedicated to soldiers of every nation, of every time…and also to those who fervently work toward a more peaceful world.
PRESENT AND IN AWE Reading: Relate the poem to its title.
THE WEIGHT OF BUTTERFLIES Reading: What kind of stories are mentioned in this poem and why do people need them? If you were to paint a scene from this poem, what would it look like?
ODE TO SKUNK CABBAGES Writing: Pick something common, something ordinarily overlooked: dandelions, chairs, or shoe laces, for example, and write a poem of celebration or appreciation on this topic.
GIANT BLOB OF SLIMY FLESH REMAINS UNIDENTIFIED Reading: How would the poem be different if the slimy blob were identified? Writing: Where do writers get ideas? The world is full of them. This poem and the next one in the collection (“Rare Albino Tiger Escapes”) are based on news accounts. When you read or hear the news, make note of interesting items that could become the basis of a poem.
RARE ALBINO TIGER ESCAPES Writing: Think about that part of yourself that could be symbolized by the tiger in this poem. What would happen if you let it out? Write about it.
THE GREAT CIRCUS FIRE Reading: This is a true story. What keeps it from being a simple recitation of the facts; what makes it a poem? Author’s Note: The question above is one I struggled with while writing the poem, and I’m still uncertain about my degree of success or failure in transforming this true, tragic event into a narrative poem.
COWS STOP TRAFFIC IN WEST HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT Writing: Do you delight in the absurdity life offers so abundantly? If so, think of some examples and use them as a basis for writing.
AFTERWORD In the Afterword Connors talks about an overriding theme that resonates in many of her poems: the intersection of wildness and civilization and the tension between the two. Identify the poems that you think most relate to that theme and explain why or how they relate. |
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Some new poems since Ecstasy Among Ghosts
"Voices" is a poem I’m working on that tries to sort out those sometimes disconcerting Suddenly, from inside,
VOICES There are times when, in my mother’s voice, I also hear it when my daughter speaks- Then my boy speaks with his brother’s voice, "Back Pages" is a blank verse acrostic which uses the months to depict the passage BACK PAGES Ah, but I was so much older then, Just another day of flawless clarity, Frankie and Rosario out in front Memories of joining the service out of spite, Angelo was the first to mutiny, Men grow up to see their fathers die, Joey showed up drunk one Christmas Eve, Jalopy parked against the curb, you posed and after that she brought you home to Mama. Soon enough you’d get to know her dad; Once there was a time that you would joke -- no chance that they’ll return. They don’t exist. During the day now you are in your cellar get down feebly on your iron knees,
WATCHES Agostino says, “For knock-off Rolexes
THE DUTIFUL CAR My father makes his way to his grandson’s home, They arrive at the party to everyone’s delight, He tosses his keys in the basket on the table People graze around the kitchen table, I press the button on the little pad, The guests have now begun to fix their plates, Then someone says, “The car is on again.” And picking up the key-ring one more time, I think about the dutiful car out front
Derek is a family friend who has been a fire man for years and when FIRE MAN The fire pit was a rusty fifty-five gallon drum pulsing and dancing to a larger flame. and charred to an ember. The moon split of his mouth, and recalled how cornered of unearthly manic joy as he spoke of the order where the “D” was, erased it from the sand, stick he twirled, dancing frenzied on the sand. |
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Michael Cervas's Inside the Box
1. Why might the poet have chosen to begin his book with the poem "Geology" (p. 15)? Why is "plate techtonics" an apt metaphor for poetry itself? For memory? What other poems in the collection suggest "plate techtonics" of their own? 2. What major themes and motifs characterize the collection of first poems in "Local Geography"? Consider carefully the titles of each poem. 3. How does natural imagery—mountains, stones, brooks—shape the poet's early poems in "Local Geography"? What does the imagery suggest about the speaker of these poems? About youth? 4. The poems in "Local Geography" all seem to be about coming of age. What images of youth and innocence are juxtaposed with images of awakening sexuality and maturation? 5. In "Choosing" (p. 30) the poet carefully repeats several words, images, and phrases. How do these repetitions link each moment in the 6. Pick any one poem and analyze the line breaks. Why does the poet choose to end and begin his lines with certain words? 7. Many poems have a shift or a turn, moving the poem effectively from observation to reflection. What poems have a clearly identifiable turn? Is this turn toward the end of the poem, in the beginning, or somewhere in the middle? 8. The poet seems especially concerned with stolen moments and seconds, snapshots of time preserved delicately through verse. Why is poetry, in particular, an effective means of capturing these moments? Select several poems from the collection and discuss the ways in which the elements of poetry—figurative language, imagery, diction, line breaks—work to underscore the importance of a particular moment in time. 9. Look closely at the four poems about the sport of squash: "Sunday Morning Squash" (p. 45), "The Grip" (p. 46), "The Serve" (p. 47), and "Inside the Box" (p. 48). Why does the poet find squash a particularly "poetic" game? How do these poems inform our understanding of the book's title, Inside the Box? 10. What kinds of things does the poet lament in the third section, "Lament"? Is there a tension between reality and expectation? What also might the poet be suggesting about progress? 11. In the poem, "On Getting from Here to There" (p. 69), the poet asks: "What will we discover then, when our journeys are complete?" But he seems more concerned with the nature of the journey than the destination. What examples does he give of journeys he seems to cherish? Why might these journeys be better, compared to the faster, modern means to ends? 12. Why might the poet have chosen to end his entire collection with the poem "Fire" (p. 102)? |
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Geri Radacsi's Tightrope Walker
1. Ekphrasis can be defined as a verbal representation of visual images. The Oxford Classical Dictionary says it is “the rhetorical description of a work of art.” Horace, born in 65 B.C., and a leading Roman poet, in Ars Poetica expressed the ekphrastic ideal of giving voice to painting and had as a principle, ut picture poesis, “poetry as a speaking picture and painting as mute poetry.” The earliest examples of ekphrastic poetry focused on utilitarian objects such as goblets, urns, vases, chests, cloaks, weapons and armor, and architectural ornaments. Select an ordinary object, a kitchen knife, a dog’s leash, an IPod, a hammer, mirror, clock, lamp, remote control. Write a self-contained description or interpretation of this thing. Write a poem where it is possible to “insert” the description in an appropriate place. 2. Note how this poetry collection is structured. How do the title and last poem, “Tightrope Walker” suggest an overriding theme? How does Idyll relate to Cold Rain and in turn to Tightrope Walker? How do the three sections present a progression of thought and overall arc of this book’s theme? 3. Historical background research was done by the poet in writing poems grounded in such art masterpieces at Matisse’s “Dance,” “American Gothic,” John Singer Sargent’s “Portrait of Madame X” and the famous photograph “Migrant Mother, 1936.” How can historical details create nuances in a poem? Select a painting or photograph (not necessarily a celebrated one), and write a poem in which you not only use close description drawing on all the five senses to produce evocative imagery, but also invest the poem with a “history” either factual or invented. (Study Madame X for its sensual details.) 4. Consider the “persona” speaking in “Migrant Mother (Part I)". What’s the point of view, tone, attitude of the speaker? Find a photograph taken on a special occasion (birthday, anniversary, holiday festival, vacation) and write a persona poem drawing from one of the people pictured. What is this person thinking, feeling, hiding? Make the voice distinctive enough to resonate with ironic meanings. 5. Notice the difference in voice, attitude, and outlook of the two mothers speaking in Part I and Part II of “Migrant Mother.” Select a picture of your mother, and write about her qualities from different perspectives: of yourself, a sibling, her brother/sister, her husband, co-worker. 6. Consider the “persona” speaking in “Neferiti’s Missing Eye.” How would you describe this individual’s tone, characteristics, goals, and fantasies? Assume the role of a painter or sculptor and, write a poem in which the artist/speaker directly addresses the subject or model being transformed into an art form. Try experimenting with two opposite tones of voice; for example, the speaker could be in love with the model in one poem and be angry at the model in another version. 7. Look at “Sonny on Trumpet in the Quarter” and how it melds musical and personal themes. Select a musical form (classical, jazz, rock ’n roll, be-hop, hip-hop, rap, whatever). Taking the artist’s point of view as your favorite song is being performed, write a poem showing how it feels to bring the music to life. Use images that transform the music into words. 8. Online there is a useful site to look at some 40 ekphrastic poems accompanied by images. Ekphrastic Excursions is found at the site: http://www.dwpoet.com/poetassign.html It is the creation of Prof. David Wright of Wheaton College and contemporary as will as classic poets are represented. Include are W.H. Auden, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Hayden, Lisel Mueller, Frank O’Hara, W.D. Snodgrass, Wislawa Szymborska, and William Carlos Williams. For an exercise, look at Randall Jarrell, "The Bronze David of Donatello" and compare and contrast that poem with “The David” in this collection. Consider such questions as how the poets have responded to the figure in the sculpture, the history, re-creation of the art through verbal means. What is the point of each poem? Is it the same as the work of art? What’s the point of view of the narrators?
