Writing the Life Poetic

Enter to win a book at day at the Writer Mama Back-to-School Giveaway

For the third year in a row, The Writer Mama, Christina Katz, is giving away thirty books in thirty days as part of the Writer Mama Back-to-School Giveaway.

All you have to do to participate is answer the question that Christina will pose daily. One lucky winner will win a unique book each day. There is no limit to how many times you can enter. The drawing is for U.S. residents. You don’t have to be a mom, but of course, the event is created with moms in mind, so please tell all the writer mamas you know!

My book, Writing the Life Poetic: An Invitation to Read and Writer Poetry, will be given away on Day 6 -- September 6.  Check out the full giveaway list!

Hope to see ya in September at http://thewritermama.wordpress.com.

 

Ten-month tai chi

Ten months: the coolest age since nine months!

I make you a river

By Sage Cohen

Philip Levine claims that there was at least one day when Lorca and Crane were in the same place at the same time. His poem is the imagined moment of flint on flint, as the poets’ minds converged in a small brush fire of tongue and ash before each fell forward into his own, inevitable future.

Stranded in my own moment in time, the electric pulse of poetry charging my clinging sweater, back lined up with the hard bench of listening, I enter the eternity of Spring, where Lorca stands stooped, his pockets weighted with unspent poems.

Each hard knuckle of bud containing a great courage of reckless beauty unfurls itself into words under the spell of my recording pen.

Levine says: “horse cock and mattress stuffing,” a name for a sandwich composed of Wonder bread and bologna. We can take any experience and make it matter: put it in a barn or on a train, make it back-lit or blast it with headlights. I make you a river, so my love has somewhere to go.

I take the word “sacred” into me, and assign it to your mouth, which is echoing my inner ear as the conch holds the ocean. We are blind as a field. I am a maple tree wide as century, your kiss the sun pouring through my green. Time rings me in radiance. There is only this moment of enough. Stable as seed, your hands hold all futures. My pollens drift to dust.

The little note cards on my knee are preserved petals. Levine claims he hasn’t met a poet who rivals Dickenson. We silence our beauty inside the heavy book of Past. These cascading evasions we call time and truth, around which we organize our disappearances, return me to the cross-hatched convergence of afternoon and future. The earth’s thirst for metaphor rains you over my listening skin. I breathe you in, then cry you out again. I write you down so when the river returns, it will know to flow right through me.

 

The Writing Life: To Thine Own Self Be True

By Sage Cohen

Ren was a massage practitioner in my home treating my dog Hamachi for back pain. He had paw prints tattooed around his wrists and Pat Benatar’s name running up the inside of his forearm. The first time he came to my house, I found myself singing for the rest of the day in my most macho rocker girl swagger: “You can cry tough baby, it’s alright; You can let me down easy, but not tonight.”

Ren’s second visit inspired, “Before I put another notch in my lipstick case, you better make sure you put me in my place.” “Fire and Ice,” of course, was simply inevitable.

On his third visit, I asked Ren: “How has it impacted your life to have Pat Benatar’s name on your body?”

He was sitting on the floor with Hamachi in his lap. She was upside down, spread eagle, licking his wrists. He was working on softening the fascia of her belly that connects to the spine. He lit up.

“Pat Benatar is my talisman,” Ren explained. “Her name on my arm is a daily reminder of who I am and how I want to live. I go into people’s homes, and they see her name on my arm, and they are reminded of whom they are and how they want to live. It gets us talking about what matters to us.”

I am intrigued by this idea of taking the name or idea or embodiment of someone or something else literally into your skin. Living alongside your life, these words perhaps provide a kind of parallel perception; a harmony playing counterpart to the main melody of your form and function––an aspiration or value to which you have assigned yourself, against which the beating of your own heart aligns or collides.

I have never been certain enough about the longevity of any word, phrase, or belief to tattoo it onto my body. However, I did wear a necklace pendant for maybe three years straight that said, “To thine own self be true.” I liked to think of that necklace having powers akin to Wonder Woman’s groovy metal bracelets: deflecting all that might steer me off the course of my greatest good. And I am absolutely convinced that those words worked!

Today, magnetized to the calendar above my desk are two SARK cards that my dear friend Pam sent me. One reads “Breathe” and the other, “All your dreams are already coming true.” Beside this, a framed piece of art that my mother gave me maybe twenty years ago that has been held close in every home since: “The act of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.” ––David Hare. Again: none of these are imprinted on my skin, but all are a part of my daily visual cues as I look up to consider deadlines and seek poems from that vast, diaphanous place above my head where they materialize.

