I Was Born Doing Reference Work In Sin

THE BLOG HAS MOVED!

2009-08-30T01:53:00.000-07:00

I Was Born Doing Reference Work in Sin has moved!
The new web address to visit and link is www.dustinbrookshire.com

WHY DO I WRITE ~ Arisa White

2009-08-23T13:14:00.000-07:00

WHY DO I WRITE ~ Arisa White

Photo by Sven Wiederholt

I write because I'm trying to love others and myself.

It is a way of getting to.

It's an opportunity to try on humanity, from varying points of view. If I can write from the perspective of the murdered and murderer, I can discover in myself something I did not know.

To get to a place where I am not ashamed of my secrets.

To not judge.

It's how I keep myself sane and honest. Growing up with six other siblings, a mother who chose abusive boyfriends as partners, I needed a space to breathe, to remind myself that I had a voice that could be listened to, even if it was only by me. And despite the lies my mother told herself and us to permit and excuse such violence in our home, writing allowed me my own truth.

Writing is raising the silenced and inaudible voices to heard.

I've chosen poetry to help me navigate the questions I ask about people and the things people do, and the systems that we create to keep people doing the same, often, unhealthy things they do.

I can't let things go: I like the challenge of finding the words to remake the moment again. The constant translation of events, situations, and emotions keep my brain turned-on.

I like to be turned-on.

It is truly, the times when I feel safe. Free to take risk, to emote, and to be led by imagination without fear.

Sometimes, I need a knife, a lover, a priest, a compass, and the poem offers direction, listens, loves, and stabs.

It allows me to not be while still being. When you walk in the world as black, woman, queer, poor, and the such, you get read before you reveal who you are. And sometimes, there is no space to learn who you are without being constantly challenged by assumptions, stereotypes, and expectations to perform or produce in a certain way because of those social identities. So writing is restorative, recuperative and permits me to ask myself vulnerable questions about my own who-ness and humanness.

I love it.

Double Ds Move!

2009-08-21T20:32:00.000-07:00

Well, I have a lot on my plate. Yes, I'm a big boy who enjoys a full a plate and often seconds, even I have to realize when I need to embrace change to keep everything on my plate balanced.

I have decided to move the Double Ds, which is a monthly column I organize with Denise Duhamel, from Read Write Poem to I Was Born Doing Reference Work in Sin. I hate to move the series from the fantastic Read Write Poems site. Read Write Poem has it all-- writing prompts, forums, and more web traffic than my blog; however, I have to think of the project. I am balancing a full-time job, college, Atlanta Pride Committee, Atlanta Queer Literary Festival Committee, Project Verse, Quarrel, Poetry Swap, Limp Wrist, and as of this week, promoting a chapbook that is going to be published by Pudding House Press. I'm a one man show doing all of this, so I have to do what is easiest for me while keeping the integrity of the project. --- moving the Double Ds to I Was Born Doing Reference Work in Sin will do just that!

I owe Dana a huge thanks for embracing the Double Ds as soon as I pitched the idea to her. I owe a big thanks to the RWP staff for posting the first entry with Marilyn Nelson.

Please check back for the Double Ds questioning Dara Weir in September. You won't want to miss it!

Sagittarius Agitprop from Black Lawrence Press

2009-08-20T23:30:00.000-07:00

Matthew Frank's new collection of poems exchanges ideas for music and music for pictures, with completely unexpected freshness and velocity-- and this is not the experience of surrealism, but of a current realism that is hastening with the times. And these times are often rude and beyond all correction and all comparison. This book is sort of miraculous. I love it.
-Norman Dubie

In Matthew Gavin Frank's splendid debut collection, Sagittarius Agitprop, poem after poem is unswervingly bold and astonishing. "Parts of a Feather," to give an illustration, may be grounded in the experience of newlyweds home from a rainy honeymoon in Venice, but its opening announces that something very different from a personal narrative is at work in a Frank poem: "The superstitious geometry of the rock dove rests/ between its first and fifth rib. And you// rest between it, poised as water. It’s easy/ to call you a disease. Better: a heart or rain[.]" These are striking lines and they move into a startling meditation on art, life, union, and mortality: "Of course, you say, my hands// are the skeletons of everything with wings . . ./ A feather // stripped of barbs is bone." Frank is a master of deft balance between the material of experience and lyric transformation, never losing his poetic footing or his sense of humor. As the speaker hilariously observes: "A marriage license/ makes a lousy umbrella" ("Parts of a Feather"). These poems are inventive, fearless, and wise. To be Frank, I think he walks on the water that is the page!
-Cynthia Hogue, author of The Incognito Body and Flux

Judge Announcement: The Replacement

2009-08-18T20:36:00.000-07:00

This morning it was announced that Dana Guthrie Martin will not be able to serve as a judge for Project Verse's Week 10: Final Assignment. Click here if you missed the post with all the details.

Matthew Hittinger is stepping in to fill Dana's spot for the Week 10: Final Assignment. Not only did Matthew serve as the guest judge for Week 3: Simile Vs Metaphor, he has been following Project Verse since Week 1.

Welcome aboard, Matthew!

ADAM & STEVE: Gay Dance Off

2009-08-18T20:05:00.000-07:00

In my search for a specific Parker Posey clip from ADAM & STEVE, I found this gem:

Project Verse: Judge Announcement

2009-08-18T07:25:00.000-07:00

Originally, the final Project Verse assignment was not what was posted early this morning. In fact, the original task probably wasn't even a hard enough task worthy of the fierce final two: Emily and Kathi. After a discussion with weekly guest judge Beth Gylys, we decided to incorporate change. This change keeps us close to our mission of promoting poets and poetry by giving a poetic makeover to Project Runway.

Unfortunately, weekly judge Dana Guthrie Martin will not be able to participate in the judging of the final assignment because of this change. Dana poured herself into Project Verse-- my thanks to her is endless. The contestents will never truly know how much she cared and cheered for each one of them-- I heard it in her voice each time we spoke on the time to discuss Project Verse. Your hard work and dedication is greatly appreciated. Thank you, Dana.

Here is a statement from Dana:

The Project Verse competition has been a wonderful experience, and I wish the final two candidates — as well as all the incredibly talented poets who competed — the very best with their writing.

Because of changes to the competition’s end date that have pushed Project Verse into September, I unfortunately won’t be able to be part of the final judging and must step away from the competition at this time.

An extra-special thanks is due to Dustin for all he’s put into this competition, and for having such a fantastic idea in the first place.

Good luck, everyone! I’ve learned a lot, and you have all been amazing to work with.

Poem on! And step in a little shit when you write. (That’s the opposite of the best advice my mother ever gave me. You don’t even want to know her second-best advice to me. It involves what kind of speculum not to allow the gynecologist to insert into you during a pelvic exam.)

Stay tuned for updates!

Week 10: Final Assignment

2009-08-18T00:25:00.000-07:00

Emily and Kathi, you've made it a long way; however, you have one last assignment.

Only one poet can win Project Verse and receive the Project Verse prize package.

The final assignments consists of five parts:

Poem #1:
Part of your Week 9: Duel Task assignment required you to select what you consider the strongest line from your revised poem. The selected line will be used to write a new poem. While the new poem must use the strongest line, the new poem must not be anything like the poem from which it came. I almost forgot: you must swap lines.
Emily, you will use Kathi's Unrequited love can kill you.
Kathi, you will use Emily's and glittering. The sky is vintage celluloid, the hell.

Poem #2:
Revisit Week 5: The Between; redo the assignment. Yes, you must follow the rules as originally listed in the assignment. Poets, you may NOT use the lines you selected the first time around. Here is a reminder as to which lines you used the first time around:
Emily: He already has a name, she sighs reproachfully.
Kathi: As soon as he saw her, he knew that this wouldn't happen.

Poem #3:
Revisit Week 6: Epigraph; redo the assignment. Yes, you must follow the rules as originally listed in the assignment. Poets, you must select a different poem to create an epigraph from. Here is a reminder as to which poem you used the first time around:
Emily: "With Mercy for the Greedy" by Anne Sexton
Kathi: "Famous" by Naomi Shihab Nye

Poem #4:
Dorianne Laux participated in the new celebrity writing prompt series at Read Write poem. Click here to read Laux's prompt. Poets, you will use Dorianne Laux's RWP prompt to write a poem. Follow the instructions of the prompt carefully.

Poem #5:
Write a poem that begins with "I started writing poetry when I found out..." You can insert line breaks into those eight words any way you see fit; however, the poem MUST begin with those eight words. No, using the words in an epigraph won't suffice. The poem must be written in 50 lines or less. There is no form constraint.

DEADLINE: Poems should be submitted in a single Microsoft Word document by 4pm on Friday, September 11, 2009.

Good luck!

Get to writing.

Week 9: Duel Task ~ Results

2009-08-17T02:27:00.000-07:00

Beth, Dustin, and Dana were joined by guest judge Denise Duhamel for Week 9: Duel Task. Click here to revisit pop culture portion of the assignment, and click here to revisit the revision portion of the assignment.

THE FINAL THREE:
EMILY VAN DUYNE
W.F. ROBY
KATHI MORRISON-TAYLOR

Beth Gylys said it best when she said, "I want to be clear, my top choice and bottom choice are not separated by miles, but rather by degrees of degrees." I hope each of you take Beth's words to heart.

Emily, you've earned a spot in the final two. Congratulations!

W.F. and Kathi, both of you are talented poets. Both of you have been active in the poetry scene before this contest, and I know you'll continue after.

I'm sorry, W.F., you are on permanent caesura.

Kathi, congratulations!

I want Parker Posey to be my sister

2009-08-16T23:35:00.000-07:00

Week 8: Villanelle Results

2009-08-16T22:37:00.000-07:00

Beth, Dustin, and Dana were joined by guest judge Maureen Seaton for Week 8: Villanelle. Click here to revisit the Week 8 poems.

W.F. ROBY
KRISTEN MCHENRY
KATHI MORRISON-TAYLOR

The weekly judges & guest judge Maureen Seaton all agreed that there is a clear winner for Week 8: Villanelle. Congratulations, W.F.

While the decision for the winner was easy, Kristen and Kathi, the decision for the bottom two was not easy. In fact, the decision for the bottom two was quite difficult, and the decision as to who goes on permanent caesura was extremely difficult.

Kristen and Kathi, the weekly judges feel that for most of the competition the two of you have been neck and neck. Both of you have had your ups and downs-- we've thought you've been great at times; we've questioned what you were doing at times. We see it all coming down to the week 8 assignment.

Kristen, you revised your poem correcting the AAB rhyme scheme error to the proper ABA rhyme scheme of the villanelle. However, the judges feel your original poem was stronger than the revision.

Kathi, the judges won't deny that you made great choices with your revisions; however, you didn't address the issue of slant rhyme.

Who stays? Who goes on permanent caesura? The poet who took the chance to revise and took two steps back, or the poet who wrote a good poem in spite of the rules....

Kristen, you are on permanent caesura.

Week 9: Duel Task (Poem Revisions!)

2009-08-16T11:44:00.000-07:00

Week 9: Duel Task is a two part assignment for the remaining Project Verse contestants. Below you will find the poems from the revision portion of the assignment.

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EMILY VAN DUYNE

ORIGINAL:
Elegy

Oh My God, the angels
wear white gloves on their left hands!
Eternity’s a big fat fucking show
tonight, vacuous black churned white

& glittering. I can see it
from my little clammy foxhole. The sky
is vintage celluloid, the hell with digital.
I hope you didn’t think

you’d make a nice clean break!
For’s Christ’s sake, don’t fail
us now— the stars went scuttling when
they heard you coming! You wouldn’t

leave us with no light
to top the bill? You couldn’t leave
us in the dark. We need another
comeback, need to know this isn’t how it ends—

(if you can end, then so can we)
& trust this Jersey girl who stalks
the sky— we never cared for your humanity.
The world’s no

stage these days, it’s just a screen,
some dumb flat firmament; convince me
why your death would break the mold.
Look up— even the moon’s turned out

for you; old hag of rag & bone,
she’s donned her crescent gold, she’s
donned her best. She’s know
tonight she hosts an honored guest.

REVISION:
Elegy

Oh My God, look up! The angels wear white
gloves on their left hands! A chorus line of shimmy

hipping seraphim. Eternity’s a big, fat blazing
show tonight, vacuous black churned white

and glittering. The sky is vintage celluloid, the hell
with digital. The world’s no stage

these days, it’s just a screen, some dumb
flat firmament; why should heaven break

the mold? Even the moon’s turned out! She’s donned
her best, crescent gold. She hangs in wait

for your arrival; the stars are milling in the aisles.
Mars has snagged the house’s choicest seat. So sorry,

but there isn’t time to sleep! Look, there— the lady
moon’s sashayed into eclipse for your debut:

your show will go on, with or without you.

Emily revised her poem from Week 3: Simile Vs Metaphor, and her strongest line selection is and glittering. The sky is vintage celluloid, the hell.

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: I'm glad to see this revision as well. The original was somewhat confusing and the revision seems to me more easily applicable as a general elegy and reads as more sad and more powerful to me because of that. The end "your show will go on, with or without you" is lovely and could be said for and to many who have died, not just Michael Jackson (which I think was the inspiration for the poem). I like the revisions of the beginning too, though I did miss the "big fat fucking" line in the revised version. I agree with Emily about he strongest line, and I think this is a fine revision.

Dustin: I remember my disappointment when I read the original version of this poem. You've taken most of that disappointment away. Your original poem was almost in the land known as hot mess, but your revision rescued it. I do believe there is still something missing from this poem, but I'm not quite sure what is missing. I'm happy you picked this poem, and I like the line you picked as your strongest.

Dana: Very much loving your revisions. Now the piece, which still does not mention Michael Jackson, is about more than him, so the whole thing works beautifully. The elegy is now, in my reading, not to Jackson specifically, but rather to the fact that: “The world’s no stage / these days, it’s just a screen, some dumb / flat firmament.” This move positions your poem as being contemporary in terms of pop culture but also as being conversant with literary history. The allusion you make to the world being a stage, and how we’ve moved beyond that, is remarkable — as in, something to be remarked on, as I am doing right now. You do a lovely job with the extended metaphor, creating an entire world inside this poem. I love the line you chose as your favorite from the original, and I feel the new form really helped snap this poem into place.

Guest Judge Denise Duhamel: Yes to the couplets! The poem is much “cleaner” in this version—earth and sky, humans and angels, digital and analog. This is a lovely poem—“sashayed” and “snagged” indeed.

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W.F. ROBY

Original:
Singing “Death Letter” at Dawn

Crickets out there singing “Teach me, teach me.”
My baby she wrote me a candle
just long enough to read her letter by,
in the time it takes to flip the record.

My baby she wrote me a candle
in the moonlight sharp as chicken bones.
In the time it takes to flip the record
my baby kicked holes in the toolhouse.

in the moonlight sharp as chicken bones.
Now I look for the grave at my toes.
My baby kicked holes in the toolhouse
until the sun went cannon dark,

now I look for the grave at my toes.
My baby she wrote me a cloudburst --
until the sun went cannon dark,
just long enough to light a candle by,

My baby she wrote me a cloudburst --
my baby she wrote me a letter
just long enough to light a candle by,
just short enough to skip the record.

My baby she wrote me a letter
just long enough to read her letter by,
just short enough to skip the record.
Crickets out there singing “Teach me, teach me.”

REVISION:
A Song Written on the Wall of the Communal Shower
Crystal Beach, Texas, 2002

The beach road’s jutting stripes spit back.
We lost the rubber of a tire
scouting out a pasture where two horses
melt a little every day. The cut still smells like meth --
the cops are quick to point their pens under umbrellas.
That night we spit smoke, waved off the storm,
wonder-eyed and kicking the ass of the cobweb highway.
We edged out along the front winds, we wrecked
and lost the bet.

Now, there’s a crack in the wall of my beach house
between the screen and the front door.
A flower grows there. When
I pick the flower another bud pops up
in the time it takes to flip a record.
There is a mark on the face
of the latest bloom, this one
bent toward the beach, reaching
for the dune where you rest, where your car
sits torched and whining. The tires spin
against the pebbles set aside
for oyster's mouths or the sandals of a tourist.

For the sake of wind there are clouds and for
the sake of clouds there are umbrellas, though
the two have never met, in fact would not get along. The sun
puffs cannon dark, setting behind offshore rigs,
painting the water as coconut might stain
the sleeve of a dinner jacket, just
a whistle of color. I wait
for the grave at my toes.
This is the coffee and this is the tea
I drink, lonely as laundry left to stack
and wrinkle in its pile -- perhaps
a hyphen is tragic to watch up close but
delicious when seen from a bullet train. Crickets

set up shop while the light drips off to Mexico.
They sing “Teach me” over ankle horns and driftwood.
At night I move with the grace of a death letter --
I jump over rocks, across sand, I jump with feet pressed numb
to the planks buried half in sand, half in sleep.
I find you in the dark, open the car door
callous-stiff and salty. I pull you out, we run
where delicate shore beasts press
their claws against the beads of the beach. And when
at day's end the sun gives up
we decide we are not ready.
You hold the sun there, heavy on the horizon,
making glass of everything.

W.F. revised his poem from Week 7: Pantoum, and his strongest line selection is At night I move with the grace of a death letter-.

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: This revision blows me out of the water. It's so completely different and so much richer and more complex than the pantoum. I love seeing the way the poet recreates the impulse and fashions it into a whole new outfit, as it were. And the language and imagery and movement of the poem all seem rich and surprising and right. "The sun/puffs cannon dark, setting behind offshore rigs,/paintint he water as coconut might stain/the sleeve of a dinner jacket, just/a whistle of color." I love that "just a whistle of color" I love the dreamy, surreal quality of the poem. This is wonderful and impressive work.

Dustin: I'm happy to see you selected your week 7 poem to revise. You did an amazing job with this revision. Seriously! This poem is splendid in terms of revisions. Yes, this poem could use some trimming in places, but I'm only concerned in the before and after. The place where you pulled this poem, that's where I want you to write from. On the other portion of the assignment, I stated that you didn't have control of the poem; you definitely have more control in this poem. I'm also in love with the line you selected.

Dana: I could pick this poem apart in terms of what is not working. But why do that? What I need for you to know is that this poem is so powerful that when I read it while I was at the Wave Books Weekend Poetry Festival, the following three things happened: 1. I could not stop reading it and must have read and reread it for an hour, 2. I chose to read and reread it instead of reading any of the books I had just purchased from Wave authors (and that is saying a hell of a lot), 3. I ended up in the restroom at The Henry, where the event was being held, crying. That’s right. I was overcome by this poem the way I am often overcome by classical music — all that it contains and all that it leaves our for us to insert our own lives, emotions and minds into. This is a risky poem. This is a beautiful poem. I see so much in it, and in you as a poet, when I read it. The difference between the original and the revision is startling. Even that title! Wow.

Guest Judge Denise Duhamel: I honestly thing you have TWO strong poems here—the pantoum which mirrors the skipping record and this new version which riffs on the original.

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KATHI MORRISON-TAYLOR

ORIGINAL:
From the Phrase Book of my Fearful Mother

Adventures are for careless people.
Life is dangerous—then you die.
Here’s the church and here’s the steeple.
Watch out for the other guy.

Life is dangerous—then you die.
Every man will want your body.
Watch out for the other guy.
Eating dessert first is naughty.

Every man will want your body.
Knee his groin; poke out his eyes.
Eating dessert first is naughty.
Don’t believe their twisted lies.

Knee his groin; poke out his eyes.
Never say I didn’t tell you.
Don’t believe their twisted lies.
Unrequited love can kill you.

Never say I didn’t tell you.
Henry James, The Wings of the Dove?
Unrequited love can kill you.
Sex, drugs, rock & roll, and love.

Henry James, The Wings of the Dove?
You should go rent Vertigo.
Sex, drugs, rock & roll, and love.
Stop that, now! You know, I know.

You should go rent Vertigo.
Here’s the church and here’s the steeple.
Stop that, now! You know, I know.
Adventures are for careless people.

REVISION:
My Mother’s Explanation

Adventures are for careless people:
never say I didn’t tell you.
Here’s the church and here’s the steeple—
unrequited love can kill you.

Never say I didn’t tell you,
when I was young, I was naive.
Unrequited love can kill you;
he loved his art more than he loved me.

I was young, like you, naive—
your father was a terrible spouse.
He loved his art more than he loved me;
those garish abstracts hung in our house.

Your father was a terrible spouse
and he could be a nasty drunk.
Those god-awful abstracts in our house,
my closets stuffed with still-life junk.

Yes, he could be a nasty drunk:
I stayed with him because I should,
filled secret closets with married-folk junk,
and drank until I understood,

I stayed with him because I should.
Here’s the church and here’s the steeple—
fold your hands. You understand?
Adventures are for careless people.

Kathi revised her poem from Week 7: Pantoum, and her strongest line selection is Unrequited love can kill you.

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: I can see exactly what Kathi is pushing for in this revision: to create a more clear character, and I would say she is absolutely successful in that attempt. Oddly, though, I felt like the poem was a little flatter in this version, and I'm not sure why. Maybe because I had read the earlier version, so I knew the general setup, or maybe because the language is a little flat, even though more specific and more effective in some ways. I like the impulse behind this poem, and for further revision, I'd suggest maybe loosening the rhyme scheme so that the language has a little more breathing room. THe poem feels a little like it's trapped inside something. I do agree that the poem "unrequited love can kill you" is wonderful, and I almost don't understand the mother, unless she had an unrequited love and then married out of necessity? Maybe there is more to this story, and we need those details here? I don't think the poem has quite found its final shape, but an admirable attempt here.

Dustin: If we put each line selected by the poets on a list, well, I'd have to go with "Unrequited love can kill you" as my favorite. Great choice! I'm also happy with the poem you selected for the revision portion of the assignment; however, I think there is still some work to be done. Maybe get rid of the cliche "Here’s the church and here’s the steeple." "Yes, he could be a nasty drunk: / I stayed with him because I should"-- much better than what you had in the original version.

Dana: I found myself writing “yes, yes, yes” next to so many of your revised lines. Thank you for opening this poem up to the form and all the potential and subtlety the form contains. And you opened up in terms of content as well, letting the reader learn much more about this narrator’s mother — and in the end about the narrator — than before. I personally would have selected the line “Adventures are for careless people” as the strongest from your original, but that’s a minor point, since the line you chose is also very strong. You used the line you chose, and incorporated the line I liked best as well — and you turned out a very strong poem in the end. You’ve created shades and nuance and depth where there wasn’t any before. I do have to say that I like the title better from the original, though, maybe without the word “phrasebook” but instead just “book.”

Guest Judge Denise Duhamel: Yes! Great revision. Though I miss the “dessert” line. Anyway to bring that back?

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I Love Marcia Gay Harden

2009-08-16T09:59:00.000-07:00

PV Week 9: Duel Task (Pop Culture Poems!)

2009-08-15T23:58:00.000-07:00

Week 9: Duel Task is a two part assignment for the remaining Project Verse contestants. Below you will find the poems from the pop culture portion of the assignment.

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Weekly Guest Judge Beth Gylys wants to send out this message:
These poems are all really wonderfully inventive and powerful and fun. I have to say that I want to be clear, my top choice and bottom choice are not separated by miles, but rather by degrees of degrees, and all of the poems are well worthy of high praise. You four poets have been consistently strong, stalwart, hard-working, innovative and delightful. It has been a pleasure to read your work. Kudos to you all!

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EMILY VAN DUYNE
Ars Poetica

‘If Fred Astaire was up and around again and dancing with a humming Frank O’Hara across the dear and broken landscapes of our lives, the sound of their steps, through the late spring afternoon, might have some of the sweetness of these poems. But these poems are sweeter than even that…’ – from Marie Howe’s blurb for All-American Poem

My grandfather is back up and banging
heavy nails with a heavy hammer. None of this if shit,
none of this might. I’m telling you, it’s cold
in my poem. It’s not the late spring. It’s winter
again. The sky’s that deep, headstrong,
island slate, but it won’t fucking snow. We can’t get a break.
We are poised on the verge

of nothing but another long season, building summer
homes for the American rich. I’m stuck
in this town. Try and look out to the ocean—you can’t! It’s blocked
by this skeleton house my grandfather builds, for a family I’ll never meet.
The dad’s a lawyer in Philly. The mom’s got a wet
nurse. I’m not making this up. No one’s dancing
in my poem, ok? I spent last week trying to write

about desire and ended up
in the cold. I thought about the Beatles, blared
Abbey Road, ran my hands down
my taut summer skin, I want you, I want
you so bad… I got tarted up: a bird in fishnets
with a seam down the back. ‘Girl’ played on repeat
on my turntable, I smoked, topless... It didn’t matter, no one

wants to hear that story. Least of all, my grandfather, whose sweat
is frozen to his hoary brow. Usually in my poems, he’s half
Viking, half Tennyson. He remains
all dead, but this morning he’s visiting
as himself: checkered red flannel and a black wool cap. He wants
a cup of coffee. It’s ten o’clock break. I get the thermos
from the truck. He can’t believe I’m still going

at this poetry shit. Pop-pop, me either. You wouldn’t
believe the asses you have to kiss. And the boys!
They’re the worst. All delicate bones and paisley scarves. Give me
a man, I need a fullback. Someone whose glasses won’t break
in bed. Pop-pop laughs so loud, he snorts. He says they sound
like Gene Kelly. He hates Gene Kelly. Namby-pamby
son of a bitch… Fred Astaire, now there was a dancer, he could really move…

Totally, I nod, sip my bitter, black coffee. I still can’t see
the ocean, but the sun’s out. He picks up his hammer and drops
me a kiss on my red, freckled cheek: back
to work. His heavy steps echo in someone else’s kitchen. No
sweet patter. All boots. He disappears
behind a half-built wall, stuffed pink with insulation. The paint
splattered boom box blares,
                  Oh, darling! If you leave me,
                                             I’ll never make it alone…

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: This is the Emily I've come to love over the course of the last few months. I love the wacky energy and the bravado of the imagery "The sky's that deep, headstrong/island slate" And also the wonderful command of tone: "The dad's a lawyer in Philly. The mom's got a wet/nurse. I'm not making this up. No one's dancing/in my poem, ok?" And there's a wonderful sense of humor at work too "he's half/Viking, half Tennyson". At her best, Emily's work is both fun and wildly imaginative at the same time that it is poignant, and this poem for me shows all of her strengths. The relationship between speaker and grandfather is touching and funny and wistful and the dramatic scenario of the poem effectively defines who Emily is as an artist. Well done.