9. “Einstein, Man of the Century” was inspired by a Time magazine cover. Depict your own Man or Woman of Any Century in an ekphrastic poem. The subject could be a revolutionary figure, such as Ghandi, Madame Curie, Abraham Lincoln, Mother Therese, Jackie Robinson, Eleanor Roosevelt, or some other historical/political/literary/scientific giant. Look closely at minute details in a picture of the subject. Now decide on an approach you will take as poet to write about this subject. Some ideas: give voice to the subject through a “persona”; use the image/photograph to examine personal issues; conduct a narrative conversation or interview with the subject (what questions would you ask your subject?). 10. Art sometimes provides strong reactions. Look at “Woman in the Waves (Ondine).” Select a painting of your choosing and write a poem focusing on what feelings it elicits. What details in the artwork trigger them? 11. Various sources agree that the “original” classic ekphrasitic poem was a description of Achilles’ shield in the 18th book of Homer’s the Iliad. Some noteworthy historical examples of ekphrastic poetry are W. H. Auden’s “Shield of Achilles,” Keat’s “Ode to a Grecian Urn,” William Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” John Ashbery’s “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” and William Carlos Williams’, “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.” More contemporary examples include Sylvia Plath’s “Colossus,” and Robert Hayden’s “Night Blooming Cereus.” Study some of these poems for their ekphrastic elements. Try writing a poem using the form of one of these poems, but just for fun argue with the poet you’ve read and present an opposite stance in your poem.
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Steve Foley's A Place at the Table
Additional poems composed since the book appeared:
SMOKE While his dad snores away We’re backed against the worn brick chimney, He’s a different twelve than I am, When the Camel burns down
A MURDER OF CROWS 4:52. 4:54. My wife’s undisturbed sleep-sounds behind me, The cacophony expands, At the window now Before I know it I’m through the kitchen, when from my right
THE YEARS SPEAK THEIR MESSAGE TO MY MOTHER We will allow you the story how you’d speed up at the dead spots the streetlights couldn’t reach, how you’d see three, maybe four cars tops how you’d turn onto Colonial, Yes you can have that story, and we won’t allow you to remember |
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Parker Towle's This Weather Is No Womb
Every book is the very best the author can create at one point in time. Mine represents thirty-five years of pretty steady study and Engagement in the craft of poetry. It is my unofficial New & Selected collection. How do you approach a book of poems? I study the cover art which may be very pleasing in itself. I encounter the typography and overall production somewhat passively, I must confess, then advance to the back cover or fly-leaf blurbs. It’s nice to learn the names of certain friends of the author, and some knowledge of the contents may even be acquired. Biographical material about the author may be of interest, depending on our critical tendencies. Next it may be well to scan the author’s book credits, poem acknowledgements, other prefatory material, epigrams, and notes to individual poems, perhaps, compiled at the end, so as to be oriented to their location and content once the actual reading begins. Some readers may sample poems in the various sections of a volume. Being locked into narrative tendency, I find it best to start at the beginning. Infrequently I start at the end and work backwards. This may be out of laziness or contrariness. With more lyric poems it may matter very little. Those obsessed by puzzles, games and mystery novels may try to figure the reasoning behind poem groupings in the sections of the book and the naming of these sections. They may or may not succeed. It probably will not matter. The groupings may be to some extent outside the author’s (or even the editor’s) consciousness. Like the poems, like our children for that matter, we do not own the books we write. They pass through us, but they belong to the world for better or for worse. Typical of physicians and pedagogues, perhaps, I’m lecturing when I should be provoking my audience into thought. Well here’s a question: is poetry dead as some literati claim, I suppose, because it doesn’t fill stadiums? No, say others: it is taught more and better than ever before, and written more as well. What makes poetry novel and irreplaceable in the creative arts? It follows tradition. “Old Friends” and “”Spring at Town Hall Bridge” are two examples. Yet new forms are created; see “Variations on a Riff by Eubie Blake, Dead Age 100, 1984.” More importantly, poetry expresses itself physically, a literary form steeped in sound and beat like music, but carrying the richness of human language and meaning. With great concision it conveys mystery and surprise. It liberates imagination from the shackles of story. These features will be found in prose fiction, memoir and biography as well, but there is something uniquely primordial in poetry that will never be attained in any other form. Poetry will live on as long as language survives. I offer “Biking Remembered,” “The Architecture of Nine-Eleven” and “Mount Mansfield, Age Eight” as highlighting physicality, surprise and imagination respectively. You will find many more examples in this book. They are yours. Hopefully, they will touch you, and above all please. |
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“What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.” Soren Kierkegaard. According to the Kierkegaard’s definition, I am not a poet. I am a relatively happy person, in fact, more so than I have been at many times in my life, and am writing more poetry now than at any point save for my late teens when I churned out reams of stream of consciousness prose and poetry without stopping to consider whether or not it was any good. Still, “when in doubt go dark, and if still in doubt go darker;” has long been my fiction mantra and has been known to find its way into my poetry. It is also fair to say that I am a bit of an accidental poet, as I devote more of my time to short fiction. This has led friends and students to ask me whether I consider myself a short story writer who writes poems or a poet who writes short stories. I answer honestly that I am at a loss to see what the difference is. All writing is a mixture of ego and inspiration tempered and humbled by grinding hours of revision and doubt. One per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration, as the saw goes. Be the task an op-ed piece, a short story, a poem, or essay the process, from what Richard Hugo calls the initial “triggering” to the final draft, if there is such a thing, is a solitary slog. My friend, the songwriter and novelist, Bill Morrissey, points out that a musician may get ten or fifteen years to gather enough good songs for a first album, honing them over time in the clubs and bars while discarding the duds and polishing the gems, but once the album is released, faces the daunting task of creating another dozen songs in the next year for the follow up recording. In my twenty years in the music business, I averaged an album of new material about every five years—two to three songs a year if you spread it out. A poet who manages only two or three poems a year risks being forgotten between books. For me, songs came in bunches, and I find that poems and stories do as well. What is important to me is to always have work in progress, regardless of the genre. I may work on new poems and stories the same day, or on revisions of each almost simultaneously. My greatest fear is to have nothing in the works. That is why I get up early most days—the more hours the more opportunities to discover some “triggers.” I find the prose and poetry processes to be similar. The main difference is that short stories begin with a character or characters, while poems spring from smaller moments, more concise visions. In this way poems tend to come to me like stream of consciousness or interior monologue, one spark leading to another. Poetry gives me an outlet or opportunity that contemporary fiction allows me less frequently, and that is to explore lyricism. Contemporary poetry embraces vocabulary with a fonder zeal than contemporary short fiction. One need only read the vacuous slice of life prose that clogs the pages of the few national rags that still print fiction to see what I mean. For every wonderfully crafted William Trevor story in the New Yorker there are a half dozen dreadfully, self-indulgent, “frozen moments” of what is alleged to be an insightful look at contemporary life. It bores the hell out of me. Working on poetry makes me a better fiction writer, more concise, more evocative, and from fiction I have learned the importance of structure, which, I believe, improves my poetry. Lately, I have been trying to put to good use some advice I learned from Baron Wormser. He says that he often reads poems that seem unfinished, as if the poet were content to get enough of the job done to get on to the next thing. An emptiness is left behind. I am endeavoring to learn how to stay with the task to the end. This has sent me back to the poets who engaged me when I was in my teens and twenties: Yeats, Dylan Thomas, Blake, Whitman, Hardy, Yevtushenko, Frost, as well as to contemporary poets: Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, Dennis Nurkse, Dzvinia Orlowsky, Ted Deppe, Jack Driscoll, Leslie Ullman, Betsy Sholl, Terrance Hayes, Brian Turner, Gerald Costanzo, Shara McCallum, Carolyn Forché, Kurt Brown, and Laure-Anne Bosselaar, to name a few. I have also been floored by John Stanizzi’s book Ecstasy Among Ghosts, which you can order right at this website. In short, I am delirious to be here and grateful to Antrim House for allowing me into such a grand and accomplished family. A new poem: SHOES My dog gets as excited Sandals, boots, flip-flops, |
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This is a portrait of Jocelyn Sloan painted by Ann Scoville when she and her husband Pete Scoville were in Rochester during the 1940's, when Pete was affiliated with the University of Rochester:
And here is a letter Jocie Sloan wrote to the editor-publisher of Geisha, during the days when he and she traded poems at 1250 East Avenue. In it are some interesting stories about her youth, and of course the spontaneous style of the letter is very Jocie.
