Amy's comments (member since Jun 19, 2007)

Amy's comments from the ¡ POETRY ! group.

Want your words to reach two and a half million people?

Goodreads and the ¡Poetry! group have partnered to create a contest in order to select a new poem each month for our newsletter.

1. Post your best poem here (*one poem per person*) in this folder (below as a "comment").

2. Goodreads and I will select five poems each month to be voted on by the Goodreads community.

3. ¡Poetry! group members will vote for the poem they like best (one vote per member). The poem with the most votes will be published in the Goodreads’ newsletter – distributed each month to nearly 2 million people!

Good luck & please post your best work!

Thanks,

Amy King
¡Poetry! Moderator

Welcome, all! Thanks for posting info about yourselves! An interesting group...

Malcolm,

Your conclusion that "no rhyming poems" have been selected is just false. Before you boast such blatant claims, you need to go back through all of the months and determine if no rhyming poems have been selected - and you will find that this simply isn't the case.

Further, the constant repetition of such a claim is downright bullying. Pointless and dogmatic.

Gregory,

Why are you typing in all caps? Are you shouting at me? Attempting to be combative?

Clearly, I don't own the site, but I started this group and am the moderator. My final word on the subject.

Amy

Dear Gregory et al,

I have refrained from curbing your discussions about rhyme for sometime now, but I have finally received enough complaints to ask you to please move discussions about this topic into another area of the group.

I realize you don't agree with the selections, but this section, each month, is not the place to repeat the same discussion about the validity and merits of rhyme. Please move the discussion to another section of the group where members who are interested can join if they like.

Finally, I will add that, despite your protests, I have been more than fair in giving you ample space and time to state your positions, and I have read and considered them. Rhymed poems make it into the selection when they are worthwhile, not because they are rhyming poems but because they are good. I am not averse to rhyme. If you don't agree, that's okay. But to keep repeating the same position each month, well, many members are becoming upset by the insistence and repetition.

I started this group sometime ago because I wanted it to exist. I know that someone else has started a group for rhyming poetry because she wanted it to exist. If you don't agree with how the group functions, you are welcome to stay and you are welcome to leave. You are also welcome to start another group. I don't mean this to sound cavalier; I want you to understand that I have been very patient -- but I did not start this group to see discussion dominated each month by the same repetitious argument. I hope this is clear, and I hope you understand that I mean this in the best way possible. But people are growing weary of it, so please understand.

Thanks much,

Amy

VOTE IN THE POLL ON THE POETRY GROUP'S MAIN PAGE! (CLICK THIS LINK TO VOTE! --> JUST SELECT TITLE OF POEM YOU LIKE BEST!


POQUITA

The lady sits on the park bench.
Her skirt is quiet around her legs
That are brown vases creased with blue veins.
Yesterday she stood up and sang
En mi viejo San Juan, cuantos sueños forjé
Her skirt was like the wind
In a hurricane -open and reckless.
And her eyes were glistening brown
Today the lady holds a golden Chrysanthemum
That blooms in the autumn.
While her cataract eyes turn into
White veined marbles

Light fades. The city bus’s headlights
Blossom
Children and parents walk by her bench.
They are small blue pinpoints
As they walk away from her down the darkened street
Holding hands

En mi viejo San Juan, cuantos sueños forjé
The lady sings holding onto memories.
Everything is disappearing
inaudible invisible and drifting.

The fragrance of pink and red hibiscus
In her mother’s vases on the windowsill
Aunts uncles, cousin Julie
The ocean against white sand
Her heart’s beat.

--Elizabeth P. Glixman

~~

Derelict Farm, Late Winter, 2009

“Worlds are altered rather than destroyed.”
-- Democritus

On the other side of the unused pasture
the black-and-white feral cat pads
across the upper rafters of the half-
collapsed barn, its socks and patches
the only brightness in the gray of late winter
though this morning's rain threatens
to change to snow and mask the mud
making everything appear again briefly clean.
What hunger must drive it there to risk a fall
and hunt whatever nests above the ground.
The farmer and his wife, too old now to work
have wrapped their house in plastic
against the bitter wind. In the field
the machinery of agriculture decays
abandoned and random, oxidizing in the slow
cold fire of rust. Eons from now, the iron
reclaimed by the soil, will rise from roots
to leaves and fortify the blood of deer
who in the fall come to forage from the pair
of ancient unpruned apple trees. All winter
I had not seen that cat, though my kids
assured its tracks had crossed the snow.
It must have sheltered during the day
from the hawks down from the tundra
who prowled the sky and rested, watching
in our trees, diving now and then for voles
I could not see except when dangling
from their fatal beaks. The world
is changing now, a bigger revolution
than the season's march, the globe's economy
collapsing like that barn, but faster. Hunger
threatens half of us, while fear of it tightens
the fists of those who have enough to share.
Is this the end? Spring will come when it comes
and not before. The thaw exposes all the mess
the snow had hidden. Let the sun warm more
than just this patch of frozen ground.

--Wendy Babiak

~~

PHOTO ALBUM


We are screaming and we are swimming near grass
of the graves that grew above the lives we planted
each day hoping that the shutter and flash would capture
what all of the gestures added up to when they were taken away
by page upon page of inflated pools overlaid
by burning birthday cakes, kids flying off
swingsets over grandmothers climbing stepladders
to hang birdhouses next to wedding gowns.

The drowned boy will always be four
in a last picture with his face against the sliding glass door.
When everyone was asleep he slipped from cottage to dock
and walked out of his life.

