May 01
MeredithPoetry, Reading, Uncategorized and the winners are, Clare Greene, Erika Ferrin, Jenny O'Grady, michelle jordan, poetry out of nothing challenge, yay poems!
I want to thank everyone who entered the Poetry Out of Nothing Challenge. Thank you for joining me in this new venture, and thank you for sharing your work with me and my readers–it was a treat. And now, the Challenge has come to an end. The poems have been read. Votes have been cast. Scores have been tallied. That means the only thing left to do is announce the winners of the Poetry Out of Nothing Challenge, which I am quite happy to do. So, without further ado:
1st Place: Clare Greene, “Juicy Love”
Clare’s poem will be the inspiration for a handmade book by Christina Gay.
2nd Place: Jenny O’Grady, “Folding Laundry”*
Avelino Maestas will create a unique framed photo based on Jenny’s poem.
3rd Place: Michelle Jordan, “Stink Bugs”*
Michelle will be receiving a unique handmade journal from Jenny O’Grady.
4th Place: Erika Ferrin, “Meat Dreams”
Erika will be receiving a $15 gift certificate to Powell’s Books.
Learn more about the prizes these amazing poets will be taking home.
*As stated in the initial challenge rules, the prize contributors were eligible for the challenge, but they are not eligible to win the prize they themselves have donated. Jenny O’Grady, who donated a handmade journal for the second prize, was voted into second place. To resolve this issue, the prizes for 2nd and 3rd place will be switched. Jenny will be awarded a framed photo based on her poem and Michelle will receive the handmade journal.
Apr 30
MeredithPoetry, Reading, Uncategorized, Writing Can't believe it's over, national poetry month, yay poems!
I love National Poetry Month, unabashedly and perhaps to an extreme. I’m not one to take that sort of month/week/day of thing seriously–there are just too many for any of them to many anything, it seems. And yet, I love that April gives the poetry community a reason to organize, a definable stretch of time to push harder, to share more, to encourage others to get in on this thing we love.
I make my contribution through this month of blogging, which has become an unexpected tradition. For me, it means 30 days of reading, writing, and thinking about poetry, but more than that, thinking about it in ways that I can share it with people. It means a free pass to discover new writers, to question my own tastes and tendencies in poetry. It means searching for ways to convey that poetry has enormous importance, that it doesn’t have to be an intimidating, foreboding art form to be stared at and passed by, that it can instead be an accessible and even necessary way of viewing the world.
It means an opportunity to invite in guest bloggers and see how my friends and family bring poetry into their lives, whether it’s through the recitation of long-remembered verses, the discovery of new poetry, the appreciation for poetry that withstands the years, or the interpretation of poetry into art.
It also means, this year, a unique chance to invite people, poets or self-proclaimed non-poets, to not only find a way into poetry through reading it, but to use it as a tool of self-expression by writing it. I have enjoyed every moment of the Poetry Out of Nothing Challenge: it is an enormous honor to have people trust you with their art, to read the words they put on the page in response to the details of their days and the ongoing joys, struggles, and questions of their lives.
Obviously, I’m a bit sad that April’s over, that in a few short hours this month of celebration will come to a close. But I also know that even as the calendar flips to May, I’ll continue reading and writing and thinking about poetry, and I hope you will, too.
Until next April, happy reading and writing.
P.S. Voting for the Poetry Out of Nothing Challenge continues until 11:59 tonight, so if you haven’t already voted, you should! I’ll be tabulating the votes over the next day or two, and I’ll announce the winners early next week.
Apr 29
MeredithPoetry, Reading, Uncategorized all the best kinds of poetry, Cindy Greenwood, finding the poems you love, guest blogger
Well, National Poetry Month is practically over, and it’s been a whirlwind here at the blog. I’m super excited to introduce this month’s last guest blogger, Cindy Greenwood. She’s originally from Michigan, but she’s lived all over the country from Washington state to Florida, and she just arrived in Baltimore a few months ago. Though we haven’t known each other long, we quickly evolved from mere officemates to friends thanks to how wonderfully warm and outgoing she is. I feel like there couldn’t be a better way to round out the month than with Cindy’s post–she explores the role poetry in all its forms has played in her life, and I think you’ll probably find you share in her experiences with it. Enjoy!
