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Books, Poems & the Circle of Life

13 Saturday Jan 2018

Posted by BoneSpark Blog in 2sDay Poems, C.A. Explains It All, Odd Bits from a Creative Life

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Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Alexander McCall Smith, Andy Weir, Artemis, Audible, Circle of Life, Connotation Press, Copper Canyon Press, Directions on Dying, Drew Brees, Jessica Chastain, Lion King, Lobison Song, Mardi Gras, Memorials, Molly Bloom, Molly's Game, No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Oceanic, Poetry magazine, Richard Blessing, Saints game, The House of Unexpected Sisters, Who Reads Poetry

 

It’s been awhile. I know. And I’m smooshing together several types of posts here:  #2sdayPoems, Odd Bits from a Creative Life, C.A. Explains It All.  You’ll understand why towards the end.

First of all, thank goodness that the stress of the “official” holidays has passed and Mardi Gras is in full swing here in Louisiana. I’ve just had a slice of King Cake with my lunch and my neighbors have all gone off in truckloads, beer in tow, for the parade streets away.

The dog is not fond of the noise this time of year, but his real nemeses are the possums that always seem to congregate under our shed when the temperatures drop. He will brave the weather for a lick at those furballs, but he’s decided snow is better off left to the plants.

That little dusting we had back in December was toed, tasted, christened, and abandoned for a warm bed in a matter of seconds. Here he is trying to get to the space heater.  My cat, a scrappy ten-year-old “runt”, on the other hand, got into her tiny, red sweater as fast as she could and frolicked until she was almost a popsicle.

What can I say, she enjoys the outdoors, especially when she can scoop up stunned, half- frozen lizards at wholesale. This is her pissed-because-you-made-me-come-inside face.

Even arctic foxes aren’t dumb enough to brave the negative temps like some (crazy!) New Orleanians are doing for the Saints game in Minnesota this weekend. Just to be clear: I don’t care that much about football. Okay, I cared that one time when I had chump change on the Denver Broncos back in the nineties. 

I do follow the Saints some, but only because Drew Brees is literally days ( yes, days) younger than me and my twin.

I look at old man Drew and I wonder how long he can keep up the pace. I wonder what the hell he is doing to keep up the pace. I wonder where the hell I can get some of the gris-gris he’s imbibing. Seriously, that can’t all be discipline? Can it?

Anyway, suffice to say, Baby Brees and I had and are having fantastic b-days this year. Had he lived, my father would have been having a good one too. At least, I like to think so. Hard to believe it’s been three years next week since his passing. It was three days before his birthday and very unexpected.

Meanwhile in Florida, my grandfather’s (his father’s) 90th year did not start out so well. A bad fall landed him in rehab, his favorite dog passed away, and the Seminole responsible for his physical therapy was being too rough (according to him). Just when he’d finally started to like the Seminole, was having lunch with him in fact, Grandpa had a sudden, terminal heart attack, the same as my father.

His last words to me were scribbled in the Christmas card, a brief note about a $150 book on the Tlingit that he had donated to his local library. It stands to his second wife to sort out his complicated life, starting with getting his ashes into the totem pole as he requested.There will be several memorials along the pow-wow trail, with the big dinner next year. RIP Kashka. And Dad.

Odd Bits from a Creative Life/#2sdayPoems

When the news came, I had just picked up a copy of  Who Reads Poetry: 50 Views from Poetry Magazine. It opened randomly to the essay with lines from Richard Blessings’ poem “Directions on Dying”. Very surreal and a little disconcerting.

Later, I was sorting through poems I’d bookmarked for the next round of #2sdayPoems.  The window with Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s “Lobison Song” froze.  It’s a poem about the birth of one of her sons, who oddly enough had come into the world with the same hairy condition as my little brother. Suddenly, it was like the Lion King’s “Circle of Life” was going off in my head. Another Dali-esque feeling.

But these two poems taken together made me feel…better. Somehow.

[FYI, Aimee’s latest Oceanic is available for pre-order on Amazon.]

