This Wednesday, Soft Exposure features Summer Rodman and Matthew Miller!
Posted by naomi on April 26th, 2010 filed in Events, Soft Exposure Open MicComments Off
Hello Friends of Soft Exposure!
We’re back with another night of featured readers and open mic poetry at our usual haunt. Join us this Wednesday, April 28th, to hear the voices and words of Summer Rodman and Matthew Miller! We’ll be at Infusion Tea in College Park, 1600 Edgewater Drive, Orlando. I’ll have the open-mic sign-up sheet out by 6:45 and we’ll start the readings at 7:00. Come on out, hear some fantastic work, and share your voice with a warm ans welcoming crowd!
Summer Rodman was born in Miami, Florida and moved to Orlando in the fifth grade after sailing around the world for three years. She received her BA from Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, CA and her MFA at Naropa University’s “Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics” in Boulder, CO. After being published here and there, including an original book of poems, “A Train Came By and Slowed,” and a poetry chapbook “Hot Pink and Nervous,” Summer has settled in Orlando. More or less. She will be reading from a new untitled collection of poems.
Matthew Miller grew up in Oregon. He has an MFA from the University of Alabama. He now reads and writes and travels as an editor for Islands magazine. He won Seminole Community College’s Thomas Burnett Swann Poetry Prize in 2005, and his writing has appeared in Quarterly West, New Orleans Review and Cimarron Review. His writing now mostly appears in Islands magazine. He’s learning to dance.
American Life in Poetry: April Issues (263 – 266)
Posted by naomi on April 26th, 2010 filed in American Life in Poetry SeriesComments Off
In honor of National Poetry Month (and to make amends for the slackness of my American Life in Poetry repostings), I give them to you posted by month.
Hazzah!
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American Life in Poetry: Column 266
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
The great American poet William Carlos Williams taught us that if a poem can capture a moment in life, and bathe it in the light of the poet’s close attention, and make it feel fresh and new, that’s enough, that’s adequate, that’s good. Here is a poem like that by Rachel Contreni Flynn, who lives in Illinois.
The Yellow Bowl
If light pours like water
into the kitchen where I sway
with my tired children,
if the rug beneath us
is woven with tough flowers,
and the yellow bowl on the table
rests with the sweet heft
of fruit, the sun-warmed plums,
if my body curves over the babies,
and if I am singing,
then loneliness has lost its shape,
and this quiet is only quiet.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The PoetryFoundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Rachel Contreni Flynn, whose newest book, Tongue, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press. Reprinted from Haywire, Bright Hill Press, 2009, by permission of Rachel Contreni Flynn and the publisher. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
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American Life in Poetry: Column 265
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Tell a whiny child that she sounds like a broken record, and she’s likely to say, “What’s a record?” Jeff Daniel Marion, a Tennessee poet, tells us not only what 78 rpm records were, but what they meant to the people who played them, and to those who remember the people who played them.
78 RPM
In the back of the junkhouse
stacked on a cardtable covered
by a ragged bedspread, they rest,
black platters whose music once
crackled, hissed with a static
like shuffling feet, fox trot or two-step,
the slow dance of the needle
riding its merry-go-round,
my mother’s head nestled
on my father’s shoulder as they
turned, lost in the sway of sounds,
summer nights and faraway
places, the syncopation of time
waltzing them to a world
they never dreamed, dance
of then to the dust of now.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The PoetryFoundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Jeff Daniel Marion. Reprinted from his most recent book of poems, Father, Wind Publications, 2009, by permission of Jeff Daniel Marion and the publisher. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
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American Life in Poetry: Column 264
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Wendy Videlock lives in western Colorado, where a person can stop to study what an owl has left behind without being run over by a taxi.
The Owl
Beneath her nest,
a shrew’s head,
a finch’s beak
and the bones
of a quail attest
the owl devours
the hour,
and disregards
the rest.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The PoetryFoundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Reprinted from Poetry, January 2009, by permission of Wendy Videlock and the publisher. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant inPoetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
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American Life in Poetry: Column 263
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Music lessons, well, maybe 80 out of every 100 of us had them, once, and a few of us went on to play our chosen instruments all our lives. But the rest of us? I still own a set of red John Thompson piano books that haven’t been opened since about 1950. Here Jill Bialosky, who lives in New York City, captures the atmosphere of one of those lessons.
