Poetry Tips: Park Benches

This week I couldn’t help but notice the weather has been warmer and the people sitting on benches waiting for the bus or in the parks have come alive compared to being huddled in jackets. This week I want you to try writing poems dedicated to benches and the people using them. I’ve also provided a link to a poem about Central Park for inspiration on the subject. Good luck to all of you who try it!

http://poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=171587
“Retired Ballerinas, Central Park West” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti


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Rope-A-Dope Open Submissions

You better act fast because the open submissions for chapbooks closes on March 31st at Rope-A-Dope press! Include two copies of your original manuscript, 15-35 pages, and include two title pages for EACH copy of your manuscript. The first title page should have your contact information and the title, the second title page should feature the title only. Include a Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope and mail them to the editors to:

Golden Gloves Chapbook Series
Rope-a-Dope Press
516 East 2nd Street #42
South Boston, MA 02127

Please check out the site and the details by clicking the link below and good luck to all of you who submit:

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


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Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://apt.aforementionedproductions.com/nineteen/townsend1.htm
“The Elegy: Cherry Blossom” by Beth Townsend

http://poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20447
“Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself” by Wallace Stevens


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Poiesis 2 Review

Alternating Current's biannual literary magazine, Poiesis, was released back in January and once I started reading it, I couldn’t put it down. There are over fifty poets featured, some of which have been featured in Poet Hound before such as Hosho McCreesh, Justin Barrett, Leah Angstman, and Timothy Gager. The collection of poems is as diverse as the writers and you are sure to find more than several poems you’ll want to make copies of to share with your friends, family, and co-workers. Each issue has a Featured Writer who happens to be J.J. Campbell in this issue and when I read his poems I said “I like this guy!” So let me start out by sharing one of his poems below:

my fellow man

often as i watch the seconds aimlessly
tick away each day as i wait for my
number to be called certain thoughts
will enter my head

like how my fellow man could ever
allow reality tv to become popular

or how my fellow man could ever let a
government of the people, for the people
and by the people become so corrupt and
hell bent on greed and ruling through fear

when did my fellow man become
a member of the religious right

how did my fellow man
forget the one rule for this planet

keep the rich rich
and the poor poor

why did my fellow man allow the
schools to rot into ruin and suddenly
become naïve and think raising a
collective voice would change
anything, anything at all

my fellow man must have missed
the memo about the almighty dollar

but anytime i’m out there, waiting in
line, running a red light or pulling up
a chair at the bar next to my fellow man

it only takes me a few seconds to order
another drink, something stronger this
time, for the look on my fellow man
says it all

we’re fucking doomed

J.J. Campbell’s poem is very abrasive and visceral which I like because blunt people are my favorite type of people—you know exactly where you stand with them. All of his poems featured in this collection have the same visceral quality and you need a strong stomach to read them all.


Another poem not quite so abrasive but also blunt is one by Joseph Veronneau below:

An Artist’s Night Out

Entering the building, I could
see the academics sitting
stiffly in cushioned chairs.
I quietly filled a seat in the back
Amongst snob-nosed “professionals.”
The poet kept his wine glass
closer than his book of poems,
selling his words to us in monotone.
A delicate two-finger clap
to the palm and then silence –
for the English Professor wannabe-poet
is about to speak again.
After the last metaphor
and sentences of “grandmother’s
crisp apple pie,”
I was ready to leave.
I received a dirty look
on the way out
by the bookstore owners.
I was pleased because
I had finally received something
from the evening.

I congratulate Joseph Veronneau for being so candid about the poetry reading he describes. I can picture perfectly the scenario and know that I may have struggled internally whether to leave or not if it had been me but Mr. Veronneau walked out and was pleased with the dirty looks he received as a result which makes a great ending for this poem.


I will now share one final and more sentimental poem by Janice Brabaw:

Moshe

You were too young to love me
The way I thought I needed to be loved
And in the end I wasn’t enough
Too much
For you

I was too young to love you
The way you thought you needed to be loved
And in the end you weren’t enough
Too much
For me

Dusk does not settle
Without the dust
of our love
whispering across
floorboards
from under the floor.

And every night
Before I sleep
I have to sweep it back
So I can rest again.

This poem sounds like first young, true love that you can never be rid of. Most of us have that experience and I love the repetition of “wasn’t enough/Too much” for each other. I also like the idea of having to sweep back the feelings to rest peacefully at night, it makes the relationship in the poem more pronounced and like a fresh memory than an old wound. This poem avoids being trite on a topic we all read and write about and I think Janice Brabaw does a wonderful job with her choice of words.


There are countless more poems I could share with you but I think you should check out the collection for yourself.

To purchase a copy you may find it for $4.00 at the link below and I hope you’ll take a look:
http://alt-current.com/pp/pp_item.html#poiesis_issue_2

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

Poems Worth Your Time

You know how you can drop in on Wednesdays to find links for all kinds of poems here? Well this site does it more often than I do and what a grand selection! These poems are worth your time and I hope you’ll check it out at:

http://poemsworthyourtime.wordpress.com/


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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?

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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”


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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.

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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

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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…