Somewhere, there is
a pile of scissors,
all waiting for
a guiding hand.
Safety scissors compare
stubby tips with nail scissors;
surgical scissors and kitchen shears
talk over finer points of tendon, bone.
All have platinum-white blades,
gold handles. All lie jumbled
in a drawer, waiting, hoping
to someday be
useful.
To be linked later today at Open Link Night at dVerse Poets.
… because April is time for NaPoWriMo, which was so much fun last year. Similar to NaNoWrIMo but geared toward those of us who wri pos rather than nos (when it comes to fiction, I was always pretty good at setting the scene and developing characters—I just couldn’t figure out what should happen to them), NaPoWriMo is a daily writing challenge created by poet Maureen Thorson in 2003.
Each day in April, a prompt is posted, ranging from a general topic to a very specific—and sometimes very unusual—poetic form. You can write based on that prompt or just write any kind of poem. If you don’t have a blog or a website and don’t wish to create one—or if you don’t want to post unpublished poems on it—that’s all there is to it.
But to my mind, the real fun comes if you do have a blog and are willing to post poems there (more on that in a minute). I did NaPoWriMo for the first time last year and was just astounded by how much new traffic I got that way, and by how many outstanding poets I encountered for the first time by bouncing around the page of links to participants’ sites. Some of those connections remain to this day, and I treasure them.
The whole experience was so reinvigorating and enlightening—and fun. I highly recommend it.
A word to those who are new to poetry or who are writing again after a long lapse: Go for it. If you’re thinking you could never post a poem and thus make it available for public comment, please know that there are (in my experience) very few trolls among the writers and readers of poetry blogs.
Members of this loose community all seem to understand how difficult it can be to express so much in such a compressed space. Whatever your style and whatever your level of experience, you are sure to find appreciative readers this way, and any suggestions you might receive will be gentle and constructive. April would be a great time to give it a try!
And, for the more experienced, a word about the relative wisdom/foolhardiness of posting poems that you might want to submit for publication someday: I know the risks, but I go for it anyway—weekly year-round, and daily in April.
Why?
For one thing, there no longer seems to be ironclad consensus that a blog-posted poem counts as a previously published poem (which, as you probably know, is the kiss of death as far as many publications are concerned). Things seem to be easing up a bit, and if you ask around—as I have—you might find—as I have—that editors at some very reputable publications will consider poems that have been posted on your own blog (as opposed to in online literary publications).
Also, the poems I write for challenges of this type don’t tend to be the ones I submit for publication. Sometimes the exercise is enough, and it doesn’t feel as if I need to do anything further with them. Other times, they might be perfect additions to a chapbook manuscript (and for chapbooks, it’s totally fine if individual poems have been published elsewhere) or a springboard for something else.
And it’s just fun (which I think I’ve mentioned). It’s so much fun that I almost don’t mind it if I am “wasting” an entire month of poems. That is, even if they all bear the dreaded PP badge and are banished to the land of wind and ghosts, it would still be worth it. And again, no poem is ever wasted—because one that I post in April might spark an idea for something else entirely a few months down the road.
Also in April (and again in November) is a poem-a-day challenge through Writer’s Digest. I’ve done that one before and have enjoyed it but will not be doing it this time. I feel pretty busy lately and would like to focus on just one daily writing challenge; two felt like a bit much last April.
I chose NaPoWriMo for this year because the action is mainly at the individual participants’ blogs, whereas the Writer’s Digest one lives mainly in the comments section of a particular blog at the WD site. There are workarounds—you can certainly post on your own blog as well as in the comments—but the daily ping ping ping of new visitors and the fun of visiting other poets’ blogs make NaPoWriMo impossible for me to resist.
To each his or her own, though, and that comments section at Poetic Asides—the WD blog that hosts the other challenge I’m talking about—does become its own sort of community, which has its own appeal. It just depends what you’re after, and you should definitely check out both.
Will I see you in April? Whether you take up a daily challenge or not, I hope it’s a big—and fun—month for you and your writing!
God was in the hush under
the soft-needled pine tree that
reaches out over the sidewalk
and is now freighted with snow,
late-winter snow, wet and heavy.
Stop, I told my son. Look up.
Isn’t it quiet? Do you feel it?
But then a man, whose
irritated presence I had not
felt, appeared beside us
and then in front, having seen
that we and our grocery cart
were not going to step aside,
let him pass without
having to step into the street,
or a high drift, spilling snow down
inside his boots. Then I was
a spiritual dilettante, an oblivious
seeker of capital-E Experiences,
and everything was complicated
again, not simple after all.
