Poetry Tips: Spring Cleaning

Spring is fast approaching and it is time for you to clean out your poetry! Dust off your forgotten poems you’ve written and see if you can polish them up for upcoming Open Submissions at various journals and web-sites. Don’t forget to dust off and open your beloved and forgotten poetry books you’ve bought or borrowed over the years. Re-read your favorites, find which books you’re no longer interested in to lend to a friend or give to a local library as a donation. Perhaps the spring cleaning will inspire you to re-write old poems anew or bring forth new creative energy. Either way, you can’t lose, can you?

Thanks for dropping in and please stop by Monday for another featured site…

Roadrunner Haiku Open Submissions

You may send 5 to 15 poems of haiku, senryu, zappai, etc. via e-mail to Scott Metz at scott(AT)roadrunnerjournal.net. Please note: No simultaneous submissions, no previously published work, and be sure to look through the site and read the journal to get a feel for what is published. Roadrunner is published quarterly on February, May, August, and November, so please submit your best soon for the next issue!

http://www.roadrunnerjournal.net/pages_all/submissions.htm

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

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://adirondackreview.homestead.com/Dowding.html
Philippa Dowding’s “Then That Summer, Daniel”


http://arseniclobster.magere.com/180101.html
Emily Jern-Miller’s “Wetsuit Wearing Hot-Coal Walker”


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

Mathea Harvey's Modern Life

I picked up Mathea Harvey’s collection Modern Life from Graywolf Press, published in 2007, at my local library. The cover features a set of dominoes with the dots melting towards the center. Normally I don’t talk about covers but I was seduced by the cover originally and was happy to be seduced by the poems and prose within.

The prose poem “The Golden Age of Figureheads” is a journey you take with the poet in the waters of the Pacific. “First we sloughed off the sailors—when a storm hit we’d lean into it and watch as they slipped into the water.” It’s a scary first line to read, but read on you must as you learn more about the adventure. “Sometimes we’ll peer into the water to catch a glimpse of our old enemies, the anchors, glinting at the bottom of the ocean,…” Are anchors enemies for holding back the boat from adventure? That is the feeling I get as I read on to learn “The ship with a bird’s head wants to squawk with the gulls that forage its sails, would follow them into the water when they dive for fish if only it could.” I love that line because you can imagine the rolling waves and the ship’s personification of a bird diving for fish rather than plunging for the sake of the waves. Then there is the rain: “When it falls hard enough we can’t tell which way is up, which way is down./Then we’re like the earth before the equator was invented…” Those are beautiful lines as well and I can’t help contemplate the idea of the earth before an equator was invented. Beautiful prose and a lively adventure.


You can find a link to the next prose poem titled “Wac-A-Mole Realism” if you will click below and read it first:
http://www.mattheaharvey.info/poems/index.html#

I love the idea of a Robo-Boy at a carnival and the Flirt Program installed in him results in “tilting at the school librarian which caused him to wheel in reverse into the Civil War section knocking over a cart of books that were waiting to be shelved under B.” What a wonderful and random anecdote for a robot boy. At a carnival, Robo-Boy seeks refuge at the Wac-A-Mole game where “He wins bear after bear./It’s only when he’s lugging them home, the largest one skidding face-down along the sidewalk getting dirt on its white nose and light blue belly, that he remembers the program: Wac-A-Mole Realism –the disc on the installer’s desk./Suddenly it all fits together: the way a deliciously strange thought will start wafting out of his consciousness—the then WHAM, it disappears.”
I love the visual of the teddy bear skidding along just like any other little boy dragging his carnival prize and then the “wake-up” Robo-Boy experiences in a very human-like way when he realizes he beat the game because he already knew the answers from the disc. It’s a very surreal prose poem that is futuristic in its idea but is so close we’re almost there today technology-wise. A spooky prediction of the future on behalf of Mrs. Harvey.



