Immigrant song

(Sunday). Up and to church, and so home to dinner, and after dinner to my office, and there busy all the afternoon, till in the evening comes Mr. Andrews and Hill, and so home and to singing. Hill staid and supped with me, and very good discourse of Italy, where he was, which is always to me very agreeable. After supper, he gone, we to prayers and to bed.

sun and din
of the afternoon
I come home singing

and it is our Italy
where always we pray
to be


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 26 February 1665.

New book of Via Negativa-derived poems: The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis

cover of "The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis"

On Monday, Elizabeth Adams at Phoenicia Publishing, Montreal, announced the arrival of my new book, The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis —and for a limited time, or until March 20, 2018, Phoenicia is offering it at a special discounted pre-order price.

cover of "The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis"

I’m so grateful for Beth’s attentive eye for detail, and for the outstanding cover that she made— cutouts à la Henri Matisse, depicting a bird resting on some bramble bushes; and a lady slipper orchid. So much love and gratefulness too, to these beautiful writers who are some of the first readers of these poems as they are collected in one volume: Ira Sukrungruang, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Ivy Alvarez, Satya Robyn, and Tom Montgomery-Fate. Their generous words are helping to usher this book into the world. The gifted poet Marly Youmans has also done a quick early feature of the book on her blog, The Palace at 2 a.m.

There are around 53 “Buddha” poems in this volume, which is my 14th single-authored collection of poetry. I began writing them in late January or early February 2016, here on Via Negativa as part of my daily poem practice, now in its eighth year.

At the time, I didn’t really have any intention of writing a book of poems with various Buddha personae. I’m no Buddhist, though I have found myself attracted to many concepts presented on sites like Tricycle: The Buddhist Review (for instance, this month there is this discussion on “Everyday Buddhahood“).

Through the years, I’ve heard people use this phrase: “The Buddha in me greets the Buddha in you”— by which they mean the idea that every living being already holds the seed for transformation within themselves; in other words, that in every creature, there exists the possibility of transcendence, of going beyond our flawed, imperfect nature.

That spring, quite rapidly (in just under three months) I wrote poem after poem using a variety of “Buddha” personae. Once I started, it felt like I couldn’t stop until I’d exhausted the subject. In each poem I proposed different scenarios: what if the Buddha felt the need for a therapist? what if the Buddha had a child with an Internet addiction? what if the Buddha was a mother in mid-life who had a “wardrobe malfunction” at a public beach? what if the Buddha joined a campus “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes” for Women’s History Month?

It wasn’t until later in the year that I returned to these “Buddha” poems to see how they might belong in a manuscript together. I was surprised at the humor that emerged in many of the poems, especially as I don’t think humor is my strongest suit. I also wrote and brought in some quieter poems— poems that could function as reflection, or as transition between sections.

Late in 2017, Beth Adams informed me that she wanted to publish my manuscript— my second title now with Phoenicia (the first being Night Willow, a book of prose poems, published in 2014). We’ve worked through most of the winter going back and forth in correspondence over the book, and I am so excited to be able to share it with readers very soon.

Pre-order prices are being offered until March 20, 2018, after which Phoenicia will make the book available at the regular price.

Please watch for events soon that will feature The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis. Further, I hope you will consider using the book for course adoption in the coming year, or including it in your literary and festival programming.


Re-blogged (with a few minor changes) from my author website.

Theory of knowledge

What creed, what idea is the body
tethered to beyond itself? Today

there was talk about the need to leave
a place in order to find it again—

to feel the poverty of losing
the most familiar key to oneself.

So how could you not forgive each
cavity that opens to be filled?

In the city where I grew up, the blind
walked in pairs, tapping on sidewalks

where knobs of grass pushed their way
through each crack. If you wait awhile

after you enter a darkened room, each
object slowly reveals its hidden light.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Old wino

