Sommer Nectarhoff's Blog, page 5

Axioms

Axioms, my second book, is now live on Amazon. 
Do not weep above the pyramids, for pain is in the mind, and it rests beneath the crypt. Your conjecture has been deduced to dust, and it does not sound. We understand; we simply do not care. Each of the relevant aspects has been assumed and appropriated, yet all the books in the world would be insufficient to right these wrongs, regardless of their relative merit. Even the sharpest whip is nothing unless it has been wrapped round the proper...

My Least Favorite Artist

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, At the Moulin Rouge, 1895. Oil on canvas, 123 x 141cm
This is my least favorite painting by just about my least favorite artist, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Too often in everyday life I hear people use qualifiers like "bad" or "terrible" to describe all sorts of things, let alone art, that they in reality just dislike. I dislike this painting, but I would never, and could never, claim that Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is anything but a phenomenal artist. Perhaps wha...

The Box

Online flash fiction magazine Smashed Cat Magazine has just published my short story "The Box". Smashed Cat specializes in stories that you might find on the fringe of the literary world and probably not in many conventional journals. Or, as their moniker says, "Gritty, Edgy, Bizarre, and Brain-Bending Flash Fiction Every Tuesday"--Check it out!

- 8/26/14

(nectarhoff)

The Door

Online flash fiction magazine Yesteryear Fiction has just published my short story "The Door". Check it out!

- 8/20/14

(nectarhoff)

One Wrong Word

The Forge
by Seamus Heaney
All I know is a door into the dark.
Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting;
Inside, the hammered anvil’s short-pitched ring,
The unpredictable fantail of sparks
Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water.
The anvil must be somewhere in the centre,
Horned as a unicorn, at one end and square,
Set there immoveable: an altar
Where he expends himself in shape and music.
Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose,
He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter
Of hoofs where traffic...

So Much in a Title

Alone with His WorkYannis Ritsos
All night he galloped alone, in wild excitement, pitilessly spurringhis horse’s flanks. They were waiting for him, he said, undoubtedly,there was great urgency. When he arrived at dawnno one was waiting, there was no one. He looked all around.Desolate houses, bolted. They were asleep.He heard beside him his horse panting—foam on his mouth, sores on his ribs, his back flayed.He hugged his horse’s neck and began to weep.The horse’s eyes, large, dark, near to deat...

Isn't it?

Orchard
A.R. Ammons
Art’s the fruit of
the treesof pain
that grow in the
fields ofunspent life.

I've heard a few critics say that A.R. Ammons writes witty lines but not poetry. This is a poem because only "unspent" has two syllables.
- 8/11/14
(nectarhoff)

Poetry that isn't Poetic

At the Height of the Revolution
by Walt Hunter
My wife and I are separated on the train. I get off in Russia.She gets off in Finland.I spend the whole night ridingback and forth from Russiato Finland, searching every faceon every train until I find her—but only for a second, and onlyfrom the window of a passing train.

This piece doesn't bear the hallmarks of the classically poetic. There is no wordplay, rhyme, or readily apparent symbolism. But the language is clearly different from what wo...

A Thought on Memorizing Poetry

To a Poor Old Womanby William Carlos Wlliams
munching a plum onthe street a paper bag of them in her hand 
They taste good to herThey taste goodto her. They tastegood to her
You can see it by the way she gives herself to the one half sucked out in her hand 
Comforted a solace of ripe plums seeming to fill the air They taste good to her

When we read poetry we tend to go down the page as if it were prose, paying little attention to the line breaks and str...

Scape

The lake blues calmlybelow whiting cloudswhile wings sailingon high brush themselvesagainst distantprecipitation coldly(but not unfondly) in the airynothingnessof someone’s overhead and yes,
it is fulfilling.

- 8/1/14
(nectarhoff)