Over the canned announcements on the train,
she continues to tell me about the birth of Titans,
how Cronus swallowed his own babies, and how
you would think the world began with Zeus,
but he was once a baby, and the world began
instead with Gaea, Mother Earth. I wanted
to tell her that it’s all myth—not just those
ancient stories, but others, too:
the patient turtle that holds us upright,
we people made of clay and rib. So many
ways to organize a world. So many things
to understand, however we can.
Left unfinished is any idea of how
to tell her our myths, too, the ones
I spent Sundays learning, week by week,
craft by craft. Apostles’ boats of Ivory
soap, woven willow twigs signifying
something (baskets, perhaps, for loaves
and fishes?). It’s different when
the myths are still living, still asking
to be believed, when there is
a prickle you can’t deny
before you throw away the Bible tract,
when the church bells sing a song
you still remember.
Someday, I want to give her
these things, too: a giant boat,
a pillar of salt, a god-man-ghost
leaping, unseen but recognized,
welcomed.
In Dallas there is
an empty place
equal to nothing
I’ve ever known.
It glitters at night.
Flashes of neon,
LED, a million
separate impulses
luring the eye
to come and see
nothing.
An open range
with no cattle,
a banquet set
for nobody.
In the historic
West End, near
the place where
JFK was shot,
a bus drives over
brick streets.
It is spotted like a cow.
It moos.
Somewhere in my head,
an argument begins.
There is something here.
Every place has something.
I know it is here—I saw it;
I took many cab rides
in order to see it.
Undoubtedly, this is so.
Undoubtedly, I am being
unfair.
And yet,
memory insists upon
clouds and wind over
Stemmons Freeway from
the smoked glass windows
of the Hilton Anatole, where
cowboy ghosts could wander
for days, unseen, unfelt,
lost
amidst glories of Asian art.
To be linked later today for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets.
Also, I did enjoy Dallas, and I hope no one is hurt by the rather jaundiced view in this poem. It is just one facet of my impression of that city, and I could easily write an entire chapbook about all the great experiences I had there.
Even the hotel I reference was lovely and very, very impressive — just separated from everything by a giant freeway. I am used to walking around big cities and exploring them that way, so this is my impression of a city that has many delights but also big stretches that are only navigable by car.
Because nothing takes hold,
I build a tiny box, fence it over
with wires and bells until I have
a new kind of robot that won’t
do my chores but will buzz
a little bit, and chime.
For Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. Also, please read the post right before this one — especially the last paragraph — and let me know if you’d like to participate.
Many thanks to fabulous poet Jennifer Bullis for tagging me to be part of The Next Big Thing Blog Hop, which means I get to spotlight a current writing project of mine via a series of interview questions. Here’s my Q&A:
1. What is the title of your book? Is it a working title?
My chapbook is called Drivers and Passengers, which is definitely a working title. It expresses the concept, but it might be a little flat. I also have poems in the voice of a cloud and a crow, so I suppose I could be arty and call it Drivers, Passengers, Cloud & Crow (could—but probably will not). I meant to also have the road itself and a hillside, but these didn’t quite come off. If I decide to revisit that idea, I definitely, definitely think I should add those to the title, too. I like to use all the letters! I also briefly considered In Cars—yes, from the Gary Numan song—but it sounds a little too clever to me, and it suggests the ‘80s, whereas the narrative poems in this chapbook are set in the present day.
2. Where did the idea for your book come from?
I’ve attempted chapbooks many times, but it’s always been an after-the-fact deal where I look through poems that I like a lot and try to wrestle them into a theme. I’ve never gotten one published. So this time, I decided to actually follow the advice to write around a fairly focused theme from the outset. We were on a road trip when I began thinking along these lines, and I started to think about all the cars around us and how all the people in them have stories that I’ll never know. That concept has intrigued me ever since I was a kid.
3. Who and/or what inspired you to write your book?
Because these are realistic, narrative poems, I wanted to write about people in cars on an actual road and let some of the geographic details and local issues come into play. We happened to be driving on I-70 in Ohio at the time, in an area where fracking is both a boon to the economy and a concern for the environment. Some of that entered in, and some of the personas borrow from actual viewpoints I’ve heard. I tried to be respectful to everyone and also muddy things a bit so there’s no direct resemblance to any real people I know and love.
4. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
Exactly one month, which I think is a great time frame for a chapbook. Between two-pagers and some cases where I wrote two poems in one day, I ended up with just enough extra that I now have the luxury of focusing on what I think are the 24 to 28 best pages. Also, it felt like just enough time to let things develop without getting maybe a little too hung up on the project and unable to put it down.
