Poetry Monday: Cecilia Woloch

If you've never imagined sleeping with a poetry book under your pillow to become tenderly infused by another poet's power, welcome to the extraordinary world of Cecilia Woloch.

I'm thrilled to feature Cecila today. Highlighted are two of her stunning poems--"Bareback Pantoum" and "Why I Believed, As A Child, That People Had Sex in Bathrooms"--as well as her thoughts about the genesis of these poems. (I feel especially connected today to the "Why I Believed" poem, given my father's recent death and my mother's starting a new life in the midst of her Alzheimer's diagnosis. In clearing out their house this weekend because it just sold, I've come across so many things--notes, cards, pictures, writings--that have helped me see more deeply the intimate connection of their life together.)

* * *

About why and how she began writing poetry, Cecilia says she has been "in love with language, and especially musical language" for as long as she can remember, She was "good at memorizing and reciting poems as a kid" and started making her first attempts at writing poetry in early adolescence.

Theater has also influenced her. She says, "I was also a pretty good comic and character actor on stage in college and for a few years after, in equity-waiver theater; my attraction to acting had mostly to do with language, too, with wanting to say things in intense and beautiful ways, wanting to move exceptional language out into the world."

Cecilia describes herself as "catholic" in her poetry tastes. She says, "I try to keep an open mind and an open heart, and to let things move me and stimulate me in all kinds of ways." Her poetic influences include Anna Akhmatova, who "has been very important to me—her life as well as her work, the lessons they offer about integrity and beauty and love. I slept with her collected poems under my pillow during one of the most difficult periods of my life, and even dreamt of her, and felt I drew strength from that. She'd lived through worse, and when asked if she could describe it, gave that miraculous answer, Yes, I can. Her example is a gift to all of us."

Cecilia has a similar relationship with the poet H.D., whom Cecilia believes has been underrated. H.D. "wrote, in my opinion, her most beautiful poems and some of the most beautiful poems in the language while the bombs were falling around her during the London blitz. Her 'Trilogy,' in my opinion, makes Eliot's 'Wasteland' look like a long, incoherent whine. I think she was and is too easily dismissed by the male poetry establishment."

As far as contemporary poets, Cecelia admires the work of Sharon Doubiago. Doubiago's "work and life have provided important examples to me, too, and another woman poet whose work doesn't get the attention I feel it deserves. Her book Hard Country changed my life, and my way of seeing the world, and my attitude toward poetry."

Cecilia adds, "Of course there are male poets, too, whose work I love and admire. W.S. Merwin—also an example of extraordinary artistic and personal integrity, I think. And Walt Whitman, whose work I return to again and again, for its energy and wild love. And where would any of us be without Rilke, and Lorca, and Langston Hughes, and their vision of humanity? And I love the shattered beauty of Saphho's fragments, especially Anne Carson's versions of them, and I think Anne Carson is truly a genius, though I seldom use that word to describe anyone."

Cecilia clearly has a reverence for the echoes of individual lives. Embedded in her discussion of the term "genius," she added that she'd used the term to describe her nephew: "Jesse was killed in a car accident this past April, and I'm loathe to take the reference to him out of this response."


* * *


Poem #1: "Bareback Pantoum"

Cecilia says:
This poem began as a catalogue of images from a memory of one night in the heat of my adolescence, in rural Kentucky. Someone had started a fire in the woods near our house, probably to burn some brush or scrap lumber from a house that was being built nearby, and the fire started to spread.

Since the fire department wouldn't come out unless or until a structure had caught fire, my sister and I and two local boys — Boo and Tony were their names — decided to take it upon ourselves to keep watch through the night. Boo and Tony had borrowed some horses from another neighbor, but we didn't have saddles. Really, it was just an excuse for my sister and me to ride bareback behind those boys through the woods, holding onto their waists, and my mother knew it.

She and my father kept watch from the house, I'm sure, but let us stay out there until nearly dawn. My mother had to write a note to excuse my absence from school the next day, and wrote a melodramatic and hilarious account of the whole episode, which I wish I'd saved; it's probably better and more accurate than the poem.

When I started to write the poem, 30-some years after the event, I wanted to capture the heart-galloping excitement I'd felt that night, the first stirrings of sexual drama; I wanted to try to write my own version of "The Highwayman," which I've loved since I was a girl and was first seduced by its dark rhythms.

When the poem wasn't moving forward as a catalogue, I decided to try taking the most rhythmic lines and shaping a pantoum from those. The poem seemed to come together pretty easily after that; the pattern of repetition seemed to fit perfectly my memory of riding back and forth between the woods and our house, and was deeply pleasurable, too. It was the first pantoum I'd ever written, and I felt as if I'd discovered a slightly wicked, lovely secret.

(Note: To read about the pantoum form, click here and here.)


* * *

BAREBACK PANTOUM

One night, bareback and young, we rode through the woods
and the woods were on fire —
two borrowed horses, two local boys
whose waists we clung to, my sister and I

and the woods were on fire —
the pounding of hooves and the smell of smoke and the sharp sweat of boys
whose waists we clung to, my sister and I,
as we rode toward flame with the sky in our mouths —

the pounding of hooves and the smell of smoke and the sharp sweat of boys
and the heart saying: mine
as we rode toward flame with the sky in our mouths —
the trees turning gold, then crimson, white

and the heart saying: mine
of the wild, bright world;
the trees turning gold, then crimson, white
as they burned in the darkness, and we were girls

of the wild, bright world
of the woods near our house — we could turn, see the lights
as they burned in the darkness, and we were girls
so we rode just to ride

through the woods near our house — we could turn, see the lights —
and the horses would carry us, carry us home
so we rode just to ride,
my sister and I, just to be close to that danger, desire

and the horses would carry us, carry us home
— two borrowed horses, two local boys,
my sister and I — just to be close to that danger, desire —
one night, bareback and young, we rode through the woods.

— Cecilia Woloch
from LATE (BOA Editions, 2003)

* * *

Poem #2: "Why I Believed, As A Child, That People Had Sex in Bathrooms"

Cecilia says:
This was a subject I'd thought about for years, though I never expected it, really, to be the subject of a poem.