Eventually, the aforementioned brother, grown and not so hairy, decided my computer was suffering from failed RAM.  He got it all squared away and here I am writing about…everything.

A few more things to say about books before I close.  The audiobook of Molly’s Game was a wild ride during this time and much deeper insight into the evolution of the real woman. I’d seen the movie earlier in the month. Loved it. Jessica Chastain is phenomenal, btw, like when she channeled that weird final vulnerableness in the lawyer’s office with that carpet wobble on her (faux?) Louis Vuitton’s. The real Molly Bloom, as the book proves,  is a tough frickin’ nut, but totally addictably likable, inspiring even.

I also dug into Andy Weir’s Artemis, which is about another tough, smart woman making it in a man’s world, this time a lunar colony. Weir probed the political, social and economic cycles of such a place in a thought-provoking, yet very grounded way. 

The next book is the latest installment of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, The House of Unexpected Sisters. The main character Mma Ramotswe, is dealing with thorny family issues in Botswana, a place that is, putting it lightly, a less than friendly landscape for women in business, or women in general.

I felt very encouraged by the resiliency of the women in each of these books.  So, basically, it’s all going to work out in the end.

 

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Enchanting Ladies (#2sdayPoems)

05 Tuesday Dec 2017

Posted by BoneSpark Blog in 2sDay Poems

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#2sDayPoems, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Alchemy for Cells& Other Beasts, Copper Canyon Press, Empty Mirror, Entre Rios, Fairytale Review, Little Spells, Maya Jewell Zeller, Oceanic, The Woman Who Eats Soil, women poets



Today’s #2sdayPoems brings together selections from Maya Jewell Zeller’s  “little spells” at
Empty Mirror and Aimee Nezhukumatahil’s Hao Fenglas poem from the Green Issue of Fairytale Review. Scroll to the end for a little bonus podcast.

 

LITTLE SPELL WITH CHEST X-RAY

by Maya Jewell Zeller

sweet girl made of dust & water/ please leave
jewelry at home/ wear open, loose clothing/
this will not hurt a bit/ possibly we will ask you
to don this gown/ you are going to experience
a small dose of ionizing radiation/ you will not
feel it at all/ but possibly you will see the way…

 

FULL TEXT HERE

from Alchemy for Cells & Other Beasts (Entre Rios, 2017)

 

 

THE WOMAN WHO EATS SOIL

by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

What can the unfortunate insect do
if it is found wanting in weight?
A pill-bug rolls into a bead of silent news.
The damselfly can bend a petal

back without leaving her mark. Trickster.
There is a woman named Hao Fenglas
who cupped soil to her lips
for over seventy years. In the hem

of her blouse, in the roll of her pant leg,
she brings back a crumble of earth.
Knives stripe a feathered neck
in the kitchen for a thin broth so no one

hears her first….

 

FULL TEXT HERE

forthcoming collection: Oceanic (Copper Canyon)

BONUS: Aimee Nez Live Stream replay at Copper Canyon

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Odd Bits of a Creative Life (9/13)

13 Wednesday Sep 2017

Posted by BoneSpark Blog in Odd Bits from a Creative Life

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Tags

#readNDN, A Little Book of Form, acrylic paintings, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Alicia Ostriker, An Exaltation of Forms, Brenda Hillman, Copper Canyon, Death Tractates, Duppy Conqueror, Fish Psalms, grant applications, Kwame Dawes, Lit Hub, Lyn Hejinian, Matthew Zapruder, Native Arts&Cultures, Oceania, poetry readings, Robert Hass, Robin Houghton, short stories, Terrance Hayes, The Rumpus, Vievee Francis, Why Poetry, Wind in a Box

BOOKS, Books, books

WHYPOETRY
HASSFORM

I was happy to discover Matthew Zapruder’s Why Poetry at my local library, and have spent several happy weeks with it. The chronicle of how he evolved as a poet was interesting, but mostly I appreciated how he was able to articulate so much of what I’ve been thinking about poetry, but didn’t quite know how communicate.  Wow, that sounds very self-centered, but maybe it is. It is what it is. Here are a few of my favorite passages from the book:

