Writing the Life Poetic

A teachable poem by Kim Klugh

A Poet’s Tea
by Kim Klugh

At tea time I scoop
up a few wayward words
toss them like raw sugar
into a vintage chocolate
brown teapot,
and as they steep
I breathe in
a spicy orange tang
while my tea words brew up a poem.

Steaming words stream through the spout as I pour--
I plunge my spoon into the deep cup and stir
they swirl
some float, some sink.
Which ones will escape as I drink
from the cup?
I silently sip this poetry laden tea,
this dark and steamy sweetened- by- poetry tea.

Surging words slip through my lips
slide past my teeth
rearrange themselves inside my mouth
then glide down my throat
as I swallow
entire stanzas
form and fall apart
until a poem piles up
and I can scarcely breathe.

With a silvery spoon I stir
and scatter leftover words
I wrap my hands around the cup’s curved shape
hold the chalice to my lips
gaze down upon the tea poem
(as tea-readers unravel
 mysteries left in leafy remains)
and ask of the one that escaped
and settled at the bottom of my cup--

will you be my fortune or folly?

* * * * *

Sometimes the creative spirit seems to hibernate; other times it surges from its source. This poem originated with an empty kettle which I filled with cold fresh water. I chose the tea and scooped the dried leaves into the tea ball and slid the halves together; it dangled on its little chain and clinked against the side of the ceramic tea pot. The water boiled and the tea kettle whistled—water bubbled as it changed from one state of matter to another. All that wild energy looking for an outlet, all those water molecules moving about bumping into one another; I poured them collectively into the pot while the steam hit my face. Immediately I inhaled the orange aroma. The water darkened and I stirred loose, unrestricted, free-flowing tea particles that had escaped their containment. They swirled around then settled to the bottom of the cup; I took a sip.

I began to imagine—what if poems were fashioned this way; what if words came surging through the spout and into my cup, like a word catcher? They’re all jumbled together and tumble out topsy-turvy, jamming up against one another, re-arranging themselves like they do in my head and then on the page, spilling thoughts and possibilities all over white space. When I exchanged tea leaves for words and pictured their fluid journey, the poem brewed itself into being, and so I drank it.

Have a cup, won’t you?

* * * * *

Kim Klugh lives on a tree-canopied boulevard in Lancaster, PA. While her three grown children are now off carving out their own dynamic lives, she works in a high school just blocks from home, which she shares with her husband, their cat, Pearl and sheltie, Mandee. She is also a freelance writer who contributes to “b” magazine and BusinessWoman. In addition, Kim’s had articles published in Lancaster Intelligencer Journal, Lancaster City Living, Susquehanna Life, Central PA magazine and Byline magazine. Most recently she’s had a personal essay included in the anthology, My Dad is My Hero, newly published by Adams Media and edited by Susan Reynolds.

Recharged with the poetic spirit shared by Sage and her online Poetry 4 People class, Kim decided it was time to stir the poetry waters. She may not be quite ready to body surf or ride a wave into shore, but her shoes are off and she’s ready to stick her toes into the froth and foam.

A teachable poem by Carolyn Martin

Whale Watching Spoken Here
Depoe Bay, Oregon

By Carolyn Martin

Spring break rain,
migrating pods,
and one uncanny gull.
There! a watcher shouts,
beyond the red buoy
and off the crabber’s bow.

Even with binoculars,
I confuse white caps
and V-shaped blows,
wild waves and blue-white backs.
Near-sighted reach cannot
embrace enormity.
     
But I can see that bird.
Unperturbed, he doesn’t care
the Samson needled through
the harbor’s eye, escaped
black rocks to chase fluke prints
above the grey whale’s dive.

He seems amused  
attention’s paid to thirty tons--
a tail, a breach, a distant plume
passing twice a year
his daily stretch of wild coastline,
the shifting sands of rocky beach.

Regal. Zen. Immoveable. 
He can’t conceive he’s just a gull
and dreams his dovish dreams;
reincarnates, perhaps.
A coastal spirit courier.
A rain-free olive branch.

Five minutes down! the watcher times.
Track south a mile or two.
But we ignore whale chasers
who breach immensity. We watch
wild winds swim close to shore
and meld into the roily sea.

* * * * *

Spring Break at Depoe Bay and a poetry workshop at the Writers’ Dojo conspired to create this poem.  As soon as Sage Cohen introduced the idea of writing about an animal, I knew I’d write about the seagulls I had been photographing during that rainyMarch week. But what to say about these ubiquitous birds?

Then it hit me:  I had been consistently frustrated by the whale watching volunteers at Depoe Bay Park who’d point out spout sightings.  “Even with binoculars,” I couldn’t see any of them, much less hope to photograph them.  However, I had some up-close encounters with “immoveable” seagulls who serenely posed for me.  I watched one strain against strong winds and swoop down into the water to grab lunch.  I digitally caught his extended wings as they melded into the foamy waves.

He became the central character as my poem started to focus on the speaker’s migration from the mythic “Get the whale” to the mundane “Watch that bird.” I don’t think I’ve written a more direct, and, perhaps, more prosaic line than “But I can see that bird.” However, it contrasted the speaker’s near-sightedness to the far-sighted whale watchers and sounded --and felt --just right.

