Marin Poetry Center Online Writing Retreat
- prartho
- May 26, 2020
- 42 min read
Updated: Jun 7, 2020
Dwelling in Possibility with Prartho Sereno , May 25 - June 7, 2020
Day 14: Like a Swimmer in the Sky
Today’s Poem:
Pablo Neruda’s Autumn Testament
Autumn Testament
by Pablo Neruda
translation by Alastair Reid
From having been born so often
I have salty experience
like creatures of the sea
with a passion for stars
and an earthy destination.
And so I move without knowing
to which world I'll be returning
or if I'll go on living.
While things are settling down,
here I've left my testament,
my shifting extravaganza,
so whoever goes on reading it
will never take in anything
except the constant moving
of a clear and bewildered man,
a man rainy and happy,
lively and autumn-minded.
And now I'm going behind
this page, but not disappearing.
I'll dive into clear air
like a swimmer in the sky,
and then get back to growing
till one day I'm so small
that the wind will take me away
and I won't know my own name
and I won't be there when I wake.
Then I will sing in the silence.
Craft:
First, a note about Alistair Reed as translator. Many years ago, I discovered that all translators are by no means alike. My first collection of Neruda’s work was a huge volume, which made me think I was getting more pages for my buck (!) Alas, the poems in translation rarely hit any notes in my heart. I can’t even tell you the translator’s name, as I soon discarded that book.
But when I discovered Alistair Reed’s versions—especially the collection Extravagaria, which ends with this poem—I fell in love. If asked to name my favorite poet, more often than not, my heart shouts, before I can even deliberate, Pablo Neruda. What is it that brings me back again and again to this poet-politician (almost an oxymoron, isn’t it?) I think this Autumn Testament both shows and tells why: He is
a clear and bewildered man,
a man rainy and happy,
lively and autumn-minded.
And he is willing to dive into clear air… and grow so small the wind will take him away.
Prompt:
Taking Neruda’s lead, for our last day together, let’s write our own Testaments. When I just now looked up the term, I discovered that Testament is defined in three interwoven ways:
1. one’s will (the distribution of personal effects)
2. evidence or a sign (of something on another plane/ in another time) 3. a covenant or commitment between God and His people.
And so:
1. What personal effects will you distribute into the world?
2. What evidence or signs have drawn you toward another dimension?
3. Describe the covenant you have made or wish to make with your god.
Journal:
Oh, why not? Aim for the stars: The New Yorker !
Of course, only send the best of your best to what is considered Olympic Gold in publication. As encouragement, though, I’ve found the current poetry editor Kevin Young (we read at his poem Urgent Telegram To Jean-Michel Basquiat on Day 8) not only to be the most inclusive editor in decades, but (to my sensibilities) the most heart-based in his selections.
Recipe:
A Good Cup of Coffee
Pour-Over Style
One of my brothers is fond of asking people what last taste they would want to have before leaving this world. (His is a certain East Coast brand of frozen custard.) Mine, strangely enough, is a good cup of coffee. I guess I’m in good company. I’ve been told the Russian mystic George Gurdjieff often remarked that he could never trust a man who couldn’t make a good cup of coffee.
In my endless pursuit, here’s what I have learned so far:
Buy whole beans, a weekly amount of which are kept in an airtight jar at room temperature. (I keep the rest in the freezer)
Heat an insulated container (either single cup for one, or larger for several imbibers) by pouring in boiling water and covering.
While kettle is boiling fresh water, grind beans to fine powder (NOT the extra-fine of espresso grind, a little bit coarser)
You’ll need 1/8 c of grinds for a little over 1c of brewed coffee (NOT per mug, which are almost always 1 1/2 to 2 cups); currently I use 1/2 cup coffee (four 1/8c scoops) per 3 1/2 c water, serves 2 or 3)
Wet an unbleached filter, set in a ceramic or glass cone (NOT plastic!), add the ground coffee beans
Begin to pour in the water, “just off the boil” (I literally lift the electric kettle up with it still boiling, but wait till it subsides before pouring.) Pour around the outer edge of the filter first and work your way toward the center; fill the cone only half way for the first pour.
I used to stir the soaked grounds, but my expert barista grandson says if you pour right, you can and should skip this step, as it can disturb the beans and increase acidity.
Once the water has disappeared and the grounds have puffed up a bit, repeat pours. The number of pours depends on hour water to grounds ratio (see #4). I make 4 cups of coffee each day for my sweetheart and myself, which takes three pouring rounds. You can see when the beans have given their all, as the brew in the cone will begin to show less action…less tiny bubbles on the surface as you stir. (DON’T over-leach the beans… if you see very little action, take the cone off and stop adding water.)
Cover and serve in pre-warmed (with boiling water) cups.
Drink slowly, contemplatively … and you’ll be at heaven's door!
Day 13: With a Child’s Heart & Soul
Today’s Poem:
Paul Fentress's poem, written in first grade
at Brookside School in San Anselmo
A Dark Sea of Magic
by Paul Fentress
A dark sea of magic
Five rocks fall off songs
One wise old man in a lighthouse
A sparkly fish in the air
Craft:
In my 21+ years as a poet-in-the-schools, this poem represents one of the highest (among thousands) of moments that have moved me, for this was the poem Paul wrote during a Mothers Day workshop, just a few months after his mother had died.
As we sat criss-cross-applesauce style on the carpet and I announced that we would write about our mothers that day, the students informed me that Paul didn’t have one. It is difficult to describe what I saw and felt as my eyes met Paul’s and his fellow classmates’—I felt like I had been admitted to a circle of wise elders. Their eyes were steady and clear with what felt like true compassion, without embarrassment or sentimentality. We sat quietly together with the fact of loss—its solemnity and its power to bring us together.
When it was time to write, I suggested Paul might write his poem to his father. But he shook his head no. Later, I suggested he could write to his mother, but again he said no.
Awkwardly, I went on to write what I’d prepared on the board: Compare your mother’s hair to a vegetable. What are her hands made of (e.g., water or fire or feathers)? What do you see her doing in your mind? Crown her the Queen of something.…
I noticed Paul moving his pencil, deep into the process, and left him alone for a while. When I finally came round to his desk and read the poem I’m offering here, I was speechless before its mystery and beauty.
Eventually, I asked, “Who did you write this for, Paul?… Is this for your mother?”
He shook his head no.
“Your father?”
Again, no. Then he looked right into me and said, “This poem is for me. I wrote this poem for me.”
Prompt:
Although your main prompt today is to follow Paul’s open heart and forget any prompt I could give, I will offer this appreciation of the artistry of his Dark Sea of Magic: It eschews all explanation as it unearths its images. We are witness to an inner slideshow—his very own dark sea of magic where rocks fall off and sing. With no extra words, we are zoomed in to see one wise old man in his lighthouse (I love that he counts his characters—one!). And then, his unbelievably perfect ending… from that dark sea he brings up: a sparkly fish in the air!
Whenever I read this poem, which I consider a masterpiece (Paul is still writing, by the way. “Mostly songs,” he tells me when I run into him at Good Earth in Fairfax), I can feel the child that’s still alive in me. Doesn’t that happen for you too? She/ he is the one I’m asking to write your poem today.
Journal:
Today, I’m going to ask you to follow in the great tradition of self-publishing. Uncle Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass came into the world that way. And he wrote his own glowing reviews for that book too!