There really was no such thing as ‘poetic language.’ The words in poems are for the most part the same as those we find everywhere else. The energy of poetry comes primarily from the reanimation and reactivation of the language that we recognize and know.”  (p.9)

“I began to discover why poems look the way they do on the page…A poem, literally, makes a space to move through. To read a poem is to move through that constructed space of ideas and thinking…As we think along, we start to make connections, and have experiences and feelings we might not have otherwise had without the poem.” (p.57)

“One of the greatest pleasures of reading poetry is to feel words mean what they usually do in every day life, and also start to move into a more charged, activated, even symbolic realm.” (p. 164)

“In a poem, language remains itself yet is also made to feel different, even sacred, like a spell. How this happens is the mystery of each poem, and maybe its deepest meaning.” (p. 166)

That last quote really made me think of Terrance Hayes’ collection Wind In a Box, and more specifically the poem “The Blue Seuss”.  You can find text and audio here. But also please buy the book. It’s one of my favorites.

More than once, he mentions Brenda Hillman’s Death Tractates, (as does Hass–not surprisingly– in A Little Book on Form).  I remember reading some sort of mini-review from him about this book several years ago, and wanted to pick it up then.  [Here’s the 2014 Rumpus “Last Book of Poems I Loved” article if you’re interested]. I know I had it in my Amazon cart at some point, but somehow didn’t get to the actual purchase.  Remedying that soon.

I tackled Hass’ Form book alongside the Zapruder one.  They make a fantastic  pair. First of all, Hass’ “little book” is not ‘little’ in any sense, not in length and not in intellectual weight. It is less textbooky than say  An Exaltation of Forms (which incidentally I was introduced to by a youtube video featuring Terrance Hayes.)

Hass’ book has wonderful sections on sonnets and odes, but the last few chapters–“Collage, Abstraction, Oulipo and Procedural Poetics”; “Mixed Forms”:  and “Prose Poem” were worth the price of the book.  Before I die, I will have to audit at least one of his Berkeley classes.

When I go, I will also crash Lyn Hejinian’s “Slow Seeing/Slow Reading (English 190) class, which Lit Hub teased recently in their “Classes 25 Famous Writers Teach” piece.

Via that post, I also found out that Vievee Francis, one of my poetry heroes, teaches “Engaging in Hybridity: Race, Gender, Genre” at Dartmouth.  I am at this very moment scooping up much of her reading list, especially Kwame Dawes’ Duppy Conqueror,  which how have I not read that already?

Also, I am hoping the ARC gods at Copper Canyon, will bestow a copy of Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s upcoming Oceania on me before I lose my mind waiting. Maybe if I send a muster of peacocks up to the author at Ole Miss, she will help smooth the way.

SCRIBBLINGS

This year, I am scheduling a few readings and really appreciated Robin Houghton’s timely post on Tackling Poetry Readings.

In other news, I applied for a Native Arts& Cultures grant. They were super helpful in the application process. Receiving the grant would help me launch a better funded #readNDN campaign, revive this blog and allow me to finish a WIP collection of poems that I’m calling Fish Psalms.

 

Why psalms?

Psalms as a form have always intrigued me. The Hebrew ones are essentially lyric poems set to music, in other words, a type of song language. The Tlingit word for ‘poetry’ is roughly translated “song language” (at shí yoo xh’atángi). Additionally, the Tlingit (other Native Americans, the Irish and Acadians) have much in common with the Hebrew people, down to the complicated clan system, a tight focus on landscape common to the displaced, and a reliance on the larger community in times of trial. These groups are all deeply spiritual, each in their own way, and are all groups that inform my work by heritage or adoption.

I am also drawn to psalms for another reason. Poet Alicia Ostriker put it best when she stated that “the emotions of Psalms surge and collapse like breaking waves”. I want FISH PSALMS to tap the full range of human emotion and to mimick natural cycles of water, evening to morning, creation to death, etc., as the Hebrew ones do.

