Sunday, October 9, 2016

October 6, 2016

Poets’ Roundtable

Welcome

Hopefully we’ll have a full house today

News and Jabber

Our book: To be or not to be?

If we haven’t enough participation then we cannot do much. We can consider a chapbook, length 20-40 pages.

Discussion?

Speaking of “Invictus”

beckham-tweet

At the this link you can find Odell Beckham’s story. The mercurial receiver for the NY Giants quoted the poem in response to criticism of his on-field performance this year. Noteworthy, as pointed out in the article, is that Timothy McVeigh used the same poem as his final words before being executed for the bombing of the Alfred P Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City. Notwithstanding that, Ed Ahern’s re-write of the poem, read at our evening reading at Bigelow Center, remains a favorite. However, poetry does have a certain power, doesn’t it?

And this article about Billy Collins, former Poet Laureate of the United States, interesting too. Billy Collins story. I like his reminders about simplicity and clarity in poetry:

Speaking of clarity, the language of your poems remains very accessible. It’s not full of line breaks, for example.
I went to graduate school and got a Ph.D. in literature and I had a taste for difficult text. Hart Crane, Wallace Stevens. I don’t know if I’ve outgrown it or lost it, but I kind of banged my head against “Ulysses” and Ezra Pound, and I came out the other end following people like Robert Frost and Philip Larkin and poets who dare to be clear. I think it comes from writing a number of reader courtesies. Having a helpful title. Writing in sentences, not fancy enjambments or crazy line breaks. The line breaks follow the grammar of the sentence and help you through the poem. A lot of students think, “I’m writing poetry so I can break my lines in crazy ways.” You don’t want to say, “the wine dark — line break — sea.” It’s not worth waiting for that word. “The black — wait for it — cat.” Why do we need to wait for it?

The whole interview is worth a gander.

For reasons unexplained I drifted back to August Kleinzahler this morning. He has long been a poet I like to revisit and this morning I was reminded why. Here is a link to his reading of Before Dawn on Bluff Road . The text appears below

Before Dawn on Bluff Road

The crow’s raw hectoring cry
scoops clean an oval divot
of sky, its fading echo
among the oaks and poplars swallowed
first by a jet banking west
then the Erie-Lackawanna
sounding its horn as it comes through the tunnel
through the cliffs to the river
and around the bend of King’s Cove Bluff,
full of timber, Ford chassis, rock salt.

You can hear it in the dark
from beyond what was once the amusement park.
And the wind carries along as well,
from down by the river,
when the tide’s just so,
the drainage just so,
the chemical ghost of old factories,
the rotted piers and warehouses:
lye, pigfat, copra from Lever Bros.,
formaldehyde from the coffee plant,
dyes, unimaginable solvents—
a soup of polymers, oxides,
tailings fifty years old
seeping through the mud, the aroma
almost comforting by now, like food,
wafting into my childhood room
with its fevers and dreams.
My old parents asleep,
only a few yards across the hall,
door open—lest I cry?
I remember
almost nothing of my life.

“Before Dawn on Bluff Road” from Green Sees Things in Waves by August Kleinzahler. © 1998 by August Kleinzahler. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC. www.fsgbooks.com
Source: Sleeping It Off in Rapid City (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2008)

And lastly I urge you to checkout this review from the New York Times about two films being released about poets. I’ll check out anything regarding Pablo Neruda, who is the subject of one of these films. The other, Paterson, I no nothing of.

The Current Assignment

Who did it? How was it? Any comments about the ease or difficulty of doing it?

The Next Assignment

Write a one-sentence poem. Minimum length 6 lines, preferably 12

The Snow Man

The Next Meeting

The next meeting will be on October 20, 2016, same time same place

Other Jabber

A hot tip regarding formatting. I find that I often find things I copy to paste are formatted in a way that doesn’t fit with what I’m writing and that this sometimes screws up the text that follows. To resolve this and other formatting issues it is often good to start from scratch. To do this simply open Notepad or whatever substitute program you use (I use docpad). All formatting is stripped and you are free to re-format any way you want.

