May 2019 – Page 2

“To Enchant Someone Meaninglessly…”

poetry

Reviews. Yesterday I mentioned how they can draw you in, make you want to click to cart on amazon dot glom, run to your local bookstore, or — if your biblio-habits are bankrupting you — enter a hold on your interlibrary loan system.

This happened with Chelsey Minnis’ new book Baby, I Don’t Care, which I could not secure due to all the holds. So I reserved instead Poemland, an older book with no holds. And no holds barred.

As a poet, it’s always interesting to read a wide swath of different voices and styles, and boy, howdy, is Minnis’ voice and style different. In Poemland, she elopes with the ellipsis. The exclamation point doesn’t scare her, either! And the single-space thing is for more conventional types. (Check the mirror, friends!)

Although the poems are not named, they are spread out between black divider pages, so I’ll take that construct as a “poem, ” Minis-style, and give you a sample from Poemland here. Have fun! (I think that’s the point, Jeeves.)

I want to sit very calmly with my bangs curled…

But my pet monster has bitten my hand!

Life makes me sad.

So sad that I walk down the street etc.

When I read poems I don’t like them…

But I like them like pouf-roses…

I like them like gilt saws…

And I like them like dark brown ram shearling!…

To enchant someone meaninglessly…

Is like getting insulted and kissed by your riding instructor…

This is when your hair sticks to your lipstick and it is so cuckoo…

You close the bedroom-dividing curtain…

Gold smudges…and a gemstone powered engine!…

A great devalued thing is a plain life…

But I like it like a venus-fly-trap pried open with tweezers…

I like to live a hard life but I know I shouldn’t do it…

I should live an easy life or I am a fool!

The sea-crabs try to cling onto anything.

The crab fishermen don’t even want all the crab…they want

money…

Even though their mustaches are covered with ice…

If you are a person you can also be someone’s goat…

I can tell you all about it for free…

I can long remember a nastie thing…

If it is well done..

This is a present of tiny pretty scissors…

Which you must use to cut your beast hair…

I am a vile baby…

Look, death, I have so much delicious vulture food within my

chest cavity…

I look to the left and right with my eyes and then I swing the sharp

thing…

As you rise out of a cloud on a mechanized contraption…

If you open your mouth to start to complain I will fill it with

whipped cream…

There is a floating sadness nearby…

Don’t try to walk away from a little girl like me!

This is a recollection of flopped happiness…

And it is a fistfight in the rain under a held umbrella…

There is a way to smoke your cigarette and look out the window

but you’ll never get enough of it.

Chasing Today’s Hot Property

poetry

Typically, this is how it goes down: You read a review of a new poetry book (say, Chelsey Minnis’ Baby, I Don’t Care), and it intrigues you. Going on interlibrary loan, you find the book, place it on “hold,” and see you are hold number #23 on 2 books in the system.

So you get in line. If you were in England Comma Jolly Olde, you’d get in queue, but in the Very Unjolly (These Days) Estatos Disunitos, you get in line with the other 99%.

Then it dawns upon you, sun and all. This poet has written previous books (say, Poemland). So you search and find one of them on the library site’s digital catalogue and, of course, there are zero holds on it even though it is the same poet of the moment.

poemland

This is because the old book is yesterday’s news, and if there’s one thing people cannot abide, it is old news (and people).

Canaries are one thing. They read old news lining the bottom of their cages. Ditto puppies, who are traditionally trained to leak old news on the floor. Before they learn to take it outside, I mean.

Anyway, happily, the voice of the searchable poet is the same in the old book as it is in the new book’s excerpts. And if you read enough of the old books, eventually your hold on the new book will inch up the line and you will be notified that it’s ready and waiting on your beloved public library’s “reserved shelf.”

Only then you’re on to something else. Some other poet. Your interest in the old “gotta read” has waned.

Why, you wonder, is interest always waning? It’s like the interest on your savings account at the bank, which has waned to 0.86 APY.

Whatever APY means.

Pantoums: Easier Said Than Done

poetry

As most of you know, poetry, supposedly dying (see Ben Lerner’s The Hatred of Poetry for all the news unfit to print) has inched its way into The New York Times Magazine on Sundays.

This week Rita Dove selected a form I haven’t seen in a while, the pantoum. As Dove explains, it hails from Malaysian oral tradition and seems easy, but isn’t. The easier part is the ABAB rhyme scheme. The more difficult part is the shifting: “Lines 2 and 4 of each quatrain become Lines 1 and 3 in the next stanza.” Hoo, boy. Like working on a 500-piece puzzle some rainy Sunday, that.

As with haiku, it is much easier to write bad pantoums than good ones. It is also a type of writing that appeals to some poets who like a challenge (example: Allison Joseph, pictured) and repels others (example: Ken Craft, seen here hiding from pantoums), who like to control their challenges, thank you.

Here’s the poem Dove offered up this week as an excellent example of the pantoum form. If you want to read Dove’s introduction as well, take a jump down this rabbit hole.

Flirtation
By Allison Joseph

I like my tights electric blue,
my shoes of patent leather.
This dance I dance is meant for you —
I move quick as new weather.

My shoes of patent leather
shine brighter than my skin.
I move, quick as new weather,
to shed the dress I’m in.

Shining brighter than my skin,
my eyes, they say it all.
I’ll shed the dress I’m in,
let summer fabric fall.

My eyes, they see it all.
They see what’s false, what’s true.
Let summer fabric fall.
I know what we can do.

I know what’s false, what’s true.
I dance the dance that’s meant for you.
Show me what you can do.
You like my tights, electric blue.

When the Lines Are Good Enough

poetry

It is well known that some poems enchant you so much you have to read again. And again. And again, kind of like savoring a fine wine with the tongue.

Less known, maybe, is when the same thing happens with a few lines. You read them and are willing to stop reading the poem, back up, and read the lines and the lines only again. And again. And again, kind of like savoring a tall glass of cold water on a blazing summer’s day.

I got that feeling when reading Frank O’Hara last night. These opening lines:

It seems far away and gentle now
the morning miseries of childhood
and its raining calms over the schools

The first of six stanzas, and none of the remaining five hit me like this one, so maybe it’s me, and maybe it’s personal, and maybe what puts the “fine” in my “wine” doesn’t so much in yours.

That’s poetry. Poetry that “seems far away and gentle now.”

The Trouble with Spring

marketing poetry poetry

Ah, spring, inspired by the month of May, which brings to mind May baskets, the maypole of old, and flowers encouraged by rains of recently departed April.

Spring inspires not only birds and bees, but poets. Any survey course of poetry will show you as much. Spring is icumen, cuccu (or something like that).

The spring-inspired poet lifts his pencil and smooths out a clean page in his poetry journal. Thoughts, dreams, reflections find their fertile way to paper.

Cross outs, add-ins, revisions. Cut to the bone. (OK. To the stem, then.) It’s spring and the imagination, like perennials, is sprouting full force.

Type 3-5 poems into a single Word document, PDF, or rich text format. Go to your favorite poetry journal. And another. And a third, on and on like rising dandelions, and behold the weedy words of the season:

There are presently no open calls for submissions.

In the words of the poets of old: May Day, May Day, poetry markets are sinking!

And in the words of The Happenings, “See You in September.” Your baby named “Ample Poetry Markets” has gone not only for the spring, but for the summer.

Marketing work is no summer vacation, friends. It’s about to become work.