Let me begin by saying that I have always liked poetry…but have never really studied it or learned a whole lot on the topic. I know I liked poetry as a kid (all the silly, fun, rhyming poems and books of Shel Silverstein, Dr. Seuss, etc.). I enjoyed some poems I learned in my high school College Prep Literature class. I sometimes have found myself drawn to the poetry section in bookstores, just to browse. And even more than reading it, I have learned that I often prefer spoken word poetry. I would say that, as someone who has not spent a lot of time reading, listening to, or studying poetry, I could give a pretty basic outline of the poetry that has had some sort of impact on me.
Beyond the years when I was probably in the target market for Shel Silverstein and Dr. Seuss books, I have remained a fan of children’s poetry (and kids’ books, in general). One book I stumbled upon years ago is A Moon in Your Lunch Box by Michael Spooner. A favorite poem of mine from that book is:
How to get there
The highway
runs
from here to there
–no nonsense–
in a line
as quick
and straight
as tools
can make it.
But the river
___paddles side to side,
_______________visiting all its favorite stops,
__________thinking all its favorite thoughts,
____calling on friends,
___________playing its games,
_________________arriving later,
______________________but arriving
________________all the same.
If I could choose to make
my life
like either one of these,
which, I wonder,
would it be?
No doubt, my life has been (and continues to be) much more a river than a highway…and I like it that way.
As for those classic poems I learned in College Prep Literature class in high school, those that stood out to me include “This is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams, “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost, and “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas. I haven’t really spent much time thinking about why I like some poems and not others. I guess I feel similarly about poetry and visual art. I have not studied either, but I definitely have preferences. I just seem drawn to certain poems as I am to certain paintings and I have not necessarily examined the reasons. I enjoy the absence of a need to analyze.
I have certainly spent more time this month thinking about poetry than I ever have before, thanks to Meredith and her blog. In reading the blog, I found another poem to which I was drawn — the snippet of “A Daily Joy to Be Alive” by Jimmy Santiago Baca, featured in Avelino’s guest blog post. I read the full poem and, while I can appreciate it in its entirety, the portion Avelino shared is also the portion that speaks to me. On its own, it sounds so much like my life to me; moving to new places, starting my life over again and experiencing things I had not expected, all while feeling in some way anchored to all of the past places and especially the people in those places. That is a great thing about poetry — the ability for different people to find their own meaning in the same words.
As I am writing, I have realized that this blog post is a bit like the river in the Michael Spooner poem above. I seem to be wandering a bit, but I hope you’re still with me.
The last of my “favorite stops” would have to be spoken word poetry. I remember my first real experience with this art form. I sat in a black box theater at Washington State University, where I was attending graduate school. I was entirely in awe of Bryonn Bain and Staceyann Chin, the two performers on campus that evening. They had such passion behind their words. It was like music, but it wasn’t. I had no idea how to define what I was seeing and hearing, but I knew I loved it. The combination of entertainment and activism in their work was simply something I had not experienced.
Since that night in 2001, I have experienced many more spoken word performers whose work has left an impression on me. In case you’re interested, here are a few I recommend checking out (with specific poems of theirs, which I enjoy) [Editor's note: some of these poems may contain profanity, so beware before you click]:
I want to thank Meredith for her enthusiasm about National Poetry Month and poetry in general; I have enjoyed a renewed interest in this art form through reading new poems (including those submitted for the Poetry Out of Nothing Challenge), checking out the daily posts, and thinking about my own experiences with poetry. I hope to keep poetry a little closer to my daily life even after April comes to a close.
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There’s still time to vote in the Poetry Out of Nothing Challenge, so get to it! Check out the entries here.
Apr 28
MeredithPoetry, Reading, Uncategorized cast your vote!, national poetry month, Poetry Out of Nothing, yay poems!
Thrilling. That’s really the only word for how it felt to watch entries for the Poetry Out of Nothing Challenge roll in last night. When I dreamed up this little experiment, I wasn’t sure what to expect, and most days thereafter I just worried no one would want to participate. I’m entirely glad I was wrong.
