Thrush Sighting

Chester A. Reed, The Bird Book, 1915.

Check out the May 2014 Issue of Thrush Poetry Journal, featuring work by Anne Barngrover, Michael Bazzett, Jamez Chang, Rae Joyce, Adam Chiles, Lawrence Eby, Christine Gosnay, Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick, Rustin Larson, Thom Norgang, Nina Puro, Nicole Rollender, Jenny Sadre-Orafai, Robert Schultz, Ciara Shuttleworth, Jay Donald Smith, Carleen Tibbetts, and me.

Also, you can now get the anthology of the first two years of work published in Thrush Poetry Journal. This is one of my favorite online journals, and so worth it!!!!!

Writing Process Blog Tour

Judy Halebsky, poet and sometime-dweller-in-Japan, invited me to join her in this Writing Process Blog Tour. You can (and should!) read all about Judy's writing process here, where she answers the same four process-related questions that I will answer below.

And here's some information about Judy: Judy Halebsky’s book of poems, Sky=Empty (New Issues, 2010) was chosen by Marvin Bell as the winner of the New Issues Prize, a first book award, and was also a finalist for the California Book Award. Her chapbook, Space/Gap/Interval/Distance (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2012) won the Poets-Under-Forty Chapbook Contest from Sixteen Rivers Press. She teaches at Dominican University of California.


Now, I'll answer the same four questions that Judy did.

1) What are you working on?

My book, The Insomniac's Weather Report, which had gone out of print, recently found a new publisher Isobar Press, so I'm busy preparing for a June launch. I'm working with a different publisher on another manuscript as well (and will make an announcement about it soon).

What I'm writing these days are poems based on my mother's only brother, who at age 22 was lost on Denali (Mt. McKinley) in a mountain-climbing accident. For a number of reasons, speaking of the accident in my family was taboo for many years , and I am writing about growing up with that unarticulated loss.

2) How does your work differ from others of its genre?

My education has been solely in analytical (not literary) fields, and I can't help but use my "quant" schooling to inform my work -- I hope in ways that are deeper than merely the choice of technical wording, playfulness with logic, etc.

3) Why do you write what you do?

I always want to do something I haven't done before to reach the truths I am afraid of. I'm also a big believer that form and voice should serve the poem. I'm less interested in consistent voice and style than effective use of voice and style.

4) How does your writing process work?

I am a compulsive list-maker, in my writing life and in every other aspect of my life. I tend to think about a topic or theme, and make a list of all the images, ideas, and phrases that come to mind. Then I start working on one or several that seem related, or that seem to resonate, or are interestingly disparate. Always, writing the poems generates more items that should be on the list, which gives me more fodder for new poems, so it's a self-perpetuating method. (This is when I'm lucky and have a theme in mind. When I don't, it's anybody's guess what the process will be.)

***Next, I'm pleased to present Tara Mae Mulroy to continue the blog tour here.***

Tara Mae Mulroy is a graduate of the MFA program in poetry at the University of Memphis and currently teaches middle school Latin at a private school. Her poems, stories, and essays are published or forthcoming in Third Coast, CutBank, and others. Her chapbook, Philomela, is out from dancing girl press. Her blog can be found at taramaemulroy.wordpress.com.

***Also, Drew Myron accepted my invite to the blog tour here.***

Drew Myron heads a marketing communications company, and as a journalist has covered news, arts, entertainment and travel for numerous publications. She lives in Oregon, where she leads writing workshops for disadvantaged and homeless youth. She is the author of Thin Skin, a collection of photos and poems.   www.drewmyron.com

***Finally, in a poetry boon, we also have Shawnte Orion's responses here.****

Shawnte Orion is an Arizona poet frequently invited to read at bookstores, bars, colleges, hair salons, museums, and laundromats and published in Georgetown Review, Juked, DASH Literary Journal, New York Quarterly and many other literary journals. He hosts a monthly reading series at Glendale Community College.