Pick your favorite 12 to 18 poems, or find a theme that runs through your “collected works,” and create your own chapbook, using the “recipes” below!
Recipe:
from Poets & Writers
DIY: How to Make and Bind Your Own Chapbook
by Staff
4.6.17
Whether you end up distributing your own prose or poetry at a reading or collecting the work of your friends in limited editions, the following instructions on how to create and bind your own chapbooks offer hours of bookmaking fun.
DIY: How to Make a Pocket-Size Book with a companion video.
DIY: How to Coptic Bind a Chapbook with a companion video.
Day 12: Singing The Blues
Today’s Poem:
Langston Hughes’es Miss Blues’es Child
Miss Blues’es Child
by Langston Hughes (1902—1967)
If the blues would let me,
Lord knows I would smile.
If the blues would let me,
I’d smile, smile, smile.
Instead of that I’m cryin’ —
I must be Miss Blues’es child.
You were my moon up in the sky,
at night my wishing star.
I love you, oh, I love you so—
But you have gone so far!
Now my days are lonely,
And my night-time drives me wild.
In my heart I’m crying,
I’m just Miss Blues’es child!
Craft:
The African Americans of the Harlem Renaissance taught us that one of the best ways to transform the blues is to invite them in. To sit ‘em down and write a song together.
The Blues is a formal poem (or song); i.e., we are given a template which prescribes rhythm, rhyme, and repetition, into which we are to fit our blues. The form is simple on the surface: Three statements (as a poem, usually each statement is broken into two lines). The first statement is a clear delineation of your complaint; the second is an almost exact repetition of that complaint. (Almost being the chief operative here—a little variation helps the music move along, as Lord knows I would cry becomes I’d cry cry cry in its second iteration.)
The third statement brings a brief conclusion to the stated difficulty, with more linguistic freedom. It must stay true to the established rhythm and the last word must continue the rhymed endings of the first two statements; in Hughes’s poem child provides a slant-rhyme with the smile that ends the first two parts of the poem/song.
Langston Hughes was one of the artists of the Harlem Renaissance, which took place in upper Manhattan, with famous musical celebrations at the Cotton Club. It was there that Hughes learned the blues form from singers and brought it into his poetry.
Prompt:
Here’s a few more examples, from blues songwriters to get you ready to sing your blues:
Green River Blues
Some people say
the Green River blues ain’t bad.
Seems I’m always hearin’
the Green River blues ain’t bad—
then it must not have been
them Green River blues I had.
—Charley Patton
Black Cat, Hoot Owl Blues
Last night a hoot owl
came to sit outside my door.
Last night a hoot owl came
and sat right at my door.
A feeling seemed to tell me
I would never see my man no more.
—Ma Rainey
Special Rider
I got off my pallet and I laid down across my bed.
Got off my pallet and laid down
across my bed.
And when I went to eat my breakfast, the blues were all in my bread.
—Skip James
Now, Try these:
Name your blues… Keep revising it: the Green River Blues; them Sad Green River Blues; the Alligator Chompin Green River Blues… etc.
Put your blues in strange places: blues all in my head; all in my bread.
Let your blues be a spirit, capable of action.
Try to Write at least 3 Verses
A few places to begin:
Been so long ____________________________________________________
Only thing I know for sure_______________________________________________
I miss her/ him like_______________________________________________________
Seems this got off course when_______________________________________________
Know it might seem strange to you, _______________________________________
Journal:
Salt Hill is the Journal produced by MFA students at Syracuse University, where I studied, taught, and wrote for 3 years, between 2010 and 2013. The team is small and intimate. This is their statement about submissions:
We are interested in work that represents a broad spectrum of experience. We believe it is critical to lift up the voices of writers and artists who have been traditionally underrepresented in the literary arts. As such, we feel an urgency to read and consider work by people of color, women, queer people, non-binary folks, and anyone else who has been marginalized by the institutions which have, for so long, dominated the publishing scene.
Recipe:
Left-Overs—my favorite ingredient!
Left-Over Saag-Paneer Quesadilla
Ingredients:
1 multi-grain tortilla
Left-over Saag Paneer
(or Palak Paneer… same dish, both words mean spinach in different regions of India)
Handful of crumbled feta cheese (I prefer sheep’s milk feta)
Other grated cheese to help it all stick together
Place tortilla in lightly greased pre-warmed frying pan
Turn over and spread with saag paneer
Sprinkle in feta, (amount depends on how much paneer is left…I’ve usually eaten most of the paneer in the first round)
Sprinkle in other cheeses… which is what keeps the two halves sticking together, and what qualifies it as a quesadilla
I enjoyed this as my lunch yesterday, and decided to share it.
Day 11: All of Us, Boat People
Today’s Poem:
Juan Ramon Jimenez’s Oceans
Oceans by Juan Ramon Jimenez (translated by Robert Bly) I have a feeling that my boat has struck, down there in the depths, against a great thing. And nothing happens! Nothing…Silence…Waves... —Nothing happens? Or has everything happened, and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?
Craft:
First, a little meditation on boats: The boat is one of our most timeless metaphors. How often lately, have you heard (or said yourself), “We are all in the same boat now.”
But perhaps this has always been the case: one boat/ one ocean. It only recently occurred to me that the five oceans we’ve named to keep our bearings are really only one big body of water… there is no line to divide the waters of the world.
Our most enduring myths have us crossing waters in boats. Consider Noah, who was instructed to build his boat on dry land and to invite in the animals. How the seas rose and took him, piloting that noisy boat through a storm of 40 days and 40 nights.
It is now thought that the first immigrants to North America arrived not on foot as previously theorized, but from Asia, by boat. To this day, especially during crises, people leave their homes for better lives by boat. They are often called The Boat People, and the way is almost always very difficult.
When the crowded Vietnamese refugee boats met with storms or pirates, if everyone panicked, all would be lost. But if even one person on the boat remained calm and centered, it was enough. It showed the way for everyone to survive. – Thich Nhat Hanh
Jimenez’s small poem with its huge title Oceans, begins in a boat, floating above the depths, and striking against a great thing.
The line-breaks here create a dramatic pace for… nothing to happen. —Nothing happens?/ Or has everything happened
Isn’t this exactly where the stopping of our world, which we all share in right now, has brought us: … standing now, /quietly, in the new life?
Prompt:
Today’s assignment is simple enough. Consider yourself, your life, your world, as a boat. Allow the boat and the oceans that carry it to be your poem’s commanding metaphor. Extend the metaphor... possibly with the help of the following lists (to jar your memory) of nautical terms and terms for the sea and its elements... until your vessel strikes against a great thing.
Nautical Terms
captain crew ship craft canoe sailing ship ropes
ark (offering protection) vessel sails mast anchor deck
engine oars bow stern cabin hull portside
wheel (for steering) rudder bow spirit (or figurehead) starboard
port dock bridge port of call (stop before destination)
Terms for the Sea and her Elements
high seas (beyond national jurisdiction) gale winds white-capped waters
salt water lagoon reef sandbank bay inlet
becalmed (when a sailing ship can’t move because the winds have stopped) calm seas
gulls albatross wandering albatross arctic terns dolphins
whales nets iceberg knots (measurement of wind velocity)
fair winds (perfect for sailing) open seas
Journal:
The Bellevue Literary Review
From their website: The Bellevue Literary Review, founded in 2000, was created as a forum for creatively exploring a broad array of issues in medicine and society, using fiction, nonfiction, and poetry to better understand the nuanced tensions that define our lives both in illness and in health.