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I have noticed that some people shy away from the word "hospice" because of what it represents to them. Yet in reading to literally thousands of hospice patients and their family members over the past seven years, I have learned that they are filled with love and sometimes humor. Many openly share that love and hard-earned wisdom in the poems presented in Perspective. The poems also provide an inside look at hospice life, in particular the work of nurses and volunteers. Hopefully this poetry collection will help attract others wanting to further that remarkable work, which is repeated at hospice locations everywhere. The following are some new poems not contained in the book:
REQUEST Propped against pillows, I read "Just For Today," Sensing one more poem I lean forward to hear I gently hold her hand She closes her eyes, sighs.
The street I was raised on We children in Public School 108 The lucky ones like me had And therein lies the secret To love and be loved. |
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Since this is a seminar, I will treat the following as a lesson on where the poetry in this book came from. The only point that I am trying to make is that we should see clearly, within ourselves, the wellsprings from which our poetry comes. So I share what I have always known are the roots that form a basis of my approach to life and poetry. I grew up in an affluent suburb of Toledo, Ohio, but I have few remaining ties. If you should ask me where my spiritual home is, I would have to say the vicinity of the Ohio Valley around Steubenville. This is where both of my parents came from and where some members of my family still reside. It is the location of the “Erwin Place”—my grandfather’s farm. From time to time poetry was quoted at the supper table along with discussions of politics, etc. One time I mentioned that I was studying Bryant’s “Thanatopsis” in high school and my grandfather could quote the key portions of it. Likewise, I remember a long conversation that my mother, grandfather and I had that stretched to 2 A. M. It ended with the two of them quoting “Gray’s Elegy”, “Horatio at the Bridge” and other old jewels of English and American poetry. But home for me is not a place; it is who and what. Home is my wife, Janet, my family (both biological family and married-into family) and my old friends: some still here, some gone from sight. Finally, it is in the words of the English language that I find a lasting home. I revel in the sounds, cadences and the rich tapestry of my language: the golden lode of flexible, free form, always changing everyday language of America. At 72, I know that the souls I hold so close and I, myself, will soon travel down the swift river. But by this river I plant this book showing that I was here, that I loved life and mainly saw the light that dwells in its admitted great darkness. From my parents and other family, I also see it in a somewhat jaundiced or slant way. Here I lay my analysis: usually not of me or my feelings but of what I see in life and how I see it (always analyzing says my wife). Part of what I talk about above is the subject of the book’s first two poems: “The Erwin Place” and “Words”. The poems following are as varied as a paint store. A number reflect a great joy in the material world around me (i.e. “New Milk”, “Drinking Glasses”, “Outcrop”, “Arioso”, Andromeda” and “Nightsong”). Some are about children and growing up (“Pockets”, “Rain”). Others are whimsical or slant views of the ordinary things in life (“Certainties”, “Leadership Skills”, “Medicine Cabinet”, “California”, “Cathedrals”). Still others are deeper, dark poems about major questions in life (“Birdfeeder”, “Funeral Parlor”, “Wand”). Finally, there are poems that reflect the darkness and injustice of life (“Empire State Building”, “Hart Island”, “The Summer of 1939”) and those that come out of times of personal pain (“Ad Astra”, “Winter Woods”). All of these and others are a gift from inside me to the reader. |
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Joan Kunsch's Playing with Gravity
Here are some scribbles for a seminar-in-progress, though in my opinion I sound like a ballet teacher pretending to know something about being a poetry teacher. I think that whatever I do in poetry is instinctive, not knowledgeable. I know what it feels like to abandon myself, to get lost in the reading aloud of a poem – mine or someone else's that I believe in and love – and can capture an audience, but I don't know what to say about making that process happen. I have to let it possess me. I want to help others to get closer to poetry, but can only say this: read and write constantly, don't miss anything that goes on around you, observe with energy and put your whole imagination into whatever you are doing. Help others to find something of themselves in what you are doing. And re-write, make your poem more direct, try to omit anything that is not strictly necessary. Often the renovation of a draft is as exciting a process as the initial writing, or more so. In order to rewrite, we need the gifts of distance (in time, from the first draft); of an editor or two whom we trust deeply; and About translations… Translating poetry comes almost more easily to me than translating prose. Perhaps that's not explainable – just a sense of the magical non-practical! Interrelationship between dance and poetry: The best dance is cleared of all unnecessary movements. There is a clear line, a certain momentum, an elegance (unless the role calls for other qualities). Likewise in poetry, all unnecessary words should be eliminated to dart straight to a mood, a moment, a relationship, a revelation. I believe that poetry is the highest form for use of language, and dance is the highest form of human movement. As a choreographer, I have not often produced a ballet based on words without music; however, "CantaNeruda" was one such work, premiered in New York City and also performed in Binghamton, NY. |
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Polly Brody's The Burning Bush & At the Flower's Lip These are the most significant elements that influence my writing: a sense of connection with, and understanding of the natural world, and the numinous kinship I discover between "science" and poetry. I frequently draw metaphors from the world of nature. Attributes of its fauna, flora, and the dynamic interplay of life with environment provide me with subject matter directly, but also with imagery that I use in poems having focus elsewhere.I am not an urban poet, because that is not my habitat. My writing stays within the frames of reference that are real to my own experience of them. I am not a "feminist" poet, and one will only infrequently read a political poem among my collections. This is not to denigrate any of the preceding, but only to say that my passions lie elsewhere. What reaches deep into me is: the poignancy of transience, the excitement of nature's inventiveness and profusion of expression, the mutability of all beings, myself included, and the implications of relationship. In this poem, I find a conjunction between science and poetic celebration: ONE ATOM FROM GREEN Leaves unfurled within my veins Yet replace that atom
REVIEW OF THE BURNING BUSH from THE MIDWEST QUARTERLY (Spring, 2007 (Vol. XLVIII, No. 3)
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Polly Brody's Stirring Shadows From The Comstock Review Other Nations (Wood Thrush Press, 1999) is Polly Brody’s excellent first collection. Its content centers around the poet’s “other career” as a biologist and ranges around the world she has traveled and visited during her life. Her second book, The Burning Bush (Antrim House, 2005), is a collection of essays and poems exploring the natural world in lyrical language and luminous vision. And her stunning third collection, At the Flower’s Lip (Antrim House, 2007), is filled with sensual, yet spiritual, poems which focus on the natural world. Amid poems of tree and flower, we watch a marriage unwind, a new lover tease desire from river, wind, and flower. And we are caught up and transformed by these earthy, transcendent poems that glory in the beauty of our natural world and our responsive, desirous bodies. Bravo! Now we have Stirring Shadows (Antrim House, 2009) with its poems recounting the darker side of the world and its peoples. She relates and contrasts these to the wonders of the natural world. She is a true visionary and a strong necessary voice in the poetic world. |
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Cheryl Della Pelle's Down to the Waters In the quiet of winter, I had the opportunity to take an eight-week poetry workshop with seven other ladies. We met weekly at St. Michael's Church here in Litchfield. Jennie Mathieson, the pastor, kindly opened her doors to us and joined in the workshop as well. The thrill of writing new work was evident each week. Everyone embraced the assignments with enthusiasm and we all could barely wait for our turn to share. We were given prompts by Nancy Miller, our facilitator, such as "death", "work", "surprise", etc. along with sample poems by other writers to give us a bit of a push. Winter's drear seemd to disappear and wa-la! it is April already! Winter writing is a perfect way to celebrate the new year, new life and to give the winter blues a kick! Here is some of what I wrote: PARTY TIME Just when winter has quelled you
WHAT COMES FROM DARKNESS Under snow slowly melting
WOODLOT MANAGEMENT Truman Capote said work |
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Brad Davis's No Vile Thing and Like Those Who Dream