What did I learn from writing this poem?  First of all, how much I love research. In googling grey whales, I learned that they really are bluish-white, that their spouts are V-shaped, and that fluke prints are the smooth patches of water that mark the site of their dives. All useful details to ground the personal experience in scientific fact.

Secondly, how much I love revision. In her book The Creative Habit, the world-famous choreographer Twyla Tharp claims, “In many ways, the creative act is editing. You’re editing out all the lame ideas that won’t resonate with [your readers]….It’s exercising your judgment.”

I believe that. When I was playing with the idea that the gull imagines he’s a dove, I researched dove images in art. Initially, I made allusions to Picasso, El Greco, and Gerard Manley Hopkins.  They sounded erudite, but didn’t work as well as the simpler “…he dreams his dovish dreams/reincarnates, perhaps.”

Knowing what to leave out requires as much judgment as knowing what to leave in.  Thanks to “one cunning gull” and one sage poetry teacher, I had the opportunity to practice that judgment again.

* * * * *

Carolyn A. Martin is a happily retired business educator and author who has returned to her first love:  poetry. Her poems have appeared in Sisters Today, The Christian Century, The Wind Literary Journal, and VoiceCatcher3.  A member of the VoiceCatcher editorial collective, she revels in the luxury to garden, write, and participate in communities of artists and friends who support one another.

A teachable poem by Tomas Mattox

"I love the the ideas that take me out of my ordinary mind stream and prompt to dive into the unexpected. Last Saturday I went to visit the Writers' Dojo in St.Johns, an inspiring oasis and burgeoning
community of writers, for a day of writing and revelry.

Paulann Peterson and Sage Cohen opened the day with a workshop, guiding us through a series of invitations to mine an array of ideas, words, and colors, even. Words like weep, shadow, and oar...images like burning straw, diving in,and swimming meta-morphed into in a spontaneous poem when the surprising image of the Dalai Lama as my diving coach arose. The metaphor of diving as writing was unintentional but became obvious as I hit the water."

Dalai Lama Diving Coach

The Dalai Lama weeps
"That was beautiful,"
he says
"Just perfect"
I mentally review his instructions...
Breathe
Say a prayer
Step out on the edge
Dive in
...and how I always freeze on the last.
He puts his hand on my shoulder.
"OK, you've got 3 out of 4 down pat,
This time you jump right?"

He goes back to weaving beautiful straw mats that he will later throw
into the fire

I take a breath
Say a prayer for my brother
Step out on the edge
Freeze...
Below I see the shadow of a single oar glide across the lake
I dive
Explode into the water
feels like a triple shot of wasabi up my nose
surface

Above the Dalai Lama is bending over the edge with his hands folded.
"Now what" I asked
He raises his cupped hands up to his mouth.
"Swim!"
What? Where?
Swim, my boy, just swim.

* * * * *

Tom Mattox resides in NW Portland where he works at Food Front Cooperative, wanders around looking for poems, and is always ready to write when inspiration strikes. He is co-host of the Poetry (and Prose) for the People Series with Sage Cohen. Visit his blog at: http://randomglidings.blogspot.com/

A teachable poem by Kristin Berger

Boiling Beets

You choose them for their solidity and shape,
their ability to stain the heart from under the produce light.
Their edible greens, too, the red-veined and cooled trails
the morning sun once stalked in the furrowed fields.

You carry them home with other necessities wrapped
in plastic and brown butcher paper, flowers
for yourself in an extravagant fuchsia funnel,
reach for them first out of all the other chores,

charm them to settle together
like sleeping children into one bed,
sandy cheeks ruddy with dreams,
ignite the fumarole to flame and will

those roots to tremor and roil, your face
the moon rising above earth-steam
filling the kitchen, governing the boiling hour.
And when they finally give up their skins and slip

between your fingers, glassy and calm,
you follow their growth-rings, a striated map,
with a whetted knife, releasing cross-sections to the jar
and pour vinegar like a salve to preserve their luster.

The rubied water swirls down the drain.
Wipe your hands over and over against your apron
but the beet stain will outlast the rage cooked
out of the pot, vented to the afternoon shafting

through the leaded window. The sun turns
towards a new field of seedlings.
The next crop surfaces, leaves sluicing light
to their buried, molten hearts.

--Kristin Berger
from For the Willing, Finishing Line Press, 2008.

About “Boiling Beets” by Kristin Berger

This poem began with an act and a conversation, a convergence of ideas from two people. My good friend, Cindy, turned me on to pickled beets from her garden, and I have forever been trying to duplicate her recipe. I have been in love with the growing of beets, ever since… such a rewarding crop, so fun to pull, so child-friendly!

One day I was having a conversation with another mother about our day, and I had just caught her after a struggle with her toddler, trying to put him down for a nap. All she wanted to do was get to her kitchen, cook something delicious, and find that place where she could both be released and be replenished. Cooking for her is like that, an art form, an alchemy of spirit. She was trying to find a place for the anger she had just waged, and cooking calmed her. Geologist that she is by training, she described herself as a volcano after the eruption. How ok she felt NOW, but oh the blast-zone left in her wake!

