September 6, 2018

 

Poets’ Roundtable

Welcome

I haven’t any word of pending absences, despite the alarming heat.

News and Jabber

I quoted from a Brain Pickin’s email and promised the link and here it is:

https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/04/15/louise-bourgeois-solitude/?mc_cid=7bb379bf57&mc_eid=6c170ebd12. It is always interesting to follow the links to other expressions on the theme of the post.

I commend to you this article from the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/sep/02/kate-tempest-observer-new-review-seven-questions-for-seven-poets

It’s always interesting to get other poets’ takes on things. Also, these poets, in their answers cite poems worth looking up. Like this one by Major Jackson

Selling Out

Off from a double at McDonald’s,

no autumnal pinata, no dying leaves

crumbling to bits of colored paper

on the sidewalks only yesterday,

just each breath bursting to explosive fog

in a dead-end alley near Fifth,

where on my knees with my fingers

laced behind my head and a square

barrel 9MM prodding my left temple,

I thought of me in the afterlife.

Only moments before Chris Wilder and I

jogged down Girard to warmth

and the promise of two girls who winked

past an army of food reps, across the ice-bin

and pitched lanes of burgers and square

chips of fish, at us reigning over grills and vats,

lost in a barrage of beepers and timers.

Moments before, we stood in a check

cashing line for our first pay, evidence

of hours spent flipping baskets under

a heat-lamp, during break, with

a motley bunch of mothers on relief,

college students on bad credit, hard-hatted,

day-workers coated in white dust,

the minimum-waged poor from the many

fast-food joints lining Broad,

all of us anxious to enact the power

of our riches – me in the afterlife.

What did it matter that Chris and I

were still in our polyester uniforms

caked with day-old batter, setting out

for an evening of passion marks?

Or that an archipelago of grease-stains

smeared the length of our chests?

Or that we wore GAZELLES, matching

sheepskins and the ushanka although

miles from Leningrad. Truth is I lacked

direction, so that when Chris said,

Let’s first cop some blow, I trailed.

A loose spread of dealers guarded

corners. Runners returned from boarded,

three-floor walk-ups, told us to come back

later, troubled by my schoolboy jitters

and lack of hip. Then a kid, large for the chrome

HUFFY he pedaled, said he had the white stuff,

and came to an alley fronted by an iron

gate on a gentrified street edging

Northern Liberties. So dark, I could

barely make out his shape up front

digging pocket deep. I turned to tell Chris

how the night air glowed dark as soil,

how jangling keys made my neck itch,

how maybe this wasn’t so good an idea,

just when the cold opening of gun-barrel

steel poked my head and Chris’s eyes

widened like two water spills before

he bound away into a future of headphones

and release parties. Me? the afterlife?

Had I ever welcomed back the old neighborhood?

You wonder if a yearning persistent

as the seedcorn maggot tunnels through me?

All I know is that a single dog barked his own

vapor and an emptiness echoed through blasted

shells of rowhomes rising above,

and I could not forget the bare,

fingered-branches lacing a series

of powerlines in silhouette to the moon’s

hushed excursion across the battered

fields of our lives that endless night

of ricocheting fear and shame. No one

survives, no one unclasps his few strands

of gold chains or hums AMAZING GRACE

or pours all his measly bills and coins

into the trembling, free hand of his brother

and survives. No one is forced face down

and waits forty minutes to rise and begin

again his march past the ice-crusted dirt,

without friendship or love, who barely knows

why the cry of the earth sets him in motion,

running even from the season’s string of lights

flashing its pathetic shot at cheer — to arrive

here where the page is blank, an afterlife.

And this one;

A Cedary Fragrance

Even now,
decades after,
I wash my face with cold water –

Not for discipline,
nor memory,
nor the icy, awakening slap,

but to practice
choosing
to make the unwanted wanted.


by Jane Hirshfield, from Given Sugar, Given Salt, 2001

The Current Assignment

Who did it? Any comments on the ease/difficulty of the assignment? I tried making prose poems of poems I had already written. It didn’t work very well. I did manage a couple of decent things. I learned that the language still makes the difference, that the prose poem for all its prosiness still needs the elevated language we associate with poetry.

The Next Assignment

Any suggestions for the next assignment? I was thinking of a store poem, written as if you were a store. Here is a quotation from the online article I took the idea from:

The Assignment:  Create the store of your life.  What does this mean?  Consider this!  If your life and your personality could be represented by a store, what would it look like?  What would you sell in your store?  Who would be your customers?  Where would your store be located, and what would it be called?  What would the inside and outside of your store look like?  What would you do in your store?  Use the "store" as a metaphor for your character and personality.

And here is the link to the article: https://www.bespokeclassroom.com/blog/2017/7/23/beginning-the-year-with-creative-writing

The Next Meeting

The next meeting will be on September 20, 2018. Bring a friend.

Other Jabber

August 16, 2018

Poets’ Roundtable

Welcome

Alpha will not be here. She is recovering from an inoculation received yesterday.

In this cyber age, we are able to be in someone’s face without being in their presence. What we have here is a place to be present in a most profound sense.

News and Jabber

Grammarly?

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54119/the-bench bu Mary Ruefle

Also, check out “Blood Soup” by Mary Ruefle. If you chance to read her essays, do so; and should you be able to attend a lecture, also do so. She’s wonderful and refreshing, innovative.