That "devil" in our bathroom door when I was a kid; the fact that I always made myself right at home in my parents' bed, and that the bathroom was a private place for my parents, and that, like most kids, I had my own theories about how the world of grown-ups worked.

Of course, I realized at some point -- probably before I started to write the poem -- that my parents may indeed have had sex in the bathroom. But I wrote the first draft of this poem in one long sitting, one big rush, just piling up details and listing the reasons I thought this, thinking it was a kind of funny and silly thing to be writing, and then the last lines came as a real surprise, which is what I always hope will happen when I sit down to write.

I think those last three lines are really a kind of manifesto of what my parents taught me -- or didn't teach me -- about sexual love.

I usually write many drafts of a poem before I feel finished with it, but this one I only polished a little, deciding it was one of those "gifts" we sometimes get.

* * *

WHY I BELIEVED, AS A CHILD, THAT PEOPLE HAD SEX IN BATHROOMS

Because they loved one another, I guessed.
Because they had seven kids and there wasn’t
a door in that house that was ever locked —
except for the bathroom door, that door
with the devil’s face, two horns like flame
flaring up in the grain of the wood
(or did we only imagine that shape?)
which meant the devil could watch you pee,
the devil could see you naked.
Because that’s where people took off their clothes
and you had to undress for sex, I’d heard,
whatever sex was — lots of kissing and other stuff
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
Because at night, when I was scared, I just
climbed into my parents’ bed. Sometimes
other kids were there, too, and we slept
in a tangle of sheets and bodies, breath;
a full ashtray on the nightstand; our father’s
work clothes hung over a chair; our mother’s
damp cotton nightgown twisted around her legs.
Because when I heard babies were made from sex
and sex was something that happened in bed,
I thought: No, the babies are already there
in the bed. And more babies came.
Because the only door that was ever locked
was the bathroom door — those two inside
in the steam of his bath, her hairspray’s mist,
because sometimes I knocked and was let in.
And my father lay in the tub, his whole dark body
under water, like some beautiful statue I’d seen.
And my mother stood at the mirror, fixing her hair,
or she’d put down the lid of the toilet
and perched there, talking to him.
Because maybe this was their refuge from us —
though they never tried to keep us away.
Because my mother told me once
that every time they came home from the hospital
with a brand new baby, they laughed
and fell in love all over again
and couldn’t wait to start making more.
Should this have confused me? It did not.
Because I saw how he kissed the back of her neck
and pulled her, giggling, into his lap;
how she tucked her chin and looked up at him
through her eyelashes, smiling, sly.
So I reasoned whatever sex they had, they had
in the bathroom — those steamy hours
when we heard them singing to one another
then whispering, and the door stayed locked.
Because I can still picture them, languid, there,
and beautiful and young — though I had no idea
how young they were — my mother
soaping my father’s back; her dark hair
slipping out of its pins.
Because what was sex, after that? I didn’t know
he would ever die, this god in a body, strong as god,
or that she would one day hang her head
over the bathroom sink to weep. I was a child,
only one of their children. Love was clean.
Babies came from singing. The devil was wood
and had no eyes.

— Cecilia Woloch

* * *

About Cecilia Woloch:

Ceclia was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and grew up there and in rural Kentucky, the second of seven children of a homemaker and an airplane mechanic. Her mother came from a large, close-knit Polish-American family, and her father's people -- always very secretive and mysterious -- came from a place she'd only ever heard identified as "the Carpathians." She attended Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, and earned degrees in English and Theater Arts before moving to Los Angeles in 1979. From 1986 until 2006, she supported herself as a free-lance teacher of poetry and creative writing, leading workshops for children and young people in public schools, as well as workshops for teachers, professional writers, participants in Elderhostel programs for senior citizens, inmates at a prison for the criminally insane, and residents of a shelter for homeless women. During that time, she also spent several months each year "on the road" in Europe, especially in Paris and in the area of the Carpathians where her paternal grandmother was born.

She has published three books of poems: Sacrifice (Cahuenga Press, 1997); Tsigan: The Gypsy Poem; (Cahuenga Press, 2002) and Late (BOA Editions, 2003). A chapbook, "Narcissus" will be published by Tupelo Press in 2007. She's currently a lecturer in the creative writing program at the University of Southern California as well as a member of the core faculty of the low-residency MFA Program in Professional Writing at Western Connecticut State University, and she is the founding director of Summer Poetry in Idyllwild and of The Paris Poetry Workshop. Though her "base" is in Los Angeles, she continues to travel as much as possible, and feels most at home in Paris and in the Carpathians.

Poetry Monday: Mary Alexandra Agner

Mary Alexandra Agner's poetry is both gloriously readable and surprisingly slippery. It is so richly wrought that I experience new surprises with each reading.

Mary has published two chapbooks (Ancient Alternatives and stet), has won a ton of awards, and her science fiction novelette-in-verse can be read online. She has also published poetry all over the place.

But in a world of proliferating poetry, you can be excused if you've never come across her work. Just be glad you get to start on her here!

Mary has been writing since she was a child. She says she "can clearly remember writing a poem in early elementary school which said along the cobble path, the lonely turtle did trod. I think my teacher didn't believe it was my own work."

As far as her influences, she says that everything influences her: "What I walk through on the way to my paying job, my coworkers' comments, what I'm reading, what the people on the bus talk about. Poetry is a reflex that gets triggered by my environment. Story is how humans relate to and make sense of the world. Poetry tells that story in the most pithy and engaging way language can. I think it's essential. "

Below are two of her poems, one "from each end of the spectrum" of her writing process.

About "Are You a Good Witch or a Bad Witch?" (which appeared in Iron Horse Literary Review) Mary says:
"This poem came out in a single rush with just about no revision later; I wrote it in response to a line from a pop song by Dan Schmidt which just wouldn't leave me alone."

About "Men Granted Wings" (which appeared in Passages North) Mary says:
"The first two lines in 'Men Granted Wings' came to me while admiring Assyrian art in a museum and I spent a long time revising, cutting and bringing in new information, before it settled into a story and was finished."

* * *

Are You a Good Witch or a Bad Witch?

