Poetry month, April in her infinite melancholy, has passed. I let her pass me by without attending one reading, without doing one collaboration, without buying one book of poetry. I did write one poem. And that poem was about not having words.

I have gone to the birds for an explanation of the words becoming dross, flight not the only thing birds have to teach, their keen eyes watching over hot pavement, their intrepid waiting. I used to pray for more, writing "clarity" in my journal, beg for some trail of metaphorical bread crumbs.

But May has shown me her mercy, giving me back, if not passion, a sure desire for words. Not only mine, but the poets we publish in Tiger's Eye. I think about them often, and often let them down. Someone is upset we held his work too long, another poet pulled her poem before we asked for it. A chapbook is published with errors, and we have to start over. These things are real and immediate, leaving me feeling that any job, paid or unpaid, literary or otherwise, is fraught with disappointment. Tenacity is needed. And vision. And plain old shoulder-to-the-wheel effort. 

And humility.

Outside my window the wind is kicking up as the sun sets a little later tonight. Neighbors are coming home from work, a woman rides up with a Burly following behind. She unbuckles her small son and he climbs out, then she drags the bike and Burly upstairs. Someone speaks Spanish. Someone speaks English. A dog yips twice. 

And suddenly I'm grateful for the cool air, my husband chopping small red potatoes in the kitchen, the dog always constantly near. Such subtlety is where I choose to live, in the liminal places, the before and after that make us nervous. There are words here, there are worlds here, and possibly poems.

Tonight, that poor damn dog the neighbors leave on their tiny back porch seems tragic and holy at the same time. I want to name him Lonesome, the name of my childhood German Shepherd. I want someone to let him indoors, to stroke his good strong head, to appreciate him.

And that is it, appreciation. To be appreciated. To be seen. Heard. 

May is giving me ears to hear, and a voice to speak, and the sky is on fire with something I can't begin to name. It feels so much like autumn and yet I know the heat is coming, the stifling months of light and sweat and discomfort. But here in this moment, this unquenchable need to speak  the unspoken, to speak of the unspeakable. 

Words. My words.

A good friend, Laura LeHew, has a small poetry press, Uttered Chaos, based in Eugene, OR. She sent me her most recent publication, Turn, an anthology of poetry in which the months of the year are highlighted. 

I remember attending a critique group where we all admitted to having written "November poems." And these poems were moody, introspective. Were we reacting to the coming darkness, the anticipation of becoming more insular, more solitary? November's wistful poem is markedly different than May's exuberant one. Or the heat and humidity of an August poem, the weariness of continual sun and light.

I am going to write a review of Turn, but here I am more interested in the larger story of how each voice in this book is (gratefully) unique. When we think we have to write like Billy Collins or Mary Oliver or Sylvia Plath, we've missed the point. We may be able to mimic style and voice to a degree, but we will never write their poems as well as they do. 

As I read Jane Hirshfield's poems the other day, I became envious; I wanted to write her poems. I wanted to capture what she'd captured in just the way she'd captured it. When I returned to the world of limitations and differences, I was grateful to this woman for giving so much of herself to poetry, for living such a particular life that whatever she writes is astoundingly unique. 

from "The Promise" by Jane Hirshfield

Stay I said to my body.
It sat as a dog does,
obedient for a moment,
soon starting to tremble.

As writers, as poets, our need is to dig deeper into our November selves, to expose and turn over whatever we've buried,  whatever asks for May's exposure. And when that material frightens us, and it will, we'll know it is the rich detritus of creation. This is what makes our poem our poem. No one else has this exact experience, the corresponding emotions, or the singular voice that only we possess.

In reading through Turn, I could not choose one poem above another. But "November, Late" by Amy MacLennan, with its subtle grace, its forgetting of self, is my current favorite. The author is talking about losing someone, a final gift, but throughout the poem she works deftly with the image of leaves. 

from "Novemeber, Late," by Amy MacLennan

                       Daylight will come back
with new leaf folds on the tips
of branches. I watch for them
even now, even as the dying ones remain.

Although I might have a similar experience, I could never have written this poem in this way, its inflections, its tone, belong solely to the poet. As I continue on through Turn, I am as excited to find differences, as well as similarities. Like the seasons, there is beauty in sparseness as well as in abundance, in the lyric as well as the narrative. 

 

Social media is a giant distraction to the ultimate aim, which is honing your craft as a songwriter. There are people who are exceptional at it, however, and if you can do both things, then that's fantastic, but if you are a writer, the time is better spent on a clever lyric than a clever tweet.

