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.

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.

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]:

• Jason Carney’s “Southern Heritage”
• Mike McGee’s “Soul Food” and “Microphone”
• Gemineye “Penny For Your Thoughts” and “Poetic Bloodlines”
• George Watsky “V for Virgin”

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.

***************************************************************************

There’s still time to vote in the Poetry Out of Nothing Challenge, so get to it! Check out the entries here.

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!

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.

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

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!

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.

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. . . .”

“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

Case in point: we made a brief stop in the airport Borders to kill some time. I poked around a bit, perusing the new arrivals and bargain books, when I realized that although they had sections for fiction, history, business, children, young adult, mystery, science fiction, and even graphic novels, there wasn’t any poetry to be found. I don’t suppose that’s all that surprising, but it got me to thinking about the way poetry is sidelined, left for expansive bookstores where a shelf of poetry can be shoved to the side or the smaller bookstores that make it their mission to fill the absence felt in major chains.

I know I’ve talked about it before this month, but I think that absence of poetry says a lot about our culture. Poetry is a medium of emotion, of awe, of raw observation, of formal experimentation. We (and I say we because I am as guilty of this as anyone) seek things that are interpreted for us, we look for stories that make emotions familiar or easy to digest. We want to be entertained, and we want it to be easy. Poetry doesn’t do that for us. Poetry asks us to interpret for ourselves, to be willing to be amazed.

With that in mind, I want to look at two poems today. The first is Octavio Paz’s “Pedestrian.” The second is Nick Flynn’s “Flood.” I see in them a dialogue, a mutual exploration of the way so many of us shy away from the grit, the core of life.

First, in “Pedestrian,” we get the image of a man walking, on a day like any other: “He walked among the crowds / on the Boulevard Sebasto, / thinking about things.”

Instantly, we are given something we can all connect to–we have been that man, lost in thought about work, about the errands we need to run, alone among the crowd. Then Paz stops the man, makes him wait at a red light, gives him a moment to notice things, to look up and see that “over / the gray roofs, silver / among the brown birds, / a fish flew.”

More than anything this is a moment crafted for awe, for amazement, for curiosity and questioning. But the man, the reader’s surrogate, does what we all would do, is too be drawn away again as the light turns green and he steps into the street, shaking his head, he wonders “what he’d been thinking.” He dismisses this amazing, crazy thing, knows it to be impossible. He doesn’t even bother to muse on the odd twist in his day, how the fish, even if it is only a trick of his imagination, is something worth noting.

Conversely, in his poem “Flood,” Nick Flynn actively embraces the strange, the curious, invites his reader along with him as the speaker of his poem experiences it for them. That speaker describes the titular flood, the detritus of a disaster as it drifts by while he seeks ever-higher ground.

In doing so, he recalls that “In grade school I heard / clouds could weight three tons & I wondered // why they didn’t all just fall to the ground.” He continues in a similar line of thinking as he tells us “I study rain, each drop shaped / like a comet, ten million of them, as if a galaxy // had exploded above us.”

What I love about Flynn’s poem is that he finds beauty and mystery in a flood, the kind of thing most see only as disaster and destruction. His speaker is the opposite of Paz’s pedestrian, caught up in the whorl of everyday and perfectly happy to stay there.

That’s why I love poetry. Because there is enough every day to go around, because it is far too easy to get caught up in the mundane, because we are taught throughout our lives to be logical and to explain away the extraordinary. With poetry, read or written, we find a chance to escape that way of thinking. So I say three cheers for the extraordinary.