My teeth are still clenched
from the shock of house slammed into earth,
tornado dissipated in real time, real color,
dust motes in my mind idly panicking:
will *my* legs, in striped stockings,
look so crippled when I'm old?

Woman in white, heat wave, wand
at the ready, and a voice full of sugar
(the kind I'm not to follow
into the woods, were there forests in Kansas)
you gave me nine words of self identity,
eliminating a lifetime's shades of grey.

I'll be an evil witch
whatever that may mean, learn as I go.
In your belief of hat and cackle,
I've room to remove gingham.
I step outside your yellow lines.
I'll find the shoes that fit, myself.

* * *




Men Granted Wings

The Assyrian bird-man steps out of the granite
bas-relief and shakes the cuneiform from his skirt.
He looks up at the not-sky: blank, grey
museum ceiling meant to set off the artifacts.
His tight curls jingle as he stretches his stiff neck.
He stares at the jewelry neatly boxed in glass
and a section from a temple mosaic hung on a wall.
The air is quiet without the clang of copper
pounded into pots, women's voices rising
over the beat. He doesn't hear his wife's contralto.
The high sweet flavor of dates doesn't overpower his senses
or fight with the smell of mud bricks baking in the sun.
In the dim light, the air is chill. Nothing moves.

He touches the walls of the dead: the smooth solid
of a drinking pool before dawn. Behind his reflection
he can almost make out his wife, walking,
hands full of beads and flowers for the dedication
of his bas-relief, a smile hidden for him in her eyes
and her hips. He remembers her lips twisting
to a curved shell (with a tired laugh as the sound
of its surf) for the children he could never give her.
How she sang lullabies into the pots she made.
And her delight with the rubies he rolled down
between her breasts to her stomach. And the warmth
of her legs and arms surrounding him in their bed.
Men granted wings are so rarely granted anything else.

He would cut the feathers from his shoulders
if it would change the present, let him hear
one more sigh as she rolls over in her sleep.
Instead he flies straight through the ceiling glass
up to the god whose intervention he has not finished
paying for. The sacred flowers tied to his wrists
and ankles suddenly smell like rain. Could he have
anything with which to bargain for a shorter life?
For a longer stay in the next world with his wife
and all the children she had wanted?
His lungs heave like his wings, beating against
nothing. Gods have always let man wager
just a little more against the human soul.

* * *
Mary Alexandra Agner writes of dead women, telescopes, and secrets. She makes her home outside Boston. She can be found online here.

Poetry Monday: Queer Collection

"2007 is the inaugural year for Queer Collection: Prose & Poetry," said Editor Gregory Kompes.

"The annual anthology concept came out of a discussion on how little non-erotic queer literature is published in book form at the national distribution level. The decision to include both prose and poetry in a single volume was chosen because there's so much great work being written without many outlets," said Kompes.

Kompes added that this "first volume's submissions request was a grassroots effort" that he initiated. "Bloggers, Website owners, and queer writers passed the word and more than 300 works were submitted for consideration. "

The result is a terrific collection of diverse queer poetry and stories.

It opens with a poem by Laura Loomis titled "Mirror Poem"--a piece which, to me, is worth the price of the book. It begins:

I am not

that person

you would have made me into.

And ends:

you would have made me into

that person.

I am not.

See the pattern? The whole poem is a surprising and touching experience in the interplay between form and function.

I also liked "When I Move Out of My Parents' House" by Shane Allison, which hooks the title right into the first lines:

I'm gonna thrown the biggest party the south has ever seen.
I'll invite all the men I've had sex with.
The ones I've had crushes on
When writing poems was the only thing to get
Met through the shock of seeing girlfriends and wives
Hanging off their shoulders like dirty washcloths.

Julie R. Enszer's poignant poem "First Kiss" says about teenage desire:

I wanted to kiss you.
I always waited late
into the night thinking,

could I pretend it was just an accident?
Lay my lips on yours: mid-sentence,
mid-giggle, mid-teenage confession.

There are many more strong poems in the book, as well as compelling prose pieces. Queer Collection is a great venue for queer voices.

Since Kompes envisions Queer Collection to be an annual publication, he is currently accepting submissions. Amazingly enough, he considers previously published work--and he pays. For more information, check out the submission guidelines.

Poetry Monday: Montgomery Maxton

If you want to read original, edgy, surprising writing, check out Montgomer Maxton's blog and website.

Here's what he says about the genesis of his writing: "I have no idea how I come up with my work; I just do; like the Nike slogan, Just Do It, so I just do. Perhaps it’s based on life. Perhaps it is not. Mother Teresa sums it up best for me … 'God is the hand, I am just the pencil.' Except replace God with something a bit more logical, like Emily Dickinson’s spirit or Charles Darwin’s clone. And replace pencil with black Compaq laptop or Bic pen on the Chipotle napkin."

Leave it to MM to call Emily Dickinson's spirit or Charles Darwin's clone "logical." Such MM sentiments make the world feel fresh.

Recently I was especially struck by MM's desire to not be "afraid" of language. He's really onto something here. Fear drives the internal critic, who tells us what we're writing is dumb/not worthy/----- [fill in the blank]. I know that to write in honor of my uniqueness I need to work on letting go of the fear as much as possible. Easier than it sounds.

Below are two of MM's poems: "Moon Landing" and "Surviving the Body." To read more of his work, click here.

* * *

Moon Landing

The home haunts
the abused spouse.

The rain is
a master of disguise.

You walk the dog
to get the mail.

You never think about
conspiracies until

They are before you
in newsprint

at the barber shop
that’s open on Sunday

Because any other time
You are too busy

To consider Kennedy,
9/11, Roswell, or

If Walt Disney really is
a block of ice.

* * *

Surviving the Body

we lay against each other
exposed by flesh and soul –
water droplets forming between us.

we made love all night –
it’s six o’clock in the morning
i said looking at the clock on the windowsill.

traffic outside was waking to
steamy coffee and weekend editions of
popular newspapers where,

if they knew,
we would be the front page –
two scandals trying to find relief

in one suburban bedroom,
a touch in a town that
doesn’t know how to touch.

this moment will survive
our bodies.
i want to whisper into your ear.