Dustin: Your title does work; I think it would beckon people from a table of content, and it would do so with an air of mystery. I would flip to the poem wanting to know what "Ars Poetica" is about. I've heard Laure-Anne Bosselaar talk about the on-ramp---what we need to get our poem started. You needed the epigraph while your poem doesn't. There are so many parts of your poem that I love: "None of this if shit, / none of this might" and "The mom’s got a wet / nurse. I’m not making this up." and " I smoked, topless" and "he’s half / Viking, half Tennyson. He remains/all dead" and "He can’t believe I’m still going / at this poetry shit"--- there's more to love, but I'm not going to keep going on and on. You do a fantastic job with this poem. This poem does need a little dusting; however, after that dusting it will be ready to be placed on your mantel with pride and joy.

Dana: Nice epigraph. The combination of pop culture references and the poem being about the narrator’s Pop is lovely. I was scared by the title — not a poem about poems! — but this poem does the ars poetica so well by remaining steeped in detail. I for one absolutely want to hear the story about the narrator smoking topless. (I am just saying.) Also, this is a different voice. I love your other voices, but I love this one, too. Totally. I think this is your gift — the assumption of voice and your ability to be immersed in it. I know that’s stating the obvious. I would love to see a collection from you in which you really push into all sorts of voices, where multi-vocality and modulation of voice from poem to poem are what drive the collection as a whole. I would look at the lineation on revision. It seems a little funky in places right now.

Guest Judge Denise Duhamel: “Ars Poetica” is a strong and feisty poem. The voice is clear, determined, a scrappy gal who I am rooting for the whole poem. My only difficulty with this poem was the Howe quote which seemed strange—a blurb to introduce another poem was hard to wrap my head around. I wonder if the poem might just start with the speaker reading the back of a book, seeing the blurb, and launching into her “None of this if shit” riff. Her take on overdevelopment, masculinity, and loneliness are brilliant and real. In fact, “None of this if shit” might be a great title for this poem.

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W.F. ROBY
Twenty-six Words for Snow

O Eskimo Pie, O confection frozen
stiff to the wall of the freezer, O vanilla,
O chocolate coat, O foil sleeve you fit inside --
home is where the heart hits the asphalt
my dear, my cold misnomer. In summer
you leave your color on my hands,
you paint the needy grass with tar.
Here is a letter I’ve written to you
and washed of ink, and slipped into
the Gulf of Mexico. Here is a photo of us
caught between noon and the second hand.
I am stuck ankle deep in sand the color of ash --
you are learning the name of the heat,
you are writing it down.

We lie on our backs in a haystack,
you with your pinched face, eyes tight,
your mouth frozen in a perfect O – and I
welcome you to the cave of the Oracle. Where
we turn the gas way up. You are my golden ball,
the thing I forget in sleep but remember
with fondness in the morning, saying “O she certainly does shine.”
Es-ki-mo pie, I fold your foil jacket into words, I hold
each syllable in the palm of my hand
like a train ticket or a promise from a friend.
I've given up the smoking, mon petit chou,
chased it off the front porch. All for you.

My Eskimo Pie -- in a dream we got married
down South. We walked hand to stick
from cabana to dark swamp
where dry sticks caught a pile of sparklers,
where sparklers wrestled with smoky coals,
where coals sent fire trailing back towards
the wood panel of your dad's old wagon.
When I woke up, you were pinched between
two chipped fingernails, a girl in a cowgirl suit
with chocolate on her lips. She thought
she'd sneak into the races, find a boy on a horse maybe
could drive her back to Loose-e-ana to see
the hurricane kick and the bayou kick back.

O Eskimo Pie -- sometimes when I say your name
I feel my heartbeat in my thigh. Other times
it’s just an incoming call or
the words in red in the family Bible
buzzing through the dead leather. Inside the freezer
where you rest in a hunch
someone nailed shelves at precise heights
for the hand of a child to switch on the lights,
neon, fluorescent and a third light incandescent
taped to the wall for precision. Tonight
let’s walk upwind. I’ll try to remember what Whitman says
about the Learn'd Astronomer with his charts and graphs --
I think it goes like this.

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: This is another one of those poems that makes my mouth go agape. I love the traditional invocation in the poem to the 'eskimo pie'. THe poem's inventive, wildly imaginative, "O foil sleeve you fit inside--/home is where the heart hits the asphalt." The poem's over the top, but wonderfully so. "sometimes when I say your name/I feel my heartbeat in my thigh." Wowza! I did struggle with the end cause I keep reading it as a colon. I think it goes like this: and want something more. This is probably my problem, not W.F.'s. Fine work.

Dustin: W.F., I want to love this poem. I really do, but I can't. With your revised week 8 poem, you showed you finally trusted yourself to write what you wanted to write, but the key is that you controlled it. I think you lost control in "Twenty-six Words for Snow." I think there is a lot of room for cutting to make much tighter lines. Don't get me wrong-- this is not a bad poem. You have lovely parts: "the words in red in the family Bible / buzzing through the dead leather" and "In summer / you leave your color on my hands." I only wish there were more of those kinds of moments.

Dana: I love how this poem resonates with your revision — asphalt, color being bled from one thing to another, the beach — to name just a few of the parallels. This whole section is rad: “home is where the heart hits the asphalt / my dear, my cold misnomer. In summer / you leave your color on my hands, / you paint the needy grass with tar.” (I used to paint the needy grass with Silly Putty when I was a kid, and I also picked tar bubbles in the road — obsessively, as if I was picking away at some truth.) I was so enthralled by this poem that I completely forgot it was a poem driven by pop culture references. Some might argue that I forgot because pop culture does not drive the poem; I would argue that they are wrong and that this poem has pop culture so seamlessly grafted to it that it’s like a cybernetic moth which looks as if it is navigating the air on its own terms, when there is actually a tiny mechanism inside making it go this way and that. And I love the reference to those old Luzianne iced tea commercials. Get out! (That’s not your narrator’s heart beating by his thigh, btw.) What do you think about ending it on “Tonight / let’s walk upwind”?

Guest Judge Denise Duhamel: YES! OUI! SI! This is a fantastic fantastical poem about love. The personification of the Eskimo pie is hilarious and metaphorically apt. Where I get a little confused is the date—just hard to actually see. How big is this Eskimo pie, for example? Know what I’m saying? I was willing to go there, but I just needed a few more details to ground me. I absolutely adored “When I woke up, you were pinched between/ two chipped fingernails, a girl in a cowgirl suit/with chocolate on her lips.”

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KATHI MORRISON-TAYLOR
In the Dream of my Father at the Bar on Tatooine

It was my father’s favorite Star Wars scene, so I’m not surprised to find him
here, drinking and tapping his glass to the cantina band of Bith aliens,
dubbed over with clarinet, saxophone, and even a Fender Rhodes piano.
(My son says the Bith species has evolved past the need for sleep, and here
I am, asleep and listening.) I think, Mos Eisley’s not unlike the dives
my father played, underage, out in the desert by Pasco, Washington:
the red-eyed wolf-men, G-I’s on their Harleys, a bounty hunter now and then,
a one-eyed sheriff, and bartenders steady as priests. Not quite that
“wretched hive of scum and villainy” Old Ben Kenobi pronounces
Mos Eisley, but still an alcoholic’s paradise.

             Looking down on us, Luke has just said,
            I’m ready for anything.
            I see him come in.
            I see him tug
            on the bartender’s sleeve.

But I am across the table from my father, in this dream of the movie
renamed “A New Hope,” a man who died before the prequels, speeding
in his red car, drunk and unbuckled. No doubt, he is my father,
and he is already dead. (Let me help him lift off his mask;
let me hear him breathing.) I have to ask him where he was going
that night his car swerved and flipped, but he’s not listening,
and no one else seems to see his darkness, as he nods at a Cleopatra-girl
and orders me a Shirley Temple. Nearby, Luke falls into an argument.
I know this part. It’s right before Obi-Wan pulls out his light saber
and slices off that alien’s arm (Ponda Baba, says my son).

            You just watch yourself, someone said.
                       “I’ll be careful,” Luke answers.
            You’ll be dead.

As my father points out Chewbacca to me – He looks a lot like my student Steve.
Tall and hairy – someone sets down my drink. With a blue Jedi flash, there’s blood
on the floor and windshield glass raining on our table. My father’s forehead expands,
his ribs crack at the music’s pause. I don’t expect this, the force that brought us
to this place, after his life, years later, after I’m ready for bed, the galaxy’s violence.
I can just make out Han Solo’s face: my father’s Imperial entanglements, the 7-Up
and maraschino cherry of my drink, foreign to everyone there,
that red Ford Probe upside-down on the bar.

            And I’m yelling, I don’t like you. No, I really don’t like you!
            like someone who’s lost more than an arm.

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: Another relative in a dream poem! I love the Star Wars scene, the well-developed narrative, the problematic father figure, the cast of characters. The long lines, the compelling intermix of family drama with pop culture drama (sci fi drama), is wonderfully handled and rich and terrific. Bravo.

Dustin: Kathi, I'm shocked. My shock is NOT from your writing a good poem---I've come to expect that of you. I'm shocked a poem this good (written in such a short amount of time) is this good with such a heavy reliance on Star Wars references. Great job! In this poem you show us once again you are good with detail: "(My son says the Bith species has evolved past the need for sleep, and here / I am, asleep and listening.)" and "the red-eyed wolf-men, G-I’s on their Harleys, a bounty hunter now and then, / a one-eyed sheriff, and bartenders steady as priests," and there is more! At this moment, I'm happy with what you've given us as it reads. Yes. At this moment, I wouldn't change a thing with this poem; however, I bet you'll end up making changes that will make this poem even sharper, and we'll be wowed that the poem could be any better.

Dana: Are you all manipulating time to write such amazing pieces? I don’t really understand where all this fantastic work is coming from given the time constraints. It’s been a joy to read. This poem could have gotten away from you and turned into a parody, but you deftly control it and kept the emotional center in place throughout. Lines like “… but still an alcoholic’s paradise” are part of what keep the poem grounded in reality. That line is just this side of too much, just this side of trite, and you make it work. Then you follow it up with the plainspoken facts: “speeding / in his red car, drunk and unbuckled.” We are all visited by the dead in our dreams. Your poem touches on the universal, while your narrator pulls us into the specificity of this death, of this relationship. My father died when I was very young, and I have tried to write poems about my dreams of him. I’ve never come close to anything this skillfully or elegantly executed.

Guest Judge Denise Duhamel: I picked “In the Dream of my Father at the Bar on Tatooine” even though I am not much of a Star Wars fan and didn’t know all the movie references. This poem exemplifies the power of pop culture in that it took something as banal as a blockbuster movie and re-worked the mythic implications of masks and fatherhood to a personal/universal story about a “real” father and child. In addition to the Star Wars references, we get the Americana of the corner bar, Harleys, a bounty hunter, and Shirley Temple (the drink, but also the actress/innocence is implied). A very moving poem.

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Why Do I Write ~ Mark Wunderlich

2009-08-13T22:01:00.000-07:00

WHY DO I WRITE ~ Mark Wunderlich

I learned to read when I was four and soon discovered the set of books on a small shelf in my room; I would spend much time reading and re-reading these books over the next dozen years. The set had once belonged to my father and had been published in the 1930’s. There were 14 in total—My Book House—edited by Olive Beaupré Miller. Beaupré. Beaupré! This name confounded me, irritated like a pebble in my shoe. That choking gobbet of vowels! That accent like a bee’s stinger! How was I to know how to say this name? No one I knew could tell me, and so it remained a mystery, foreign and untranslatable, as far away as France. Someone was able to tell me this name was probably French, and so I came to think of France as the place books came from. At some point, I was given or I found a Canadian nickel. Here too was writing in French! I began sorting through my parents’ change purses, looking for Canadian money. The quarters and nickels were uncommonly beautiful; what kind of a genius puts a beaver or a caribou on one side, and the profile of a queen on the other? More importantly, this money, like the books, suggested a world to me that lay beyond the rural corner of Wisconsin hemmed by bluffs on either side; you could see up the river to the first bend, and down the river to the wooded slough, but no further. This money which was familiar and yet altogether different, had made its way to my small town; it was useless there, but it had arrived nonetheless. The fables, poems and stories in My Book House were equally out of place with their allusions to Greek mythology and Shakespeare, though both the books and the money were useful, somewhere, to someone.

I was recently called “emotionally retarded” by an intimate. It was meant in jest, but it was meant nonetheless. Remarks like this have a way of working themselves into one’s psyche, clinging to your soft parts like a burr so I’m happy to have the chance to exorcise it here. This person is wrong, of course; I have, in fact, a full and nuanced emotional range, and those emotions find their best form in written language, in the poems I write. I was raised in a part of the world where expressiveness and emotional largesse are not valued, where displays of temper or strong opinion are considered shocking or just unspeakably rude. Much credence is given to humility, to simplicity of language. In people raised in this culture (I’m speaking of rural areas of the upper northern Midwest) this is sometimes expressed by a cool demeanor, or excessive politeness. It can also be seen as a general pleasantness, a sunny disposition—neither too hot nor too cold. Just nice.

While an adolescent, as I came to understand that my sexual attraction was oriented toward men, I saw that the world of seeming could differ sharply from the world of being. I learned to read subtle cues in tone and mood, learned to understand what was felt, but would remain unsaid. I searched the faces, gestures and voices of people I met, looking for evidence of likeness.

When I discovered poems and began to write them, it became clear to me that poems were objects but ones with a minimal physical form; that they gave pleasure but they also irritated (Beaupré! Beaupré!). The best poems suggested more than they said, and rewarded you for re-reading them. Some poems I knew could never be plumbed, were bottomless pools. The words made patterns and sounds and those sounds, though attached to the meaning of the words, created their own more mysterious meaning. Poems revealed and concealed simultaneously, and when my first book was published, my family and I both experienced a great deal of anxiety and distress about being exposed. I felt I had accomplished some great goal, and that the accomplishment came at great cost. My mother told only a few close friends about my book, and my father refused to either read it, or discuss the matter at all. I understand and respect their reactions, though I will continue to write and publish as it brings the world of seeming and the world of being closer together, and that work makes sense to me.

Several years ago while visiting my family in Wisconsin, I came across my collection of Canadian money which I had collected as a child. All told, I had about $50 in change and a few small bills. On a whim, I bagged it and put it in my suitcase. My partner and I made a trip to Montreal later that year, and I took along my money, changed it for bills at a bank, and spent it I don’t remember how—on a meal, or on the city bus, or maybe I left it as a tip for the bartender who listened patiently as I tried out my broken French.

Why do I write? I write because of Canada with its beavers and caribou and queens as tokens of exchange. Beacause of Olive Beaupre Miller. Because I grew up on a farm. Because my parents left books in my room and often left me alone. I write because my grandparents spoke a language other than English, even though their grandparents were born in America. I write because I’m queer. I write because I yearn for order. I write because I am emotionally retarded. I write out of revenge and with the desire to punish. I write to create a vision of myself at my most articulate, my most generous, my most cruel. I write because I seem to be one thing, and am another. I write in order to praise.

Week 9: Guest Judge Denise Duhamel

2009-08-12T23:06:00.000-07:00

Denise Duhamel's most recent poetry titles are Ka-Ching! (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009); Two and Two (Pittsburgh, 2005); Mille et un Sentiments (Firewheel, 2005); Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems (Pittsburgh, 2001); and The Star-Spangled Banner (Southern Illinois University Press, 1999. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, she is an associate professor at Florida International University in Miami. Don't forget to visit Denise in a monthly column at Read Write Poem called the Double Ds. Become a fan of Denise Duhamel or a Duhamalite on Facebook!

ET Spotlights THE LOVELY BONES

2009-08-12T19:34:00.000-07:00

Revisiting Week 8: Villanelle Revisions!

2009-08-12T18:01:00.000-07:00

Well, there was an unexpected twist to the Project Verse week 8 assignment; the weekly judges were not impressed with the poems submitted. Click here to see what the judges had to say.

In this post you'll find each contestant's original poem followed his/her revision.

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Weekly Guest Judge Beth Gylys wants to send out this message:
I'm very impressed by these revisions. I know some of you were distraught to have to rewrite, but the poems are for the most part much improved, I think, so bravo to you all!

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KRISTEN MCHENRY
ORIGINAL:
The Menfolk Whisper of The Gulabi Gang

“They wear pink saris and go after corrupt
officials and boorish men with sticks and axes.”
--Soutik Biswas; BBC News, Banda

Our good wives have taken to convening: tight-knit and savage crushes
of bowed and fuchsia heads, but their heads aren't bowed in prayer.
A massing of flamingos in sweeping rags and furtive blushes,

we've seen them hoarding rocks from the gutter's oily slushes.
The women have taken to whispering: we've heard them smirk and swear.
Our good wives have taken to convening in tight-knit and savage crushes.

Remember when they'd comfort us with sanguine, melodic shushes?
These days when they caress us, their hands shake with a livid flare.
A massing of flamingos in sweeping rags and furtive blushes,

I hear they've stashed crippled rifles in the rusted sticker brushes.
Gentle men, though we have nourished them, their hungers strip us bare.
Our good wives have taken our daughters, in tight-knit and savage crushes--

they'll swathe them in that treacherous pink, all pink-skinned from the water's rushes,
where they baptized them in their pastel ways with a hard, insurgent stare.
A massing of flamingos in sweeping rags and furtive blushes,

the wives of Banda have grown still, but as tense as a tree of thrushes.
These days, they're as silent as their nurturing is spare.
Our good women have taken to convening in tight-knit and savage crushes;
a rage of flamingos in sweeping rags and furtive blushes.

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: I admire that Kristen tackles this interesting and rich subject, and she uses some beautiful language here: "A massing of flamingos in sweeping rags and furtive blushes." My criticism of the earlier draft was that it felt distancing, and I think she's managed to make the poem less objectifying with lines like "Remember when they'd comfort us..." Still, the tone of this one is less successful I think than it might be, and that is in part because of phrases like "Gentle men". Because I think finally, these men are going to be angry, and the speaker then comes across as disingenuous. I also worry about the long-ish lines, some of which seem unwieldy. Lines like "where they baptized them in their pastel ways with a hard, insurgent stare." I'd like to see the poem's lines more lean, and I'm still a little worried too about the point of view which seems to me really hard to pull off.

Dustin: Kristen, I'm not completely won over with this revision; I think this is due to the change of lengthier lines. I don't have a problem with long lines; however, I don't think it works for your poem. In your first draft, I loved "A tribe of flamingos in rags of blush," so I was glad to see you basically kept it in your revision: "A massing of flamingos in sweeping rags and furtive blushes"---beautiful. I'm happy to see that you corrected the form error you had in your original poem. I do like that you rhymed in plural; however, I wonder if this held you back any. This is not your strongest poem from the competition, but it is much better than your Week 6 poem.

Dana: So I have a matrix of sorts that I use which takes into account several things, including doing the assignment, skillfulness of execution, emotional resonance, level of risk taken, and other elements I looked for in the poems I read. I am not saying this is an objective matrix that anyone, even a computer, can plug in and use. Other people will have other matrices, other lenses through which they evaluate work. That’s what it means to be a reader and to have individual responses to pieces. But this *is* a way to externalize my personal process.

According to my matrix, you have a good balance of all aspects I was evaluating. I actually think your edits strengthened the piece, particularly the first line. But I do have some concerns. You chose two-syllable feminine rhyme all the way through, when there are more interesting ways to employ perfect rhyme. And in terms of emotional resonance, I still think you could push further. This piece feels a little like a Fabergé egg. I’d like to see it come down from the shelf and maybe even get a knick or two in it.

Guest Judge Maureen Seaton: Great subject. Kristen uses color well in this runaway persona piece. Memorable images: “a rage of flamingos” and “treacherous pink.” (I like “a massing of flamingos” too.) The repetition of pink, in “pink-skinned.” The epigraph gives us just enough. And I love the lines: “Gentle men, though we have nourished them, their hungers strip us bare” and “These days, they’re as silent as their nurturing is spare” and the image “tense as a tree of thrushes.” However, the piece doesn’t read like a villanelle to me, but more like a long-lined narrative with imposed rhymes. The poem begs for at least one companion piece, either in another persona or a narrative about the Gulabi Gang.

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EMILY VAN DUYNE

ORIGINAL:
The Lacrymosa, Washing the Dishes: Wednesday Night in Wartime America

‘Mozart’s Requiem begins with you walking towards a huge pit…’
-Zadie Smith

Those can’t be my hands in the sink! Expunge the crass
dried blood of this night’s wine, strewn
in the glass. That can’t be my face, cast

in the window—lonely woman, eyes like the Black Mass…
kyrie eleision, now scrub those pots & spoons…
expunge the crass sink. Those can’t be my hands that blast

the grease of fat & bone, latticed like the past…
and why should you have this life, this boon…
That face in the glass? It can’t be her place to cast

aspersions to the night’s eclipse, the sweet, dark grass,
another person, far away, who seeks the same hidden moon?
Those can’t be my cries! They sink in the crass

face of history: slouching beasts, dead stars… the last
shall be first, penance is like ashes— no one is immune…
That can’t be my face in the window: bloody glass

house we’ve assembled and hewn.
The pit is ever closer, surely you come soon,
surely: those must be my hands that sink in the fast
cast of water. That must be my face in the glass.

REVISION:
The Lacrymosa, Washing the Dishes: Wednesday Night in Wartime America

‘Mozart’s Requiem begins with you walking towards a huge pit…’
-Zadie Smith

Those can’t be my hands in the sink! Absolve the crass,
dried blood of this night’s wine, strewn
on the porcelain … that can’t be my face in the glass—

lonely woman, eyes like the Black Mass…
kyrie eleision, now scrub those pots & spoons…
those can’t be my hands that absolve the sink: crass

grease of fat & bone, this warm night’s mass …
and why should you have this life, this boon…
that face in the glass? It can’t be on her to pass

judgment (14 more dead) on the dark grass,
someone far away who seeks the same hidden moon.
Those can’t be my cries! They sink in the crass

face of this slouching beast, (a roadside bomb), dark morass…
penance is like ashes, no one is immune…
That can’t be my face in the window: the bloody glass

house we’ve built on another’s green grass…
The pit is ever closer, surely you come soon,
surely: those must be my hands that sink in the crass
well of porcelain. That must be my face in the glass.

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: As usual, I admire Emily's skill with language and sound and her lovely turns of phrase: "Absolve the crass,/dried blood or this night's wine, strewn/on the porcelain...that can't be my face in the glass--" I'm a little less charmed by the metaphor here though. I get that filth and filth work together: war is dirty, we are all made dirty by war, the dishes reflect that on some level. And then of course there's the helplessness of the speaker standing there at the sink is poignant. Still, there's something a bit less natural about this poem than the poems that Emily has so charmed me with earlier in the competition. Still, I have to say, I think the revisions are smart and there's real beauty here.

Dustin: This isn't your strongest poem from the competition, but it is a good revision. You did a great job playing by the rules. Now, do you see it doesn't hurt to play by the rules? In the past, I have enjoyed your longer titles, but I am not sure about your title this week. I think you can come up with a title that is a shorter and packs a punch, or you could have a title that is the same length that packs more of a punch. Basically-- I want more of a punch with the title. You are capable of it. I love "lonely woman, eyes like the Black Mass." Also, I love your opening line "Those can’t be my hands in the sink! Absolve the crass." Your first line does a good job of pulling in your reader, and I don't think your reader will be disappointed one he/she reaches the end of the poem.

Dana: If this were an ice-skating competition, I would give you a 10 in terms of using perfect rhyme. But that’s not *all* we’re looking at as judges (or all I myself am looking at). Yes, there’s the matrix. I put your piece in the matrix and, balancing everything, how do you think you fared?

You fared great. This poem had me at the Requiem reference in the epigraph and held me until the very end. Just look at what you do with language throughout — I can’t stop smiling when I misread “night’s wine” as “night swine,” an error I hope you intend your readers to make, thus giving another layer to the image. (And even if you didn’t intend it, that’s great, too. We could chuck intention out the window and still be drawn to words and phrases in ways we don’t fully understand.) This is a wonderful piece to read aloud as well. I love how it sits in the mouth, very musical, and not in a child-playing-the-recorder sort of way.

Guest Judge Maureen Seaton: I immediately noticed the rhythm this poem sets up, the enjambment of lines that make it interesting to me: “…crass/grease of fat & bone..,” “…the bloody glass/house we’ve built…” Ending in the effective last half of the last line, “That must be my face in the glass.” I would question the italics—their source(s). And I would get rid of the ellipses, and perhaps the exclamation points, although I normally like them. The poem appears busy although the image itself is carried from the first line all the way down. I like “the bloody glass/ house we’ve build on another’s green grass.” And I’m touched by the self-reflection of the piece. Its earnestness carries it.

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W.F. ROBY

Original:
Through the Gauze of Heroin Hydrochloride

I took to the drug like a baby
takes to incidents of peas. A bore
we tapped out grain by grain, all tingly.

In the distant city, two birdies
lined up their beaks and poked at the core.
I took to the drug like a baby.

Dope on my desk, brown and crumbly
as steel and ash on the city’s floor.
We tapped out grain by grain, all tingly.

The news so graceful, silver latchkey
on my neck, the stash drawer
open to the drug like a baby,

like a fly to a glass of sherry.
New York fell, I was a sophomore.
We tapped out grain by grain, all tingly --

a needle’s difficult to bury.
Let’s watch smoke cover up the seashore.
I took to the drug like a baby.
We tapped out grain by grain, all tingly.