What better place to submit your poems at this time?
Recipe:
One of the easiest, yet somehow impressive, side-dishes I know
Curried Brussel Sprouts
Steam Brussel Sprouts (preferably fresh, but frozen will do, follow cooking directions on package)
Stir in a few dollops of our secret ingredient…ready for this?…mayonnaise!
Add your favorite curry powder to taste.
Reheat in a sauce pan, stirring constantly till warm
That’s it! This came from an old hippie friend who wowed everyone with her simple culinary skills. Whenever I’ve brought the dish to a potluck, everyone wants to know how I made such a delicious sauce! (shhh… now it’s your secret too. Don’t tell!)
Day 10: Our Verbs Know
How to Dance
Today’s poem:
The Ancient Christmas Dancers, written by Angel Mejia when he was in third grade under my tutelage at Venetia Valley School, San Rafael, CA
The Ancient Christmas Dancers
by Angel Mejia
On the longest night the moon fades the bells.
The trees fade in the darkness. The light of the ancient dancers sweeps, floats, flirts, somersaults. And I hear the wind say, Dance. Dance for the ancient dancers. For the moon, for your whole family and the Christmas spirit. And reveal that your great grandpa isn’t dead in your heart.
Craft:
This is a poem that knows how to dance—a poem we can witness dancing its way into its young writer’s heart and opening his ears so he can feel the love and hear the voices of the Ancient Christmas Dancers.
I watched Angel write this poem… painstakingly at first, but once he found his verbs: The light of the ancient dancers/sweeps, floats, flirts, somersaults… Something took over his pencil. I love how he began to receive instructions from the wind—The urgent instruction to Dance. For the ancient dancers! For the moon (!) And soon enough, for everyone he loves, a dancing which performs the ultimate magic—bringing his late great grandpa back to life… in his heart.
Prompt:
Angel and his fellow poets were given two essential prompts for this poem; I am giving you the same:
1. To consider what happens, secretly, in the long and mysterious hours of the year’s longest night. (We were writing in December and began our session thinking together about the changes in daylight and nighttime throughout the year, with the imminent arrival of the longest night of that year.) I encouraged them to include what happens to the moon? The trees? The wind and light? The People?
2. We also spoke about the power of verbs to get things moving. I gave each student a list of Verbs to Move You, which I am including here. I think what makes Angel’s poem so remarkable is how generous he is with his verbs. Today, take his spirit, and the spirit of the ancient dancers, as your guide!
A List of Verbs… to move you:
veer skew teeter shuffle circle branch
lurch shiver lean swallow slog whisper
dilly-dally glance soften pour sprinkle dust
dig dive flick flutter plunge rock
flash drizzle bounce spring settle slump
hover brush sweep flow blossom bump
climb cradle touch sing darn mend
fan pluck collapse stutter shrink grow
drive duck release catch reach drop
scribble crack glue tape tremble sigh
uproot upstage reroute wade float rise
sink soar sail slosh fly flirt
fumble flit race rustle row wrangle
engulf envelop vanish relinquish dissolve disintegrate
balance shape carve hover hide flare
jump linger loiter lag land stretch
flap flounder scatter tumble mumble open
close pass blaze brighten plow blur
stitch scribble smooth rumple scatter mar
bellow sip saunter limp creep sway
drift scuttle inch sidle launch parse
tip flip flap turn scratch cartwheel
somersault skateboard splash grumble squish crumble
swing save jitterbug foxtrot skate slide
Journal:
Barrow Street Review was founded in legendary Greenwich Village, in New York City. https://barrowstreet.org/press/
One of my dearest friends lived on tree-lined Barrow Street for more than 40 years, which was what first drew me to this high quality journal. Their next reading period is a ways off… Gives you plenty of time to polish those poems!
From their website: Send your submission during the reading period by using our Online Submission Manager. Our open reading period is from Dec. 1 - Dec. 15. Dec. 16 - March 15th there is a $3 charge per submission. Submit up to five pages maximum. Name, address, and phone number should appear on each page. Submissions that exceed the maximum cannot be read.
Recipe:
The Good Old Green Banana Smoothie
(Not with green bananas, but a banana smoothie suffused with green!)
Put all ingredients in blender:
1 frozen banana, cut into cubes (freezing it is the secret!)
1 c. plain low-fat yogurt
Other fruit (optional… whatever’s in the fridge or kitchen bowl)
1 Tbs. wheat grass or other green powder (or a few chard leaves)
1 tsp. vanilla
5 to 6 ice cubes, crushed
(my method for crushing: put cubes in a bag and wack with the back of an ice cream scoop till the pieces are quite small)
Blend on medium until all ingredients are fully blended. I make mine with only the sweetness of the fruit, but ice cream or sweeteners, such as maple syrup or agave juice or honey, can be added to taste.
Day 9: Let the Songs of the Night Touch Our Bodies
Today’s poem
Kosrof Chantikian’s A Meditation on the Poem
from his forthcoming collection The Songs Inside of You (Kosmos, July, 2020)
A Meditation on the Poem
by Kosrof Chantikian
The poem’s deepest foundation is love
which is why it is revolutionary
the poem transmutes our lives in the world
it restores us to ourselves and each other
each time it does so history rises from its dull sleep
washes its dirty hands and feels itself breathe again
the poem undresses us
we become aware of our own and each other’s skin
this is how we invented the kiss
love in its true state is erotic
as moss slowly touches and enters the heart of the flower
love and eroticism are inseparable from each other
they are the original subversives
the poem asks nothing from us except that we remain true
to our dreams our work ourselves
this is the original insight of all poets the poem creates the poet
of the poet the poem requests nothing
but exacts everything
it is impossible to go beyond without language beyond words
the heart would choke and die if words
were shot at sundown
even the sparrow sings
as it waits to touch the wind
a poet’s intuition music as the sky
as songs of the night touch our bodies
Descartes’ cogito ergo sum must be undressed by the poem
I think, therefore I am must be forged by our lips into
we imagine and invent ourselves
and each other
we love
and become
is it necessary to prove the value of your laughter the sky your kiss?
and why the fields of wild iris at twilight
call to hold you tightly?
Craft:
This poem, which opens Kosrof Chantikian’s forthcoming collection, is most obviously an ars poetica, a self-reflective poem about the art of poetry. But what sets it apart from legions of other poetic meditations on poetry (almost every poet has written at least one!) is its unabashed sensuality. For Chantikian, love and eroticism are the original subversives, and from this sensibility we are urged to love and become… to let the songs of the night touch our bodies.
The speaker instructs us to be undressed by the poem, to become aware of our own and each other’s skin. Almost every image speaks from and to the body—even history must wash its dirty hands and breathe again.
The wonder of this poem is that its sensuality and eroticism bear no hint of the pornographic. Spoken with transcendent tenderness, from a voice beyond the poet himself, these images and words are infused with love. They enter our bodies, and open us to the resplendent world lurking behind the one we have dulled by intellectual habits.