* * *

About Montgomery Maxton:
Montgomery Maxton was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1980 and raised on a rural six acre estate in southwestern Ohio. He is an award-winning journalist. His poetry and prose have appeared in various print and online publications. He is also a photographer, activist, painter, and lunatic. He is the artistic editor of Limp Wrist , an online poetry and art magazine launching in late 2007. He divides his time between New York City and Columbus, Ohio and is working on his first novel and second collection of poetry.

Poetry Tuesday--and Your Advice

Not until I came onto blog did I notice: It's Tuesday!

I'd thought it was Monday.

It's so easy to lose track of the days when I have the summer off.

And also when I'm absorbed in working on my novel, as I have been. My head's in that world more than this one.

Needless to say, I missed Poetry Monday. I will be back at it again next week.

In the meantime, in the past seven weeks, I have featured seven poets on my Poetry Monday feature. If you missed any of them, click below and check them out:

Collin Kelley
Susan Rich
Larissa Shmailo
Lorna Dee Cervantes
Ellen Bass
C. Dale Young
Joan McMillan

AND I SOLICIT YOUR ADVICE: I have a few more poets in line to feature...but if you have any poets (who have a blog presence) you'd like to nominate to be featured in a future Poetry Monday, please let me know by email or a comment on this blog.

Poetry Monday: Collin Kelley

Yes, that's Collin Kelley--today's featured poet--with Pam Grier. Collin is one of those people who constantly surprises you. For instance: he knows Pam Grier?! He's the kind of guy you talk to who seems unassuming but then surprises constantly pop up--about people he's met, awards he has won, adventures he's had, and insights he offers about everything from the poetry of Anne Sexton (his poetry goddess) to American Idol (he predicted this year's winner months before it was obvious).

He's a talented, award-winning writer of poetry. And he's also a novelist, playwright and journalist.

His day job is writing for Altlanta Intown newspaper. Outside of that, he is a tireless ambassador for poetry. He participates in and spearheads a wide variety of public poetry events, and he hosts an Internet radio show, The Business of Words, on Leisure Talk Radio.

Collin says he writes "because I don't know how to do anything else, and I've really never wanted to do anything else. I started reading full novels at an early age and I knew then that writing would be my life's work. I flirted momentarily with being a helicopter pilot. There probably would have been more money in it."

His poetic influences include Sexton, Sharon Olds, Stan Rice, Margaret Atwood and Alice Walker. He considers his work in the realm of confessional poetry, as evidenced by the title of his blog: "Modern Confessional."

Today are featured two of his poems: "What Remains" and "The Virgin Mary Appears In A Highway Underpass."

About "What Remains," which appears in his lovely chapbook Slow to Burn (MetroMania Press), Collin says:

This poem began in a workshop and I recall the workshop leader and another poet getting into an argument – which I wasn’t involved in – about the last line of this poem. The workshop leader wanted me to cut it , the other poet said the last line was vital. I kept it…mainly because I like the word ephemeral, although many people don’t know what it means.

About "The Virgin Mary Appears In A Highway Underpass" (which originally was published in Poetz), Collin says:

This has become one of my most requested poems when I give readings. Some find it sacrilegious, others find it humorous, but I always love the silence that descends after the last three lines sink in. This poem was written in 2005 and inspired by a real event in Chicago. We haven’t had a Mary sighting lately, and I’m eagerly awaiting the next one.

* * *

What Remains

We arrived in Paris on a rainy Sunday,
I remember this now,
as I lift the veil you shrouded me in,
made me complicit in your indecision.

While the others walked under umbrellas,
we lay on opposite beds in the Marais,
our hands reaching across the chasm,
my fingertips tracing your open palm,
every line a dead-end.

We made love through a litany
of favorite things: films as foreplay,
music for kisses, books our orgasm,
a rush of words safe between hard covers.
We should have been covered in sweat,
sticky with the unspoken,
a tangle of limbs and lips.
We are those people in an alternate world,
where hallway voices hold no sway.

I remember this now, your eyes
before the door opened, broke the spell.
Your hand moving away, all the lines
suddenly on fire, a map gone to cinder.
This ephemeral day, even the afterglow.

* * *

The Virgin Mary Appears In A Highway Underpass

Mary pops up in the strangest places,
usually as a window stain or sandwich,
but yesterday she dripped down a wall
on a Chicago underpass, brought the faithful
running with candles and offerings, blocked traffic.
I saw the pictures, couldn't see her face,
saw a giant gaping vagina instead, just failed
my Rorschach Test, going to hell for sure.

If this is Mary, she sure gets around,
recasting herself as a Holly Golightly,
popping up where you least expect her,
causing trouble for the locals.
But why would she choose to appear
in condensation, burnt toast or ditch water runoff?
Some will say it’s proof that she still dwells here,
runs like an undercurrent, manifests in the mundane.

I say, cut the parlor tricks, Mary.
If you want a little respect, come flaming
out of the sky on a thunder cloud,
ride it like a magic carpet over middle America,
speak in a voice like Diana Rigg or Emma Thompson,
command attention, instead of this sleight of hand,
a stain to be cleaned with soap and water,
so easily erased.

* * *

More About Collin: Collin Kelley is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet from Atlanta, Georgia. He is the author of Slow To Burn (2006, Metro Mania Press) and Better To Travel (2003), which was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award and Georgia Author of the Year Award. Kelley’s poetry has appeared in In Posse Review, Blue Fifth Review, Terminus, New Delta Review, Chiron Review, poeticdiversity, The Pedestal, Lily, Welter, SubtleTea and many others. He is co-editor of the award-winning Java Monkey Speaks Anthology series (Poetry Atlanta Press) and hosts the Internet radio show The Business of Words at Leisure Talk Radio Network. For more information, visit his website by clicking here.

Poetry Monday: Susan Rich

"I believe poetry has made me become a better person; I’m more empathetic and less judgmental thanks to the humbling task of setting sounds on paper, taking words and trying to cajole them into beauty and meaning," says Susan Rich. "Poetry pushes me into new challenges and allows me a myriad of experiences that extend my world."