My wife and I will be floating happily inside the brandy glass
where a department store photographer placed our heads.
We could have gotten the star background but preferred to drown forever
in the moving spirits distilled from still memory.

If we are containers that contain ourselves,
if we are waiting on shelves to fall off,
defeat is as easy as never being able to see--
how we were smashed and what we were attached to,
who called our name and changed us
into each other and us all.

Gather dolls, squalling infants, clippings
of the fire that destroyed the Masonic Lodge, the daughters'
daughters, pet dogs, favorite coffins
and the first moon a child sees out the window
as she's riding in a car. . . .

It glows and follows to show that even it is alive.

Add stepmother's goldfish, a half-wit nephew,
brothers' lovers, a picnic basket on the lap
of the homosexual astrologer
with a cat born on Hitler's birthday.

there is a flash as we all remember
and are preserved in each other's embrace.

And a lingering, dumb prayer sent back fourteen years to the fifth page
where the neighbor's son woke up before anyone--

May there have been enough light at dawn for you to look down
into the water and see the reflection of the sky you were stepping into
instead of a boat.

--Matt Jasper

~~

The Beatitude of Swimming Nude

In Mazunte, where the ocean is dense
with phosphorus, I skinnydipped in a jacuzzi
forged by a spiral of rocks.
I was peeled and sea-salted at dusk,
ignoring the skywatchers who chanced to look my way.
John stood above at the craggy peak,
hands cupped to split the bellow of ocean,
howling that I must hurry into my trousers
for the sky had turned crimson above.
I scuttled up the rock wall, afraid I was going to keel off
into the surf. I'd almost made it
when the fabric of my pants scraped rock
and cleaved at my knees and backside.
I watched the sunset with the pale flesh of my rear
facing eastward toward Zipolite,
where it is permissible to swim in the nude.
May I never skinnydip lawfully;
may I be thoroughly baptized in this curious gospel;
may I always tear my finest clothes
rushing to something beautiful and quick.

--KWP

~~


Miari Area
(Seoul, South Korea)

the jizism girls
sit in their jizism
windows take your
faith & kick
it out the window
we'll clay our way
out of this dark
I'm working on
working on
erasing you
I'm on my loneliness
with my fat lips
I'm drumpy
you're simple
I'm considering
drinking
your ass juice
to whom do I
spread to whom
do I crack
open soften
inside slime
into the grind
a bliss cup
among the towers
pain became
a passage
a puppet
a muppet
a beauty bar
twigs in the twaggle
bakelight inside
the mouthcharts
don't make me
sweat do not wear
do not make me
make me wear
flares do not
make me
spit cherry pits
stick glass in
tummy munch
Rumi let us
then mate

--Marcus Slease

~~

Broomstick

By day I’m blind
head in the dirt
stiff as a pole
to the girl’s push, push at motey sunlight.

When master clips her
she chews her bonnet-string awhile,
returns to her tuneless humming.

By night I have a heartbeat.
The green in me courses
with the force that swings the tides
and we are up, up, up,
a hot frost of flying twigs and hair,
her laughter scaring owls.

She sings the night, cold and clear
as snaking river-light below,
dark as the calligraphy of trees.
We rise with Our Lady Moon,
a beauty-spot upon her face.

By day I’m blind
head in the dirt.
She keeps night folded
in her apron pocket;
we sweep the day into a corner
--a little pile of dust.

--Judith Allnatt

~~

The Princess’s Dilemma

When he leans over and wakes you
with a kiss, beads of sweat drip
onto your cheeks as you look up
into an ordinary face. His eyes,
the color of old pennies, are close set.
His clothes smell of a horse
ridden too hard too long.
He’s overweight. Pressed against
your chest, he steals your breath.
You sit up, call for fruit and wine,
and pray for piquant conversation.

"Do you like dogs?" he asks. He talks
about Stanley, his beloved
English mastiff; his rose garden
with twenty-four species,
floribunda—his darling;
tea with Mother in the afternoons.
She’s teaching him petit point.
He claims you’d never be bored.
Friday nights—bingo with the staff.
On Sundays they hunt unicorns.

You ask about governance, peaceful
coalitions, the well-being of his subjects,
patronage of the arts. He scoffs,
"Let those under me trouble themselves
with such headaches."

You can’t picture yourself married
to this feckless simpleton.
You’d lock your door at night
against his lust. You’d likely take up
with the winsome gardener.

Besides, his kingdom is far, far away,
across rivers and mountains. You know
you’d sorely miss your family
and friends. How to break it to him
without hurting his feelings
and ruining the end of the story…

--Jane Ellen Glasser

~~

Grassland

When I could not get with child
I swallowed the egg of the meadowlark
who eats the daylight,
the mother of untangled grasses.
A long drop, the egg bore its root
in my foot, it stitched me
together with grain.

I am patient now; I am not damaged by waiting.
Languid as a coming rain, stalks
inch alongside my veins to the tips
of my fingers.

A grassland has thirst,
so does a fire,
a cup, noon,
the color of dough,
so while I sleep the moon creeps
between my poised teeth
to flood me with moonwater.
When I speak, the scent
of lengthening wheat overwhelms me.
Shoots rise straight up
and don’t droop as tears,
don’t fail like questions;
they get on with growing.

I hold a handkerchief
over my mouth to veil the clover
and bees that tickle my throat,
but the angel
who’s due at my tent
won’t catch me laughing.

A kiss would do it.
One sprinkle of milkwhite salt
and I’ll break like bread at your table.