As Naomi Shihab Nye testifies on the back cover of The Songs Inside of You: So much love lives in the beautiful poems of Kosrof Chantikian - read them with a wide open soul and prepare for restoration! ~ Naomi Shihab Nye, Young People's Poet Laureate, The Poetry Foundation
Prompt:
Today, let’s let our bodies be the muse. You may want to write your own ars poetica… or not. Whatever theme is calling to you today, approach it with all your senses, and your heart, open—as a lover.
Let in smells, tastes, sounds, and feelings on the skin, but also let in the creatures that share your world—birds, wind, the night sky. Your assignment today is to fall in love, with all of it!
Journal:
The literary journal Rosebud declares its mission as publishing the under appreciated. They featured one of my poems and illustrations from my collection Causing a Stir: The Secret Lives & Loves of Kitchen Utensils, and later dedicated the visual art in one issue to paintings from that book. They have eclectic taste; give them a try!
Recipe (for 96 pages of insPiration):
Here is all the info you need to order Kosrof Chantikian’s collection, The Songs Inside of You.
Publisher: KOSMOS
Publication Date: June/July 2020.
Distribution: Books will be available through:
1. check and order note to:
KOSMOS
20 Millard Road
Larkspur, CA 94939
2. Amazon
ISBN/ Price:
978-0-916426-163 The Songs inside of You — Paperback, $19.95
978-0-916426-194 The Songs Inside of You — Hard Back, $35.95
Details: 96 pages, 88 pages of poems
Both the paperback & hardcover are stitched.
Day 8: Urgent Telegram
Today’s Poem:
Urgent Telegram To Jean-Michel Basquiat by Kevin Young
I chose this poem today because of my deep outrage and sadness for what has continued to be a horrible legacy of treatment of our African American sisters and brothers. I feel it is urgent that we express our solidarity from the bottoms of our hearts. Who better to help us find our way in this than the huge-hearted bluesman Kevin Young?
Urgent Telegram To Jean-Michel Basquiat
by Kevin Young
HAVENT HEARD FROM YOU IN AGES STOP LOVE YOUR LATEST SHOW STOP THIS NO PHONE STUFF IS FOR BIRDS LIKE YOU STOP ONCE SHOUTED UP FROM STREET ONLY RAIN AND YOUR ASSISTANT ANSWERED STOP DO YOU STILL SLEEP LATE STOP DOES YOUR PAINT STILL COVER DOORS STOP FOUND A SAMO TAG COPYRIGHT [*] HIGH ABOVE A STAIR STOP NOT SURE HOW YOU REACHED STOP YOU ALWAYS WERE A CLIMBER STOP COME DOWN SOME DAY AND SEE US AGAIN END
[* SAMO is a graffiti tag used on the streets of New York City from 1977 to early 1980. It accompanied short phrases, in turns poetic and sarcastic, mainly painted on the streets of downtown Manhattan. The tag, written with a copyright symbol as "SAMO©", and pronounced Same-Oh has been primarily associated with the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, but was developed mainly as a collaboration between Basquiat and Al Diaz, with help from a few friends.]
Craft:
First, I would like to apologize for my illustration (circa 1967), which in no way meets the wild chaotic imaginings of the late painter and intended recipient of Kevin Young’s Telegram-Poem. (His images are protected by copyright, but you can view them here, on the website Artsy, who sell some of the painter’s works: https://www.artsy.net/artist/jean-michel-basquiat )
The bio from that page: A poet, musician, and graffiti prodigy in late-1970s New York, Jean-Michel Basquiat had honed his signature painting style of obsessive scribbling, elusive symbols and diagrams, and mask-and-skull imagery by the time he was 20. “I don’t think about art while I work,” he once said. “I think about life.” Basquiat drew his subjects from his own Caribbean heritage—his father was Haitian and his mother of Puerto Rican descent—and a convergence of African-American, African, and Aztec cultural histories with Classical themes and contemporary heroes like athletes and musicians. Often associated with Neo-expressionism, Basquiat received massive acclaim in only a few short years, showing alongside artists like Julian Schnabel, David Salle, and Francesco Clemente. In 1983, he met Andy Warhol, who would come to be a mentor and idol. The two collaborated on a series of paintings before Warhol’s death in 1987, followed by Basquiat’s own untimely passing a year later.
And so, after visiting the artwork of Jean-Michel Basquiat, we are better prepared to enter the urgency of jazz poet extraordinaire (& current poetry editor of The New Yorker) Kevin Young’s “Telegram Poem.” Although Basquiat died in 1988, at the age of 28, Young’s poem was published in 2001 in his collection To Repel Ghosts, and was most likely written a year or two before that publication. In other words, this urgent missive is to one who has not been with us on this earthly plane for a while.
The form of a telegram does incredible work here. Because of the sizable efforts and costs of transmitting them, telegrams were only sent in emergencies; the form itself reflects that. For any of you too young to know, telegrams were hand-delivered in envelopes. Inside was a small piece of tissue-thin paper with a message composed for brevity. Due to the technologies of the day, they were typed in all caps with no punctuation. STOP was used for periods; the final period was replaced by the word END.
Because of its strange form, it takes a bit of time to sort out what is being said in Young’s Urgent Telegram To Jean-Michel Basquiat, but we need no time at all to sense the urgency. The irony, of course, is that a dead person likely knows no such urgency, as he no longer resides in our “time zone.” He also has no mouth or voice box with which to answer. Still, this missive, flung into the Timeless, arrives, doesn’t it? It hits the target Young’s poems are always aiming for—the very bottom of our hearts.
Prompt:
I suggest today we write to someone who has passed on—this could be a cultural icon (like Jean-Michel Basquiat), but it could also be a personal friend or family member. The main thing is to write to this person with a sense of urgency.
You might notice that Young doesn’t reveal the reason for his urgency, but we feel it, and the poem is all the more compelling because of what the poet has left out. It is your choice how much (or little) backstory (or none at all) you want to include in your missive. Exploring what wants to stay hidden and what asks to be exposed is an important part of today’s prompt.
In terms of form, you might want to imitate a telegram, as Young did. But you could also borrow from one of our more contemporary forms: a series of short texts, emails, or tweets, for example; or a service you need or are offering on Craig’s List. These days, we have our own ways of taking shortcuts with language—use them! You might even write a descriptive note to conjure the emoji you are pasting in (e.g., red un-smiley face with tear at one eye).
Most important: Sincerely try to reach the one you (we) have lost. Where that takes you might surprise.
Journal:
Poets Respond, weekly online publication, sponsored by the literary journal Rattle:
Our solution is Poets Respond—a poem written within the last week about a public event that occurred within the last week will appear every Sunday. Our only criterion for selection is the quality of the poem; all opinions and reactions are welcome. Selected poets will receive $100. To have your own poem considered for next week’s posting, submit at the link below before midnight Friday PST. Any poems sent before the midnights of Sunday and Tuesday will also be considered for bonus postings mid-week.
Recipe:
Today, let’s do it all in pictures! Offered by the cook in our house, my sweetheart Dennis Ludlow!
Pan-Fried Japanese Ginger-Tofu
Itadakimasu! ... (Let's eat!)
Day 7: Reimagining our Myths
Today’s Poem:
Kay Ryan’s The Fourth Wise Man
The Fourth Wise Man by Kay Ryan
The fourth wise man
disliked travel. If
you walk, there’s the
gravel. If you ride,
there’s the camel’s attitude.