I think both of Susan's poems featured today demonstrate this empathy and humility, fortified with an uncurrent of gentle humor. The poems are: "Transcendence" and "Sexing the Terza-Rima." Here's what Susan says about the poems:

I wrote "Transcendence" after visiting a translation workshop at Centrum Writers Conference in Port Townsend, WA. I had to leave early that day just as my poet-friend was passing out an assignment. I felt guilty sneaking out and jotted down some notes on how prescient everything had felt in that room – even the curtains.

The original title was "Translating Afternoon," but in the end, that felt too prescriptive. I tried to conjure a little bit of the way poetry brings us out of ourselves, always trying to say the unsayable.

It was actually published in a special issue of Bellevue Literary Review that focused on death and dying. And actually, that works too. Who knew death and translation resembled each other so?

"Sexing the Terza-Rima" (published in Words + Images) is a much older poem. It began as a graduate school assignment: write in terza-rima. I think one terza-rima is enough for me for a lifetime – although I like the odd turns it takes – desperate to keep those rhymes going while alternately weaving in a new one. I have new respect for Dante after this. Of course, in Italian this form makes a great deal more sense.

Sexing the Terza-rima

The End flashes on the screen all curlicues.
It's a film we've seen a dozen times before.
The lovers kiss, their bodies fall from view

All dilemmas solved, forgotten, or ignored,
It left me craving husbands with suede shoes
And I went with one who opened fine trap-doors

To rescue captains when their ships were wrecked
And usher fortunes from old cobbled floors.
My man adored all things that time neglects —

Old gramophones and girls dressed-up as bears.
But soon the sex was stale: more angst than artistry.
I left him for a chef with pastry shears

Who sang to me from under a blue gum tree
And whispered, I've something to confess!
How quaint it seemed: a man of integrity.

What Carl retold I never would have guessed.
He'd fallen for my scarves and lace-up boots.
To wear alone — he pressed, when I cross-dress.

What feelings in me did this news produce?
Was I repulsed, amused, or simply charmed?
He passed me homemade tarts with cheese and fruit

Our relationship continued on unharmed.
With custard cups and chocolate pinafores
We saved each other and bought a dairy farm.

Now late at night along long corridors,
I hear the hurried kicks of commodores
And know it’s not the end at all, just the man that I adore.

* * *

Transcendence

A summer wind clicks through the room
plastic curtains ecstatic as castanets.

Standing outside the rim of the body

you inhabit other lives –
Russian horses and red pigeon feathers –

weathered to beach glass, to scrim.

And this afternoon, as other Jews before,
you call out green syllables

nearly sing them:

incantation of salt air, ripened plum.

Anna Akhmatova wanders the halls
offering peppermints with dented spoons –

Under a different house of sky …

Praise humans that blunder us
into the great unknowing –

translate sea to transalpine
an epic fable to jazz-filled tulip field.


* * *

About Susan Rich and her influences: Susan is the author of two poetry collections, both from White Pine Press: Cures Include Travel and The Cartographer's Tongue.
The books she takes with her on trips include The Complete Poems 1927-1979 by Elizabeth Bishop, Negative Blue: Selected Later Poems by Charles Wright, and Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee. Elizabeth Bishop has traveled with Susan through South Africa, Bosnia and an airport stay in Frankfurt.

Bishop--whom Susan calls her "dead mentor"--was the first poet Susan ever found that shared her obsessions with maps and travel. Reading Charles Wright always makes Susan want to write – and inspires her to reach further into the disjunctive line or lyrical leap-froging than she might otherwise try. Li-Young Lee allows her to think about why she writes poetry and to not be embarassed to claim it as a kind of spiritual practice.

Susan's poems are forthcoming in translation in the Slovenian journal Dialogi, translated by Veronika Dintinjana. Her awards include a PEN USA Award for Poetry, Artist Trust Fellowship, and Fulbright Fellowship to South Africa. She has been a Peace Corps Volunteer in Niger and an Electoral Supervisor in Bosnia. She lives in Seattle with her cats Sarajevo and Otis Travnic. Click here for Susan's website.

Poetry Monday: Larissa Shmailo

I inter-met Larissa Shmailo through WOMPO, the Women's Poetry Listserv (which, despite its moniker, includes men in the conversation).

Two things grabbed my attention about her: her poetry--it's fresh and surprising--and her email signature, a quote from Rollo May: "The poet, like the lover, is a menace on the assembly line."

It's too easy for me to get cornered by authoritative voices in my life and art. I like art and people that re-remind me, as Foucault put it, that we are freer than we think.

Coming to Poetry
Larissa came to poetry writing in her thirties. She says as a young person she "made a good show of the role" of writer by "drinking and posing with the arty kids." Then as an adult she "turned to turgid, therapeutic prose, and at the age of 36," as she says, poetry "found" her when she was camping outside of Woodstock.

Larissa says, "I was in an altered state due to meditation, and the poems came flying to my pen. Since then, I can't live without exploring language in poems. (They don't appear magically as much anymore). Much of my poetry is deemed political but my main interests are combinations of words and sounds in a way that pleases my ear. Increasingly, the look of the page is important to me."

Influences: Patti Smith for a Day
Larissa says, "I love Elizabeth Bishop, Pushkin, Mayakovsky, Auden, Roethke, Wilbur--there are too many to list. I just reviewed Letters From Aldenderry by Philip Nikolayev and I think he is the most exceptional poet I have encountered this decade. I started chanting my poems after hearing the amazing Anne Elliott and I wish I could be Patti Smith for a day. There are many more, in many ways I only am beginning to explore contemporary poetry."

Two Poems and Commentary
Below are two of Larissa's poems, one short and one long, each followed by her thoughts about them.

* * *

Spring Vow

We will love like dogwood.
Kiss like cranes.
Die like moths.
I promise.

Larissa's comments on "Spring Vow": Not surprisingly, I was in love at the time and experiencing one of those moments in which my hand and the flower petals falling upon it were completely indistinguishable. Blooms and some loves which are finite by definition are nonetheless lovely, hence this poem. (This poem appears in About: Poetry Spring 2007 Anthology.)

* * *

Madwoman

(click here for the poem since I cannot get the formatting correct on my blog.)

