poet
Thanks to Peter Everett and all the students from Housatonic Community College for inviting me to speak and sharing their ideas about point of view, perspective and crafting a voice in poetry. Special thanks to my former student James Novoa spending your day off with me and for snapping a few pictures. Videos to come.
All are welcome; The HCC bookstore will be selling copies of Reconnaissance and Four Blue Eggs, and I’ll be signing books and discussing Point of View, Perspective, and Crafting a Voice.
A wonderful gathering at Nomad’s End put me in the mind of this poem from Four Blue Eggs. Thanks to Ann Nyberg, Eric D. Lehman, Leslie Browning, and Andy Long, Jim Lampos and Michaelle Pearson, John and Denise Surowiecki, Jose Cabrera and Michael Doran.
A Great Deal of Company
~from Walden, by Henry David Thoreau
After the storm, the loneliness
does not evaporate. A half-day trek
to the shingled cottage through dunes
ripe with coyote tracks and unfriendly
dwarf pines means another week in isolation
with only the oily pigment of August
and the acrid stink of turpentine
to argue with. Even when the sun
in its naked, unforgiving callousness
ventures out again, holes in the atmosphere
remain. It could be worse.
A fourth trapped mouse rumors
to be still alive behind the shack,
and the ghosts of bums and poets ricochet
around the creaky loft. These, anyway, are voices,
consolation for the blank canvas in front of her.
A still life of bowled fruit decays in the charcoal
of her mind. First the brush must dip itself
into the clear water where the muses bathe,
but the well coughs up only the red iron of earth.
Once the mottled conglomerates
of sunset arrive, dinner is made; the wood stove
sparks against a damp log, the unswept floor
calls for a broom, and the burden of idleness
finally exhausts her. She dunks dry bristles
into wet, sandy paint, spreads black onto white
and forges a scene: stick figures walking
in the terrestrial moonscape of dune summer.
A blue crescent of water loops off
the feathered page, blurs past beach grass
to the deep, ample surf, its shores crowded
with the blinking eyes of sea gazers, each
with gravity ’s sadness salted to one brush tip.
Four weeks in, I’m wondering if anything is starting to stick. Annotating the texts hasn’t quite led to dirty hands. Maybe tomorrow.
You can find the poem in Reconnaissance. Books are required for the course. Buy it.
Prototype
Bless the first day of class
in its confined clutter. Notebooks
stacked and piled like sculptures that
say to the first lesson, I am ready
for you to feed me. Catapult us
into the realms of academia.
I picture chimpanzees swallowing
pineapple white sheets in open cages.
Get your hands dirty, I tell them,
love the pages, the print, smell it
and remember papyrus. Break
the spine, hold it up to the light,
tell me who you are, author, tell
me your secrets, help me make sense
of your world. Transmogrify.
Cave dwellers, hierophants—make friends
with the exclamation point, bond
with the asterisk. Play with dirt.
Play with dirty words.
Thanks to Voices of Poetry and Hopkins Vineyard for hosting “Back on the Vine” poetry reading and music event at the beautiful vineyard in Warren, CT. The wine was great, and the poetry was even better, spoken and sung. Readers included David K. Leff, me, Charlie Bondhus, Melissa Tuckey, with music by Carol Leven and Nick Moran.
Please support us and all artists, writers, musicians who do what we do because we love it. Buy books and CDs, come back to our readings, follow us on Facebook, sign up for our classes, share wine with us at your local poetry watering hole (which essentially means anywhere).
Mirror, Mirror
She tells me what I want to hear;
puckering into the glass, I primp,
outlining thin lips with red dye,
shading eyes and rouging cheeks.
Pretty, she says with coy shine.
The heat from my toy gun dryer
burns already frail follicles as I smooth
sometimes blonde hair into waves.
No gray, she whispers, imitating.
She doesn’t blink when frizz spews,
doesn’t snicker when I flick tartar
from minty floss into her silver eyes.
When I shimmy brick hips to zip
a long pleated skirt, she says oooh.