REVISION:
Through the Gauze of Heroin Hydrochloride

I took to the drug like a ferry
ducks into the crests of waves, a bore
I did not think I’d ever marry.

The TV hummed -- a monastery
somewhere far away, airplanes galore.
I took to the drug like a cherry

takes to red, a fresh capillary
bright as bent steel on the city’s floor.
I did not think I’d ever marry.

The news was up loud. Cautionary
words fell out – heroin’s a trapdoor.
I clung to the drug like a berry

clings to a stem, math to binary.
New York fell, I was a sophomore.
I did not think I’d ever carry

a needle into church, or parry
perfect rhyme until my hands were sore.
I took to the drug like a ferry.
I did not think I’d ever marry.

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: I love the revision. Love the simple lines, Love the similes. I mean "Like a cherry/takes to red" "like a berry/clings to a stem, math to binary". There's a confessional quality, undermined by the slightly self-mocking tone "I did not think I'd ever marry." My only one small quibble is that in the last stanza the repeating line "I took to the drug like a ferry" doesn't have quite the same punch as it did in the opening stanza.

Dustin: W.F., I love this revision. Okay. I want to make this clear. I love this revision. Everyone did a good job with revisions this week; however, I think you did the most work in the revision arena. Do you remember what I've said to you about your similes? If you've forgotten, here it is, analyze more before you simile. W.F., you listened! Well, you didn't listen in your original poem---I have no clue what you were thinking with "I took to the drug like a baby / takes to incidents of peas." Honestly, I stopped reading and had a what the hell moment. OK. That is behind us because we are juding the revised poems. I was thrilled to see your beginning simile changed to "I took to the drug like a ferry / ducks into the crests of waves"----lovely. Then there are more lovely lines/similes: "I took to the drug like a cherry / takes to red, a fresh capillary / bright as bent steel on the city’s floor" and "I clung to the drug like a berry / clings to a stem, math to binary." Again, lovely. The end of your poem needs work. I don't think your last stanza is as strong as the rest of the poem. I know. I know. Your hands are tied by rules. THIS revision is what I've wanted to see from you during this competition. This revision makes me feel like you trusted yourself and the poem while you wrote. Good job!

Dana: We asked you to be a little dangerous, to let loose, and you did. All the poems were strong this week, as you would expect toward the end of the competition, but I can’t not get behind a poem that tackles the subjects you tackle. On Read Write Poem, Marilyn Nelson said this about her poem “A Wreath for Emmett Till”: “I don’t think I would have written the poem if I hadn’t imagined the form could be something I could hide behind in self-defense.” Your poem has that wonderful tension between form and content that I absolutely love to see in a piece. You used the form not to strap you down but to give you a new kind of freedom, and the reader senses how much the form contains the uncontainable content as well. It’s not perfect, but it’s dangerous — and it’s an important poem.

Why isn’t it perfect? There’s one slip-up with regard to the perfect rhyme: “binary” and “carry” are not a perfect rhyme in that there are two syllables after the accented syllable in “binary” and only one after the accented syllable in “carry.” Overall, however, you employ the perfect rhymes with precision, and you keep it interesting by pairing words that do not have the same number of syllables but do have the same number of syllables and the same sounds after the accented syllable. Nicely played.

I have to add that your rewrites made this piece sing. You accepted the challenge of using the form to sharpen the poem, and your poem is now so sharp it won’t be allowed as a carry-on item if you try to board a plane. So stay home, or travel by car.

Guest Judge Maureen Seaton: This poem feels most like a villanelle to me with its syllabic count of (mostly) nine. I found it subversive for its fitting the subject matter into a loose meter. I enjoyed reading a poem about addiction (which was well done in itself) in the “traditional” form of the villanelle. Like wearing sneakers to church when I was a kid, but better than that, wearing no underwear to church as an adult. (Not that I think of the villanelle as a church symbol. Do I?) Changing the rhymed endwords was really cool as well. I love doing that in sestinas. Not sure I’ve seen it before in a villanelle. Great choices, not your everyday: “monastery,” “capillary,” “cautionary,” “binary,” etc. This is my first pick for originality and proficiency with the form.

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KATHI MORRISON-TAYLOR

ORIGINAL:
Gretel Copes

Repression’s underrated. She’ll forget
her cookie-house binge with M&M trim, licorice whip pitch;
the scent of burning witch and cloves and chicken shit

all run together. She’ll always hate chocolate,
is rumored to huff Easy Off and do witch
impressions badly. She’ll forget

to watch Hansel on Letterman: instead, flit
from club to club to Daddy’s house. A hazel switch,
the reek of burning witch and cloves and kitschy shit—

grief after grief, it stings her. Damn it.
Damn the greedy crumb-eaters. Damn the itch
of repression, too slow. She’ll forget

her chubby brother behind barbed wire, but she’ll spit
at old ladies with gumdrop smiles. Anorexic bitch,
motherless witch, smokes cloves, shoots the shit—

that tabloid-Gretel: famous, wrecked, unfit
as a Nazi, murder charge dropped, filthy rich. . .
Repression’s underrated. She can’t forget
the scent of burning witch and cloves and chicken shit.

REVISION:
In Which Gretel Becomes Tabloid-Gretel

Repression’s underrated. She’ll forget
her cookie-house binge with M&M trim, licorice whip pitch;
the scent of burning witch and cloves and chicken shit—

Hansel in that cage. She’ll always hate chocolate
and gingerbread, hoard Easy Off and do witch
impressions badly. She’ll forget

to watch her brother on Letterman: instead, flit
from club to club to Daddy’s house. Abercrombie & Fitch,
the reek of burning witch and cloves and kitschy shit—

even centuries later in Hollywood Hills it
finds her: hunger’s cruel pose, behind kindly masks a twitch
of cannibal. Repression’s too slow. She’ll forget

her chubby brother behind barbed wire, but she’ll spit
at old ladies with gumdrop smiles. Post-traumatic bitch,
motherless witch, smokes cloves, shoots the shit

as she becomes that tabloid-Gretel: famous, wrecked, unfit
as a Nazi, clubbing with the stars, filthy rich. . .
Repression’s underrated, but she can’t forget
the scent of burning witch and cloves and chicken shit.

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: I like this poem's imaginative innovation. I'm still a little bothered by the use of the slant rhyme--"forget/shit" in terms of following the rules--especially given the revision option. The rules aside, the poem's really wonderfully rich and fun and smart with some great sounds: "licorice whip pitch;/the scent of burning witch and cloves and chicken shit--" And I like the contemporaneous look at the myth. Not that I haven't seen re-visions of the Hansel/Gretel story, but this is a really smart and fun and apt one.

Dustin: Kathi, I'm disappointed. The judges specifically commented on the use of slant rhyme in the week 8 poems; however, you revised your poem and left the slant rhyme. Are you giving us the finger? I realize each contestant is pouring a lot time into this contest, but the judges are pouring in a lot of time as well. These are the only comments you're getting from me for this week.

Dana: I thoroughly enjoyed this piece, Kathi. How can I not like a poem that lets the shit fly? This was so imaginative and controlled and had so many unexpected moments. I love the part about Hansel appearing on “Letterman,” for example. I will say that I was sad to see huffing Easy Off go in the rewrite, as well as a couple of other details lost in revision, such as, “Damn the greedy crumb-eaters.” I know it was impossible to keep everything and meet the requirements for the assignment, but I would still take a look at your first version and see what else you could fold back in. Of course, you gained a lot, too, in the revision, including a killer new title.

One thing I did take into account was the rhyme, per the matrix. It’s hard to ignore the fact that many of your rhymes were slant, not perfect. In addition, your middle lines are off in terms of the rhyme scheme because they don't provide a "b" rhyme. I even looked up the pronunciation key for each rhymed word (as I did for everyone’s rhymed words) to be absolutely sure the vowel sound in words such as “forget” can’t be pronounced the way the vowel sound in words such as “shit” are pronounced. They’re not the same sound. Maybe where I am from — Oklahoma — but people play it fast and loose with language in those parts.

Guest Judge Maureen Seaton: Very funny take on an old fairytale. And the short “i” has to be my favorite sound in the English language. Those second and third lines are a blast: “her cookie-house binge with M&M trim, licorice whip pitch;/the scent of burning witch and cloves and chicken shit—.” And, from there, we’ve got more to go because Kathi has decided ALL of her endwords will have that short “i” (except maybe two or three). And as if all that assonance isn’t enough for the ear, we’ve got all that consonance as well—every end word ending in “t” or “ch”. I really enjoyed the craft and the humor.

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Damages, I long for your return!

2009-08-10T18:04:00.000-07:00

Watch the first seven minutes of Damages: Episode 1, Season 1 to see why I want to be Patti Hewes.

Week 9: Duel Task

2009-08-10T06:25:00.000-07:00

WEEK 9: DUEL TASK

Next week, we will announce the two finalists for Project Verse!

Contestants, read this assignment thoroughly:
Pick what you consider your weakest poem written during Week 1 through Week 7 of the competition. You are going to revise the selected poem. (Yes, there is a bit of repetition with this part of the assignment since you are already revising your Week 8 poems; however, please remember the weekly assignments were written before the start of the competition.) At the bottom of the revised poem, you must write what you feel is the strongest line of the poem; I suggest you pick a line you feel you can work with. Pick everything wisely; besides being judged you on your revision technique, we are also judging you on the poem you select as well as the line.

As if revising isn't enough!---you also have another poem to write. Pop culture references are often hard to weave into poems; however, poets like David Trinidad and Denise Duhamel do it with ease. Duhamel has a whole book inspired by the pop culture icon known as Barbie. If she can write a book of brilliant poems, surely you can write a single poem that is DRIVEN by a pop culture reference.

Your poem driven by a pop culture reference must be written in 60 lines or less.

No form constraints.

Get to writing!

Week 8: Villanelle-- Unexpected Twist

2009-08-09T19:58:00.000-07:00

Project Verse Contestants,

The weekly judges are not impressed with how you handled the Week 8: Villanelle assignment. Part of the rules for week 8 read, "Slant rhyme won't cut it for this assignment," yet some of you use slant rhyme. One of you should remember that the rhyme scheme for a villanelle for the first fifteen lines is ABA, and the rhyme scheme for the last four lines is ABAA. The bottom: The Week 8 poems are not the best representation of the quality of work each of you can produce; therefore, we can't accept these poems.

Your options:
(1) Revise your poem. Make sure you're not using slant rhyme. Make sure you follow the rhyme scheme. Submit your revised poem by noon on Wednesday, August 12.
(2) You can choose not to revise your poem; however, this means you'll be entering into a double elimination with your poem as is, and you'll be adding that poem as is in your overall collective work, which will help decide the contest winner.

Your Week 9 assignment will still be posted on Monday, and it is still due by 10am on Friday.

We want you to know that we're pushing you because we know you are talented poets who can handle the challenge. We know you must be tired, but it is almost over. Don't fizzle out on us. Shine.

Good Luck,
The Weekly Judges

PS.
Yes, the week 8 guest judge has our backs with this decision.

Why Do I Write ~ Andrew Demcak

2009-08-09T19:22:00.000-07:00

WHY DO I WRITE ~ Andrew Demcak

As Joan Didion says “In many ways writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying: listen to me, see it my way, change your mind. It’s an aggressive, even a hostile act. You can disguise its aggressiveness all you want with veils of subordinate clauses and qualifiers and tentative subjunctives, with ellipses and evasions, with the whole manner of intimating rather than claiming, of alluding rather than stating but there’s no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer’s sensibility on the readers most private space.”

All of my poems are "cut-ups" of poems which originally appeared either in The New Yorker, Poetry, or in Sylvia Plath’s various books. This very act of “cutting” is a violent reclamation of language. I use a variation of the "cut-up" method pioneered in the 1920's by both the DADA and Surrealist movements, refined in the late 1950's by William S. Burroughs and Brion Gyson. I have further augmented it, moving the praxis farther from the creation of non-objectivist "collages" and into what I can only describe as a way of facilitating textual "mutations." I edit the meanings of the poems as they evolve from the various permutations of word fragments. I further edit for syllabic line length and maximum syllabic line total, while playing around with various rhyme schemes, making the end product a hybrid of traditional English blank verse and French lyric and metrical/formulaic syllabics, e.g. OULIPO methods. In my “how” is my “why.”

Week 8: Villanelle (The Poems!)

2009-08-07T23:36:00.000-07:00

Here are the poems from Project Verse ~ Week 8: Villanelle.

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KRISTEN MCHENRY
The Menfolk Whisper of The Gulabi Gang

“They wear pink saris and go after corrupt
officials and boorish men with sticks and axes.”
--Soutik Biswas; BBC News, Banda

Why do our good women gather in a fuchsia crush,
to bow their heads, but not to pray?
A tribe of flamingos in rags of blush,

they're hoarding stones from the filthy dray.
I hear they are hungry in a bottomless way.
Our good women gather in a muffled crush;

they have nurtured us with that same pink hush.
Now their lullabies seethe with a cryptic sway.
A cloud of flamingos in rags of blush,

they shroud their rifles in the underbrush.
I've heard it told: one night they may
gather our daughters in a fuchsia crush

and baptize them in the river's rush--
Banda wives wading in the moon's crimped ray;
a rage of flamingos in rags of blush.

I've heard they grow fervent, lithe and lush,
their hair unruly as the grass owl's bray.
Why do our good women gather in a fuchsia crush,
a tribe of flamingos in rags of blush?

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EMILY VAN DUYNE
The Lacrymosa, Washing the Dishes: Wednesday Night in Wartime America

‘Mozart’s Requiem begins with you walking towards a huge pit…’
-Zadie Smith

Those can’t be my hands in the sink! Expunge the crass
dried blood of this night’s wine, strewn
in the glass. That can’t be my face, cast

in the window—lonely woman, eyes like the Black Mass…
kyrie eleision, now scrub those pots & spoons…
expunge the crass sink. Those can’t be my hands that blast

the grease of fat & bone, latticed like the past…
and why should you have this life, this boon…
That face in the glass? It can’t be her place to cast

aspersions to the night’s eclipse, the sweet, dark grass,
another person, far away, who seeks the same hidden moon?
Those can’t be my cries! They sink in the crass

face of history: slouching beasts, dead stars… the last
shall be first, penance is like ashes— no one is immune…
That can’t be my face in the window: bloody glass

house we’ve assembled and hewn.
The pit is ever closer, surely you come soon,
surely: those must be my hands that sink in the fast
cast of water. That must be my face in the glass.

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W.F. ROBY
Through the Gauze of Heroin Hydrochloride

I took to the drug like a baby
takes to incidents of peas. A bore
we tapped out grain by grain, all tingly.

In the distant city, two birdies
lined up their beaks and poked at the core.
I took to the drug like a baby.

Dope on my desk, brown and crumbly
as steel and ash on the city’s floor.
We tapped out grain by grain, all tingly.

The news so graceful, silver latchkey
on my neck, the stash drawer
open to the drug like a baby,

like a fly to a glass of sherry.
New York fell, I was a sophomore.
We tapped out grain by grain, all tingly --

a needle’s difficult to bury.
Let’s watch smoke cover up the seashore.
I took to the drug like a baby.
We tapped out grain by grain, all tingly.

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KATHI MORRISON-TAYLOR
Gretel Copes

Repression’s underrated. She’ll forget
her cookie-house binge with M&M trim, licorice whip pitch;
the scent of burning witch and cloves and chicken shit

all run together. She’ll always hate chocolate,
is rumored to huff Easy Off and do witch
impressions badly. She’ll forget

to watch Hansel on Letterman: instead, flit
from club to club to Daddy’s house. A hazel switch,
the reek of burning witch and cloves and kitschy shit—

grief after grief, it stings her. Damn it.
Damn the greedy crumb-eaters. Damn the itch
of repression, too slow. She’ll forget

her chubby brother behind barbed wire, but she’ll spit
at old ladies with gumdrop smiles. Anorexic bitch,
motherless witch, smokes cloves, shoots the shit—

that tabloid-Gretel: famous, wrecked, unfit
as a Nazi, murder charge dropped, filthy rich. . .
Repression’s underrated. She can’t forget
the scent of burning witch and cloves and chicken shit.

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Reminder: Project Verse Prize Package

2009-08-07T21:44:00.000-07:00

The winner of Project Verse receives the following:
 a contract for a limited edition chapbook published by Limp Wrist
 a weeklong residency at Marilyn Nelson's Soul Mountain Retreat* (for the poet to revise and finish his/her chapbook)
 an interview with Joe Milford of “The Joe Milford Poetry Show”
 a review of the chapbook that will be published in ouroboros review and Limp Wrist
 a year subscription to the Naugatuck River Review
 a copy of Best Gay Poetry 2008
 a copy of the 2008 Squaw Valley Review

Week 8: Guest Judge Maureen Seaton

2009-08-05T22:38:00.000-07:00

Maureen Seaton's sixth book of poems, Cave of the Yellow Volkswagen, was released in Feb '09 from Carnegie Mellon University Press. Her previous collections are Venus Examines Her Breast (Carnegie Mellon UP, 2004), winner of the Publishing Triangle's Audre Lorde Award; Little Ice Age (Invisible Cities Press, 2001), which was nominated for a National Book Award; Furious Cooking (University of Iowa Press, 1996), winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize and the Lambda Literary Award; Fear of Subways (Eighth Mountain, 1991), winner of the Eighth Mountain Poetry Prize; and The Sea among the Cupboards (New Rivers, 1992), winner of the Capricorn Award and the Society of Midland Authors Award. The recipient of an NEA fellowship, Illinois Arts Council grant, and two Pushcart Prizes, she is also the author of a memoir, Sex Talks to Girls, published by the University of Wisconsin.

As A Kid She-Ra Always Made Me Smile

2009-08-05T00:01:00.000-07:00

Project Verse ~ Week 8: Villanelle

2009-08-03T03:30:00.000-07:00

Week 8: VILLANELLE

Form and repetition continue.

This week you are writing a villanelle. You have six stanzas and nineteen lines to impress us.

You may write on any topic that you desire, but you must do the following:
(1) Make a political reference in your poem. You can drop the name of an event or person--doesn't matter, just make the reference.
(2) Slant rhyme won't cut it for this assignment.

By the way, you may alter NO MORE than three words in lines one and three when you repeat them.

If you need a guiding light, take a look at "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop. Contestants, don't lose us, or you'll be OUT.

Good luck!

Get to writing.

Week 7: Results

2009-08-03T03:00:00.000-07:00

Beth, Dustin, and Dana were joined by guest judge Sandra Beasley for Week 7: Pantoum. Click here to revisit the Week 7 poems.

Before we get to the reason you are reading this post, you need to read a statement from guest judge Sandra Beasley:

"When I agreed to be a guest judge, the identities of the Project Verse competitors was not determined. It has turned out that I know one of the finalists. Therefore, out of respect for Project Verse's ethical code I recuse myself from voting. But I spent a lot of time with the poems, and Dustin is being kind enough to share my comments; I hope they are helpful. My deepest appreciation goes out to all the contestants and the judges. Good luck!"

Now, here we go:
MICAH LING
KRISTEN MCHENRY
W.F. ROBY
EMILY VAN DUYNE

KRISTEN, last week you were in the bottom two, and you are in the top two this week. EMILY, you are joining KRISTEN, and you get to call yourself the winner of Week 7. Congrats, EMILY!

MICAH and W.F., the judges realize this week's assignment was hard; however, they felt you didn't utilize your poetic talents and rise to the occasion. MICAH, the judges were hoping to have another strong poem like you wrote for week 6. W.F., this is a competition and someone has to leave, but it isn't you this week. MICAH, you are on permanent caesura.

W.F., the week 8 assignment will involve repetition; don't fall prey to the same mistakes with your week 8 poem.

A Few Updates

2009-08-02T20:38:00.000-07:00

(1) The comments from the Project Verse weekly judges and guest judge Sandra Beasley have been posted here.

(2) 8/5/09: The first entry of the Double Ds will feature Marilyn Nelson. Don't forget to visit ReadWritePoem to check out the monthly column.

(3) I started a fan group for a poet on Read Write Poem. You know you want to click here and join!

(4) I also started a Project Verse group on Read Write Poem. Click here to view and join. Members will have a chance to........

Links: Hate Crime to HIV/AIDS to Healthcare to Apple

2009-08-02T18:19:00.000-07:00

Hundreds of members and supporters of Israel's homosexual community have rallied in Tel Aviv a day after a masked gunman killed two people at a gay youth centre.

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A new strain of the virus that causes AIDS has been discovered in a woman from the African nation of Cameroon. It differs from the three known strains of human immunodeficiency virus and appears to be closely related to a form of simian virus recently discovered in wild gorillas, researchers report in Monday's edition of the journal Nature Medicine.

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Confusing claims and outright distortions have animated the national debate over changes in the health care system. Opponents of proposals by President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats falsely claim that government agents will force elderly people to discuss end-of-life wishes. Obama has played down the possibility that a health care overhaul would cause large numbers of people to change doctors and insurers.

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How Apple can mess with your life

Week 7: Pantoum (The Poems!)

2009-08-01T10:14:00.000-07:00

Here are the poems from Project Verse ~ Week 7: Pantoum.

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MICAH LING
White Fox

White Fox, curled on the road
Were you headed there:
Into the wild
When you stopped in the sun?

Were you headed there:
Through late-October stalks
When you stopped in the sun?
A one-eyed nap

Through late-October stalks
You rested your head
A one-eyed nap
When the dust started up.

You rested your head
Dreaming into the wild
When the dust started up
And Harvest Moon crept in

Dreaming into the wild
As dust covered your coat
And Harvest Moon crept in
Cleaning your fur stark

As dust covered your coat
The scent of into the wild
Cleaning your fur stark
Stripped and pure.

The scent of into the wild
Into the wild:
Stripped and pure.
White Fox, curled on the road.

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: The trick of the pantoum, of course, is to find a subject that has its own complex weaving, so that subject and form work together. I’m not sure this poem’s subject does that as well as it might. I like the sad spareness of the poem’s focus (that dead fox), but for me, there’s something a bit forced about the way the form works in this draft. Part of the problem may be that “into the wild” is used as both the book title and the movie title. The writer seems to have made it harder on herself than need be, and the unnecessary over-repetition worked against the poem, I think, but the spareness of the subject is compelling, and I think a good thorough re-shaping could make the poem work.

Dustin: I thik you might have taken a shot of Mary Oliver before writing this poem--I don't meant that as a negative-- I'm just saying. You definitely have a missed opportunity with your title; we get a white fox in the first line, so give us something different. I really enjoyed your poem from last week, and I wanted to see something as powerful this week, but I don't feel you delivered. Yes, pantoums are difficult to write. Yes, writing a pantoum in fours is freaking hard, but after last week, I know you can deliver a better pantoum than "White Fox."

Dana: What is clear from this week’s poems is that it’s really hard to write a pantoum. You don’t just have to get in gracefully, you have to get out gracefully. And you have to be able to incorporate the repeated lines throughout without losing control of what you’re doing. The pantoum, done well, is like a professional diver’s entry into the water — it ends clean, no splash as the water gets thrown out of place. This poem has some good moments, but overall you aren’t in control of what is going on, and it culminates in an ending with a lot of splash — and not in the good sense of that dead metaphor.

Guest Judge Sandra Beasley: This poem is...okay. It is not Ling’s best by far. Maybe it was a labor of survival for the poet—we’ve all been there, so I am sympathetic. But in the spirit of pantoums future, let’s take a look at the strategic ways in which the poem could be strengthened.

Molly Peacock has a great philosophy of form: she says that the formal dictates should be a skeleton giving structure to the flesh around it, rather than a box containing the poem. Right now, this poem feels a little too boxed-in by the pantoum. It would be great to see the author challenge himself more with longer lines, or additional enjambment; there’s a herky-jerky quality created by all the endstops, especially that severe colon.

Because the subject is literally “still,” a fox curled on the road, it doesn’t give Ling much opportunity to energize the scene. Instead of a rhetorical build-up, we drift toward an odelike, static appreciation of nature. If we are treating this as a draft open to revision, I would suggest that the two elements that offer the most potential for dramatic tension are the speaker’s questioning of the fox (though I think there are riskier questions to be asked) and the idea of “one-eyed nap.” Does that mean only one eye is closed, and therefore the fox is not as asleep as it appears? I would love to see that pushed farther.

I don’t know how/if the other judges will weigh in on this, but for the record I regard Ling’s doubling of Into the Wild as both book and movie title a clever move, in line with the pantoum formal repetitions. It’s not cheating. Frankly, since I hate prompts, I’m always rooting for those who find a way to subvert them.

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KRISTEN MCHENRY

The Book of Lilith

I could pass for your pious wife.
But then there's that Louisiana
Milk Snake in my Miu Miu bag.
Nights, I study from the Book of Lilith.

But then there's that Louisiana
heat that slithers in my restless hips.
Nights, I study from the Book of Lilith.
I'm teeming with Eden's

heat that slithers in my restless hips.
Nights, I drive to this cave I knew--
I'm teeming with Eden's
canticles of serpent song.

Nights, I drive to this cave I knew--
before men, before trouble, before
canticles of serpent song.
Nights, the stars would rush at me,

before men, before trouble, before
I was a cherished breakable.
Nights, the stars would rush at me,
I was the thrum of their hustle and flow;

I was a cherished breakable.
Eden brides married blind and bustled.
I was the thrum of their hustle and flow;
now I'm your willow-shelter, your choking-roots.

Eden brides married blind and bustled.
I should keep my eyes cast down, given that
now I'm your willow-shelter, your choking-roots.
I'm the bitch in the kitchen with a cooling knife.

I should keep my eyes cast down, given that
Milk Snake in my Miu Miu bag.
I'm the bitch in the kitchen with a cooling knife.
I could pass for your pious wife.