By the end of the week, I hope to finish a short story that is on the surface about a lost dog, but underneath about the ever-present class struggles in the Deep South. I am 2 scenes away from being done. Currently calling it “Denny Albers’ Dog.

ART

Besides taking new photos for the blog, twitter and the grant application (see a few below),

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LaRue2
LaRue3
LaRue4

I tried to translate the success of my oil pastel portraits to acrylics by trying out sheets of 10x 12 canvas paper and reinterpreting photos from the historic New Orleans collection.  This seems to be the right mix of materials and subjects. FINALLY.

 

 

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Poets on Craft (Youtube) Playlist

09 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by BoneSpark Blog in Thoughts on Poetry

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Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Jane Hirshfield, line break, metaphor, Playlist, poets on craft, style, Terrance Hayes, Tim Seibles, transitions, youtube channel

Just a few short (and not-so short) videos featuring Poets on Craft. Highlights include Jane Hirshfield speaking on transitions, Aimee Nez on capturing landscape/natural world, Tim Seibles on metaphor and Terrance Hayes reflecting on style. Enjoy!

 

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#NationalPoetryMonth’16 Round-up (Day 16)

16 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by BoneSpark Blog in National Poetry Month '16

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#NaPoWriMo, #NationalPoetryMonth, 30dpc, 32 Poems, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Amit Majmudar, Amy Lowell, Anchor & Plume, Apparatus Magazine, Bustle, Elisa Diaz Castelo, Fishouse, Found Poetry Review, Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, Indian Country, Indiana Humanities, Jo Bell, Kate Foley, Marge Piercy, Mariah Wilson, native american poetry, NotaLiteraryJournal, NPM16, Peggy Freydburg, Poem a Day, Poetic Asides, poetry and tech, poetry prompts, poetry t-shirts, QuillsEdge Press, Sylvia Plath, The Writer's Center, Theodora Goss, Tracy K Smith, Winter Tangerine, women poets

16

DAY SIXTEEN of the best prompts, poems and news from your  #NaPoWriMo/#NPM16/#NaPoMo /#NationalPoetryMonth/#poemaday hashtags.

Best of the Prompts

NaPoWriMo’s “Almanac Questionaire prompt”
NotaLiteraryJournal’s “Who Holds Your Hand prompt”
Indiana Humanities’ “Past & Present Meet prompt”
Poetic Asides P-A-D “Food Establishment prompt”
The Writer’s Center “Elevator prompt”
Mariah Wilson’s “Guilty Pleasure/Food prompts”
QuillsEdge Press’ “In Winter I Dream of ___ prompt”
Found Poetry’s “Field of Stars prompt”
Apparatus Mag’s “Farmer’s Market prompt”
Imaginary Garden’s “Remains prompt”
30dpc “Spring Has Sprung prompt”
Kate Foley’s “Best Dream prompt”
Jo Bell’s “Work prompt”
Winter Tangerine’s “Message in a Bottle prompt”

Poems I Have Loved (Tweeters’ Shares)

Peggy Freydburg “Chorus of Cells”
Amit Majmudar “Recombinant Fairy Tale”
Elisa Díaz Castelo “Ode to the Radiator”
Sylvia Plath “Morning Song”
Tracy K. Smith “The Nobodies”
Amy Lowell “The Peddler of Flowers”
Theodora Goss “Swan Girls”
Aimee Nezhukumatathil “The Body”
Marge Piercy “Leftovers” (w/ commentary)

Miscellaneous

Poetry and Tech: A Happy Collision (MIT)
Poetry Made Me Do It T-shirts from Anchor& Plume
11th Century Wise-Cracking Poet Invented the Listicle As We Know It (Bustle)
Indian Country’s Native Selections for National Poetry Month Part One & Two

**Poets, if you would like to be featured in 2sDay Poems, have your collection reviewed, guest post in the Poetry Lab or blog on any of the Thoughts on Poetry topics, including Foremother Friday or Small Press Interviews, drop me a line at  bonesparkblog@yahoo.com.

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