--S. Jane Sloat

~~

Day of the Dead


Let us celebrate the Day of the Dead:
Jesus coming down from the cross,
the decapitation of the saints.
I am the skull resting
at the feet of Jesus, dancing
in the hearts of lovers. My wife
steals my pain, her nails
torturing my flesh. She lights
another candle to the Virgin.
I taste the shadows of life,
visions of skulls rummaging
about in wooden graves,
soldiers dying in each other’s arms,
widows kneeling before the altar.
Light the match now. Burn
the souls of innocent children.
We are not God’s children,
only a shadow of his creation,
a pimple on a scarred face,
a forgotten planet at the edge
of the universe where nothing
is as it seems. And we all
search our collective memory
for guns and swords and skulls.

I cry again:
Let us celebrate the Day of the Dead:
So that Jesus will climb back
onto the cross. So that sinners
can dance through the gates
of heaven. So that priests
can paint pictures of prostitutes
and worship little boys. May
God have mercy on our souls.
I fight back the tears.

Let us celebrate the Day of the Dead.
Let us light candles to honor the dead.
Soldiers in body bags. Lovers
torn from their sleep. Knives
violating throats. Dreamers
nailed to crosses. I must
not forget. You must not forget.
We must tell the story. God
does not understand. He lives
inside a flower. Trampled
by the feet of the lost and damned.
I will light the candle in protest
of the bodies that lie at my feet,
at the wickedness that crawls
within my soul, of the darkness
that haunts the images captured
by cameras. We can not run.
We can not hide. Jesus, climb
back on the cross. Save us
from those who choose to
lead us down a path that
leads to our destruction.
Light the match, again and again.
Burn the flesh. Tattoo the heart.
Free the soul. Love the spirit.

I watch as the light
goes out of her eyes. I taste
the horror circulating through
her veins. I worship the dead.
I offer up fruit and vegetables,
like lambs to the slaughter,
like criminals to the gallows.
Celebrate the Day of the Dead!


— Harley King

Dear listeners, readers, poets of every stripe:

It's cold outside, but there's plenty to do indoors. Take shelter on October
30th with guest host Julian Brolaski and readers Cara Benson, Elizabeth
Bryant, Carla Drysdale, Brenda Iijima, Magus Magnus & Moez Surani; and on
November 20th with readers Lily Brown, Dorothea Lasky, DéLana R.A. Dameron,
Akilah Oliver, Lytton Smith & Joshua Marie Wilkinson! And if you can't make
it to Brooklyn, our Spring/Summer 2009 season videos are now online at
http://stainofpoetry.com/. Run click and view some astonishing readings.
Starring, in the order of appearance:

Bill Berkson, Cindy Cruz, Aaron Fagan, Jennifer Fortin, Jean-Paul Pecqueur,
Bill Rasmovicz, Jason Gray, Tony Mancus, Deb Poe, Ric Royer, Mario Susko,
Jessica Reed, Joel Chace, Elena Georgiou, Stuart Greenhouse, Cindy King,
Christian Peet, Brett Price, Jennifer Burch, Heather Green, Chris Hosea,
Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Daniel Lin, Barry Schwabsky, Ken Chen, Johannes
Goransson, Cathy Park Hong, Joyelle McSweeney, C. S. Carrier, Jennifer
Firestone, Erica Kaufman, Maya Pindyck, Laura Sims, Ari Banias, Maya Funaro,
Colie Hoffman, Alana Joblin, Caledonia Kearns, Shani Thompson, Julian
Brolaski, Adam Fieled, Nada Gordon, Scott Hightower, Chris Stackhouse, David
Wolach, Emily Kendal Frey, Phil Memmer, Jeni Olin, Zach Schomburg & JodiAnn
Stevenson.

The stain of poetry seeps through la pellicule...

Cheers, Ana & Amy

http://stainofpoetry.com
http://amyking.org/
http://nightcommute.org/



Goodbye Blue Monday
1087 Broadway
(corner of Dodworth St)
Brooklyn, NY 11221-3013
(718) 453-6343

J M Z trains to Myrtle Ave
or J train to Kosciusko St

Verse broadens the mind, scientists find

RICHARD GRAY (rgray@scotlandonsunday.com)

IF LITERATURE is food for the
 mind, then a poem is a banquet, according to research by Scottish scientists
 which shows poetry is better for the brain than prose.

Psychologists at Dundee
and St Andrews universities claim the work of poets such as Lord
Byron exercise the mind more than a novel by Jane Austen. By monitoring the way
different forms of text are read, they found poetry generated far more eye
 movement which is associated with deeper thought.

Subjects were found to read
 poems slowly, concentrating and re-reading individual lines more than they did with 
prose. Preliminary studies using brain-imaging technology also showed greater
 levels of cerebral activity when people listened to poems being read aloud. Dr
Jane Stabler, a literature expert at St Andrews University and a member of the research group, believes poetry 
may stir latent preferences in the brain for rhythm and rhymes that develop
 during childhood. She claims the intense imagery woven through poems, and 
techniques used by poets to unsettle their readers, force them to think more
 carefully about each line. "There seems to be an almost immediate
 recognition that this is a different sort of language that needs to be 
approached in a way that will be more attentive to the density of words in
 poetry," she said. "It may be because readers are trying to hear the 
words or recreate the imaginary event the poet has provided a script for.
" Also, children seem to be born with a love of rhyme and rhythm. Then
 something happens and by the time we see them in the first year at university
 many of them are almost frightened of poetry and clamouring to study the
 contemporary novel."
To study readers’ reactions,
 the research group focused an infrared beam on the pupils of their eyes to
 detect minute movements as they read.

