Our class activity today in my Contemporary Poetry class was to create a blackout poem. I used Howard Nemerov’s poem “On Being Asked for a Peace Poem” (1973) from The 20th Century in Poetry. Happy National Poetry Month.
National Poetry Month
April is the month long celebration of poetry. Join me and other poets at these events:
Sunday, April 10, 1 p.m. at the Artists’ Cooperative Gallery, 7 Canal Street, Westerly, Rhode Island
Friday, April 15, 7 p.m. at Byrd’s Books, 126 Greenwood Avenue, Bethel, Connecticut
Saturday, April 23, 2 p.m. at the Minor Memorial Library, 23 South Street, Roxbury, Connecticut
Support the arts and poetry in your community. Participate in other events and activities.
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Goats and Spiders
Curds and Whey
“Blessed are the cheesemakers.”
~Monty Python, Life of Brian
Temperatures regulate
and acid swirls; curds curdle
and tell reluctantly
of brown bearded goats
chomping grass
with pliant teeth and wandering
eyes. Far off in a kitchen.
the maker, with her chewed
apron and dangling cross
waits sourly for the spider.
Class Notes
5 lines x 7
Elsie, The Roller of Big Cigars, and the Grasshopper
so much depends
upon
the maker’s rage to order words of the sea
will never wholly kiss you—
Wholly ordered: rage to kiss words
Heads or Tales
5 lines, day 5
I pledge to read each
day’s oncoming slaughter
as a penniless
dark spur opening beneath
a cataclysm of daisies
Iron Skillet
Five lines (+/-), day 4.
Iron skillet
You school me with your trochees and well-oiled forgery
seasoned with elbow grease so that nothing
not the overnighting left overs
not the knife marks
not the hunger
stay for long, the most
anyone could ask
from fire.
Five lines (day two)
elliptical shifts
bequeath February with
truant light; shape shifter skies—
like lamppost bulbs—following
the timed ascent to evening
Just around the corner
With temperatures dipping, snow falling or rain threatening, I have thoughts of spring and dreams of robins and tortoises, bees and rainbows. Please, “Tell me what time the weaver sleeps . . . ”
Here is Emily Dickinson
Bring me the sunset in a cup,
Reckon the morning’s flagons up
And say how many Dew,
Tell me how far the morning leaps—
Tell me what time the weaver sleeps
Who spun the breadth of blue!
Write me how many notes there be
In the new Robin’s ecstasy
Among astonished boughs—
How many trips the Tortoise makes—
How many cups the Bee partakes,
The Debauchee of Dews!
Also, who laid the Rainbow’s piers,
Also, who leads the docile spheres
By withes of supple blue?
Whose fingers string the stalactite—
Who counts the wampum of the night
To see that none is due?
Who built this little Alban House
And shut the windows down so close
My spirit cannot see?
Who’ll let me out some gala day
With implements to fly away,
Passing Pomposity?
Until Nomading Ends
Giving up the shell can be hard, but so worth it. After nomading, we find home.
Abandonment
Naked, the crab forgets
his hermit ways, creeping
in the oyster underworld,
brushing against minnow fins
and ugly red claws, until
nomading ends, and a home,
spiraled in calcium, appears.
A watery cosmos of green
awaits the refugee shell;
the sea is populated
by old dwellings, discarded
by molting crustaceans, spit out
for sand diggers and souvenir
hunters, strangled by a scarf
of seaweed or broken
with gravity’s axe, swung
by the long hand of the moon.
From Nomad’s End, 2010 Finishing Line Press
My Better Self
My good friend Mary Fletcher (in cahoots with my secret-keeping husband Eric) painted my portrait. It was a Christmas surprise, but also a wonderful celebration of the end of the year, the beginning of the new year, and especially our friendships and love of art. It’s also a never ending birthday gift. As strange as it is to see myself in paint, it’s been wonderful to reflect on what it means to be seen through other’s eyes and to see Mary’s generosity come through in her work.
The painting is richly textured, warm and cool, delicate and bold, subtle and bright. Mary painted the image from the author photo I’ve been using, but chose a completely unique color palette, which I love. The painting takes on a life of her own, one that I’m honored and humbled to be connected to. Thank you Mary.
Amy Nawrocki 