I summon Yssrs, the Orc-Gnome

Dear Scott,

Get writing or the awesome power of Yssrs, the Orc-Gnome shall be unleashed on thy ass.

Sincerely,

Yer Fans.


Im in Ur hwase, reedin Ur book

Poetics & Politics - Marge Piercy

Another favorite poet and all around interesting person. Poet, novelist, feminist, cat lover. She has a quote in her FAQ on her website that pretty much sums up the way I feel about being a dual (poetry/fiction) writer.

What's the difference between writing fiction and writing poetry?
"Poetry comes far more directly from my life. Basically I get to exorcise my autobiographical impulses in poetry. I explore other people’s lives in my fiction. Often for me fiction embodies the choices I did not make, the paths I did not follow. Poems are built out of sounds and silence. Rhythm and sound values are far more important in poetry than in fiction. Images are central. Poetry to me is more organic, more passionate, more spiritual, more intense. Fiction is about time – what happens if you make one or another choice. What happens next. And then and then and then, as a result of every choice made, what happens? Fiction to me is an art of empathy and imagination. Each novel is like a small world I inhabit for a period of two or three years, and then move on to another small world. The way I work, I learn each time about different things – areas I would never have studied for my own life."

Marge has a wonderful audiobook of political poems called "Louder We Can't Hear You (Yet)". When she reads, her voice is impassioned by her work. She sometimes prefaces the poem with a story or antidote, or closes with the same, and the little asides add richness to the reading. Included is the poem from her collection "Colors Passing Through Us" titled 'No One Came Home', about 9/11. The stark simplicity of a lost cat starts the poem, it goes on to imagine a slice of time in the life of ordinary people on that day. The minimalism of the poem, the matter-of-factness is what makes it so powerful.

Marge Piercy's poems never flinch. She tackles abortion, war, the intricacies of being female, and the Patriot Act with sharp insight that never loses its compassion, even as she slices her topic to the bone.

Sneak and Peak
by Marge Piercy

Under the Patriot Act, any strong arm
of law enforcement
has the right to enter your home
while you sleep
while you are out
to enter covertly and search
under suspicion you might
be hiding something
under the bed
among your boxers or thongs
on your computer among the porn.

Are you patriotic?
Do you submit lists of what you read
to the F.B.I. without waiting to be asked?
Do you spy on your neighbors checking
if they play Middle Eastern music
if they smoke other than tobacco
if they read the wrong books –all u.s
right thinking people know what
they are. If they have too much sex
or sex of the wrong kind – all u.s.
right thinking people know exactly
what we mean. Do you believe
in the separation of Church and Hate?
Evil our President says is everywhere
and obvious and must be invaded
mostly by Black adolescents
whose morality is dubious anyway
unless they die as heroes. They’ll
come home to unemployment
if they do come home.

We, your born-again FBI
have collected receipts from your
restaurant meals for the past five years.
You have ordered hummus six times,
falafel twice and lamb four times
which is suspect because your
President eats only beef and ham.
What are you planning to do with that
sesame tahini you purchased at Stop
& Slop? Can you justify this act?

Your credit card records indicate
you purchased 8 bags of fertilizer
on April 11 at 17 hundred oh 8.
Fertilizer can make bombs.
You also purchased nails --
material for anti-personnel devices.
Who but a terrorist would need
these dangerous supplies?

You have turned off the television
48 times while Our President spoke
words of wisdom and Christian endeavor.
During the State of the Union address
you were observed on your couch
making derogatory faces and obscene
remarks. You have emailed quotes
from our sacred leader miscalling
him Shrub. This is now punishable
by death. You may not criticize
the President nor his lady Laura
nor his omniscient veep
the great grey Cheney of oil
nor the secretary of defense
Our Donald whose brain shines
bright as titanium solid
between his perked up ears
into which every men’s and women’s
room in the country is directly
bugged. You may be detained
on suspicion of being suspicious
You want to protest?
That’s grounds enough.
You are under arrest.
You have no right to remain
silent, to seek counsel
or to defend yourself. Welcome
to the New Inquisition.


Copyright, 2004, Middlemarsh, Inc.
Louder: We Can't Hear You (Yet!)
Publisher: Leapfrog Press
Total playing time 63:24
ISBN 0-9728984-2-5


I first heard "The Day My Mother Died" on Writer's Almanac, read by Garrison Keillor in that wonderful, rich voice of his. The poem struck right at the heart of what happens when we struggle with an unexpected loss. No angels, no glimpse of Death, just an ordinary day gone differently than planned. That is what I like about Marge Piercy, the ability to take events the reader might ignore, and show them to us in a new light.