NO VILE THING Is there something that gets your goat, yanks your beard, sparks your ire, never fails to darken your day? I can think of a couple of people, a few situations in my little life that qualify as sure-fire day-darkeners. But what’s really at issue here? Are they in fact as vile as I deem them? The book's title, NO VILE THING, is not a naïve assertion that nothing in the universe is yucky. It is rather a phrase borrowed from the third verse of Psalm 101: "I will set before my eyes no vile thing” (New International Version), a poem in which the speaker has a clear sense of the difference between what is from faith and what is faithless, what is true and what is deceitful, what is pure and what is perverse, what is honorable and what is prideful. There are also strong hints in the poem that when he speaks of, morning by morning, “silencing all the wicked in the land,” the psalmist is not committing himself to a social program but referring to his own inner struggle to “walk in [his] house with a blameless heart.” Here’s one purpose for making poems: by locking on to the yucky, hot button items in our lives and subjecting them to deep, honest scrutiny, we can in fact begin removing them from “before [our] eyes” – deleting them as the default foci of our souls – and refocusing on what would be life and joy to us. Or in the words of the psalmist, setting “love and justice” in the center of our vision. This seminar proposes a strategy for engaging this struggle creatively. Take the poem “Alison” on page 36.In the first three lines of “Alison,” there is a short list of vile things that, at the time of writing, had me fuming: an insurance company, the media’s lock-step cooperation with the government’s fear-mongering, and the government itself. I was feeling desperately alienated – impotent in the face of post-9/11, post-Katrina social forces – and angry, and the foci of my discontent were by no means petty concerns unrelated to matters of justice. Truth be told, however, I was not at the time interested in justice; my longing was for large-cale vengeance. Full stop. Problem: I did not and do not want to be a person whose motivational core is rage. For most of my life I have believed that it’s a trap to take on Big Wickedness by fighting fire with fire, returning evil with evil. Not that I presume to have discovered a fool-proof formula for effecting motivational alchemy, but I trust what I believe and have, at times, experienced: that there is a better way. For a solution to the funk I had slipped into, I opted for a strategy employed by martial arts masters and Jesus of Nazareth and modeled by such modern heroes as Gandhi, Rosa Parks, and Lech Walesa: to receive the energy generated by the aggressor and, through craft, turn it to his disadvantage. Neither fight nor flight were acceptable, so I had to stand and receive the full, alienating force of my powerlessness, hoping that, in the process of being pummeled, my imagination would discover how to redirect the force creatively, rage being an unacceptable telos or modus operandi for taking on Big Wickedness in any one of its manifold disguises. And what happened? As I gave myself to the internal strategy, I felt, after a season of self-pity (a pathetic starting place for making art), my emotional attention shift away from my own pain and toward an unexpected empathy for my twenty-something son whose sense of alienation, I had recently learned, made mine look junior varsity. The shift left me shaken, my heart straining in his direction. But because I did not want to embarrass him, I knew that the poem I now wanted to attempt had to speak of someone like him, a struggle more like his than mine. I began in my journal to play with language and point of view. After several drafts, it seemed good to let the character be wholly possessed of my interest in righteous vengeance but with an intelligence and determination beyond mine. It also felt good to let the character be female and young and, regarding her conviction, admirable. So admirable, in fact, that it might make my path through the mess look perhaps like a copout. Perhaps. And “Alison” was the result, named after a daughter of an old friend. Back to my opening question: Is there something that never fails to darken your day, something you regard as vile and best kept at arms length? Have you considered “the vile thing” as a source for poetry, poems that, through the process of making, move you from destructive obsession to a more creative and ultimately effective response? I’m not preaching poetry-as-opiate; Denise Levertov is my exemplar: poems can be actions against Big Wickedness, yes, AND there should be no divorce between a poet’s words and the daily pattern of her life. Rather I am proposing, in the description of one poem’s making, that there may be a way for you to translate a vivid encounter with “the vile thing” into a significant force for good, both in the force of your words and the force of your life. Shalom.
LIKE THOSE WHO DREAM POETRY & HOPE Hope takes a whuppin’ from the muscular tongues of cynics, doubters, hardened skeptics, and others who may have suffered disappointments in the optimism department and given up on the future. But hope is not really about optimism – or wishful thinking – which waxes and wanes inside your psyche and mine. Hope resides elsewhere, as though it were an immense power source, and we are either connected to it or not or wondering if there might be a way to get connected. In fact, hope isn’t really about the future either. The future, after all, doesn’t exist. But we do exist, and here in the present, we lean into what feels like the future either with or without a connection to hope. I believe a function of poetry is to effect, by way of music and metaphor and associative thought, just such a connection between the individual psyche (soul) and the reality of hope. Following on the dedication of NO VILE THING, “for those who struggle,” this new book is dedicated “for all who hope” – that is, all who, in the midst of struggle, sense a connection however tentatively with something more. Struggle is universal; hope seems to be in short supply. The question arises: how to make a poem that would serve to connect the individual psyche with the reality of hope? Obviously, one cannot if one does not think there is something called hope as I have begun to define it – hope as something that resides elsewhere, outside (as it were) an individual’s immediate circumstance. Now I know this sort of talk may make some look askance at the argument of this commentary, but that there is more to human existence than meets the eye, that there is mystery in and around us, should grant a seeker permission to use the imagination to “taste and see” whether any particular notion of reality includes that thing called Hope. My model for a poetry of hope is found in the Hebrew prophets whose confidence in God inspired them to speak of and write poems about a Day of YHWH in which wrong would be righted, the poor exalted, the proud brought low, the earth restored to a fullness (shalom) exceeding that of Eden – and this Day was not something far off in some distant future but was and is the day we have always called Today. Hope is kindled in us as we connect with what Jewish theologian and biblical scholar Abraham Joshua Heschel called God’s “pathos,” God’s passionate intention for all humanity (and all creation) that today reconciliation replace enmity, today excellence replace shoddiness, today justice replace injustice, today joy replace sadness. This “pathos” is the immense power source I think of when I speak of a hope that resides elsewhere and to which poetry may connect us. So how to make a poem that would connect a reader to hope? Such a poem begins with empathy and a willingness to entertain the twin possibilities (1) that there is such an energy or passionate intention as we may call hope and (2) that we humans have built into us the wherewithal for connecting or reconnecting with it. For example, in LIKE THOSE WHO DREAM, the poem “Intercession” began with an actual report of what happened to a student of mine on the “crew lake” one rainy spring afternoon. Now I am fully aware of what crew, the sport, represents – affluence and immense privilege – and my student “Emily” grew up familiar with all of that. I am also aware that her suffering on that day pales when compared to what she, too, would regard as true, life-diminishing suffering. But when this happened, I knew her well enough to know of her enthusiasm, as well as a wee bit of her heart and her vulnerability to the opinions of those to whom she looked up. I had even been her junior varsity soccer coach, and I had learned that, if I wasn’t going to play her, she did better when I gave her “the courtesy of a reason.” Empathy was no problem as this poem began. Quite to the contrary, I had to find a way to distance myself from my feelings. The choice of working within a tight form helped: fourteen decasyllabic lines – a sonnet-like thing. Of course, the first draft went on and on with all kinds of emotion-heavy language, so the second draft required, fortunately, a bunch of cutting and thinking about the formal constraints I had set for myself. Bottom line: I wanted better for Emily than she experienced that afternoon, and leaning lightly upon the Psalms’ confidence in a God who intercedes on behalf of the downtrodden, I went after “Him” as the one who, right now – today – could make a transforming difference in Emily’s experience. Is there such a deity? Is there even anything hope-like that exists anywhere and to which one may make an appeal on behalf of whatever may be wrong in the world? I actually think art, at its best, is an effect of hope’s unselfish pressure within the human experience, bringing into being today a sense of what is possible today if only we would connect and act in concert with hope’s energy and vision. Perhaps you have already written a poem of hope without thinking of it as such. Or maybe you’re feeling that it’s about time you tried your hand at one. Go ahead. Here in this election season, one candidate has positioned himself as the candidate of change, an ambassador of hope, and though I am wary of being played the fool by high-sounding but empty rhetoric, his message is timely and compelling. The Psalmist would warn me not to put any trust – or hope – in princes or presidential candidates from either side of the aisle. I don’t know. Of one thing I am, more or less, certain: hope is not for the future. Hope is for today and proposes that we live and write today, charged with its energy, its vision for the possible, willing to suffer the muscular reproach of cynics, doubters, hardened skeptics, and the like. For if hope is anywhere close to what I’ve described, then it is far better, by our words and actions, to aim at setting in motion consequences inspired by hope than to suffer moral collapse and the consequences of hopeless words and actions.