Music Is Time
Music is time, said the violin master.
You can’t miss the stop or you’ll miss the train.
One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four,
one, two, three, four.
She clapped her hands together
as the boy moved the bow across the strings.
One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four,
one, two, three, four, the violin master shouted,
louder and more shrill so that her voice
traveled through the house like a metronome,
guiding him, commanding him to translate the beat,
to trust his own internal rhythm.
Good boy, she said.
See how hard you have to be on yourself?
How will your violin know who you are
unless you make it speak?
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The PoetryFoundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Jill Bialosky, from her most recent book of poems, Intruder, Alfred A. Knopf, 2008, by permission of Jill Bialosky and the publisher. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
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American Life in Poetry: March Issues (258 – 262)
Posted by naomi on April 26th, 2010 filed in American Life in Poetry SeriesComments Off
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American Life in Poetry: Column 262
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
When we hear news of a flood, that news is mostly about the living, about the survivors. But at the edges of floods are the dead, too. Here Michael Chitwood, of North Carolina, looks at what’s floating out there on the margins.
The Coffins
Two days into the flood
they appear, moored against
a roof eave or bobbing caught
in the crowns of drowned trees.
Like fancy life boats
from an adventurer’s flag ship,
brass plating and grips,
walnut sheen, scroll work,
they slip through the understory
on this brief, bad river.
What have they discovered
and come back to account?
Or is this the beginning
of the marvelous voyage
and they plan never to return?
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The PoetryFoundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2000 by Michael Chitwood, whose most recent book of poems is Spill, Tupelo Press, 2007. Poem reprinted from Tar River Poetry, Vol. 48, no. 1, Fall, 2008, by permission of Michael Chitwood and the publisher. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
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American Life in Poetry: Column 261
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
All over this country, marriage counselors and therapists are right now speaking to couples about unspoken things. In this poem, Andrea Hollander Budy, an Arkansas poet, shows us one of those couples, suffering from things done and undone.
Betrayal
They decide finally not to speak
of it, the one blemish in their otherwise
blameless marriage. It happened
as these things do, before the permanence
was set, before the children grew
complicated, before the quench
of loving one another became all
each of them wanted from this life.
Years later the bite
of not knowing (and not wanting
to know) still pierces the doer
as much as the one to whom it was done:
the threadbare lying, the insufferable longing,
the inimitable lack of touching, the undoing
undone.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The PoetryFoundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Andrea Hollander Budy, whose most recent book of poems is Woman in the Painting, Autumn House, 2006. Poem reprinted from Shenandoah, Vol. 59, no. 1, by permission of Andrea Hollander Budy and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2010 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
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American Life in Poetry: Column 260
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
This column marks our fifth anniversary, and we send you our thanks for supporting what we try to accomplish here.
These days are brim full of bad news about our economy—businesses closing, people losing their houses, their jobs. If there’s any comfort in a situation like this, it’s in the fact that there’s a big community of sufferers. Here’s a poem by Dana Bisignani, who lives in Indiana, that describes what it feels like to sit through a bankruptcy hearing.
Bankruptcy Hearing
They have us corralled
in the basement of the courthouse.
One desk and a row of folding chairs—
just like first grade, our desks facing Teacher
in neat little rows.
Upstairs,
wooden benches like pews and red
carpet reserved for those who’ve held out
the longest. No creditors have come to claim us
today. We’re small-time.
This guy from the graveyard shift
stares at his steel-toed boots, nervous hands
in his lap. None of us look each other
in the eye. We steal quick looks—how did you
get here. . .
chemo bills, a gambling addiction,
a summer spent unemployed and too many
cash advances to pay the rent.