The day my mother died
by Marge Piercy

I seldom have premonitions of death.
That day opened like any
ordinary can of tomatoes.

The alarm drilled into my ear.
The cats stirred and one leapt off.
The scent of coffee slipped into my head

like a lover into my arms and I sighed,
drew the curtains and examined
the face of the day.

I remember no dreams of loss.
No dark angel rustled ominous wings
or whispered gravely.

I was caught by surprise
like the trout that takes the fly
and I gasped in the fatal air.

You were gone suddenly as a sound
fading in the coil of the ear
no trace, no print, no ash

just the emptiness of stilled air.
My hunger feeds on itself.
My hands are stretched out

to grasp and find only their
own weight bearing them down
toward the dark cold earth.


From Colors Passing Through Us, Alfred A. Knopf Publishers, NY, 2003.
Copyright, Marge Piercy, Middlemarsh, Incorporated, 2003.

The Buffalo Connection – Robert Creeley

Way back when I attended the University of Buffalo (SUNY Buffalo) I had a chance to listen to poet Robert Creeley read his work. Creeley was an English faculty member for about thirty years, resurrecting the idea of a Black Mountain College II in Buffalo. His short, sparse style of poem appealed to me. I would have to name him as an influence on my own work, but he was an influence that wouldn't surface until many years after I heard him read.

Robert Creeley (1926 - 2005) was a contemporary of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Jackson Pollock and included them in his circle of friends. The interconnectedness of the arts at that time shows in Creeley's poetry, it is often terse with no excess verbiage to weigh it down. He often wrote poems about family, love, and personal issues that radiated with intensity despite the leanness of his words. His work reflects his interest in the process of poetry, over the finished product. It's like getting a glimpse inside the mind of a poet without having to worry about the mess.


The Measure
by Robert Creeley

I cannot
move backward
or forward.
I am caught

in the time
as measure.
What we think
of we think of—

of no other reason
we think than
just to think—
each for himself.


Creeley made use of line and stanza breaks to increase the emotional impact of his work. In 'The Measure', he breaks the first stanza with 'I am caught', letting the words carry over into the next stanza and line, setting up a natural resonance. "I am caught//in the time as measure". In the last stanza he uses the same technique but instead employs a dash to carry the reader through. "just to think—each for himself".


Inside My Head
by Robert Creeley

Inside my head a common room,
a common place, a common tune,
a common wealth, a common doom

inside my head. I close my eyes.
The horses run. Vast are the skies,
and blue my passing thoughts' surprise

inside my head. What is this space
here found to be, what is this place
if only me? Inside my head, whose face?


Here Creeley uses a playfulness to cover the intensity of what he is trying to say. The rhymes and repetition lull the reader into thinking the poem is all lightness. The use of enjambment between the first and second stanza, then in the last stanza lets the punch sneak up on the reader. 'a common doom / / inside my head'. By the last stanza, the end rhymes are irrelevant, and the emotional plea takes the forefront. 'what is this place / if only me?'


I Know a Man
by Robert Creely

As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking, -- John, I

sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what

can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,

drive, he sd, for
christ's sake, look
out where yr going.

"I Know a Man" is one of Creeley's most well known poems. Startling in it's skeletal framework, it uses humor to deftly deflect the reader away from the speaker's mania and onto 'John'. The staccato effect is helped along by Creeley's use of 'sd' and 'yr' in place of entire words, and the use of enjambment to drive the reader forward at a rapid pace. You know the narrator is prone to ramble. You know 'John' is a man of few words, and even those words are dispersed grudgingly.
SUNY Buffalo keeps a collection of his work and mini Internet shrine to Creeley located HERE.

There are also numerous interviews that showcase the man's personality, humor, and dedication to his craft.

An Interview with Creeley

Courtland Review Interview

Paris Review Interview(.pdf file)

Thinking Blogger Awards

Gabriele tagged me for a Thinking Blogger Award, for which I say mille grazie! Hopefully I can continue to wax philosophical on poetry, writing and life, and that people will continue to find it interesting/scary.

Here are the rules if you choose to participate:

1. If you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.
2. Link to The Thinking Blog so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. Optional: Display your Thinking Blogger Award with a link to the post that you wrote.

I don't have all the blogs I frequent on my sidebar, I'll have to remedy that for the ones I tag, because they truly are thought provoking. I've tried to pick ones that haven't been tagged yet, that I read on a regular basis.