Ignoring grooved stretch marks
when draped beneath a pink towel,
she favors shoulder muscles, and like
a true friend, reminds me—too much
bundt cake—with a wink as I close
the noncompliant bathroom door.
Pouting recently about new gray strands silvering through my hair, I now realize how many good things come with age. Eric and I traveled back to Quebec City, where we first visited together 10 years ago. Looking back over pictures, old and new, I see that Quebec is just as beautiful as ever. I’m older, happier, more fulfilled, more in love, and thankfully, thinner with out all that 32-year old baby fat. Bring on the gray.
Given the curve of the horizon, here is surprisingly appropriate poem, written more than 20 years ago, which captures our hike up the highest peak in southern Quebec.
The World is Round
When I close my eyes
the grass is parched hair
and the sky is old slate,
but I am not lonely.
This is a nervous habit –
the way I think, the way I dance
without sound, like a cat
floating through empty hallways
searching for mice.
When I wonder, I hear
a sunbeam in the ocean
where I am nothing but a tear drop
falling into morning shadows.
And when I sing,
it is the departure of sparrows
fleeing the madness of earth.
The moon is happy
and yesterday means nothing.
photo courtesy of The Guardian
A silly poem in honor of Pluto.
Planethood
When mortals pretend to know everything
the gods cannot but laugh at silliness.
And how we are called the names of bodies–
our celestial immortality
becomes preserved regardless then of fate.
Two schools of thought–one embraces the old
notion of nine planets, with me, Pluto
in the rear. Spherical, elliptically
orbiting the sun–and yet large enough
to hold myself together with gravity.
The other theory calls me comet-like,
asteroid-esque, or minor planet-ish
anomaly made up of ice and rock.
Take, for instance, my odd loop which orbits
the sun and so perhaps I should have been
a ballerina. If I act more like
one thing than another, then could I be
the first thing, not the second. Never mind
about that. I say look to history:
Cast by non believers down to the rank
of myth, then cast from darkened underworld
where I began my reign so long ago.
In ancient times benevolent gods were
laughed upon, while gods with wrath inside them
took their place on Mount Olympus–brothers
Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto, were all known
giants. Jupiter, the lord of thunder,
ruled supreme. Neptune, ruler of the sea,
commanded waves of power, beckoned storm
upon storm; then I, brother three, did draw
for my fair share of the underworld, where
I remained long, free, and terrible. King
of the dead, resurrected by old men,
astronomers who look to see and find
objects buried deep into space until
technology is fortunate enough
to see and bargain for history’s sake.
I am Pluto, damnit, mightiest king
of the dead of dead. Place me in your sky
oh man, and be satisfied. Resurrect
my name for purposes divine and sell
your soul to me. If I am not a planet
true, then let me be false, as falsity
has meaning, too. Let me have my planet
hood. Be gone, you comet thinkers, asteroid
lovers, crazies: to thine own selves be true,
you who deny my right to sit as rock
and ice, at just the end of that old world.
Do not use my name and abandon me
here, far in the sky, without the proper
acknowledgement. For I will spill on you
the wrath of death and you will find yourselves
heretics, alone, in my underworld.
The moon’s fingernail
scrapes a far away gazer’s
thoughts, breaking open
her mind, freeing a thousand
love songs stoked with lunar dust.
East-blowing storms coil
above night’s descending
horizon. Stars pop
from showering brushstrokes
across blue lingering breath.
I pledge to read each
day’s oncoming slaughter
as a penniless
dark spur opening beneath
a cataclysm of daisies.
As the final gasp
of a humid day wheezes
into dusk, a breeze
tickles with its feather tongue,
hinting at evening’s reprieve.
Love this little guy. More so, I love his epic name: Red Eft. He’s a young red-spotted newt. I found him in the garden while I was weeding. He wandered off and I lost track of him near Buddy, the red cedar sapling who unfortunately hasn’t been doing so well. I hope the little eft will help the little tree.
Amy Nawrocki 