We examine the pipes that hang
from the ceiling, the scratched tiles on the floor,
the red glow of the exit sign at the end of the hall
so like our other failed escapes:
light of the TV at night,
glass of cheap Merlot beside a lamp,
a stop light on the way out of town.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The PoetryFoundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Dana Bisignani and reprinted from Blue Collar Review, Vol. 12, Issue 2, Winter 2008-2009, by permission of Dana Bisignani and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2010 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
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American Life in Poetry: Column 259
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Wisconsin writer Freya Manfred is not only a fine poet but the daughter of the late Frederick Manfred, a distinguished novelist of the American west. Here is a lovely snapshot of her father, whom I cherished among my good friends.
Green Pear Tree in September
On a hill overlooking the Rock River
my father’s pear tree shimmers,
in perfect peace,
covered with hundreds of ripe pears
with pert tops, plump bottoms,
and long curved leaves.
Until the green-haloed tree
rose up and sang hello,
I had forgotten. . .
He planted it twelve years ago,
when he was seventy-three,
so that in September
he could stroll down
with the sound of the crickets
rising and falling around him,
and stand, naked to the waist,
slightly bent, sucking juice
from a ripe pear.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The PoetryFoundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2003 by Freya Manfred. Her most recent book of poems is Swimming With A Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle, Red Dragonfly Press, 2008. Poem reprinted from My Only Home, Red Dragonfly Press, 2003, by permission of Freya Manfred and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2010 by The PoetryFoundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
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American Life in Poetry: Column 258
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
This marks the fourth time we’ve published a poem by David Baker, one of my favorite writers. Baker lives in Granville, Ohio, and teaches at Denison University. He is also the poetryeditor for the distinguished Kenyon Review.
Old Man Throwing a Ball
He is tight at first, stiff, stands there atilt
tossing the green fluff tennis ball down
the side alley, but soon he’s limber,
he’s letting it fly and the black lab
lops back each time. These are the true lovers,
this dog, this man, and when the dog stops
to pee, the old guy hurries him back, then
hurls the ball farther away. Now his mother
dodders out, she’s old as the sky, wheeling
her green tank with its sweet vein, breath.
She tips down the path he’s made for her,
grass rippling but trim, soft underfoot,
to survey the yard, every inch of it
in fine blossom, set-stone, pruned miniature,
split rails docked along the front walk,
antique watering cans down-spread—up
huffs the dog again with his mouthy ball—
so flowers seem to spill out, red geraniums,
grand blue asters, and something I have
no name for, wild elsewhere in our world
but here a thing to tend. To call for, and it comes.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The PoetryFoundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by David Baker, whose most recent book of poems is Never-Ending Birds, W. W. Norton, 2009. Poem reprinted from Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 84, no. 2, Spring 2009, by permission of David Baker and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2010 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
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American Life in Poetry: February Issues (254 – 257)
Posted by naomi on April 26th, 2010 filed in American Life in Poetry SeriesComments Off
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American Life in Poetry: Column 257
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Often when I dig some change out of my jeans pocket to pay somebody for something, the pennies and nickels are accompanied by a big gob of blue lint. So it’s no wonder that I was taken with this poem by a Massachusetts poet, Gary Metras, who isn’t embarrassed.
Lint
It doesn’t bother me to have
lint in the bottoms of pant pockets;
it gives the hands something to do,
especially since I no longer hold
shovel, hod, or hammer
in the daylight hours of labor
and haven’t, in fact, done so
in twenty-five years. A long time
to be picking lint from pockets.
Perhaps even long enough to have
gathered sacks full of lint
that could have been put
to good use, maybe spun into yarn
to knit a sweater for my wife’s
Christmas present, or strong thread
whirled and woven into a tweedy jacket.
Imagine entering my classroom
in a jacket made from lint.
Who would believe it?
Yet there are stranger things—
the son of a bricklayer with hands
so smooth they’re only fit
for picking lint.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The PoetryFoundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Gary Metras, whose most recent book of poems is Greatest Hits 1980-2006, Pudding House, 2007. Poem reprinted from Poetry East, Nos. 62 & 63, Fall 2008, by permission of Gary Metras and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
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American Life in Poetry: Column 256
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
A poem is an experience like any other, and we can learn as much or more about, say, an apple from a poem about an apple as from the apple itself. Since I was a boy, I’ve been picking up things, but I’ve never found a turtle shell until I found onein this poem by Jeff Worley, who lives in Kentucky.