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: Something about this poem charms and thrills me, even though a few of the lines are a bit of a stretch “heat that slithers in my restless hips” (does heat slither? maybe this is referring to a man’s genitals? hmmmm). But mostly the poem has an energy and sonic power that works well with the formal constraints, so the poem feels like it is weaving forward, weaving forward, the way the best pantoums do:

I was the thrum of their hustle and flow;

I was a cherished breakable.
Eden brides married blind and bustled.
I was the thrum of their hustle and flow;
now I'm your willow-shelter, your choking-roots.

Eden brides married blind and bustled.

Does it get much better then “now I’m your willow-shelter, your choking-roots”? And what about that “milk-snake in my Miu-Miu bag”? How wonderfully weird! The quirkiness and beauty of this poem is refreshing and certainly makes me glad we’ve given Kristen a ‘second chance’. Well done, Kristen!

Dustin: I absolutely love your last two lines: "I'm the bitch in the kitchen with a cooling knife. / I could pass for your pious wife." I almost want the last line of the poem to be "I'm the bitch in the kitchen with a cooling knife." Don't get me wrong, your last line works-- just a small personal preference. I love "“milk-snake in my Miu-Miu bag" and "But then there's that Louisiana / heat that slithers in my restless hips." I'm not sure about heat that slithers, but I find the line so sexy that I'm not distracted, in fact, I'm drawn. Small item: Toward the end of the poem. I'd remove "now" from your repeating line. I think the poem could use a touch-up here and there-- very small stuff as I just mentioned. There is no denying that this is a good poem. Now, I have to say this: I love that you wrote about Lilith. Ever since I was a kid, I have been fascinated with the story of Adam's first wife who wouldn't submit; therefore, I was happy to see a poem on the topic.

Dana: So the hard decision for me this week was between this poem and Emily’s. Both are amazing. I wouldn’t even pick between the two under normal conditions because I don’t tend to compare poems in that way. But this is a competition, after all, so I sat with both pieces in front of me and what I came away with is this. Your work is exceptional, very exciting to read, extremely polished. I can see why you just placed as a runner up in Qarrtsiluni’s chapbook competition. The only thing I would say is to maybe, maybe think about a little *less* control in some of your pieces. Step in a little shit, if you will. Just a little. Sometimes it feels a little too pulled together, like a room that uses all the same hues instead of varying the undertones just enough to create the uncomfortable energy that gets us going. This is a 1% complaint, mind you. Teensy.

Guest Judge Sandra Beasley: McHenry has been turning strong poems throughout this competition, and this is no exception. With its rich sounds and sassy tone, “The Book of Lilith” was genuinely pleasurable to read, and offers a supple handling of the pantoum form.

One of the poet’s trademarks seems to be intelligent compression. In lesser hands, the complex power dynamic captured in “I’m your willow-shelter, your choking-roots” would have taken a whole stanza to communicate. Here, it’s accomplished in five words. I liked the bold pairing of contemporary vernacular with biblical reference. The strategic positioning of “Eden” and “Louisiana” at line breaks—meaning they each got a turn at modifying the heat and snake motifs—was a clever way of making form serve theme.

That said, I’m not sure the theme is fully developed. Clearly the Lilith-like figure has evolved through several selves. What is the transformation of character that we, as the reader, are supposed to be most invested in? When the speaker says “I could pass for your pious wife”—a line which has to bear up under extra scrutiny because it both opens and closes the poem—does pass equate to “I could be mistaken for, by someone not looking hard enough…” or does it mean “I could choose to play the role of…”? It would be easy to coast on that wonderful end rhyme in the final couplet, and not ask for a greater narrative satisfaction. But I’m charged with being more demanding.

One small thing: revising the repeating lines can be a slippery slope, but alterations also prevent distracting confusions. The speaker’s story hinges on contrasting the past (“before men, before trouble”) to the present. But because McHenry needs to use the same phrasing in two different contexts, she ends up with the weird tense conflation of “I drive to this cave I knew.” It’s a jarring moment, but I can’t judge too harshly when her hands were tied by the assignment. It can be easily fixed in a post-contest incarnation.

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EMILY VAN DUYNE

For My Girlhood Best Friend

I need another heart, two brand new eyes, a bigger boat:
I’m on her bedroom floor. Jaws flickers on the little screen—
She floats above me, blue lit, drunk, remote.
It’s August 21, 1996, her sweet sixteen.

I’m on her bedroom floor. Jaws flickers on the little screen—
the party’s finished, everybody’s gone. I’ve spent the night, instead.
It’s August 21, 1996, her sweet sixteen.
She fucks some blond boy in her pink, four-poster bed,

the party’s finished, everybody’s gone. I’ve spent the night, instead,
too late to sneak out now, to wander home. It’s 4 am!
She fucks some blond boy in her pink, four-poster bed—
I bind a pillow over my dark head, choke out a loud ahem!

too late to sneak out now, to wander home. It’s 4 am!
Now he’s growling lines in tandem with the flick!
I bind a pillow over my dark head, choke out a loud ahem!
On their bodies tumble, his balls slap; they heave and slick—

now he’s growling lines in tandem with the flick!
How she grunts and groans: a man-eater, ferocious.
On their bodies tumble, his balls slap; they heave and slick,
each novel sound stays with me— I’m a virgin, I’m precocious.

How she grunts and groans: a man-eater, ferocious,
I just have to look; it’s like something from Justine!
Each novel sound stays with me— I’m a virgin, I’m precocious,
I’ll take this night to heart. I can’t forget this scene, I mean

I just have to look; it’s like something from Justine!
She never read a goddamn thing, she kissed the boys, instead.
I’ll take this night to heart. I can’t forget this scene, I mean,
I used to plait her curls in that pink bed!

She never read a goddamn thing, she kissed the boys, instead.
She floats above me, blue lit, drunk, remote:
I used to plait her curls in that pink bed!
I need another heart, two brand new eyes, a bigger boat.

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: Easily and hands down my favorite poem of the week. What I love about this poem is that the form becomes completely integral to the meaning of the poem, the intensity of the experience being described, the dream-like horror of the scenario. So the repetition feels absolutely in keeping with the subject of the poem. Even the hyperboles: i.e. “his balls slap” seem absolutely right for this character and her enforced voyeuristic episode. Fabulous work here!

Dustin: Last week C. Dale Young wrote, "Wow. I mean, Wow!" I'm stealing his words for this week. Wow. I mean, Wow! There is so much to love about your poem that I feel like a glutton. What a first line: "I need another heart, two brand new eyes, a bigger boat"-----a great first line to pull in a reader. I immediately wanted to know why the speaker needs another heart, two brand new eyes, and a bigger boat. I also want to applaud you. The past couple of weeks I've stated that you've had some issues with flow--- Not this week. Using a date in a line that repeats in a poem can be tricky business, but you make it work. Small item: In the second to last stanza, I wanted to see "pink, four-poster bed" instead of "that pink bed." This poem is very dramatic, and I think keeping it "pink, four-poster bed" helps keep it operating at a high drama level. I'd love to see what you would do with to this poem with a little more time. Good job!

Dana: I need another pantoum, two brand new pantoums, a bigger pantoum. Not because I don’t like this poem and want a trade, but because I like it so much I want more. I actually have some technical things I could say about it, so I suppose I will. It feels a little redundant in stanzas three and four, and it’s hard to sustain the same tension and drive that you have in that marvelous first stanza. That first line! That second line! I also think there’s more spit and polish you could put on the middle stanzas. The only time the repeated lines really aren’t working for me is when you use the “ahem!” Twice. A vocal utterance like that calls a lot of attention to itself and it’s hard to finesse that twice in the poem without it standing out. But here’s the thing: Your poem is dangerous and complicated, on the whole and in and within individual lines. I could sit with “She never read a goodamn thing, she kissed the boys, instead” all day and I was so happy that you used it as a repeated line. Your poem does step in a little shit, but it has all the emotional, raw, smart, complex stuff going on in it that I find in my favorite poems.

Guest Judge Sandra Beasley: Van Duyne’s poems have fascinated me throughout this competition—she’s totally unafraid of hyperbolic language and extremist viewpoints. I wish there was more of her wildness among today’s poets.

Unfortunately, the frenzy of exclamation points is not as well suited here as it has been in her past work. The problem is that we’re in narrative space, rather than a dramatic monologue (at which Van Duyne excels, i.e. the Plath poem). As a reader I took the cues of specificities such as “It’s August 21, 1996, her sweet sixteen,” and invested in the story. Would her friend actually consummate the act? Would the speaker look? Would this kill the friendship? But ultimately, the story doesn’t offer any kind of conclusion, or explicit conflict; it’s just a crutch for the acrobatics of voice. Exploiting a hermit crab for this purpose is fine; using “My Girlhood Best Friend” feels a little strange.

This assignment simply does not complement the poet’s skills. The long lines each have a lot of internal momentum, but those comma-heavy clauses suffer in the pantoum repetition. Both titles are referenced in a literal way (the movie as a movie, the book as a book), and the Justine reference feels particularly tacked-on.

Yet I want to say that this poem includes my favorite line of this round: “I need another heart, two brand new eyes, a bigger boat.” (Though I’d strike “brand” and just say “new eyes.”) In its latter appearance, we know this rhetoric is grounded in details of the evening: the speaker’s heart is broken by her best friend; her voyeuring eyes no longer match the rest of her virginal self; “bigger boat” is a witty Jaws echo. But even as the first line—with no knowledge of these cross-references—I fell in love. What better paraphrase of achy adolescence is there than the universal wish for another heart, two new eyes, and a bigger boat?

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W.F. ROBY
Singing “Death Letter” at Dawn

Crickets out there singing “Teach me, teach me.”
My baby she wrote me a candle
just long enough to read her letter by,
in the time it takes to flip the record.

My baby she wrote me a candle
in the moonlight sharp as chicken bones.
In the time it takes to flip the record
my baby kicked holes in the toolhouse.

in the moonlight sharp as chicken bones.
Now I look for the grave at my toes.
My baby kicked holes in the toolhouse
until the sun went cannon dark,

now I look for the grave at my toes.
My baby she wrote me a cloudburst --
until the sun went cannon dark,
just long enough to light a candle by,

My baby she wrote me a cloudburst --
my baby she wrote me a letter
just long enough to light a candle by,
just short enough to skip the record.

My baby she wrote me a letter
just long enough to read her letter by,
just short enough to skip the record.
Crickets out there singing “Teach me, teach me.”

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: For me, the best of this poem happens in the four lines below:

my baby kicked holes in the toolhouse.

in the moonlight sharp as chicken bones.
Now I look for the grave at my toes.

I really wish the rest of the poem had this kind of freshness. The poem veers for me too much into what feels like song lyrics. The repetition of “My baby wrote me” pushes the poem toward a country western ballad, and it seems to finally overwhelm the poem which feels like it doesn’t move much past what happens in the opening two stanzas. The danger of the pantoum is that it can feel like it doesn’t go anywhere (oh, yes, I’ve written my share of these!), and I fear that’s what happened with this poem even despite the surprise and delight of the above quoted lines.

Dustin: Your title contains an allusion and grabs attention. If I saw the title of the poem on a table of contents, I'd flip directly to it. I sort of like the first line, but I'd lose the "out there." However, I am lost with "My baby she wrote me a candle." While it seems nice, the lines works against the poem by creating a distraction--- througout the poem my mind kept wandering back to that line. Yes, I know pantoums are hard. Repetition can a troublesome task to handle. Unfortunately, I think this troublesome task got the best of you. I feel like your poem is a bad country music song. You're a good poet; however, at times I feel like you don't trust yourself when writing. Maybe I'm wrong. If I'm not, trust yourself--- just do it.

Dana: There is some really creative work going on in this poem, but I feel like it’s suspended between different approaches, if you will. Is it a song? Is it absurd? If it’s a song, I want it to be its own song, not thrust Joe Cocker in my ear in line two – Joe is very, very difficult to get out once he’s in, by the way. If it’s absurd, I want it to go more in that direction and really push the weird. Your way with language is really wonderful, and I've seen daring, strange, disturbing poems you've written that I adore, but I think this assignment tripped you up. I want you to be fierce and unapologetic. Your poems, that is. You are clearly already both in real life.

Guest Judge Sandra Beasley: Much like the sestina, the pantoum is a form that can fatigue the reader. Many people resist this risk by masking the repetitions. Rather than backing away from the inherent repetitions, Roby doubled down on the risk—adding his own both within a line (“Teach me, teach me”) and with the use of anaphora (“My baby she wrote me a cloudburst— / my baby she wrote me a letter…”). That’s a really bold move, and it shows an admirable openness to play at this critical stage of the competition.

On top of the movie and the book, Roby also embeds a reference to a third creative genre, song. The title invokes Son House’s “Death Letter” (and those more likely to know Joe Cocker will hear “My Baby, She Wrote Me a Letter”). In terms of these labyrinthine assignments, he’s saying Bring it on. Awesome.

The big problem is a lack of coherence. This feels less like a poem, more like a riff (House was a 1930s blues musician). I’m not always looking for story—I appreciate lyric. But this relies on the framework of “Death Letter” (in which a man learns of his loved one’s death via a letter delivered in the morning, goes to the morgue to identify her body, buries her, and returns home depressed) in order to make sense.

There are some gloriously strange word choices here, modifying a “poetic” object with an unexpected adjective; the tradition goes back to Wallace Stevens and, further back, many of the Japanese nature poets. I want to relish phrases like “moonlight sharp as chicken bones,” or “until the sun went cannon dark.” But I can’t quite make it all stick. Ideally, these surrealistic pairings should illuminate both halves; but telling me the moonlight is as sharp as chicken bones doesn’t make me see the moon in a new way. The bones stay bones. The speaker and his baby never achieve a third dimension of personality. I admire the aim, but the execution felt sloppy.

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KATHI MORRISON-TAYLOR
From the Phrase Book of my Fearful Mother

Adventures are for careless people.
Life is dangerous—then you die.
Here’s the church and here’s the steeple.
Watch out for the other guy.

Life is dangerous—then you die.
Every man will want your body.
Watch out for the other guy.
Eating dessert first is naughty.

Every man will want your body.
Knee his groin; poke out his eyes.
Eating dessert first is naughty.
Don’t believe their twisted lies.

Knee his groin; poke out his eyes.
Never say I didn’t tell you.
Don’t believe their twisted lies.
Unrequited love can kill you.

Never say I didn’t tell you.
Henry James, The Wings of the Dove?
Unrequited love can kill you.
Sex, drugs, rock & roll, and love.

Henry James, The Wings of the Dove?
You should go rent Vertigo.
Sex, drugs, rock & roll, and love.
Stop that, now! You know, I know.

You should go rent Vertigo.
Here’s the church and here’s the steeple.
Stop that, now! You know, I know.
Adventures are for careless people.

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: I very much like the conceit of this poem, but in a way the conceit becomes a trap. The phrases of the poem are made up mostly of all-too-familiar bromides. “Unrequited love can kill you.” is a winner, and helps to sharpen the mother’s character, but most of the lines don’t do that kind of hard work, and then as the poem unfolds, the language feels kind of clichéd and uninteresting. It’s a tough assignment to be sure, but this poem was a bit of a disappointment.

Dustin: I'm not feeling this poem; it doesn't move me. I don't think this is your best work in the competition. Using cliches can be tricky business, and I think the tricky business got the best of you. Also, I don't think the cliches are even wovenly together nicely. I almost feel like you tossed lines together. Bottom line: This seems like a rush job. You have written better poems.

Dana: This poem fails in one essential way, which is that it does not make use of the turns between lines that make the pantoum interesting. Without those turns, the shading of the lines when they repeat is very close to the initial use of the line, even if the surrounding lines are different. The end-stopped lines might work very well, splendidly in fact, if this were a list poem and not a pantoum. But as a pantoum, I am just not feeling it. I also don’t feel this piece develops, and too many of the lines are clichés, which might work as a device if they were used more strategically or laid the groundwork for a poem that then breaks through to something deeper and broader. But I don’t see that happening in this piece.

Guest Judge Sandra Beasley: There’s confidence in this poem’s assembly. Morrison-Taylor uses a palpable four-beat line and full end-rhyme, which is another way of intensifying the pantoum’s formal requirements. Although in many cases this would read as too precious an effect, in this case the title—“From the Phrase Book of my Fearful Mother”—justifies a certain sing-songing quality in the verses that follow. The title is doing a lot of work, and the median line length is suited to the pantoum’s repetitions.

As with a list poem or an abcedarian, the artificial premise clarifies the reader’s expectation; the challenge is to keep the gimmick from limiting the experience. In a way, “Fearful” undermines the joke—we should extrapolate our understanding of the mother’s personality from the phrases offered, versus having it labeled at the outset. In a few cases the rotation of phrases produced pleasingly weird juxtapositions: “Life is dangerous—then you die. / Every man will want your body,” for example, made me wonder if this was a particularly necrophilia-wary mother. And although the invocations of Vertigo and The Wings of the Dove aren’t transformational, I like the friction between the two in the sixth stanza (as if one is being recommended one in response to the other).

Some of the lines feel like Jello, though—too easy to make, too easy to swallow. “Don’t believe their twisted lies” takes up valuable space that could be devoted to unpacking the child’s finger-game of “Here’s the church and here’s the steeple,” which has some double-meaning here (or a potential for one) that’s out of focus. From the approach of potential revisions, I wonder if phrases could be added that reflect the mother’s own experience. I recall plenty of warnings in my childhood that began “When I was your age I…” I’d like to engage the mother as a person, not just a mouthpiece.

The craft is solid. A poem that takes bigger risks, though, could garner bigger rewards.

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Week Seven: Guest Judge Sandra Beasley

2009-07-29T18:00:00.000-07:00

Sandra Beasley is the author of I Was the Jukebox, winner of the 2009 Barnard Women Poets Prize, selected by Joy Harjo and forthcoming from W. W. Norton. Her first collection, Theories of Falling, won the 2007 New Issues Poetry Prize judged by Marie Howe. She lives in Washington, D.C., where she writes for the Washington Post Magazine and is working on Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life, forthcoming from Crown. Click here to visit Sandra's blog!

NEW: "Change It" by Dolly Parton

2009-07-28T19:05:00.000-07:00

As you may or may not know, Dolly Parton wrote all the music for the Broadway musical 9 to 5. As usual with a Broadway production, a cast album has been released----this is lovely, but I don't have much of an interest in anyone but Dolly singing songs that she's written. (You shouldn't expect anything less from a Dolly fanatic!)

Well, I am happy to say that Dolly recorded one of the songs from the cast album. "Change It" sung by Dolly was released as a single today. Yes, I downloaded it. I'm not completely won over with the song as I was with her single "Better Get to Livin'." Yes, "Change It" has the ole Dolly charm that Dolly fans love and expect, so I am sure I'll come to enjoy and love it more and more as I listen to it. And, I'm sure when something crappy or extremely frustrating happens with me, well, I will feel in tune and possibly madly in love with the message in "Change It."

You may purchse Dolly Parton's "Change It" on iTunes!

William Shatner Reads 'Palin Poetry'

2009-07-28T18:22:00.000-07:00

The Double Ds: A ReadWritePoem Column w/ Denise Duhamel

2009-07-27T19:23:00.000-07:00

The Double Ds
Want to know more about your favorite poets? In this monthly column, Dustin Brookshire and Denise Duhamel will ask a poet one poetry-related and one non-poetry-related question. Respondents’ answers will surprise and delight you. Look for Marilyn Nelson, Dara Wier, David Trinidad and Patricia Smith as part of this exciting series.

A Statement From The Weekly Project Verse Judges

2009-07-27T18:38:00.000-07:00

Project Verse Contestants,

The only rules in print are the rules you agreed to abide by when you applied to participate in Project Verse.

Is the collective work of each contestant important?

One of the prizes of Project Verse is a chapbook deal with two guaranteed book reviews in two fine publications. The poems from the competition will help create and shape the Project Verse winner's chapbook. YES, the collective work of each poet is extremely important. Just like on Project Runway, especially toward the end of the competition, the body of work throughout the competition becomes more important in determining which of the lowest ranked contestants each week will go home. As we move into the last half of Project Verse, overall performance will play a larger factor in which of two lowest ranked competitors that week goes on permanent caesura. This shouldn't surprise you.

Keep up the good work,
The Weekly Project Verse Judges

Project Verse ~ Week 7: Pantoum

2009-07-27T03:59:00.000-07:00

Week 7: PANTOUM

This week you must a write a pantoum.

You may write on any topic that you desire, but you must do the following:
(1) Have a minimum of 6 stanzas, but 8 is the maximum.
(2) Work in the name of one movie into a line that will be repeated.
(3) Work in the name of one book into a line that will be repeated.

By the way, you may NOT alter the second and fourth lines of your stanzas
when you transition them to first and third lines.

Good luck poets.

Get to writing

Week 6: Results

2009-07-26T22:04:00.000-07:00

Beth, Dustin, and Dana were joined by guest judge C. Dale Young for Week 6: Epigraph. Click here to revisit the Week 6 poems.

KRISTEN MCHENRY
EMILY VAN DUYNE
EMARI DIGIORGIO

The easy part of Week 6 was selecting the winner. Congrats, EMILY!

KRISTEN and EMARI , you both made the bottom two this week. One of you received four out of four votes; the other contestant received three out of four votes.

I suppose the decision of who should go on permanent caesura seems simple, well, that is if you go strictly by the numbers; however, it is not a simple decision. The decision was so difficult that the weekly judges had a phone conversation in addition to their usual email correspondence.

KRISTEN, you received the four votes; EMARI , you received three votes.

EMARI , you were in the top for Week 2: Firsts, but you haven't won a weekly competition. You were in the bottom for the Curveball, so this marks your second time being in the bottom. KRISTEN, this is your first time in the bottom two. In fact, you have won three challenges: Week 3: Simile Vs. Metaphor, the Curveball assignment, and tied for the top spot for Week 5: The Between.

EMARI , when the judges compared your collected work from the competition with KRISTEN's collected work, well, they didn't feel your collected work was as strong as KRISTEN's. Therefore, you are on permanent caesura.

KRISTEN, you have survived elimination because the judges believe your collected work thus far shows great promise. Next week, give us the same caliber of work we've seen each week up until Week 5.

Sunday Eye Candy ~ Alex Meraz

2009-07-26T18:20:00.000-07:00

Links: Jupiter to Mills to Kemp to Hennessy

2009-07-26T11:58:00.000-07:00

"Ka-Ching! is a Winner or Why I'm Never Riding an Escalator Again" by Stephen Mills

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Subito Press of the University of Colorado invites submissions to its annual book competition. We will publish two books of innovative writing, one each of fiction and poetry. Submissions will be accepted from June 1 to August 15, 2009 (postmark date).

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Robin Kemp holds a copy of her first collection, This Pagan Heaven. There will be an interview with Robin published here at I Was Born Doing Reference Work in Sin.

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I hope you didn't forget----Christopher Hennessy wrote a book titled Outside the Lines: Talking with Contemporary Gay Poets.

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Praise Dolly: Jupiter is a comet block!

An object, probably a comet that nobody saw coming, plowed into the giant planet’s colorful cloud tops sometime Sunday, splashing up debris and leaving a black eye the size of the Pacific Ocean.

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Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software maker, offered to include rival Web browsers in the Windows operating system to settle a European Union antitrust case.

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Week 6: Epigraph (The Poems!)

2009-07-25T10:58:00.000-07:00

Here are the poems from Project Verse ~ Week 6: Epigraph.

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MICAH LING

Kittens
             Splendor, and splendor,
             and not a one in any way
             distinguished from the other
                       -Mark Doty, from “A Display of Mackerel”

Spring brings birthdays
and Dad's trip to the pond.
The girls name cows and chickens,
the cats are all Molly.

Dad chooses
a rock from the pile behind the barn,
places it in the burlap with the tiny bodies,
eyes barely opened.

The girls watch as he marches past the field
where corn will grow, along the creek
where crickets go silent. Dad tosses the bag
of Mollys over the edge

and turns before the splash. Sometimes
the youngest cries, to herself,
because she glimpsed a tiny grey Molly,
and gave it her own last name.

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: Okay. So I’m sitting here reading this poem as the gray feral kitten I rescued from under my house (born there), purrs at my feet. The poem’s pretty brilliant and awful and perfect in its brutality. The flat language accentuates so effectively the flat affect of the father and the event as he wants to convey it. The one thing I would suggest for revision is that the word “Sometimes” has a flattening effect on the experience. I’d like to think this is one specific moment, so it could be “This morning” or “This time” or some other phrase to indicate specificity. The cycle of the occurrence is already inherent in the opening line and need not be emphasized, I don’t think. A powerful poem.

Dustin: This poem reminds me of a poem written by my friend Lisa Allender; in her poem, her grandfather tosses a sack of puppies in a lake while the the mother dog circles the lake---heartbreaking, like your poem. I like the detail of "the girls name cows and chickens, / the cats are all Molly" and "...he marches past the field / where corn will grow, along the creek /where crickets go silent." You need to revisit your last stanza to make it clear. The lack of clarity weakens the punch you're delivering with "gave it her own last name." I love the irony that I find with the epigraph paired to your poem; I like the irong a lot. I think this is my favorite from all the ones you've written for the competition.

Dana: This poem is interesting in that not only are the kittens not distinguished from one another, but the girls are not distinguished, either. They are referred to as “the girls” throughout, yet the narrator refers to the man in the poem as “Dad,” so we assume the narrator is part of this family. But he or she creates a sense of distance from the girls by not calling them by their names or even by their familial relationship to the narrator. In the end, one kitten is distinguished, by being given a last name, and one girl is distinguished, by bestowing a last name on that kitten. I like that shift in the piece, and it’s an interesting take on the epigraph.

Guest Judge C. Dale Young: Well, this certainly utilizes tension between the epigraph and the poem written. If one told me this poem lived between “splendor” and “death/murder” I would be intrigued. But despite that basic premise of tension, this poem seems too narrative for what it seems to want to do. The power of the lyric poem is its ability to place readers within a situation. This poem mostly tells. At times it reads like the opening of a short story and yet it resists being a narrative poem. And I cannot get over the unfortunate moment in the final stanza where “the youngest,” due to grammar, refers to the youngest Molly. I know Ling means the youngest girl, but that isn’t really what she has written. As a result, the ending is overly maudlin.