Thursday, September 15, 2016

September 15, 2016

Poets’ Roundtable September 15, 2016

Welcome

News and Jabber

This article isn’t half as provocative as its title may imply but it does interest me as I think about our upcoming event introducing our book or our next reading. Particularly, I’m looking for features, such as music, to add to our programs.

http://dailyfreepress.com/2016/09/14/poetry-brothel-brings-art-character-controversy-to-boston/

I also commend to you this article from the Stratfield Star about what to do with the Shakespeare theater. Read the article and the comments. Interesting and deplorable to find a region without the resources to keep the place going. Should be a no-brainer, should bring national attention and philanthropist-based funding.

http://www.stratfordstar.com/56871/shakespeare-referendum/

So I googled Shakespeare and what do you think I find? An all female nude production of Shakespeare in the Park. Not the kind of thing we�ll find in Fairfield but I was wondering what a google news search for Shakespeare would cough up.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-theater-shakespeare-s-tempest-nude-idUSKCN11I2HN

Speaking of the book, 100 days from today is the target for publishing. Unfortunately today is the 259th day of the year and I want the publishing and its introductory event to occur prior to Dec 15. So, I’m shortening the calendar (but not removing Autumn) and targeting 90 days from today. That makes it the 349th day which is December 14, 2016.

Here is what I need: Your poems. Pick three you want to see in print. I will also go through my copies. I want you also to recall poems you particularly liked by others to recommend we include. Target date: October 20, 2016.

Additionally, I need a typist to put the poems into digital media. All I want here is someone to provide me with e-copies compatible with MSWord. Keep the formatting simple since I’ll probably end up reformatting the text once I assemble the first version of the MS. Target date November 3, 2016.

Additionally, I need cover art. I want a painting (to be photographed) or a photograph done by a member of Bigelow Center, this group or someone else. All work will be pro bono but credit will be given in the publication. Target date November 3, 2016.

I will need a couple of editors. They will read, recommend changes. The authors will then review the editions and agree or disagree. In the event of a dispute I will decide. This phase is the stickiest since I need the digital copies finalized before I can submit to CreateSpace. Target date November 17, 2016.

I would prefer these dates be seen as last, drop-dead dates and to achieve each one a week in advance. Also, we may need one or two meetings outside this group to work on the project. TBD.

The Current Assignment

Who did the assignment? Was it hard, easy?

The Next Assignment

Write about a happening or object in your childhood that majorly scared or frightened you. (Thanks Trish)

The Next Meeting

The next meeting will be on October 6, 2016.

Other Jabber

Today’s tech tip:

http://www.phraseexpress.com/

You can organize phrases into folders, grouping commonly-used concepts together, such as addresses, business greetings, favorite quotes, and boilerplate sections of text. The macro function included in PhraseExpress offers a level of interactivity, where a specific value can be filled in by the user when the phrase is executed. A common use is to enter a specific name into a generic message.

In addition to the keyword activation system, PhraseExpress also allows you to assign phrases to hotkeys.Particularly useful is assigning a hotkey to a folder of phrases, rather than a single phrase; the whole list appears as a popup, and you can navigate it with the keyboard, so you never need to go grab the mouse.

I use Phraseexpress for my address, copyright notice and a few other things I don’t want to have to type every time. It is an especially good place to put things like your statement that all characters in your book are fictional and all that stuff so that you don’t have to re-write it.

Thursday, September 1, 2016

Poets’ Roundtable

We’ll attribute the slight turnout to the timing and the success of the meeting to the quality work of the slight turnout. We look forward to bigger numbers once we’re out of the summer season. We covered everything from bikinis to gold shoes. I mentioned The Triggering Town as favorite help in thinking about writing. It is by Richard Hugo. Check it out.

Welcome

Thank you for coming on this, the entrance to Labor Day weekend and a meeting so early in the month that it may not seem time yet.