Larissa's comments on "Madwoman": I've been following a vigorous discussion of mental illness among a favorite group of woman poets and want to offer a glimpse into the "consumer" (yes, that's what the mental health industry calls us!) side. Those who glamorize the mad artist never mention the years lost in chaos and the arduous task of reconstruction after episodes which destroy careers, social networks, brain cells, and the mad artist herself. However, madness can shift paradigms and challenge conventional values and thinking. That is what "Madwoman" is about.

* * *

Larissa Shmailo has been published in Newsweek, About Poetry, Rattapallax, BigBridge.org, Lungfull!, and many other publications. Her recent poetry CD, The No-Net World, has received excellent reviews. Larissa has received "Critic's Picks" notices for her readings and radio appearances from the New York Times, Village Voice, Maud Newton, and Time Out magazine. Larissa translated the Russian Futurist opera Victory over the Sun which was performed at the first Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and internationally; a DVD of the original English-language production is part of the collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art. She recently contributed translations to the anthology New Russian Poets forthcoming from the Dalkey Archive Press(under auspices of the National Endowment of the Arts). She is active in the New York City poetry community as curator of the Sliding Scale Poetry series.

Read more of her poetry here, here, and here.

Poetry Monday: Lorna Dee Cervantes

Lorna Dee and her musician brother Steve

Back in the early 1990's, Lorna Dee Cervantes was a guest speaker in a class I was taking at San Jose State. I was moved by her passion for life, for poetry, for social justice--and her tender-edged images of California. I still have my signed copy of her first poetry collection, Emplumada. So much great poetry in that book--and I especially love the pairing of "Barco de Refugiados" with the English version "Refugee Ship."

In April, Lorna Dee and I--along with a number of other poets--read at an SJSU poetry event (for more about that, read here). I remember thinking it was too bad she no longer lived in the Bay Area. But now, amazingly, she's in the process of moving back! She talks about that below.

Also below she riffs on her creative process and the writing of the two poems featured below: "Untitled (Pfeiffer Beach)" and "Untitled (Monterey)."

Lorna Dee says:
These two poems are a pair. They come out of the same place, literally and existentially. I wrote them last week, on a trip "home" after 20 years away, returning to Pfeiffer Beach where my ex of that many years and I used to camp. The whole Monterey Bay, point of first contact with the Europeans, my native land. And now the smell of the invasive alien eucalyptus penetrating my senses and taking me back to there with the sound of pounding surf, to it all, an early lifetime of living--and loving.

I was seeing and hearing it all for the first time again; a whole shelled pecan returning to the nutcase; a state of just looking and not even attempting to remember and re-present it, to try and jump back in, to try and fit into it.

I'd gone to a used and rare book store in Monterey, a narrow walled high-ceiling place with trippy antique wall-paper with drawings of frustrated writers, or so they seemed to me. I found a copy of Zbigniew Herbert, a poet I had read in a literally translated version without stanzas or form when I was a teenager, and love him. It seemed to fit this state of returning (I'm planning to relocate "back home" to the Bay Area.)

After 20 years away ("kantum sung"), the Colorado transplant never quite took. I'm still in a rootball and easy to pull. These are very much poems of place, in that homing wolf sort of way of Brother Antoninus (William Everson) by way of Robinson Jeffers by way of the women of Point Lobos, the native and Californio women — like me.

I was back in a land where I know the names of things. "A product of affection and imagination." Robert Hass, Bob, my "guru" of many years said this in relation to the economics of certain types of free markets involving predilective labor. I believe he intends it to apply to poetry, the magic of a good poem that just happens; happens upon you, rather than you making it or making it happen. Ouija board poetry is how I sometimes think of it. Not exactly automatic writing, or channelling. As Bob says of poetry, "poetry is much wilder than that" and I'm not in charge nor are there dictates. Just a state of free dwelling in affection and imagination, and a rhythm, a cadence, a voice and a voicing — as a constant, for how ever long it lasts, like setting the top to spin, then sitting back and observing it.

If there's anything I learned from my gurus, my poetry teachers: Rose Higashi, Sylvia Gonzalez, Virginia de Araujo, Robert Hass, Naomi Clark, Stanley Kunitz, it's: pay attention.

Every poem discovers its own process.

That line came to me just now the way the first line of the first poem came to me, with the (seeming) power of a visionary dream: Every ending finds its own beginning. This had enormous personal meaning to me regarding my own state of mind and circumstance as a being at a crossroads, and conscious of it. I decided to sleep on it, and write the poem the next day. And I'm glad I did. It would have been a different poem, then. Before the influence of the Herbert, his 3 poems of heart poem in particular, it would have been a lesser poem, I think. But like a choice of lovers, who knows? Eh? I guess you just have to live with it, the final choice, with affection and imagination.

Someone said the first line and a half, (my catalytic line!) and the last line and a half (my attempt to save my line from triteness) were trite, and not worthy of the rest of the poem. Ouch. That might be true. It's like having an ugly child, I imagine. Mine has always been beautiful, so, who knows? It wouldn't be the poem it is without it, I think. Maybe, like falling in love with someone a bit unsuitable, too late now.

I had been working on the final form of my new 220 page collection of love poems, Una poca de gracia/ Bit of Grace, and conscious of how I wanted these new poems to fit in, like filler for the holes in the dike. I had found a poem of mine from my second book called Point Lobos and now, in the rereading and reconsidering, it seemed convoluted, and I pulled it from the book. But I needed a Point Lobos poem. Or, poems.

I was riffing on some earlier Santa Cruz poems, and earlier love poems that were published in my first book, Emplumada, published when I was 24. A good year for loving the love of your life. Both poems were written in a day, a day apart, and all in a single sitting. Something else's hands were guiding the pen, someone else's voice was speaking through me. I wrote what I heard and broke the line when I was led to it. Then I typed and carved like the sea does to the land at Point Lobos, especially at the first which didn't seem "it" until I broke it into quatrains, unfinished, and unresolved, in the end.

I tried to sustain this state of consciousness, of seeing, into the week with a series of poems, but there was too much to do, too much to say and people to say it to, that I wrote no more. I wrote one I started the next day, "Untitled (Whaler's Cove)" (which is the title), and tried to finish it yesterday, thinking of it, and these poems, and this bit of writing here.

