Poets’ Roundtable
Welcome
You braved the heat to come in and enjoy our cool.
News and Jabber
1. As I begin a series of notes about the tools I use to write, particularly digital tools, I want to begin with noting a backup tool I’ve used for about a year now. I need to keep things simple and preferably free. I use Google for a lot of things and Google Drive has developed nicely over the years. For the moment, I want to note that just by signing up for Google and accessing Drive you have a free 15GB of storage. I write a lot and my entire “My Documents” folder which is loaded with nearly two decades of text files takes up only 3.6GB. I easily uploaded my entire folder to Google Drive where it retains the same file structure as on my hard disk. Now I’ll update whatever is new. Keep in mind that these are only text files. Photos take a great deal more space (mine are currently at 31GB) and more likely amenable to a different backup program. But, we’re writers here. BTW Google promises security and backups, for whatever that is worth. You may want even more redundancy.
2. This is the season of many poetry festivals, among them the Montana Cowboy Poetry Festival. So, I found a cowboy poem written in 1922 by a Scottish cowboy who likely wrote this in Australia. I don’t think he ever came to America. Find more at: https://allpoetry.com/The-Hoofs-Of-The-Horses-.
Hoofs of the Horses
The hoofs of the horses!—Oh! witching and sweet
Is the music earth steals from the iron-shod feet;
No whisper of lover, no trilling of bird
Can stir me as hoofs of the horses have stirred.
They spurn disappointment and trample despair,
And drown with their drum-beats the challenge of care;
With scarlet and silk for their banners above,
They are swifter than Fortune and sweeter than Love.
On the wings of the morning they gather and fly,
In the hush of the night-time I hear them go by—
The horses of memory thundering through
With flashing white fetlocks all wet with the dew.
When you lay me to slumber no spot can you choose
But will ring to the rhythm of galloping shoes,
And under the daisies no grave be so deep
But the hoofs of the horses shall sound in my sleep
by Will Ogilvie from Galloping Shoes, 1922
Scotsman Will Ogilvie (1869-1963) lived in Australia for a dozen years, where he became a top station hand, drover, and horse breaker. His poems Hooves of the Horses and The Pearl of Them All are perhaps his works heard most often at gatherings in North America.
"Hooves of the Horses" appears as "Hoofs of the Horse
Alexi Pappas:
Alexi Pappas says she was a serious poet before she became a serious runner. The 26-year-old athlete, who will compete in the women’s 10,000 meter at the 2016 Olympics in Rio, was a poetry major at Dartmouth College.
Scary Things
The thing about scary things
like spiders
is that they do not scare me
nearly as much
as the things I want the most.
The want things creep and stay
live in my mind–
a much harder place to reach and find
cannot be killed
will grow instead
unlike the spider in my bed
the scary want inside my head
is not afraid
and will not flee
rather than boo
says come and get me.
The Current Assignment
I found this more interesting than I imagined at the start. The restriction to two words of my own perplexed me a lot. I got past that when I found how hard it caused me to seek out useful lines in whatever I had chosen to use as my source material. By the end of the exercise I was surprised and schooled in observation. I have been pondering the concept of situational awareness as it may apply to poetry and this assignment aided me in that. Heightened awareness of the words we look at yields considerable rewards.
The Next Assignment
While driving I saw a woman’s high-heel shoe hanging from a speed limit sign. It was a dress shoe, open-toe, 3-4” heel. Where did it come from? What is its story?
The Next Meeting
September 1, 2016. It’s a short end of month. Labor Day is the 10th
Other Jabber
Check the Westport Library Newsletter. A lot happening for writers there. http://westportlibrary.org/events/calendar.
I finished my poem today. Does anyone want to share? G
ReplyDeleteAs they say in Vietnamese, "Chua," meaning "Not yet." Co le ngai mai hoac ngai mot," meaning "Maybe tomorrow or the next day."
ReplyDeleteOkay, just cranked out mine. Here it is.
ReplyDeleteThe Yellow Shoe
The gathering was secret.
Those going strangers.
What was done a crime.
Never repeated.
"Turn at the Yellow Shoe,"
they were told.
"The high heel atop the speed sign,
go down the two-track trail."