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Marilyn E. Johnston's Silk Fist Songs and Weight of the Angel SILK FIST SONGS The primary genesis for Silk Fist Songs was losing a beloved father and older brother within a year and a half of each other, at age 88 and 57, respectively. In 2001 the Towers fell, 2002 my father fell.and so began a year’s agonized deterioration of old age, heart failure, emphysema weakening him to a shrunken, emaciated fighter conniving, inwardly raging, and suffering against his own decline. He died exhausted in May 2003 five years ago. While Dad sickened, the world outside swirled with anthrax scares, terrorism threats, and build-up to the Iraq war that staggered and demoralized us. At this time, my brother, Ken, a postman, hard-working father of two draft-age sons, suffered an intense recurrence of hereditary Crohns, an intestinal disease that had first flared up in (and almost took his life after) his tour in Vietnam in the late sixties. He steadily worsened through all of 2003 and 2004. Later, he was diagnosed with cancer. He died tragically of Crohns and colon cancer in December 2004. Writing has been my “stay against confusion” since my post-college stumble into adulthood. My family was often subject matter. It was a bewildering corporate world I entered in 1973 and I was not ready. As a young person, writing helped me make a refuge and to negotiate the long process of developing a self against the pressures of an organization which simultaneously alienated yet, bizarrely, worked as a ground for much needed self-growth. I had to see myself challenged and mastering life. Writing poems was a way of strengthening and hearing my own voice. For twenty years, I wrote mainly with no audience but the silent witness in beloved books. When I left Cigna in 1991, I searched out other local poets and conferences and entered an exhilarating world of real life writing souls. Five years ago, writing and mourning merged into “one art,” as Elizabeth Bishop says they do in her poem on the art of losing. I’d come back from a hospital or home visit with my father or brother teeming with overwhelming emotions triggered by seeing them in an ultimate way, under the aspect of eternity. Each moment together started to feel like the “last time.” Just being with them, I would live through a poem. I had to write it, save it, study it. I saw their essence in a phrase, a hand gesture, a reminisence. Memories haunted me; images, patterns from the past came to the surface to be relived. Sometimes, unprecedented honest moments happened between us. Insights I could barely handle. Looking back on this now, I see it was a process of letting go, of reckoning up unfinished understandings. I needed to try to understand them before I could ever relinquish them (if I have). I also had to understand myself. In this process, the past poured out like opening Pandora’s box: childhood, teen-hood, coming of age, love and marriage. What kind of girl was it that my husband found in 1966 when he met me? How did I get that way? How was I formed? By whom? Who was I now? Who would I become, without these men in my family, their supportive and challenging presences and voices? I felt I had to re-bond with them on some new footing. “Life must be lived forwards, but it must be understood backwards, ” said Soren Kierkegaard. I lived backwards into time, wrote constantly, often in tears. A passionate momentum carried me. I searched memories, old photos, pulled out poems written long ago, revised them in light of the now wrenching experience of loss. Mourning has been the process of building a work of art that I hope is a testament to my love as well as a claim to my own character. These compilations I drafted became the core of the book that Rennie McQuilkin helped me finish.
WEIGHT OF THE ANGEL Over the years I’ve written many poems about my mother. In my forties, when I was attempting to shift from a long career in insurance to a life in poetry, I felt an inner clash. I was fighting her unspoken rules of “don’t risk, don’t delve, don’t be too different.” Poetically this drama began to coalesce around my mother’s vast, long-time collection of knick-knack “angels.” Symbolic totems, to me. One theme they suggest might be what Virginia Woolf called “the Angel in the House,” a name for a particular kind of ideal of perfect womanhood dear to the Victorian Era of which my mother (born in 1922) was a daughter. I wrote many poems trying to come to grips with this ideal, taking its measure, its full "weight" as legacy, both in terms of its hampering burdens and its positive gifts. What follows is a series of thoughts on particular poems, accompanied by ways of approaching those poems and possibly using them as springboards for your own writing. 1. “The Cornflower Blue Dress” began with looking at old photos and being spun back into the past. This poem recounts a brief and subtle drama with two forces clashing in silence. Can you characterize each force and the nature of their conflict? What does the final image call up for you in your life? Review “Angel Walking.” It too began with a photo. How is it different from and similar to “The Cornflower Blue Dress”? Idea for writing: Review old photos. Notice the clothes you were in. What were the subjective feelings of being inside those clothes? Describe those feelings and relate any memories that come back to you. 2. “Coffee,” “On Being Washed,” and “Crocheting” all hinge on step-by-step actions of a simple task. In each poem, what can you intuit about the inner character from the depiction of actions? What is revealed about the child/observer watching and selecting the details? What implications of relationship reverberate beyond the task at hand? Idea for writing: Make a portrait or self-portrait by describing the step-by-step operations of a daily task. Include details that can be seen as idiosyncratic to the particular doer. Close observations may allow you convey the essence of someone. 3. “Grandma’s Solo” and “Of Sunday Gone” employ the form of dramatic speech using a character’s own voice. Intuit all circumstances out of which Grandma is speaking her “solo.” What conflict is at issue? Weigh her last words, “It’ll only be for a little while.” What meanings hover there, some known to the woman speaking, some not? In “Of Sunday Gone” what is the speaker’s immediate problem, state of mind, understanding of her state and coping strategies? How do your sympathies fall, facing each of these dramatic speeches? Each is actually a speech-within-the-poet’s-larger-speech. Discuss this “ventriloquist‘s” own speech in “Critical Monologue of a Daughter.” Idea for Writing: Invent a dramatic monologue, employing words and style of voice from someone in your own life or from history. Let a one-sided conversation imply the circumstances of the scene, setting, and situation. Let the reader intuit the “players,” the emotions, and the problem guiding the content and delivery of this speech. 4. “Extra Gentle Tonette” is one of many poems that is written“in situ”—that is, it relocates a self in a place in the past and describes all the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and muscular pressures involved in the experience. How many senses are drawn upon in this poem? Do the images conjure insights about the experience and the characters? Idea for Writing: Put yourself back in a physical place and describe an experience there using details from as many senses as you can. Allow the reader to relive it with you and primarily let the sensory images speak for themselves. 5. “Odd Girl Out,” “Admission from Nowhere,” and “Love’s Way”: each poem turns on an intense emotional confrontation after long repression, wherein one character directly challenges another. In each poem, define the oppositions coming into stark encounter. How does each confrontation resolve? Can you think of similar “show-downs” in your own life? Idea for Writing: Narrate an intense emotional “one-on-one” in your own experience or imagination. Use third person narration, or narrate by directly addressing the other party—and follow, as you choose to, the stages of the show-down to the resolution or non-resolution reached. 6. Many poems present close description of an object: “High School Theft,” “Ceramic Figure,” “Hip Hop Tree,” “Brother’s Accordion,” “Cross-Over Locket,” and “Her Bonica Rose.” Discuss the details and meanings each object holds. What part does each play symbolically within the larger themes and narrative progression of this book? Idea for Writing: Find an object around the house, new or possessed many years. Describe it in detail. Let broader associations of the object flow out of the physical description, minimizing direct statements of its meaning.
