Poetry Tips: Interesting Words

Think of the many interesting words out there that so rarely have a chance in daily conversation: Gargantuan, combustible, stench, cantankerous, elation, falafel, for examples. What if you threw all those interesting words you enjoy together in a poem and then tried to make it sound sensible? Would you break it into repeating refrains or create an elaborate story out of them? You can always use a dictionary for inspiration and I wish all of you good luck who attempt the challenge.

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Rope-A-Dope Press Open Submissions

Get ready folks! Polish your shorter collections of poems into a chapbook submission for Rope-A-Dope Press and make two copies of your collection totaling 15-35 pages to be sent post-marked between January 25th through March 31st. Go to the link below for full details before proceeding and be sure to send those manuscripts to:
Golden Gloves Chapbook SeriesRope-a-Dope Press516 East 2nd Street, #42South Boston, MA 02127

**Do not forget to enclose a large enough Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope so that your manuscript will be read, considered, and returned/accepted.

http://rope-a-dope-press.blogspot.com/2008/11/open-submissions-february-march-2009.html

Good luck to all of you who submit, and thanks for checking in. Please stop by tomorrow for more Poetry Tips…

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=14247
“Blessed Be the Truth-Tellers” by Martin Espada

http://brooklynrail.org/2008/12/poetry/from-de-la-bronx
“from De La Bronx” by Greg Fuchs

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Laura Moriarty's Self-Destruction

I picked up Laura Moriarty’s book Self-Destruction at my local library and while I find the poems just slightly beyond my reach I thought they were enjoyable to read. This collection was published by The Post Apollo Press in 2004. There are several poems I enjoyed and I will share some of them with you:

“A Letter” is a poem that reminds me of the way I feel when reading Emily Dickinson. I often think “it makes sense but it doesn’t.” There are beautiful lines and an interesting way of making her point while also begging you to look a little deeper. In this poem, the lines “Life not releasing (unfolding)/Me letting go/The world not escaping (me)/The street this one long” is an example of what I mean. I can imagine the world turning and spinning out our lives into the street but I also wonder if that’s what she originally meant to say or if there is more to it. I am also infatuated with these lines: “Thirst/But soaked in/Not rain but sky/Blue, I don’t resist.” I cannot begin to interpret these lines into what she is trying to say but I think of it as feeling a sense of longing when looking up into the sky, thirsting for an answer to a question beginning to form in the mind. If you pick up this book and have a better sense of the poem I am eager to hear about it. I love the poem but as I said in the beginning I feel as if the poem is just slightly out of my reach.

A prose poem I enjoy is titled “For the Birds.” The beginning lines are simple and rhyme without being cliché: “I concentrate on the radio in the afternoon during pain./During rain.” The lines are something that could be easily said in a conversation and the conversation continues: “The machine breaks open to reveal our conversation./Call letters./Graphic love.” I like the clever idea of the radio being able to project literal objects such as letters and graphics. The ending line is unexpected but if I shared it with you it wouldn’t make sense at all to the beginning lines. I feel as though Laura Moriarty is describing a personal conversation that she is being reminded of while listening to the radio. You’ll have to pick up this book for yourself and find out. I don’t typically enjoy prose poems but I very much enjoyed this one.

There are other poems I enjoy but these are the two I enjoyed most out of all. I hope you’ll stumble across her work and she does have other collections out there such as Nude Memoir by Krupskaya Press in 2000 and Cunning, published by Spuyten Duyvil in 1999. She has had collections published since 1980 and I hope she continues producing more.

Thank you always for reading, please drop in tomorrow for more Poems Found by Poet Hound…

Luminarium Site

This site is really interesting because it links you to writers (poets included of course) from Medieval, Rennaissance, 17th Century, and the Restoration. It’s a beautiful site that is easy to navigate and I hope you’ll check it out at:

http://www.luminarium.org/

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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

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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

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Poetry Tips: A Year of Poetry

Most of us make New Year’s Resolutions and I have a proposal for all my readers out there. I’d like you to pick up a poetry book (library, book-store, internet, however you prefer to acquire poetry) and make sure you read an author you’ve never heard of before at least once a month for the entire year. You don’t have to like the author once you’ve finished, but you will have expanded your mind for trying to read outside your comfort zone.

My New Year’s Resolution for poetry is to try and gather even more people to my humble blog (particularly skeptical family and friends) to see if I can gain a bigger audience for poetry. I think poetry is worthwhile, it feeds the soul, it inspires, it can provide solace, joy, and so much more. I pledge to reduce hesitant people’s fear that poetry is “snobby” or “difficult” by keeping things simple here at Poet Hound and I hope some of you will join me by including your own reviews on your blogs and web-sites if you have them, or linking interesting poems for others to stumble onto.

