Poetry Tips: Perseverance

There are times when all poets feel as though the well has run dry or that they just can’t get anyone to accept their poems. In those times you must persevere and continue on. Making a routine of writing helps, as does acknowledging the odds of your poem being accepted among hundreds of other contenders. This week take the time to persevere through any pitfalls, even a poem that is giving you trouble. Perseverance pays off in the end, as many wise people say: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Write poems about the heroes you know who have persevered when you are stuck and the dark clouds just might lift…

Good luck to all who continue to persevere, please drop in again next week…

Nerve Cowboy Open Submissions

Straight from the site:

NERVE COWBOY is always looking for the kind of writers who just seem to know what word comes next. We also like to feature drawings and illustrations by artists who see things a little differently. Send poems, short-short stories (up to 5 pages) and black & white art along with a SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope) to:
Joseph Shields and Jerry Hagins, Editors
Nerve Cowboy
PO Box 4973
Austin, Texas 78765
Please also look at their web-site for further details by going to:
http://jwhagins.com/submission.html

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

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://www.sundresspublications.com/wickedalice/gendron30.html
“GhostPatriotHusband” by Erin Gendron

https://sites.google.com/site/rhpissue34/howie-good-1
“Meditations on a Candle Flame” by Howie Good

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

Nerve Cowboy Spring Issue #29

Yes, this issue was delivered late but it was worth the wait! There are some edgy poems and some powerful ones—especially by Burn Thompson. The artwork inside is always paired with just the right poems and I am happy to share a small sample with you:

Snack
By James Valvis

My daughter asks me for a snack.
She wants chocolate chip cookies.
It’s after lunch, before dinner, so I say no,
but I can see the hurt sting her eyes,
a flash of tears that lately come on
suddenly like all her other emotions.
She’s hungry. She’s always hungry.
This past year she’s put on weight.
Her belly sticks out, her legs are flabby.
Her cheek dimple has smoothed over.
It’s embarrassing, she says, her new shirt
too tight, and as I ponder if she’ll need
a training bra at nine years old,
she wonders if boys will ever like her.
At dinner most nights she eats like me,
a heavyset man with a big appetite.
Dishing it out, I pause mid-spoonful
and wonder if I’m adding too much.
I remember how my parents, to keep
my sister from eating, chained the fridge
around the handles and padlocked it.
She still topped 400 before stapling
her stomach and spending the next year
eating nothing but thin mashed potatoes.
I tell my daughter to come sit on my lap.
She does and her weight is suffocating.
It was barely days ago, practically hours,
that I bounced her around on my shoulders
and flung her in the air like a tennis ball.
Now she’s nearly too big to fit on my lap.
What a harsh job parenting is sometimes.
Sorry, kid, I tell her in my mind.
No cookies for you this afternoon.
I’ve nothing sweeter to offer than a hug.

My heart goes out to the father and the daughter in this poem. The heartbreak of the father watching the pounds accumulate along with the realization that he may be contributing through snacks or extra helpings at dinner is palpable. The end shows that the father offers instead of sweets, love through a hug, and brings kindness in the closing of the poem. I’m left with a sense of hope that the father will do what is best in the kindest of ways to help his daughter become healthier, it is a touching poem.



In Alaska And Homeless
By Burn Thompson

Coming here all my poetry lost
and most all else- missed my poems most as if struggling up
mountain crests- missed so much the story a long poem
of mine tells. Spent a year in a homeless shelter-
never missed the rest. My past calling, I heard faint church bells
ringing- didn’t answer. In a corner Tlingits-

beads stringing. Moved out. Camping on the city fringe,
my things people stole. Still there’s kindness-
given a snowsuit with new tags. Sleeping bag gone, my tarp
around me I roll. I sleep cold- lose weight-
see my coat on me sag. Without paper walked streets composing
lines of verse. For my memory’s sake, I keep my lines terse.

This is one of two poems Mr. Thompson wrote about being homeless and I picked this one because despite the hardships he is still composing and creating verses. The will of survival and the will to create are strong in his lines above and incredibly moving to me.