Words can be like arrows, directing your attention in certain directions. And they can be like steering wheels, literally influencing the choices you make and actions you take. I encourage you to think (and feel) carefully about the words you keep close: on your body, where you sleep, work, and live. Sooner or later, the words you see will become a part of your framework of belief.

If “Pat Benatar” are the two words you need to keep in sight to remind you of your true North, then by all means become one with the legendary rocker. Whatever it is you believe or you’d like to believe, experiment with letting words be the current that can keep your circuits juiced with your own truth.

The Poetics of Community: Poetic Lineage and the Saturation Job

By Christopher Luna

I have been a writer for as long as I can remember. When I was eleven I received a typewriter for Christmas and immediately began banging out imitations of Stephen King and Rod Serling. Later I drifted toward poetry, music, and film. Eventually, in my twenties, I discovered two books that changed my life: Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and Allen Ginsberg’s Collected Poems. I read both books cover to cover, and knew immediately that this was what I had to do.

Walt Whitman wrote about the promise of America and described a New York long-gone, yet familiar. He wrote about the beauty in all things, and the beauty in himself, and the importance of both loving and celebrating it all. Although his book had been written more than a century before I sat down to read it, I felt he was addressing me directly.

Allen Ginsberg wrote about the promise of America in its mid-Twentieth Century downturn. Democracy was threatened by McCarthyism, consumerism, nuclear weapons, and the war in Vietnam. More importantly, many Americans suffered from a lack of imagination. Ginsberg’s sexually precocious, righteously indignant, stream-of-consciousness poems represented freedom. His words pointed toward The Possible. And whatever it was, The Possible was definitely more exciting than life in the suburbs. 

When I was a student at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Anne Waldman introduced me to the concept of poetic lineage. Those who take the study of poetry seriously find that they are part of a poetic family tree that stretches back generations. Once you have discovered your poetic lineage, and have a sense of where your work fits into that history, you have a homework assignment for life akin to what Charles Olson referred to as a “saturation job.” In his essay “A Bibliography on America for Ed Dorn,” Olson wrote: “Best thing to do is to dig one thing or place or man until you yourself know more about that than is possible to any other man. . . . One saturation job (it might take 14 years). And you’re in, forever.”

What will become your saturation job?

Poets refer to our poetic elders by their first names. This is because we have spent enough time with their words to feel a certain familiarity. It is because they are our family and friends.
 
One can also learn lessons about how to live from our poetic elders. In my case, Whitman taught me that one can decide to dedicate one’s working life to jobs that are related to writing: teaching, publishing, journalism. Allen Ginsberg provided a model of generosity that is still unmatched. Despite being our first (and perhaps only) poet to enjoy the same popularity as a rock star, Ginsberg provided support to many of his friends and followers. As Ed Sanders points out, Ginsberg even stormed the offices of publishers, insisting that they publish his friends, unknowns who would come to be regarded as some of the most important writers of our time. Don’t you wish you had a friend like that? How would your life be different if you aspired to emulate such generosity?

* * * * *

Christopher Luna is a poet, editor, artist, teacher, and graduate of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Publications include Cadillac Cicatrix, eye-rhyme, Exquisite Corpse, and the @tached document. Chapbooks include tributes and ruminations, On the Beam (with David Madgalene), and Sketches for a Paranoid Picture Book on Memory. GHOST TOWN, USA, which features poems and observations of Vancouver, WA, is available through Cover to Cover Books  and Angst Gallery, or from the author.

POETRY AVAILABLE ONLINE
Poem in Exquisite Corpse
Poem in For Immediate Release
Profile for Here Comes Everybody: Writers on Writing

Email: christopherjluna@gmail.com
Blog: www.christopherluna-poetry.blogspot.com

Discover New Poetry Markets and Get Published: Summer

By Shawn Sorensen

I hope you enjoyed the submission ideas and three outlets for publication from my last column. Please report back regarding any correspondence you receive from a publication or contest, and I’ll do the same! We’ll celebrate our successes and also rejections.

I can hear you asking “Why should I celebrate a rejection? Aren’t I supposed to feel lousy? Aren’t I supposed to wither like a rose bush in winter?”

Absolutely not! I suggest you wear rejections like badges of honor. Why? Because you’re in the game! You’re taking the risk to put your work out in the world. And if you don’t get accepted, then at least you have work you could revise, or simply send somewhere else.

And if you do get published, that can expand your horizons even further.

The best part about submitting work, in my experience, is that almost everybody gets back to you. There’s no rush involved, though, so I wouldn’t recommend camping out by your mailbox. Some publications may take a month or two. Most take two to 12 months.

So keep writing and submitting in the meantime! The best thing to do to pass the time is write and revise more poems until they’re ready to send out.