A third prose poem is ominous in its own right, “Dinna’ Pig.” A family that is obviously dysfunctional adopts a pig that is ultimately headed for doom. It’s a disturbing poem all around and like a car accident you can’t look away. The beginning line sets the tone with “Members of the Family rarely spoke to each other, but when they did, they studied each other’s throats.” A short time later, “Pa found the pig in a stall at market…/He felt something welling up inside him—love—and spat it onto the tin where it glistened like a chrysalis./That didn’t get rid of the feeling so he brought the pig home.” Isn’t that a strange reaction for a human being to have in regards to love? Ma gave the pig his name as it was headed for dinner and the poet explains her character this way: “She liked to call a spade a spade, hence her children: Mistake, Mistake 2 and Goddamit.” While you get a sick feeling as you smile at the names, the poem dives even deeper into the fascinating muck. “In any other farmyard, love would have slid off Dinna’ Pig’s oily hair, seeped from his watery eyes, bounced off the coil of his tail and landed on something fluffier./But the family couldn’t help itself—their love was stirred into the gray slop he was fed daily.” The oldest child shows his love in a way I won’t mention here, you may find and read the poem for yourself. The youngest child, Goddammit, leaves us with this ending: “She was having a beautiful dream./It was Sunday dinner and she was the only one at the table cramming handfuls of love into her enormous mouth.” You wonder if the only way the family can experience love is through dysfunctional means or if the only tenderness is through the consumption of this creature. This poem grabs my attention in a grotesque way but I bet you’ll find you can’t tear yourself away when you read it either. I dare you to find this poem in her collection and read it as soon as you can get your hands on a copy.


Mathea Harvey’s poems are blunt in their various subjects and I have always enjoyed the company of blunt talkers and writers alike. I hope you’ll pick up a copy of her book the next time you are able and hope you are also seduced by the poems within.

Mathea Harvey has her own site where you can find links and news items so please click below to find out more about her:
http://www.mattheaharvey.info/index.html

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

Bootstrap Productions

Check out this site that publishes volumes of poetry and awesome pictures of hand-written, or typed, letters. There are so many things to see and explore, it is well worth your while. Check it out at:

http://www.bootstrapproductions.org/home.html

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

Poetry Tips: Unexpected Places for Poetry

This is both a challenge to produce and a challenge to find. I can’t help but notice that some bathroom stalls will have some scrawled poem (often crass) by some unknown author in the stall. Other times there may be scrawled poetry on picnic tables, big boulders at public parks. I don’t advocate vandalizing anything but I do want you to notice poetry in unexpected places.

I also want to see if you can place poetry in unexpected places. Try posting a poem on the back of a cabinet door in the office kitchen/lounge. What about taping up a page of poetry in a bathroom stall instead of using permanent marker? How about writing a poem on origami paper, folding it up, and giving/sending it off to someone?

Also, note that next month is National Poetry Month. What better time to start gathering ideas for distributing poetry to the masses than now? Good luck to all who look for unexpected poetic finds and for all who place poetry in unexpected places.

Thanks for stopping in, please stop by Monday for another featured site…

Small Fires Press Open Submissions

This site I found via the Press Press Press blog site and have provided a link below. Please note that they produce match-book size poetry journals so your poems must be no more than 22 characters wide (including spaces) and no more than 24 lines in length when submitting up to 8 pieces/poems along with a Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope to:
Friedrich Kerksieck, Editor2620 University Blvd, UpstairsTuscaloosa, AL 35401

*No simultaneous submissions and please provide your contact information on each page. Check out the site via the link below it is pretty awesome!

http://www.smallfirespress.com/

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

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://poems.com/poem.php?date=14298
“A Midnight Clear” by T. Alan Broughton


http://www.blossombones.com/winter09/dixon_w09.html
“Calling Jesus” by Athena Dickson