They found poetry produced 
all the standard psychological indications associated with intellectual
 difficulty, such as slow deliberate movement, re-reading sections and long
 pauses. Even when they used identical content but displayed it in both a poem
 format and a prose format, they discovered readers found the poem form the more
 difficult to understand. Stabler said: "When readers decide that something
 is a poem, they read in a different way. As literary critics we would like to 
think that this is a more thoughtful way, more receptive to the text’s richness
 and complexity, but in psychological terms it is the same sort of reading
 produced by a dyslexic reader who finds reading difficult. "We focused on
 poetry that disturbs or unsettles readers like the work of Lord Byron. "We
 found that his stanza form in Don Juan does make subjects read more quickly
 than readers focusing on the rhymes of an elegy in a similar metre."

Stabler believes those
 reading other poets, such as Robert Burns, would show similar increases in
 brain activity.

The group hopes to use
 Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans to watch how the brain reacts as people 
listen to poetry and prose. Early results suggest a larger area of the brain
 lights up in the scans upon hearing poetry by Byron than prose by Austen. The 
research has profound implications for the way English literature is taught in
 schools, and Stabler believes they should consider placing greater emphasis on 
teaching youngsters poetry.

Both rhythm and rhyme have been found to be
 intricately linked with making and recalling memories. Stabler asked: "If 
poetry helps to stir memory, might it be useful in the treatment of age-related
 or injury related memory problems?" Dr Martin Fischer, an experimental
 psychologist at Dundee University involved in the project, claims the findings could 
also form the basis for producing new techniques for helping dyslexic children.
 He said: "It certainly has implications for children who have certain
 difficulties, like in dyslexia where a rhyming deficiency could be compensated
 for by exposing them to more poetry."

Members of the literary world have
 welcomed the research and insist it underlines the importance poetry has played 
in literature. Bestselling crime novelist Ian Rankin said too many people felt
 intimidated by poetry without realising it was designed to be challenging. He
 said: "Novels first began as a form of poetry where story telling was used
 to pass tales from one generation to the next. This was done with rhythm and
 rhyme as it made the stories easier to remember. "We are even seeing that
 today with song lyrics - the only way rap artists can remember all those lyrics
 is because they have rhythm and rhyme. "Not many people pick up books of 
poetry anymore to read. You have to wonder if people find them too hard. "
Edwin Morgan, the nation’s official Makar, the Scottish equivalent of the poet
 laureate, added: "Writing poetry is almost a physical experience as well
 as mental. Children are rarely worried about extracting too much meaning from
 poems, but they seem to get a much deeper experience from it."

Want your words to reach two and a half million people?

Goodreads and the ¡Poetry! group have partnered to create a contest in order to select a new poem each month for our newsletter.

1. Post your best poem here (*one poem per person*) in this folder (below as a "comment").

2. Goodreads and I will select five poems each month to be voted on by the Goodreads community.

3. ¡Poetry! group members will vote for the poem they like best (one vote per member). The poem with the most votes will be published in the Goodreads’ newsletter – distributed each month to nearly 2 million people!

Good luck & please post your best work!

Thanks,

Amy King
¡Poetry! Moderator

Thanks, Ruth! It's fairly light reading, I think. More of a response than anything...

Double Review Of Amy King’s Antidotes For An Alibi and I’m The Man Who Loves You by Matthew Rotando

http://chax.org/eoagh/issuefive/rotando....

NOW ONLINE
EOAGH: A Journal of the Arts
ISSUE 5
http://chax.org/eoagh/issuefive.html
http://chax.org/eoagh/issuefive.html


Contents:

A PANEL, READING, & EXHIBITION
CHARLES OLSON: LANGUAGE AS PHYSICAL FACT

Tenney Nathanson
Cole Swensen
Steve McCaffery
Barbara Henning
Anne Waldman

A CHAPBOOK
Nothing is in Here, by Andrew Levy

READINGS/ARTICLES

An Interview with Kevin Killian, by Tony Leuzzi
TEXT FOR A CUL-DE-SAC, by Wystan Curnow & Lawrence Weiner
The Functional Art of Bruce Nauman, by Jessica Hullman
A Topological Memoir by Penelope Bloodworth
Poetic Ecologies in Bruxelles, by Arpine Konyalian Grenier
Composition as Exposition: A Case File, by Bill Marsh
Paradox: The Diminishing Increase of an Author, by Tom Clark
Field Poetics (a compleat history of de-individualizing practices), by Donald Wellman
Raymond Roussel's (New) Africa, by Louis Bury
Iterative View (of Brent Cunningham's Bird & Forest), by Jesse Seldess
Double Review of Amy King, by Matthew Rotando
Review of Brenda Iijima's Rabbit Lesson, by Geoffrey Olsen
Metapoetic Speculation In/On Tom Beckett's "This Poem," by Thomas Fink
Reading Julian Poirer's Poetry, by Filip Marinovich
Review of Joseph Lease's Broken World, by John Chavez