Bryan Adams 



In a world of instant gratification through social media, at what point does this major distraction distract from the quality of our writing? Do we twitter, pinterest, facebook and ning our way through the day, or do we use these communication tools to occasionally make contact with the people we care about? 

Should we, as writers and creatives, be even more concerned about the effect of constant and easy communication? And if we are adding to the overall online noise, what is the quality of that noise? 

A few years back, the word "platform" became the new obsession for writers. You didn't even need a completed manuscript, you were encouraged to build your platform, and then you could worry about what you were offering the world. Who you were, or made yourself appear to be, was the selling point, not what you wrote, or even how well you wrote it. It seemed absurd to me, a kind of backwards approach to creativity. Get an audience and then create something!

The only way this approach is valid is if the end product of creativity is just that, a product. We can argue that of course a painting or a book, a Florence + the Machine CD or a well-crafted bentwood rocker is a product. Yet doesn't the quality of the commodity matter more than how much attention it receives? If 200 people "like" something on facebook, does that make it more viable? 

What frightens me is that we might lose the deep contemplative selves that need quiet rooms, disconnection from electronics, and large swaths of time in order to have thoughts worthwhile enough to share. If our communications become primarily superficial, where in this electronic rabbit's hole is there room for empathy, for compassion? Not only do these distractions detract from our ability to create freely and wildly, they ironically distance us from one another.

Are we short-circuiting our adult brains, just like kids parked in front of Sesame Street? No one questions PBS-wisdom, when the early childhood experts explain that children have short attention spans, and shooting images and words and bright characters at them is the best way to program their malleable brains. We might ask those experts  if learning how the adult world works in slow, boring time isn't a better preparation for living in the adult world. 

Sesame Street to twitter is not a big leap. We adults build our web sites, create blogs, such as this one, and maybe we even have followers on the quick and dirty sites. Our every thought broadcast for others to consider. But what of the content? Can we in 140 characters communicate any more than self-interest? Do we touch or help or change one another's lives by posting the meal we just ate or the hand bag we just bought? Do you really care if I did 50 reps per arm at the gym? Okay, 30.

I recently opted out of facebook. I assumed my adult children would eventually call me, my friends too when they figured out I'd gone missing. As for the dozens of new "friends" I'd befriended, they would not truly miss someone they'd never met face to face. I'll maintain this site and my business site . . . and I'll communicate more intimately with people. I'll call them or email them or write them a letter. People still do that, right?  

As writers, we know what it takes to create our best work . . . each of us having a different set of quirky needs and habits. I found early on that I could not have music playing while I wrote, the lyrics kept me from deep concentration. Discovering that social media, as seductive as it is, has the same effect on me, it makes sense to walk away. I may not be following the populace, and the populace is definitely not following me, but if you and I pass on the street, recognize one another and embrace in friendship, that is enough of a platform for me.

One builds a house of what is there . . . 
Charles Tomlinson



December marked one year of living in Denver . . . nothing has occurred as we’d expected, and nothing is going as planned. Oddly, I am getting used to being unmoored. 

The poems I wrote during that chaotic twelve-month period are stark, more narrative than my usual style. The only explanation I can come up with is that when you’re up against the wall, you don’t write lyric poetry. I quite literally felt I was nailing down each word, each line, so it wouldn't get away. The theme of my poems has been predictably, home, houses, moving, change . . . and it runs continuously through this what I'm calling, "a small chapbook." Only 26 pages, counting all of the front matter.

What I’m feeling is relief, relief that in spite of a year of immense change, I produced a body of work. I've been telling people I'm not writing, and I'm not writing as I normally would, batches of poems created in periods of literary passion; but instead, a slow and steady stream of words turning to lines turning to poems. 

Where we live, how we live, the people we let in, the people we turn away, all of these things matter in life, and in our writing. The landscape matters. I used to question poetry of place, thinking it simple. I've come to see that all poetry is landscape poetry, all is impacted my our exterior climate, as well as our interior. 

Someone told me they couldn't wait to read my "dry" poems that would come from living in the mile high city. And possibly these narrative poems are my dry poems, they definitely lack the emotionalism of my Oregon poems. They also lack water, which mirrors this land of stark, dry beauty.

I'm sending the manuscript out, I'm filled with expectation that someone will take it, print it, give it wings. And now I'm writing haiku, which is centering me, and a non-fiction book that is un-centering me. This is creative tension, which has always been my inner landscape, the struggle to understand, to nail down a feeling, an image. 

