Poem in Your Pocket Day #5

If you’ve never carried a poem in your pocket before, now is a good time to start.

April 26th is National Poem in Your Pocket Day. It’s pretty self-explanatory--you copy down a poem and carry it in your pocket all day. Simple, right?

I’ve asked people in and around the Piper Center (the headquarters for HFR) to share the poems they plan on carrying on PIYPD, and the reasoning behind their choice. So for the next few weeks, we’ll take a look at the poems staff, interns, MFA students and general float-arounders hold close.

Today's poem is from Peter Turchi, Director of both the Piper House and the Creative Writing Program at ASU.

He chose "You Go to School to Learn" by Thomas Lux, and says, "The poem I'll be carrying this year--the poem I was carrying a copy of today, until I gave it to someone--is Thomas Lux's "You Go to School to Learn." Like a lot of Lux's poems, it is both straightforward and surprising, written in clear colloquial language, and humorous; and it carries a deceptively strong critique. In this case, Lux begins with the assertion "You go to school to learn to/ read and add, to someday/ make some money," makes a turn with "But:/ You're taught away from poetry/ or, say, dancing (That's nice, dear,/ but there's no dough in it)" and ends "It's true,/ and so, every morning--it's still dark!--/ you see them, the children, like angels/ being marched off to execution,/ or banks. Their bodies luminous/ in headlights. Going to school." It's a good reminder of the fate that awaits us when we forget the true goals of education."

Read the poem, which is encouraging as we enter the end of the semester grind, it its entirety here. Thanks, Pete!

Poem in Your Pocket Day #4

If you’ve never carried a poem in your pocket before, now is a good time to start.

April 26th is National Poem in Your Pocket Day. It’s pretty self-explanatory--you copy down a poem and carry it in your pocket all day. Simple, right?

I’ve asked people in and around the Piper Center (the headquarters for HFR) to share the poems they plan on carrying on PIYPD, and the reasoning behind their choice. So for the next few weeks, we’ll take a look at the poems staff, interns, MFA students and general float-arounders hold close.

Today's poem is from the lovely Karen Sideris, Piper House Finance & Operations Coordinator. This year she will be carrying a poem of her own that has an interesting story. She says:

"I wrote it in Piper Writer's Studio class when challenged to write a poem about loss. My sister had died recently, and I found an old birthday gift she'd sent, a tacky keychain, in a drawer. I started carrying it around, and when it finally broke I felt very sad. The poem was about birthday gifts that stop coming and sisterly dynamics. So, a few weeks later I got a wild hair and submitted the poem after reading a poem from a woman in my home town. I forgot about it, but then randomly, on my birthday, "Tin Heart" was published, a very unexpected gift."

Here's a link to Karen's poem, "Tin Heart."

Poem in Your Pocket Day #3

If you’ve never carried a poem in your pocket before, now is a good time to start.

April 26th is National Poem in Your Pocket Day. It’s pretty self-explanatory--you copy down a poem and carry it in your pocket all day. Simple, right?

I’ve asked people in and around the Piper Center (the headquarters for HFR) to share the poems they plan on carrying on PIYPD, and the reasoning behind their choice. So for the next few weeks, we’ll take a look at the poems staff, interns, MFA students and general float-arounders hold close.

Today's poem is from John-Michael Bloomquist, a poet in the MFA program at ASU.

He chose "Lacrima Christi" by Hart Crane, and says: "I read this poem two years ago and didn't know what it meant but knew it contained a powerful essence. I typed it out and stapled to my kitchen cabinet in my old place, glancing at it as I made dinner. Two years later, after studying Greek mythology and eroticism, I came across the poem again in a 1936 copy of White Buildings that I got for a ridiculous deal; I was amazed by Crane's revisionist myth embedded by every word in the poem. He showed me that lyricism, with a great deal of research on each word, creates in impenetrable and inescapable narrative. It is my favorite poem and I look forward to a lifetime of reading it."

Hear poet Clayton Eshleman reading "Lacrima Christi" by Hart Crane at One Pause Poetry's website.

Poem in Your Pocket Day #2

If you’ve never carried a poem in your pocket before, now is a good time to start.

April 26th is National Poem in Your Pocket Day. It’s pretty self-explanatory--you copy down a poem and carry it in your pocket all day. Simple, right?

I’ve asked people in and around the Piper Center (the headquarters for HFR) to share the poems they plan on carrying on PIYPD, and the reasoning behind their choice. So for the next few weeks, we’ll take a look at the poems staff, interns, MFA students and general float-arounders hold close.

Today's poem comes from Tom McDermott, Piper House Communication Coordinator extraordinaire.