Up, and to the office, where all the morning. At noon to the ‘Change; where just before I come, the Swede that had told the King and the Duke so boldly this great lie of the Dutch flinging our men back to back into the sea at Guinny, so particularly, and readily, and confidently, was whipt round the ‘Change: he confessing it a lie, and that he did it in hopes to get something. It is said the judges, upon demand, did give it their opinion that the law would judge him to be whipt, to lose his eares, or to have his nose slit but I do not hear that anything more is to be done to him. They say he is delivered over to the Dutch Embassador to do what he pleased with him. But the world do think that there is some design on one side or other, either of the Dutch or French, for it is not likely a fellow would invent such a lie to get money whereas he might have hoped for a better reward by telling something in behalf of us to please us.
Thence to the Sun taverne, and there dined with Sir W. Warren and Mr. Gifford, the merchant: and I hear how Nich. Colborne, that lately lived and got a great estate there, is gone to live like a prince in the country, and that this Wadlow, that did the like at the Devil by St. Dunstane’s, did go into the country, and there spent almost all he had got, and hath now choused this Colborne out of his house, that he might come to his old trade again. But, Lord! to see how full the house is, no room for any company almost to come into it. Thence home to the office, where dispatched much business; at night late home, and to clean myself with warm water; my wife will have me, because she do herself, and so to bed.

so old to get so lit
liver like a lie
on behalf of the sun


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 25 February 1665.

Stained

Some things never leave:
marks that are difficult
to erase— beet juice,

strawberry pulp, blood
in the middle of a sheet,
a nail pulled roughly

from its bed. Knees
rubbed raw on pavement.
A girl in my first

grade class was sick
and soiled herself one
morning; the teacher

had to clean her up
at the sink. And I
had nosebleeds

every day for more
than a month: pinched
nose, tilted head,

metallic clot that formed
in the back of my throat.
After the birth of my

last child, I staggered
up from the hospital bed
and dragged the IV

drip to the bathroom
but did not make it
in time. Until then

I didn’t know exactly how
many ways blood could
congeal: spongy

thickness; islands
marking irregular outlines
on white linoleum tile.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Piscean.

Piscean

Up, and to my office, where all the morning upon advising again with some fishermen and the water bayliffe of the City, by Mr. Coventry’s direction, touching the protections which are desired for the fishermen upon the River, and I am glad of the occasion to make me understand something of it. At noon home to dinner, and all the afternoon till 9 at night in my chamber, and Mr. Hater with me (to prevent being disturbed at the office), to perfect my contract book, which, for want of time, hath a long time lain without being entered in as I used to do from month to month.
Then to my office, where till almost 12, and so home to bed.

fish touching fish
make me understand something of the night


Erasure haiku derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 24 February 1665.

Backward river

This day, by the blessing of Almighty God, I have lived thirty-two years in the world, and am in the best degree of health at this minute that I have been almost in my life time, and at this time in the best condition of estate that ever I was in — the Lord make me thankfull.
Up, and to the office, where busy all the morning. At noon to the ‘Change, where I hear the most horrid and astonishing newes that ever was yet told in my memory, that De Ruyter with his fleete in Guinny hath proceeded to the taking of whatever we have, forts, goods, ships, and men, and tied our men back to back, and thrown them all into the sea, even women and children also. This a Swede or Hamburgher is come into the River and tells that he saw the thing done. But, Lord! to see the consternation all our merchants are in is observable, and with what fury and revenge they discourse of it. But I fear it will like other things in a few days cool among us. But that which I fear most is the reason why he that was so kind to our men at first should afterward, having let them go, be so cruel when he went further. What I fear is that there he was informed (which he was not before) of some of Holmes’s dealings with his countrymen, and so was moved to this fury. God grant it be not so!
But a more dishonourable thing was never suffered by Englishmen, nor a more barbarous done by man, as this by them to us.
Home to dinner, and then to the office, where we sat all the afternoon, and then at night to take my finall leave of Mrs. Bland, who sets out to-morrow for Tangier, and then I back to my office till past 12, and so home to supper and to bed.

years of my life full
of horrid memory

taking me back into the river
that thin nation
all fury and revenge

cruel men never suffer
barbarous as the afternoon office


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 23 February 1665.

Poet Bloggers Revival Digest: Week 8

poet bloggers revival tour 2018

poet bloggers revival tour 2018 A few quotes + links (please click through!) from the Poet Bloggers Revival Tour, plus occasional other poetry bloggers in my feed reader. If you missed last week’s digest, here’s the archive.

Over the past few days I’ve been studying César Vallejo’s poem “Piedra negra sobre una piedra blanca” (“White Stone on a Black Stone” in the Poetry magazine translation by Rebecca Seiferle), in which he famously “remembers” his own death, and turns back con todo mi camino, a verme solo — “with all of my road, to see myself alone.” Perhaps conditioned by this, I’m struck by how many poets this week have been writing about facing fears.