The Insomniac's New Look!

The Insomniacs's Weather Report (originally winner of the Three Candles Press First Book Prize) is being reissued with Isobar Press in June of this year.

Check out the new cover (featuring Paul Klee's Fire at Full Moon in a design by Paul Rossiter) !

More details about how to order the book (it will be available on Amazon and through me) later!

One Hundred Years of Gratitude

I don't know how old I was when I first read Gabriel García Márquez, but I do know that it was in parents' house, the one they lived in before their current house that they've lived in for 26 years now. I was in either high school or college. I remember that after I finished the book I walked around the house aimlessly; I wandered into my parents' room and looked at their bookshelf, their bedspread, and wondered, "How can everything look the same when nothing will ever be the same again?"

I had just read One Hundred Years of Solitude. I had picked it off the library shelves because I had liked the title. I had not before heard of García Márquez, had not been assigned to read his work. I actually thought I had discovered an unknown writer and that I must tell everyone. I thought either he was brilliant or I was naïve. Turns out I was right on both accounts.

There have not been that many writers whose work has changed me as fundamentally as García Márquez, whose writing has made me look at what is possible to do with words, who have caused me to step back from reality in order to describe reality.

I immediately returned to the library to get Love in the Time of Cholera, which was published in 1985. So I was in college. Solves that mystery.

Gabriel García Márquez was a brave writer, an endlessly moral person, a strong believer in his own work and what it could do for his region though he refused to sacrifice fine writing for political content (rejecting that false dichotomy), and there is as much to learn from his life as there is from his writing. I am grateful to him for his body of work, one that makes it easier to live in this world and make sense of it all by letting go of sense. And now we have to let go of him, and that too makes no sense. As it never does. Thank you, Gabriel García Márquez.

Empty II

Poetry isn’t a profession, it’s a way of life. It’s an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that.

Mary Oliver

******

Love Song: The Reproduction of Mothering (1)

from The Making of the Mother: Portraits        Marcia Aldrich

This is a mother who still holds her daughter's hand when they're walking down the street. Her daughter is 18 years old. This is a mother who wants her daughter to look and act and be just like her. This is a daughter who does not resist what her mother wants. As the years pass this is a daughter who is becoming her mother. This is a mother who is always receding into the background. This is a mother who is always refilling platters, emptying trash, washing dishes. This is a daughter who with each passing year is receding into the background, watching her brother from the wings doing his tricks, clapping along with her mother and others. This is a mother who wears little Sunday school white gloves to bed to keep her hands innocent. This is a daughter who in time will too.


******

Peach                                            Catie Rosemurgy

The head, the mouth, the fruit, the eating.

The pit, the teeth, the branch, the fall.
The wet, the swollen, the light, the seeing.
The picking, the washing, the cutting, the quartering.
The sweet, the having.

The juice. The holding it in your hands

beautiful and then ruined. The forms of devouring. The remaining empty.
What’s inside.

The excitement of the definite article. What’s inside

one thing is analogous to what’s inside another.
The ceremonial names

of what is done to them. What is unknown requires a new way of cutting.

What we’re left with.

How we make an object ours, make it disappear.

How we become the object and are food.
How we are delicious and dead at the center in so many ways.
How that is wrong and it is stillness, moon-like at the core.
How what we are is what reflects off it. How we are light produced earlier
by other things.

******

A poem is an empty suitcase that you can never quit emptying. Kay Ryan

******

"For What Binds Us"                                  Jane Hirschfield

There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set down --
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh,
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest --

And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.

******

The true contemplative is not the one who prepares his mind for a particular message that he wants or expects to hear, but who remains empty because he knows that he can never expect or anticipate the word that will transform his darkness into light. He does not even anticipate a special kind of transformation. He does not demand light instead of darkness. He waits on the Word of God in silence, and when is “answered,” it is not so much by a word that bursts into his silence. It is by his silence itself suddenly, inexplicably revealing itself to him as a word of great power, full of the voice of God.

Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer, p. 112-3

Empty

Gone                                                      Malena Morling, from Five Points

          The world
is gone
      like the exact
shape of a cloud
          or the exact shape
of a hand waving
      in the sunlight
from across
          a crowded
train-station
      parking-lot
to another hand
          that waves back.

Come to think of it,
      everything up to now
is gone.
          And I have also
already left
      even though
I still ride
          the train
through the outskirts
      of the city.

And I still sit
          by the window,
the filthy
      train-window
while what is left
          of the demolished
buildings
      go past
and the empty
          billboards
and the transitory
      architecture.

It's amazing
          we're not
more amazed.
      The world
is here
          but then it's gone
like a wave
      traveling toward
other waves.

          Or like
the delicate white
      spaceships
of the Dogwood
          that float
as if there were
      no gravity,
as if there were
          no moments
isolated from
      any other
moments
          anywhere.


*****

Everything that seems empty is full of the angels of God.  St. Hilaire, fourth-century bishop (and patron saint against snake bites)

 

******

Empty similes                                                                  Bob Hicok

Like standing in front of a woman who says thank you
when you tell her you love her, that stuck

sound of a crow, pulling the one nail from its voice
outside your window and you

going down to the sea too late, where it was
three million years ago, waving your little towel
at the shadow of waves, like dropping

your stomach when you drop the phone,
a voice spinning at the end of the chord, your mother,
father, everyone

dead, even the person telling you
gone and you
waving your metronome arm, and time

inside the trees making clocks we check
by cutting them down.

 

******

Genesis                 Herman de Coninck, tr. By Laure-Anne Bosselaar and Kurt Brown

It was the sixth day. Adam was ready.
He saw the oaks firmly rooted
in the void. Power is a matter of branching.
He had seen the mountains, vast storerooms holding
only themselves, high empty cellars.
And deer. With legs as thin as stethoscopes
they stood listening to the breast of the earth,
and as soon as they heard something, they ran away,
inventing pizzicato as they fled the horizon.
And he had seen the sea, the busy swelling and receding
that makes one calm. And the empty, provocative gestures
of the wind, come along, come along, though no one followed.
And the depths, gulfs that make one uneasy. And being silent,
because that's what everything was doing, and being too big.
Then God said: and now you. No, said Adam.

 

******

Bats                                                                 Paisley Rekdal

unveil themselves in dark.
They hang, each a jagged,

silken sleeve, from moonlit rafters bright
as polished knives. They swim

the muddied air and keen
like supersonic babies, the sound

we imagine empty wombs might make
in women who can't fill them up.

A clasp, a scratch, a sigh.
They drink fruit dry.

And wheel, against feverish light flung hard
upon their faces,

in circles that nauseate.
Imagine one at breast or neck,

patterning a name in driblets of iodine
that spatter your skin in stars.

They flutter, shake like mystics.
They materialize. Revelatory

as a stranger's underthings found tossed
upon the marital bed, you tremble

even at the thought. Asleep,
you tear your fingers

through your damp neck hair
and search the sheets all night.

******

Future Tense                                                                                                                                                                                                              Charles Wright

All things in the end are bittersweet—
An empty gaze, a little way-station just beyond silence.

If you can’t delight in the everyday,
                                                         you have no future here.

And if you can, no future either.

And time, black dog, will sniff you out,
                                                            and lick your lean cheeks,
And lie down beside you—warm, real close—and will not move.  

 

Rushing Towards Rejection

“Rejection should be rushed towards. Rejection has to be faced.” Dan Savage

There’s no art in giving what you have. The art is giving what you haven’t got. The gift of empty hands.   Anna Kamienska, Industrious AmazementOkay, so this advice from Dan Savage was about relationships, not writing, but there's still validity here.