Here are three great markets to check out this summer:

Print Journal:  The MacGuffin

Published three times per year, The MacGuffin journal simply wants “well-crafted poetry”. For reference, The MacGuffin has recently published poems by Dawn McDuffie, Lisa Siedlarz and Vivian Shipley, poetry that is slightly revelatory and/or humorous in tone, something that sheds new light on the greater meanings of making it through the world.

Send no more than five poems, along with a cover letter, to Carol Was, Poetry Editor/ Schoolcraft College/18600 Haggerty Rd., Livonia MI/48152-2696. Considers simultaneous submissions and would like poems to be typed and single-spaced with the poet’s name, address, and e-mail appearing on each page. Include an SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope). Pays two contributor’s copies. For a sample, send $6 to the above address.

Online Journal: Wild Goose Poetry Review

This is a lovely website that publishes poetry every three months. You can send simultaneous submissions, but don’t include previously published work. Email submissions only, with poems pasted right in the body of an email. A cover letter here is a very good idea. Over 10% of all poems submitted get published! To get all the submission details and read poems from other editions, go to www.wildgoosepoetryreview.com. Responds in four to six weeks, often with comments. 

Contest: New River Poets Triannual Poetry Awards

Lots of prizes, a contest every four months, and low entry fee make the New River Poets contest an attractive option. 1st-8th place poems receive cash prizes and submissions may be previously published, even winning in other contests. This is for your best work, but choose from anything you’ve ever written. Submit up to four poems of no more than 42 lines each.

Submit what you’d like, but if you use a structured form, simply identify it. Send two copies of each poem on 8 1/2 X 11 white paper and list the deadline in upper right-hand corner of both copies. On the second copy only, in the upper right-hand corner under deadline, list your name and full address. Include #10 SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope). Entry fee is $5 for up to four poems – only a little over a buck per poem if you submit four. Checks are payable to New River Poets. Mail submissions to Verna Thornton/New River Poets/36929 Grace Ave./Zephyrhills FL 33542. Postmark Deadlines: Oct. 15th and Feb. 15th. 

Now get those poems out! Wishing you good fortune and fun.

* * * * *
Shawn Sorensen is a published, award-winning poet whose work can be viewed at manequinenvy.com, Winter 2008 edition. His poem called “The Yard” won 1st Place in the Oregon State Poetry Association's spring 2009 contest, New Poets category. Shawn's poetry submission goal is to send something in at least every other week and get published/recognized a few times per year.  He's written dozens of complete book reviews, many of them for poetry titles, on goodreads.com and braves a perilous river crossing to be the Community Relations Manager at Barnes & Noble in the hinterlands of Vancouver, WA. He plans and hosts an every-2nd-Wednesday Poetry Group event that's always at 7 pm, always features the area's best poets and always has a great open mic.

The Cook, The Writer, The Gardener, The Business Woman: Kindred Arts

By Brittany Baldwin

I started writing as soon as they taught me how. I didn’t speak loud or well but with my pen there was no need for sound. In words I could say anything. I have boxes of stacked notebooks hidden in closets—fantasy stories from early elementary and journals from fifth grade on.

I was the girl with the stack of polished stones on her desk she used as telephones to her invisible friends. At a certain point everyone else was living in reality and I was able to slip off easier.

At 15 I got a job at the foot of our mountain washing dishes, bussing tables and making pizzas. Pizza is a good place to start in a kitchen. You have to prep all your toppings so you learn how to use a knife and how to work with dough. I was taught by a high school punk kid and an older creep who always said “I have a friend who really likes 15 year olds.”

I worked in restaurants for 10 years then started a catering company. The business woman was born. I had to learn how to talk to people, make big decisions about where to go and how to do it. Everyone in my immediate family is an entrepreneur. I was much shyer and awkward than they are and I messed up terribly so many times at first, stuttering and blushing. Thankfully, my food spoke for itself.

Two years ago I decided I wanted to grow vegetables for the company, get a few hens for farm eggs. When I was growing up, my mother ran a flower garden business; I had worked part time for her throughout my teenage years. I knew the basics of plants but now I was growing and selling quail eggs, squash blossoms and fine herbs. After a long day cooking over a stove in the middle of summer, now I put on a dress and play in the garden at sunset; eating as I go. Back stooped, talking to the tomatoes, I am a gardener.

I balance these four arts: writing, cooking, business and gardening, like old friends. They trade poems about food, and menus written like poems, and plants grown for the company and the company pays the bills. Today, writing still serves as a refuge for things I can’t say well. Along with the woods around my farmhouse, it always makes me clean again. With cats rubbing into my ankles and dogs panting in the corner, I am alone chopping onions listening to recordings of old poets.