News and Jabber

Since it is summer, although ending soon if football be any guide, I offer this note about bikini. I didn’t know how the bikini got its name. I always thought it was linked to the famous atoll but I didn’t know how. Now I do. Pikinni, [pʲi͡ɯɡɯ͡inʲːii̯], meaning coconut place)[2]

A Brief History of the Bikini

The 1946 U.S atomic test at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific inspired a French designer to underscore the explosive effect of his new line of shockingly revealing women’s swimsuits by calling them ‘bikinis.’”

– The Oxford Companion to American Military History

Observe the chasm made when the atom split:

a gap between the breasts and pelvis, the mid-

riff’s cover blown. Where did the fabric that fused

the top and bottom go? So whole it hid

the stomach without a seam. But the belly-button

waited behind it like a bull’s-eye. The bomb

was never far enough away. Chain reaction –

the two-piece multiplying (by division) the sum

of energy in small amounts of matter.

So many summers the body wasn’t there,

invisible and free to show itself

to nobody. Then boom.

Observe our middles: bare

by subtraction. Our skin remembers only air.

Caitlin Doyle’s poems, reviews and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, Boston Review, The Threepenny Review, Black Warrior Review and others. Her poetry has also been published in several anthologies, including The Best Emerging Poets of 2013, The Southern Poetry Anthology and Best New Poets 2009. She has held Writer-In-Residence teaching positions at Penn State, St. Albans School, and Interlochen Arts Academy. Doyle earned her MFA from Boston University, where she was the George Starbuck Fellow in Poetry, and she is currently pursuing her PhD as an Elliston Fellow in Poetry at the University of Cincinnati, where she teaches in the department of English and Comparative Literature.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/poetry/poet-explores-how-bikini-became-explosive-topic/

Also check out this story about a Punjabi poet from Toronto. I site it since she is one who first self-published.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/26/rupi-kaur-poetry-canada-instagram-banned-photo

The Current Assignment

The gold shoe poem-- who did it?

This assignment has a history. I used it once about eleven years ago with the Manchester Chapter of the Connecticut Poetry Society. The results were so good that we published a chapbook with them.

The Next Assignment

Write an autumn poem but with the following provisos:

Make it an acrostic poem. That is begin each line with the letters that spell “autumn” down the page. You can also use “fall” or both words and can repeat them. Secondly, write about the season as if the weather gods decided to skip it this year; a poem about there being no autumn. I suggest reading several poems about autumn as preparation for this. Here is a link to some quality poems about Autumn: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/articles/detail/68561.
And two of my favorites:

To Autumn

John Keats, 1795 - 1821

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
   To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
   For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
   Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
   Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
   Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
   And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Written September 19, 1819; first published in 1820. This poem is in the public domain.

End of Summer Related Poem Content Details

BY STANLEY KUNITZ

An agitation of the air,

A perturbation of the light

Admonished me the unloved year

Would turn on its hinge that night.

I stood in the disenchanted field

Amid the stubble and the stones,

Amazed, while a small worm lisped to me

The song of my marrow-bones.

Blue poured into summer blue,

A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,

The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew

That part of my life was over.

Already the iron door of the north

Clangs open: birds, leaves, snows

Order their populations forth,

And a cruel wind blows.

The Next Meeting.

The next meeting will be on September 15, 2016.

BTW the next meeting of the Writers’ Roundtable will be on Thursday, September 8, 2016 from 1-2:30PM and will continue on the second and fourth Thursdays of each month.

Other Jabber

Continuing my look at sites and software for writers I suggest that whatever software you use that you become proficient in using styles. I use WPS for writers. I find more user-friendly than MSWord and you should be able to get it free online. I have an aversion to paying for quality software, especially from Microsoft. Not that MS isn’t good, I just like freeware. At any rate, by learning to use Styles you will make it much easier to put together manuscripts for printing, especially e-printing and on-demand printing. Styles is an invaluable tool whatever publishing mode you choose. It enables quick changes in TOCs, formatting and other pain-in-the-ass tasks that take you away from your writing when you try to publish,

Here is a link to learning about styles. There is both text and video. http://computers.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-simplify-word-document-formatting-with-styles--cms-21069

Friday, August 19, 2016

August 18, 2016

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

3. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/poetry/olympic-runner-alexi-pappas/

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.