As I type, there is a squirrel out my window, his tail just gently moving, then he bites himself and hugs his tail . . . and I am transported somewhere else. And this, this moment, is its own landscape.


squirrel in winter
sprinting from branch to branch
expecting spring

Back from OR and CA. The holidays stretched out to include two weeks of working with my friend and co-editor, JoAn, in CA. We accomplished a lot, published the latest issue of our journal, read submissions for the next one, contacted poets . . . and in the back of my mind was my own writing. I'd written one poem on the road trip from CO, and another my last full day in CA. 

In-flight, after reading a particularly negative article in Poets and Writers, I knew one reason I wasn't writing, why it seemed more a chore than a joy. I had fallen into the world of magical thinking. Someday I would be known, published in the bigger journals, and make money from writing poetry. I'm an editor of a small press poetry journal, I should know better. 

Instead of despair, this latent realization brought extreme relief. I've been stuck in someone else's model for success. I can now relax and return to my previous mind-set where writing is for the joy of it, not for the pay-off of publication or an occasional check in the mail. I can go back to daydreaming and observing and just being myself. And if something does open, some wider arena, I will enter it knowing I've earned it. 

Months ago I bought a used copy of the book, Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. This from chapter 6:

A person who becomes familiar with the conventions of poetry, or the rules of calculus, can subsequently grow independent of external stimulation. 

Sometimes having control over such an internalized symbol system can save one's life. It has been claimed, for instance, that the reason there are more poets per capita in Iceland than in any other country of the world is that reciting the sagas became a way for the Icelanders to keep their consciousness ordered in an environment exceedingly hostile to human existence.

Isolated in the freezing night, they used to chant their poems huddled around fires in precarious huts, while outside the winds of the interminable arctic winters howled. If the Icelanders hadn't spent all those nights in silence listening to the mocking wind, their minds would have filled with dread and despair. By mastering the orderly cadence of meter and rhyme, and encasing the events of their own lives in verbal images, they succeeded instead in taking control of their experiences.

Taking control of our experiences. No wonder the proliferation of MFAs in America. We as a collective are living in a hostile environment, bombarded hourly by dire political and environmental predictions. We have recently exited an "end of the planet" mania because of an ancient calendar's ending. Now we are taking in the aggression of gun control arguments. Creating order with poetry, as well as any other symbolic system, makes sense when our outer world becomes threatening.

I usually avoid new year's promises, but this year I have committed to re-connecting to my writing life. Not the magical one I found myself in, but the real one, where writing is a joy and a passion, where the work takes precedence, and all else is icing on the poetic cake. 

All compounded things are impermanent.
--the Buddha

Of all of the tragic images coming from NY and NJ, the one of a widow clutching a piece of china, all that was left of her material world, made me cry. Even the newscaster had tears in his eyes. She seemed so alone, she'd lost her husband, and now her house was gone, just gone. She said she wanted something to take with her. When she found the broken plate, she was satisfied; she could leave the wreckage that used to be her shelter. The parting shot was her walking slowly toward a relief group, the plate still held to her chest. 

I've thought of this woman, and more despondently of the woman whose two sons were swept from her arms, the father and daughter who stayed behind because during Irene their home had been vandalized, and now both are gone. I can't help but consider the thousands of people permanently affected or displaced by this massive storm. 

As co-editor of a small poetry journal, I expect poems to start coming in that contain weather, loss, broken things. But then most of our poems contain the broken elements of our lives. We write about love, knowing how fragile it is; we write of autumn's yellow leaves as they release themselves from the trees and fall to be swept away. Maybe we write to save that ideal moment, that shared whisper, that image of autumn becoming winter. 

Impermanence. We hate the word, we hate the idea of it, and we often spend our lives denying its existence. How ironic that turning and facing impermanence gives life an unexpected sweetness. Accepting that everything and everyone is made up of exhaustible materials, including ourselves, both terrifies and comforts us. 

As writers, we work with our word lists, we scribble our thoughts, choose line breaks and better words. We submit our work to be heard, but I suspect that seeing our thoughts in print is also concrete proof that we matter. It is our little stab at immortality. It is our broken plate, something to hold to our chest when the world has become utterly incomprehensible. 

No matter our losses, we'll keep writing, and we'll keep sending, and we'll keep pushing that submission manager button, the one that still seems ludicrous and unreal. Once in a while someone will tell us our work made them think or cry or reconsider. And in that moment we will be as permanent as we're ever going to be.

Like the priest who said, All of my sermons are about the things I need to work on, when I give writing advice, it's because I need to work on that same area. 

I'm asking you to consider the possibility that the reason you haven't completed your poem, collage, book, thesis, letter to the editor . . . is because it's the wrong project. It isn't that you can't complete what you've begun; it’s because you are no longer excited about it, and on a visceral level you already know this. You just haven’t given yourself permission to dump the project. 

