30/30: A Poetic Evening

October 13th 

After some light house projects and a couple rounds of bowling for Tommie with his guy friends, we spent the evening at a free poetry reading by Richard Blanco (Obama's inaugural poet) at The Carolina Theatre.  

I always enjoy poetry readings because you get to learn about the backstory of the poet and it givers greater depth to their poems.  Blanco's poems (and stories) were very entertaining and funny, and explored concepts of culture, identity, and family, which are universal themes, therefore, easy to relate to.  It's great to see a poet like him gaining traction and interest.

After the reading, I had my book signed and told him that he ironically lives in the same small town in Maine as my parents (I did tell him, Dad, that you two have yet to meet.  He said that eventually it seems everyone there does end up meeting, so don't worry there's still time.)

Gloucester Poetry

Gloucester poets are being recognized in an anthology put together by the city's poet laureate, John Ronan. I'm especially looking forward to it because one of my poems, which was a finalist in Gloucester's Quarterdeck Poetry Contest, will be featured.

The collection of poems titled, Salt and Light: An Anthology of Gloucester Poetry will be available for free (thanks to sponsors) at the Sawyer Free Library, Rose Baker Senior Center, and Mayor Kirk's office. If you live on the North Shore, be sure to pick up a copy and celebrate National Poetry Month by reading some local poetry.You can read more about it here:
My View: Time for poets to shine - GloucesterTimes.com, Gloucester, MA

National Poetry Month

Poets.org does some pretty cool ("cool" if you're kind of a nerd like me) stuff for poetry month:

One easy thing you can do is sign up for their free poem-a-day e-mails. You will get a new poem each day in your inbox throughout the month of April and maybe get a few new favorite poems/poets out of it.

Billy Collins: Poetry Videos

I stumbled across a Website featuring animated videos that go along with poems read by former poet laureate Billy Collins. These short QuickTime videos are basically what music videos are to songs...something visual to watch while listening to the words. I think this is a great way to entice people who don't care to read poetry to at least listen and watch it. Not to mention, Billy is a very accessible, humorous, and fun-to-read poet.

Billy Collins
action poetry

Art From Above

The other day at work an artist came in to drop off some of his paintings and he proceeded to tell us that God gives him visions of what to paint. Usually when people say things like this I smile politely and turn quickly away to give a good eye roll towards the wall. To make matters worse, this guy wasn't even a good artist—The least God could do is pick a better artist to paint for him, I thought. But the fact that this man wasn't good actually helped clear something up for me (no, I wasn't converted), but for the first time I was able to make sense of what he was saying.

When this man feels inspired or when he gets a clear idea of what to paint he believes this comes from God. I can actually relate to that because as a writer I have had similar moments, I've just never given a thumbs up towards heaven when they've happened because I don't believe that's where they came from. I have had moments writing poems when I have no idea what I'm saying or where the poem is headed until it suddenly, and seemingly at once, becomes very clear and the rest flows easily from my head and from my heart. See, I just said it comes from my head and my heart—others would say it comes from God. It's just a matter of what you do or don't believe in.

So, I stopped mid eye roll this time because I realized that while I would personally be freaked out if I thought someone (God included) was infiltrating my mind with "visions," all creative minds have moments of inspiration from somewhere...whether we choose to believe it comes from within us, around us, or even above us.

California Poet: Robinson Jeffers

In a poetry reading I went to the other night, Louise Gluck and Robert Pinksy read some of their favorite poems, including one from Robinson Jeffers whose work is influenced by the natural beauty of the central California coast. I had read some of Jeffers poetry before but kind of forgot about him...I appreciate his work more now that I'm familiar with the Calif. coastline and have seen first-hand how quickly and carelessly we push forward building more developments and promoting more materialism, particularly on the West Coast. So, in the spirit of poetry (and nature), here is one by Jeffers:

Carmel Point
Robinson Jeffers

The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of surburban houses-
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads-
Now the spoiler has come: does it care? Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty
Lives in the very grain of the granite,
Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.-As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.