A POWERPOINT

Pace of Dream, by Eric Magrane & Wendy Burk

PLAYS

Captain America, by Laura Goldstein

The Obituary Show, by CA Conrad

from Conversations Over Stolen Food, by Andy Fitch & Jon Cotner

POETRY
BY

Samuel Ace & Maureen Seaton, William Allegrezza, Renee Angle, Robyn Art, Ari Banias, Emily Beall, Roberto Bedoya, James Belflower, Graeme Bezanson, Carlos T. Blackburn, Kate Broad, Julian T. Brolaski, Ethan Saul Bull, Tetman Callis, Sean Casey, Stephen Chamberlain, Cheryl Clark, Kate Colby, Thomas Cook, Lisa Cooper, Barbara Cully, Mark Cunningham, Shira Dentz, Amanda Deutch, Michelle Detorie, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Moses Eder, Will Edmiston, Thomas Fink & Maya Diablo Mason, Greg Fuchs, Kristen Gallagher, Lawrence Giffin, Giles Goodland, Noah Eli Gordon, Stephanie Gray, Arpine Grenier, Gabriel Gudding, John Harkey, Jeff Harrison, Nathan Hauke, Stefania Heim, Derek Henderson, Michael S. Hennessey, Chelsea Hodson, N. M. Hoffman, Erika Howsare, Paolo Javier, Adeena Karasick, Michael Kelleher, Vincent Katz, Amy King, Paula Kolek, Mark Lamoureux, Dorothea Lasky, Gregory Laynor, Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Ruth Lepson, Joel Lewis, Eric Lindley, Hillary Lyon, Kimberly Lyons, Jami Macarty, Majena Mafe, Jill Magi, CJ Martin, Filip Marinovich, Kristi Maxwell, Rachel May & Joshua A. Ware, E.J. McAdams, Pattie McCarthy, Chris McCreary, Nicholas Messenger, Benjamin Miller, Carol Mirakove, Rajiv Mohabir, Emily Moore, Glenn Mott, Uche Nduka, Gale Nelson, Maurice Olivier, Geoffrey Olsen, Monica Peck, Jennifer Petersen, Lance Phillips, Siri Phillips, Nick Piombino, Lanny Quarles, Jessy Randall & Daniel M. Shapiro, Karin Randolph, Karen Randall & Ross, Priddle, Michael Rerick, Christie Ann Reynolds, James Sanders, Sam Schild, Kyle Schlesinger, Morgan Lucas Schuldt, Paul Siegell, Sandra Simonds, Joel Sloman, Rick Snyder, Alan Sondheim, Leah Souffrant, Sparrow, Christopher Stackhouse, Elizabeth Kate Switaj, Eileen Tabios, Paige Taggart, Anne Tardos, Jeremy James Thompson, Elizabeth Treadwell, Matt Turner, Mara Vahratian, Nico Vassilakis, Andi Werblin, Sara Wintz, and Deborah Wood..

http://chax.org/eoagh/issuefive.html

THREE FINALIST POEMS - CONTINUED:

Vacation

A dusty lifeless ocean has become habit for a congested old man. He collects dead weeds and broken sea glass inside the woman’s hull. Through two snot holes the old man's nostrils attempt to capture the memory of the her bosom blossom scent. A warm breeze comforts the man’s body as his heart and palm can only recall the feel of his woman’s soft golden flower bush.
At one time he was a young woody creosote. She a vibrant shrub. Both sweating in the hot sun like dutiful forms of art. Together each morning the man and the woman prayed for the day they would sail away from that unforgiving dead sea. Survival was not easy living in constant heat. Over time the harsh elements took it’s toll on the man. He eventually became brain washed and delusional.
When the woman would say: “One day I will swim away from this ghetto mirage.” The man’s brittle leaves would coil and shake violently.
“Woman you’re crazy. This is life. Shut the F up!”
Now the lonely man wears a lost broken hearing aid and wipes his nose with a used crusty napkin. His eyes confront the powder blue sky. The man’s ear facing a cotton white cloud. He pretends he can hear a soprano signal. A wind song to only himself.
She whispers: I wait for you. You will be safe. I love only you.

--Ginnetta Correli

~~~

Sonya

(Yasnaya Polyana, November 11, 1873)

I compose letters to him in my head,
and like ash they quickly fall apart.

In the living room Petya lies in his coffin,
his small figure colorless
against the silver cloth lining,
hands crossed on chest.
His nails have blackened.

I think of my selfishness,
my concern over my thickening waist,
my desire for little ribbons,
a new leather belt, to be beautiful again.

For a year I held Petya’s once-red mouth
to my breast – greedy child!
And now he is gone.

Lev is distant, speaks of going
to Moscow tomorrow, to see
the typesetter about the new novel.
I do not understand his kind of grief.

He once told me of a dream – a nightmare,
where death was a red and white room:
square, geometric, inevitable.
Now death is in our house.

I remember two years ago
when he went to the Yasenki barraks,
watched the autopsy of that poor woman,
skull crushed by a train; how he talked
incessantly of her pitiable story.

By spring he was writing again.

When I look into his eyes I see
a widening, a darkness.
A shadow falls between us.

-- Steve Harris

~~~

Me and You


“You know, you really are a jerk sometimes,” you say;
“In that real snooty, intellectual way.”
I arch an eyebrow subtly and say, “So?
Tell me something I don’t know.”

You say, “Well, you’re very funny, I’ll admit.
But sometimes it’s a nasty kind of wit.”
I click my tongue impatiently and say, “So?
Tell me something I don’t know.”

“You hurt my feelings a lot,” you say;
“Like maybe eight or nine times a day.”
I shrug unapologetically and say, “So?
Tell me something I don’t know.”

You say, “You have this high-and-mighty act.
But it’s all fake, and that’s just a fact.”
I look at my watch and say, “So?
Tell me something I don’t know.”

“I don’t think I can be your friend anymore,” you say,
And you turn your back and walk away.
I kick the dirt and tell myself, “So?
Tell me something I don’t know.”