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

Leah Angstman's No One Gains Weight In The Shoulders

Leah Angstman’s chapbook, No One Gains Weight In The Shoulders comes from Alternating Current’s Propaganda Press for a mere $6.00 and is well worth it for the collection which ranges from righteous anger to amusing anecdotes, celebrity clichés to airport diatribes. Her visual comparisons are superb and unexpected. I am more than happy to share several poems with you and hope you are as entertained by them as I am:

I almost wanted to ignore this poem as a result of the title and how Heath Ledger is starting to become a rather cliché topic in the news but Leah redeems herself with this poem so I hope you’ll find it amusing as well:

mr. ledger, sir, it’s too late for your autograph

there’s that magical age
when all celebs shall transform
from being youth into being
all growed up into being
gone

that statistic again

and in the shock of the moment
it has taken me this long
to pen it

for the outpouring blubbering
placation of sudden grief
from traditional media
to become solid honest words
that make sense
instead of drivel
and could have should have would haves
and let me wet my lips for
the kissing of societal high standard buttocks
right on the balloon knot
if you will

i didn’t worship you
i waited till that tide fell in and out
to write you now for your autograph
you weren’t some teen idol
boy band style obsession for me
as with some girls
you certainly were

morbidly so
still are

instead you were a human
a being of flesh and brain matter
severe style and headlined vessels
rhythm and statued torso of skeletal frame
the same as we are all skeletons under there
i saw you as a shame
a mirror a page turning fresh look at
someone not celebrity

but
my age

consumed by the same starvation
equal attention to detail
probably ate the same grub liked similar music
hated the government on metaphoric levels
with similar intensity

transferred pain from page
to bones
not to
implants

my age
exactly
give or take the trivial counting
of days in between and gone by
seemingly of no importance to you now

something is very human about that
not that untouchable silicone and
academy award and dolce
and prada level of attempting beingness
but very much on my human level

and not just that thought
that it could have been me
instead

but that
if it were
these past days of unimportance
would not have existed at all
i would not have eaten at ole cito today
or kissed my lover
or known that my azalea is finally poking
its head out of its little hood
i would not know this day’s clouds
or local brewery special
or that my cat has newly discovered
clawing the fresh tablecloth
that i would not be admiring

prior moments are as far
as i would have come


I just love the lines: “the kissing of societal high standard buttocks/right on the balloon knot” because what a perverse visual that brings to mind! How many poets can achieve such a vision that is comical and perverse all at once? Mrs. Angstman also carefully avoids common phrases with these lines: “instead you were a human/a being of flesh and brain matter.” I’m so happy she didn’t use “flesh and blood” but brain matter also shows her respect for Heath’s creative mind and not just his looks as are focused by “boy band style obsession…like some girls.” All in all it is a tribute poem that maintains a tongue-in-cheek attitude while somehow being reverent at the same time, well done!


This next poem I found comical and entertaining as I am sure you will, too.

airports

are the ultimate local television show
the cartoon people not realizing
they are on the screen
pick noses
blatantly stare at fat people
one reads a magazine that says
raunchy sexy sex
exclamation point
i wonder if she is reading it now
i search her face for signs of raunchy sexiness
but none is there
a baby across the way
has booties i want
in my size
and canada dry is not vernors

i am sitting cross-legged in the ugly levittown-style
mass seating projects area of gate e2b
in the entirely unnavigable boston logan
without all the dailies that de-stress me
instead there are tabloids
and bottled water that costs as much
as a normal starbucks
and starbucks that costs as much
as a normal Ferrari

an elderly lady sips a martini
and eats a toasted break sandwich deli item
while staring at me penning thoughts
staring back at her

when she approaches with her bags
she says to me
my
you look as if you are a poet of sorts

yes
of sorts
i say
and shudder at the connotations of the word

she says she once was a poet too
her small wrinkled eyes
blazing with a young passion
that hadn’t been put there from any martini

she was stoking a fire
that was all her own

i tore the last page from my notebook
and handed it to her

if you like it
it’s a gift
i say

she doesn’t even look at it
just says
it’s a gift
and folds it for safe-keeping in her pocket

i like to think it changed her life
somewhere in the skies of iowa
and didn’t just end up
in the washer
with last week’s
grocery list.