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KRISTEN MCHENRY

Silence

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.
--from “Famous” by Naomi Shihab Nye

We are right to fear it.

It is only within it
that we die enough to heal.

A clot of soul, coaxed free,
falls mute
into the shaman’s net of light.
Grief swarms
through the soundless breach.

Silence skins us naked,
expresses its veins,
lets flow
the carnage of change.

No wonder the lunatic
seeks it in earnest.

No wonder we've laid down
highways of jabber
in every open airspace,
even knowing
our wards will only hold it off so long.

At the end,
we’ll claim we didn’t know
that the whole, nattering
world was so quiet underneath;

all this time, so still.

At the end, silence
will lumber onto the horizon
for her austere coronation, spread
her thighs over the earth
and hunker in her rightful place at last.

Healers will remember
no sound but the knowing of their hands.

The healed will hear nothing
but the divine
hymn of their brokenness.

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: Many of the poems of this week are rich and powerful in their own way. This particular poem has a wisdom that is quite winning, and some of the lines are simply nuggets: “It is only within it/that we die enough to heal.” “No wonder we've laid down/highways of jabber/in every open airspace,” “The healed will hear nothing/but the divine/hymn of their brokenness.” The one problem with this poem (or one caution flag the poem raised for me) was that it’s a conceptual poem and thereby it is short on image and specificity. I love the poem for its ambitiousness, but I also worry about it for the same reason.

Dustin: Oh, Kristen. Yes, you complete the assignment, but I didn't really care for this poem. This poem is no where near the caliber of work that you've been delivering. Where you purposely trying to show us yet another side to your work? I find

"At the end, silence
will lumber onto the horizon
for her austere coronation, spread
her thighs over the earth
and hunker in her rightful place at last."

to be disturbing. I guess I can give you creative points, but this stanza doesn't work for me. I think you have a great first line to pull in a reader; however, the rest of the poem doesn't pull through for that line-- I know I've made this comment about first lines and titles, but this is the first time I've made that comment about your work.

Dana: I feel like this poem encounters a problem in trying to talk about the abstraction of silence. The piece is fumbling a bit as it tries to get its hands on making silence concrete. I was thrown by the shift from silence being referred to as “it” at the beginning of the poem, to being referred to as “she” in stanza nine. I could see a shift like that working in a poem, but I don’t think it’s working yet here. I can see the relationship between the epigraph and the poem, and I appreciate that the resulting piece is so different from the original, but I think there’s more work to be done to make the piece sing. (Of course, you’re in a really tough position, coming off last week’s poem in particular and all the strong work you’ve produced so far during the competition.)

Guest Judge C. Dale Young: Unfortunately, you could sum up this poem as “Silence is scary but is good (in a mysterious way).” Despite opening with a wonderful first line that hooks a reader almost instantly, the poem continues with a vacuous second stanza that seems intent on making the “silence” more mysterious than it really is. By the time we reach the truly terrible mixed metaphor in the opening of the third stanza, we move from doubt in this poet to a need to catalogue her errors in judgment. And who knew “silence” could straddle the earth in such a sexual way?

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EMILY VAN DUYNE

Contrition

My friend, my friend, I was born
doing reference work in sin, and born
confessing it. This is what poems are…
-Anne Sexton, ‘With Mercy for the Greedy’

Forgive my fat mouth! Topsy-
turvy glutton. It begs speech and out
it wings, a swallow from the flue… Careful,
girl, your tongue might fly out, too… It happens
I’m a long line’s lonely sum, and rank
confessor, posting sin before I even fell
to earth (the sparkling

cider in her nuptial glass, empire
waisted gown to hide her girth…) I must
catalogue these failings— Irish music
drenched in gin! Its pipes would wallow me
into the bin… toora, loora, looral—
focus, girl, or follow in their sins…
Idolatry, now there’s a pretty word!

Grandma worshipped whiskey in the glass, two cubes
that clinked and cooled— how her head ached
when my Dad would wake for school! Her fists
curled up like smoke if Grandpa asked
her where she’d been the night before— but
in her head, she heard her father hiss
you whore… he used to beat

her face until she bled, her mother
always turned the other cheek. Her sister
Grace, the one who courted trouble?
Girl, it doubled back on her… oh, but
that’s a different tale, another
time. Bless me,
Dad, I have to speak

your crimes— your fury zipped the house
shut like the priest’s confessional slot!
Even the dogs refused their bark.
All mouth, I mapped escape routes
in the dark— lusty girl, with mercy
for her body. My hands skimmed brand new
breasts, then wandered south—

since we’ve happened onto lust, let’s
say it plain. At 23, (and four, and five…)
I numbered men like sleepless children
count fat sheep. More, I cried, and more!
Another needle in the vein— my wounded
need’s a wild, trackless
train. On, it ticks, and on

like tatted lace— these poems
are its wrangled, desperate trace—
they bleed in some back alley
with poor, reckless Grace. Oh, greedy
tongue, don’t fail me.
Heed this seedy call. My God, my
God, I’m sorry, but I have to spin it all.

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: The poem’s dazzling in its way, but it also has a kind of all over the place unfolding that feels a bit unwieldy. Perhaps the presentation is meant to mimic the wildness of the speaker, but I’d have liked a bit more control.

“Dad, I have to speak

your crimes— your fury zipped the house
shut like the priest’s confessional slot!
Even the dogs refused their bark.
All mouth, I mapped escape routes
in the dark— lusty girl, with mercy
for her body.”

One can hardly fault the inventive language nor the energy, but there is a kind of haphazardness in the poem that worries me. I’m also less wild generally about the poem about writing. The epigraph leads naturally to writing about writing, but lines like “these poems / are its wrangled, desperate trace— / they bleed in some back alley / with poor, reckless Grace,” are not as compelling to me.

Dustin: Emily, if you weren't such a sassy pants, I'd say you picked the Sexton poem to kiss ass since my love of Sexton is obvious. However, a sassy pants wouldn't kiss ass. Okay. I had to tease you!!! I like this poem; it is strong work. Not as strong as "Shame," and I have to say I'd kill to have you turn out another poem that delivers a bitch slap like "Shame." You issues with the poem flowing at time--- I made the same comment on your Curveball poem. I love that you begin the poem with "Forgive my fat mouth!" I really like "At 23, (and four, and five…) / I numbered men like sleepless children / count fat sheep."

Dana: Extra points for using the name of Dustin’s blog in your epigraph. OK, you don’t really get extra points for that, but you do get extra points for creating such an strong, persona-driven piece again. We’re dropped right into an amazing opening with the command: “Forgive my fat mouth!” That entire opening stanza is killer, and the tone reminds me a great deal of your piece for Shore Tags in terms of the strength of the voice. You also mirror much of Sexton’s poem in yours, including the exclamations and rhyme, as well as the lines, “On, it ticks, and on / like tatted lace— these poems / are its wrangled, desperate trace— .” There’s no doubt the poem was influenced by the epigraph, so you’ve definitely completed the assignment. I do think you could look at stanzas three and four. They are great on their own (although perhaps “turned the other cheek” could go), but in context, they feel different from the other stanzas in terms of the diction. You pick that diction up again in stanza five, with “your fury zipped the house / shut like the priest’s confessional slot!” Compared with the other stanzas, the two I mentioned were a little flatter. But overall: bravo.

Guest Judge C. Dale Young: Wow. I mean, Wow! The command of diction here is unreal. And not only is the command of diction here incredible, but the tension between the line and the syntax of the sentences only heightens our appreciation of the diction. This poem is amazing considering how little time was given to write it. It is simply amazing. I almost don’t know what to say. My one quibble, tiny as it might be, is the ending. The speaker of this poem doesn’t seem the type to be sorry. And this speaker cannot help but “spin it”; it is what she does! I suspect a better last sentence or line might be: “My God, my God, I am not sorry at all.”

*************************************************

EMARI DIGIORGIO

Short Answer

“...would you want to be yourself only, unduplicatable, doomed to be lost?”
–from Mark Doty’s “A Display of Mackerel”

I told God no.
At least I think I did.
There was a storm.
Not an end-of-the-world
joist-ripping, amphibian-flying storm,
but the rain was loud and I could hardly see
past the dash. To tell you the truth
I don’t know if it was before or after
the accident, lights on the bridge, a squad car.
I wasn’t driving that fast. There must’ve been an ambulance.
I didn’t even think You’re gonna kill yourself tonight.
Come on, you know you’ve thought that too,
and if you don’t wanna die, or even if you do
and are just a bit squeamish about it, you ease off
on the turns. You check the brakes, tap ‘em,
make sure they’re there. I was glad really:
no angel song, no harp, no golden stair.
Just guessing it was God, that voice in my head,
maybe the same one that would’ve warned
Slow down, sweetheart.

And the blue books were passed down the rows.
I’d been in my car but now I rummaged for a pen.
I was always a good student, studied, sturdy, shot straight.
Short answer. Directions. I could follow directions.
What would Kierkegaard say? Something about
a leap of faith? It wasn’t a dream but it felt like it.
A woman issued me a temporary id card
and left two quarters on my desk.
They stared up like coin-covered eyes.

I’d never been myself only.
Wore my mother’s eyes my whole life.

Imagine the self dissembled on the factory floor.
Earlobes, elbows, furrowed brows, sighs
the same length, weight, frequency sorted
stacked in the corresponding row.
What sharp instruments to strip
the sense of loss we might share.

Tough work cutting a body from a car,
especially when the car has melded with a bridge.
Traffic stops. The water, the barge beneath the bridge
proceed. Proceed, the officer waves. You go.
Slow, looking, think rubber-necking,
are embarrassed for only an instant. You will forget
the color of the car, what you are wearing,
how many bodies attend the one body trapped
wrapped around the steering column.
The leap of faith less difficult now.
You’ll never really leave that bridge.

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: I’ve been a fan of Emari’s work, and I like the subject here, the speaker’s encounter with death, but this poem’s end is less satisfying to me, and generally I’m not as compelled by the story as I feel I ought to be. There are great moments in it, (for example the stanza about the disassembled self), but finally, I’m less gripped by this one than by some of the other poems of the week and by some of Emari’s other work.

Dustin: The beginning of this poem made me feel like I was reading a short-short instead of a poem. I didn't start enjoying this poem until the last two poems. Your last two stanzas are damn good stuff. What a striking line: "Imagine the self dissembled on the factory floor." I only wish the rest of the poem was as striking.

Dana: This piece has so much going on in it and so much potential, yet it feels unfocused. I was confused by the setting shift in the second stanza, and I think you know that’s confusing because you give an explanatory note in line two of that stanza: “I’d been in my car but now I rummaged for a pen.” From the second stanza on, I felt the stanzas were pulling the reader this way and that, and not in a good way. The next-to-last stanza is very strong on its own, for instance, but going from that stanza to the last is jarring. I feel like this poem loses its way in the middle, and that the poem really is happening in the first and last stanzas. I would love to see what happened if you combined those stanzas and then focused on making the poem clearer.

Guest Judge C. Dale Young: I admire the way the poet threads narrative within a lyric structure here. I like the delaying tactics in the poem, the way it moves the way the mind works, via tangential locations in time. It seems quite fitting for the opening and the ending to be separated by school and the Short Answer test. But Kierkegaard? Where did he come from? He surprises, but he also distracts. I also loved the way the epigraph was used here and the fact the poem is an answer to the question posed. That said, the real focus here is not answering the question. If revising this, I’d say lose the epigraph and tighten up the poem and let it be more meditative instead of narrative. Good poem though.

*************************************************

W.F. ROBY

To the birds

“The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.”
-Naomi Shihab Nye, from “Famous”

Perch here, my jewel tone, my parachute,
and study the outline of the beast. At night you’ll hear
his spells crossing the lawn in thick boots,
the everywhere creak of ice under weight. In time
you’ll understand his scraps, his bondage,
his rolling in congress. Under the street’s lamp
some nights there are two tails pointing
the way home, two mouths to track. You’ll catch
his good eye creased to watch
the tiniest detail -- a feather flickering
against the tree’s skin. Rest here,
shake off the weight of the shell,
peek around a twig and learn
the dance of his paws. He is lightning
from a blue sky. You are no longer blind,
you can tell me what the cat looks like. Start
at the whiskers, finish at the scratch.
Eat this worm.

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: I love the inventiveness of this poem and the clarity and distinctiveness of the voice. I’m not entirely clear on the meaning of a few of the lines “two tails pointing the way home” (two cats—but why would it be home to the birds?) and also not sure why this bird sounds so weirdly villainous “my jewel tone, my parachute” “Rest here/shake off the weight of the shell…” (I mean, it’s a sweet little bird, right?”, but generally, this poem’s a winner, with a fantastic close.

Dustin: I love your opening line; it does a good job pulling a reader into the poem, and you do a good job making sure the reader isn't going to be disappointed once he/she is done with the poem. I do think this poem could use some revision to put more emphasis on the identity of the speaker because it is a little fuzzy. I know that fuzzy can be good at times, but in this case, I think fuzzy is distraction from a lovely poem with lines like: "He is lightning / from a blue sky." And, yes, I love that last line. Good job.

Dana: First, this is a great poem, W.f. Second, I want you to stop beating yourself up. Deal? It pains me to see you say negative things about your work or about your future in the competition. But back to the poem: I love these lines especially, “In time / you’ll understand his scraps, his bondage, / his rolling in congress.” The first line is great, too. And the last. Pretty much everything in between. The only thing I would say is that it took me a minute to orient myself in terms of understanding who the narrator was. What I really love about this piece is how creatively is responds to the epigraph by Nye. This is good squishy, W.f.

Guest Judge C. Dale Young: This address to the birds is odd. I cannot figure out the speaker’s psychological stance. Is he warning the birds? Educating them a la St. Francis? The speaker seems far more interested in the cat. And we know the poet is interested in the cat from the epigraph. But here is my issue: if the epigraph says the cat is “famous to the birds,” why does a speaker need to educate the birds, tell them all about the cat(s)? And why does the cat suddenly become two cats? Odd. And the poem is made odder by its decisions to locate images where they are. This would be a very different poem were it to open with these lines used late in the poem:

He is lightning from a blue sky.
You are no longer blind,
you can tell me what the cat looks like.

That is a setup for a perverse yet interesting poem.

*************************************************

KATHI MORRISON-TAYLOR

Also Famous

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.-- from “Famous,” Naomi Shihab Nye

Our paper boy’s black Converse sneakers
dangle on the power line just above
Min’s Sushi. I recognize them

because of purple stripes drawn on the margin
of their soles. When I ask, he says
he can’t remember who threw them up there,

but will count the summer thunderstorms
anointing them with lightning.
He’s too poetic. I don’t buy it.

Urban legend says he’s dead (a casualty
of gang violence), or Min is selling crack,
or here’s a boundary we shouldn’t cross,

as if we walked around looking up like that,
seeing trouble and mapping out new routes.
Let the truth be more simple.

A boy and a girl under an awning after hours—
his pitching arm itched, as she unlaced
his favorite shoes to fling at the Peeping-Tom-moon

shining in the window on the plastic
replicas of sashimi plates. I don’t know
how many times it took, back and forth,

until her toss stuck and swung, for the length
of a kiss, in the raw universe
of the young and poor and famous.

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: The ‘boot’ of the epigraph and the sneakers seems to me to have a different kind of cultural import (the first of course referencing the working class, the second indicating or indicative more of race and a racial identification). I do see the last line as sort of bringing the two together, but the connection may be a bit of a stretch. Putting aside this quibble, I think the poem itself is impressive for the power of its details “unlaced/his favorite shoes to fling…” “stuck and swung for the length/of a kiss, in the raw universe” (such great sounds in this last passage), and for the unity of its message. In fact, perhaps part of the strength of the poem is that it brings racial and class differences together (too true for the U.S., sadly). A strong poem.

Dustin: Last week, Dara Wier told Emari to remove a note about certain lines of her poem coming from another's poet work. Dara wrote, "We either get it or we don't." In the case of your poem, I didn't get it, and my not getting it me. I had to visit my ole friend Google for clarity. Maybe I was bothered by the extra work because I don't feel this poem is your best work. Don't get me wrong---I like what you are trying to accomplish with this poem. I like this poem. But, I think the last half could use some tweaking and possibly a little more added to the store.

Dana: The opening of this poem doesn’t pull me in. I feel like we get information in the first and second stanzas that isn’t needed and doesn’t move the poem forward: “I recognize them / because of purple stripes drawn on the margin.” I had to look up the urban legend that shoes hung on a power line are a signal that a gang has killed someone or that crack is being sold in the location below the shoes. This reference is very interesting but would be lost on many readers, and I wonder about having a second epigraph that explains the legend and orients the reader. I see the connection between the poem and the epigraph, but I don’t think it’s as strong as with some of the other pieces this week.

Guest Judge C. Dale Young: “Let the truth be more simple.” Brilliant move! That small rhetorical gesture deployed just past the mid-point of the poem, is what allows this poem to move from the narrative to the metaphorical, and yet, Morrison-Taylor resists that and gives us more narrative, albeit slightly more charged narrative. This is lovely. The ending is not quite right: “her toss stuck and swing”? But this poem understands how an argument is utilized within a poem. It has an authority because of that. And I love how it mines what readers already suspect about the shoes hanging on the wire only to then discredit those suspicions. “Let the truth be more simple.” Gorgeous.

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Poetry Swap!

2009-07-24T00:10:00.000-07:00

Poetry Swap

Q: What is Poetry Swap?
A: It is a group of poetry lovers interested in sharing poems they enjoy with fellow poetry lovers via snail mail.

Q: Wasn't this project formerly called the Great Poetry Exchange?
A: Yes. The name of the project was changed from Great Poetry Exchange to Poetry Swap to help eliminate confusion between this project and one created by Rick Lupert.

Q: How does it operate?
A: Each poet involved is paired with another poet. (All efforts will be made to pair poets from different states.) A poet will be selected to initiate the poem swapping by sending his/her Poetry Swap Pal a poem. Then the receiving poet replies with a poem. This pattern continues until the poets request a new PW pal or want to call it quits.

Q: Where are some of the current participants located?
A: Poetry Swap has reached the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia as well as GA, WA, CA, OR, NM, OH, AZ, FL, NC, IL, NJ, VA, AR, MN, KY, and UT.

Q: Can I send poems I've written?
A:: The purpose of Poetry Swap is to share poems written by poets other than yourself.

Q: Do I have to be a poet to participate?
A: Nope. You only need to enjoy poetry and want to promote it.

Q: How many poems do I have to send?
A: Ideally, a poet should send his/her PS pal two poems a month. If the poets want to send more, well, that is their prerogative.

Q: How long will Poetry Swap run?
A: As long as people are willing to swap poems, Poetry Swap will exist. Ideally, it will be great if poets stay paired for at least six months before requesting a new Poetry Swap Pal or quitting Poetry Swap.

Q: What about my mailing address?
A: No information will be sold nor will you be added to any mailing lists. All information remains private!

Q: Where can I direct my questions? How do I get involved?
A: Contact Dustin Brookshire at dustinvbrookshire@gmail.com with any questions, or send your name/mailing address as you want your Poetry Swap pal to see it. Please put "Poetry Swap" in the subject line of your email.

Where The Poem Comes From

2009-07-23T17:49:00.000-07:00

I'm the latest writer to participate in Ellen Steinbaum's series titled Where The Poem Comes From. Click here to see what I have to say about "Stuck," which was originally published in Oranges & Sardines.

Why Do I Write ~ Alan Shapiro

2009-07-22T17:55:00.000-07:00

WHY DO I WRITE ~ Alan Shapiro

**Essay provided by author; however, originally published in the Cincinnati Re and reprinted in Best American Essays 2007 .**

             Some years ago, I went to a child psychologist—if Henny Youngman had written this opening sentence, he would have added: “The Kid didn’t do a thing for me.” But I digress. The child psychologist I went to had recently tested one of my children for ADD. When the results came back positive, he called me and my not-yet-ex-wife to suggest that we be tested too. There may be a genetic component to ADD, he said, and taking the test would not only reveal the extent to which we ourselves suffered from this condition; it would also enable us to better understand our child.

             So we took the test. Turns out it’s the only test I ever aced. As the doctor put it, in my case the results were salient.

             “So, I’m ADD.” I said. “What does that mean?”

             “Well,” he said, “according to the test, your ADD manifests itself in three ways: you have trouble starting tasks. You have trouble staying on task. And you have trouble finishing tasks.”

             “That pretty much covers it.” I said. “But how do you explain the fact that I’ve written a number of books, and even today I spent several hours puzzling over a single sentence in a translation I’m doing of a Greek tragedy.”

             He said that it’s not that people with ADD can’t concentrate on things they want to do, it’s that they lack any ability to concentrate on anything that bores them. People with ADD have no tolerance for boredom. When I pointed out that I’d been teaching for over twenty five years and seldom read a student paper that didn’t make me want to drive an ice pick through my skull just to relieve the boredom but that I nonetheless returned each and every student paper in a timely fashion (even the ones I bothered to read—just kidding!), my soon to be ex-wife interjected: “But Alan, you can’t remember the name of anyone you meet at a party.”

             “Sweetheart,” I said, “That’s called a greeting disorder.”

              “And,” she continued, “even if I give you a list of groceries you come home with the wrong things, red peppers instead of tomatoes, bananas instead of squash.”

              “That’s called being a guy,” I said.

              “And you don’t hear five per cent of what I tell you.”

              “That’s called marriage.” She wasn’t amused.

              Sensing the tension, the doctor asked, “So what do you think you want to do about this? How do we proceed?”

              “With the ADD or with the marriage?”

              Now it was his turn not to be amused. He went on to describe the kinds of medication I could take but then said he wasn’t suggesting I do anything if I didn’t think I was a problem to myself. “People who grew up before this condition was named or treated have often found ingenious ways to compensate for their disabilities. Writing for me, he said, was a prime example of what he called compensatory behavior.

              “Let me get this straight,” I said. “I write books in order to make up for my inability to remember the names of the people I meet at a party, or because I come home from the grocery store with a red pepper instead of a tomato?”

              “Well not exactly,” he said but before he could explain exactly what he meant, the hour was up.

             I don’t know, maybe I was a tad defensive with the psychologist--you think?-- and even a little miffed by his reduction of the art I love and have devoted my life to for the better part of almost forty years to a side effect of a neurological condition. At the same time, telling the story over I can’t help but ask myself, “Why do I write?” Is writing a compensation for psychological, emotional or even neurological deficits? Do we write, as the old saying goes, because we can’t do? Is art, as Freud believed, a kind of socially acceptable wish fulfillment for asocial infantile desires? A way of finding in imagination what we lost in life? A sublimation of sexual energy? A way of transmuting our hidden wishes or shameful secrets, our failures and losses and humiliations into beautiful objects that win us wealth and admiration and all the sexual fulfillment that we put off in order to do the work in the first place? Why else get into the poetry racket? That I could even ask this question, even in jest, much less attempt to make my way in the world by writing poetry is yet another manifestation of an abiding suspicion I’ve had for many years now that god put me on earth to disprove the stereotype that all Jews make money.

              I once asked a very talented student of mine why she wanted to become a writer. Fame, she said. I want to be famous. And what did fame mean to her? It meant being able to check into the penthouse suite of a five star hotel and totally trash the room and then be loved for it. This quintessentially American celebrity-driven fantasy is just the self-indulgent flip side of an older, time honored messianic fantasy of the writer as unacknowledged cultural legislator. Seamus Heaney has written that poetry or great writing of any kind provides a culture with images adequate to its predicament. Who hasn’t dreamed of providing everyone with images adequate to their predicament and being loved for it, and maybe even given loads of cash? When we’re in our teens and early twenties, maybe we all dream of becoming celebrated shamans of the heart, but that adolescent daydream doesn’t begin to explain why we continue writing after the age of 25 or 30, once we realize that the world isn’t exactly rushing out to take its marching orders from anything we’ve written.

              I think of my dear friend Tim Dekin, a wonderful poet, who died a few years ago at the age of 58 of pulmonary fibrosis. Tim’s first full-length book, Another Day on Earth, was published posthumously in 2002 by TriQuarterly Books. Tim and I met at Stanford in 1975. Eventually, we both ended up teaching in the Chicago area. He was a brilliant talker, a fabulous poet, and a very funny man who lost many years of his writing life to alcoholism. He held down a series of demanding low paying jobs teaching freshmen comp at various universities. After years of struggling unsuccessfully to find a publisher for his poetry, he wrote three very good novels that he likewise couldn’t publish. In his last year of life, he returned to his first love, poetry, and finished his magnificent one book. Tethered to his oxygen machine, he drove from Chicago to Chapel Hill not long before he died so he and I could go over his new poems and put the manuscript together. My brother had just died, and I had broken up with my wife and was living in a basement apartment. Neither Tim nor I were in very good shape at the time, physically or otherwise.

              During that visit, I told Tim a joke that a musician friend of mine told me about the four stages in a musician’s career: The first stage is “Who is Richard Luby?” The second stage is “Get me Richard Luby.” The third stage is “Get me a young Richard Luby!” And the fourth stage is “Who is Richard Luby?” Tim laughed at the joke, then added ruefully, “I seemed to have passed from stage one to stage four without ever having passed through stages two and three.”

              I cherish the memory of those few days with Tim, and I love the image of us in my dreary digs, Tim’s poems spread out on the coffee table, Tim puffing on the oxygen tube the way he puffed on the forbidden cigars he still occasionally smoked, leaning over the poems, reading out passages, discussing them, rewriting them, the two of us beset with troubles, physical and emotional, but working rapturously nonetheless throughout the day and long into the night. What exactly were we doing? What lack were we trying to fill? What were we compensating for? Whatever it was, fame and fortune had absolutely nothing to do with it.