5. What genre does your book fall under?
Poetry. Specifically, narrative persona poetry.
6. What books [I’m going to amend this slightly] would you compare yours to in your chosen genre?
There are so many great persona poems, but the one that first comes to mind is Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess.” I read this in college, and it knocked me on my ear to learn that poems, too, could have unreliable narrators. If you want a concentrated dose of contemporary narrative poetry—some with personas—I recommend Naugatuck River Review (and not just because I was in one issue).
7. What is a one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Many people who are not the poet herself drive around and ponder things.
8. Do you have a publisher, or will you self-publish your book or seek representation?
Seeking a publisher, for sure. My plan is to polish this up and enter it in a couple of spring contests.
9. What actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie or to read your work for a recording?
I’m so bad at this game! I think one of the personas could be played by Channing Tatum if he went kind of down-market (and also didn’t take his shirt off). Leighton Meester could play one of the young women because I understand her upbringing was pretty hardscrabble. Frances McDormand might be in there somewhere, and I’ve seen less “done” photos of Patricia Heaton that remind me of one persona in particular. (You should know, by the way, that other than Frances McD, I first thought of these actors as Magic Mike guy, Gossip Girl … girl, and the lady from Everybody Loves Raymond.)
10. What else about your book might pique readers’ interest?
Watch in wonder as the shape-shifting poet BECOMES MORE THAN TWO DOZEN DIFFERENT PEOPLE!
And now I’m supposed to tag three to five other writers to answer these interview questions next. But … I’ve been asking around and haven’t found anyone who wants to take this on! You should know that: a) the writing can be in any genre, and b) the “book” concept can be loosened so that it applies to any big project you’d like to highlight. Any takers? (Three to five of them, perhaps?) Please let me know in the comments. Thanks!
I was out of town recently, and while checking email from a super slow FedEx Office computer at 40 cents a minute (side note: I’ve vowed — again — that this is my last business trip without some type of smartphone or at least my very heavy laptop), I got a great surprise: A poetry collection that I edited over the summer has now been published.
Signal from Static, from Chromatopia, LLC, is available on Kindle or in paperback. I knew I would receive an editing credit, but I was really floored to see my name on the cover. How gratifying!
My own ego aside, I’m excited about this book because the poetry in it is so fresh and original. There are a lot of different styles and a range of subjects, but all the poems are united by the fact that they push boundaries and are vivid and emotionally honest. I truly enjoyed reading them, and I know you will, too.
The all-star lineup of poets includes several with whom I’ve since crossed paths during Open Link Night at dVerse Poets (aka, that thing I do each Tuesday, except for this most recent one — see the first paragraph of this post).
Chromatopia, LLC is one of many endeavors by the indefatigable Anna Montgomery, who is — among other things — both a poet and a visual artist herself. It was a joy to work with her and the individual poets in this collection, and I could not be more thrilled to see it come to fruition!
The morning titans stretch themselves,
release the earth again, on its own
recognizance. We recognize these things:
Leaves. Sun. Water. Each other’s faces.
How many mental maps do we have?
How many can we carry? This is
the riddle of every morning.
I solve it day by day.
To be linked tomorrow afternoon/evening for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. (I wrote and posted it now because I’ll be in Dallas tomorrow. Ever been there? Any tips?)
Hello, friends, followers, likers, and lurkers …
The fabulous poet and blogger Jennifer Bullis, whom I “met” during last year’s NaPoWriMo, recently tagged me for a project called Blog Hop: The Next Big Thing. This is intended for those of us who have books we’re working on, shopping around, or getting ready to publish. It’s open to writers of poetry and prose, and chapbooks count — that’s what I’ll be highlighting in my own Next Big Thing post, on February 12.
In addition to answering a few interview questions, each participant is supposed to tag three to five writers to participate as well. That’s where you come in.
I know that many or most of you with whom I cross paths in the blogosphere, and especially through Open Link Night, are writers. What I don’t know is which of you have a book in the works. If that’s you, please let me know in the comments here.
Also, here’s a little “honor system” request: I believe the spirit of the exercise is that we’re calling attention to writers with whom we’ve had some interaction so that we’re saying, “Here are these great writers I know, and they’re going to tell you what they’re working on.” So I’d like to prioritize people with whom I’ve exchanged comments in the past — or at least, mutual “likes.”
I think everything should be pretty clear from Jennifer’s post (thanks again for tagging me, Jennifer!), but I can answer any questions you might have.
If I end up with more than five potential “taggees,” I’ll think of another way to highlight the writers I’m not able to include in this project.
OK … Tag — you’re it?
Marilyn Rauch Cavicchia 