He says: “OK, so the last time we were asked to do this by a Piper intern I used "Verse For a Certain Dog" by Dorothy Parker because I had just got a new dog and the poem made me think of him. I still have the dog (Hank the beagle), but I should probably use a different poem. After giving it some thought I am going with "Hippopotomonstrosequippedaliophobia" by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Why, you ask? Well, her reading at ASU back in September of 2007 was the my first event as a member of the Piper Center for Creative Writing staff. Actually, it was my first-ever poetry reading, so the least I can do is carry the poem in my pocket for a day.”

An excerpt from Hippopotomonstrosequippedaliophobia by Aimee Nezhukumatathil:

You want something

to startle you? Try tapping the ball

of roots of a potted tomato plant

into your cupped hand one spring, only

to find a small back toad who kicks

and blinks his cold eye at you,

the sun, a gnat. Be afraid of the x-rays

for your teeth or lung. Pray for no

dark spots. You may have

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis:

coal lung. Be afraid of money spiders tiptoeing

across your face while you sleep on a sweet, fat couch.

Poem in Your Pocket Day #1

If you’ve never carried a poem in your pocket before, now is a good time to start.

April 26th is National Poem in Your Pocket Day. It’s pretty self-explanatory--you copy down a poem and carry it in your pocket all day. Simple, right?

I’ve asked people in and around the Piper Center (the headquarters for HFR) to share the poems they plan on carrying on PIYPD, and the reasoning behind their choice. So for the next few weeks, we’ll take a look at the poems staff, interns, MFA students and general float-arounders hold close.

Our first poem comes from Anthony Cinquepalmi, HFR intern and poetry undergrad.

He says, “I suppose one way to go about this is to choose the poem I have returned to most after the first reading. I've read and reread Michael Burkard's poem, "A Small Closed Room," so many times in the year since I've had the book, Fictions from the Self. The poem doesn't strike me as inherently difficult, nor does it demand rereading. Though I think I know what brings me back to this poem. I think it has something to do with loving, and more importantly, relating to the other, whatever the other happens to be. It is a wholly selfish poem about a selfless act. Even in the sarcasm of its ending, the poem relays a sort of comfort, and this must be why I have returned to it again. There's an awkward sense of comfort in all our syzygies and their endings, or maybe the poem's stake is simpler than that, worse: maybe it reminds me of someone I love...”

An excerpt from "A Small Closed Room" by Michael Burkard:

I don't know why I keep these records anymore.
I don't know why
it's a problem of privacy. I guess
I stopped when we stopped, someone
who was not the world, whoever that was.
Which one comes early with the early light
of evening, which is the last early light,
and on any day how do you live on? It is too bright
for me here, and the birds sing, I don't know their names
and don't want to, it is enough that they sing, I look
out a small closed room I put myself in and look out at them
sing, I can't breathe when I do that.

National Poetry Month

The temperature in Arizona is on the rise and if you're the kind of person that wants to do something other than swimming to stay cool, come listen to some fascinating poets for poetry month! 

Alaska's Fiddling Poet brings fiddle, poetry to AZ

If there are two things in this world that I love dearly, they are poetry and fiddles. So I can't wait for Ken Waldman, Alaska's premier fiddling poet, to visit the Valley. He'll be bringing his fiddle, his poetry, and even some stories, to the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) for performances April 28th through the 30th.

Waldman is a former college professor and the author of 6 books of poetry, a memoir, a children's book. He's also produced 9 CDs. He travels the country, sometimes performing solo, but often with accompanists, and details his life in Alaska and around the country through song, story, and poetry.

His shows at MIM will include a mandolin player, a guitarist, and a banjo player, and will appeal to "anyone who enjoys traditional folk music, smart poetry, acclaimed storytelling, or Alaska." The performances are free with museum admission, and are a great way to wrap up your Poetry Month celebrations!

O, Miami!

April is National Poetry Month, and I'm imagining tons of poets and poetry lovers coming together to celebrate all month long. What I'm having a hard time imagining is the spectacle that will be Miami this April due to the month-long celebration the city is hosting in honor of National Poetry Month: 'O, Miami.' This will not be a bunch of poets sitting around in a hotel-conference room or library, etc. going over their work--nope. The point of this event is to get every single person in Miami to read/look at/touch/absorb at least one poem before the month is out. There's 2.5 million people in the city. So naturally, poetry will be everywhere. The Miami Arts Charter building will be wrapped with a blank canvas of paper on Monday, April 25, and people are invited to come and write poetry on it, there will be poems on the Miami-Dade buses throughout the month, and during a poem-drop, poems will be dropped from a plane onto the city of Miami.

HFR found out about this when we got an email from the Betsy Hotel--one of the sponsors of O, Miami. The Betsy was first opened in 1942. The hotel asked us to send them two copies of HFR for display in their lobby for the O, Miami event, but the cool part is the Betsy Hotel is poem-friendly all year long, making sure each of its rooms has its own library and instead of (or maybe along with) the traditional pillow-mint, you get a poem on your pillow every night.