On Finding a Turtle Shell in Daniel Boone National Forest
This one got tired
of lugging his fortress
wherever he went,
was done with duck and cover
at every explosion
through rustling leaves
of fox and dog and skunk.
Said au revoir to the ritual
of pulling himself together. . .
I imagine him waiting
for the cover of darkness
to let down his hinged drawbridge.
He wanted, after so many
protracted years of caution,
to dance naked and nimble
as a flame under the moon—
even if dancing just once
was all that the teeth
of the forest would allow.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The PoetryFoundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Jeff Worley, whose most recent book of poems is Best to Keep Moving, Larkspur Press, 2009, which includes this poem. Reprinted from Poetry East, Nos. 62 & 63, Fall, 2008, by permission of Jeff Worley and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
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American Life in Poetry: Column 255
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
A honeymoon. How often does one happen according to the dreams that preceded it? In this poem, Wesley McNair, a poet from Maine, describes a first night of marriage in a tawdry place. But all’s well that ends well.
For My Wife
How were we to know, leaving your two kids
behind in New Hampshire for our honeymoon
at twenty-one, that it was a trick of cheap
hotels in New York City to draw customers
like us inside by displaying a fancy lobby?
Arriving in our fourth-floor room, we found
a bed, a scarred bureau, and a bathroom door
with a cut on one side the exact shape
of the toilet bowl that was in its way
when I closed it. I opened and shut the door,
admiring the fit and despairing of it. You
discovered the initials of lovers carved
on the bureau’s top in a zigzag, breaking heart.
How wrong the place was to us then,
unable to see the portents of our future
that seem so clear now in the naiveté
of the arrangements we made, the hotel’s
disdain for those with little money,
the carving of pain and love. Yet in that room
we pulled the covers over ourselves and lay
our love down, and in this way began our unwise
and persistent and lucky life together.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The PoetryFoundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Wesley McNair, whose most recent book of poems is Lovers of the Lost: New and Selected Poems, Godine, 2010. Poem reprinted from Five Points, Vol. 12, no. 3, by permission of Wesley McNair and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
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American Life in Poetry: Column 254
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
What might my late parents have thought, I wonder, to know that there would one day be an occupation known as Tooth Painter? Here’s a partial job description by Lucille Lang Day of Oakland, California.
Tooth Painter
He was tall, lean, serious
about his profession,
said it disturbed him
to see mismatched teeth.
Squinting, he asked me
to turn toward the light
as he held an unglazed crown
by my upper incisors.
With a small brush he applied
yellow, gray, pink, violet
and green from a palette of glazes,
then fired it at sixteen hundred
degrees. We went outside
to check the final color,
and he was pleased. Today
the dentist put it in my mouth,
and no one could ever guess
my secret: there’s no one quite
like me, and I can prove it
by the unique shade of
the ivory sculptures attached
to bony sockets in my jaw.
A gallery opens when I smile.
Even the forgery gleams.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The PoetryFoundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Lucille Lang Day and reprinted from The Curvature of Blue, Cervena Barva Press, 2009, by permission of Lucille Lang Day and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
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Soft Exposure is pleased to feature Robin Lippincott this Wednesday
Posted by naomi on January 26th, 2010 filed in Events, Soft Exposure Open MicComments Off
Hello Friends of Soft Exposure!
We’ll be gathering again this Wednesday, January 27, 2010 for another night of featured reading and open-mic poetry. Our feature for the evening is Robin Lippincott, and we’ll be meeting at our usual time and place, 7:00 p.m. at infusion Tea in College Park, 1600 Edgewater Drive, Orlando.
The feature will be followed by an open-mic poetry session where you can share 5 minutes of your work. I’ll have the open-mic sign-up sheet out by 6:30, so come on out to enjoy some wonderful literary talent and share some of your own!