              Which is not to say I don’t desire fame and fortune. I do. I do. I’m not above them. In fact, I’m so far beneath them that I’d even happily forget fame if I could have just a little fortune. When I take a good hard look at the life I’ve chosen, I have to wonder how I’ve stuck it out as long as I have. For there’s a Grand Canyon’s worth of difference between the literary life I dreamed of as an adolescent and the life I found once I began to publish and actually live what passes for a literary life.

              I remember thinking in my teens and early twenties that if I could only publish a poem in a magazine, any magazine, I’d feel fulfilled and validated and wildly happy. And then I got my first publication. And I was happy for a day or so, until the bill arrived for the printing cost, and then I thought if I could only get a poem into a real journal, into a magazine that pays, I’d feel validated and happy, and when that happened, I began to feel the need to publish in the Atlantic Monthly or the New Yorker, magazines that someone other than my fellow writers may have heard of, and eventually when that happened I believed that only publishing a book with a reputable press would make me feel as if I’d earned the right to call myself a poet. And then I published a book, and the resounding silence and inattention of the world (it’s my books that suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder, not me), made me feel that the only measure of my poetic worth would be to get a book reviewed somewhere by someone I didn’t know, someone who wasn’t related to me, and when that occurred, and pleased me and the pleasure passed, I thought that only winning a big book award could quell this anxiety about my literary worth. I didn’t realize how preoccupied I was with literary recognition till one day I overheard my seven year old son negotiating with my five year old daughter over who got to hold the TV’s remote control. He said, Izzy, if you give me the controller I’ll give you a Pulitzer Prize. I’ve been at this long enough to know that even if god himself, the lord almighty, hallowed be his name, came down from heaven and gave me a big fat kiss on the back of the brain, I’d probably shrug it off: “What? That’s it? For years you don’t write, you don’t call, and now all I get is a lousy kiss?”

              Don’t get me wrong. Acclaim of any kind is wonderful, except when it goes to someone else. But even at its best, that sort of “reward” or “recognition” is like cotton candy: it looks ample enough until you put it in your mouth, then it evaporates. All taste, and no nourishment.

              Then there’s the thrill of dealing with editors. By way of illustration, let me tell you a story. In 1976, before I’d published anything, I wrote a long windy poem called Fathers and Sons. I sent it to the journal Quarterly West. The editor sent the poem back with a note suggesting I rewrite the middle two sections and resubmit it. I knew from watching the editors of Sequoia, the Stanford literary journal, that all editors are overworked and underpaid and can’t possibly read everything that crosses their desk with keen attention. So I waited six months and sent the poem back unchanged with a letter thanking the editor for his suggestions, all of which I said I took. I even thanked him for his help and said that even if he didn’t accept the poem I was still in his debt for his suggestions had made the poem new to me again, and more like what I initially envisioned when I started writing it. Within days, I received a letter from the editor accepting the poem and commending me for my professionalism.

              In 1997, in this very auditorium, I participated in an editor’s roundtable. At the time, I was the editor of the University of Chicago’s Phoenix Poets Series, and I told this story in order to make the point that writers need to treat what editors tell them with a healthy dose of skepticism. Don’t presume an editor is smart just because he or she is an editor. Editors should have to earn their authority by reading what you send them with intelligence and imagination, and that in any case they themselves, the writers, ought always to be the ultimate arbiters of what they do. Editors, I said, are mostly obstacles to get around. I returned to Bread Loaf two years later, and one of the students here stopped to thank me for my advice back in 1997. He said he followed it and it worked like a charm. What do you mean, I asked. What advice? “Well, I got a poem back from Boulevard, and the editor suggested I do a major rewrite. So I waited six months like you said and sent it back with a letter thanking him for his time and help, and he accepted the poem.” The moral of this story isn’t that editors are fools, though some are. The moral isn’t that you should all con your way into print, though if you do more power to you. Rather, the moral is you needn’t listen to everything an editor tells you. The moral is you need to be cynical about publishing in order not to be cynical about writing, in order to protect and preserve the deeply private joy of doing the work itself (I’ll say more about that private joy in a moment). I know it’s hard, sometimes impossible, to keep the po biz out of the poetry, to keep the anxieties and injustices of trying to publish from contaminating your own relationship to what you do. It’s hard to find the proper balance between the arrogance we need to keep on writing, the arrogance that assumes that we have something worth saying, and that we’re smart enough to learn what someone’s smart enough to teach us; and the humility we also need in order to grow and develop, the humility that knows that we cannot nurture and refine our gifts without the help of others, that other people including editors can sometimes tell us things we need to hear. Too much arrogance and not enough humility and we close ourselves off from the world, and nothing new comes in and we eventually become imitators of ourselves, turning what at one time were discoveries into mannerisms. And too much humility and not enough arrogance and we lose our center of gravity and find ourselves at the mercy of everyone else’s opinion. Striking the right balance between humility and arrogance is another exhausting and often frustrating aspect of the writing life.

              And then there’s the frustration that surrounds the work itself, the work we’ve already done and the work we want to do. The dissatisfactions we often feel toward older work, not to mention the frustrations we often feel toward what we’re writing now as well as the anxieties we feel toward what we may do next, put me in mind of the old joke about the Jew who’s shipwrecked on a desert island. Twenty years later, he’s discovered, but before he leaves he wants to show his saviors the three synagogues he’s built: “Over there,” he says, “is the synagogue I used to go to. Over there’s the synagogue I go to now. And over there, that synagogue, I wouldn’t step foot in.” I know this is really a joke about class and status, and the need to feel superior to something. But I do think the more we refine our abilities, the more embarrassing our older work becomes. That is, if we’re truly lucky, we’ll despise our early work. If we’re lucky, we’ll feel as if nearly everything but what we’re writing now was written by someone else we’d rather not be seen in public with. And if we’re lucky, what we’re writing now won’t compare with what we’ll write ten years from now. That’s the price we pay for getting better. The problem is the better we get at writing, the better we get at imagining getting even better. So the discrepancy between the writer we are and the writer we want to be only widens as we improve. To flourish as an artist requires a tolerance for frustration, inadequacy and a deepening sense of failure.

              And that’s the good news. Now let’s consider the effect of what we write on those we write about. Over the years, I learned the hard way that no one wants to give up narrative control over his or her life. Yet my theory’s always been that if I try to tell the truth, if I have no ax to grind and write about others in a spirit of forgiveness, curiosity and understanding, then no one should be upset by anything I say. Well, so much for theory. Even the most affectionate portrait of a loved one, the most intimate praise (never mind depictions of estrangement or disaffection) can and will offend. In 1996, I published a book of personal essays. My mother called to congratulate me. “Have you heard from anybody yet about the book?” She asked. “Only my shrink,” I joked. “He’s upset that I’ve gone public with stories I should have only shared with him. He’s threatening to sue me, Ma!” “That’s ridiculous,” she’s said, not joking, deadly serious. “If anyone’s going to sue you over this book it’s me.”

              But even if we never write about our families, there’s still the often-painful fallout on our families from the dedication, time and solitude that the art requires. I don’t want to suggest, even for a moment, that artistic success depends on domestic instability, or that there’s any correlation between art and suffering. One doesn’t have to have a tortured soul to become a writer. Or rather our souls don’t have to be tortured any more than most people’s souls are tortured. Catastrophe or self-destructiveness is no prerequisite for the position. Nor need one be a drunk, a womanizer or a victim of abuse. If bad behavior or bad luck were essential ingredients of a writing life, our de-tox centers, prisons and twelve step programs would be full of writers. All one has to do to be a writer is to write. We’re writers only when we’re writing. Writing, in other words, is an activity, it’s something we do, and not something we are. When we’re not writing, each of us is just another poor slob trying to get through the day without hurting anyone too much. That said, let’s also recognize that many of us live within rather stringent economies of energy, and to do this is not to do that. With jobs, kids, relationships, it’s impossible to balance the competing claims of life and art without slighting one in favor of the other. I should add too that the muse is an especially demanding and jealous mistress, and most of us when we’re not writing wish we were. It may be that even if I were a shepherd or a proctologist, I’d be just as troubled as I’ve often been throughout my life, struggling to satisfy both my need to work and my need to love. Maybe, but I doubt it. The fact is, like most writers, I’ve been and continue to be monomaniacal about putting in my hours at the desk. And that dedication to work has sometimes proven lethal to my loves and friendships.

              So the work itself always entails frustration and failure; it can damage our most intimate relationships; its public rewards are illusory at worst, fleeting at best. And if you write poetry, hardly anyone is listening. So why do it?

              Elizabeth Bishop provides a possible answer in a famous letter to Anne Stevenson. Bishop writes that what we want from great art is the same thing necessary for its creation, and that is, a self-forgetful, perfectly useless concentration. We write, Bishop implies, for the same reason we read or look at paintings or listen to music: for the total immersion of the experience, the narrowing and intensification of focus to the right here right now, the deep joy of bringing the entire soul to bear upon a single act of concentration. It is self-forgetful even if you are writing about the self because you yourself have disappeared into the pleasure of making, your identity, the incessant transient noisy New York Stock Exchange of desires and commitments, ambitions, hopes, hates, appetites and interests have been obliterated by the rapture of complete attentiveness. In that extended moment, opposites cohere: the mind feels and the heart thinks, and receptivity’s a form of fierce activity. Quotidian distinctions between mind and body, self and other, space and time, dissolve. Athletes know all about this nearly hallucinatory state. They call it being in the zone. They feel simultaneously out of body and at one with body. I also think that infants inhabit a rudimentary version of this state of being. When my children were babies, I would often awaken in the morning to the sound of my son or daughter babbling happily in the crib. They’d be talking but the meaning of the words were indistinguishable from the sensation of the sound, and the sound was part and parcel of the mouth that made the sound, of the hands and fingers that the mouth was sucking on as it sang. No matter how sophisticated our poems may be, or how deadly serious they are about eradicating or exposing the terrible injustices around us, I still think that we are trying, by means of words, of consciousness, to reawaken that preverbal joy, to repossess, re-inhabit what someone else has called the seriousness of a child at play. Bishop says this concentration’s useless because it is its own reward, the mysterious joy of it. It is singing for the sake of singing. And even if the singing pleases others or consoles them, stirs them to further the cause of justice in the world, or simply brings the parent to the crib with food, warmth and maybe a dry diaper, those effects and ramifications are nonetheless incidental to the primal fundamental urge to sing, to the sheer gaiety (to borrow a word from Yeats’s “Lapis Lazuli”) of projecting our voices out into the ambient air.

              Maybe it’s because I do have ADD and have always been a deeply and often painfully distracted human being, but my best days are the ones in which I sit down at the desk at 9 am, and look up to discover that it’s 3 pm, and that 6 hours have passed in a single moment. It doesn’t matter ultimately whether what I’ve written is any good or not. I always feel renewed and grateful if the material, whatever it is, induces that self-forgetful perfectly useless concentration. While I’m working I’m only working, nothing else exists. Inside and outside feel perfectly aligned, and throughout the full range of my faculties and sensibilities I’m entirely alert, entirely present, and this, for me, too rare experience of being there, wholly there, never fails to exhilarate. While it lasts, there’s no joy like it. And it never lasts long enough, or happens often enough to satisfy my yearning for it. Dickinson describes its passing as a “sumptuous destitution.” Wallace Stevens expresses the desperate longing to prolong this blessed state when he says in “Solitude Among Cataracts” that he wants to die in “a permanent realization.” The pleasure of that concentration is addictive, and it’s that addiction, I think, that accounts for the restlessness and melancholy many writers feel when they’re not writing. It’s not, as Berryman believed, that poets need to suffer in order to write; that misery produces art; it’s rather that that self-forgetful perfectly useless concentration makes them happy, is itself the happiness that may elude them or never come so purely or reliably in their non-writing lives.

              In February of 2001, a month before Tim died, I flew to Chicago to spend a few last days with him. Tim was bed-ridden by then, his breathing labored, his consciousness a little compromised by lack of oxygen. One afternoon, Reg Gibbons, his good friend and editor at TriQuarterly Books, Reg’s wife Cornelia Spelman, and I were sitting around Tim’s bed, talking about poetry, as we almost always did. The subject of Tim’s forthcoming book came up. He had just seen a mock up of the cover, which consisted of a picture of Tim fly-fishing, one of his great passions and the subject of many of the poems in the book. Tim was happy with the cover, and hopeful that he’d be around when the book came out in the fall. I don’t remember who suggested this, but Reg and I began to take turns reading from the last poem in the book, a poem in four sections called “Woodmanship.” Tim by then was too weak to read out loud. His eyes were closed throughout the reading while his fingers tapped out the rhythm of the poem on the bed’s railing. Though fly-fishing is the occasion of the poem, the subject is really acceptance of mortality, failure and loss, and the value of joy in all its elusiveness. Reg got to read the magnificent final section in which the speaker fishes with a young boy he has befriended:

Early the next morning, I poach
In the Rod and Gun Club, the boy beside me,
In pitch black, making our way by starlight
And the cold flowing river.
We’re being careful of sheriffs with sidearms,
I tell him, though an expensive ticket’s about
The worst for getting caught these days.

In the preserve of the privileged, I whisper,
Honest men take small breaths to avoid
The smell of wasted, rotting game.
But poachers breathe
                                    From the soles of their feet
The blue ribbon trout streams.
Now pine needles, now pungent, spongy sucking
Gives way to commotion: the slapping and thrashing
Of twenty-pound steelhead trout on the shallow gravel—
The bucks are biting each other’s tails,
The hens are heavy with roe.
My heart aches.

Then finally, the long, moon-shimmering slick
Coming down hard into a sucking whirlpool.
In my desire it is already light.

The boy fishes: a crisp, short, roll cast—
And a huge steelie takes the lure deep in the hole.
The trout jerks its massively-jawed head once,
Then twice, as if trying to shake off a nightmare.
The boy strikes sideways, downstream,
To set the hook firmly.

I wait, calm, observant, almost indifferent now,
But still the old feeling comes—
Well being. Delight being. Joy being.
The sun breaking,
Birch branch shiny with spilled light
(Is it black on white
                                    or white on black?)
The only difference now my knowing enough not to think.

Go joy. Fly.
I don’t need you,
Which is why you’ve come,
                                               Welcome back
My childhood’s earliest familiar,
Omnipresent except when desired.
Still, if you will, take bread at my hand
Like any unsuspecting creature of the forest,
Eat the trail of crumbs I left to find my way back.

An explosion goes off in the whirlpool:
Silver with a rosy pink underbelly,
Predatory, unsuspecting, all of creation
Caught in its exquisite contortions,
A steelhead leaps—
The burden of the past and the future lifting—
Two feet out of the water
And throws the hook.

I move up beside the boy to praise his effort;
I try to comfort his unfathomable loss.

             The poem of course is also about writing, the moment of creation, when we forget all else but the task at hand, when preparation and luck coincide, when the burden of the past and the future lifts, and exhilaration comes, what Tim calls delight being, joy being, his childhood’s familiar. The poem, itself, he implies, the writing of it, is both the crumbs that lead us as adults back to that childhood paradise, and the measure of how far we’ve traveled from it. When the moment passes, and the poem’s written, and we rise from the desk to return to the world awaiting us, our tangled loves and commitments, the exhilaration is nearly indistinguishable from “unfathomable loss”.

             Career-wise, Tim’s life was not a happy one. At the same time, in his last six years he remarried, had another child, and despite his worsening physical condition he did his finest writing. His life, in fact, contradicts the cliché that great art springs from misery. Illness and the terrors of dying certainly inform Tim’s rueful, funny, heart wrenching final poems, but so too do the joys of fatherhood, and marriage, and the deep pleasure of domestic peace. The poems, in fact, are inconceivable without them. Ill as he was, in his last years Tim had never been so happy, as a writer or a man.

             Early and late, though, Tim’s only constant was his work, his poetry, the pleasure of sitting down to write each morning, and those marvelous days when hours would pass in what would feel like seconds. Through all the vagaries of love and loss, addiction, illness and recovery, he took delight in the work, and the delight and the surprise that found him as he wrote these final poems is now our delight and surprise as we read them. It was for that pleasure that he wrote. It was for that self-forgetful perfectly useless concentration that he kept on writing even when the world paid no attention. He didn’t write for fame, however much he may have longed for recognition and suffered keenly for the lack of it. He wrote for the sheer joy of the writing, which, as a writer, was his most durable sustenance. It was less than he deserved, but, lucky for us, it was enough to keep him going.

Week Six: Guest Judge C. Dale Young

2009-07-22T00:01:00.000-07:00

C. Dale Young is the author of three books of poetry: The Day Underneath the Day (Northwestern 2001); The Second Person (Four Way Books 2007); and TORN (Four Way Books forthcoming 2012). He practices medicine full-time, edits poetry for New England Review, and teaches in the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. A recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the National Endowment for the Arts, he lives in San Francisco. Click here to check out his blog.

"The Replacement" by Tania Rochelle

2009-07-21T20:42:00.000-07:00

THE REPLACEMENT

For months I've imagined brass
and polish, sharp edges--
a food critic, maybe,
or a stripper-someone
agnostic enough to tolerate
an indifferent lover, reluctant
father, petulant payer of bills;
and all that time, she's just
got to get to class.
Ten years younger, she shakes
her long brown hair
from her clueless face,
asks if I want my husband back.
She tells me she wouldn't compete,
as if it were a gift,
more lead crystal
to leach slow poison
into my daily cocktail.
So fresh I could bite her,
this girl, twenty-one, still
smelling of grass and Kool-Aid,
is asking permission.
But I'm not her mother--
to care if she runs
with a pencil in one hand,
a fork in the other.
Let her keep her prize:
his glass-green eyes,
a gold-plated tongue
that ferrets out soft spots
where promises grow
wild as ivy, as fire
through parchment.
Searching her flat baby-blues
for ripples, the slight wave
that might suggest she stands a chance,
I see only a plain beauty,
hands in her pockets.

Tania Rochelle, Karaoke Funeral

Beth Gylys on The Joe Milford Poetry Show

2009-07-20T17:32:00.000-07:00

Click here to listen to Beth Gyly's interview/reading on the Joe Milford Poetry Show. Beth and Joe won't disappoint you!

Project Verse ~ Week 6: Epigraph

2009-07-20T06:57:00.000-07:00

Week 6: EPIGRAPH

According to Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Only poetry inspires poetry." Take these words to heart because they are the guidelines for your next assignment. You must pick a poem from the options below to serve as your inspiration:
"With Mercy for the Greedy" by Anne Sexton
"A Display of Mackerel" by Mark Doty
"How I Discovered Poetry" by Marilyn Nelson
"Famous" by Naomi Shihab Nye

From the selected poem, you must select 2 to 3 lines to use as an epigraph in your poem. Keep Emerson's words close because we must see how this epigraph inspired your poem.

Denise Duhamel's "Buying Stock" is the only help I'm offering.

The poem must be written in 75 lines or less. No form constraints. Like Emerson's words, your poem better be a jewel.

Poets-- Your Friday deadline has been moved from 10am to 1pm. Don't be late.

Get to writing!

Week 5: The Between Results

2009-07-20T06:48:00.000-07:00

Beth, Dustin, and Dana were joined by guest judge Dara Wier for Week 5: The Between. Click here to revisit the Week 5 poems.

MICAH LING
KRISTEN MCHENRY
W.F. ROBY
KATHI MORRISON-TAYLOR

KATHI and KRISTEN, you both received a total of three votes from the judges; therefore, the two of you tie for the winning poem of Week 5: The Between.

MICAH and W.F., you are at the bottom this week. One of you received a vote from each of the weekly judges but not the guest judge. The other received a total of two votes. Which was which? Well, it doesn't matter. I suggest both of you write furiously for Week 6. No one is going permanent caesura due to the early dismissal of Martin Ott.

"Two of Hearts" ~ Stacey Q

2009-07-19T20:33:00.000-07:00

I Won!

2009-07-17T19:10:00.000-07:00

I won C. Dale Young's Caption Contest #41.

Week 5: The Between (The Poems!)

2009-07-17T18:27:00.000-07:00

Here are the poems from Project Verse ~ Week 5: The Between.

*************************************************

MICAH LING
Runcible Spoon

A piece of toast cracks like slate
when it’s the only sound in the room
and the only room in the world. The toast
is lonely, Jim sighs as he pockets the burnt bread.

When it’s the only sound in the room
Jim’s voice is thin as his ribs
and lonely: he sighs as he pockets the toast
wasting nothing, soaking each crumb.

Jim’s voice is thin as his ribs
when he sits at his table, in his corner
wasting nothing, soaking each crumb
with butter or cream or cold coffee.

When he sits at his table, in his corner
Jim listens to the sounds of the room
rich with butter and cream and coffee
between his teeth.

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: This is not Micah’s strongest work, I don’t think. There’s something a bit like Bishop about the poem, a matter-of-fact and distanced tone which appeals to me on some level, and in fact there’s a bit of Bishop’s sestina “Miracle for Breakfast” here with the toast and coffee references. But the poem feels “thin.” Jim is a gesture of a character not actualized in the poem, and the situation feels not fully realized. Why is this “the only room in the world”? Finally, I wonder what we are meant to feel by this one.

Dustin: I think you have a great beginning with "A piece of toast cracks like slate / when it’s the only sound in the room." I'm also quite fond of "Jim’s voice is thin as his ribs." I think you complete the assignment by splitting the sentence "A piece of toast cracks like slate between his teeth," but what you have between the split isn't very compelling to me.

Dana: I love pantoums and I’ve written a lot of them, so I was smitten with this piece right away. I didn’t mind the variation with the third-to-last and last lines not repeating lines three and one, but it did make the poem feel a little incomplete, and I wonder if there could be another stanza to tie the piece up. While the poem does exploit the variations that can occur when each line is repeated — one of my favorite aspects of the pantoum form — I don’t feel that overall the variance was leveraged as much as it could have been. Also, there was some confusion in the poem, which can happen in the pantoum as lines are brought back. One instance of this was the bread being pocketed but also being soaked. On re-reading, I understand that the bread is being pocketed and the crumbs from the bread are being soaked, but it’s a little confusing at first.

Guest Judge Dara Wier: Who doesn't like a runcible spoon? And there being but one room in the world, well, that's good to think with, too. I really like the recycling ways with the lines, I love how it makes both sonic and sense insistently inevitable. I like this poem a lot. It is also fun to translate "Jim" into "I" just to see what happens then.

*************************************************

KRISTEN MCHENRY
Sanctuary

Thus the private asylum is far
thus he cannot
get there but by boat.

Thus he will pay the ferryman
in moon-fat coins.
Thus he will thunder

over cowlicked waves
in a rot-bottomed barge
to grasp the scrawny shore.

How he has festered in his prophecies,
and oh what the Stakes are
in this Seeing!

It’s all in the Semantics--
the wording and the Interpretation:
somewhere lurks a shelter

in which he may learn
dreamspeak. Thus he will shamble
through the hoary copse,

trample the backs of mud-deep moles
with his scabrous feet for passage.
He will breathe the sick-mist,

let their neuro-germs seep in
through his most judicious eye.
But he has exhausted

his amulets too soon; been made to beg
provisions from the enemy.
It is said: a silver-tongued

saint deceives us all. It is
said: there are no angels on this plane.
Always there's another gummy step

on his odyssey to the silent pool,
but nothing will hold
still in all this bruise and teal.

The sky presses its mattress full
of squids upon his mouth
to suffocate his warnings. The chatter

of the assassin bugs is ceaseless. Peace
is always never-jam-today; always
beyond his reach at the present.

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: I have been a fan or Kristen’s inventive, sonic, surprising language throughout the competition, and this poem’s language is no exception: “ he will pay the ferryman/in moon-fat coins./…will thunder/over cowlicked waves/in a rot-bottomed barge/ to grasp the scrawny shore.” “The sky presses its mattress full/of squids.” The mythological story also works beautifully here to ground the poem and give it resonance and breadth. I’m not as wild about the way the poem ends the “never-jam-today” is a bit awkward and there’s a kind of falling away, but this is a strong poem given the parameters of the assignment.

Dustin: Kristen, I have to give you kudos for selecting "Thus the private asylum is far beyond his reach at the present"-- I think it was the hardest option to work with. My favorite lines: "It is said: a silver-tongued / saint deceives us all." Yes, you have beautiful language. Yes, you have lovely images. Yes, you always do a good job with the assignment. However, I can't help but feel there is a little something missing, for me at least. Maybe you are leaving something out. Are you writing furiously, then stop thinking it might be too much? Either way, I still enjoyed this poem quite a lot.

Dana: Are you kidding me? This poem is amazing. For me, this is one of the best pieces overall in the competition so far. The way the rich, lush language works against the short lines is thrilling. The poem is so tight but so language-dense. I loved reading from line to line to see what goodies the next line would bring, and I was not once disappointed. I especially love the line, “trample the backs of mud-deep moles.” And when I got to, “The sky presses its mattress full / of squids upon his mouth,” I couldn’t even get past the lines because I wanted to read them over and over. I finally managed to read the rest of the poem, though.

Guest Judge Dara Wier: The anachronistic therefore idiomatic "thus" completely seduces me. Immediately feel in the presence of an oracle or at least a fiesty judge, turns out there's but one part of this poem that maybe could be changed.

Even though this is probably true:

It’s all in the Semantics--
the wording and the Interpretation:
somewhere lurks a shelter

in which he may learn
dreamspeak.

it's not needed in this poem. If you left this part out the poem's not about to appear as any kind of lesson, it's more mysterious and I like that a lot. "The chatter / of the assassin bugs is ceaseless," is just great.
Added to "thus" come other rhetorical insistences most enjoyable (funny how so called transitions can make or break a poem, these make it). This is also great to read translated into first person.