Miami is lucky to be able to have an event (and a hotel) like this, but wherever you are, I hope you have as good a time during National Poetry Month as I know they'll be having in Miami.

The Piper Center Celebrates "Poem In Your Pocket" Day!

I know all of you have been sharing those poems you've kept handy for National Poetry Month's Poem In Your Pocket Day with just about everyone you meet. The Piper Center's been keeping up with the festivities as well--so what if we're a week late? Here's some of our favorites!

Beth Staples
I've got two, and I can't seem to decide: "[nor can love be proven except by act]" by Emily Carr, from Issue #45, and "Under the Rug" by Lauren Henley from Issue #46. Both have this incredible urgency about them. I love how Emily's starts with a plea, to look at our "want & not wanting." I love that combination of feelings: tragedy and breath. Lauren's is more disturbing, but there's a mystery to it, and a strength.

Under the Rug

The night before I leave you for good,
I'm driving us home from a party
because you've gotten stupid again,
insisting you weren't the fool
of the evening, certain you didn't
piss in my friend's vegetable patch
and break two glasses. All lies
you say. We get home, you puke
into the drapes, hide them somewhere
I can't see. I scrub the wall
and you tell me it wasn't you,
it was me. I spend the night searching
for the drapes, checking all
the garbage cans while you sleep,
looking through closets, cupboards.
There is no moon to light my way,
I stumble through the dark calling out
for the drapes. In between meals and chores
I hunt for them, imagining how foul
they must be. I'm about to give up
and then-a trapdoor under the rug...
it leads down a bright tunnel to a pile of junk.
The drapes are there, clean and spotless.
Nothing makes sense. I come back up
and scream for you to hit me.
Hit me. Hit me. And you do.

Elizabyth Hiscox
I don’t like to outright apex, if possible. For poem-in-your-pocket day I will assume that all my pockets are full of poems (on any given day I usually have at least four pockets from which to choose) and that I've grabbed these two first. Each of these poems was originally brought fully to my attention by a friend, so the attractions aren't mine alone although the reasoning might be.

Adrienne Rich's "For This."
The close of the poem where the equation between art and salvation is made swiftly and with force while somehow circumventing the melodrama that necessarily accompanies both those concepts.

Gary Snyder’s "Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout."
It smacks of a romantic American West, but in ways that ring true for me. There’s the serenity at the cusp of a wild (fire) season. The revelations of isolation.

Sean Nevin
My poem is "Brothers Playing Catch on Christmas Day" by Gary Short. I guess it's the emotion, that Nevada-ghost-town nostalgic melancholy that somehow smacks of what Jane Kenyon or Anna Akhmatova do at their best. It's the same seemingly simple structure and diction, plane even, (that is until one tries to replicate it) that can blindside the reader. The sheer psychic weight of this poem and the love between brothers is so compressed it is not just held in the concrete object of the football but the flashes of the spiraling, soon-to-be invisible "clean white laces" of the ball that rescue it (and us) from the sentimental.

Amanda Monrad
This, "Let America Be America Again" by Langston Hughes is not my favorite poem. This is a poem I love and reread the other day in light of what’s been happening in Arizona recently. It resurfaced for me just prior to the 2008 election and found it to be a true motivator, for me a true symbol of the change we were all looking for so desperately. It’s a poem that moves me by a poet whom I love dearly. (PS - It might not fit in your pocket.)

Tom McDermott
I have a 18 month old beagle (Hank) that I can’t help but think about when I read "Verse for a Certain Dog" by Dorothy Parker. I can picture his confident strut with his head held high when I read the line 'High in young pride you hold your noble head'. That is of course until he hears an oncoming skateboard and runs for cover!

Aaron Falvey
"Junk" by Richard Wilbur: It's a perfect marriage of antiquity and modernity through judicious use of refuse.

Mike Pitoniak
"Happiness" by Raymond Carver. To be brief, I love that last stanza. Just awesome.

Colin McGann
"Learning to Swim" by John Burnside.

Trying to seem unconcerned, but numb with the fear
that he'd killed me, the glare of his laughter
dying away in the hollows and nooks of the roof
and everything silent...

I really like this line and poem because I teach swim lessons at a pool over the summer and it frightens me how many people have horror stories about how they learned to swim. The fear that consumes someone when they first learn to swim is something that is very immediate in my mind and I like how Burnside captures it here.

Maleri Sevier
A piece by Dorothy R. Parker:

Razors Pain you;
Rivers are damp,
Acids stain you:
Drugs cause cramp.