He far preferred
to be inside in solitude
to contemplate the star
that had been getting
so much larger
and more prolate lately –
stretching vertically
(like the souls of martyrs)
toward the poles
(or like the yawns of babies).
Craft:
Kay Ryan’s ingenious use of poetic license is on display in all of her poems. (It’s no accident she is among our nation’s MacArthur Geniuses.) Her brilliance is not only her ability to bring the immeasurable into very small spaces (the fifteen short lines in The Fourth Wise Man are representative), but also her offbeat slant on unusual subjects, an understated ever-present humor, and a penchant for craftily hiding her rhymes where you don’t expect them (i.e., rarely at the end of a line).
Here, Ryan takes on one of our culturally shared stories and stretches its boundaries to reveal a reluctant player backstage. This is poetic license at its best. Of all the imaginative freedoms poets get to explore, perhaps being able to re-write our myths and legends is one of the most liberating—for both writer and reader. We enter age-old cliche-ridden territory and tip the landscape on its side.
The very idea of the fourth wise man (our title character), puts us off-balance; then the opening lines tip us into laughter. He disliked travel, and then there’s the gravel (catch the rhyme?). Another way of camouflaging rhyme—slant or imperfect rhyme—was sneaked in between the camel’s attitude and solitude.
Opened by laughter—the work some of the best poems do—we easily sink into the more profound possibilities of: He far preferred/ to be inside in solitude/ to contemplate the star…
Then Ryan does it again—now the star is not only growing, but stretching towards the poles, inexplicably pulling together the souls of martyrs and babies’ yawns.
We are left with a little, Huh? It’s as if, as Emily Dickinson famously described her experience of being inside a poem, the tops of our heads have come off.
Prompt:
Yes. Today you get to use that poetic license to navigate the loopdeloops of your imagination! Begin by choosing one of your favorite well-known stories. Think Hans Christian Andersen or the Brothers Grim. Think the Garden of Eden or Mother Goose. Try a story that won’t take any introduction for the reader.
Now tilt the landscape: invent another character, change up the plot or point of view. For example, I wrote a poem in which the emperor’s new clothes turned out to be a true gift to him, awakening a new vision.
Or simply focus on one of the forgotten characters in a familiar tale. I, among many other poets, have written about the experience of Lot’s wife, who was infamously turned to salt “for looking back.” In the classical telling, she is almost a prop—not even given a name of her own.
Try to take Ryan’s playful lead. Play with situations, humor, and hidden rhymes (which are part of the humor.) And leave some room for the immeasurable to creep in when nobody is looking!
Journal:
The Chattahoochee Review is a delightful literary journal published by Perimeter College at Georgia State University since 1981. I have been proud to see my poems between their pages.
Recipe:
Asparagus Brown-Rice-Tortilla Melt/ California Style
This is one of my go-to lunches. When I made it for my East Coast brother one summer day at our family cottage, he dubbed it my California style sandwich.
One Brown Rice Tortilla per serving
Organic Humus
3 or 4 Asparagus stems per serving
One or two thin slices of Swiss cheese
1/2 C alfalfa &/or other sprouts
Steam asparagus (or other veggie), set aside.
Warm a lightly oiled skillet
Briefly heat tortilla on one side
Flip and spread with humus
Add Swiss cheese slice(s)
Add steamed veggies to half of the tortilla
Fold the tortilla in half over the veggies
Cover and turn off heat; let cheese melt
Before serving, open the tortilla and add sprouts or tomatoes or any other uncooked veggies you want to stay fresh.
Before serving, cut in half with a kitchen scissors (the easiest way to cut cheesy offerings, including pizza!)
Day 6: The Metaphors of Science
Today’s poem:
Dorianne Laux’s Facts About the Moon
Facts About the Moon
by Dorianne Laux
The moon is backing away from us an inch and a half each year. That means if you’re like me and were born around fifty years ago the moon was a full six feet closer to the earth. What’s a person supposed to do? I feel the gray cloud of consternation travel across my face. I begin thinking about the moon-lit past, how if you go back far enough you can imagine the breathtaking hugeness of the moon, prehistoric solar eclipses when the moon covered the sun so completely there was no corona, only a darkness we had no word for. And future eclipses will look like this: the moon a small black pupil in the eye of the sun. But these are bald facts. What bothers me most is that someday the moon will spiral right out of orbit and all land-based life will die. The moon keeps the oceans from swallowing the shores, keeps the electromagnetic fields in check at the polar ends of the earth. And please don’t tell me what I already know, that it won’t happen for a long time. I don’t care. I’m afraid of what will happen to the moon. Forget us. We don’t deserve the moon. Maybe we once did but not now after all we’ve done. These nights I harbor a secret pity for the moon, rolling around alone in space without her milky planet, her only child, a mother who’s lost a child, a bad child, a greedy child or maybe a grown boy who’s murdered and raped, a mother can’t help it, she loves that boy anyway, and in spite of herself she misses him, and if you sit beside her on the padded hospital bench outside the door to his room you can’t not take her hand, listen to her while she weeps, telling you how sweet he was, how blue his eyes, and you know she’s only romanticizing, that she’s conveniently forgotten the bruises and booze, the stolen car, the day he ripped the phones from the walls, and you want to slap her back to sanity, remind her of the truth: he was a leech, a fuckup, a little shit, and you almost do until she lifts her pale puffy face, her eyes two craters and then you can’t help it either, you know love when you see it, you can feel its lunar strength, its brutal pull.
Craft:
For this magnificent poem, we are graced with Laux’s own process-notes, as she reports them on Brian Brodeur’s wonderful blog, How a Poem Happens:
“… I read everything I could get my hands on about the moon. That fascination has been long-lived as I’m still reading about the universe and am just now I’m finishing up Timothy Ferris’ Coming of Age in the Milky Way. The second aspect of the poem is that my extended family was going through a life-crisis, a not uncommon state of affairs for them, so that was in the back of my mind. I was in the process of working to pull away from them. Maybe I became obsessed with the moon as a way to curb my obsession with the latest family crisis. But the tug of the family is tremendous. Even a crazy family can seem better than no family. The poem is two obsessions in collision.”
Many of my own poems have begun this way: One about the theory that great whales evolved from cows, another about scale—how if the Earth were shrunk to the size of a cue ball, it would be smoother, or vice versa, if a cue ball were expanded to the size of the Earth, it would have higher mountains and deeper canyons.
My own sense about scientific theories and discoveries is that they come from the same human sensibility—the same source of intuition and imagination as poetry. So in both pursuits we learn more about our own humanity. Metaphor is not just fancy; it is the real truth of where and how we are: not only is everything connected, but everything lives inside everything else.
Prompt:
Today is the day to mine your obsessions, to dig into one until you reach the other. Then let them fight… or dance… it out!
Find a scientific fact that provokes wonder for you. It could also be a mathematical formula; I’ve written about those too. You may already know what your human-world obsession is. Or you may not. My guess is it will find its way in.
When I started my poem Undertow, about the first cow waddling back to the sea, I only knew that something was in that idea for me. In the end, I found that my own calling into a deeper, stranger truth was what was at stake.
As I often tell my young students, “Start moving your pencil and the poet inside you will know you’re ready. It’s a kind of invitation.”
Off you go!
