Oh the places you'll go

A belated wrapup of blogs I was reading during National Poetry Writing Month, plus somebody saying really smart things that help newcomers (students of all ages) "get" poems:

Poeta y Diwata is the blog of Barbara Jane Reyes. She weighs in on a number of cultural events ranging from Filipino/a books to the recent Star Trek reboot. But during April, she had an ongoing sequence called "Poem: For the City that Nearly Broke Me," ultimately containing 12 parts. Go read.

Mairi's Secret Poems from the Times Literary Supplement is a wonderful project, taking a line or phrase or couple of sentences from the aforementioned periodical and using it/them to spark an entire poem. Her efforts continue into May, so continue to visit for new poems.

Mike Theune talks a lot about Structure and Surprise, centering in large part on the Turn, the necessary moment at which things shift in a poem. Visit his blog for micro-essays on specific poets and how the structure of their verse is as important as their word choice.

UPDATE: In the comments section, Barbara Jane let me know that her sequence is ongoing as well.

NaPoWriMo Bonus Post #11

While at Stone Pigeon last night, I heard Ryk McIntyre do a love poem from a chupacabra. I'd already planned to do my Monsterpocalypse haiku, but I was inspired to write a fourth one on the spot.

Relativity haiku #4
for Ryk McIntyre

Love is half monster,
and it's the part that looks like
us that frightens us.

NaPoWriMo Bonus Post #10

OK, I missed two or three of these, so you get three complete haiku from this morning, all sparked by meditations on Monsterpocalypse.

Relativity haiku #1

Monsterpocalypse:
massive urban destruction
one one-thousandth scale


Relativity haiku #2

Three heads? Check. Lasers?
Check. Tentacles? Check. Game night.
Everything's normal.


Relativity haiku #3

We all want power.
We pretend to grow out of
smashing block towers.

NaPoWriMo Bonus Post #9

Middle and end portions of a reverse-sonnet titled "This one time I will tell you"

full of teeth and closing when
I recalled the mouse caught earlier
down in the basement,
felt it burst between my molars,
...........
everything to do with putting one
foot in front of the other, praying
the floor will not pull back like a tongue.

NaPoWriMo Elsewhere

I'm doing this two-post-per-day thing, but there are a handful of folks who I'm also checking out daily (usually thanks to the ease of an RSS feed, but I'll visit their blogs on my own regardless):

Oscar Bermeo has an ongoing series titled "Anything to Declare?" that is worth comparing and contrasting (I think his interesting subtitle for each piece - Version x - asks for a compare and contrast).

Karin Gottshall runs Cafe Babblecat, which remains one of my favorite blogs to pop in at. I like the combination of poetry bits (the mouse poems in particular are great), little memoirish notes, crazy games, and photography experimental and traditional.

Lindsay Penelope Illich has a number of "Evening Poems," most dealing with motherhood. She's got some polls up asking for opinions on possible titles for 14 of them right now. A good read - take the time.

Of course you can look at my profile to see whose blogs I follow, but these are three folks I wanted to highlight briefly for poetry or otherwise creative writing that I've been enjoying on a daily basis.

NaPoWriMo Bonus Post #8

Someday I'd like to work on a video game. A few things that I'd incorporate (not all the ideas I have, since these ideas are more likely to be stolen than ones for poems):

1. Have an avatar creator that is incorporated into the storyline. If the game is to be dreamlike or surreal, have a voiceover talking about a dream s/he had in which s/he was molding his/her own face, like clay. If it's more realistic, perhaps use backstory questions as a way to semi-randomly assign features (e.g. "Are you a tough guy?" Affirmative answer gives the avatar a scar).

2. A game that involves dimensional travel through mirrors. If you fix a problem in one world, another problem arises in the other world. You can never fix all of them. Insert plenty of revelations for the player, such as realizing that the [highest government official] of the current world must be corrupt, because the other one is a saint.

3. Offering players the chance to play as three different characters who will ultimately come into conflict. Don't tell the player this until the conflict is immanent, at which point imbalances will already have arisen. The player cannot "lose" this situation, but it may turn out differently than s/he would have planned.

NaPoWriMo Bonus Post #7

Lucky #7. Rather than give you something new, here's two poems of mine that will appear in the joint Crystal-JeFF Icarus production:

Icarus the Young

Schematic embryo. Star-crossed fetus.
Small as a period, a cluster of cells could not stop
Growing, could not but motion slowly
In the unnamed womb; were molded
By flesh-electric waves, programmed
With illusions of a user, else we might
Say these cells would soon be tricked
Into the light, as though any had choice
In the face of the atomic.

(first published in the 2008 Poetry at Round Top Anthology)


Icarus Interviews Orville

I: Were you close?
O: Wilbur and me? Closer than any brothers you’d ever meet. We even married sisters.
I: I mean to the sun.
O: Well, I was only ten feet off the ground that first time.
I: Did you feel the heat?
O: It was December.
I: ...
O: Wilbur had the most controlled flight – 853 feet.
I: ...
O: Of course, it wasn’t our only attempt.
I: ...
O: ...
[Interviewer leaves]
O: Yes, in all my veins, I felt it.