Owls wake me in winter. Thin talons worry into my scalp. Time immemorial, time that passes. My days are dark with black ash and bone, the rot settling into sickly flowers. Sometimes, I dream of nectar, sometimes, of blood.
Lakshmi, This Winter Heart: response to a question from another Tumblr user

*

In 2014 I embarked on an anonymous adventure, publishing some poetry chapbooks with my super small press Twenty-Four Hours. We did 4 books between then and now, each free of identity-confirming information such as author names, biographies, photos, or anything else that would give away the gender, race, or age of the poet. The reasons were multi-fold. It would take away the puffery of an author bio and force the reader (and the writer) to consider the poems themselves, not the previous accomplishments of the writer. It would also take away any preconceived notions of what a particular work a writer of a certain gender, a certain race, or a certain age is “supposed” to produce. These were a smashing success and the philosophical ideas behind them resonated with many people.

So around this time in 2016, a few weeks shy of Christmas, I decided to make the next logical step and use myself as a test subject. I was going to publish all of my work anonymously.
Josh Medsker (guest blogger for Trish Hopkinson), My year of living anonymously

*

Usually winter is a productive creative time for me- the weather is not tempting me outdoors, and the long drag of school days without breaks usually leaves me very eager to think about other things at home. Any other things. But not this winter.

After the poetry writing I did in January at the conference I attended, every bit of writing I’ve done since has been non-poetry related – this blog, reviews of other poets, proposals and lessons for work, etc. The poems are dormant.

I am hopeful that they are dormant in the same way the iris bulbs in front of my house are dormant – sleeping safe beneath the soil of everyday “stuff” but ready and able to push through and bloom when the weather dictates. But there is a nagging fear that, this time, the poems are dormant the way a volcano can be dormant – seething beneath the surface for years and years and years, roiling and alive but never surfacing. And this is a little scary.
Donna Vorreyer, Fear of Hibernation

*

I had a dream a few nights ago in which I was touring a new university opened by Donald Trump. I do not know why, in my dream, I was touring a university owned by Donald Trump, but apparently, I was considering signing up for classes there. The building was being touted as “new”, but it was shoddily built and some of the larger rooms were still under construction. I wandered into the staff kitchen to chat with some fellow prospective students and I kept saying, “But what’s the curriculum? I haven’t seen a curriculum.” Suddenly, busted-elevator-style, the entire kitchen sank with a stomach-lurching thud and crash-landed in the basement, right next to the university swimming pool. Shell-shocked, I wandered out into the pool area. Trump came ambling up to greet me, and I explained to him that his school seemed to have some infrastructure problems, as the kitchen just fell through the floor and missed landing in the swimming pool by mere feet. Trump seemed totally unfazed by this news.
Kristen McHenry, Dystopian Round-Up

*

This still from Werner Herzog’s ‘Encounters at the end of the world’ has been called ‘one of the great existential moments of modern cinema’. It’s one that has me in tears. For some reason this one penguin has left the tribe (according to wikipedia , a group of penguins on land is called a waddle. Other collective nouns for penguins include: rookery, colony, and huddle. None of them seem to credit their air of social purpose. I’ll stay with tribe). The others are purposefully plodding seaward, towards food and salvation. This one is equally purposefully heading inland to a certain death. The camera pulls back, and goes on pulling back until the penguin is microscopic in an infinity of white. Herzog’s voice-over speculates that the only reason for this behaviour is that the penguin has become insane. It’s heartbreaking.

I should say that I’ve spent the last couple of days in bed, feeling physically done in. A bit like the early symptoms of flu, without the coughing and sneezing. Just very tired and achey. So this post post might be more incoherent than usual. Still. Press on. Basically I’ve been thinking about how to introduce today’s guest poet, who happens to write short poems…not necessarily lyric, but short. I’m very conscious that I don’t do short, and admire poets who do, mainly because I think it takes more confidence and craft and discipline than I have. I suspect I’m afraid of white space, because, essentially, it leaves no hiding place. Every word is exposed, and has to justify itself.
John Foggin, No hiding place…. and a Polished gem: Matthew Stewart

*

I face a slice of pink sky and await
words, dormant bulbs interred in dirt. Your absence
invades my slumber, I will die of it. The rawness
is too much.
Risa Denenberg, Nostalgia is an illness you might die of

*

I keep trying to write about my impending book publication, about the process of writing, about poetry. But all I can think about are the students and teachers of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. I spent twelve years in a high school classroom – one as a full-time substitute teacher, eleven as an English teacher.