* * * * *

Brittany Baldwin runs a small catering and personal chef company that maintains its own organic garden. She has written poetry in Portland for eight years while starting her own business and self publishing her own poetry collection, Broken Knuckles Against Knives, Cutting The Food To Feed Me Through This (2005). In 2002 she received a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Colorado. Her poetry has appeared in local poetry collections Ephemeris and Broken Word: Alberta Street Anthology Volume 1 and 2. She has appeared on KBOO's Talking Earth,  won an honorable mention in the Oregon State Poetry Associations fall 06 contest and was featured in the 2006 and 2007 Silverton Poetry Festival.

If I've reached for your lines

If I've reached for your lines (I have) and cupped in each hollow a tender word (I will), the fullness of night that turns in blades through this darkness will give me something I can follow, some net of stars that will hold me closer than I know how to be held. And into that great sentence unfurling to paragraph into the dream that our bodies weave together, too heavy to contain what we know, too impossible to line our shelves with the sturdy preservatives of time and tomorrow, will be the moment unadorned, light as a nightgown, empty as a name.

Creating Space for Writing: Making Room Internally

By Toni Partington

Last month, you identified the physical space that inspires you to write poetry. This month, it’s time to make space inside yourself. This isn’t a process to stop the noise, eliminate internal conversation, or remove people. It’s a process of reflection and preparation.

Poems happen we’ve allowed our mind and body to access the internal place where imagination is married to creativity and the freedom of expression. How can we get there? I suggest a reflection exercise to start exploring the answer to that question.

Identify your obstacles
Make a list of what’s in the way of your writing. Be honest--are the obstacles in your mind or in the world? Do they carry more weight than necessary? Are they excuses for not writing? When you’ve finished the list, rank them 0–10 (zero for excuses that can be removed by structure or determination, five for things we can change with some effort, and ten for issues or situations requiring serious resolution). Next to each item, write down what you can, or rather what you will do to stop these from preventing you to write.

Identify your strengths
This reflection exercise is in two categories. One is for folks already writing poetry on a regular basis -- let’s call you Active Poets. The other is for beginners, whom we’ll call Emerging Poets. Go to a quiet place, bring pen/paper and allow 60-90 uninterrupted minutes.

Active Poets: Select five poems you’ve written -- ones you feel good about. Start by reading the first poem. Close your eyes and think about what inspired this poem. Write down your responses to the following prompts:

• Where were you when you wrote the poem?
• Was there a specific catalyst?
• What was going on in your life at the time?
• How did you feel when you started the poem? Finished it?
• How do you feel about the poem now?

Emerging Poets: Begin by listing five personal, academic or work-related achievements where you overcame an obstacle or problem. Take the first achievement, close your eyes and think about the moment you knew you had achieved success. Describe the feeling in writing and respond to the following prompts:

• What turned the corner for you -- was there a specific catalyst?
• Describe the difference between how you felt before and after this success.
• How do you feel about the achievement now?

Do this exercise for each poem or achievement on your list. If you need a break, take one. Try not to do this fast or on the fly. When you are finished, read what you’ve written and make notes along the margins of themes that emerge. Are there common elements in the themes or something that is present nearly every time you write a poem or feel accomplished? What is it? Write it down.

Recap what works
You’ve just identified some key themes in your process that would be helpful to repeat. We’re going to help you remember these by listing them on a clean sheet of paper. For example, here are my themes:

Theme one: Nature as muse
I get an overwhelming feeling outside when I notice how small I am compared to the enormity of nature. Sight, sound, smell and temperature are all likely to spark poetry for me.

Theme two: Social justice as spark
When I feel concern about a social issue and want to learn as much as I can, often I express myself in writing. Empathy, compassion and care generally send me looking for a pen.
Reflection can help us recognize the feelings and circumstances that nudge imaginings, creativity, language, and ideas. Think of the list you’ve just created as a jump-start -- knowledge of what sparks you. Carry it with you and refer to it whenever you feel drab or unmotivated to write. With instant recall of the elements that fuel your desire to write, you can open your poetic world.

* * * * *

Toni Partington lives and works in Vancouver, WA. Her poetry has appeared in the NW Women’s Journal, the Anthology of the River Poets’ Society, VoiceCatcher 3, the Cascade Journal, and others. Toni’s other work includes career/life coaching, editing services for new and emerging writers, and grant writing. This winter she joined the editorial collective for VoiceCatcher 4. She holds a BA in Social Work and an MA focused on Literature and Literary Editing.  Before that, Toni was a high-school drop out, pregnant and then married at age 16 whose life came faster than it should have and toughened her into a self-described survivor. Today, her circle includes family, friends, dogs and poets, not in any particular order.

Blog: www.poettone.blogspot.com
Email: tpartington@earthlink.net