--SM

VOTE IN THE POLL ON THE POETRY GROUP'S MAIN PAGE! (CLICK THIS LINK TO VOTE! --> JUST SELECT TITLE OF POEM YOU LIKE BEST!



Lynette’s War

My cousin Lynette says she’s tired from cleaning
East Main houses of rich bitches. They don’t even shit
like us, got toilet seats that float to the bowl,
never make a sound, & she hands me the baby
over the front seat. Days off Merry Maids
we like to drive her ’97 Trans Am to Atlanta—
kd lang over eight speakers.
I’m tired too, tired of being the babysitter.
Leah grabbing my earrings, covers me in crumbs.
She bites off the heads of animal crackers.
Only eats heads.

Don’t know why I hang with her.
She’s like the girl who cut my hair at Cinderella’s
saying I had the ugliest strands she’d ever seen.
I kept going back for more till Lynette blurted
you don’t need to pay for that kind of shit.
But Lynette says outright
she’s sexy & I’m not. We both know it.
Junior high she called me a mutant. "Boobs
like raisins on a fifteen-year old’s wrong."
Mama took me to the doctor & he shook his head.

At least Lynette is a good mother.
When the kid has fever, Lynette won’t go
to work. "I’d rather lose my job
than leave a sick baby at daycare."
Guess that’s why I hang with her.
She might call me names, but let somebody else do it,
she’d scratch their eyes out. At the Sonic,
some boy from Crossville leaned in the window,
"drop the fat chick & let’s go driving."
She clawed his left cheek & screeched away,
tray still on the car, cokes & fries flying.
"Son of a bitch thinks he can dump on you and have
a good time with me. Stupid bastard."

I thought Lynette would always be the one to leave.
Good looking. Smart. She never let anybody
walk on her, or me, though she did
what Cochran girls do after getting their
driver’s license. She got knocked up.
Wouldn’t tell a soul who the father was.
We all thought it was Sonny Cruz.

He went to Iraq in August & emailed Lynette every day.
Like they were junk, she’d hit delete.
He started writing letters she stacked on her dresser—
unopened. "Keeping in touch with soldiers
is talking to the dead." Sonny could come back,
I say. Lots of boys make it. Lynette turned away,
"he might, but he won’t be the Sonny I knew."

After homecoming she carries his letters out to the grill.
They catch on the third match.
Every last word.

--Chella Courington


~

Reading After Midnight


Hour after hour, they watch the tube.
No one in the rehab reads.

They remind me of bored household pets.
Perhaps it's self hypnosis.
I almost envy their rapture, their zombie gaze.

The mad house fills
The shelters fill
The graveyards fill
The crack house is full again

There will always be a void inside of me.

The counselors advise me to read steps 2 & 3 from the AA Big Book.

Came to believe...

Someone changes the channel:

It's a show about a brother on parole who ends
up in the joint again
is sprung, hooks up with a beautiful mobbed up crack head:

Together, they're a sort of inner city Bonnie & Clyde
ripping off drug lords
while gaining insight
about themselves without the benefit of middle class psychotherapy

It's a show about growth

It's the one time in rehab where everyone is silent, reverent--
...believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity:

Before sanity, sleep.

I weep for the simplest pleasures:
I want myself, to be by myself.
I want to hear myself think.

Consider the body

How vulnerable it is.
Without food, clothing, shelter,
why does anything exist?

There's a void inside of me.
There's a void inside most all of us.
I've come to believe that no one thing will ever

change that.

--Stephen Russell


~~~

An American Beauty


What you notice first is how small and hunched over she is.
A big hump rises up between her shoulders, and
her head parallels the ground.
Yet her neck and carriage are strong as she peers up, not missing a thing.


Her mouth forms a natural grin,
a grin she has generously shared with the world
for 93 years.
That grin subsides when she’s focused on you.
That’s when her twinkling eyes stare intently,
and her lips purse together,
listening, remembering.


Her hair is what you notice next,
long red hair that’s now mostly white,
a deep, rich color that’s not ephemeral
and can’t be dismissed.
I gaze enraptured as she braids it every morning,
using 2 long hair pins to keep it in place.
When she’s done braiding,
she casually flips is over her shoulder
like a young school girl,
immune to her own beauty.


When she walks, she scurries,
quick, solid, and strong on her feet.
She has a walker she scarcely uses.
She holds it up in front of her as she firmly moves
forward, all 93 years of her, moving out.
Her legs are strong, determined.
I long to touch them.


I spend the first day wanting to explain her—
create my own story on why she never married.
“She’s secretly gay.”
“She was unattractive and gawky.”
“She loved and was burned.”


None seem to fit.
I give up explaining and enjoy her.
If there’s a story it’s this one:
She was so open-hearted and bursting with pure joy
that no man could contain her in 1924.


People like her.
They say, “You’re doing all right, Thelma”
and ask her how she stays so pleasant.
Everyone knows her,
or perhaps I should say, she knows everyone.
All day long I’m introduced to all within range,
as we gallivant around this small Wisconsin town
where she’s lived her whole life.


She talks, not noticing when people are rude
or too busy.
She continues on, asking questions, conversing.
“Can you imagine that?” she’ll say to me.
Or she’ll tell me to look at the birds
for the fifth time.
“I wonder why that one has a red beak?”


I soak in her light-hearted wonder,
and feel the joy of being alive and happy
with the world.
I want more of her.
“Wonderful you,” she says, ending every encounter
with, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”


I want to touch her, hold her.
I want to breathe her in.
I want to swallow her.
When we watched the Grammy awards,
I sat 3 hours at her feet.
I couldn’t sit in my own chair.
I couldn’t sit close enough.


She was jump-center on her high school basketball team
1920 to 1924
Maybe basketball is the key
to open-hearted joy and powerful beauty
at the age of 93.

--Kim Hermanson

~~~

The other three poems, "Vacation," "Sonya" and "Me and You" are posted in the first comment below!!