Poetry Contest Winners Announced

The Quarter Deck Poetry Contest winner, finalists, and honorable mentions were announced yesterday, and as one of the finalist, my poem appears on the Gloucester Poet Laureate Website:

www.gloucesterpoetlaureate.org

I wrote the first draft of this poem in college while reading Charle's Olson's The Maximus Poems. Olson drew from the rich history of Gloucester (my hometown and where he eventually settled). He explored the connection between people and place and the changes (not such a good thing) brought about by technology and industrialism. I got to thinking about how much things had already changed since the time Olson wrote about them to the time I was writing about them. Time always moves forward but our words are more fluid and explore the connection between the past, present and where we're headed.

Mass. Poetry Festival

The Massachusetts Poetry Festival will take place in the Boston area this fall. Events begin on October 15th and continue through the 18th. If you click on the image above, you'll be directed to the Website where you can view the schedule of events and reserve tickets to the popular events (especially those on Saturday, Oct. 17th). Tickets are free, but you can guarantee a seat by donating a few bucks to reserve your place online. I grabbed a couple tickets for Louise Gluck's reading in Lowell on Oct. 17th, which happens to be on my birthday. People who know me know I wouldn't mind starting my birthday evening off with some good poetry.

Recognized For a Poem About Home

The poet laureate of Gloucester, Mass. recently held a poetry contest to recognize the Gloucester Fisherman's Memorial (a statue remembering the fisherman lost at sea) which will be featured on the new Massachusetts quarter.

On a whim, I sent in one of my poems about Gloucester and found out yesterday that though I did not win the contest, I was one of three finalists and that my poem will be mentioned in the newspaper and published online as well as in a print version later this winter/spring. I'm honored for the recognition. I'm glad it was well-received and it makes me happy to have shared my work locally. I know this is where my words belong.

I'll post a link to the winning poems when they are published in a couple weeks!

The Wild Iris

Irises are one of my favorite flowers. My grandparents had planted some leftover irises from our old house in Mass. about four years ago in their yard, but each spring the green shoots never produced any flowers...until now. This is the first year the irises in the photo above are going to bloom. They are a little late (as you can see by the photo below, other irises are already at their peak), but better late than never.

This is a poem by Louise Gluck from her collection appropriately titled Wild Iris. This poem reminds me of her other poem "Snow Drops" from the same collection. A tale of the seasons, rebirth/reincarnation and the voices of nature.

The Wild Iris
By Louise Gluck

At the end of my suffering
there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:

From the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure sea water.

Voice of Spring

"Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night." ~Rainer Maria Rilke

National Poetry Month: Charles Olson

In preparation for my journey back to my hometown of Gloucester, Mass., I have chosen Charles Olson as the last poet to blog about during National Poetry Month.

Olson, the author of a well-known epic poem about Gloucester, The Maximus Poems, grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts but spent his summers in Gloucester before relocating there in his final years. The Maximus Poems, which he began in the late 1940’s and continued to work on until he passed away in 1970, captures the historical effects of industrialization on a place such as Gloucester, which was once (only) a small fishing community. Olson mixes his own personal knowledge about Gloucester and mythology with the research he gathered about Gloucester’s early history and settlement to express his concerns about the gradual movement of human beings away from a more modest and simple way of life.

Bk ii chapter 37
By Charles Olson

I. Beginning at the hill of Middle Street the city
which consists mostly of wharves & houses
reaches down to the sea. It is bounded
on the one side by the river Annisquam,
and on the other by the stream or entrance
to the inner harbor. In the Fort at this entrance

are the images of stone and there is another
place near the river where there is a seated
wooden image of Demeter. The city's own
wooden image of the goddess is on a hill
along the next ridge above Middle Street
between the two towers of a church called
the Lady of Good Voyage. There is also a stone image
of Aphrodite beside the sea. 2. But the
spot where the river comes into the
sea is reserved for the special
Hydra called the Lernean monster,
the particular worship of the city,
through it is proven to be recent
and the particular tablets of Poseidon
written on copper in the shape of a heart
prove to be likewise new.