Y'all tell me if it was successful. Maybe these poems are just the pair.

Both poems are being submitted to Ocho #10, "Untitled (Monterey)" at the request of Didi Menendez, so it might appear in there soon. Otherwise, the pair were posted on my home blog and and at the CafeCafe blog at facebook. Hosted by Didi, it includes lots of very good poets, with very good comments, and that inspires me. It always inspires me to read good poetry. Besides, they also offer monthly challenges, and I like the practice of writing to form or writing occasional poems inspired by something outside of me.

I've spent so many decades writing out of another way, out of Frost's perpetual "lump in the throat" that I like it, it's a form, a practice of not-doing. As Kunitz says, poetry is a kind of order/a kind of folly. Yes. And, a way of saying, "YES".


Untitled (Pfeiffer Beach)

Lavender clings to the cliff.
I left this long ago. Yellow
lupine slings her slipper, small moss
hands shiver in the stilled wind. Hello
past. Goodbye fading future into
now. The eternity of the sea waves
her saludos. Sometimes something slips
and the cracked pawl skips, the sawing
away at my face slows for an instant
and I see. Summer sludges up the hill
as the sun burns through until
frost. And here I am. Not hurrying.
Breathing in the medicine breath of eucalyptus
as the hillsides burst into the many erections
of horse chestnuts, their flagrant white
penises trumping the bees. We called them
Coyote Trees, Trickster bushes, always changing
shape. The shape-shifters along this path I'm on
beckon. The whole world beckons. And I'm traveling
on.

6/1/07

* * * *
UNTITLED (Monterey)

Every ending finds its own
beginning, the broken beetle curled
into its hovel, the leaves and leavings
of the world gone crisp. All of it

in a loop of sense, the still burning,
and its ash. The seed in me
bears wings, nubbins to the last.
I take the last oranges on the wiry stem,

the then and now expurgated in its scent.
And remember you, my face, my mirror,
my tunneling in the remembrance — a sprig
of bouganvillea, vibrant and calling

the memory home: a memory of home,
or some kind of smoke, a haze
over days, and, the dissipation.
I believe that the butterfly finds

its lost scale, all the scuffled dust
that keeps it aloft. I believe that what
sleeps in its hollowed den wakens
and feeds, and needs the nuzzlings

it finds there. I believe that the sea
in its spiral cage looks out the cephalopod's
wake. All of spring in its burgeoning fate
repeats. And I am. Repeating. I am.

And I'm not. And I wait.

5/31/07

Lorna Dee Cervantes (visit her blog here) is a Chumash Xicana poet/printer/professor now living in Berkeley, preparing her book of new and selected love poems for publication, and finishing a screenplay and writing a novel this summer. She is also completing a nonfiction book, Ganesh's Tusk: Towards a Pedagogy of Poetics on writing, writing practices and the theories of teaching creative writing. The recipient of numerous awards, honors & fellowships, Lorna Dee is an Associate Professor of English at CU Boulder where she teaches Chicana and Black Studies courses for Ethnic Studies, and mentored 45 creative writing students in 18 years.

Writing Wisdom

"There are three rules for writing novels. Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are." (Somerset Maugham)


* * * * * * * * * *

Come back Monday for an exciting and exclusive Poetry Monday: two poems with commentary about those poems by a terrific poet. Many of you probably already know her work and will appreciate her insights.

Poetry Monday: Ellen Bass

If you've never read the whole of Mules of Love by Ellen Bass' , you're in for a treat. I wish I could read it again for the first time. I've taught it several times in my creative writing classes, and Ellen has generously come to speak to my students about her work.

I've taken writing workshops with Ellen, and she is a gifted teacher. She has a way with saying just the right thing (and of letting silence do its important work too . . . in teaching and in writing, she's a master of negative space). She also has a great sense of humor!

Now Ellen has a new book out, The Human Line--just released by Copper Canyon Press. Look what Billy Collins says about The Human Line: "Ellen Bass's frighteningly personal poems about sex, love, birth, motherhood, and aging are kept from mere confession by the graces of wit, an observant eye, an empathetic heart, and just the right image deployed at just the right time. The Human Line is full of real stunners."

Below is "Bone of My Bone and Flesh of My Flesh," a poem from The Human Line. (Click here to read more poems from the book.)

And exclusive to this blog, here is some commentary by Ellen about the poem: Ellen says, "I was working on a poem in which I needed a word for Janet, the woman with whom I have lived, loved, and raised children for twenty-five years. Searching through an old thesaurus--I still use the thesaurus my older brother handed down to me, published in 1962--I came across such a wonderful plethora of words that I thought they deserved a poem of their own."

Bone of My Bone and Flesh of My Flesh (by Ellen Bass)

I can't always refer to the woman I love,

my children’s other mother,

as my darling, my beloved,

sugar in my bowl. No.

I need a common, utilitarian word

that calls no more attention to itself

than nouns like grass, bread, house.

The terms husband and wife are perfect for that.

Hassling with PG&E

or dropping off dry cleaning,

you don't want to say,

The light of my life doesn't like starch.

Don't suggest spouse—a hideous word.

And partner is sterile as a boardroom.

Couldn't we afford a term

for the woman who carried that girl in her arms

when she was still all promise,

that boy curled inside her womb?

And today, when I go to kiss her

and she says, "Not now, I'm reading,"

still she deserves a syllable or two—if only

so I can express how furious

she makes me. But

maybe it's better this way —

no puny pencil stub of a word.

Maybe these are exactly the times

to drag out the whole galaxy

of endearments: Buttercup,

I should say, lambkin, mon petit chou.

Set down War and Peace,

just for a moment, and lift

your ruby lips to mine.

And talking to the dishwasher repairman,

the vacuum cleaner salesclerk, the woman

in the Blue Cross billing department

I could explain that I'd already sent the co-pay

for my soulmate, my duckling,

my chocolate-covered cream puff.

Maybe it would brighten her day, too.

Hello, I might say, you precious,

you jewel, O queen among queens,

darling, honey pie, angel,

my sweet patootie.