Idea for Writing: Have you witnessed or felt a similar transformation
in a new setting with someone? Let details of the setting carry the
discovery of a perspective change.
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Elizabeth Thomas's From the Front of the Classroom
In the act of teaching, I am also a student – ready to learn, to experience new ideas, to meet new people. This is one of the thrilling aspects of my work as a poet and educator. It is also part of my creative process. Many of the poems in the book From the Front of the Classroom were inspired by young people I’ve met along the way. I joke with students and tell them – “More than being a poet, I am a supreme eavesdropper and people-watcher. I’m lurking and listening, always ready with a pencil and paper.” “Will you write a poem about me?” they often ask. Again, many of the poems in this collection are a response to that question. “My Muse” is my favorite poem in the book (at least today it is). It started as a 10+ page free-write. I could have gone on much longer, but at that point the poem was beginning to make itself known. In the classroom, I frequently jot down comments the students make and included many of their voices in this performance piece. I often use it in the classroom as an example of what the “art of eavesdropping” offers and enjoy giving it as an assignment – “Go out into the world (take the bus, sit in a café, go to the park during lunchtime) and listen. Then write.” |
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Ellen Rachlin's Until Crazy Catches Me
RELATIVITY
The Milky Way pushes its light years hulk From birthday to ceremony, And the ducks cross Canandaigua Creek
RADISHES IN CHILDHOOD
Simplicity and clarity are the essential elements leading to statements of complex truths in poetry. I tried to incorporate in that little story of planting radishes the various and opposed conditions of bland fact, of loneliness, of fear, of magic and of love.
TRAVELS Pain waits atop its web; its prey can’t unravel.
The triolet form (in which a key line is repeated
three times) works well for communicating one point. The form proves
that what is true combines all the clarity of what is brief and
the complexity of what is obscure. “Travels” is about
the fear of bad luck finding one despite all caution. The best one
can do is hope to survive the inevitable collision with disaster.
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Jim Kelleher's Quarry
I sometimes think I wasted my life trying to write poems. I wonder are the poems good enough to justify what I didn't do with my time and talents. I think I would have been good in a number of professions. And helpful. Then I think I have been provided a certain grace, or solace, to bear with all else life brings, providing I honor the gift I think I have. Viz., keep trying and the waters of the sea will remain parted. It's certainly too late to turn back now, and at least I have stories to tell. The trick is: don't look behind you, and especially, don't look sideways. EASTER PSALM You who send the gray geese high |
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David K. Leff's The Price of Water A PROSE POEM MANIFESTO The time has arrived to . . . break down the barriers of form between prose and poetry. – Walt Whitman
I believe in poetry that is equally welcome in barrooms
and classrooms. What better way to infect people with poetry than
to embed its music and spring-loaded thoughts in the ordinary format
most people use every day?
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Kenton Wing Robinson's The Water Sonnets I begin with a line from Flann O'Brien, that greatest of Irish novelists and newspapermen: ”When it comes to poetry readings, I've always sympathized with an acquaintance of Myles na gCopaleen's, who, upon finding himself at a verse speaking bout, 'hurried outside and tore his face off. Just that. He inserted three fingers into his mouth, caught his left cheek in a frenzied grip and ripped the whole thing off.' Thus is monotony defeated and dolorousness assuaged …” As one who not only has attended poetry readings but is guilty of reading his poems in public, I understand the impulse. But I don't plan to stop. Perhaps because I labor under a delusion common to my species: that I am not a bore. My poems, I may flatter myself, will amuse, provoke, delight, beguile and shock. (I will now put down my thesaurus.) And, after all, those who attended my readings were complicit in their predicament. Nobody herded them there. I bring this up because I am now the proud father of my first book of poetry, a slender volume published by Antrim House and titled The Water Sonnets. And I will be introducing it to the world at a book release party at the Hygienic Art Galleries in New London.Which is apt, as many of the poems owe their settings to New London and the region, and many are reflections on my curious occupation: newspaperman. Still, having written in happy obscurity for nearly 50 years, this feels a bit presumptuous, like one of those dreams where you find yourself strolling down Bank Street in your pocketless skin. I did not write my poems for this. In fact, even if I were never published, I would write still. It is a kind of sickness, this love of words, this need to shape them into small and intricate machines that you hope might live and breathe on their own. It's wonderful to be - at last - a book. But poetry only lives in the human voice, and a book of poetry is a dead letter until you open it and read from it aloud. And so, I will be reading from and signing copies of my book at the Hygienic, and you, dear reader, are invited. If, however, you should come and feel the urge to tear your face off, don't say I didn't warn you. |
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Lisa Sornberger's Returning Light Thank you for visiting my page here. Working on this book has been a terrific experience, giving me lots of joy and a deeper understanding of how to convey experience and emotion through language. I’ve been writing since I was a young teenager, as a way of working with the tumult that teenagers live! It came to me as naturally as singing, plus I grew up in a family that encouraged reading and respected language and the arts. "Write poems, but train to do something practical so you can get a job!” I was inspired by some of my favorite singer-songwriters, such as Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon, CSNY, plus the Beat poets, Sylvia Plath, and Erica Jong, to name a few. Some of the poems in this collection are brand new, some are pieces I began many years ago, but never really “finished” until push came to shove and I was ready to meet the opportunity of writing a collection. Joni Mitchell once said, “I write my sorrow, and I paint my joy.” Writing poems has always been a way for me to deal with sorrow, and transcend it. I hope readers can relate to the themes and emotions in the poems, and, ultimately, get a feeling of clarity, resolution, and joy in the process of reading them. Thanks to my editor and publisher, poet Rennie McQuilkin,
for understanding my vision, and sharing his abundant gifts for
language to help me fine-tune the work so I could say what I wanted
in the best way possible. And to my husband, John, who is so very
kind and smart (plus handsome, just a bonus-ha!), yet still fun.
He brings me happiness worth singing about! Also to Sandy Mastroni,
the painter whose work graces the cover. |
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Vera Schwarcz's Chisel of Remembrance
AMAZON.COM READER REVIEW A Beautiful Journey, April 20, 2009
The book was handsomely produced by Antrim House. Its cover by Rose Sigal Ibsen, another Romanian born artist with interest in Far East art, with its warm colors, sunflowers, and hints of Hebrew and Chinese calligraphy, offers a prelude to the poetry within. The invitation is unmistakable, in Vera's words: I work silk and wool, embroider The queen of periwinkle, daisies, trillium and
wart I love this book and highly recommend it to anyone who loves poetry.
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Susan Allison's Down by the Riverside Ways
As to the book: I have climbed up and down around Middletown for close
to thirty years. I am not the same person I was when I arrived.