the rocks in Settlement Cove
like dromlechs, menhirs
standing in the low tide
out of the back of the lights from Stacy Boulevard
at night

out of the back of the light,
from Stacy Boulevard on the water
at night

National Poetry Month: Rita Dove

I was lucky to hear Rita Dove give a reading at my college a few years ago. She read mainly from her collection "American Smooth," and half-joked that reading her older poems made her cringe. Like any writer, she was overly critical about her earlier work. But I had developed a deep interest in mythology that year and loved poems that mixed these ancient stories with our modern world. Dove's older collection of poetry, "Mother Love" explores the relationship between mother and daughter by interposing the myth of Persephone and Demeter in modern locations and scenarios. Here is one of my favorites about the moment "Persephone" goes missing, along with an excerpt from another (longer) poem from "Demeter's" perspective after her daughter has been living in "the Underworld."

Persephone, Falling
By Rita Dove

One narcissus among the ordinary beautiful
flowers, one unlike all the others! She pulled,
stooped to pull harder—
when, sprung out of the earth
on his glittering terrible
carriage, he claimed his due.
It is finished. No one heard her.
No one! She had strayed from the herd.

(Remember: go straight to school.
This is important, stop fooling around!
Don't answer to strangers. Stick
with your playmates. Keep your eyes down.)
This is how easily the pit
opens. This is how one foot sinks into the ground.
The Bistro Styx
By Rita Dove

She was thinner, with a mannered gauntness
as she paused just inside the double
glass doors to survey the room, silvery cape
billowing dramatically behind her. What's this

I thought, lifting a hand until
she nodded and started across the parquet;
that's when I saw she was dressed in all gray,
from a kittenish cashmere skirt and cowl

down to the graphite signature of her shoes.
"Sorry I'm late," she panted, though
she wasn't, sliding into the chair, her cape

tossed off in a shudder of brushed steel.
We kissed. Then I leaned back to peruse
my blighted child, this wary aristocratic mole...

...She swallowed, sliced into a pear,
speared each tear-shaped lavaliere
and popped the dripping mess into her pretty mouth.
Nowhere the bright tufted fields, weighted

vines and sun poured down out of the south.
"But are you happy?" Fearing, I whispered it
quickly. "What? You know, Mother"—

she bit into the starry rose of a fig—
"one should really try the fruit here."
I've lost her, I thought, and called for the bill.

National Poetry Month: Mark Doty

If you have ever lived in a coastal town, somewhere where land meets water and water meets sky, you know what a strange and beautiful place that can be. Treasures wash ashore with the tide, storms can catch you by surprise, and there is probably no other place where the cycle of life is more evident. Poet Mark Doty, residing in Provincetown, Mass., wrote the collection of poems "Atlantis" exploring that zone between worlds: between land and sea and also between life and death. The imagery of the empty crab's shell in the following poem makes it one of my favorites:

A Green Crab's Shell
By Mark Doty

Not, exactly green:
closer to bronze
preserved in kind brine,

something retrieved
from a Greco-Roman wreck,
patinated and oddly

muscular. We cannot
know what his fantastic
legs were like—

though evidence
suggests eight
complexly folded

scuttling works
of armament, crowned
by the foreclaws'

gesture of menace
and power. A gull's
gobbled the center,

leaving this chamber
—size of a demitasse—
open to reveal

a shocking, Giotto blue.
Though it smells
of seaweed and ruin,

this little traveling case
comes with such lavish lining!
Imagine breathing

surrounded by
the brilliant rinse
of summer's firmament.

What color is
the underside of skin?
Not so bad, to die,

if we could be opened
into this—
if the smallest chambers

of ourselves,
similarly,
revealed some sky.