I've had inspired projects where the muse skittered across the page so quickly I couldn't keep up with her. But once I became immersed in the project, I knew it wasn't going to be fleshed-out. I either didn't have the necessary stick-to-itiveness, the skill, or my desire waned to the point that facing the project was like looking into a pit of hissing snakes. 

This past year, my desire to write poetry lessened considerably. I wasn't blocked. It was worse than that: I was disinterested. So I began writing a novel, and when that project started hissing at me, I quit. I loved my characters, I loved their long, clever conversations; but I didn't care enough to follow them to the ends of the earth, let alone the end of the book. So I abandoned them. 

Out of nowhere (in other words, the thought was slithering around in my head all along and I'd ignored it) an idea came to me for a non-fiction book about writing and submitting poetry. The idea thrilled me. It incorporated everything I'd learned over the past ten years, while co-editing a small press poetry journal, as well as my own conflicted experiences in the uncertain world of publication.

The snake-hissing lessened considerably as I thought about the book's possible content, and stopped entirely when I began the writing, the editing, and the all-out believing that my fledgling project deserved. Instead of fearing the pit of snakes, I began playing my pungi until the snakes danced for me.

Ideas are exciting, like new love, all titillation and flirtation. Often these flirtations turn into concrete published poems and books. But sometimes we need to let go of the very thing we thought we loved, just stop in the middle of the endeavor and give it a big heave-ho into the abyss. It challenges what we've been instructed to do since preschool. It goes against our finish-everything-you-start mentality. And it feels wonderful. 

If what you're working on doesn't thrill you, if the work seems too much like work, stop chastising yourself. Set it aside and consider something outside your normal venue. If you write poetry, try essays, if you write essays, try short stories. If you’re tired of writing, pick up a paint brush. Don't allow frustration or ennui to stop you from expressing yourself. Bust out your pungi and start playing.

Fall back with your hands before or behind you just so. 
                Joshua Marie Wilkinson, The Dogs 


The unexpected. As humans, our fears are realized when the unexpected comes along and kicks our legs out from under us. 

On Labor Day I was hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park with my husband, Mike. We were discussing my desire to hike California's John Muir Trail solo, when I tripped on a rock. I landed flat on my forearms, as Mike said, Like a book falling over. 

Once I caught my breath, we finished hiking to our car, laughing the entire way back at my clumsiness, me making a mental list of who might accompany me on the John Muir hike. The next morning I was in the ER having my left arm immobilized due to a fracture in the radial head, next to the elbow.

Quickly I realized how dependent I am on using both arms together, and how frustrating it is to do the simplest of actions, like buttoning my jeans or folding a towel. What I took for granted, is now difficult, like typing . . . 

The irony of the entire event is that Monday was the best day I've had since moving to Colorado. I was finally hiking in a gorgeous setting, feeling strong and invincible, making plans for next year. And then there I was, literally laid out flat.

Life.

On the upside, I have cable TV and a Kindle that works with one hand, and I definitely have the time and opportunity to edit and complete the chapbook I'm working on. Yet, maybe this is not a time for distracting myself, but for listening. 

As autumn finally whispers her seductive promise of cooler weather, I am listening to her subtle messages: stay put, look around you, feel the breeze on your skin, don't take anything for granted. And, one more unexpected utterance: look for those yellow legal pads, because you'll be writing your poems in long-hand.





http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21981 

This week I've been struggling with sight. Or the lack thereof. It seems the drier Denver air and a fan going 24/7 has created dry eyes. I'd heard of it, but never experienced it, so I went to my doctor, the ER, and finally an ophthalmologist before finding the cause of my blurred vision.

Despite the blurriness, I took a long walk around Sloan's Lake in hopes of shaking out some of my frustration. Sitting at a picnic table were ten nuns dressed from head to toe in white. The juxtaposition of formality and leisure captivated me; the word, beautiful, came to mind. Unfortunately I'd left my camera with its telephoto lens at home, and missed the opportunity to save the image. The above photo is not mine, but gives you an idea of what I saw.

And this brings me to what we take in as poets, how we enter our own poems. I could have been taken in by the seagulls on the lake, or the lone cormorant hoarding his pier post, or the guy jogging shirtless with three dogs on leashes, but it was this vision of women clustered around a table, that thrilled me. 

How do you enter your poems? Through vision or sound or taste? Or feeling? I do not usually begin a poem with an image. Feelings are my way into poetry. Of course I thrash around looking for something that works as metaphor for the feeling, but usually the image is secondary. I may be an exception.