Born and raised in Sanford and Lake Mary, Robin Lippincott is the author of three novels, In the Meantime, Our Arcadia: An American Watercolor, and Mr. Dalloway—now in its 5th printing and nominated for the IMPAC-Dublin Literary Award, the American Library Association Roundtable Award, the Independent Book Award, and the Lambda Literary Award; he has also published a collection of short stories, The Real,True Angel. His fiction/nonfiction have appeared in over twenty journals, including The Paris Review, Fence, The Literary Review, The American Voice, and Memorious, and for ten years he reviewed mostly art and photography books for The New York Times Book Review. The recipient of many fellowships to Yaddo, as well as to the MacDowell Colony, he teaches in the brief-residency Master of Fine Arts in Writing Program at Spalding University, and at Harvard University. The Library Journal called his most recent novel, In the Meantime, “highly nuanced…with nary a false word or feeling.”
Yours in poetry,
Naomi Butterfield
Host, Soft Exposure
American Life in Poetry: Column 253
Posted by naomi on January 26th, 2010 filed in American Life in Poetry SeriesComments Off
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Animals are incapable of reason, or so we’ve been told, but we imaginative humans keep talking to our dogs and cats as if they could do algebra. In this poem, Ann Struthers looks into the mystery of instinctive behavior.
Not Knowing Why
Adolescent white pelicans squawk, rustle, flap their wings,
lift off in a ragged spiral at imaginary danger.
What danger on this island in the middle
of Marble Lake? They’re off to feel
the lift of wind under their iridescent wings,
because they were born to fly,
because they have nothing else to do,
because wind and water are their elements,
their Bach, their Homer, Shakespeare,
and Spielberg. They wheel over the lake,
the little farms, the tourist village with their camera eyes.
In autumn something urges
them toward Texas marshes. They follow
their appetites and instincts, unlike the small beetles
creeping along geometric roads, going toward small boxes,
toward lives as narrow or as wide as the pond,
as glistening or as gray as the sky.
They do not know why. They fly, they fly.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Ann Struthers, whose most recent book of poems is What You Try to Tame, The Coe Review Press, 2004. Poem reprinted from the Coe Review, Vol. 39, no. 1, Fall 2008, by permission of Ann Struthers and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
American Life in Poetry: Column 252
Posted by naomi on January 24th, 2010 filed in American Life in Poetry SeriesComments Off
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
My grandfather, when in his nineties, wrote me a letter in which he listed everything he and my uncle had eaten in the past week. That was the news. I love this poem by Nancyrose Houston of Seattle for the way it plays with the character of those letters from home that many of us have received.
The Letter From Home
The dogs barked, the dogs scratched, the dogs got wet, the
dogs shook, the dogs circled, the dogs slept, the dogs ate,
the dogs barked; the rain fell down, the leaves fell down, the
eggs fell down and cracked on the floor; the dust settled,
the wood floors were scratched, the cabinets sat without
doors, the trim without paint, the stuff piled up; I loaded the
dishwasher, I unloaded the dishwasher, I raked the leaves,
I did the laundry, I took out the garbage, I took out the
recycling, I took out the yard waste. There was a bed, it was
soft, there was a blanket, it was warm, there were dreams,
they were good. The corn grew, the eggplant grew, the
tomatoes grew, the lettuce grew, the strawberries grew, the
blackberries grew; the tea kettle screamed, the computer
keys clicked, the radio roared, the TV spoke. “Will they ever
come home?” “Can’t I take a break?” “How do others keep
their house clean?” “Will I remember this day in fifty years?”
The sweet tea slipped down my throat, the brownies melted
in my mouth. My mother cooked, the apple tree bloomed, the
lilac bloomed, the mimosa bloomed, I bloomed.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Seattle Arts & Lectures. Reprinted from Wake Up In Brightness: Poetry & Prose by Students 2008-2009, Writers in the Schools, 2009, by permission of Seattle Arts & Lectures. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
American Life in Poetry: Column 251
Posted by naomi on January 24th, 2010 filed in American Life in Poetry SeriesComments Off
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
The poet Lyn Lifshin, who divides her time between New York and Virginia, is one of the most prolific poets among my contemporaries, and has thousands of poems in print, by my loose reckoning. I have been reading her work in literary magazines for at least thirty years. Here’s a good example of this poet at her best.