I’ve taught every kind of student: eager, disinterested, poor, rich, parents overly involved, parents totally absent, some good at school, others disheartened by it. I’ve taught students as articulate as those who are speaking out now about gun reform. I’ve taught students who I know were capable of killing seventeen of their peers.

Every time I sit down to write about writing, I come up dry, because it doesn’t seem important in the face of dead children. Then I remember Alex Schachter reading his son Max’s poem. A poem that Max wrote two weeks before he was gunned down in his high school. I think of how people turn to poetry in times of love, in times of sorrow.
Erin Coughlin Hollowell, What can a poem do?

*

I find the main themes I return to are mental health and legacy. My first two chapbook manuscripts dissect my mental health diagnosis and my relationship with others with mental health challenges. Because mental health does affect every aspect of life, it’s important to me to speak about it and work against the stigma surrounding it. I feel the need to be very vocal about it because of the silence and stigma still surrounding mental disorders in Latinx communities, particularly the one I grew up in. I feel I wasted a lot of time feeling like something was wrong with me, and I find it important to write to let others like me know they’re not alone. Legacy is also interesting to me to explore, particularly definitions from others and from oneself. I feel most satisfied writing about the complexity of my heritage and am currently working on a few projects questioning my relationship to the colonizer/colonized sides of my family tree. I think a lot about when to use language, and when to use stillness, so I often edit and edit until the rhythm of a poem is evident on page. Some images I return to frequently are surrealism and dreams, and water and all of the implications they can have.
Marisa Adame, interviewed by Shannon Steimel

*

I do write about the things that frighten me in life and the world, but I think I am also fascinated by my fear, by my inner demons, by the notion of fear itself. Some of these fears, like sexual or domestic violence are easy to understand as frightening, but I have other responses to things that only take on significance because my psyche associates them with other things. Engaging with fear tends to expand one’s personal resilience and strength, and I think that has great value. The ghost story reminds us to stay strong against thoughts of what we will one day be erased from life and memory. The creature story reminds us that what makes us different isn’t always cause for exile from polite society. And, enduring the trust terrifying world of nightmares tells us that we are stronger than we think, that we have the power to survive the torments our demons serve us whenever they can.

I feel myself, as a person, haunted by the darkness in the world, but in my work I can choose to wear it or face it, and I have the choice of how. Beyond contending with the bigger issues of monstrosity and complexity, I think that some of us just really love dancing in the dark. My poems definitely come from a desire to explore the complexities of the human psyche, the ineffable void inside us all, the flip side of the incessant, banal need to demonstrate happiness in our worlds. Something in that darkness speaks through sharp teeth, reminding us of what is really human, what is authentic.
Saba Syed Razvi, interviewed by Andrea Blythe

*

Her arm, absent from sleep,

has great adventures. And then she wakes and shifts her weight,
only to discover something cold and clammy in the sheets beside her,

a lump of flesh she cannot call her own. Her other arm,
the one remaining in her bed, loyal until the end,

investigates by lifting the offending, foreign object
and then, in shock, dropping it.
Sarah Kain Gutowski, “We Surrender Our Dreams to Hunger” (accompanying an interview by Shannon Steimel)

*

If you’ve always relied on your brain, rather than your body, for a sense of self-worth and self-respect, and it lets you down, it’s disheartening. It’s frustrating. But one neurologist who specializes in recovering from different types of brain injury (including MS lesions) told me that we don’t really know what the brain can do when challenged, how plastic our memory and abilities. As a writer I’ve tried to continue to write through all the health challenges I’ve had, even when my fingers could barely type. The piece I wrote about the consequences of being raped when I was six (and pondering the long-term consequences for so may girls who have had these things happen to them) was written a few months ago when I was still practicing my motor skills and swallowing, and I hope it will be helpful to someone. Talking about rape isn’t super fun or upbeat, but until we start protecting people and standing up against a culture of “boys will be boys” and “it’s okay for girls to suffer in silence” and “well, it happens to everyone” I’m afraid that little girls will be in the same danger I was in in 1979. As I talked about in my last post, it’s important not to get so fatigued mentally, spiritually, physically that we stop fighting for what is right. I am trying.
Jeannine Hall Gailey, A piece on rape culture on The Rumpus, outrage fatigue, a renovation and accessibility, and what to do when your brain lets you down