The beginning makes me laugh, especially the magazine “raunchy sexy sex” because Leah again brings a perversity to light in a comical and understated way. She narrows her poem from the crowd perspective to the unlikely connection to a woman drinking a martini who approaches her of her own free will to ask about Leah’s being a poet. How strange that I’ve encountered this same scenario in an airport myself once. I love that the martini-drinking lady’s “small wrinkled eyes/blazing with a young passion/that hadn’t been put there by a martini” invokes Leah to tear out a page of poetry for her. What a wonderful little gesture—then of course brought into reality with the hopes that the poem “didn’t just end up/in the washer/with last week’s/grocery list.” I really hope that it didn’t and I wonder how many of you out there who write poems have had similar encounters with strangers in public who came alive at the word poetry? Please let me know of your own encounters such as this in the comments section.


The last poem I will share with you is one you surely have either seen or experienced for yourself. As you know, I love poems about everyday life and this is another fabulous one:

the bored wife

a wife is bored

her husband is talking on his phone
and from her expression
it has been some time this way

neither knows i am staring
but i emphatically
inadvertently am
feeling the wife’s numbness
sending its shadow
all the way over here

she fingers her ring
sucks on it a little and
then moves her teeth up to
the tips of her nails

for a minute i see
what i must look like to others
when i am nervous
or anticipatory

he is a chatterbox my goodness
business then golf then back
to business he winks and
smiles a bit at her
in an i’ll be with you soon manner
that she reads as
please take a number

her eyes so grey
dulled over
two bricks sunken into
clay with no pulse or momentum
her hair fried out on the tips
from too much coloring
and she occasionally pulls it
back from her eyes then back
over her eyes as it’s the
only softness she can touch

her attention wanders to the
busybody server who seems to be
busy with everything except serving

and just then you show up
i look away from them and to you
we both smile when our eyes meet

i say honey please
turn off your phone
just in case


Like I said, a poem everyone can relate to. I have my own soap box on the way people abuse polite manners with cell phones but I’ll spare you the lecture. I love the description of the wife’s eyes as “two bricks sunken into/clay with no pulse or momentum” which is a beautiful way of expressing emotion. I’ve never thought of comparing eyes to sunken bricks. I also love the lines regarding the wife’s hair as “the/only softness she can touch” because it shows just how cold and hard the husband is in his actions at the table. You are certainly made to feel sorry for the wife and you champion the poet’s resolve when her own loved one enters the scene and she asks him to turn off his phone. Leah does a great job of describing emotion through unusual comparisons.


I hope you found these poems as entertaining and amusing as I did. You can find more of Leah Angstman’s work at http://alt-current.com/pp/pp_catalog.html, through Alternating Current along with links to many other reviews of her books and the many poets produced there.

Don’t forget that with any purchase at Alternating Current you receive a free book from the archives and that all poets receive royalties which is a wonderful thing if I do say so myself.

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

I Was Born Doing Reference Work In Sin Site

Find poems, prose, and more features from and by various writers at this site created by Dustin Brookshire of Atlanta, Georgia. Even a spot on the side showing “What The Cool Kids Are Buying,” which I love by the way, if you’ll check it out at:

http://dbrookshire.blogspot.com/

Thanks for dropping in, please drop in tomorrow for another featured site…

Poetry Tips: Senryu Poems

Senryu Poems are similar to Haiku in that they are three lines long. This type of poem hails from Japan, is unrhymed and looks like this:

Line 1: 5 syllables
Line 2: 7 syllables
Line 3: 5 syllables

For more information on the difference between Haiku and Senryu, click the link below for an explanation from Shadow Poetry:

http://www.shadowpoetry.com/resources/haiku/haiku.html

Thanks for stopping in, please stop by on Monday for another featured site…

Arsenic Lobster Open Submissions

You may send between 3 to 5 poems (simultaneous submissions are okay so long as you notify the editors if your poems are accepted elsewhere) all within the body of your e-mail to: LOBSTER(AT)MAGERE(DOT)COM

Please read their on-line issues to get a feel for what they publish and please submit only one e-mail per issue. Issues are published in April, August, and December. For more information, click the link below.

http://arseniclobster.magere.com/1submission.html
Good luck to all who submit, please stop by tomorrow for more Poetry Tips…

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://www.octopusmagazine.com/issue11/gibson.htm#two
Donny Gibson’s “In The Middle Of Zero Is A Center That Will Not Hold”

http://www.foxchasereview.org/09WS/11-ADWinans.html#3
A.D. Winans’ “City Cowboys”



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

Charles Simic's Sixty Poems

Charles Simic was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1938 and came to the US with his parents in 1954. Since then he has gained recognition for his poetry by being awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990 and held a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant from 1984-89. He has also served as Poet Laureate for the United States from 2006-2007. I picked up Sixty Poems, published by Harcourt Inc. in 2007 at my local library and was not disappointed in the least!

One of the poems I greatly enjoyed is titled:

Against Whatever It Is That’s Encroaching

Click the link below to read the poem first.
http://poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=171697

I love the very beginning lines “Best of all is to be idle,/and especially on a Thursday,” because no reason is given for Thursday being a good day to be idle and you continue reading to find out. The reason never truly develops but you are told that two women are good to have around, “Let them whisper to each other/And eye you with a smirk./Let them roll up their sleeves and unbutton their shirts a bit/As this fine old twilight deserves,” shows the reason why this particular day is such a good one for the poet. The poet seems to ask what could be better for a man than two women such as these? When a small schoolboy enters the scene I can’t help but wonder if it’s the son of the poet or one of the women especially as he watches “The giddy-headed, red-haired woman/With eyes tightly shut,/As if she were about to cry or sing” at the end of the poem.” What is the purpose of the small schoolboy entering the poem, I wonder? To add a further air of mystery to the merriment? What do you think? Either way I think it’s a wonderful poem about an intimate gathering after a possibly long workday.


Another poem I quite enjoyed is

Cameo Appearance

Please click the link below to read this one, also:
http://poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=171701

I can imagine Charles Simic pointing himself out to his grandchildren in this movie as an “extra” and his grandchildren unable to find him no matter how many times the scene is re-played. “In the distance our great leader/Crowed like a rooster from a balcony,/Or was it a great actor/Impersonating our great leader?” seems to reference Charles Simic’s memories of war in Yugoslavia blending in with the filming of this “bloody epic.” The last stanza is my favorite. “We ran, and the planes grazed our hair,/And then we stood dazed in the burning city,/But, of course, they didn’t film that.” Those ending lines explain the intensity of the scene and how intense it was but of course the movie crew didn’t film that part. Or, knowing Mr. Simic’s history of living during war time in Yugoslavia, you wonder if he is blending a memory with that scene?


As usual there are quite a few wonderful poems in this collection. I was able to find two of the poems I liked on Poetry Foundation’s site which I have linked below to Mr. Simic’s biography as well should you wish to learn more about him. You can assuredly find his books in stores as well as libraries (where I found this volume, Sixty Poems). Please check him out when you have the chance.


http://poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=6290
For more information about Charles Simic, click the link above.

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

Dan Wilcox's Blog

Dan Wilcox does not mince words in his reviews of poetry or the poetic scene where he lives in Albany, New York. I’m thrilled that someone talks about open mic poetry readings because I have yet to attend one and find out what it’s like. Now I can! Check it all out at:

http://dwlcx.blogspot.com/

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