There were 23 entries from an enormously diverse group: students of writing, salty old poet types, and some brave souls making their first ventures into poetry. They also cover a broad range of topics, from meditations on meatloaf and intimacy and Mortal Kombat to reflections on self-worth and stink bugs and and illness. They treat their subjects with wonder and humor and familiarity. And even though everyone was writing from a different place, all of the poems are amazing, and they all have something to important to say. I don’t envy the voters who will have to chose their favorites.
Speaking of voting, it’s about time I told you how that is going to work. I’ve set up an online survey where you can cast a vote for your top 4 favorite poems. Here are the important details:
1.Voting will begin at 10 a.m. EST on April 28 and continue through 11:59 p.m. on April 30.
2. You may cast only one vote a day.
3. You can learn more about the challenge and read the poems in their entirety at meredithpurvis.com
4. If you have any questions, please send them to halfstartsandtrailoffs [at] gmail [dot] com.
5. You can see a full list of the entries here (alphabetical by poet’s name and including links to their individual posts)
And, most importantly, here’s the link to the survey. Go forth and vote! Tell your brothers, mothers, fathers, sisters, aunties, friends, neighbors, grocers, classmates, dogwalkers, and hair stylists. Just get out the vote and support these brave and talented writers!
Apr 27
MeredithPoetry, Reading andrea hollen, guest blogger, isabel fraire, national poetry month, the importance of the absence of words, white space
I love curating these guest poetry posts–it’s thrilling to get a glimpse of the ways in which people I know interact with poetry, because it forces me to step back and look at poetry in new ways. With that in mind, I’m excited to introduce today’s guest, Andrea Hollen, whose life as an engineer grants her a unique perspective on Isabel Fraire’s use of white space. Andrea is the Director of Analytics & Research for Case Commons, a technology startup incubated by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. She served for ten years as a Signal officer in the United States Army, and will always consider leading soldiers a singular privilege. She enjoys urban planning, Civil War history and nature kayaking, and loves living in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Incapable of reading a novel, she is grateful for poetry, short stories and essays about equations.
I discovered Isabel Fraire years ago when I was searching for the perfect love poem. I found it: Fraire’s “Mi amor descubre objetos” – “My love reveals objects.” I was captivated by her imagery. I set out to learn more about her life and work.
“Pendulum” is from Fraire’s second book of poetry, Poems in the Lap of Death, beautifully translated by Thomas Hoeksema. She wrote the collection, which won Mexico’s prestigious Villarrutia Prize in 1978, with the support of a Guggenheim grant.
I’m an engineer by trade and at heart. I feel at home with equations, not so much literary criticism, so I’ve been struggling to convey why I love this poem. I settled on explaining how it speaks to me in my day-to-day pursuits.
Click on the poem to see it larger.
What draws me to “Pendulum,” and Fraire’s poetry in general, are the intense visual and sonic affects of how she uses white space. Hoeksema sums it up nicely: “All of Fraire’s poems are spread orthographically like bones – intricately patterned verbal ligatures.” I would compare her use of white space to how gifted urban planners use space – plazas, view corridors and solar access, for example – to make vibrant public places. In my experience as a planning commissioner, inspiring and sustainable site design is less about what gets built and more about what gets left out. I submit that poetry is much the same. In The Art of the Poetic Line, James Longenbach captures how the criss-crossing chutes of white space in “Pendulum” remind me of the built environment:
Every poem is based at least implicitly on a choice to do something rather than something else, and, as a result, every poem takes power from its exclusions as well as its inclusions. [p. 120]
“Pendulum” also moves me in the way it explores the oscillation between thought and action. When do we have a duty to act? What holds us back? What should hold us back? What shouldn’t? These questions are central to my work in Analytics. As a data scientist, I help public human services systems visualize and explore their data so that they can more deeply understand what services work best for the families and communities they support. Frontline human services caseworkers make life shaping and often wrenching decisions every day. What tools do they, as expert problem solvers and storytellers, need to share their insights in ways that contribute to a larger statistical narrative and ultimately shape public policy? How can we make day-to-day practice more reflective, even meditative? How can we ground social policy research in “the necessary action” that unfolds minute by minute as caseworkers do what they must to strengthen vulnerable families? As I read “Pendulum” I have an affirming conversation with Isabel Fraire about how my colleagues and I might begin to answer these questions.