* * * * * * *

Ellen Bass's poetry books include The Human Line (Copper Canyon Press, 2007)and Mules of Love (BOA, 2002). She is also co-author of The Courage to Heal (HarperCollins). She teaches in the MFA program at Pacific University, in Santa Cruz, and at beautiful locations around the world, including Big Sur, British, Columbia, and Mallorca.

Poetry Monday: C. Dale Young

I recently came across C. Dale Young's blog and recognized his name, so I hunted down some of his poetry and was blown away. C. Dale has graciously agreed to be featured on today's Monday Poetry.

He's a physican and a poet, a time-honored combination when you consider Rafael Campo and William Carlos Williams. (An aside: My mom is an R.N. and a writer.)

Exclusive to my blog only!! C. Dale discusses each of the two poems featured below.

C. Dale Young (blog here, website here) practices medicine full-time, edits poetry for New England Review, and teaches in the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. He is the author of The Day Underneath the Day (Northwestern 2001) and The Second Person, just published this spring by Four Way Books.

Poem #1: "Clean"

C. Dale says: "I wrote 'Clean' after a friend of mine told me I never write about tenderness. I was determined to write a poem that held, at its core, tenderness. In the end, this is closest I have come.

Clean (by C. Dale Young, first appeared in Ploughshares)

Already, his abdomen was sculpted, and already

the thin trail descending from beneath his belly button.

Even now it is difficult to explain it. I was, after all,

only 7; I didn’t even know what Turkish meant.

In the dead of winter, which only meant

certain flowers had ceased blooming on the island,

we had driven up into the mountains

to “take the waters,” as our parents put it.

Our parents’ instructions were simple: they would be

in one room, our sisters in another, my brother

and I in yet another. Down the dark hallways

as dark as tunnels, down through the strong smell

of minerals and seawater, the attendants led us

to our rooms. What was that smell? Sulfur?

Aluminum? There was the smell of salt, but it

was not the salt of the earth, not the sea itself.

The old man told us not to sit in the water for more

than fifteen minutes at a time, to drink lots of cold water,

to scrub the salts into our skin, to take care of each other.

And then, he left us. We took off our clothes, did it

without thinking. “You get in first,” is all he said, his voice

sounding more like my father’s, his voice having changed

almost a year ago. His body had changed, too.

Sitting in the pool, my thoughts began to swim

in the vapors, the steam. I felt nauseated.

I wanted not to look at him. I wanted to look at the tile:

blue and blue-white with the depiction of a terrible vine

twisting and creeping around the tops of the walls.

When he got out and lay on the tile next to the pool,

his abdomen was already sculpted, and the thin trail . . .

He knew I watched him, and he loved the admiration.

When I finally got out, my head dizzy, my heart racing

from the heat, I lay myself down next to him. He scrubbed

my back with a rough sponge, pulled me against his chest

as he scrubbed behind my ears and under my arms. There,

in the steam, I was cleaner than I would ever be again.

* * *

Poem #2: "Sepsis"

C. Dale says: "'Sepsis' is an amalgamation of several experiences I had as medical Intern. I am haunted by many experiences I have had as a physician. Sometimes, the haunting spills over into my poems. As much as I love my profession and cannot imagine myself not practicing Medicine, it has damaged me in ways I can never explain. I am not even sure I can explain it to myself."


Sepsis (by C. Dale Young, first appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review)

The fog has yet to lift, God, and still the bustle

of buses and garbage trucks. God, I have coveted

sleep. I have wished to find an empty bed

in the hospital while on call. I have placed

my bodily needs first, left nurses to do

what I should have done. And so, the antibiotics

sat on the counter. They sat on the counter

under incandescent lights. No needle was placed

in the woman’s arm. No IV was started. It sat there

on the counter waiting. I have coveted sleep, God,
and the toxins I studied in Bacteriology took hold

of Your servant. When the blood flowered

beneath her skin, I shocked her, placed the paddles

on her chest, her dying body convulsing each time.

The antibiotics sat on the counter, and shame

colored my face, the blood pooling in my cheeks

like heat. And outside, the stars continued falling

into place. And the owl kept talking without listening.

And the wind kept sweeping the streets clean.

And the heart in my chest stayed silent.

How could I have known that I would never forget,

that early some mornings, in the waking time,

the fog still filling the avenues, that the image

of her body clothed in sweat would find me?

I have disobeyed my Oath. I have caused harm.

I have failed the preacher from the Baptist Church.

Dear God, how does a sinner outlast the sin?

Poetry Monday: Joan McMillan

I met Joan in the MFA program at San Jose State. Every poem she brought to workshop took my breath away. That is why I selected her for Poetry Monday. Here is one of her poems which first appeared in the Blue Mesa Review:

The Doll

On Christmas, a few months after my sister's abortion,
my mother gave her a Madame Alexander doll
the size and weight of a newborn, wearing a gown and bonnet
of textured pink satin trimmed with Irish lace.

In my mother's mind, soaked like a spongecake with liquor,
everything had its replacement:
if a single plate from her Desert Rose dish set
dropped and shattered, the next day she bought another one
at the Franciscan Ware shop in Glendale,

so, after my sister came home from the doctor,
my mother drove to a toy store and purchased the doll.
It lay swaddled in tissue on the top shelf of her closet
next to her silver makeup case from the 1940's
gleaming in the fragrant dark.

I imagine how my mother smoked a cigarette
alone in the living room the night after Christmas,
all the lamps extinguished, the tree glowing with starry lights,
flicking her cigarette-ash into an ashtray and remembering
the moment she had been waiting for, when my sister
cut the silky white ribbons and lifted the doll from its box,
its glass eyes clicking open as it made a faint, mechanical cry.

* * * *

Joan McMillan received her MFA in Creative Writing from San Jose State University. Her work has appeared most recently in White Pelican Review and Oyez Review, and has also appeared in Poetry, Quarry West, Chattahoochee Review, ONTHEBUS, and elsewhere.

Sunday, Sunday

Yesterday Annie and I needed an escape, so we escaped to an escapist movie, The Valet : perfect escapist fare. Not very deep but very enjoyable. I loved the film's tenderness toward the two main characters.

A beautiful day here. Annie and I are off for a dog walk then a bike ride.

Check out this blog tomorrow for the Monday Poetry Feature, starring a surprise poet! You will love her, trust me.