I wrote boxloads of poetry over this period of time, and I praise
Rennie for selecting a good batch and making sense of it. The collaborative
editing process was extremely helpful for me and allowed me to focus
on a few themes. There are rivers, birds, and riverbirds in these
poems. There is my growing family. And there is this town. The poems in this book represent a selection made
between poet and editor. The selection was added to and trimmed
much in the way I edit my own poems. The poems look back over a
period of time in one place. They do not represent all of my poems
of this period or of this place. As to my own writing: As to being a poet: When I was young it occurred to me once that I should
live my life in service to my poetry. It was a decision I later
regretted, but it gave me plenty of material. It was only a matter
of time before I learned that this was a difficult if not impossible
proposition, as much as trying to make a living off of poetry. |
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RUMINATIONS OF A WRITER
Writing poetry in 5th grade: what happens when no art classes are offered in school! Later in the year, during the winter, when the darkness crept in early to steal the day, Mr. Allen caught me writing poetry when I was supposed to be studying geography. Since I was attending afternoon sessions, it got quite dark in the winter, as we didn’t get out of school until about 5:30 PM. I usually sat and looked out of the window after the advent of darkness. I thought seeing he headlights from the passing cars and the lights on the street was sort of magical. I had taken an interest in Haiku poetry, and I wrote about what I saw and entitled the poem, “The Town.” I was so absorbed in counting the syllables to make it a true Haiku that I didn’t notice the teacher watching me until it was too late I had obviously been caught. “I’m sorry, I’ll put it away,” I said, apologetically, hoping he wouldn’t tear up my creation. He reached down and put his hand on my arm. “Wait,” he said. “Let me read it.” I thought I would really be in trouble. “I said I was sorry,” I stated. “It’s OK. That’s really good. Poetry. You know that’s really good,” he smiled. “You saw all that looking out of that window didn’t you?” “I’m sorry.” “No. It’s OK. That’s really good.” He smiled. “It’s Haiku,” I said meekly. “I know. It’s good. You’re not in trouble. Try to study your geography, OK?” he asked. He didn’t tell me, he asked me. I always studied my geography after that, and Mr. Allen never had any more problems with me. *** Poetry followed me to college Standing in my dorm room I glanced over at my typewriter. It was sitting innocently on the desktop that the college had conveniently provided, sort of nestled in a corner amongst papers and a few books. It had been my mother’s, as she had purchased it in 1967 for some reason or other, but not being the studious sort she had left it in a closet to gather dust for a few years. That’s when I came across it and claimed it for my own. I had actually been quite surprised that she allowed me to keep it, and it had been my own trusted companion ever since. Now it was 1980. Both the typewriter and I were beginning to show some wear. I looked at it again. Words come out of that, I thought. Hmmm. Words. Words of wisdom? Maybe I could use this device to extract some knowledge from somewhere not usually accessible. What if, somewhere deep inside my psyche there is something like Carl Yung’s collective consciousness from which I could try to draw some answers? What if I could tap into some creative flow of knowledge, or at least delve into a portion of my brain that has up to this time been underutilized? Maybe I could crawl out onto the edge of my perceptual reality and get a glimpse from another realm of consciousness, or maybe I’ve been taking too many psych classes and I’m starting to get weird. No matter, I thought. I had nothing to lose. I sat down at the desk and pulled the typewriter away from the corner where it had been sleeping. I placed my fingers on the keys and played a few notes. Hi Well, I certainly got a lot to think about. I looked down at the typewriter still sitting on the desk before me. Then I re-positioned my chair and looked at it again. It certainly appeared inanimate, but something had just breathed life into it. I set my fingertips onto the keyboard again and attempted to play something else melodious, but only came up with bad notes. Huh. Whatever it was is gone. Nonetheless, I felt as if I had just had a chat with a wise parent, and it made me feel better and much more confident. Then I placed my fingers on the keys once again. Suddenly I wasn’t in such a hurry anymore. Tired of rainy weather?
A CHILD'S FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE WISCASSET SCHOONERS, 1964 It was a sweltering hot summer afternoon, as hot as it can get in Maine, and my parents, grandparents and I were heading home on U.S. Route 1 after being at a clambake in Boothbay. I was quite unhappy as I disliked seafood, especially clams and lobster, and wasn’t having a good day at all. On the ride home I had refused to talk and was staring out of the rear window of my parents Ford. That’s when I first saw them. . . “Ships! Look at the old ship!” I exclaimed suddenly. “Look! Look!” I screamed, gazing longingly at the Luther Little with her tall masts and rigging still attached, imagining ghost sailors might emerge from the fo’c’sle at any moment. “Quiet down,” my mother scolded, ineffectively, while my father cast a deprecating stare in my direction. “Look! Look!” I continued to yell, and then, “Stop! Stop! I have to see the ships!” “Let her see the old schooners,” my grandfather replied. “What harm can it do?” Rather than allow a four year old to bounce and scream uncontrollably in the back seat my parents likely assumed it would be better to indulge me. I couldn’t take my eyes off them----it was as if I recognized them. There was the smell of low tide, a hot summer breeze, seagulls and the schooners against the backdrop of Sheepscot Bay in Wiscasset. Finally my parents pulled me away and tossed me into the backseat of the Galaxie 500, my head hanging out of the window, longingly staring back as the car sped away. I watched the schooners disappear but never forgot them. I knew they were important, but I didn’t know why.
Photos of Wiscasset Schooner/s featured in the poem "Wiscasset Schooners"
The author with friends, the "haunted saddle," and wood
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A REVIEW OF THAT DARK LAKE FROM THE NEW HAVEN ADVOCATE, Nov. 18, 2009
Don Barkin, That Dark Lake The pervasive feel of Connecticut poet Don Barkin's first collection of poems, That Dark Lake (2009, Antrim House, located in Tarriffville, Conn.) is of a life lived in New England, trying to wring grace from a landscape at times harsh and from social interactions that tend to be attenuated. Barkin grew up in New Hampshire, which is fitting since his poems, in their formal precision and introspective nature, might make you think of the great American poet forever associated with New Hampshire, Robert Frost. Frost was the preeminent poet of eloquent nature and laconic people, insisting that poems should have a formal pattern even when most of his contemporaries embraced various kinds of experimental verse. That traditionalism lives on in Barkin's work, though it's clear he's also absorbed the other point Frost insisted on: American verse should sound the way Americans talk. Barkin has an enviable knack for marrying metric regularity with the rhythms of speech. His poems sound natural, which is why they are all the more effective when you realize they conform to formal patterns. Frost famously said writing unmetrical verse was like "playing tennis without a net," suggesting that such a practice would be slightly ridiculous and pointless. Barkin isn't as vehement about form, but says it keeps his poems from flying off into more chaotic areas of thought and feeling. But it's also the case that with poems so small and spare, full of perceptions about aging ("In Middle Age," "A Reunion,") and missed connections with others ("Our Marriage," "The Descent," "Out of Work") and self-conscious tales of parenting ("Evensong," "Sliding") and at times rueful, at times awed interactions with nature ("Upstream," "No Longer Tempted by Greatness"), the form leavens what might otherwise seem too much a slice of life, with views too baldly self-critical or diminished. The tightrope walk of form gives weight to the feelings in the poems. While many of the poems here register a gloom familiar to New Englanders, there is a sense of mastery in the lines themselves, of getting the upper hand on one's own dark side by thinking of all "that made you suddenly quietly glad / for what you'll only just have had." Frost was praised as a poet of philosophical consolations often found by contemplating nature and its creatures without undue romanticizing, but most of his critics point out there is a darker sense always lurking in his poems, an allowance that, no matter how precise our command of language and our human environment, there is something "other" in nature that has no sympathy for us. Barkin's poems seem to accept that less hospitable world as a given of nature and of human nature. It then becomes the poet's task to find some point of acceptance or satisfaction, often through humor and a sense of scale. Barkin, as a poet of quotidian life in 21st-century America, isn't making epic or visionary claims. He's putting a quietly lyrical spin on life with what might be considered a down-sized aesthetic, which is to say his poems, when I first heard him read at Yale's McDougal Center a few weeks ago, resonated with local realities. Imagine Frost alive today and living as a family man, school teacher and poet in suburban Connecticut. Might not he sound a bit like this:
Nothing More to Say
I remember last fall when the first frost pricked the lawn, I let my mower run for an hour in the shed until it shuddered and quit, the last fumes gone to heaven, the engine as good, or bad, as dead. It roared and sputtered and even sobbed the way people do when they have nothing more to say."