A Flight Attendant’s Lament
By Lori Jakiela

They told me I was going to Paris
so why am I stuck in Atlanta, Georgia
in a tiki hut on Bobbie Brown Boulevard
eating crab legs out of a dented bucket?
A guy in a blue Hawaiian shirt
loads the jukebox with a $20
and plays Jimmy Buffett’s “Why Don’t We
Get Drunk and Screw”
over and over and over
then sends me a beer with a note that says, “Smile.”
I raise the beer to say thanks, hold a crab leg up
in a salute, then ask the bartender for a pen.
Somewhere there’s an ocean.
Somewhere beauty’s waiting.
On the note, I write back,
“I am smiling.
Sincerely,
Mona Lisa.”

I like the sass of this poet, and I think it’s a nice change of pace from the previous two for today’s feature. This poet dead-pans her experience as a flight attendant stuck in Atlanta (and I, for one, hate being stuck in Atlanta’s airport, though Atlanta itself is nice), so I could not help including it in this sample. The ending is funny and clever, thank you, Lori Jakiela.


If you enjoyed this sample and would like to learn more about Nerve Cowboy and/or find out about subscribing, visit their website below:
http://www.jwhagins.com/nervecowboy.html

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

The Book of Kells

Kelli Russell Agodon is a writer and editor in the Pacific Northwest who hosts this blog full of advice, real life experiences in writing and learning, and so much more. Check it out at:

http://ofkells.blogspot.com/

Thanks for clicking in, please stop by tomorrow for a featured journal…

Poetry Tips: The Wee Hours

Lately I’ve been waking up in the wee hours of the morning thanks to a variety of events including nightmares, pets, barking dogs, loud neighbors, etc. It inspired me to get up, stretch, and type out a few poetic tirades on the interruptions. This week, write about your own experience with the wee hours of the morning—do you sleep right through them and therefore the goings-on outside are a mystery? Are you an early riser who enjoys the first peak at dawn? Either way, there’s a whole world moving while most of us are still sleeping.

Good luck to all who try it, please stop by next week…

Rattle Open Submissions

Rattle is open year-round and often has tribute issues if you take a look at their web-site, see the link below. Otherwise, you may send up to six poems, your contact information must appear on each page, and you may e-mail them to submissionsATrattleDOTcom.
http://www.rattle.com/submissions.htm

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

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=177976
“The Appalachian Book of the Dead” by Charles Wright

http://www.juked.com/2010/07/deadpeople.asp
“I’m Not Here to Look at Dead People,” by Arlene Ang

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

Jim Murdoch's This Is Not About What You Think

Jim Murdoch is a novelist and poet whose latest collection of poems, This Is Not About What You Think, begs you to take a closer look at not only his own poems but all poems. Published by fvbooks.com in July, this collection will allow your own thoughts and experiences to flow through his words so that while the collection may not tell a complete story it will allow you to build your own through reading. Below I am happy to share a few poems:

Advice to Children

People will fail you.
It's a fact of life —
they'll let you down.

But not always.
And that's the worst of it —
sometimes they don't.

But most times it's hard to tell.

I think this poem tells it like it is, don’t you? The people you think you can count on fail to and the people you don’t think you can count on turn out to be dependable. Isn’t that the way life is?



Father Figure

This is the floor beside my bed
where I kneel to talk to God.
If I press my ear to the floor.
I can hear Him talk to Mum.
About me. It is always me.

I know what God looks like.
He looks just like my dad.
I heard him tell my mum:
"In this house I am God."
I heard that through the floor.

Now I only pretend to pray
because I don't want my dad
to really hear the things I think.
Now he's not sure I'm so bad.
I don't want him to know I am.

I just want my dad to love me.

I can picture a child writing this poem and it definitely tugs at the heartstrings. It is something I think a majority of us can relate to, feeling that a parent is larger than life, larger than God, and the feeling of wanting to please that parent more than God.