Thank you for this opportunity to share the meaning I find in “Pendulum,” and my fascination with what Isabel Fraire does with language.
Editor’s Note: “Pendulum” is and remains the intellectual property of Isabel Fraire. We include a scan of it here for instructional purposes and to illustrate Andrea’s discussion of the white space, which is difficult to convey otherwise.
Apr 25
MeredithPoetry, Reading, Uncategorized, Writing Dayna Carpenter, guest blogger, national poetry month, painting, reverse ekphrasis, sisarhpke, the kind of thing that makes your day, water color
Today’s guest blogger is Dayna Carpenter, a dear friend of mine. She’s amazing in her job at UMBC, which is how we met, but she’s also an incredibly talented artist. It is appropriate then, that her post for today is, at its core, visual. She’s chosen to take a look at poetry and narrative, and when she agreed to guest blog, she told me she thought she’d respond to a poem with a painting. I was entirely surprised, honored, and humbled to find out today that she chose one of my poems. I move beyond my typical guest intro with this next statement, but it must be said: Dayna, thank you. I am so moved by your work and completely honored that you found in my poem not only something worth reading but something that inspired your own art.
Click on the image to see it full size.
Trying To Remember Daddy
Girl, small, clomps
across the room
in scuffed steel-
toed boots
while he sleeps
in his favorite arm
chair.
– Meredith Purvis
I’ve always been captivated by poems that can stir up memories and feelings. This one, in particular, reminds me of well-oiled Redwing boots that my father always owned as I was growing up. Every year, it would be a new pair – with their fresh leather smell and pristinely smooth surfaces. Later, you would find them well-worn and creased sitting beside his reclining chair.
Dayna's father, Bryan, and her brother, Andy.
Apr 24
MeredithPoetry, Reading, Uncategorized books I want to own, books you should read, national poetry month, that new book smell, the most splendiferous poetry ever
I am a bibliophile. If you’ve ever been to my house (or been the caretaker of one of my many boxes of books while I moved from place to place over the years), you probably know this. If you live with me now, you definitely know this. In fact, you probably feel tempted to take away all my money because I can’t go anywhere near a bookstore without toting about 20 books back out with me. I acquire books with greater rapidity than I could ever possibly read them, and I tell people this is because I worry that I will forget I want to read the books if I don’t take them with me.
So, since today is a holiday, and I’m feeling stuffed to the gills with delicious food, I thought I’d give my brain a break and instead do what comes naturally to me: look for books I want to own. Then I figured I’d share a few with you, in case you’re looking for a way to start, or expand, your poetry collection.
Orange Crush: Poems, by Simone Muench
“Train track flutter girl; coriander lips and Prohibition ale. That empty mouth like a bottle on a man’s neck. Marabou soft, doe’s muzzle on a pomegranate split, ultraviolet.”
An Aquarium, by Jeffrey Yang
“You can see straight thru / an X-ray fish to its heart. / We are just as transparent / so be true, gentle, honest, just. . . .”
The Ada Poems, by Cynthia Zarin
“My heart in two / was my own heart / the coal black bird / was my own ear / that heard no sound / nor would come near / that song too dear / for me to hear.”
Lucky Fish, by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
“If a man in China can keep ten thousand dollars worth / of caterpillars in a metal box underneath his bed / for medicine, then I want to collect flakes of light / for those winter months when we go a whole week // without seeing a slice of sun.”
The Little Book of Guesses, by John Gallaher
“You can press / your enormous eye / to their window, and see them / taking it up, // becoming little red birds.”
What books are you looking forward to reading or would you recommend for others’ to-read lists?
Apr 23
MeredithPoetry, Reading, Writing building a poem, cento, danielle pafunda, national poetry month, poetry as architecture, poets and writers, writing poetry
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been following The Academy of American Poets 30 Poets 30 Days Twitter project. They’ve had some great poets guest tweeting for them. One of them, Danielle Pafunda, is hosting a cento (poems composed from the lines of other poets) contest. Throughout her day as guest Twitter-er, she tweeted 75 lines from different poems, then asked followers to compose a cento from those lines in about a day and a half.