Journal:
Chautauqua is a beautifully curated and produced journal any writer would be proud to appear in. Submissions will open again September 1; this year’s theme: Water
Recipe:
Believe it or not (if you’ve read my previous wimpy recipes), I was once head cook at an international vegetarian restaurant, where I created many of the dishes! I particularly liked Sunday Brunch, as all the dishes were colorful and quick (On Sundays I always decorated the plates with edible flowers).
I especially loved making omelets to order. I feel that the secret to keeping eggs light and fluffy when cooking on a burner (besides separating the eggs, which is optional here) is a short cooking time. The actual cooking time here is less than 5 minutes, so have everything ready before you turn on the gas.
Quick and Easy Veggie Omelet
2 eggs
1/4 c milk or nondairy beverage of your choice (unsweetened!)
Grated cheese(s) of your choice
5 asparagus stems (or other green veggie)
Your choice of herbs, fresh or dried
High-heat cooking oil, preferably spray as to not overdo the oil
1. Heat frying pan sprayed with cooking oil on medium high.
2. While you are waiting, whisk the eggs in a bowl, slowly adding the milk.
3. Turn the heat down to medium and drop in the asparagus stems and toss (the French word sauté means “to jump!”)
4. Sprinkle herbs over the asparagus, toss again and add 1/2 t of water and cover for a few seconds
5. Uncover and, whisking as you pour, add the egg mixture
6. Using a rubber spatula, go around the outer edge to lift the cooking eggs, tilt the pan so the liquidy egg mixture runs under. Continue to do this until the eggs are no longer liquid, but still quite moist.
7. Add the grated cheeses into the moist eggs
8. Fold the omelet in half, turn off the heat, and cover for 1 to 2 minutes, allowing the final firming to happen with the heat off.
Serve immediately, with whole wheat toast… and edible flower garnish!
Day 5: Catching a Poem by its Tail
Today’s poem:
Ruth Stone’s How They Got Her to Quiet Down
How They Got Her to Quiet Down by Ruth Stone
When the ceiling plaster fell in Aunt Mabel’s kitchen out in the country (she carried her water uphill by bucket, got all her own wood in), that was seventy-five years ago, before she took her ax and chopped up the furniture. Before they sent her to the asylum. Shafe, father of the boys (she didn’t have a girl), was running around with a loose woman. Earlier Shafe threw the baby up against the ceiling. "Just tossing him," he said. Little Ustie came down with brain fever. In two days that child was dead. Before that, however, the boys all jumped on the bed up stairs and roughhoused so that one night the ceiling fell in; all lumped on the floor. The kitchen was a sight. But those kids did not go to the poorhouse. Grandma was elected to take them. Mabel’s sisters all said, "Ma, you take the boys." Beauty is as beauty does. Grandma chased them with a switch until they wore a bare path around her last cottage. Grandma was small and toothless, twisted her hair in a tight bun. After she smashed the furniture, Mabel tried to burn the house down. Years later when they let Mabel out of the asylum, she was so light you could lift her with one hand. Buddy took her in and she lay on the iron bed under a pieced quilt. "Quiet as a little bird," he said.
Craft:
Stone called herself a mountain poet, and this poem reflects the poverty and hardship that many mountain dwellers endure, particularly mountain women. It opens with the shattering image of the ceiling falling in—the story broken before we begin. And as we weave back and forth through time, the tragedy only deepens.
But it is the ending of this poem (which I consider one of Stone’s masterpieces) that lifts us to another dimension—the devastating details of this narrative poem turn upside down, transforming our tragic protagonist into a being “so light/ you could lift her with one hand […] a little bird.”
That the poem’s ending is its master stroke is particularly interesting to me, as I have read several accounts about Stone’s quirky creative process. In a conversation with author Elizabeth Gilbert, Stone told her that poems came to her like a “thundering train of air” from far off—she could, in fact, feel it shaking the ground beneath her feet. Sometimes she’d barely get to her pencil on time so that the poem was nearly out of reach. Then she’d have to “grab it by the tail” and pull it into her body as she transcribed it on the page—from the last word to the first, “writing it through the bottom up.”
Surely, the opening of this poem feels like it could have come thundering toward Stone, but I wonder too if How They Got Her to Quiet Down wasn’t one of those poems the poet had to catch by the tail and write from the bottom up.
Here is another account of the poet’s unique process, a snippet from a 2010 interview she had with Chard Deniord, just after her 95th birthday:
It's a funny thing. Even as a child, I would hear a poem coming toward me from way off in the universe. I wouldn't hear it. I would feel it, and it would come right toward me. If I didn't catch it, if I didn't run in the house and write it down, it would go right through me and back into the universe. So I'd never see it again. I'd never hear it again. I've lost about ninety-nine percent of my poems this way. Sometimes I would catch the last line and write it through the bottom up. I have to say. I never thought they were mine. They weren't mine. They belonged somewhere else.
Prompt:
Can you open yourself to the poem that’s rushing toward you?
Today’s prompt is a question: Can you feel the transformative possibilities in a not-so-happy family story? You don’t need to know the details or end-result of that transformation, only to sense the possibility in it. In fact, it’s almost always best if you don’t know where the not-so-happy story wants to take you.
Given Stone’s testimony of her process, perhaps the last line of How They Got Her To Quiet Down was the tail she got hold of to reel the poem in. If indeed the poem came to her whole (I believe this is possible, as a few of mine—a very few—have come this way), Aunt Mabel’s ceiling falling in was the engine that pulled the rest of the train.
To allow Stone to be our muse today, I suggest we wait for our first lines to charge toward us. This might require a walk in nature, or maybe performing a familiar chore. Stone talked about hanging laundry when the train would start to shake the earth beneath her feet. She’d drop the sheet on the ground, spit out the clothespins, and run.
Let’s open ourselves to that!
Journal:
If you’re already a member of Marin Poetry Center, who is sponsoring this Free Online Writing Retreat, you know that as a member each winter you are invited to submit a selection of poems to be included in our annual anthology.
I want to remind and encourage all of you to stay updated and submit when the time comes. It’s a wonderful gathering and support of our very own community of poets.
Recipe:
(Another of my 15-minute wonders!)
Arugula & Parmigiano Ravioli Primavera
One package of Arugula/Parmesan Ravioli
1 Tbs Olive Oil
2 C chopped veggies of choice (broccoli, peas, carrots, etc.)
A few tsp Chopped Herbs (fresh if possible, e.g., basil, parsley, oregano, etc.)
2 to 3 Tbs Basil Pesto
Grated Parmesan Cheese
Start boiling water in medium saucepan to cook the ravioli
Place the raviolis into the boiling water, cook about 5 minutes (during which you can prepare the veggies)
Add olive oil to medium cast iron skillet and heat on medium high for a minute or so; do not let smoke.
Add chopped veggies to the heated oil and saute; i.e. toss and flip them in the air to coat with oil
Add in spices and flip some more
Add a drizzle of water, cover and turn off heat
While you are draining the pasta, add pesto to the veggie saute
Add raviolis last and carefully mix
Serve with grated parmesan and a green salad (Just about everything I cook is served with a green salad!)
Day 4: The Inner Voice
Today’s poem:
Jane Hirshfield’s Tree
Tree by Jane Hirshfield
It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.
Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.