POEMS NOT IN THAT DARK LAKE
Ode to Ambition Ambition, you cocksucker,
Ode to Rte. 6 West-bound
In the Cemetery These stones don’t turn to watch me drive him
home,
The Persistent
A Graveyard Tale “Father”, “Mother”, “Susan”
-- three She’d feared that as their child she Comrades The Long-Married
At the Edge You can’t take your eyes off the boy slumping
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I am sometimes asked why I chose an odd title like Gandy Dancing for my book. Well, for one thing it’s the name of the title poem. But where did that name come from? “Gandy dancers” is a name given to men who worked on the railroad. Some research says they were nicknamed after the tools they used that the Gandy Corporation made. Other research disputes that as myth. Whatever the truth, in our neighborhood the hundred or so men who worked the rails were called Gandys. Their presence terrified my mother and the other women nearby on our country road a mile from the railroad station. I was a little girl when we moved into the house my father built in Newtown. It was quiet there, the kind of quiet where all we heard was the sound of crickets and birdsong. It was the 1940’s and only one or two cars passed our house each day on a road now so busy with traffic that backing out of the driveway is dangerous. I remember a pretty blonde teen named Cynthia walking past our house when the Gandys were walking to the package store at the junction of our road and Rt. 25. Cynthia swerved into our yard and Mom ran out and called her into the house. There also was nothing funny about our next-door neighbor Jewel hanging wash from her back porch and a Gandy who was lying underneath it making a crude remark. Jewel ran back into her house, locked the door, and phoned my mother and Wilma, another neighbor. Once again, we were all terrified. When Mom said stink and breath and big hands and touch
she was warning me, a little girl, to stay away from the Gandys
without saying rape or other words that weren’t said back
then. She was scared and nights were the worst because my father
was at work. The Gandys would sit on our porch drinking from their
bottles, singing and cursing until they fell into a stupor, so she
kept the bedroom light down low in an effort to “hide.”
She read stories to me and my imagination flourished. Did I actually
think of circus clowns? Who knows? That’s where the poetic
voice comes in. I do remember that the men’s faces were often
streaked with dirt and soot and that I had met Emmett Kelley before
our move to Newtown. As a child I wanted a joyful life but that’s
not what I got, and I didn’t get happy circus clowns in my
adult life either. I got the stinking drunk, one of the men in the
second half of the book. The Gandys are a metaphor for all the men
who impacted my life in negative ways.
REVIEWS OF GANDY DANCING
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Alexandrina Sergio's My Daughter is Drummer in the Rock 'n Roll Band
TO HEAR SANDY SERGIO PERFORMING ON YOU TUBE click here.
Sandy Sergio is a Poet in her Soul Over the years, Sandy Sergio has been a teacher, wife, mother, and the head of two major nonprofit organizations. In her soul, though, she’s always been a poet. Ms. Sergio, whose father was Scottish and mother Irish, was raised in a family that was immersed in poetry and literature. “My mother could recite almost any poem written by an Irish or British poet,” she said. Often, her mother mixed those poems in with fairy tales and other nighttime stories. Ms. Sergio grew up in Wethersfield and attended local schools until her junior year in high school, when her family moved to Hartford and she finished high school there. “I always wrote stories and essays,” she said, adding that she won first prize in the state for a humorous essay when she was 14. She earned a teaching degree from the Teachers’ College of Connecticut, now Central Connecticut State University, and wrote a lot of poetry while there. “It’s my worst nightmare that one of those magazines will resurface somewhere with all that young angst for all the world to see,” she said with a smile. After graduation, Ms. Sergio taught English in Rocky Hill, first at the junior high school and later at the new high school. “I loved it,” she said of teaching. She fell in love with David Sergio, the music teacher down the hall, and the couple had four children during the next several years. There’s Stephen, “the adored big brother,” and younger sisters Gillian, Stacy and Lauren. She thought about returning to teaching when they were older, but decided not to. “I couldn’t figure out how to return to part-time teaching and keep track of all those teenagers,” she said. Instead, she accepted a position as executive director of a fledging organization known then as the Glastonbury Mental Health Group, now InterCommunity Mental Health. “It was a very exciting organization,” she said. “It was founded by two families with young adults with serious mental illness. There weren’t enough community resources.” The families realized they needed someone to head the organization and offered the job to Ms. Sergio. “I was hired, not because I had a shred of experience with mental health, but because I was very active in the community and had a lot of contacts,” she said. “I established an office staffed by trained volunteers. We had a referral service and offered some public programs.” At first, the organization operated from Ms. Sergio’s home, but before long the group realized it needed an office, preferably someplace “very Glastonbury,” she said. They rented space in the Welles-Chapman Tavern and sponsored programs with titles such as “Understanding your adolescent.” “We downplayed the other elements,” she said. Inter-Community Mental Health, now based in East Hartford, established a mobile after-care clinic for chronically mentally ill people and has continued to offer programs for clients and their families. “I feel that was a really good thing I did in my life,” she said. In 1986, after 10 years there, Ms. Sergio thought it would be good to find another job and was hired to head the Hartford Courant Foundation because, she said, of her experience with non-profits and her ability to see what they could accomplish. “It was a wonderful job,” she said. “I got to know all the great people in Hartford’s non-profits.” She retired as she approached her 65th birthday and soon after joined the Thread City Poets in Willimantic. “It meant driving 45 minutes on Route 6, but it was worth it. They’re my major writing group,” she said. “A writing group is important. You can try out something and hear what people say about it.” She’s also a member of the Connecticut Poetry Society. After a good bit of work, the self-described “card-carrying old lady” called Rennie McQuilkin, owner of Antrim House, a publishing house in Simsbury, and founder of the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, to ask about the possibility of publishing a book of her poetry. She said she chose Antrim House because she admires the way they publish “well crafted, artistically done” work by New England poets that is “written to be read, understood and enjoyed.” Mr. McQuilkin told her to submit five pages of poetry. “Then I had to wait,” she said. When the call came, it was good news. Antrim House recently published Ms. Sergio’s first book, My Daughter Is Drummer In the Rock ’n Roll Band. It’s a compilation of more than 60 poems grouped into three sections, “Old Lady Gone Bad,” “To Dare Love,” and “All That Remains.” The first section features such titles as “Ring Ding Girl in a Linzertorte World,” “You Will Be Notified When We Have Located Your Luggage,” “Old Lady Gone Bad” and “When Wearing Purple Isn’t Enough.” The second section includes “Honoring My Mother,” “Forgiving My Mother,” “Near Encounter with a Queen,” and “I Never Know Whose Sister Is A Lesbian.” The final section, more serious than the first two, includes “Memento,” “I Read of Your Death,” “My Sister’s Wings” and “The T.I.A.” There are some autobiographical elements — one of Ms. Sergio’s daughters actually is the drummer in a rock ‘n’ roll band — but she cautions readers not to read too much into the poems.“This is not autobiography,” she said. “Don’t think this is my memoir.” Mr. McQuilkin, who worked with Mr. Sergio on the poetry collection, said he met her when she was working at the Hartford Courant Foundation. “She was enormously supportive of my organization, the Hill-Stead Museum’s Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, which was co-sponsored by The Hartford Courant,” he said. “When she retired from the foundation, I followed her with interest in her new role as a fund-raiser for Curbstone Press. At that point, I didn’t know her own poetry and didn’t realize that her interest in poetry was far more than a professional one. It was, indeed, an intensely personal interest, for Sandy is a superb poet in her own right.” He described the book as “a delicious mixture of mood: the sad poems contain moments of wry wit, and the richly humorous poems contain deeper undercurrents.” He added, “This is a book for all seasons of the heart.” Since the book’s publication, Ms. Sergio has gotten several invitations to read her poetry and talk with readers. “I love to visit, love to talk with people about their ideas of poetry,” she said. “I feel that poetry is a form of communication and I don’t want to talk to myself.” She also enjoys being on stage, especially with her husband. “I like to perform. I enjoy reading and I’ve been told I do it well,” she said. “And I have the advantage of David, who likes to perform with me.” When they perform together, Mr. Sergio plays piano, interspersing tunes with his wife’s reading. The effect is stunning. When she’s not writing poetry or performing it, Ms. Sergio is a gay rights activist and a member of the Glastonbury Coalition for Sensible Growth, a community group that focuses on development in the north end of town. She encourages others to try their hand at writing poetry. “Everybody doesn’t have to be Wordsworth,” she said. “There are different levels of success and quality. But if someone is serious about it, there are ways of learning and getting better.”
Here's a Sergio poem that says what she's about as a poet:
Go, little book, from “Envoy” by Billy Collins
Here’s what I can tell you about my poems. I write about those things that arrest me, I count on the poems to be emissaries. Thus I would not suggest laboring to parse my collection
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