National Poetry Month: Lisel Mueller

In honor of National Poetry Month, throughout the month of April (in between frenzied moving activities), I will be posting some work from my all-time favorite poets.

First up is Lisel Muller. I came across her collection of new and selected poems "Alive Together" while aimlessly searching for a poet to review for a class in college. Her narrative style reminded me of my own writing and I instantly connected to her work. I have posted one of her poems before; the one below is another favorite of mine because it reaffirms my belief that the world should be a more peaceful place when we consider how lucky we all are to be here, alive together, sharing this world at the same time.

Alive Together
By Lisel Mueller

Speaking of marvels, I am alive
together with you, when I might have been
alive with anyone under the sun,
when I might have been Abelard's woman
or the whore of a Renaissance pope
or a peasant wife with not enough food
and not enough love, with my children
dead of the plague. I might have slept
in an alcove next to the man
with the golden nose, who poked it
into the business of stars,
or sewn a starry flag
for a general with wooden teeth.
I might have been the exemplary Pocahontas
or a woman without a name
weeping in Master's bed
for my husband, lost in a drunken bet.
I might have been stretched out on a totem pole
to appease a vindictive god
or left, a useless girl-child
to die on a cliff. I like to think
I might have been Mary Shelley
in love with a wrongheaded angel,
or Mary's friend. I might have been you.
This poem is endless, the odds against us are endless,
our chances of being alive together
statistically nonexistent;
still we have made it, alive in a time
when rationalists in square hats
and hatless Jehovah's Witnesses
agree it is almost over,
alive with our lively children
who—but for endless ifs—
might have missed out on being alive
together with marvels and follies
and longings and lies and wishes
and error and humor and mercy
and journeys and voices and faces
and colors and summers and mornings
and knowledge and tears and chance.

Gear Up For National Poetry Month

For all the poetic souls out there, now is the time to sign up for your poem-a-day e-mails in preparation for National Poetry Month in April.

Even though poetry has taken somewhat of a backseat in my life since graduation to be replaced by the burdens of "the real world," it's still an ever-important part of my being. In April I'll highlight some of my favorite poets, but for now here is a poem to get you thinking. I'm reminded of the quote by Robert Frost, "No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader." This is how some of the best poetry happens...it wanders like an unpredictable dream. The words and thoughts come as a surprise and leave you questioning how the poem got there, and also how you got to where you are in your own life.

Intro To Poetry
By Steven Bauer

You thought it was math that taught
the relation of time and speed
but it's farther than you knew
from that sun-lit white-walled classroom
to this darkened lounge with its couch
and overstuffed chairs. How many miles,
would you say, since you talked
as if poetry were no distorting mirror,
one-way street? But listen, sometimes
it's like this, a stranger's Ford pulls up,
and you, with no plans for the afternoon,
get in. He doesn't talk, stares at the road
and it's miles before you understand
you didn't want to travel. His lips say no
as you reach for the radio's knob.

In this silence you fall deeper
into yourself, and even the car
disappears, the stranger's face
blurs into faded upholstery, and all things
being equal, you're alone as though
you've wandered into a forest with night
coming on, no stars, the memory of sun
and a voice's asking Is this my life?

Silent Poetry Reading

I saw the following message posted on a fellow blogger's site and couldn't resist the invitation to post another poem on my own blog. Enjoy!

***

Fourth Annual!

What?

A Bloggers (Silent) Poetry Reading

When?

Anytime February 2, 2009

Where?

Your blog

Why?

Some poetry is warming. It cracks the ice in the heart of the Earth to remind her that spring is just around the corner. Or...if you live south of the equator, choose poetry to cool the heart of the Earth so as to remind her fall is coming.

How?

Select a poem you—a favorite poet or one of your own—to post February 2nd.

What else?

Feel free to pass this invitation on to any and all bloggers.

***

I have chosen the following poem from Louise Gluck's collection: "The Wild Iris." I like how you can read this poem from the perspective of the flower...but also apply it to the viewpoint of a human being awakening from a long winter or other trying time.