Want your words to reach two and a half million people?

Goodreads and the ¡Poetry! group have partnered to create a contest in order to select a new poem each month for our newsletter.

1. Post your best poem here (*one poem per person*) in this folder (below as a "comment").

2. Goodreads and I will select five poems each month to be voted on by the Goodreads community.

3. ¡Poetry! group members will vote for the poem they like best (one vote per member). The poem with the most votes will be published in the Goodreads’ newsletter – distributed each month to nearly 2 million people!

Good luck & please post your best work!

Thanks,

Amy King
¡Poetry! Moderator

Congrats, Ruth!

Actually, Emily Dickinson was bastardized because she used half rhyme (slant rhyme)! Those who think poetry is synonymous with rhyme thought Dickinson wasn't "doing it right." They wanted to publish her work while she was alive, but only if she would "correct" her half rhymes and make them full rhymes or "whole" rhymes, as if there were something wrong with slant rhyme, a technique Dickinson deftly mastered. So actually, she was moving away from the notion that rhyme is synonymous with poetry. If they are synonyms, then why not just call verse "rhyme" and not poetry?

The father of American poetry, Walt Whitman, broke the line open wide - he showed that the vernacular and idiomatic could be just as poetic in cadence and rhythm as any straight/strict form!

"All others have adhered to the principle that the poet and savan form classes by themselves, above the people, and more refined than the people; I show that they are just as great when of the people, partaking of the common idioms, manners, the earth, the rude visage of animals and trees, and what is vulgar," Whitman wrote. "Imagination and actuality must be united."

Poetry is far larger and more encompassing in purpose, style, and subject matter, greatly surpassing such an overdone argument as to whether or not it rhymes or not. Language and the way we use it is always changing, no matter how much we try to straight jacket it. Chaucer certainly wrote poetry in his day; now we have great difficulty even understanding what his English verse means! His rhymes certainly don't help anyone discern what they mean... neither does his non-rhyming verse. The discussion should be far larger than whether or not Chaucer rhymed or not to determine the value of his poetry! The same holds true for every poem...


Amal wrote: "in honor of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson is the master of rhythm and rhyming; especially end rhyming!

Emily Dickinson became a hidden treasure because of the rejection of people like you who r..."

The politician wants men to know how to die courageously; the poet wants men to live courageously.

—Italian poet Salvatore Quasimodo, Nobel lecture, 1959

~~

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there

--William Carlos Williams

~~~

“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” --Emily Dickinson

~~~

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language. --W. H. Auden

~~~

A poet must leave traces of his passage, not proof. --Rene Char

~~~

A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep. --Salman Rushdie

~~~

Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out... Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.
--A. E. Housman

~~~

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. --Leonard Cohen

~~~

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful. --Rita Dove

~~~

There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either.
--Robert Graves

~~~

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession. --Robert Frost

~~~

SO WHAT DOES A POET DO?

A few notes --

1. Please vote in the poll - your vote does not count if it only appears here in the comments.

2. Goodreads' staff have informed me that membership is up to 2.5 million readers - the winning poem will be sent to more than two million people in the newsletter!

3. Previous Goodreads' newsletters may be viewed in the archives here:
http://www.goodreads.com/newsletter

4. Rhythm and rhyme do not a poem make, as has been previously discussed here:

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/2552...

AND here:

http://www.enotes.com/poetry/group/discu...

AND here:

http://forum.p4poetry.com/topic.php?id=4...

and many other places. Ultimately, it all boils down to preference as there is no official definition of poetry that declares rhythm and rhyme as essential. Otherwise, free verse would not exist.

Not so incidentally, several of these poems certainly do have rhythm.

VOTE IN THE POLL ON THE POETRY GROUP'S MAIN PAGE! (CLICK THIS LINK TO VOTE! --> JUST SELECT TITLE OF POEM YOU LIKE BEST!
~~~

WHEN BERRYMAN DIED


He left his shoes, scuffed loafers,
on the bridge. A cordovan pair
he could have shed
anywhere: at the university
beside his desk, under Tate’s coffee table,
at the foot of a lover’s bed.

Every night he thought, tomorrow.
Mornings, he remembered
his suit at the cleaners, his essay
on Marlowe, students waiting
outside his office. January 7
reasons ran dry.

He bathed and trimmed his beard,
putting on a new shirt.
In eight degrees he walked
to the bridge.

-- Chella Courington

~~~


BODIES: THE EXHIBITION


Children’s bones grow quicker

in springtime, says educational

Vegas. We had some mis-

givings about keeping our eyes on

the carpet, the fuzziness of

a losing pattern. My favorite part of

our marriage was the circul-

atory system, preserved lit up

in its own dark room. Some relative

would spend half of February in

Florida and bring all us kids back

those suckers you force into

an orange, to drink its juice with-

out peeling it. What a lot of nerve

endings it takes to make a finger

tip, or any extremity, so far out there

that it is forced and expected to take

its cues from things external. To be

influenced by the exhibition, which

is to say the holding out.