 

Rush towards rejection in your writing. Face the hard subjects, the demons, the projects that are going to make you uncomfortable, and make those who love you uncomfortable. (And, by the way, get over yourself--they probably won't be as uncomfortable as you think they will be; your writing is not the center of their life just because it's the center of yours.)

 

Rush towards rejection in submitting. Dare. The worst that can happen is that you are told No. That's it.

 

Rush towards rejection in other opportunities you are offered. This where I am weak. I write boldly, submit fearlessly (submitting is a relatively private matter after all), but other opportunities that come my way I am timid about accepting. Because I'm afraid I will let down those who ask me. Or embarrass myself in front of a readership or listenership. This is definitely the area that I need to learn a sense of abandon, a sense of rushing towards rejection.

 

Rush towards rejection. It might not happen, but even if it does, you'll probably (in the long run) be glad you dared instead of endlessly wondering if you should have.

Countdown to 3:1

Kansai poets, writers, artistic types -- poet Steven Breyak is hosting a open reading event on Wednesday, April 16th, from 10 pm, at Café Absinthe in Osaka.

The event is called 3:1, because, in Breyak's words, "[there is]  one rule of this event. Simply, for every one poem of your own that you read, you need to read 3 other works by other poets. Any language, any time period, just something that's been published. I want this event to be more about share our reading than our writing. (Though I want us to share our writing too!)"

For more info, go to the 3:1 event page on Facebook. Hope to see you there!

Control

Ring               by Melissa Stein

Control was all
I wanted: a handle
on the day, the night
when it curved,
when it swayed,
when I could sense
the teeming stars
in light, in dark
the sun's bare wire.
Some switch
to turn it off:
each shadow
pinned to each tree
like a radius
of some infant's
milk it spilled.
And the leaves,
their gossip
of claw and beak
and wind and heat
and wing. Tether
lake to bank and
cloud to peak.
And weather it.
Weather it. All this
to say I've
taken off my ring.

 

 

******

Kiki Smith: "Just do your work. And if the world needs your work it will come and get you. And if it doesn't, do your work anyway. You can have fantasies about ...having control over the world, but I know I can barely control my kitchen sink. That is the grace I'm given. Because when one can control things, one is limited to one's own vision."

******

 

To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him. So it is with people: first, let them do what they want, and watch them. This is the best policy. To ignore them is not good; that is the worst policy. The second worst is trying to control them. The best one is to watch them, just to watch them, without trying to control them. Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, p. 32

*******

Ars Poetica               Henrietta Goodman

Why do we think we have any control
at all? My breasts are soggy cartons.
The baby is greedy. He grabs
my skin in his fists, twists my hair.
He seems to know everything
already, the checkbook, balanced wrong,
the ignorance I'm not supposed
to confess—my friend says Giotto
and I hear Choteau, tiny town not far
from here. Clearly, I can imagine
no farther. The valley's a funnel,

skyline blurred by charcoal clouds,
the valley's a tornado and I'm
the eye—doodlebug, doodlebug
your house is on fire—
the room spins and spins
until the floor drops away
and I'm dizzy, frescoed to the wall,
Madonna Defying Gravity.
You can't tell it yet,
but I'm slipping, scratching the days
in my skin with a dull blade,
too afraid to just cut clean
and deep. This is how prisoners do it,

one scratch for each day
on the wall that holds them in,
one for each day I've lost
in half-sleep, the baby curled
like a snail on my chest, my hand patting,
patting, stomach bulging
over the top of my pants—

what is restrained in one place
escapes in another—

 

******

"I cannot seem to feel alive unless I am alert," Charles Bowden writes in his recent book, "Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing", "and I cannot feel alert unless I push past the point where I have control."