That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books—
Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
Craft:
Though it often "speaks" more as a feeling in the body than in words, we’re all familiar with the voice of this poem. It’s the quiet one who knows things. Practical things—like when it’s time to head for the car so we don’t miss the ferry. Or when we ought to contact the friend we've lost touch with.
Sometimes, though, if we quiet down and let the inner voice know we’re listening, she’ll clear her throat and speak in everyday language. She’ll address us directly, in the second person (you). She'll offer a gem of practical wisdom in a voice that seems to have an otherworldly authority.
Thus local treasure Jane Hirshfield begins one of her most celebrated poems, as she invites us to eavesdrop on her plain-spoken inner directive: “It is foolish…”
Notice how Hirshfield breaks her opening to let this simple three-word imperative linger a while. Right out of the gate, we are confronted with our folly. (Yes, so much of what I run myself ragged over is foolish; tell me more.)
Although the second stanza brings in the possibility of perhaps another lifetime, it seems for our contemplation here, this one is all we need. In this very life we are going to have to choose.
Without any fanfare the choice is laid out: “That great calm being.” Or, our suddenly comical little fortress—“this clutter of soup pots and books.”
Our foolishness has expanded—from household worries about plumbing to the deeper foolishness of thinking we might evade the Immensity that is already tapping at our life. The ending of this short interior journey is at once devastating and liberating. The poem leaves us curiously grateful, as we are reminded of what Frederico Garcia Lorca called “the thing that everybody knows, but we all ignore.”
Prompt:
To my sensibility, every poem is an act of listening. But today let yourself listen deeper, into some bit of practical advice you’ve been ignoring. (Examples: Don’t forget to… {Stop and look at the trees}, Remember… {The roses need more water now.} Or… It is foolish…)
Notice the intrinsic authority of that inner speaker, its confidence in seeing "what everybody knows, but we all ignore." Let that wise voice take you into your own deepest questions, including but beyond watering the roses or stopping to see the trees. Let the voice speak plainly without extra embellishment, but do use imagery in your exploration (soup pots and books, branch tips at the window) rather than mentally constructed platitudes.
Go for short and clean. Hirshfield performed her magic in 10 short lines. Even if the first draft goes longer, go back and clear out anything extra.
Journal:
The Comstock Review in Syracuse, NY has been publishing poetry since 1986. They were one of my first publishers, and as fate would have it, years later I met the team of dedicated poet-volunteers when I studied poetry at Syracuse University. They'll take good care of you!
Recipe:
…for a more joyful day:
After a pleasant body-loosening shower, put on the music that fits your mood. Your inner voice will guide you. It could be meditative flute or sitar or chanting, but some days it might be a bit of gentle rock that calls to you.
Stand in the middle of the room with eyes closed, and take world-class martial artist Bruce Lee’s advice, “Be like water.” Let your joints loosen and wait for a current to pass. Move as if your body were a strand of seaweed.
Let the body find its own “dance;” the prime objective is to let in joy. Once she’s inside, she’ll be hard to shake!
Day 3: A Poem Should Always Have Birds in It
Today’s Poem:
Mary Oliver’s Singapore
Singapore by Mary Oliver
In Singapore, in the airport, A darkness was ripped from my eyes. In the women’s restroom, one compartment stood open. A woman knelt there, washing something in the white bowl.
Disgust argued in my stomach and I felt, in my pocket, for my ticket.
A poem should always have birds in it. Kingfishers, say, with their bold eyes and gaudy wings. Rivers are pleasant, and of course trees. A waterfall, or if that’s not possible, a fountain rising and falling. A person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.
When the woman turned I could not answer her face. Her beauty and her embarrassment struggled together, and neither could win. She smiled and I smiled. What kind of nonsense is this? Everybody needs a job.
Yes, a person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem. But first we must watch her as she stares down at her labor, which is dull enough. She is washing the tops of the airport ashtrays, as big as hubcaps, with a blue rag. Her small hands turn the metal, scrubbing and rinsing. She does not work slowly, nor quickly, like a river. Her dark hair is like the wing of a bird.
I don’t doubt for a moment that she loves her life. And I want her to rise up from the crust and the slop and fly down to the river. This probably won’t happen. But maybe it will. If the world were only pain and logic, who would want it?
Of course, it isn’t. Neither do I mean anything miraculous, but only the light that can shine out of a life. I mean the way she unfolded and refolded the blue cloth, The way her smile was only for my sake; I mean the way this poem is filled with trees, and birds.
Craft:
Although she is known as one of the most inspirational poets of our time, we rarely meet people in Mary Oliver’s poems. Mostly we walk with her alone in nature, more often than not our companions are birds. But this poem begins in a bathroom stall in an Airport on the other side of the world, where we listen in on the “arguing” of disgust in the speaker’s stomach, the”struggle “of embarrassment and beauty on the woman’s face…
Rather than bullying away her urge to contemplate rivers and birds, the poet invites them into the poem. She assigns herself a formidable task—to open the poem, somehow, along with the woman’s world, to let in the solace of nature. And rather than doing this back stage, she turns the whole process transparent. She invites us in, even turning to us directly to ask, “What kind of nonsense is this?/ Everybody needs a job.”
I love the weaving of this poem—between inner and outer, dismal and brilliant, despair and possibility. And of course, the magnificent conjure: Through the alchemy of love, she pulls it off in the last line! The poem really is “filled with trees, and birds.”
Prompt:
Start with a small moment with undertones that are dark and/or dismal. Not maudlin or morose, but difficult and compelling for you. With the freedom Oliver displays here, to make leaps away from logical sequences of thought, allow your struggle to be transparent on the page. Write your process and editorial thoughts into the poem. For example, “You aren’t supposed to say that” or “Where are we going with this?”, etc.
Bonus Points: Get a bird in there!
Journal:
West Marin Review! I’m sure this tip has come your way many times. This gorgeously produced journal is not only local, but it has won national awards for its exceptional content and presentation.
Submissions are not open now, but you can get on their email list and they'll let you know when they're reading again.
P.S. Even if you’ve gotten the proverbial rejection slip from them, keep trying. They also throw a splendid release party!
Recipe:
My favorite summer thirst-quencher, the Tonic-Lime-Ginger-Enhanced Sparkling Pellegrino
Put into tall glass—chilled, if possible (you can also use ice, though I tend to avoid iced drinks, even in warm weather):
2 to 3 tsp fresh-squeezed lime juice
2 tsp bottled ginger juice
1/4 - 1/3 c tonic water
Stir, then fill the glass with Sparkling Pellegrino
Cheers!
Day 2: Conversation with the Moon
Today’s poem, from More About the Moon by Madhuri (Irene Z K Ewing)
Teacher Moon by Madhuri
The moon tried to send me to school.
I said yes,
But I didn’t speak the language.
I was told to forget my past.
I said I couldn’t do that
No matter how I tried.
The moon said
Don’t take it so seriously then.
I said
Let me cry
Every sob my mother never managed
Every gasp my father felt in pain.
The moon said,
I’ll take you to Calcutta
In a sky of muddy rain.
And then the moon
Put a flower behind her ear
And winked at me
And picked up her fiddle
And played an elven tune.
By that time my heart had come out
Like an avocado pit
And wind could pass through,
And moonbeams.
There were places to go
But I was no conductor.
The moon held my hand
And told me where to disembark
From the train.