They went, the old men,
one to a car.
Each ashamed, each eager.
All culpable.
No introductions, no names,
only urgency.
Gas generator rhythm
for arthritic movements
The shoe pulled down pre-dawn
as a spider tried to web it.
The old men never knew.
if it was hers.
Here is mine.
DeleteThe Clue Was a Black, Spiked Toe, Four Inch,
High-Heeled Shoe, with an Ankle Strap;
And This Is His Story
I was driving Route One-Eleven home from my job, working the night shift in /Sanford, Maine. As chief, I had been detained by a missing wife alert and was late / Getting home. I was approaching a badly lit, bi-forking country road, one that I knew / Well, located Just above the Big Country Mall situated North of the Boston & Maine / Tracks, when I reflexively focused on a 45 mph sign and slowed down because my / Lights lit a lone, spiked shoe, its strap hanging from that black and white speed sign.
* * *
The first thing I had to do was to alert my wife.
She hates changes in my plans. She wants life
To be plain and simple. As chief, life is a muddle.
A call can be helpful or, quickly, full of trouble.
Today, for example, a wife who went missing
Might have turned out to be a marital, pissing
Fight over who gets to spend the casino dough
Wrapped in a red, Western themed throw
This morning, she could not find her savings,
And called her hubby at work to ask him about it.
When she reached him she got an earful of shit
And wasn’t too pleased with his stupid “forgivings”
About the money and who might have spent it
***
No point in reviewing the extent of his duties.
When they married, she knew of his tutees.
He might have spent time at the local pub
His excuse was that tutoring was the rub.
So why should she believe him about the wife
Who went missing? She could play him like a fife.
For she believed he would stop on the way home
If he saw a swanky shoe and stopped to phone.
And. he did, the son-of-a-bitch! He was a sport
To always be the committed chief , the sort
Who, with unblemished character, dissembled
And remembered events as they were assembled!
And now he was caught in formidable lies for naught.
* * *
A stylish shoe seamlessly struck a suspended state
Of malevolence in him for a woman whose spite
Would ruin his illicit caper and bring this ingrate
Chief to the fall that was his due over a superb slight.
The first stanza is boxed as indicated.
Ed, Comments on the Yellow Shoe
ReplyDeleteGerard Coulombe
Gas generator rhythm, the put, put beats underscore the rhythm of the “urgency,”
as you, the engine of this creation, pumped out yours
The shoe was symbolically hers.
Raises many questions. Was this a serial rape or seduction? Do we need to know more? Who and what was she to them or to the boys in town at the time?
Is this the omniscient viewpoint?
Of course raising these questions or not is part of the game that rarely runs its course. G
Whether or not the reader is on track, the explanation may be otherwise recalled or told. And I may be off track. G
Gerard,
DeleteI left the nature of the crime unknown. Given the age of the participants rape is less likely, but there are lots of other possibilities, not necessarily only sexual. It may be too vague, but I felt specifying it diminished it.
In my time, there was a young lady in town with a reputation as a whore. At recess on Monday morning, groups of boys discussed her latest assignation, whether they knew something or not, to add to the defamation. Suppose she gets even on several of these old debauchers and, though belatedly, calls them to a sort of accounting.
DeleteThe narrator is privy to the story and the invited participants--never too late to shame them, assuming that they are now known for their
generosity . G
Gerard,
DeleteJust read your piece. Somebody had fun.
ed
That's what writers start when a piece resonates with readers. What if you knew all aspects off your readers' take on your work? STOP! I think someone has already written about this. G
DeleteBy the way, specificity is left to the reader's imagination. G
DeleteOkay, this is posted just in case I forget to mention it next week. Heron Tree (herontree.com) is a poetry journal that is requesting found poems. Must be submitted beofre October 15th. I can't, because Facebook Findings was picked up by Poetry Breakfast and will run in September, so go for it. (Their acceptance rate is about 6%)
DeleteEd, thanks for the sources. I haven't submitted for years, but it is awfully tempting, just to know where I am. I looked up guidelines from the two on-line sites. Will return to them.
ReplyDeleteYou have proved how useful this site can be for the group looking to publish as well as share in-group. Thanks. G