1. Whatever, John Scalzi. An eclectic mix of opinions on writing, politics, childrearing and life on earth, served up with a hefty side of sarcasm. Author Scalzi pulls no punches, he gives his opinion and stands by it. He also does some interesting Photoshop experiments on innocent pictures.

2. Notes From The Geek Show, Hal Duncan. Author of Vellum and a philosophical rambler after my own heart. Sometimes posts long dissertations on things like "propositions regarding necessary existence". C'mon, you know you always wanted to argue the details of Pascal's Wager in a public forum!

3. Woodblock Dreams, Annie Bissett. A Moku Hanga printmaker who posts her artistic process, warts and all, for the rest of us to see. Annie produces some wonderful prints and isn't afraid to tackle political subjects in her art work.

4. WWdN: In Exile, Wil Wheaton's Blog. A blog for your inner geek, Wil discusses his writing, technology, gaming, and the difficulty of shaking Star Trek. Another actor/writer/geekboy who's not afraid to poke fun at himself.

5. Poetry Thursday, various authors. Daily poetry prompts, news, and all around interesting articles. The goal of Poetry Thursday is to read, enjoy, and share poetry. I can do that. :)

Reading World Poets

Lately I've been reading Women Poets: From Antiquity to Now by Aliki Barnstone. It's an interesting collection ranging from a lone Sumerian poet through Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Persian, Indian, African, Chinese, Japanese, European, Native American and even one translated Egyptian Hieroglyph poem.

The time span ranges from about 2300 BC to poets born in the 1950's. The range of voices is fascinating. Although the poets are separated from us by hundreds and sometimes thousands of years, the poems themselves transcend time. They speak of love, hate, relationships with husbands and lovers, children, the pain of growing old, regret and betrayal.

In the introduction the Barnstones speak of the sense of loss in Latin poetry. We know women wrote and painted, but little has come down to us because of the culture of the time. Women's arts were not worth preserving. Contrast this with the reverence Eastern peoples held for their poets, male and female, and a subtle difference is seen in the writing. There is boldness, a straightforwardness to the writings of the Chinese and Japanese women. Their poems are as powerful as those of Basho, Issa, or Buson.

From the Diary of Izumi Shikibu
by Izumi Shikibu


On nights when hail
falls noisily
on bamboo leaves
I completely hate
to sleep alone.


From 18 Verses Sung To A Tatar Reed Whistle
by Ts'ai Yen

II
A Tatar chief forced me to become his wife,
And took me far away to Heaven's edge.
Ten thousand clouds and mountains
Bar my road home,
And whirlwinds of dust and sand
Blow for a thousand miles.
Men here are as savage as giant vipers,
And strut about in armor, snapping their bows.
As I sing the second stanza I almost break the lutestrings.
Will broken, heart broken, I sing to myself.


One of my favorites comes from India, a classical Sanskrit poem that is dated from somewhere between 700 and 1050 AD. It lists no title; the author is identified as Mahodahi.


On the holy day of your going out to war,
the sky is black with dust
which the chisel of your horses' feet
ground from the earth.
The sun's charioteer is lost,
his steeds rock from horizon to horizon,
stumbling off track
and the sun on its longer voyage
is melancholy.


The poet paints a vivid picture of a loved one gone to war, and how the day stretches endlessly as she waits for his return. The sense of pending loss hangs over the poem like a knife. She has little hope that he will return, 'black with dust', 'the sun's charioteer is lost', and 'stumbling off track' all lead us to the inevitable conclusion.

I find inspiration in reading these missives from the past. It translates over into other forms of writing. How does my female character feel as her lover gallops off to save their kingdom from invading forces? I imagine she reels from unsaid emotions much as the woman in Mahodahi's poem does.

I am only halfway through the book, approaching the European, Native American, and African poet sections. It will be interesting to compare and see the experiences of women brought out on the page, past and present. We are not as far removed from our ancestors as we like to think.

Eye Candy

This is the type of eye candy I'm talking about... None of those chocolate covered eyeballs for me this Easter. Gratuitous? You bet! (Thanks to Amelia for bringing the Spartany goodness to my attention.)