There were places to go –
And there she is
A something round as nothing…
Craft: Poetry gives itself to the vulnerable—those willing to move through the world with their hatches unbattened so that something beyond the self can wander through. Madhuri is a native of this world—a natural-born poet who abandoned public education to sit and write with “the elders” at age 16, publishing her first poetry collection soon after.
I met Madhuri in a community in India, where we meditated danced, and sang together for many years. But I truly met her in an Indian hospital as she recovered from brain surgery. As part of her care-team, I was charged with sitting at her bedside, where I mostly listened to her recite poems she knew by heart (Neruda, Rilke, and others… as well as her own.)
Often these recitations ended with both of us in tears. Having sidestepped formal education to converse with the masters on her own terms, Madhuri’s poems reverberate with innocence and integrity. She is able to take us by the hand through heartbreak into a kind of surrender that opens to bottomless grace.
This beautifully audacious poem is a study in contrast. The quirky magnanimous voice of Madhuri’s moon contrasts against her child-like heart, making both voices bolder. And the ordinary language (diction) along with ordinary/universal sorrows (mother’s sobs, father’s pain) create the perfect backdrop for such flights of fancy as:
By that time my heart had come out
Like an avocado pit
And wind could pass through,
And moonbeams.
Prompt: Give yourself permission to return to childlike innocence and wonder. Let yourself converse with the moon… or another force of nature ( sun, forest, sea, cloud, night, etc.).
The energy here is that you get to play both sides! Keep contrast in mind as you write; not only with the differing tones of the two voices, but also creating a dancing balance between the mundane and your figurative flights of fancy!
Journal: Over twenty years ago, the Atlanta Review, then edited by Dan Veach, was the first Journal to accept one of my poems. It became a longterm relationship; we got to meet at a few AWP book fairs and continue to support one another’s work.
This is the kind of magazine that welcomes heart-based poems. The first poem of mine they published was titled: EXPLORATIONS OF A HEART IN SPACE.
Recipe: In my family I’m known for my 15-minute meals. Left to my own devices, I don’t think about cooking till I’m hungry!
With that in mind, here is a typical 15-minute dinner offering; all ingredients available at Trader Joes:
Sautéed & Steamed Broccoli
Pan-Fried Salmon Burger with Ginger Sauce and Lemon Yesterday’s short grain brown rice, re-steamed
Herbed Salad mix with cucumbers, avocado squares, sliced radicchio, etc.; balsamic dressing.
15-Minute Procedure:
1. Cut half a head of broccoli, into 2” florets, stems peeled and cut into similar sizes. Heat small amount of coconut oil in iron pot. Add broccoli when hot, stir in basil &/or other herbs. Drizzle in about 2 Tbs of water and cover. Let steam for 1 to 2 minutes, then turn off and let it continue to slightly soften.
2. Sear frozen salmon burger over medium high heat for a few minutes on each side, then lower heat to medium low and cover for the remaining cooking time. Once one side is done, drizzle with ginger juice, which you can find in bottles now! At the table, add lemon juice and more ginger to taste.
3. Boil water in a sauce pan with a steamer basket inside. Place about a cup of rice from an earlier 30-minute dinner into the basket. Steam for about 5 minutes. (I only cook rice from scratch once or twice a week!)
4. Place a few serving-spoons full of lettuce mix directly onto your dinner plate, add whatever cut veggies that please you. I like to add radicchio these days, as both the bitterness and the red color provide satisfying contrast!
Marin Poetry Center Online Writing Retreat
Dwelling in Possibility May 25 - June 7, 2020
Day 1: Expanding our Circle to Generations Hence
Welcome to the Marin Poetry Center Shelter-in-Place Writing Retreat. What better time to Dwell in Possibility (as Emily Dickinson declared in her poem #466) than this strange but also sacred Now?
For the next two weeks, inspired by the voices of luminous poets, I will dispatch daily missives aimed at opening our hearts & our poems… mine and yours… to possibilities we have yet to imagine. Each dispatch will include a poem, a little craft talk, a writing prompt, a journal worth submitting to, a recipe (of sorts!), and one of my own watercolor or pencil illustrations.
Today’s poem, from our Great (in every sense of the word) “Uncle Walt:”
Excerpts from "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"
by Walt Whitman
It avails not, time nor place—distance avails not, I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence, Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt, Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd, Just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh'd, Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood yet was hurried, Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the thick-stemm'd pipes of steamboats, I look' d. — What is it, then, between us? What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us? Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not, I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine, I too walk'd the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the waters around it, I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me, In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me, In my walks home late at night, or as I lay in my bed, they came upon me, I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution, I too had receiv'd identity by my body, That I was I knew was of my body, and what I should be I knew I should be of my body.
Craft: “I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever/so many generations hence…” Perhaps you have also read this poem before, but I wonder if today, for you too, these lines enter more deeply? As I reread this excerpt I feel the warmth of human touch.
From those opening lines, I go willingly with the poet to the gladness of the river, to look at the sky and watch the steamboats… By the time he turns to ask his question again, “What is it, then, between us?” I feel the time and distance I thought was between us has dissolved. He has defied the fierce dimensions of time and space.
Whitman is probably best known for ignoring the requisite rhyme-schemes that were practically the definition of poetry for centuries. But his ear for the music of language remains unsurpassed. His lines sing with well-paced anaphora (repeated opening phrases, as in “I too… I too… Just as you… Just as you…”), and with metrical lines punctuated with alliteration (repeated consonant sounds, as the s sounds in “thick-stemm'd pipes of steamboats”).
In truth, his work is operatic—full-voiced, extravagant, unselfconscious and unapologetic. He holds nothing back, which is likely the only way to reach through time… and arrive… here with us, precisely when we need him most. Just like he intended.
Prompt: From many private corners of the sheltering-in-place world, I hear stories that highlight the paradox of solitude bringing an enriched sense of connectivity. Friends have not only expressed a newfound global sense of community, but also a connection through time to prior generations.
Today’s prompt is to write a Whitmanesque missive through time—either to citizens of the past or the future, or even in both directions.
Perhaps it is best to begin as Whitman himself said he often did, with a walk in the woods, where the best inspiration is found. Listen for what sings loudest in you, and when a line comes, go for a full-voiced, extravagant, unselfconscious, operatic outpouring. (You can always pare it down latter.) Try letting the anaphora, rhythms and alliteration take you deeper…
Journal: Tim Green is editor extraordinaire of Rattle, a poetry journal published in Southern CA. He and his team publish a wide variety of poems, produce podcasts of poets reading their work, host readings in the LA area... and they even pay for each poem they publish!
Recipe: This is not my strong suit! My sweetheart is in the kitchen right now, as “we speak.” But here is something I’ve been experimenting with during lockdown:
The Fruit-Layered P&B Sandwich (a new take on peanut butter, honey, and banana sandwiches, which my kids grew up on).
Two slices of sprouted wheat bread, toasted. Generous plop of Organic Crunchy Peanut Butter on one side
Favorite jam or local honey on the other side (optional)
Sliced peaches, strawberries, or cherries, whole blueberries or raspberries, sprinkle in
Smoosh well together.
Cut at a cross-angle, to make two triangles.
Serve in the garden or on the back porch,
with rainbow carrot sticks
and a small salad of baby garden lettuce.
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