Snowdrops

By Louise Gluck

Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know

what despair is; then

winter should have meaning for you.

I did not expect to survive,

earth suppressing me. I didn't expect

to waken again, to feel

in damp earth my body

able to respond again, remembering

after so long how to open again

in the cold light

of earliest spring—

afraid, yes, but among you again

crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world.

What Maya Perhaps Hears

The following poem is by one of my favorite poets, Lisel Mueller. It makes me think about Maya's alertness and her truck and bus phobia...the way she raises a cautionary paw when she hears the rumble of a big engine from blocks away, ducks her head, and if she's on a leash, starts "swimming" on the pavement trying to pull as fast and as hard as she can to get away. If she's not on a leash she makes a break for it. She looks behind her to see if we're following her to safety, but if we're not coming fast enough she pretty much says, "Screw you; I'm saving myself," and keeps running.

In a way I can understand...have you seen those tracker trailers with the jaws painted on the front grill? And the buses I used to take to high school drove 65 miles an hour down quaint, residential streets. The drivers used to hit street signs along the way and one guy hit a car and would have kept driving if a kid on the bus didn't start yelling, "That was my brother's car!" I was afraid of buses too. I can only imagine what they sound and look like to Maya with her heightened senses. I wonder what else she can hear "above that shut-off level of our simple ears."

What the Dog Perhaps Hears
By Lisel Mueller

If an inaudible whistle
blown between our lips
can send him home to us,
then silence is perhaps
the sound of spiders breathing
and roots mining the earth;
it may be asparagus heaving,
headfirst, into the light
and the long brown sound
of cracked cups, when it happens.
We would like to ask the dog
if there is a continuous whir
because the child in the house
keeps growing, if the snake
really stretches full length
without a click and the sun
breaks through the clouds without
a decibel of effort,
whether in autumn, when the trees
dry up their wells, there isn't a shudder
too high for us to hear.

What is it like up there
above the shut-off level
of our simple ears?
For us there was no birth cry,
the newborn bird is suddenly here,
the egg broken, the nest alive,
and we heard nothing when the world changed.

Poem by Mary Oliver

I remember reading Mary Oliver's poem Sleeping in the Forest during a writing class. We only read the one poem by her but that brief encounter left me wanting to read more. She is a true observer of the natural world and through her words the reader can appreciate a deeper connection to nature.

When I went to the bookstore I couldn't decide which of her poetry books to get so I opted for her "New and Selected Poems: Volume One" figuring it would give me a sampling of her work. My favorite section is from her book "American Primitive" and The Sea is probably my favorite poem from the collection.

Growing up in a New England coastal village (photo below), the Atlantic Ocean was a central part of my surroundings and my life. My memories are filled with salty summer days, unforgiving storms, restless nights listening to the waves break, the moon's reflection against the black water...I loved the ocean so much that I sometimes felt as if I wasn't that far removed from it. The ocean was as much a part of my home as the land. I wrote poems of my own to express this connection—this almost "lack of evolution" that causes people who grow up on the sea to feel as if they haven't fully evolved from their ancient ocean ancestors. Oliver's poem captures that feeling—that pull back to our original home—and reads almost like a tale of human evolution on rewind.

The Sea
by Mary Oliver

Stroke by
stroke my
body remembers that life and cries for
the lost parts of itself—
fins, gills
opening like flowers into
the flesh—my legs
want to lock and become
one muscle, I swear I know
just what the blue-gray scales
shingling
the rest of me would
feel like!
paradise! Sprawled
in that motherlap,
in that dreamhouse
of salt and exercise,
what a spillage
of nostalgia pleads
from the very bones! how
they long to give up the long trek
inland, the brittle
beauty of understanding,
and dive,
and simply
become again a flaming body
of blind feeling
sleeking along
in the luminous roughage of the sea's body,
vanished
like victory inside that
insucking genesis, that
roaring flamboyance, that
perfect
beginning and
conclusion of our own.