******

To Mirah: In Utero: On Being Named                                Jennifer Perrine

I lost control of my car one summer, blacked out
on the way to work: when I woke, I’d lost
a random taxonomy: paper, sieve, sand dollar:
stuck in some synapse between mind and tongue:
others lost in their fumble of letters: I found
driftwood on the river and called it derby:
my doctor gave me a name: aphasia: like Adam
knowing he’d gotten it right when he found
gecko or ant lion under a dead leaf: no doubt
there’s a purgatory for lost language: the dark
burning-off before ascension: a lexicon
shaken loose from etymology: uprooted
rhizomes shucking their dirt: and you: swathed
in the hum of your name: all the world your alias.

******

Did We Betray the River                                                      Dionisio D. Martínez

Did we betray the river or did the river betray us? You've noticed, I'm
sure, how, under certain conditions, a ladder leaning on a wall is a draw-

bridge waiting for a sailboat that keeps delaying its journey, calling
the man who operates the bridge, layering elaborate excuses so neatly

that the man only hears one excuse: the boat's coming, just not yet, not
while the water's in control of the situation. The man waits—drawbridge

up, traffic on hold. Sometimes the world is all patience and silence
and there is nothing you can do to stir up trouble. The driver who keeps

a knife beneath the seat is tapping on the dashboard a song coming from
another car. This is an exception. Others are praying to their private

rivers, as if the one just ahead were not there: seeing is too easy: one
acquires increasingly complex needs, like the taste of earth just

turned by oxen who know the plow as well as a man knows his river. We
know this blue's an illusion: the things that shelter us are colorless and

hover just so, not quite halos and not quite hats, and they can all be named
even if the names are arbitrary, even if they're not quite words. Our boat

waits for the water to go from blue to brown to ocher, as in a Turner
vision—a realism so crude it borders on beauty, the way beauty

was meant to touch us: with its repulsive allure, its unwashed mirrors of
heavy morning fog. We have to look head-on, and learn to forget again.

******

Equilibrium Update                                                                    J. Allyn Rosser

      Look there, a man caught smack in the middle of his life
and almost aware of it; not quite yet resigned
            but past most of the old impatiences, having
developed a consciously casual walk, not quite
      the swagger of yore, nor the dignified limp
to come; rather like a man carrying a long heavy plank,
            glad of his hard-won, admittedly modest momentum;
calmly dreading several varieties of misstep
            such as tipping the future a little too far forward or
letting the past plunk down heedless behind; or merely
            looking down; or turning so quickly to look back as to
whack the one just now bending to pick her own burden;
      still staunchly bearing it onward in splinterless grip
            across the rooftop lifescape—bicep, trapezius and
thigh muscles in play, also those of the spine, the upper lip,
      he is at last in control, yes, in his element, in his heart
            of hearts wondering how long he will bear it, where to
and, as ever, what for.

The Insomniac is Back!!!!!!

I have some exciting news: my first full-length poetry collection, The Insomniac's Weather Report, is back!!!!!!!  After winning the three candles press First Book Award, The Insomniac's Weather Report subsequently went out of print when the publisher suddenly closed down (after more than 10 years of service to poets and readers). It was a devastating setback, but happily fortune has reversed itself with the following good news.

Thanks to Paul Rossiter's Japan-based Isobar Press, a brand new edition of The Insomniac's Weather Report will be available in June 2014. Anyone wishing to preorder a copy can send me an email from my website. It will also be available on Amazon at a later date. I'll give you more details as the project progresses.

Isobar Press is, in its own words, interested in "work in English by Japanese and non-Japanese authors who live (or have lived) in Japan, or who write on Japan-related topics. The focus, at least initially, will be on poetry, including both original writing and translations from the Japanese." This is a welcome addition to the poetry universe, and an exciting development for me. Three cheers for Isobar!

Poetry Madness for National Poetry Month

To celebrate National Poetry Month, Powell's Books is running Poetry Madness, pitting poet against poet for popularity. This year it's all female poets. (Emily Dickinson won last year, so for fun check last year's brackets.)

Be sure to vote in all four brackets. First round voting ends April 7th, so don't be late!

(The graphic to the right is from Powell's website. Head over there and vote!)