Poetry Tips: Interpreting a Poem for the Timid

When I was in school there was always that moment in the classroom where my English teachers would say “What do you think this poem means? There are no wrong answers!” and of course when I’d raise my hand to give my opinion I was always told “no, that’s not what it’s about…” I have never understood this trait in English teachers.

So for those of you who are new to interpreting poetry let me tell you this much: If you enjoy a poem, be happy with it.

After that, it is a matter of figuring out what the poet is trying to say by means of their language or references. Some poets say exactly what they mean, others reference great literature or moments in history. Short of utilizing a dictionary or searching your shelves for former literary greats you may find better luck using on-line resources such as The Poetry Foundation or Poets.org for insight into poems you find difficult to understand—if they have the particular poet within their collection. These sites feature essays on poets and can break down the poem into what the poet was referring to. Then there is also the plethora of books presenting criticism of particular poets who can help you understand a poet whose work you enjoy but don’t always “get.” These are often available in the library and if not, you can always ask the library staff if they can order some for you.

Then there are poets who throw in words from other languages within the frame of their poem and you may need to use an on-line dictionary to translate those words into English. If you don’t have regular use of the internet there is always your local library which should have various dictionaries that translate other languages into English.

The bottom line is to try to understand a poem you find interesting and difficult or frustrating. It doesn’t mean you have to know the literary greats, be able to speak French, etc., all it means is that you liked the poem enough to want to figure it out. The more you figure out, the wider your repertoire in poetry can become.

I, myself, enjoy Pablo Neruda because his poems are presented in both English and Spanish so that I can try to read the original, beautiful language but then read it in English for a full understanding.

For any regular readers who have any particular resources they know of that I haven’t mentioned specifically, please add them in the comments section for the benefit of all, and thanks.

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Cafe Review Open Submissions

You may send three poems along with a $1.00 Submission fee which goes towards the production of the publication along with a Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope to:
The Café Reviewc/o Yes Books589 Congress StPortland, ME 04101

To inquire about dead-lines you may send an e-mail to: cafereveiweditors[at]mailcity[dot]com
*Note that no submissions are taken on-line and please use the link below to explore their wonderful site and get a feel for what they publish.

http://www.thecafereview.com/Submissions.html

Good Luck to all who try, and thanks for dropping in! Please stop in tomorrow for more Poetry Tips...

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://poems.com/poem.php?date=14267
“Night” by Dana Roeser

http://poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=177116
“The Orange” by Wendy Cope

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Donald Revell's A Thief of Strings

Donald Revell was born in 1954 and has ten collections of poetry thus far and has won many prizes for his poems such as the PEN Center USA Award and the Gertrude Stein Award. I picked up his most recent collection A Thief of Strings, published by Alice James Books in 2007, at the local library. I have links at the end for you all to learn more about Mr. Revell, it is a shame that the poems I want to share with you aren’t also available on these sites but at least there are plenty of poems to read through and enjoy.

One of the first poems I enjoyed in this collection is “Storks.” Obviously this poem is centered around storks but it also has the recurring theme of healing the sick or the broken-hearted. “Reading,/I find myself/Praying for animals/One hundred years gone/” leads me to reminisce about the characters of my own beloved books who I wish were living or were still alive. “Choirs of children/Gather to sing to heal/The white storks ailing in the steeples,” is a stanza I just love. Can’t you picture a large church and choir singing to storks, or any other bird, as they roost in the steeple? “The children’s song is human/But unconcerned with the affairs of men.” Throughout the poem there is also the mention of advocacy and charming and finally at the end you learn more about the real theme of the poem when Mr. Revell reveals “I was reading when my father died/Who could not read,” and goes on to say “I prayed and listened./I prayed and hear/Nothing concerned with men, including my father./He wanted nothing to do with them either./” The very last two lines are the most beautiful: “Once he said/My eyes and my sister’s eyes were brown like those of deer.” While the title is “Storks” it could just as easily be titled “Souls” since this seems to be what he is essentially referring to and the poem is just beautiful if you get a chance to read it yourself. I cannot do it justice.

Another poem I enjoyed was “Just in the Morning, In Memory of Robert Creeley, 1926-2005.” This is another beautiful poem for which I cannot do justice but I shall share some lovely lines with you: “There are no clouds./Pink or purple, in a terrible wind…But the ground dark somehow, as though clouds were passing./Absent or present, death slips beneath.” Then Mr. Revell reminisces about Creeley’s afterlife with the lines “Who’s to say there is no one/Already building a fire in the cabin…On the mountaintop beside one tree?/The wind seems not to reach that high./Smoke from the chimney goes straight up.” I think this is a wonderfully tender way to picture Creeley’s home in the afterlife, a soul content in a cabin whose sign of life is the smoke rising from the top.

There are many poems I enjoy and I believe you will not be disappointed if you happen to pick up his collection. As mentioned earlier, I have links you can click below to learn more about Donald Revell and read his poems.

http://poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=5662

http://poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/856
Thanks always for reading, please click in tomorrow for more Poems Found by Poet Hound…

Blackbird On-line Journal

Brought to you by the Department of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, this is a site full of wonderful poems and stories. Please check it out at:

http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/

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Poetry Tips: Poets for the Timid

Having made some connections with some shy and timid poetry readers I thought this post would be appropriate for them and anyone else out there reading this blog who wants to believe in the idea of “loving poetry” but hasn’t quite reached it yet.