*************************************************

EMILY VAN DUYNE
Because As A Youth, My Love Was Sure His Wife Would Want His Name

He already has
her plucked! This is years
before we saunter down the aisle—

I’m sleuthing time’s back
alleys, a wedded Nancy Drew. Suddenly,
I unearth Mrs. Peck! His conjured lady

wife; she’s lounged, facedown upon
a paisley chaise. Perfection: she lifts
her sleepy chin: sphinxy girl—

a bas relief Colette. ‘Sorry,’
she says, ‘have we met?’
Oh, my dear, we have. In dreams,

and in the sun. I’ve decked you out
in paper aprons; you cooled the piping
steam from my mud pies. You peeked

out from my Mother’s sad brown eyes.
I ask, ‘What’s it like to be
a flat, two-sided bride?’ ‘Every woman

is imagined!’ she huffs out— a thunder-
cloud of pride. ‘I’ve seen you
in the shower, how you wish

your body gone— your wet lark’s
an execution song! You grasp and wring
your glutted flesh, you’d hack it off, if

only—!’ Now she pancakes down to size—
smoothes her chignon, rolls her cobalt
eyes; they turn familiar, brown! ‘Sometimes,

I think he still wants you around,’
I whisper, look the other way. ‘It’s not
too late,’ she jeers, ‘Let’s call you

Mrs. Peck.’ She bids her hollow
hand— it glints! Hot diamond in a flame.
She smiles a white mirage.

She Mona Lisa’s me.
I tell her I already have
a name, she sighs reproachfully.

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: This is a fun and inventive poem exploring sexual dynamics. I like the light deftness of the way the poem moves “I’ve decked you out /
in paper aprons; you cooled the piping / steam from my mud pies." and ‘What’s it like to be / a flat, two-sided bride?’ Another fine job with a tough assignment.

Dustin: Again, you create a long title for your poem. Again, the long title works. I think this title would cause people to go from the table of contents directly to your poem. You also selected a sentence that no one else used: "He already has a name, she sighs reproachfully." I am in love with "I’m sleuthing time’s back / alleys, a wedded Nancy Drew," and I really enjoyed "Now she pancakes down to size." On the other hand, I am not really feeling "She Mona Lisa’s me." In the end, I think you handled the assignment well. Emily, give us an interesting story between.

Dana: Emily, I love the creativity in this piece and so much of what is going on throughout. A couple of things hung me up, though. I had trouble settling into the poem and understanding what exactly was going on at first. The “he” and “her” in lines one and two made the “we” in line three confusing, and even the explanation in the second stanza, along with the title, wasn’t clear enough to orient me immediately. Don’t get me wrong — I am not arguing that poetry has to be “accessible” in that way that everyone talks about poetry being accessible. I just wanted a smoother on-ramp into the piece, if that makes sense. The other thing I noticed was a lot of long “i” sounds in the fifth through seventh stanzas, with “piping, “pies,” “eyes,” “like,” “bride” and “pride.” You have rhyme and assonance in the rest of the piece, but not the same sounds over and over, and that made this section of the poem sound and feel different from the rest of the piece.

Guest Judge Dara Wier:
...I’ve decked you out
in paper aprons; you cooled the piping
steam from my mud pies. You peeked

out from my Mother’s sad brown eyes.
I ask, ‘What’s it like to be
a flat, two-sided bride

is my favorite part of this poem, and I'm also intrigued by the dramatic monologue quality that's immediately territorially in action here. I listen. I listen in to a conversation that's reported. There's a sphinx, Nancy Drew, Mona Lisa, Mrs. Peck, Mother, Colette, a populated poem! I appreciate how these 3 line stanzas create vertical action in the poem's narration/dialog. And I admire the work the poem's title does.

*************************************************

EMARI DIGIORGIO
Continually Calling On Persephone

A piece of toast
blackened beyond a clean shave
with the best serrated knife.
Nothing a little butter, a little marmalade
can’t sweeten. Over breakfast
I ask what love isn’t half stale anyway?
Akhmatova answered this: the first helpless and frightening glance.
I remember them all. Boys, really.
The evening of their eyes starless, lit only by my face.
Their longing dangerous. Mine, too.
You, sir, are mistaken: a siren cannot not sing.
And pleasure slackens desire.
We walk along the hard crest of the snowdrift.
The shiver is not from the cold.
Whatever was promised me
cracks like slate between his teeth.

*Poem contains lines from two Anna Akhmatova poems translated by Jane Kenyon.
THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: Though I like many of the lines in this poem “I ask what love isn’t half stale anyway?” “I remember them all. Boys, really. / The evening of their eyes starless, lit only by my face,” the contemporary situation of the poem feels a but insular to me. I think the poem needs to be teased out more. The lines: “You, sir, are mistaken: a siren cannot not sing. / And pleasure slackens desire.” don’t let me in enough. I do like the ending lines, and the situation of the poem is intriguing.

Dustin: The title of this poem really piqued my interest; however, I don't feel the poem lives up to its title. I don't feel like there is enough between "A piece of toast" and "cracks like slate between his teeth." I also feel with more time that you could turn this into a much better poem.

Dana: It’s interesting to see three different takes on the “piece of toast” line. All three poems are so different, and I like your approach very much, especially the quiet intimacy of it, the narrator’s meditation and revelations. Lines such as “The evening of their eyes starless” and “And pleasure slackens desire” are standout moments in the poem. I stumbled over the double negative of “a siren cannot not sing,” but that’s a small detail. The turn created with the line you chose is remarkable, the way you move from “A piece of toast” to “Whatever was promised me / cracks like slate between his teeth.” Look at all the territory this poem covers in just a few lines.

Guest Judge Dara Wier: I think you can leave off the note that tells from where the lifted lines come. Either we know it or we don't, and if we do, fine, if we don't fine. The note's a great big interruption in a poem such as this (notes can be incorporated into a poem's very being, or appear elsewhere). I love
"The shiver is not from the cold."

*************************************************

W.F. ROBY

Breakfast with Walt

A piece of toast cracks
into a broken line. His face is the wing of a flightless bird.
The crumbs of gathered eggs are caught in his beard.
My orange juice is half full, it casts a glaze
over his manuscript, stretched epigraph to postscript,
laid out between the knives and the pepper mill.
A bit of shell was lost in the egg batter, an island
bound to the dreams of mapmakers, a flea
on a wedding dress. Walt is still drunk
from the night before -- we sipped HD
until our lips were salty as the sea’s edge
where blooms take root.
Behind my breakfast nook
there is a window framing trees, still
as iambs in a sturdy breeze. I tell Walt
that leaves of parsley seem to me to be
the uncut hair of omelettes. The great poet frowns
around a mouthful of food -- he's found the shell. It sings
like slate between his teeth.

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: I like the imagined scenario here, and some of the lines/metaphors are quite nice “His face is the wing of a flightless bird.” “A bit of shell was lost in the egg batter, an island/ bound to the dreams of mapmakers, a flea/ on a wedding dress.” I have to say though that finally, I’m not all that excited by this poem. I think my main question for it is that it doesn’t move much beyond itself in the telling. It has a kind of flatness and the arc of the poem doesn’t for me have enough metaphoric reach.

Dustin: I am actually disappointed that you selected "A piece of toast cracks like slate between his teeth." I thought you would have went with another option. This poem is not lacking in images. We even have writers popping up. I do love a poem full of images, but I am not sure if this poem is about to be on image overload. I do not like "still / as iambs in a sturdy breeze." I would say something, but I've already said it two or three times in my comments to you. This is not your best work in the competition.

Dana: Another piece of toast! This poem has a kind of playfulness that I really enjoy. I especially love the second stanza, the way you start out in lines one and two with iambs, then describe the trees as iambs. That’s a wonderful interplay between content and rhythm. And the rest of the stanza is outstanding, including the parsley as omelets hair and Walt frowning around his food. The only part that tripped me up was “to me to be.” The first stanza has a lot of great imagery, but it felt less polished than the second. I felt myself wanting to pull a few words out and tighten a bit as I read it.

Guest Judge Dara Wier: "a flea on a wedding dress," is worthy of a latter day Emily Dickinson! I wonder what HD thinks about being in here, probably that HD (the very proud HD likes it a lot). I'm not crazy about "still as iambs" but maybe it's growing on me.........esp. when I see how close, for the first time! iambs is to lambs. And the poem turns toward a tonal joke in its 3rd to last line in a way that's pretty fetching. "...the uncut hair of omlettes," that's funny. And since you're obeying the assignment's orders, I find that all the more funny. I wonder if you were going to disobey, if you'd end the poem very differently.

*************************************************

KATHI MORRISON-TAYLOR
My Grandma’s Breast

As soon as he saw her
crying in the bath, hand cupped
over something on her chest—
an engorged tick, head buried
in skin an inch from her nipple—
her father thought of fire,
             my grandma said.

Only 13, she knelt in a tub,
screened off in the kitchen corner.
Stomping in from the porch
with all his “take charge”
Kentucky charm, her father
returned with an open flame.

His head half-turned, he held that burn
to the sucking creature at her breast,
until it let go in its inferno. Fear
and fire puckered her skin.
It hurt like Hell. Her eyes swelled
closed with tears from pain,
             for her lost modesty.

At 90, she repeats her story to me,
while my father dismisses this tall tale.
She admonishes him: his own cheek
rested on the scar in infancy;
his own lips worked in and out
beside that dime-sized injury.

She raises her voice to tell me
how hard it was to be a woman,
someone’s rag doll or nurse maid,
fighting all the time with big boys
who thought they knew better.
She shakes her head and clucks her tongue
             at her son, my father,

when he says that even back then,
folks knew basic medicine: tweezers,
rubbing alcohol, or perhaps, rum,
and if a deer tick latched on
to a daughter a good man loved,
he knew that this wouldn’t happen.

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: I am a sucker for the compelling narrative, and Kathi’s poem certainly ropes me in from the get-go. That opening stanza (that title even!) is hard to beat. She is a natural story-teller, and we see this in the following section, which I’ll paste in en toto:

Stomping in from the porch
with all his “take charge”
Kentucky charm, her father
returned with an open flame.

His head half-turned, he held that burn
to the sucking creature at her breast,
until it let go in its inferno. Fear
and fire puckered her skin.

I’m not sure fear can pucker the skin, but the sounds, the timing, the power of the scenario all work well. The penultimate stanza is less sonically rich and gets a little flat, and for me the last line doesn’t quite fit, but this is definitely a strong draft and a top pick for me this week.

Dustin: You were the only person who selected "As soon as he saw her, he knew that this wouldn't happen," and you did a great job. This assignment was about what's betweent he split line, and you give us one heck of a story. I thoroughly enjoyed this poem, and it is my favorite for this week. Granted, I think you can be a little tighter in places. One place for me is:
She raises her voice to tell me

how hard it was to be a woman,
someone’s rag doll or nurse maid,
fighting all the time with big boys
who thought they knew better.
She shakes her head and clucks her tongue

This is minor, but I really wanted a simile with the engorged tick-- something to make us see it more. I like your title; it will make readers do a double take. Good job, Kathi.

Dana: This is a strong piece, and I love the storytelling aspect of it, specifically the way this poem gets at the oral tradition in families and the disputes that can arise about what’s real and what’s made up and what’s been amplified over the years of telling and retelling. I also like the reference to Hell and the inferno, with the story playing out on this teensy scale. I did feel that the piece could be tightened in places, including the first stanza. I don’t know if “over something” needs to be there, and I would love to see what would happen if the poem went straight to the engorged tick, as opposed to hovering for a line on the nonspecificity of “something.”

Guest Judge Dara Wier: Well, I'm feeling shy and almost embarrassed, wondering if I should be privy to the narrated events of this poem. Even the poem says so, after all, it's about a story, a family story, that's disputed and/or differently recalled, and at the very least differently interpreted. Of course that's what we do with stories, and if a story, as it seems to be in this case, is presented as a memory, yes, we are going to not only remember it in our different ways, we're going to assign it more or less importance. ("only 13" and "at 90" wind up being two of the most significant moments of the poem's character, maybe more of this (in a rhetorical way.....a formal way) would make the two instances of this seem less perfunctory and more intrinsic....I think it's close to being shaped into something great...........so.........maybe more imagination about what I'm supposed to be thinking would help transform an anecdotal piece into metaphorical territory.

*************************************************

"Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood"

2009-07-17T17:06:00.000-07:00

Week Five: Guest Judge Dara Wier

2009-07-15T19:32:00.000-07:00

Dara Wier's recent books include Remnants of Hannah and Reverse Rapture (awarded the Poetry Center & American Poetry Archives Book Award). A Selected Poems is forthcoming from Wave Books, and it will be Wier's eleventh book! Her poems can be found in Pushcart, Best American Poetry, Norton, Soft Skull and various other anthologies, and in American Poetry Review, Conduit, Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, jubilat, slope, Turnrow, New American Review, Volt. A limited edition, (X In Fix), is in RainTaxi's Brainstorm series. The Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the American Poetry Review have supported her work. She's a member of the poetry faculty and director of the MFA program for poets and writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and co-director of the Juniper Initiative for Literary Arts and Action. Click here pre-order Wier's Selected Poems, which comes out in September.

Project Verse: Drama Continues

2009-07-14T20:24:00.000-07:00

There is much to be discussed with Project Verse. If you didn't think a poetry competition could be filled with sass and drama, well, you were very wrong!

Check out the previous blog post for all the Project Verse drama, or you may simply click here.

As mentioned in the previous post, the drama started when Project Verse contestant Martin Ott left this comment:

My Dolly poem was accepted for the November issue of Two Review the first time I sent it out (and they get 7000 submissions per issue). Kind of takes the sting out of being on the bottom twice last week.

To follow up, Martin had this to say:

Sunday night sent out a few poems to a magazine I just heard about and added the Dolly poem as a lark...got the acceptance Monday morning at which point I forwarded the email to Dustin asking him about attribution. He kindly sent me the rules and I immediately shot the editor of Two Review a note about Project verse and the need for attribution.

Before I get to the "meat and bones," I need to address a couple of items that have ruffled my wondrously gay feathers.

(1)
Weekly Judge Dana Guthrie Martin wrote:

Martin's poem had not yet been judged by Project Verse judges when he sent it to Two Review. It was thus still under evaluation for inclusion in Dustin and Emma's collection of 50 poems paying tribute to Dolly Parton.

What if Martin had won the week's challenge? He knew that winning would include publication in the tribute collection. It doesn't seem right to send the piece out for consideration elsewhere under those circumstances.

Martin Ott had a problem with this and responded with:

It's one thing when a contestant calls you a liar which W.F. did; it's another when a judge does.

I don't think I can get a fair review from a judge after she states a falsehood about me on a blog, and highly doubt I'll be submitting my next poem (which I have a draft of) for Dana's consideration.

Martin, you are wrong; Dana is correct. You commented that you don't think you would get a fair review after all this drama around your Dolly tribute poem. You are wrong! There are so many reasons why I selected Beth Gylys and Dana Guthrie Martin as weekly guest judges. I enjoy their work and attitudes, and they are gifted poets. I know and believe that NONE of the judges associate attitude (or any issues for that matter) with a poet's work. We share a belief: It is all about the work. We want the work to speak for itself. If we didn't share this belief Emily, who was quite the sassy-pants after she read the judges' comments to her poem from Week 2: Firsts, wouldn't be around. Hell, she even won Week 4: Shore Tags, and she was the first contestant to receive a vote from EVERY judge.

(2)
Martin wrote:

It is my right to believe the following:
- poetry judges should have more experience than contestants
- poetry judges should not state flasehoods about contestants as facts

Your second statement has been addressed above. As for your first statement, when you applied to Project Verse you were provided with the names of the weekly judges. You had time to research each of us. It is your problem if you failed to do so. You shouldn't have applied if you had any issues with our credentials. Do you realize your comment makes you sound bitter? It is unfortunate that you sound like a kid who wants to stop the game because he is losing. I think you are a better man than that, Martin. The sad part is that you weren't losing.

The bottome line
This goes back to Dana being right. Martin, you submitted your poems before the results were announced. You even admitted that in your submission to Two Review that you did not give Project Verse credit. When you applied to Project Verse you agreed to this statement:

By participating in Project Verse, you agree to acknowledge Project Verse as first publisher in future reprints of books, anthologies, website publications, podcasts, radio, etc. Copyright reverts back to authors upon appearance in the Project Verse competition, which takes place on the I Was Born Doing Reference Work in Sin site.

Martin, you might remember that Project Verse was down two competitors the first week because they didn't abide by the rules. One of the eliminated competitors didn't submit on time because a close relative was diagnosed with cancer that same week. I hated it for him, but the rules are the rules. Niina Pollari was just eliminated because she didn't submit her poem by deadline.

Are you catching it, Martin?

I take rules seriously. Claiming ignorance of the law doesn't excuse you from breaking it. You can say you didn't realize you had to give Project Verse first credit, but I have the email where you agree to do so, and I have the email where you admit that you failed to do so.

Martin, you are out of the competition for violating one of the rules of Project Verse.

Project Verse Drama!?!

2009-07-13T19:15:00.000-07:00

You are missing out if you're not reading the comments on the Project Verse entries.

Contestant Martin Ott has recently raised questions from his fellow Project Verse contestants when he posted this comment:

My Dolly poem was accepted for the November issue of Two Review the first time I sent it out (and they get 7000 submissions per issue). Kind of takes the sting out of being on the bottom twice last week.

Contestants want to know if Martin has violated any rules.

When each contestant applied to Project Verse, he/she agreed to the Rules/Regulations/All That Jazz. Two of those items are:
 By participating in Project Verse, you agree to acknowledge Project Verse as first publisher in future reprints of books, anthologies, website publications, podcasts, radio, etc. Copyright reverts back to authors upon appearance in the Project Verse competition, which takes place on the I Was Born Doing Reference Work in Sin site.
 While the copyright reverts back to the author upon appearance in the Project Verse competition, Dustin Brookshire in combination with Project Verse and I Was Born Doing Reference Work in Sin, reserve the right to use any poems from the competition to create an anthology in the future.

If Martin acknowledged Project Verse as the first publisher to the Two Review editors, he didn't break any rules.

BUT, did this happen?

Week 5: The Between

2009-07-13T02:00:00.000-07:00

WEEK 5: THE BETWEEN

I am borrowing a workshop prompt from Dara Wier.

Dara once pointed out that in Elizabeth Bishop's "The Fish," the first and last lines create a sentence:
"I caught a tremendous fish / And I let it go."

Project Verse Competitors: You must select a setence, and you're going to split that sentence. Part of the sentence will have to be the first line of your poem and the other part will be the last line of your poem. By the way, you don't get to create your own sentence. Come on, that would be too easy!

Your options come from Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace:

Option 1:
Thus the private asylum is far beyond his reach at the present.

Option 2:
As soon as he saw her, he knew that this wouldn't happen.

Option 3:
He approached her with a calm and smiling face, presenting an image of goodwill.

Option 4:
A piece of toast cracks like slate between his teeth.

Option 5:
He already has a name, she sighs reproachfully.

Select your sentence, and write your poem in 40 lines or less.
There are no form constraints.
One person will end up like Bishop's fish.

Get to writing!

Check Out These Peeps

2009-07-13T01:30:00.000-07:00

Steve Fellner writes about a poem by Matthew Hittinger.

****** ~ ******

Pre-order Collin Kelley's first novel.

****** ~ ******

D.A. Powell and David Trinidad cooked up a little something.

****** ~ ******

Christopher Hennessy makes an announcement.

Project Verse ~ Week 4: Shore Tags & Curveball Results

2009-07-13T01:00:00.000-07:00

The judges have deliberated on the poems from Week 4: Shore Tags and Project Verse's Curveball.

Beth, Dustin, and Dana were joined by guest judge Collin Kelley for Week 4: Shore Tags. Click here to revisit the Shore Tags poems.

For the Project Verse Curveball, the weekly judges were joined by guest judges Emma Bolden and Dollymania's Duane Gordon. Click here to revisit the Curveball poems.

MICAH LING
KRISTEN MCHENRY
EMILY VAN DUYNE
EMARI DIGIORGIO
KATHI MORRISON-TAYLOR
NIINA POLLARI
MARTIN OTT

Kristen and Emily, one of your poems received four out of four votes as the top poem for Week 4: Shore Tags, and the other received three out of four votes. It was close. On the other end, Niina and Martin, your poems tied for the weakest poem of Week 4: Shore Tags.

Emari, Micah, and Martin, your poems tied for the weakest poem of the Project Verse Curveball. Kristen and Kathi, one of your poems received four out of five votes as the top poem for the Curveball assignment, and the other received three out of five votes.

Emily, your Week 4: Shore Tags poem is going to be published in Dana Guthrie Martin's Shore Tags Project. Congratulations!

Kristen, your Project Verse Curveball poem is going find its way in the 50 poems paying tribute to Dolly Parton project by Emma Bolden and me. Congratulations!

Niina, you submitted your Week 4: Shore Tags poem after the 10am deadline; therefore, you are on permanent caesura!

Drop Dead Diva!

2009-07-12T23:28:00.000-07:00

Tonight, I tuned into the season premiere of "Drop Dead Diva" at the recommendation of my friend Lisa Allender. As I turned the channel to Lifetime, I was worried that I was about to lose an hour of my life and regret the hell out of watching the show; however, I thoroughly enjoyed "Drop Dead Diva." There wasn't a moment of the show that I didn't find entertaining. The first episode of "Drop Dead Diva" had touching moments mixed with loads of funny moments-- it really was the perfect mix. Brooke Elliot (Jane) and Margaret Cho (Teri) rocked my socks off, and I enjoyed eye candy Jackson Hurst (Grayson). I respectfully ask Executive Producer/Creator/Writer Josh Berman to give us more shirtless scenes starring Hurst's character; please and thanks!

I plan to follow this show, and I think you should check it out too. Below you'll find a trailer to give you the gist of the show.

Curveball: The Poems!

2009-07-11T21:10:00.000-07:00

Here are the poems from the Project Verse Curveball.

*********************************************************

MICAH LING

Dolly

Hey cowgirl. Hey tough-as-barbed-wire-fencing-woman, a-whole-August-of-100-degree
days-woman. I hear you still hold the record for barrel racing in Harlowton. I hear you’ve
ridden horses your whole life, and have a knotted spine. I hear you still wrangle and
mend downed fencing. I hear you feed the calf in rain and snow and sand the floor where
the door won’t close. I hear you taught your children and grandchildren how to raise a
pig, how to judge 4-H, how to brace for a storm. Hey kind, kind woman. Be the hero
ridin' up to save the day. Hey holler-for-the-three-legged-dog-to-ride-along-to-town-
woman. Hey love-for-family-woman. Put somethin’ in a bowl or somethin’ in a pan.
Make do. Is there anything, any single pine-needle on this mountain that doesn’t know
your voice? Hey cowgirl-woman, let me pour you a whiskey and listen to your life—let
me soak you in like the rain that finally comes, just when the dust has settled thick.

*Lyrics from “A Cowboy’s Ways” and “Berry Pie”

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: Okay, so this one seems like a tough assignment—a lot of struggling in this batch of poems—and Micah’s poem is no exception. The anaphora “I hear you” becomes a bit cloying in the poem and feels more like a crutch than like it takes the poem anywhere fresh or interesting. I was glad for the line: “hey kind, kind woman”, but it’s kind of a flat turn for the poem, and generally, this one felt like it didn’t quite get off the ground.

Dustin: For me, the only thing Dolly about this poem is the title, which is weak. Dolly doesn't even have children. I think this poem fails to complete the assignment. You have nice moments in this poem, but I really wish you would have written a tribute poem.

Dana: Another strong piece from you this competition. I love the accumulation of adjectives, and it’s a delight to read them. One of my favorites is “a-whole-August-of-100-degree-days woman.” Another nice moment in the poem is “Is there anything, any single pine-needle on this mountain that doesn’t know your voice?” I do think it focuses more on Dolly as a rural character almost to the point of casting her as a rural, domestic archetype. But, if it were not a poem about Dolly specifically, it totally works. I would love to see what would happen if the poem ended at “let me soak you in the rain that finally comes.”

Guest Judge Emma Bolden: I loved the inventive language in this poem, particularly the pushed-together-with-hyphens words, reminiscent of the great David Foster Wallace. However, I felt that the language in this poem could be pushed to the next level. It felt as though Micah hadn’t yet taken full advantage of the form, especially in terms of the leaps and bounds in language which separate the prose poem from prose.

Guest Judge Duane Gordon: Too western, other than a couple of songs and one scene in "9 To 5" she's never had a western image, much better suited to Reba McEntire than Dolly.

*********************************************************

MARTIN OTT

DREAMING ABOUT DOLLY ON INDEPENDENCE DAY

All fireworks start with a spark and sputter,
a new voice from the shadow of the last great war,

gospel light spilling over smokey mountains.
Freedom is amazing grace infused with talent,

banjo, harp and guitar expanding a one-room cabin.
Redemption comes in many shapes and many kinds

of pain. Freedom is stuffing your boss in a car trunk,
speeding from Harper Valley to Louisiana magnolias.

There’s a better life and you think about it, don’t you?
Heartache is as close as a Texas house of ill-repute,

and romance is a laundromat on eternal rinse,
travelin’ thru to an America that surprises.

Perseverance is singing through the boo-birds
on your first grand stage, yellow rose blooms

tended by the devotion of an iron butterfly.
America must dream anew if it will be one sheep

or many, a new generation to read the signs.
The backwoods push the frontiers forward,

the bravery to go where your heart takes you,
a honky tonk angel joining in on the long road.

*Lyrics from "Travelin’ Thru" and "9 to 5"

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: There’s a great use of metaphor in this one, and the poem feels fresh—hard to do when you have to include song lyrics in your verse. The overuse of the Noun/to be verb at the start of a sentence drags down the poem, but I think there are some great lines in this one, and that it works pretty well overall.

Dustin: Good title to pique interest. Martin, I like this poem more than I probably should because I am a Dolly FANatic. "Redemption comes in many shapes and many kinds / of pain" are lyrics from "Travelin' Thru," and you weave those words beautifully into your poem. You reference Harper Valley, which alludes to Dolly covering the song "Harper Valley PTA." I like that you allude to Dolly movies without directly naming them. Sometimes too much of a good thing can be too much, and I think that's what we have on our hands with your poem. I think this poem would have been better if it were split into parts. Granted, it would have to be a little bit better if it were split into parts, but I think you could easily pull that off. Good job, Martin.