(never published in any journal, though several places asked for a copy of the chapbook when it comes out based on this poem)

NaPoWriMo Bonus Post #6

Opening and closing (in this draft anyway) to a poem tentatively titled "The Tangible Inn":

At the Tangible Inn, M. Abstract takes a vacation...

...The hundredth door is made of warnings, and the lock
is made of fear. But behind the door is a black horse
M. Abstract wants to ride, so he will enter, he will ride
across the dome of Ymir's skull, he will be thrown.
Come lunes, M. Abstract will return to work missing
an eye. We all know the story by now. We do not ask anymore.

NaPoWriMo Bonus Post #5

One section from a short sequence I started writing this morning. The working title is "Lives of the Immortals," as in the general concept of one who lives forever as well as the specific concept of elite warriors in the ancient Persian Empire.

2

consumed by birds we were
rebirthed mid-air and useless
falling then falling no correction
possible in the amorphous
wind

NaPoWriMo Bonus Post #4

[sandbagging: this is more (stereo)typically "slammish" than I usually write, but you have to have variety - and with any luck, there's some nuance in the position presented here]

A reading from the book of Mendeleev

I don't know any snakes looking skyward

for explanations of their vestigial legs

Nor any whales who, surfacing,

blowhole prayers regarding their horselike hips

And while I know a few primates

who crack brachiating arms across their chests

and insist they are not related to apes

My appendix remains confused

by hymnals

and my full set of ribs

resonates soundly with this verse

My brothers and sisters,

My god, if such exists, did not make me in his image

Because if I am in the image of God,

then God is a more ideal version of me

and based on humanity's track record,

my god, my God is the scariest motherfucker in existence

My god, if such exists, does not lie

in the sterility of dogma,

did not create and is not interested in

perfection

My god, if such exists, is not

in the insoluble words of a book

but in the decaying of its pages,

the echo of voices not reciting

but renewing

My god, if such exists, did not plan

the oak tree, but thrives in photosynthesis

My god, if such exists, rides the spectrum

which includes male and female,

knowing it's not just frogs and fish

who sometimes need to change sex

My god, if such exists, is the blooming

but not the bloom,

the exploding

but not the explosion

My god, if such exists, is all verb,

ill-defined, beyond boxes

textual or ideological,

is perhaps only in my head,

is perhaps everywhere,

meaning nowhere,

meaning everywhere,

is paradoxical,

unowned,

not beautiful

but beautifying,

not dead

but dying,

not risen

but rising

Is quantum, knowing everything

you could possibly do at any instant

but leaving the choice up to you

and so does not wonder

why anyone would reject history, knowledge,

a chance to improve

In some version of this world,

we don't

In some, we do

NaPoWriMo Bonus Post #3

a freewrite to David Bowie's "Hallo Spaceboy (PSB Remix)" from the Best of Bowie album:

government pyramid masonic sonic explosion starfield improvewaves flucutate zeus with eyelids drooping lightning in a nebula nubular lar lar lar lar flock above daydreams as in trutledoves shells unflolding moondust trickles down economic relapse of the internior monologue say adios say hasta luego and lie burning burning tra la rome tra la travail avail hail hale hearty nevermind here we go again picking up speed spicking up leeds up reeds up feeeling feeds feeling ash buries pompeii and in the mirror of bronze convex vex aggravating feelings again feedings again the sluggoth my dear boy the sluggoth dreaming again below the sea the sea of stars the stars of the stars of the fish the fingers the legs the arms my god it's growing the arms wriggling like octopi the gnarling universe too large and grinding gaxes ashes axes yggdrasil flipside hello hello hello do you tell you willliam you lancelot and fell lancelot and golden lancelot and the knight green swinging like a galaxy [and the music player just crashed]

NaPoWriMo Bonus Post #2

The closing lines of a spoken-word piece I began today:

There is no rim, so
He bounces the ball, throws it, and chases.
Bounces the ball, throws it, and chases.
The ball. The boy. The ghetto. The world.
Until one or another goes flat.

NaPoWriMo Bonus Post #1

So here's my pledge, which I will assuredly break: That I will write a blog post each day in April on some variable topic. Furthermore, I shall make a bonus post containing the kernel of some creative endeavor - lines from a poem, a concept for an extended series, a nice title, the first sentence of a story (which, since this is National Poetry Month, we'll pretend is the first sentence in a narrative poem).

Incidentally, I have serious issues with National Poetry Month as a concept, similar to the objections to Black History Month and so forth. I can, however, have fun with this, and so I shall.

Today's bonus: The two sentences to a story:

From the age of four through the age of ten, Jonathan William Bradford was convinced that his middle name was actually Fucking, an appelation not completely undeserved. Little Jonathan Fucking Bradford had certain habits and inclinations that rendered past nomenclatures (e.g. "The Menace") insufficient.