Guns aren't lawful;
nooses give.
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

Erik Daniel Smith
"Genius" by Mark Twain: When I (Brittany) first asked Erik why he picked this particular poem, he replied, "Because you made me choose one." When I tried to pry further, all I got was, "Because Mark Twain kicks ass." Hear, hear.

Amy Ledin
"Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Brittany Herman
"Other Lives and Dimensions and Finally a Love Poem", by Bob Hicok. There's this longing contentment throughout the voice: it's lost. It longs for theoretical physics, for how hands mourn (by praying or clapping), for "a Bronx where people talk / like violets smell", and finally for "each of the places we meet." Oh, and that opening.

Website of the Week - Poems that GO

The Random House Dictionary defines poh-i-tree as "the art of rhythmical composition, written or spoken, for exciting pleasure by beautiful, imaginative, or elevated thoughts." Poems that GO is a project that challenges the conventions of contemporary poetry in ways that stretch and mold works into new-media aesthetics. The question presented: what makes a poem a poem? At what point do words become songs; when are visual representations of words transformed into cinema? The practice of etymology plays a critical role and impresses a technological wisdom upon new representations of what is labeled as "poetry".

This is seriously thinking outside the box, guys.

What's particularly interesting is the rhythm that naturally occurs when motion, sound, image, text, and code are mixed together. I really enjoyed the piece Nine by Jason E. Lewis, which is an interactive dynamic poem that explores different dimensions of the lives the artist has stumbled into.

Poems that GO is a brave movement that challenges this generation to soak in media as a form of expression, and to define written pieces as something louder beyond the blank page. Through new observations in motion and graphics, we can define and heighten the volume of poetry in how we make sense of modern language.

Free books! National Poetry Month! Oh my!

If you like free stuff and poetry, then boy do we have good news for you. Thanks to the Book of Kells blog, fifty poet-bloggers have teamed up to give away two of their favorite poetry books this month. Here's how it works: go to the Book of Kells to see the list of poets participating. Follow the links to the different blogs to see the books each poet is giving away. Leave a comment in response to the giveaway posts, and you'll be put in the running to receive one of the free books. Even if you don't win, you get to learn about what these poets are reading, and share in the love of National Poetry Month. Head on over!

Review: The Garden of Improbable Birds by Roy Seeger

The Garden of Improbable Birds by Roy Seeger. Gribble Press, 2007. Review by Meghan Brinson.

If you enjoyed the tense domestic of “Heirlooms,” by Seeger in Hayden's Ferry Review #42, then you should check out this chapbook.

While the table of contents of Roy Seeger’s The Garden of Improbable Birds might read like a biology text, The Garden of Improbable Birds isn’t just another assortment of pretty yet unfulfilling nature poems. Flora and fauna form a landscape, often ironic, where the relationships that family members have with each other create larger legacies. Seeger’s chapbook, contrasting its pastoral, lyrical images with projections of pop icons, is a formally risky, emotionally successful collection.

Seeger tackles an ambitious experiment in form with the academic practice of footnotes. Any reader of Norton’s anthologies knows the dangers of his attempt: he risks splitting the reader’s attention between important emotional moments and trivia, or draining energy out of poems by breaking up the natural momentum of lines and stanzas. Yet Seeger’s footnotes, at their best, offer a kind of secondary text to the poems, literally creating miniature poems in the space between the lines. I suggest reading the poems without footnotes once, since these interjections do not add anything essential to the first reading. But on second reading of “Cavern,” for example, footnotes are enjoyable additions: the first offers a landscape vignette, the other a ghostly Greek chorus.

Seeger’s chapbook manages to do what many whole collections do not--he pursues a topic through a period of reflection and growth and takes it to a satisfying, convincing conclusion—in thirty three pages. The book’s focus on family issues, particularly the suburban mother and contrastingly rural father, and the hypothetically sheltered future children captures a particular moment in adult life when the speaker reflects back into childhood to project himself into the future he is considering of his own fatherhood.

It’s in these poems that the chapbook particularly shines, contemplating the father of the speaker’s necessary violence and (perhaps) unnecessary judgment in “The Wolfman’s Barber,” when the rare-beef-eating father trims his wolf-son’s hair:

“and I learned to avoid my father// When he searched each room in his crusade/ to civilize me. I learned not to answer//when he called.

Alternatively, the speaker considers what he would pass on to his own children in “Whenever I dance I imitate John Travolta,” an energetic lyric:

“This is nothing/ I’d ever teach my children, nothing/ they couldn’t learn themselves:// plant the toe and twist the leg;/ point to the sky, point to the ground;/ don’t look where you are pointing.

Here for ordering information on this chapbook. Since his publication in HFR, Seeger won the 2008 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. His book The Boy Whose Hands Were Birds, is available at this website.