There are some poets with broad appeal and I will mention a few names that can be easily found in the local libraries here in the U.S.:

Mary Oliver—known for a simple love and appreciation of nature, her poems can be spiritual, loving, and very approachable to read.

Dorothy Parker—best known for her dry sense of humor and life, her poems say what they mean.

Billy Collins—known as “mainstream” for people who read poetry, his poems are very accessible, full of wit and everyday life experiences.

The Classics:

Emily Dickinson—her poems about nature, life, love, and death are also accessible but with words you may have forgotten are in the English language such as “diadems.” She can also seem hard to pin down rhythmically because she almost rhymes at time and her lines can end abruptly. She is my personal favorite.

Edgar Allen Poe—who doesn’t remember “The Raven” when learning poetry in grade-school? He is dark and mysterious, and well worth revisiting if it has been a while.

William Shakespeare—an obvious choice but he can be difficult to read as a result of an older language. He is a challenge worth taking if you love his plays and especially if you love romance.

These are just a very few of the many suggestions I could make. I urge my regular readers to post their own recommendations in the comments section with a brief description for those new to poetry or rediscovering their enjoyment of poetry.

Thanks always for dropping in, please visit on Monday for another featured site…

Blood Pudding Open Submissions

The deadline is the 25th so if you have anything ready and waiting or close enough to just take a few decided swipes of a pen before sending, then get those poems ready!
You may send 5-7 poems via e-mail to: JulietX(at)Bust.com and be sure to check out further guidelines by clicking the link below!

http://bloodyooze.blogspot.com/2008/11/blood-pudding-press-wants-your-naughty_24.html

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

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://www.notellmotel.org/poem_single.php?id=860_0_1_0
Eric Abbott’s “Ongoingness”

http://juked.com/2009/01/dollhouse.asp
Tricia Asklar’s “Doll House”

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

Justin Barrett's Nowhere Utah

This collection of poems is part of the Pocket Protector Series of Alternating Current's press. Justin Barrett has been featured before here at Poet Hound and his poems are continuously straightforward and enjoyable to read. As always, I will share some poems from his book, Nowhere Utah which describes his relationships with women and of the lonely roadways of Utah where he now resides.

a tangle of hair and arms

a brown dusk filters
through the canopy
above the playground.

she straddles a
see-saw, held aloft
by my heft
as i stand on the other end.

she holds a cigarette
in her fingers; not for the necessity of
it, yet, but to appear older
and more mature.

she rarely brings
it to her lips.

i want to grab
her, hold her,
kiss her
like we did that time
in her father’s garage
as everyone else slept;
but i know
that i, too, will
never be brought
to her lips, again.

i look up at her.

she turns her head
toward me and smiles,
her mouth
barely visible.

her head is
silhouetted against the ashen sky.

suddenly, i hop off
my end of the
see-saw and she drops,
a tangle of hair
and arms.

The immediate idea that comes to mind is that this is a memory of a grade-school sweetheart, and of course I had to e-mail Justin to ask if I am correct. Either way, it is a sweet memory that is brought with a minimum of sappy phrases while still remaining romantic in its focus with short lines such as “her mouth/barely visible” and “her head is/silhouetted” then “she drops,/a tangle of hair/and arms.” Well executed and hard to achieve yet Justin Barrett is able to accomplish it in concise, clear terms in this poem.



in the burning house of angels homeless children play with the bones of god

the fire started in the apse and
quickly spread through the
confessional,
the nave and the sanctuary.
it consumed the altar in orange
veil, black smoke suffocating
the crucified savior
behind the pulpit.

the font boiled over,
steam rising to the ceiling,
masking the stained glass
image of the
virgin and her baby.

four little girls, trapped inside,
asleep, hungry, hoping for
help from their
savior,
instead found the devil
of humanity.

This is a horrifying poem and this is why I bring it to you. Not all poems confront the darker side of life so bluntly. I wonder where the inspiration for the poem comes from and who is “the devil of humanity” at the end? Is it someone who set the fire? Is it the lack of safety mechanisms in place to save the girls who were trapped inside? Was it ignorance in regards to the absence of attempt to put out the fire? There are many possible “devils” and no answers. Sometimes the enjoyment of the poem is the mystery and the frustration in knowing there is no answer given to us as readers.


Perspective from the 10,000-Foot View; Or What We Learned in Couples Therapy

It turns out that from
The 10,000-foot view
I’m still an
Inconsiderate asshole
And she a spiteful,
Condescending bitch.

Just on a much
Smaller scale.

I find this poem hilarious as a result of its bluntness. This poem is a literal take that the big problems in our daily lives are not so large yet they remain. The only conclusion I added for myself at this poem was “bummer.” How about you?

If you enjoyed this short sample of poems from this chapbook you may visit the alternating current site by clicking the link provided at the beginning. Again, the royalties go to the poets themselves and the Pocket Protector Series chapbooks cost $3.00 each, or you can get a one-year subscription of 12 books for $30.00.

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

Book Thug Site

Courtesy of clicking the links on Silliman’s Blog I ran into this site that you’ll just have to see for yourself, it’s definitely of interest. Some of the titles of the books they offer are enough to hook me, see if they do for you:


http://bookthug.ca/proddetail.php?prod=3389


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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.

Thanks for stopping in, please visit again on Monday for another featured site…

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

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

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/

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