I have to say that my Wednesday feature of Poems Found by Poet Hound is the most popular and I think that is wonderful because it is a constant introduction to countless types of poetry and poets in just the right sized dosage.

Happy New Year’s and please keep visiting! I wish all of you good fortune in life and in poetry…

Hanging Loose Press Open Submissions

If you aren’t filled to the brim with activity over the weekend then perhaps you’ll want the time to polish and send off some poetry to Hanging Loose Press.
Definitely check out the link because they are very detailed but the general guidelines are:
You may send between three to six poems along with a self addressed stamped envelope to Hanging Loose, 231 Wyckoff Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217.
Note that you may not have simultaneous submissions and the response time can be as long as three months. They also publish writers still in high school for those of you who are younger and hoping to publish.

Good luck to all who submit!
More specific guidelines are below:
http://www.hangingloosepress.com/submissions.html

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Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20283
Emily Dickinson’s “The Soul selects her own society”
(Recording)

http://snorkel.org.au/008/manhire.html
Bill Manhire “The Little Match Girl”

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Slice of Life by Kevin Hibshman

The press, Alternating Current, has a series of chapbooks called the Pocket Protector series that are just as small as you can imagine, about the size of a business card. They cost a mere $3.00 each (not including $1.00 postage).

Mr. Kevin Hibshman whose chapbook is titled Slice of Life is a collection of short poems that capture daily life events pared down to their essential frame.

One of the poems I enjoyed is as follows:

My Vacation?

No sea.
No beach.
Phone still rings and rings.
Two weeks of staying up late.
Running Nina to the vet’s where she
was put to sleep.
Smoking tearfully in the bathroom.
Smoking between CD’s.
Waiting for pizza.
Waiting for poems.
Settling for thunderstorm.
I lie under the skylight, my connection
to the outside.

I like this poem mostly because I can relate. How often have you taken a vacation only to realize you can’t escape what you were hoping to get away from and then an unexpected tragedy (as with the pet in the poem) occurs? It’s a poem that is pared down to the letdowns where the thoughts punctuate the page, simple, clear, and sober.


Another poem I enjoy is:

Until you Spoke

Heaven quietly fermented on moist,
dutiful sheets.
Sleep finally overtook assailing need
until we, like tired children,
surrendered to dream.

Serene until the sun rose, morning
broke, until you spoke and
ruined everything.

I’d like to know what was said that ruined everything, but imagining what could have been said lends the quality of mystery to the poem. I especially like the first two lines, indicating intimacy and love between the couple before it all changes the next morning.

The final poem I would like to share with you is:

Bone Grinder

In ultimate irony, I once lived to the
rear of a funeral parlor.
In a time when death seems to pervade
my waking life,
I am forced to chuckle at my own
mortality.

These years have served to siphon the
romance right out of suffering.
I’ve been blowing on dice while
throwing up blood.
I think I may have broken someone’s
heart but I am sure I killed
somebody’s plans.

I’ve been hiding behind buildings,
behind alibis, behind cigarettes
and nighttime.
Behind a past so transparent that it’s
hard to find.

Here I sit numb, the hollow taste of
time on my tongue.
Stung by the act of saying one too
many goodbyes.

This is my favorite poem in the collection, I love the ways Mr. Hibshin explains his life in lines such as “I think I may have broken someone’s/heart but I am sure I killed/somebody’s plans” that ties to the funeral parlor mentioned in the beginning. I’m always happy when a poet can keep a common thread running through a poem and this one references facing ones own mortality and then leaving it open ended since he has not passed away but has been “Stung by the act of saying one too/many goodbyes.” Words such as “throwing up blood” bring a sense of violence to this poem, it keeps the reader from feeling comfortable and safe while reading it, and I am the type to find morbidity intriguing.

If you enjoyed these poems and you’d like to purchase a copy for yourself, Ms. Leah Angstman (the owner of the press) has included the following information for the Pocket Protector Series:

“they are $3.00 each, plus $1 US postage, $2 out-of-US postage. they can be purchased by cash, check, money order made out to Alternating Current, PO Box 398058, Cambridge MA 02139 USA, or via Paypal directly to the email address alt.current@gmail.com, or online at alt-current.com, where postage is done by weight. the direct links to them online are here: http://alt-current.com/pp/pp_item.html#slice_of_life all authors receive royalties on our press, and each purchase comes with a free random chapbook from the archives.”

I am a huge fan of poets making money for their work when so often they can only be rewarded with extra copies of their publication. Please support small presses such as this one and I’ll be reviewing more books from Alternating Current in the future and thanks always for reading!

Please drop in tomorrow for more Poems Found by Poet Hound…

Center for Book Arts

Check out the beautiful selection of books from artists and poets at this site! They also teach classes about the art of book-making and they also have contests for publication. It is a wonderful place to peruse so I hope you’ll visit by clicking the link below:

http://www.centerforbookarts.org/newsite/bookstore/

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