I knew I had a poem in the works…. the language of food and geology are where I feel at home (I often feel that I was dirt or basalt in a past life!). I started with placing myself in my friend’s “blast zone,” and imagining what it would take to accomplish one satisfying stint in the kitchen, boiling and pickling beets. There was also the under-current of tension, this rage that needed cooling off, needing a release. I used many geologic terms and imagery because the language of emotion, while so often belongs to water, also lives in the realm of fire and earth. What happens to something that is born of the earth, a root-crop, how is it transformed, under what conditions, what makes it pliable, nourishing, what makes it tender towards others? These are all questions easily asked about people, about mothers in particular. Caring comes with compassion, but how do we get there?

The poem’s form lent itself to a cyclical reading… that what is finished will begin again, that just as the season’s evolve, revolve, the body continues to want food and comfort, and the days’ rhythms repeat.

I don’t think I thought a lot about these bigger issues when I was doing the actual writing. Mostly, I had a lot of fun in the re-writes, playing with the language, layers and references, and finding the 4-line stanza form – which helped keep the momentum tense and forward-reaching, just like plodding through the day. Writing “The rubied water swirls down the drain.” after 5+ stanzas of build-up was the most satisfying line I have ever written. This poem was all about the re-write, and instead of feeling daunting, or like I was “messing” with it, the process was playful and not too challenging.

It always makes me hungry after I read it!

Kristin Berger’s poems and essays have appeared in Alimentum, Mamazine, The Pedestal Magazine, Sea Stories and The Oregonian, among other publications. She received runner-up for both the 2008 New Letters Readers Award in Poetry, and a 2009 EDDY Award (given to Edible Portland). Her chapbook, For the Willing (Finishing Line Press, 2008) has been nominated for an Oregon Book Award. Kristin is an editorial collective member of VoiceCatcher, an anthology of Portland area women writers. She lives, gardens and studies clouds in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two young children. You can visit her and read more of her work at www.kristinberger.wordpress.com.

OSAGE DIAMONDS

By Claire Sykes

Taut as the distance between
trees on the Plains,
a circle of string winds
around two hands, palms facing
like the banks of the Neosho
carrying 460 miles through Osage country.
“Made muddy by buffalo?” or “cold and clear?”
no one is certain.
 
But someone, done with the day’s planting,
knotted two ends and wove into their fingers
a current crossing with each pull
the shape of wind.
 
It’s what pushes
a river, the Neosho drifting
toward Chetopa, Iola, Oswego,
the ones that remain.
A tangled net these people, cast into their waters
now dammed, yet still moving
like memory passed down by the hands.
 
No need for words.
String scrawls a language only the Osage knew
written in a river at times so clear
its glassy surface cuts right through.
 
* * * * *

Whenever I'd been a featured reader at the William Stafford birthday event (twice before), I'd promised myself that I'd write a poem specifically for my reading, and I did. But this year, when Scot Siegel emailed me inviting me to read, I told him No, thank you. I hadn't written a poem in over two years and felt a bit removed from the whole poetry world. How could I possibly come up with anything good? Anyway, surely there was someone else--a real, working poet--who'd be grateful for the addition to their poetry resume. But Scot (and Paulann Petersen) urged me and insisted, and after two more tries at getting out of it, I gave in.

Around that time, I was teaching myself string figures (like "Cat's Cradle"). I loved the way the string felt in my fingers, and the resultant shapes of "Osage Diamonds" and "Apache Door" stretched between my hands. Suddenly, the idea of writing and reading a poem didn't seem so bad--if I could show off one of my string figures. I went through my Stafford books looking for anything Indian. There, on page 229 of The Way It Is was a poem with "Osage" right in the title. How lucky was that? Plus, I really liked the poem, and the fact that I didn't get some of it at first. I read up on the Osage Indians, the Neosho River, the diamond shape in Native American design. The more I learned, the more I saw meaning in the history, geography and symbolism, as they related to my own life--words like "journey" and "transformation," "breakthrough" and "awakening." This felt big. This felt like more than a poem going on. I organized all my Googled facts, and brainstormed images and ideas. Then, with a pencil and lined paper, in one evening, out poured "Osage Diamonds." I spent the next several days editing it, going through my Thesaurus looking for just the right word, running revised versions of the poem by poet (and non-poet) friends. By the evening of the reading, I was sure I wouldn't screw up doing the string figure--and I was happy with what I had written.

But really, the poem wrote me. And it reminded me, assured me that if I ever find myself wondering again whether I'll write another poem, deep down I know I will. Because, even if I abandon it, poetry won't leave me. Even if I push it away, it won't let me go. It won't say No.

* * * * *

Claire Sykes, who lives in Portland, Oregon, is a freelance writer of national magazine articles, mostly about the arts and health and wellness. For three years, she was associate editor of Poetry Northwest. Her poems have appeared in a few literary magazines and on city buses in Tacoma and Bellingham; and she has put out two chapbooks, The Listening Bell and Blind Light.