*

Look, I can’t adequately explain to you what it is to feel terror at frost heaves in the road you’re shuffling, or of curbs, or of a span of loose pebbles, never mind a hill or stairs: what it is to know that uneven ground is impossible, that even that flat-ish forest path is off limits to you, creature of wilds, because one exposed root can end you if you fall: I can’t adequately explain months and months of severed paraspinals screaming and conscious mind explaining to nerves and muscles how to lift, and move, and set down each foot (and please oh please body do it for me without impact that blows the world apart in blinding, nauseous pain that makes me want to die). I can only tell you this: today the water was so still and calm after days of furious winds and violent waves, salt-spray crusting everything in a moment. I can only show you what I saw: this Atlantic, these creatures, this vast sky, this small, irrelevant body in the midst of it so completely sure-footed and strong on loose sand and weathered steps, having forgotten again to take even ibuprofen, still and calm with oceanic joy, moving like it didn’t mean everything.
JJS, February 22, 2018: pause for gratitude

*

I needed to write the poems I have written.  I will continue to write poems about the loss I feel each time a person is gunned down in mass shootings in this country.  But I can no longer only do that.  I will stand behind the youth of America who have raised their voices and said You are either with us or against us, because I believe being silent is a form of complicity.  I will be in attendance on March 24th in the March for Our Lives.  I have already made a donation for this event at March for Our Lives/Go Fund Me.  I have begun reading about how our elected officials vote on gun laws.  This is just my beginning.

As a poet, I will continue to process my grief through writing, but with an understanding that my writing is not enough.  I understand we can never eliminate violence—as the arc of history has proven—but we can do more, we can promise to do our best to keep our children as safe as we possibly can, and I will work towards that end until my poem Math That Doesn’t Add Up ends differently, with a line that in the very least suggests— And all our promises of safekeeping are NOT lies.
Carey Taylor, May You Find A Way

*

I spent part of the afternoon fiddling with a sea level rise map, in part because I knew we were meeting our friends for dinner, but mostly because I fell down that internet rabbit hole when I found a news article that says that new research, released last week, says that Miami will experience 2 feet of sea level rise by 2050–not quite far enough away for comfort, since water is rising faster with every report. At one point, the date for 2 feet of sea level rise was 2100.

I think our plan will still work: to fix the house, enjoy the house for 5-10 years, and then sell. We may stay in the area and rent, if my job (the only full-time job between the 2 of us) still exists.

I find it interesting to watch the nation argue about guns, while all the while the sea eyes our shores with growing hunger and impatience. But I also understand the way that a violent event can transform both individuals and communities. I will go with my church tomorrow to a prayer vigil because I’m always going to be available to pray for peace. That might work. I’m not sure that our prayers can change the processes governed by physics or chemistry that we’ve already set into motion.
Kristin Berkey-Abbott, Prayer Vigils, Planetary Warming, and Other Ethical Dilemmas

*

I’m
tired of being split open
and not knowing how to sew
Kevin J. O’Conner, Undarned (a poem)

Psychopomps from around the world

have the same function: Virgil to Dante, taking
the lift down and deeper down before ascending,

level by level. The goddess Freya, who carried
vanquished warriors from the battlefield.

Where did I read about how one can’t hope
to take heaven by storm without first

navigating hell? Shapeshifter, hooded one
who appears with a scythe and arrives

in a carriage pulled by sleek black horses.
Ravens, owls, cranes, foxes, bees: any

creature that can run a line between worlds.
In the desert forty days and nights: heated sand

made unctuous like butter as a glittering
body sheathed in gold and black slithers

forward with its message— No return, no
exchange. Once bitten, you leave and can’t

come back. In the spa foyer, I want to imagine
there are greeters who’ll help take off what

you were wearing; perhaps offer a robe, prepare
to take you down a hallway for the longest soak.

Self-portrait, with bedclothes

You make your bed, you lie
in it: as late as you can, until
they yell at you to get up

lazybones and you can choose
to line it with moss or memory
foam and magazine pages

or the crumbs from a midnight
snack of peanuts, pork cracklings
dipped in spicy vinegar. You can pray

at night to the god in the middle
of the pillow or hide in the mattress
the stash of letters from that boy

with the darkest eyelashes— And this
is the age before karaoke or Spotify,
but you have the newest Song Hits

and hold your hairbrush
to your lips like a microphone.
Make your bed, you’re told: you

make it and make it until
your legs are long and old and you
don’t need permission anymore.