The Other Fathers
would be coming back
from some war, sending
back stuffed birds or
handkerchiefs in navy
blue with Love painted
on it. Some sent telegrams
for birthdays, the pastel
letters like jewels. The
magazines were full of fathers who
were doing what had
to be done, were serving,
were brave. Someone
yelped there’d be confetti
in the streets, maybe
no school. That soon
we’d have bananas. My
father sat in the grey
chair, war after war,
hardly said a word. I
wished he had gone
away with the others
so maybe he would
be coming back to us
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Lyn Lifshin, whose most recent book of poems is Persephone, Red Hen Press, 2008. Poem reprinted from Natural Bridge, No. 20, Winter, 2008, by permission of Lyn Lifshin and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Soft Exposure returns this Wednesday to feature Stacy Barton and Meg Sefton
Posted by naomi on January 9th, 2010 filed in Events, Soft Exposure Open MicComments Off
I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season! After a winter break,
I’m pleased to announce our next Soft Exposure coming up this
Wednesday, January 13th at its usual spot in Infusion Tea in College
Park, located at 1600 Edgewater Drive, Orlando.
We’ll be starting at 7:00 with the featured readings by Stacy Barton
and Meg Sefton, and will continue after with a poetry open-mic where
you can share 5 minutes of your own words. As always, admission is
free and the audience is warm and accepting. I hope you can come out
and join us for our first event of the new year!
Stacy Barton is a short story author and playwright. Her collection
of short stories, Surviving Nashville, was released in 2007. Her
stories and poetry have appeared in a variety of literary magazines
including Potomac Review, Relief, Ruminate and Stonework and her most
recent stage play, an adaptation of Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas
in Wales, premiered in Orlando, Florida. In addition to short
stories, plays, and poetry, Stacy is the author of a children’s
picture book (Babba and I Went Hunting Today), a Ringling Bros circus
(Illuscination) and an animated short film (Christmas in Hollyville).
At the moment a handful of publishers are considering her first novel
and a new collection of stories. In the meantime, she works as a
free-lance scriptwriter for the Disney Company.
In August 2008 Meg Sefton received her MFA in Creative Writing from
Seattle Pacific University. While there, she worked closely with
Robert Clark, Sandra Scofield, and Gina Oschner. In Oschner’s final
evaluation of Meg’s book-length thesis, Ms. Oschner had this to say:
“In Meg’s work, no two stories are structured the same way and no two
stories I received ask the same questions of either writer or reader.”
Despite the diversity of her stories, what they share is the
brokenness of her characters and the need to negotiate lives that will
accommodate these vulnerabilities. The working title for her current
collection-in-progress is Among the Broken. The title is a tribute to
one of Meg’s favorite writers and poets, Conrad Aiken. His collection
Among the Lost People contains the much anthologized “Silent Snow,
Secret Snow” and was her introduction to a to a type of writing that
could so perfectly encapsulate beauty, pain, and loss while eschewing
sentimentality. However, Meg wants her collection to also convey hope.
She blogs about the challenges of this process on Blogspot and
Amazon’s Kindle. You can find her by navigating the web or Amazon
using her name “Meg Sefton” and the title of her
collection-in-progress: Among the Broken.
Meg’s stories and reviews have appeared or will shortly appear in
Relief, Avatar Review, Double Room, and The Quarterly Conversation.
She lives in Baldwin Park with her husband, son, and their little
white dog, a Coton de Toulears named Annie, who is also more formally
known as Queen Ann.
Please join us as we welcome the new year with words of beauty, and
support for the Central Florida literary scene!
American Life in Poetry: Column 250
Posted by naomi on January 4th, 2010 filed in American Life in Poetry SeriesComments Off
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
I’m very fond of poems that demonstrate their authors’ attentiveness to the world about them, as regular readers of this column have no doubt noticed. Here is a nine-word poem by Joette Giorgis, who lives in Pennsylvania, that is based upon noticing and then thinking about something so ordinary that it might otherwise be overlooked. Even the separate words are flat and commonplace. But so much feeling comes through!
(Untitled)
children grown—
dust accumulates
on half the kitchen table
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Joette Giorgis and reprinted from Modern Haiku, Vol. 40.1, Winter-Spring 2009, by permission of Joette Giorgis and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.