Dana: There are some nice moments in this poem, but overall I don’t find it extremely engaging. The opening line is a great way to kick off a Dolly poem and bring to mind all of Dolly’s literal and figurative glitter and shine. One turn that doesn’t work for me is the shift in stanza four to characters Dolly has played as opposed to talking about Dolly herself. That throws me out of the tribute, but I am back in it again as soon as you address Dolly directly in the next stanza.

Guest Judge Emma Bolden: There are some beautiful moments in this poem where the language twists and turns upon itself and offers a fresh and surprising take both on Parton’s music and on the complicated subject of patriotism: “Freedom is stuffing your boss in a car trunk” and “romance is a laundromat on eternal rinse.” However, I felt that most of the poem didn’t live up to the promise of these lines stayed in the realm of the expected, even, at times, of the cliché.

Guest Judge Duane Gordon:Liked starting it off with the image of fireworks, given her flashy and sparkly appearance ("I never leave a rhinestone unturned," she says); he also worked in her nickname in the industry ("iron butterfly") and her favorite flower (yellow roses), which shows he either knows a lot about her or is a good researcher. :-)

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KRISTEN MCHENRY

The Ballad of Mama, Porter, Sinner, and Number One Fan

When did you love Dolly most?
When she was a hummingbird,
thrumming to stun.
My lithest daughter, my rawboned one,
sang vibrato; lullaby bait
to keep the grieving from our gate.
We joined with her, round by round.
Little sparrow, little sparrow,
your voice has that high, lonesome sound.

When did you love Dolly most?
When she was a raven,
bedraggled with sorrow,
and I sought soulfulness to borrow.
My first in-love-with; Lady Lament.
We sang together of sweet descent;
baptized anguish, but never drowned.
Little sparrow, little sparrow,
your voice has that high, lonesome sound.

When did you love Dolly most?
When she was a swan
unwinding her throat,
holy host to the mercy note.
Her gospel pierced like a keening wren,
and Jesus made me whole again.
Sinner lost and poor man found.
Little sparrow, little sparrow,
your voice has that high, lonesome sound.

When did you love Dolly most?
When she was a Scarlet Ibis;
a quick flame branding sea.
My voice has long been dead in me;
a corpse bud on a sickly vine.
But it waxes bright as clementine
when I sing with her, my bold unbound.
Little sparrow, little sparrow,
your voice has that high, lonesome sound.

*Lyrics from "Little Sparrow" and "Blue Valley Songbird"

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: This one is probably my favorite of the bunch. I love the sounds, love the form (works so well with the Dolly theme), love the language. A fine job with a tough assignment.

Dustin: Kristen, I give you big points for branching out with form, but I don't know if I am sold on this poem. Don't get me wrong, I love what you do here. "Little Sparrow" is one of top ten favorite Dolly penned songs, and I think you pull off each bird comparison linguistically and in a beautiful way; however, as a Dolly fan, at times, I have a hard time seeing it in relation to Dolly. I think a dove instead of a raven would have been a better choice. Yes, you've written a good poem, but I don't like it as much as some of your other work.

Dana: This form shows even more range in your work and complements the other work you have produced so far in the competition. The song of the ballad works with and re-contextualizes the types of songs Dolly sings. I did wonder about the introduction of the wren in the third stanza. That’s where the poem moves away from the shift to a personal relationship with the narrator in the fifth line of the stanza (i.e., “my lithest daughter” in stanza one and “my first in-love-with” in stanza two). The introduction of a second type of bird in stanza three stood out. The swan might be enough bird there.

Guest Judge Emma Bolden: I thought that this poem was absolutely gorgeous, and offered a beautiful take on my favorite Dolly song. Kristen’s language danced across the page, leaping gracefully from image to image, idea to idea. The pervasive image of the bird, I thought, was especially beautiful and effective. I do think that the repetition of “When did you love Dolly most?” was a bit unnecessary – it seemed as though Kristen needed this device to get into the poem, but that the poem evolved beyond it.

Guest Judge Duane Gordon: This one was my second favorite because I felt it did a fairly good job at capturing Dolly's essence, and that is that she's a little bit of everything: innocence mixed with wisdom, righteousness spiced with raunchiness, bubbly happiness tinged with sad songs, a study in contrasts and contradictions. While it didn't cover all aspects of her persona, it did give the flavor of her diversity.

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EMILY VAN DUYNE

Where Beauty Lives
for Alicia, 1979-2000

She paints her lips a brilliant red,
we corkscrew curlers to our heads—
we ooh at her like she’s some
studded queen. She strikes a pose
and shrieks a laugh, she’s like

a busty, hip giraffe, the coolest girl
in school, so long and lean. In
the background of the den, that movie’s
playing yet again— Truvy teases
Shelby’s locks on the small, bright screen.

We’ve viewed this flick two dozen times—
Julia Roberts in her prime— it’s summertime,
we’re just about thirteen. Outside, the heat
creeps like a thief, a rising
wave, like disbelief, the way the autumn tans

a verdant leaf. The way a mother wakes
one day to find her daughter gone away, to risky
quick sands, memory’s pooling bay. Inside, we squeal
like bright stuck pigs, pass whiskey ‘round
for fast, burnt swigs, Alicia hangs on

longer than the rest. Truvy lets loose
AquaNet on Shelby’s pixie, lets it set; Alicia
makes a crack about big breasts. And hers
are huge, like teenage art— and oh, mine is a jealous
heart! My little buds are slight, belated guests.

Alicia takes another drink, it dribbles down
her night shirt’s pink, and Truvy dons her pearls,
her funeral black. Alicia chokes back whiskey
tears, looks older than her thirteen years— Truvy’s
three-inch heels go click, go clack.

Shelby sleeps beneath the green; and while
we sob, Alicia keens, a siren song, a deadly
flooded tide. A paper kerchief stops her mouth,
her tears decant straight toward the south, she chokes
It’s as if my own daughter died…

When Alicia’s mother found her on the basement
bathroom floor, she was facedown, barely twenty-one
years old. And though they tried to save her
with their magical machines, her mother said,
When I held her, she was cold. Her drink

became a clear white brook that held her in
its pleasant nook, and finally she drowned beneath its
tears. She wanders through my sleep some nights,
a giggling girl with broken eyes, she’ll stay
awhile and then she’s gone for years.

*Lyrics from "Where Beauty Lives in Memory" and "Jealous Heart" and "Kentucky Gambler"

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: I like the idea behind this poem, but I have some problems with the execution. The poem is in regular iambic rhythm, and it rhymes, but the lining is really odd and seems out of control. I’m not sure why the poet decided to do that. The poem almost reads like a ballad, and I’m not sure why Emily didn’t just push it into the form. On the other hand, I like many moments in the poem i.e. “and oh, mine is a jealous heart! My little buds are slight, belated guests.” (such a great description of the mind and heart of a young girl), and I think the end is well-controlled and effective.

Dustin: Emily, I think your poem is a poem honoring Alicia rather than a tribute poem to Dolly Parton, and it is a beautiful poem honoring her. The rhyme holds back this poem. The poem has a nice flow until it hits the spots with rhyme. Also, the next to last stanza feels prosaic, but I think you could easily rework that stanza to make it flow like the majority of your poem. I think "it dribbles down / her night shirt’s pink" doesn't help your flow. After reading that part, I couldn't help by ask why couldn't she just say pink shirt. Also, I think you should work in the title of the movie-- I don't see that taking away from your poem. I love too many images/details in this poem to list. I almost forgot: Great job working in the Dolly lyrics. This is a beautiful poem for your friend, but even in its beauty, I can't see how it is a Dolly tribute poem.

Dana: This poem shows off your technical abilities, and it is clear that a lot of work went into it, but ultimately feel your work is stronger when the rhyme chimes less and feels more natural. The piece feels too formal and sing-songy for the content of the piece, and it feels as if there is some filler language dropped in to sustain the rhythm. Having said that, there’s a lot of great language here, too. My favorite lines are, “Inside, we squeal / like bright stuck pigs.” For readers who aren’t familiar with Steel Magnolias, I wonder if there could be an epigraph to orient them to the poem.

Guest Judge Emma Bolden: I loved the way that Emily used Steel Magnolias as a metaphor in this poem, and how the movie becomes a way to tell a coming-of-age story and drives the narrative of her journey through adolescence. However, I think this is a case of form getting in the way of content. I felt that the use of rhyme held the poem back a bit – it often seemed as if the language was forced to make way for the rhyme.

Guest Judge Duane Gordon: My third favorite. The Dolly reference is very specific here (Steel Magnolias) and is maintained throughout the story, linking the death of a character in the poem to the death of a character in the film. Dolly has said many times, "I write a lot of sad songs, and some of 'em are just plum pitiful." That legacy comes from her Appalachian upbringing, indoctrinated at a young age in the old world ballads of death such as "Mary of the Wild Moor" and "Barbara Allen." This piece reflected her talent at touching the heart with a tragic story song like few other songwriters can.

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EMARI DIGIORGIO
Dolly Parton, Oracle of Opry

Honey, this ain’t no
honky tonk love poem,
this ain’t the heartbreak hotel.
These old bones I shake and rattle,
these old bones I toss and roll,
it’s all in where they scatter,
tells you what the future holds.
I see you’re on the local
and you need the express.
But this ticket won’t take you
where you want regardless.

Your mama didn’t raise no
sissy-ape, no wet-faced softie.
You think: easier to live the lie
than leave the life you live.
That’s what your granny said.
Heart’s don’t burst for nothing.
This life splits clear dear, you know:
pack the car, leave the key.
Roll on roll on roll on down
the line gonna get him off your mind.
Go west, sweetheart, expect gold.

Expect your luck to run long.
The doctor’ll be wrong. Forgive him.
Give your heart too freely, blame yourself.
Twenty seconds, that’s all you’ll need
should you lose the horizon. Girls
like you don’t crash.

*Lyrics from “These Old Bones” & “Heartbreak Express"

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: For me, this one doesn’t have a compelling enough voice, and reads more like a song than a poem. I think the major problem is with the set-up. The audience is too general and then the poem becomes a little generic. I wouldn’t want to do this assignment though, so I’m sympathetic.

Dustin: I don't like this poem. One of the strongest and most interesting lines of the poem are "These old bones I shake and rattle, / these old bones I toss and roll, / it’s all in where they scatter, / tells you what the future holds," but those are lyrics from Dolly's "These Old Bones." I'm disappointed because I know you are capable of writing a better poem.

Dana: I know this piece is about Dolly being an oracle, but it feels like a pastiche of Dolly lyrics and pseudo Dolly lyrics as opposed to a poem that comments on and expands Dolly’s lyrics. It’s not your strongest work, and it’s not among the strongest pieces this week.

Guest Judge Emma Bolden: A lovely poem which takes an inventive slant on its subject, viewing Parton’s lyrics as not simply words, but as portents. Emari’s inventive adoption of the Southern vernacular was especially impressive, and made this a stand-out poem. I wonder, though, if the last four lines are necessary, as they seem to snap the poem shut too easily – ending on “The doctor’ll be wrong. Forgive him” would make for an evocative and resonant end.

Guest Judge Duane Gordon: I didn't really get much of a "Dolly feeling" from this one at all.

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W.F. ROBY

Mea Culpa, Dolly Parton

Forgive me, it has been twenty-eight years
since my last confession.
Though I've been called many things --
waiter, playwright, carpenter,
stocker of produce -- I was not always your number one fan.
As a child I used your name
in vain, in place of anatomy. You were a figment,
a blush in secret. I was an apostate,
I thought for sure
you had something to do with Hello, Dolly!
though my only experience with that Great American Musical
was an uncle's cruel bon mot --
he'd sing the theme song as loud as he could
replacing the titular words with "Hello, Nigger"
for a shock. You could say, Dolly,
that I'm just the victim of a man
that let me down, or a series of men more likely,
you know the type -- men with sharp chins and crystal clear features,
men with smart beards and ab muscles,
A-list men with their arms around my sister.
It was only later, out back of my parent’s house,
arms across a sawhorse,
that I came to know you. Sixteen years old,
ripping boards for a new deck,
The Very Best Of You up loud
from an old set of speakers. We danced
under the hummingbird feeder, my feet light as temptation.
I could smell the powder from your face,
even taste it in between gulps of sawdust.
My God, it’s hard not to be impatient,
watching your face for a signal, Dolly,
a sign that I would start to grow
tall like my brothers, broad in the chest,
hairy like the men in dirty magazines.
Though I was swept up and wet behind the ears,
though I was practicing in patience
lines to get you under the blanket --
you were quick to disappear, you
were liquor in a tea cup, skipping off
and leaving nothing. Said you’d be
sleepin' in a station, all night
humming to the bums.

Lyrics from “Just Because I'm a Woman” and “The River Unbroken”

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: I like many lines/moments in the poem, and I much admire the music here, though I think the setup of the confession feels a bit contrived, and the beginning of the poem gets a bit prosey. I like that the poem takes us in a lot of different and surprising directions (the dance scene is wonderfully depicted), and I love the way this one ends.

Dustin: I'm not completely won over by this poem, and that isn't even because you only used one song written by Dolly Parton when the assignment called for two. BUT, I do like this poem. I think your first two lines give this poem the feel of an assignment. I do like how you worked in lyrics here: "You could say, Dolly, / that I'm just the victim of a man / that let me down." A couple of details I have trouble with in your poem are "ab muscles" and "hairy like the men in dirty magazines." (I'm gay, so I'm usually a fan of these sort of things.) I also think you have a brave moment with being honest about family-- I like it. With a little tweaking here and there, well, I think I'd come to love this poem.

Dana: Nice. Oh, the shifts in this poem are enchanting. This is one of my favorites this week, and it’s as solid as your other work this competition. You move from the disturbing personal image of the uncle to the revelatory and intimate personal moment about what the narrator wants in a man, to the scene in the backyard, to praying to Dolly. I am engaged with this poem from the title until the end. I love the line “you / were liquor in a tea cup.” I wondered about that line coming before “you were quick to disappear” so that the latter would be before “skipping off / and leaving nothing.” My reasoning is that there’s a disconnect between the liquor and the skipping.

Guest Judge Emma Bolden: Another Dolly-and-coming-of-age poem, and one which uses the physical, well, dimensions of Parton quite successfully. I think that this poem is strongest when it uses the music as a tool for revelation, allowing us a view into the speaker’s life – and I think that this poem would be much stronger with more of this, and less of the confessional “on-ramp” that started the poem.

Guest Judge Duane Gordon: One thing that shines through very clearly about Dolly is her honesty. She says what she thinks. What you see is what you get, to use a cliche. And this poem also shimmers with honesty and uncensored truths, just like her.

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NIINA POLLARI

Internet Dolly Party

I should have done the dishes but the web tonight
is complicated as a neon rosette: your bling, huge
set of teeth. Dolly, you should know I’m watching
you on YouTube, a poor
wayfaring stranger in the dark of my
dark Brooklyn railroad, the solo
glow the great and flaming brawn
of your bizarre padded outfit. Your tricky soprano unfurls
from my one always busting speaker, moves out
over the sifting dust of the apartment like the red carpet
out to meet Agamemnon. I have to confess I love your voice
but it’s your Image, your Look, your Go-On-And Stare –
the flag for a country

I never knew had such
fury – you get up
& have the place convinced! You’ve twirled
the internet all up in a bow! Even the English love you,
I can see by their sheepish smiles in this one video,
the self-conscious way they grit their teeth and glance as the camera pans
to catch them enjoying your drawling American banter. My God,
science named that sheepclone after you! I think
about this in the dark, what it means.
You have no daughters,
but you do have an entirely made up famous genetic lamb,
fabled up by scientists and set to bear your name, which is
actually kind of better. Anyway, Dolly, I’m thinking

you would be better if I clicked HQ. I’ll sneak up front-row close,
examine your pinwheel bouffant like the mouse
looks at me when I open up the tip trap: a mixture
of fear and thrilling freedom, the first light
in ages, the light of a clear blue morning, the breeze
on my hair matted and sweaty
from being in dark close quarters all this time. I’ve watched
your video diaries, I’ve seen 17 different Jolenes.
I waited so long for someone like you to burst
through my screen. Dim the lights,
and I’ll get the Jack and Cokes: this isn’t
over. I’m going til the day obscures
the glow of your jumpsuit, and we’ve got hours yet.

*Lyrics from "Travelin’ Thru" and "Light of a Clear Blue Morning"

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: This one’s a little prosey for my taste, and I’m generally not all that compelled by the setup: speaker watching Dolly on Youtube. Ultimately, I’m not convinced that the speaker cares much about Dolly, so the poem feels a bit more like an exercise.

Dustin: I'm on the fence about this poem. I like it, but I don't like, but I like it. I think Beth is right-- I think this poem could benefit from cutting some words here and there. For example, "the self-conscious way they grit their teeth and glance as the camera pans" to "they grit their teeth, glance as the camera pans"-- I don't think your poem loses anything by the loss of the words I removed. I would have liked for this speaker to go all Glenn Close Fatal Attraction style--- it would have been entertaining and very different. Bottom line: I think there is too much to work with in this poem.

Dana: I love this narrator who is messy and in the dark all the time, and the juxtaposition between the narrator and Dolly, who is in the public eye, in the limelight, and all dolled up whenever we see her. The ending gets all stalker-y, with its “this isn’t / over” and its “we’ve got hours yet.” I love that turn to the way we can call anything up that we want — commoditizing just about anyone with any public presence — whenever we desire them, thanks to our computers. This is a far cry from watching Dolly on TV in the family room back in the day. The poem also shows how Dolly transcends — time, audience, medium. Dolly is. She just is. She’s not dependent on anything because we will gravitate toward her. We just will. I should mention that I do think the poem is a little rough, despite what I like about it. I know some of that is because the narrator is rough, but there’s some polishing you could do. I felt the bit about Dolly the cloned sheep went on for too long, for one thing, and detracted from the focus on Dolly on the internet.

Guest Judge Emma Bolden: This poem took a sideways view of Parton which I thought was very successful, using the speaker’s search for Dolly on the Internet as a device for revealing much about her life and therefore opening for the reader a window into the larger world. I do think that this could be furthered quite a bit, as the poem often falls back into the expected.

Guest Judge Duane Gordon: This one captures the way a whole new generation is finding Dolly. It also was quite witty, which is another one of her well-known characteristics.

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KATHI MORRISON-TAYLOR

10 Reasons I Love Dolly Parton

She knows irony, a country girl singing stories,
all dolled up: too much make-up, too much hair.

                              She says, “I’m just a backwoods Barbie
                              in a push-up bra and heels.”

When she was little, she thought the town tramp
was beautiful, and her mama couldn’t change her mind.

                              She could say on air, “I would have been tall
                              but I got bunched up at the top.”

As a kid, I craved the soprano ache of her voice
singing: lifetime and always, cryin’ and puppy.

                              Dobro, violin,
                              limelight and Dolly.

And the rivers flow backward
And my tears are dry, without her tribute to bluegrass.

                              My father, who despised Country-Western, watched Dolly’s show
                              in the 70’s, an unexplained break from his Mingus and Monk.

She loves
to write songs.

                              The sky is green and the grass is blue
                              She’s imagined herself, no apologies.

*Lyrics from “Backwoods Barbie” and “The Grass Is Blue"

THE JUDGES SPEAK:
Beth: Using a list is an easy way to manage this tough assignment, and I admire some of the details here. I also think that it’s a well-handled list in that it has a progression, and each item seems intrinsic to the overall movement of the poem.

Dustin: I love how you end this poem; however, I don't love the rest of your poem as much. You did well as far as the assignment is concerned; you wrote a tribute poem. But, did you write a good tribute poem? I think it might be a hung jury for me. Even though I enjoy what you have, this poem leaves me hungry for more. I think you played it safe.

Dana: I like the form and a lot of what the poem is doing, but it doesn’t quote engage me the way some other work this week did. Stanzas such as “She loves / to write songs” I appreciate for their directness and simplicity. The last line is also great because of its simplicity, and that’s an instance where the line resonates and works on many levels — I like the idea of Dolly imagining herself into existence, and how that line reframes stanzas one through four.

Guest Judge Emma Bolden: While I appreciate Kathi’s form and her use not only of Dolly Parton lyrics but also of quotes and of memories of Parton, I think that this poem needed to be pushed to the next level. Several of the stanzas seemed expected and even a bit too easy, namely “She loves / to write songs.” I think that the final stanza offered a window into a more intriguing and inventive take on the subject: what does it mean to imagine one’s self, and not apologize?

Guest Judge Duane Gordon: My favorite. I believe this is the only one that mentioned the one thing of which she is proudest: her songwriting. Also, the line about the poem's narrator's country-music-hating father watching her show expressed Dolly's ability to cross boundaries and appeal to most segments of society. It was also a very simple piece that still managed to communicate a lot -- as many of Dolly's best works do. For example, each verse of "I Will Always Love You" is only about 25 words long and the chorus is nothing more than the title repeated twice, but it stands out as one of the most heartwrenching lyrics ever written. The song's complexity is in part due to its simplicity -- emotion put to paper without any more words than necessary. Similarly, this piece gets its point across economically. But most importantly, the last line showed an understanding that she was created by and for herself and lives unapologetically as herself, which is probably the best summary of her personality that you could find.

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Project Verse Update!

2009-07-11T20:45:00.000-07:00

The Project Verse Curveball required poets to write a tribute poem to the legendary Dolly Parton. Poets were required to use lyrics from at least two songs written by Dolly Parton. Two poets only met the assignment halfway. Who? Which poems? Tune in to find out.

"Wreckage" in Ducts & Duhamel Interview

2009-07-09T21:12:00.000-07:00

Check out "Wreckage" in the current issue of Ducts. "Wreckage" is from my chapbook manuscript. Beth Gylys read the manuscript, and she had this to say:
The collection is powerful and hard to read, and you should be proud of yourself for having the courage to write those poems.

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Denise Duhamel interview in BOMB.

Curveball: Guest Judges Emma Bolden and Duane Gordon

2009-07-08T04:40:00.000-07:00

As mentioned in the Project Verse Curveball assignment, there are two guest judges this week. One guest judge is completing the standard weekly guest judge responsibility of critiquing each poem. The second guest judge is an expert in all things Dolly Parton, and he is going to judge each poem's worthiness of being labeled a Dolly tribute poem.

Emma Bolden is the author of three chapbooks of poetry: How to Recognize a Lady, published as part of Edge by Edge, the third in Toadlily Press' Quartet Series; The Mariner's Wife, from Finishing Line Press; and The Sad Epistles, from Dancing Girl Press. Her manuscript, Malificae, was named a semi-finalist for the Perugia Press Prize and the Cleveland State University Poetry Center's First Book Prize; poems from the manuscript were also named a distinguished entry in the Campbell Corner Poetry Prize competition. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including Prairie Schooner, the Indiana Review, The Greensboro Review, Feminist Studies, Verse, Guernica, and Redivider, as well as on Linebreak.com. Emma is a visiting assistant professor of English at Georgetown College, where she also serves as the poetry editor of the Georgetown Review. Once, she dyed her hair red just to be like Jolene. Click here to visit her blog.

T. Duane Gordon has spent more than a dozen years with the hobby of being editor and publisher of Dollymania.net: The Online Dolly Parton Newsmagazine, the oldest continually operating online resource dedicated to Dolly Parton and the Internet’s only regularly updated website about her. Content from the site has been used as source material for Country Music Television, CNN’s Larry King Live, the U.S. Library of Congress and even Dolly’s current official tour book. Three years ago, Dolly joked during a public appearance at Dollywood: “I'm sure anybody wants to know anything about me you can ask Duane. I have to call him to see what I'm gonna do next!" Duane’s formal training is in the field of journalism, and his first career was as an award-winning newspaper reporter, photographer and editor. His second career found him in the sector of nonprofit administration, where his present “day job” is executive director and CEO of the Middletown Community Foundation, a multimillion-dollar grantmaking agency. Click here to visit Dollymania.

Project Verse: CURVEBALL!

2009-07-05T22:24:00.000-07:00

CURVEBALL ASSIGNMENT

Competitors, did you really think you were going to get a week off?

You see a picture of country music legend Dolly Parton, because she is the focus of your curveball assignment. If you don't know anything about Dolly, well, I think that is about to change.

You are writing a poem paying tribute to Dolly for your curveball assignment. You are free to explore any part of Dolly's life in your poem: Dolly the Singer / Dolly the Songwriter / Dolly the Actress / Dolly the Entrepreneur.

You have 75 lines or less to write your Dolly Tribute poem.

No form constraints, but there are restrictions.

RESTRICTIONS:
You must use lyrics from at least two songs written by Dolly.
Lyrics from "I Will Always Love You," "Jolene," and "Coat of Many Colors" are off limits.
Using Dolly lyrics in the poem's title or as an epigraph won't suffice.
At the bottom of your poem you need to identify the songs used.

There are two guest judges for the curveball assignment. One guest judge is critiquing the poetics of your work, and she happens to be a Dolly fan as well. The second guest judge is an expert of all things Dolly, and he will judge your poem on its worthiness to be called a Dolly tribute poem. Tune in Wednesday to find out their identities!

By the way, competitors, I am working on a project with the first guest judge mentioned. We're in search of 50 poems paying tribute to Dolly. The winner of the curve ball assignment will have his/her poem be part of the 50 poem project.

Make it work, and make it work well.

Two Poems in Oranges & Sardines

2009-07-03T21:58:00.000-07:00

The latest issue of O&S contains two of my poems: "Stuck" and "Drunk Dialing With Denise Duhamel." Didi Menendez does fantastic work with all her publications; she's publishing royalty.

"Stuck" is from a collaboration project. I swap lines from Denise Duhamel poems with another poet. Each line received has to be the first line in each poem we write. The project has been good times.