True Love II

My father had a heart transplant.
Years ago, before I was born,
doctors took
out his broken heart

and gave him a machine instead.
The strange thing about this machine
was it was
powered by sadness.

Of course he was always just Dad,
but, when I discovered the truth,
at first I
hated the sadness

then I became thankful for it
because as long as I could see
him be sad
he would be with me.

And so I made it my job to
make him the saddest dad in the
whole wide world.
What else could I do?

This is another poem that lends itself to a child’s perspective. Love, sadness, and thoughtfulness are intertwined in the complicated relationship of parents to children. However, this poem can also expand outward to a myriad of relationships between people, relationships fueled by dysfunction or sadness fueled by mutual tragedies. In a way, this poem could be a children’s book given the right illustrator, and that is what I picture with this poem.


If you enjoyed this short sample, you can read more poems at:
http://www.jimmurdoch.co.uk/think_excerpt.html


To purchase a copy of This Is Not About What You Think for yourself for 5.99 Pounds from the UK, visit the Fandango Virtual site at:
http://www.fvbooks.com/jmurdoch/jmurdoch4.htm


To learn more about Jim Murdoch and his writing, visit his The Truth About Lies blog at:
http://jim-murdoch.blogspot.com/


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

Tiny Words

Find Haiku and micropoetry daily at this delightful and eye-pleasing blog by checking out the link below:

http://tinywords.com/

Thanks for dropping in, please stop by tomorrow for another featured poet…

Poetry Tips: Wreckage

This writing prompt comes from personal experience with a fender bender. This week write poems inspired by “wrecks” whether they be physical, emotional, mental, or both. For me, it was physical, for you it may be something else. Good luck to all who try it!

Thank you for dropping by, please stop by again next week…

Right Hand Pointing Open Submissions

Straight from the e-mail I received:

2010 has been a busy year here in the editorial offices of Right Hand
Pointing/Left Hand Waving. We recently fought off a hostile takeover by Google
and are regrouping to crush that little outfit soon. Our newly formed RHP/LHW
umbrella company, Ambidextrous Bloodhound, just moved into an abandoned Home
Depot here in Birmingham, Alabama. I personally supervised someone supervising
the loading and unloading of boxes and furniture by our fresh team of young
interns. (I can’t think of a better way for these kids to spend their first
12-hour day of work. On their second day, I gave them a full 30 minutes for
lunch and, trust me, these young Megans and Bradleys earned it!)

If our current RHP publication schedule pans out, we’ll put out about a dozen
issues and chapbooks this year, more than any previous year. So, what better
way to celebrate than with a special extra bonus mini-issue?

Ten poems, under 30 words.

We’ll handle submissions for this one a little differently. Rather than our
usual rolling reading and acceptance practice, we’ll have a specified reading
period, a deadline, and after the deadline I’ll accept the poems for the issue.

It’ll be a quick read as it will consist of only 10 poems, each of which may be
no more than 30 words. We’ve done two under-30-words issues before and these
have been popular and quite fun to put together. It’s an A.D.D. sufferer’s
dream. The whole issue will be under 300 words.

So, here’s the deal.

Send your poems, 30 words or under, to righthandpointing@gmail.com by September
15th. Please format the subject line like this:

RHP<30 Your Name

where “Your Name” is your name.

Include a bio, also less than or equal to 30 words.

Sometime after the deadline, I’ll open the emails (actually, the interns will
open them for me when handing me coffee once I start my workday at about 1:30
p.m.), and select the 10 poems which will go in the mini-issue. The issue will
then appear in late September.

Ready, set, go!

On another very different note, please visit the main page at
www.righthandpointing.com. There you’ll find a beautiful poem by our friend
Allan Peterson. I remembered that Allan had published some beautiful poems
about life on the Gulf of Mexico and I wanted to create a little tribute to the
Gulf by featuring one of his poems. Allan sent this previously unpublished
work. See it, along with a fine photograph by Mark Meyer, at
www.righthandpointing.com/index.html

Dale”

Good luck to all who submit, please stop by tomorrow for more Poetry Tips...