I was loving the lines she’d chosen, so I decided to try my own. I’ve never really done this before, but it was an interesting experiment in composition, in order, in arrangement. The spirit of the cento is something new from something old, and so I was free from the stress of the words themselves–I didn’t find myself trapped in the cycle of type, delete, type, delete. Instead I was free to focus my energy on how the poem came together as a whole.
I’m sharing an excerpt from my poem below (you can see it in full here), and I encourage you to check out all the entries over at the official competition blog. There are some pretty amazing poems, and it’s interesting to see all the different ways people worked with the same initial stock of lines and even words. Thanks to Danielle Pafunda for an awesome contest idea, and for picking such great poems to work with.
For six months I arranged museum dioramas;
now I am safe in the deep V of a weekday.
Sewing up the kinks in this film, I’m
sleep-fallen, naked in your dark hair,
sleepily indifferent, because the continent
was clothed in trees, just jars of buttons spilled.
Once you’re done checking out all those awesome poems, get to work on your entry for the Poetry Out of Nothing Challenge. The deadline’s coming up on April 27, but you still have plenty of time. Tell your friends, tell your neighbors! And don’t forget about the cool prizes!
Apr 22
MeredithPoetry, Reading declamation, guest blogger, Jenny O'Grady, national poetry month, the sounds words make
I’m happy to introduce today’s guest blogger, Jenny O’Grady. She’s a dear friend and mentor to me, and one of the first people I met when I moved to Baltimore (I actually met her at a poetry reading for the Little Patuxent Review). A former newspaper reporter, Jenny now serves as director of alumni and development communications at UMBC, as well as associate editor of UMBC Magazine. By night, she teaches book arts and electronic publishing classes in the University of Baltimore’s creative writing & publishing arts MFA program, from which she earned her degree in 2006. She also edits a web-based writing and arts journal called The Light Ekphrastic. You can see more of her work at www.kineticprose.com.
It is a true treat to hear a living writer speak his or her craft.
I have had the privilege of hearing many great poets read: Seamus Heaney revealing his early thoughts on where babies come from; my teacher, Kendra Kopelke, giving voice to the women in Edward Hopper’s paintings; Mark Doty speaking spunkily to the driver of a passing car. In every case, when I later read the words on the page, they leapt from the paper as if the poet was speaking directly to me.
This is no revelation; I’m sure it happens to many readers. What does surprise me, though, is the power of reading older poems aloud, of imagining an unheard voice and connecting to the words in a strangely personal way.
I love to read poems aloud. I love “Poem in Your Pocket” day. I love random surprise recitations of classics to unsuspecting co-workers. (I’m sure they love this, too. Or not.)
One of my favorites is “Oh Captain, My Captain,” by Walt Whitman. I memorized this poem for Mrs. Cutright’s seventh grade English class in the late ’80’s, and it’s been stuck fast to my synapses ever since. I can honestly say that at the time I had very little idea of the meaning of what I was memorizing, and I probably didn’t care. I recited the poem to my class, collected my “A,” and moved on to the next cool thing.
As time passed, though, and the poem stayed with me, it became something more. Each time I speak it, I feel a mix of pride and pleasure. The pride comes from having, in effect, a virtual poem in my pocket every hour of every day; from knowing that I am helping to spread the word (literally) about an important work of art; from being able to surprise people with such an unusual bit of knowledge, and to show proof of my devotion to poetry.
These points of pride bring pleasure all their own. But, more importantly, I draw immense happiness from the physical act of speaking this poem, of feeling the words click against my teeth, the spaces between words vary on a whim. I can’t know how Walt Whitman would have spoken this himself, but I like to imagine he would have especially enjoyed saying these lines out loud:
O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack,
the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
I hope you’ll try reading this aloud right now, and maybe even look at the full poem here. There are so many lovely sounds to make, so many turns, so much drama and sadness all at once.
A teenager reads things differently than an adult. When I was 12 or 13 years old, I often focused on the “O heart! heart! heart!” line, thinking it very wild and dramatic. I would flail my arms and land on my knees, acting out the discovery of a corpse. My family found it amusing.
Today, I speak it and I know better what it means. I know the history of this poem, true, but I also have an adult perspective. I have lost people, I have lost faith, I have been disappointed. And when I read it, aloud or silently, I feel these things and love the poem all the more.
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