Poetry Tips: Fan Letters

These days I doubt many people write letters but e-mails accomplish the same thing. If you are a poet chances are there are poets who have inspired you, living and dead.

If any of the poets you admire are living, I challenge you to write them a fan letter or e-mail depending on how accessible the poet is. Let them know which poems are your favorite, let them know what collections you have or journals you’ve seen their work in. All poets and writers crave positive feedback on their hard work and if you truly enjoy someone’s work why not let them know?

For poets who are no longer with us, you can still write a fan letter that you keep for yourself or write a letter as a tribute to them. Of course, you can always write a tribute poem as well.

Good luck to all of you who write fan letters this week, please drop in again next week…

Nerve Cowboy Open Submissions

You may snail mail up to five poems, no simultaneous submissions please, with your contact information on each poem. Be sure to include a Self-Addressed, Stamped Envelope and send your submission to:

Joseph Shields and Jerry Hagins, Editors
Nerve Cowboy
PO Box 4973
Austin, TX 78765

*Definitely look up their website and read a sample of the poems available if you cannot get a copy of the journal to see what kind of poems they lean towards.

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

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://wordswithoutborders.org/article/path-of-light/
“Path of Light” by Amina Said


http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/2043
“Chicago” by Carl Sandburg


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

Mather Schneider's Drought Resistant Strain

Published by Interior Noise Press in Austin, Texas in 2010, Mather Schneider’s full-length collection of poems in Drought Resistant Strain are straightforward and honest. The poems discuss everything from the hot, Tuscan sun to the mortality of the poet’s loved ones, below I am happy to share a few poems:


Old Timers

My grandparents
are getting old.
They stopped sleeping
in the same bed
a long time ago.
I don’t know
if they are still in love
or if they
ever were.
You get the feeling they’re
beyond all that.
Each morning
whoever wakes up first
gets out of bed
and shuffles across the house
to see if the other
is still alive
before starting the
coffee.

I like this poem because I can see this elderly pair taking turns shuffling down the hallway. The mystery of whether they are still in love still enshrouds a sentimental turn that they care enough to check up on the other one before starting the coffee. Also, you can’t help but wonder if they would brew enough coffee for just one cup before calling family if they did discover their other half had passed away.




Our Tin Roof

The squirrels ran around up there
like crazy step-brothers scraping their nails
on the inside of an attic door.
Birds straddled the peak,
their delicate steps
an itch you couldn’t scratch.
Even snakes got up there—
someone rubbing calloused hands together
far above us.
In autumn leaves fell on our tin roof,
little bat-wing whispers
brushing your skin,
and the acorns were thrown
from the macabre
parade float oaks.
Rain became music
that would drown you,
and snow was like being buried alive:
it piled up and made a sound
like the earth itself moving.
The wind was the worst,
the way it howled and tore
at the ragged tongues,
the way it found and infected each
new crack,
the way it taught us
to raise our voices
louder and louder.

This poem reminds me of the houses down here in Florida, most cracker style homes have the tin roof and its occupants always describe how much they love listening to the rain. Mr. Schneider’s poems bring these sounds to life for me since I have not had the opportunity to experience them often and I enjoyed imagining the sounds of snow, rain, and squirrels.



Dwayne

Dwayne invents a perpetual motion machine
while servicing the physics room.
He’s a janitor at the college.
He studies the numbers abandoned
on the blackboard
before erasing them
like a human windshield wiper.
His idea: an immortal generator
with unlimited,
unpolluting energy.
No more killing each other,
no more working two jobs,
no more worrying all the time…
It’s simple, all he needs is an ocean
and gravity.
There’s only one problem:
with no reason to struggle
the human race would deteriorate.
So Dwayne has vowed never to reveal
the details of his creation.
It will die with him, unspoken.
He has saved mankind.

This is an intriguing story to me which I enjoyed very much. You can’t help but wonder what this man discovered that we’ll never know and how often things like this might be happening where one understated genius keeps silent to save us from ourselves.


If you enjoyed this sample, you may purchase a copy of Drought Resistant Strain by Mather Schneider from Interior Noise Press for $15.00 by visiting the link below:

http://interiornoisepress.com/INP_HP_Schneider.html

Thanks always for reading, please click in tomorrow for more Poems Found By Poet Hound…

InkPop Site

Jett from Harper Collins sent me a link to this re-launched site geared for Young Adults/Teens for gathering writers together in one wonderful site. It’s user friendly, has a poetry section, along with fiction and short story writing. There are contests to enter while posting your own writing along with features that allow readers to write their responses to pieces submitted to the site. Definitely check it out at:

http://www.inkpop.com/


Thanks always for clicking in, please drop in again tomorrow…