Poems Found by Poet Hound

https://sites.google.com/site/rhpissue34/sally-molini
Sally Mollini’s “Aside”

http://poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21652
Wyn Cooper’s “Chaos is the New Calm”

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

David S. Pointer's Warhammer Piano Bar

David S. Pointer hails from Murfreesoboro, Tennessee, has a B.S. in Criminal Justice and an M.A. in Sociology and his latest collection of poems, Warhammer Piano Bar, is published by Thunder Clap Press by Editor Amanda Deo. The art on the cover and within the pages is by artist Justin Jackley and adds to the dark toned and fast-paced lines of the poems found inside. The poems range from the personal to the ethereal and I am happy to share a few with you below:


Driftermobile

Ice in a
cowboy bathtub
behind me in
the Nomad

road thoughts
detonate this day

a few bottles
of Most Wanted
whisper to
the gas pedal

oncoming cactus
start to costar

ping…ping…
szzz………..
the car conks
out of bounds

No I 10 5-0 out
but no ale house

whores who are
semi-certified

to wrench up
old cars either

This poem reminds me of road trips and crossing the Southwestern deserts. The language is unusual and catchy, I have no idea what “a few bottles/of Most Wanted/” means but I love the lines and leads me to think of outlaws. “Oncoming cactus/start to costar,” I take to mean that the car is passing cactus like most cars pass power lines on the freeway and that they are becoming the major part of the landscape. The entire poem is entertaining, and the ending is just as strange yet intriguing mentioning a lack of whores who are able to fix cars which could mean any number of things depending on your own perspective. I think of scantily clad women at gas stations who are tough broads who can also turn a wrench. Either way, this poem entertained me from beginning to end.



Small Press Loss

like a crash cart nurse
losing a brain injured boy

like an old prison coach
bear cage rolling to river

like a surfer bitchslapped
by his own good board

like the eerie Edison era
sounds of a phonograph

sold eighty years ago
on an antique wall phone

this is what it’s like to lose
someone in the small press


Yes! That’s the word that came to mind after I read the poem. A medley of strange and unrelated images yet all easy to picture in the mind’s eye, almost capturing the sound and fell of loneliness without coming out and saying so. For every small press poet that passes there is a medley of mixed feelings and memories and the sense of loneliness and loss that we are one less in number in our love and in our craft. Yes.



Inkville

all these poets
caught in
a minimally
successful
state at
the compliment
swap meet
continuously
reaching into
wallet world
for a green
launch pad
into paid
literary
appreciation

This poem has lines that are just plain fun to read, I love “the compliment/swap meet” which you could apply to almost any setting, and “wallet world” which seems almost like it could be its own actual store instead of a place for poets struggling to get by, hoping for a paid literary collection of their work instead of the typical free copies. If only more people in the world understood and appreciated poetry to make this a better paid profession, yes? That is part of why this blog is what it is, thank you Mr. Pointer, for hitting the nail on the sentimental head.


David S. Pointer has poems throughout the small press and has been featured previously on Poet Hound, you can find him at Alternating Current’s Propaganda Press as well.
If you enjoyed this short sample of poems, you’ll be pleased to know that the book, Warhammer Piano Bar, costs a mere $7.00 (not including shipping and handling) from Thunderclap Press at:
www.thunderclap.wordpress.com

and you can also e-mail Thunderclap Press at: thunderclap.mag@gmail.com


If you’d like to learn more about the artist, Justin Jackley, check out his website at:
www.justinjackley.com

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

10 Most Amazing Slam Poets on YouTube

Kaitlyn Cole e-mailed me about an article featuring the “10 Most Amazing Slam Poets on Youtube” and provided a link which features Youtube clips of slam poets at their best, I urge you to check it out at:

http://www.onlineuniversities.com/blog/2010/07/10-most-amazing-slam-poets-on-youtube/

The “What Teacher Make” poem had me clapping all by myself at home, and “Dear White People” made me laugh so hard I had to listen to it again to listen to the whole thing!


Thanks for clicking in, please stop by tomorrow for another featured poet…