Poetry as Influence

Since it's National Poetry Month, a few articles have surfaced on poetry on some of the newspaper sites. Today there is an article in the Christian Science Monitor, "Recapturing Wonder Through The Pleasures of Poetry", where the author exhorts us to read poetry for various reasons - "But as the poet Edward Hirsch has reminded us, reading true poetry "is an adventure in renewal, a creative act, a perpetual beginning, a rebirth of wonder." "

Many of these articles seem to come down to the same theme. Why read/make/bother with poetry? Pose the same question about music, and things get hostile. I'd like to blame some of the 'why poetry?' sentiment on the rampant anti-intellectualism in our schools. Being forced to deconstruct poems and examine them for 'meaning' has done more harm to poetry than any thing else I can think of. I was lucky enough to have a high school English teacher who had us read Shakespeare, Frost, Wordsworth and Ginsberg for the sheer joy of it, for the fun of the language and rhythms. For some of us it started a life long love affair with words, and the possibilities of what words could become.

Here is a poem by Robert Penn Warren, that I read long ago. It wasn't a poem recommended by a teacher, but one I discovered in my poetry travels that had a great influence on my desire to read, write, and absorb poetry. The right poem, at the right time, will do that.

Trying to Tell You Something
Robert Penn Warren


All things lean at you, and some are
Trying to tell you something, though of some

The heart is too full for speech. On a hill, the oak,
Immense, older than Jamestown or God, splitting

With its own weight at the great inverted
Crotch, air-spread and ice-hung, ringed with iron

Like barrel-hoops, only heavier, massive rods
Running through and bolted, and higher, the cables,

Which in summer are hidden by green leaves—the oak,
It is trying to tell you something. It wants,

In its fullness of years, to describe to you
What happens on a December night when

It stands alone in a world of whiteness. The moon is full.
You can hear the stars crackle in their high brightness.

It is ten below zero, and the iron
Of hoops and reinforcement rods is continuing to contract.

There is the rhythm of a slow throb, like pain. The wind,
Northwest, is steady, and in the wind, the cables,

In a thin-honed and disinfectant purity, like
A dentist’s drill, sing. They sing

Of truth, and its beauty. The oak
Wants to declare this to you, so that you

Will not be unprepared when, some December night,
You stand on a hill, in a world of whiteness, and

Stare into the crackling absoluteness of the sky. The oak
Wants to tell you because, at that moment,

In your own head, the cables will sing
With a thin-honed and disinfectant purity,

And no one can predict the consequences

Snow Days and Novels and Edits, Oh My

Wyoming. Gotta love it. One day warm and sunny, the next snow, complete with 50mph winds.

Tuesday Evening

Between the wet, heavy spring snow and the hefty winds, I now have a gutter dangling like pop art down the side of my house. I got off easy so far. Other people had shingles ripped off their roof, a friend had a pole barn flipped upside down. Now all we have to look forward to is three feet of snow melting at once. That should happen right about... now. Water is running down the street in torrents.

Friday Afternoon

Yeah, that quick. It started snowing Wednesday afternoon, by Thursday morning, our little corner of the world was closed. Roads, interstates, schools, city and state government (yeah!). Nothing could move. By Friday afternoon, I was out shoveling with the help of two unenthusiastic teenagers. Two and a half hours to clear a thirty foot driveway, twenty foot sidewalk to the garage, and get the teenager's car out.

Friday Afternoon

Since they called off work Friday also, because the roads were just getting opened, I spent my non shoveling time trying to finish off the novel I started during NaNoWriMo. I decided plowing my way through (must be the snow talking) was the only way. So I pulled out a piece of paper, did one sentence outlines for the chapter I was working on in the 'here's what happened, here's what happens next' vein. Wrote the chapter. Same for the next chapter. Then the next. I sat Idby the Writing Gnome on my table with a ruler to whack my hands if I strayed from just getting it done.

Idby came through. I wrote about 12,000 words in four days. It's still not done, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. I know how it will end, I know pretty much how I'm going to get there. I even know ignoring description and detail until later is not a crime against nature. The only thing I didn't know for a long time was who killed who in the end, and how. All of the sudden it was clear, and could be no other way. The big outlining I did up front helped, but these mini chapter outlines were wonderful roadmaps. It broke things down into bite sized chunks.

I also did the final edit on the chapbook, and tightened up a short story I want to submit. Edited six poems. Made soup and knitted half of a pair of socks. I didn't clean the house or paint the bathroom. These snow days were an unexpected bonus. Since I don't expect any more 'free' days anytime soon, I wanted to get MY work done. I think Idby reports back to the writing gods, and they wouldn't look too kindly on me placing housework over torturing my protagonist. And yes, there was an ulterior motive to getting the teenager's car shoveled out. They got to go to work and provide pizza to starving shovelers, and I got peace and quiet in order to plot mayhem and destruction.

Seemed like a fair trade.