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 28
MeredithPoetry, Uncategorized, Writing Lecture, Meagan Noel Hart, national poetry month, poetry out of nothing challenge, yay poems!
Lecture
Sometimes
My words tumble from my tongue
and bounce like rubber balls
smacking my students’ foreheads
like concrete
rejected, they quickly fly away
and settle lost within the corners
of the room.
I wish my words would always flow like water
washing over their faces
causing sensitivity
to subtle changes in the air
and seeping in
through their pores.
Apr 28
MeredithPoetry, Uncategorized, Writing a journey, jim lord, national poetry month, Poetry, poetry out of nothing challenge, yay poems!
A Journey
What a journey
I have had
Across the state and back
In search of crab cakes
And an “A”
Across the state and back
Fun with my daughter
Wife and friends
Drive, eat, repeat
Traveling the state
In search of crabcakes
Was not an easy feat
The book is done
And I am spent
Crabcakes
Never again, will I eat
Apr 26
MeredithUncategorized cranes, Jennifer Boyden, katherine larson, national poetry month, same idea different poem, there is little in life that i love more than poems about birds, think I might go do some origami
One of the things I most love about poetry is the way that writers are tasked with searching for a uniqueness in language. It’s a well-worn adage that there’s nothing new under the sun, but instead of letting that discourage them, poets, in particular, take that as a challenge. The best poets succeed at the challenge, offering up language and observations that are crisp and fresh, that cause the reader to think to herself, “that’s exactly what that’s like–why didn’t I think to say it that way?”
Perhaps the best way I can think of to convey how that feels is to imagine those moments when you want the word for something, it’s on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t find it for hours or even days. You know how great it feels when it comes to you? That’s what it’s like when you write or read a line or poem that offers a truly original rendering of something familiar.
Tonight I want to look at how two poets handle the same image in different ways, the way they both bring readers to that spark of recognition.
As I’ve mentioned here before, I recently read Jennifer Boyden’s The Mouths of Grazing Things. Well, a few days ago I picked up a new book by Katherine Larson, called Radial Symmetry. I flipped to the first poem in Larson’s collection and was immediately caught by her description of a crane. My brain reeled as I tried to decide why this particular image was jumping off the page at me, aside from its beauty. Then it hit me: this poem, “Statuary,” reminded me of the way Jennifer Boyden describes the same bird in her poem “Orectic.”
Each of the Jennifer’s handles this slender bird deftly and lyrically, but each does so in an entirely different way:
From Boyden’s “Orectic”:
Where in our bodies
would they have moored the slender cry of the crane
who calls out that night is closing the sky,
taking away the glinted green
of the frogs’ moist backs, the dazzle the sun makes
of every hair, of every shining wing?
From Larson’s “Statuary”:
The late cranes throwing
their necks to the wind stay
somewhere between
the place that rain begins
and the place that it ends
they seem to exist just there
above the horizon at least
I only see them that way
tossed up
against the gray October
light not heavy enough
for feet to be useful or
useless enough to make
gravity untie its string.
A quick search shows that the crane is a heavily symbolic creature, with varying interpretations across different cultures. For some, cranes are a sign of longevity. For others, of peace and hope. Still others attribute mystical powers to the crane, believing it carries souls to heaven on the great expanse of its wings.
These poems are no doubt influenced by these and other interpretations, with their cranes who become symbols of the in between, of change–we see Boyden’s cranes as heralds of the night (even if they perhaps mourn its arrival) and Larson rather blatantly places the crane “between / the place that rain begins / and the place that it ends.” Both make reference to the long, slender neck of the crane. And yet, despite these similarities, we have entirely different cranes in each poem.
For Boyden, the cranes are tinged with mourning; they bemoan the loss of daylight. They become a symbol of something humans can never be, but not for their grace or ability to fly; instead it is for their very ability to mourn, to make a sound of longing, as she mentions early in the poem.They are solid and right in a way that we cannot be.
For Larson, the cranes are reckless, “throwing / their necks to the wind.” They are ephemeral and distant in that in-between place. Beautiful, perhaps, but locked in to one fuzzy interpretation.
But I wander a bit with this, admittedly rather shallow, analysis. Returning to my original point, what is most interesting to me is that given their similarities, both of these poems struck me differently. At their core, both focus largely on the long, lithe neck of a crane, but they present wholly different images, both of which feel entirely apt within the setting of each poem. Both made me sit back and wonder why I never thought of cranes in that way. It’s satisfying, that feeling of stunned recognition.
————————————–
It’s practically time! Time for what? Time for you to submit your poem for the Poetry Out of Nothing Challenge. The deadline is tomorrow, April 27, at 11:59 p.m. EST (that’s a fancy way of saying my version of midnight). A few submissions have already come in, but I can’t wait to see more. I’ll be posting them on April 28, and I promise I’ll have more info on the hows and wheres and whens of voting in the next day or two (this will be determined partly by the volume of entries, hence the delay).
Happy writing!
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?
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