I'm hyper-aware of visual stimuli now. And it's brought me to a new awareness of how precious sight is. And how fragile these bodies are. Ultimately this foray into my visual neverland has humbled me. And it makes me want to write more, see more, take in more. Maybe even feel more.

Right now a crow is squawking out my window. I am tempted to enter a poem through her. I think in a previous life I was a crow. I just get them. All of that annoying chatter, picking up things that don't belong to them, an obsession with nests. It just fits. I digress.

So yes, we enter our poems as we live (or lived), and for me, even through the blurriness has brought vision to the forefront of my perception, I'm going to keep feeling my way into my poems, and occasionally I'll enter one through a bird clamoring outside my window . . . 



There Is Always a Bird, It is Always a Crow

In my house of dreams,
perpetual flight, not the brazen
lift of predator, more scavenger
looking down over humans.
It has always been like this,
measured thought before
action, when someone offers
themselves, the crow inside
builds a nest of wire and
sticks, feathers stolen from
other birds, makes a home
from everything discarded.

Dozens of people killed in Syria, 32 of them children. And we in America are scandalized, horrified, naming the deaths barbaric, a crime against humanity. What we aren't considering is our part in the world's suffering.

There were 4,487 US military fatalities during the war in Iraq. We have to search to find out how many fatalities the allied forces have suffered. And how many civilians were killed in a war that we brought to a country that had not attacked us, and who was not an imminent threat to our security. 

106,765-116,627, is the estimate given for civilian deaths in Iraq due to our 2003 invasion.

Add to these the number of both military troops and civilians who were injured or maimed, and the sobering fact that every 80 minutes a veteran of either Iraq or Afghanistan commits suicide. Every 80 minutes. Our war dead are not all slayed on the battlefield.

Having a husband who retired from the Air Force, having moved from home to home, from state to state in support of his career, having raised five children in military housing, having stood in a make-shift military chapel with a military chaplain chanting the Liturgy, having a son who served in the Army, I know what the commitment to country means. I know what sacrifice means, and I do not take either lightly. 

On this Memorial Day, I suspect the ultimate sacrifice of our war dead is being whitewashed by a half-asleep American population who will watch endless car races, grill hamburgers, boat, swim and water ski, and gather less in memory of our dead, than in celebration of having a day off from work.

And what does war have to do with writing poetry?

Everything.

If we write as a means to understand our actions, our desires, our hatreds as well as our loves, then poetry and war go hand in hand. The most vulnerable, most disturbing, the most revealing poetry is written when someone knows his or her life is in danger. Here, there is no hiding. 

In both  Here, Bullet and Phantom Noise, Brian Turner gives us a first-hand look at the war in Iraq. A soldier’s view, as well as a poet’s.


ASHBAH
by Brian Turner


The ghosts of American soldiers 
wander the streets of Bagdad by night,

unsure of their way home, exhausted, 
the desert wind blowing trash 
down the narrow alleys as a voice

sounds from the minaret, a soulful call 
reminding them how alone they are,

how lost. And the Iraqi dead, 
they watch in silence from rooftops 
as date palms line the shore in silhouette,

leaning toward Mecca when the dawn wind blows.



from Here, Bullet

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1882295552/ref=kinw_rke_rti_1



If I can separate the suspicious war of a misguided president from the men and women who served in it, if I can give more than lip-service to supporting the military here and overseas, I can open further to invite these men and women into my quiet, bookish world of poetry. Poetry has saved me more than once, possibly it can save them.

On this Memorial Day I am reawakened to what war is, and the too-high price paid for an ill-considered war. If the fallen could speak to us from their graves, I imagine they'd remind us that our hands are stained with innocent blood too, that Syria and America are not as far apart as we like to believe, and that all violence comes from the same source. But even if they could speak, would we hear them?


Approaching the Delta
by Colette Jonopulos

We shall find peace. We shall hear angels.
We shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.
  —Anton Chekov



I want to be there when mourning doves
glide above the river, downstream where

leaves and branches snare on rocks, where
deer hesitate to go further. I want to be

there when this war ends, and the next,
where under cover of trees we touch

the wind with our nakedness. When there
are no words left, only emptiness angular

with hope, I want to be there. The rush
of us, dense thighs and arms entwined,

the world grown dark, water the only
continual. Bodies buried nameless, the

quiet after; the named restless still. I
want to be there, near the crookneck,

where water eddies, glides past in
spirals, like the fingerprints of those gone,

left to memory and statistics, their
voices snagged in branches overhead,

speaking little of fallen matter, but of
water carried downstream with remnants

of winter, of the swift lure of salt right
before the river becomes something else.