-- Jen Tynes

~~~

NIGHT FRUIT


Worms in wallpaper are wet riders
without bitter graffiti. You travel

parallel on the mind-lit path to confirm
what’s already known—-the head is a jet

at night, with triple ‘A’ aphasia. Pretend drafts
try to take you, naked, to devilled ledges,

rock traps, insipid springs—one watery attendant
sits in the walnut chair, cracks each house

knuckle to read from The Book of Past
Conversations. Your quilted skin, its creased

casings—is mapable as onions. Last night’s
amputated argument is whole again. To avoid

this meteorologic you check into mountains.
The bed flowers out, walls hang unopened

-- Diana S. Adams

~~~

OVER THE BROKEN BONES OF FARMERS


Over the broken bones of farmers
They built their subdivisions,

Filling chests with wrinkle-
Free polyesters

That snapped to attention
Whenever the bosses

Filed in.
Gift-giving was reserved

For funerals,
Love-making

Was the province of stiffs,
And money, that hot bastard,

Burned holes in poems, creating
Islands of phonemes,

One of which they willed
To me.

I have lived there ever since, cultivating
Syllables and eating fragments.

On good days my shit
Makes sense.

-- Mark Melnicove

~~~~

OF ROCKS AND RUIN

When you're on one, these logging roads seem small:
narrow lanes, cleared of all but gravel, grit,
and usefulness. Number 1508 winds and climbs
from Lookout Creek toward Blue River Ridge,
innocuous as the green garter snake
crossing this bare space between the forests
with sibilant grace ahead of my truck.

To my right, vistas sink down through trees
old as this country, then span out toward Lookout
Mountain to the east. I shift down, drive up
another rise, pull sharply left, then ease
to the right, climbing even when it seems I'm not.

The scars of logging jar my sight: a rough slough
of bared earth scours the mountainside
where the fragile road clings like desperation
or hope to the bony ledge. Dashed
against the mountain’s crest, heavy clouds
split, their loads spilt with no amends
to tree or truck: water seeking its level,
roiling along the road in torrents, roaring
over ridges in brown rivers of rocks and ruin.

It's hard to tell now, if the road inclines or drops
slowly down, my sense of equilibrium
in this world of two-hundred foot trunks is skewed—
the only clue a slow lowering of perspective:
trees crouching closer to the hillside
as I round a slow curve, bank upward,
then stop short where a ten-foot pine stands
upright in the center of the road, where stones
and soil spill fifteen feet onto the roadway.

The hill’s slide embraces the doomed tree
as I once did my dying child: knowing the truth
of life’s fragility, not willing to give her up
to death. She lived. The tree will not. But
for now, ragged roots cling to this mound
of detritus torn from the clear-cut mountain’s
flank. I understand that fight to stand

upright when everything around is sharp
angles and precipices, when the only level
space is narrow and hard and full of driving rain
that sluices earth from underneath
your footing, and all that remain are jagged
stones and bare roots greedy for life.

I turn the truck around—pull forward, rock back—
daring myself to look over the precipice at the edge
of the road where the secret names of all things
below are "slide" or "loosen" or "release," where old
snags hunch close to the ground beneath
the umbrella of timorous fir, and bitter
rainwater whispers the only song it’s ever known
to the earth and to the listening stones.


Andrews Experimental Forest
Blue River, Oregon

-- Christina

~~~

getting to know you


maybe I felt forced
and perhaps a little awkward
about the way we danced
like two great airplanes
taxiing across the dim asphalt.

a pleasant breeze

blinking lights

and tired faces in the windows


-- Joe Lencioni

~~~

JELLYFISH

There are rooms underwater
we can’t imagine, pellucid rooms
we’ll never penetrate, gelid
chambers, fastened by lashes
to the tide. Dark sharpens
their sparkle, a trance of staircases
and chandeliers that traipse
and sway as those on ships
drawn far from shore.
Wade out and they come to you.
Wade out to palaces, wade
by dare, by drift, by lure.
Wade out by pendulum
that the slow bell of tide
may turn before you
reach out to beg
dazzled entry.

-- S. Jane Sloat

~~~

ABSENT DOMINICAN

I was born on an island full of palm trees,
Coconut and fruit.
I was to my island the funny one,
The outlandish one of mixed races.
And in each dawn I would look for the
Heart of my island Quisqueya,
In all the places of devotion and sanctuaries
Even below the very abyss.
On one night of a harsh wintery February,
I was separated from her.
And now in me,
In a cold dwelling with false heat,
I realize that you are no longer my possessor.
And not even rancor accompanied me
In that long departure.
And in the absence of my childhood,all my memories:
Mangu,like majarete,the criollo palate,died in me
beneath the white snow,of a city of skyscraper.
And I opened my soul and only saw
The red color of dried leaves in autumn
As your mountains.
A drop rolled down my cheek
OLD and tired through time,
As the color of your tropical sea, my beloved island.
I wanted to be faithful to nature,as the creator
Had planted for all of us, Dominicans;
But I never again left my footprints
When walking barefoot
Through the old pathways of my land,
To feel the steps of my ancestors, my dear Quisqueya.
I was the Judas that,with the old suffering of his infancy
I created a hate and became a bandit,
The one who sold out to his country and transformed
Into the ruffian who forgot his palm trees,
The free breezes of the Caribbean,the tamarind water
For the cold concrete and brick edifices,
Without windows,
With only decomposed,false air.
I sold out to my golden orange
To view instead gray sunsets.
I lost the nobility,the love of a nation.
And for a few foreign coins
I sold out like any degraded soul of the street.

-- Raymondo Polanco

~~~