Poetry Tips: Winter Doldrums

For most people, spring seems a long way off amid the snow, ice, fog, rain, and downright depressing weather. Why not grab pen and paper and a camera and start looking for peeks of color through all that winter white and gray? You may see a bird at the birdfeeder, a clump of red berries frozen in ice, a patch of green grass uncovered in the snow—snap some pictures and use these as inspiration for your next poem.
Or if you prefer to stay indoors, grab a steaming cup of hot chocolate, coffee, or tea and peek out your windows or look to your pets snuggling under the bedspread, snap a shot of the scrabble board while you and your family play for pictures and ideas?

Good luck in your pursuit of writing poetry and please stop by on Monday for another featured site…

Main Street Rag Open Submissions

Send up to 6 poems shorter than 40 lines with a Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope to Main Street Rag, PO BOX 690100, Charlotte, NC 28227-7001
**No Simultaneous Submissions**

It is also highly recommended that your order recent back issues to find out if your style will fit in with their publication and for more information please click below:

http://www.mainstreetrag.com/How2GetIn.html

Good luck to all of you who submit, please drop in tomorrow for more Poetry Tips…

Poems Found By Poet Hound

http://tiptonpoetryjournal.com/tpj11/reed.htm
“Sunken” by Talia Reed

http://absentmag.org/issue02/index.html
“We Took Away Your Helmet With No Sacrifice on Our Side” by Julia Cohen

Thanks for clicking in, please stop by tomorrow for more Open Submissions…

David S. Pointer's Ice Age

Mr. Pointer’s chapbook Ice Age is book three in the Pocket Protector Series of Alternating Current’s Press. If you didn’t catch details last week, all royalties go to the author and each of these Pocket Protector Series chapbooks cost a mere $3.00. Check out Alternating Current’s site for more detail.

Ice Age is a collection of poems that are political in nature and happen to coincide nicely with the novel I’m reading at the moment, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. The poems Mr. Pointer produces mention the complications of living on the border of Mexico and also uses sarcasm against our governmental system. I enjoyed the collection quite thoroughly and highly recommend it to you. As always, I will share several of my favorite poems with you:

Commerce As Chameleon

The telegraph wires of
wisdom have been cut

The bully of economics of
bygone eras have returned

The system has been up on blocks
Ice blocks melting money fumes

As the economic hit men play
truth of Ghengis Khansequences

while Senator Larry Craig gets his
for a little goo cannon collegiality

and at my temp job the biometric
employee hand scanner radiates

us into real early wage slavery and
the pallets of waiting e-waste.

The anger is evident in the use of words such as “bully of economics” and “Ghengis Khansequences” which makes this poem sound more emotionally raw, I think. I also like the reference to “e-waste” in our era of internet where we can waste quite a bit of our time while ignoring real world issues. I enjoyed this poem because its angry political without sounding too “preachy” or being so lengthy the reader would lose interest.

The Find

At a yard sale,
I see a scuffed
schoolmaster’s
desk made possibly
from birch and
birdeye maple,
and know with
a monumental
makeover this
could become a
poet maudit’s
perfect work
station with
a secret wall
or compartment
to the elevated
writing world
working the
literary corridors
of late stage
economics with
an old Bull’s-
eye lamp for
building up
valued verse
blowing the
small press
reader away
with the crisp
literary pop
of a fine
dueling pistol.

This poem romanticizes the writer which I’m always fond of, but instead of being too sappy about writing poetry it romanticizes the desk in which a writer may sit. Even though it sounds dreamy in the beginning it ends with an unexpected closing of a dueling pistol, violent compared to the beginning lines, which I also love as a technique to startle the reader.

Cardboard Sign Cowboy

A wage slave’s
hands were dirty –
some said it was
just the cagefungus
of capitalism under
his fingernails, and
there weren’t any
Shepherd’s bread
crumbs in the
sidewalk cracks, so
he got a cardboard
sign, and stood
under the Bannister
Mall bridge bringing
in three decades of
house payments
in a year’s and a half
becoming a titled
homeowner hurting
the homeless picking
up most of the post
payment tab as an
angered public
withheld offerings
to others, and our
newest neighbor
orders a gypsy
onion omelet in
olive oil over easy
as asking for help.

This poem brings different imagery than what I’ve ever seen to bring to light the prejudice against the homeless. Lines such as “cagefungus/of capitalism” and “Shepherd’s bread/crumbs in the/sidewalk cracks” are fresh compared to the rants we usually hear on the news or in office conversation. The neighbor at the end is clueless about the whole dilemma and asks for a meal that most homeless people could never expect to eat bringing around the clash of the man who siphons funds off the public to pay his mortgage while others starve and are ignored by the public angry at this discovery. It’s a very good poem of contrast and comparison and I always admire poets who can squeeze so much into relatively few words and lines.

There are many great poems in the collection and if you enjoy the poems shown here then please click on the Alternating Press Link to find out more. Also, each purchase comes with a free random chapbook from Alternating Press’ archives! So you get more for your money and all royalties go to the author which deserves support so that all poets can get paid for their hard work.

Thanks for reading, please stop by tomorrow for more Poems Found by Poet Hound…

Shanna Compton's Site

I’ve seen Shanna Compton’s poems around and when I found her site I was delighted! You can find links to poems, interviews, readings, and more by clicking the link below:

http://shannacompton.com/index.html

Thanks for clicking in, please stop by tomorrow for another Featured Poet…