The Current Assignment

The Next Assignment

The assignment for next time is to write a prose poem: Here are a couple of links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prose_poetry

At the last meeting we briefly discussed prose poetry, especially, I think in light of Rich’s poem about the earth, water, etc. So, I said, what if we all write a prose poem. It’s the kind of assignment that isn’t easy but may have some surprising rewards. I have lengthy notes to post to the blog with examples and links to further information. The Wikipedia entry gives an interesting history and has a lot of links to poets noted for their prose poems if not to the poems themselves.

Introduction to Prose Poetry

Have you ever encountered something that claims to be a poem but looks like prose? For instance, maybe it reads like a lyrical poem, but it's written in paragraph form? If so, you might have come across a prose poem. A prose poem, also known as prose poetry, is an example of a hybrid genre of writing. Prose poems occur when someone writes prose using poetry techniques.

Prose Poems Defined

Before we can understand what prose poems are, it's important to understand the genres of prose and poetry independently. Prose is anything written down that does not possess any poetic meter. Well, that's an easy enough definition, but what is meter exactly?

Poetic meter is the rhythm of a poem. Whether you've heard any of Shakespeare's famous sonnets or the latest hip-hop song burning up the charts, chances are that you've noticed that many poems or songs have a certain rhythm to them. This rhythm is based on different factors, including the syllables per line and what syllables are naturally emphasized or stressed if someone were to read the poem out loud.

There is more to poetry than poetic meter, of course. Poems are often image-driven and emphasize visual descriptions, including metaphors, while prose tends to focus on aspects such as narrative, characters, and plot arc. In addition, poems also play with the sound of language using repetition and rhyming.

To rephrase that: prose contains narrative and does not follow any set rhythm, while poetry is rhythmic and image-based. So, what is prose poetry then? It's quite simple. Prose poetry is anything that combines these elements into a single piece of writing! If you want a stricter definition, prose poetry is poetry that is not written in verse and contains other poetic attributes, such as rhythm and metaphors.

Characteristics of Prose, Poetry & Prose Poetry

Prose:

Written in paragraphs

Tells a story rather than describes an image or metaphor

Generally has characters and a plot

Poetry:

Written in verse

Written in poetic meter

Focuses on image-driven metaphors

Might have a narrative, but it might not or it might be harder to understand

Prose poetry:

Looks like prose (written in paragraphs)

Focuses on images

Includes instances of poetic meter

Contains language play, such as repetition

Gary Young

An example of a prose poem written by Gary Young, Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz county, is called 'I discovered a journal'.

'I discovered a journal in the children's ward, and read, I'm a mother, my little boy has cancer. Further on, a girl has written, this is my nineteenth operation. She says, sometimes it's easier to write than to talk, and I'm so afraid. She's offered me a page in the book. My son is sleeping in the room next door. This afternoon, I held my whole weight to his body while a doctor drove needles deep into his leg. My son screamed, Daddy, they're hurting me, don't let them hurt me, make them stop. I want to write, how brave you are, but I need a little courage of my own, so I write, forgive me, I know I let them hurt you, please don't worry. If I have to, I can do it again.'

Be Drunk

Charles Baudelaire, 1821 - 1867

You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it—it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: “It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.”

The Dog

BY MATTHEW SWEENEY

BTW, Matthew Sweeney recently died. He was an Irish poet of some note. Here is a link to an article about him:  https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/aosdána-poet-matthew-sweeney-dies-at-66-of-motor-neurone-disease-1.3587403

I used to be a dog. What kind? Oh, a mongrel. Nothing poncy like the black cocker spaniel called Bonzo I had as a child. And certainly not one of those four-footed, aloof snakes that go by the name of greyhound. I remember each and every one of the lice that lived on me.

Where did I live? In Sicily, where the sun shines like a fried egg every day of the year. I had the nose of an angel — I could smell porcini fifty trees away. I knew the man who would start a fight with my master the moment he walked in the bar door. I drank a saucer of red wine every day. I loved eating the butterflies that floated past me — one pounce and they were gone. And they were delicious. Better than the bones of a donkey whose meat provided salami for my master and his family. The boy was very good to me — he used to take me down to the sea and let me splash in the waves; then I’d come out onto the sand, barking, and I’d shake all the seawater onto him, wetting his clothes. He loved laughing, and I loved barking. Those were the days.

I never saw a kennel. My home was an old blanket under a gnarled vine that had been there since Dante wrote his only sestina, in homage to the troubadours. The heat was often scorching. The boy found it funny to put a straw hat on my head, one dyed in the colors of the Italian flag. I was up early, out scouting for rats to frighten away. 
I once peed on a hedgehog to see what it would do. I ran along the clifftop, barking at the wheeling seagulls, and at the fishing boats they flew above. I sometimes ate my master’s leftover spaghetti bolognese in the taverna. My tail would wag like a fan revolving from the ceiling. I was taught party tricks that I’d be asked to do when the grappa was being downed. I’d lie down on the floor and die, to great applause. I’d sit up and beg, to coos and laughter, and I’d be rewarded with a sausage, and those were sausages to swim the Adriatic for.

I’d sometimes go down to the harbor to look for an attractive gray bitch I liked the smell of. I’d have to fight off other dogs, but I was good at that. I ate one of their ears. Once I followed her onto a boat that was heading out to fill up with fish. I had to swim back and I lay on the sand and slept. When I got home my master whipped me. I ran to my blanket, whimpering.

I was once brought to a circus, and into the tent of a one-eyed woman with black hair who had a pet parrot. I barked at it, and the parrot expertly returned my bark. I lay on the multi-colored mat and observed the strange bird who observed me. I was glad to leave that tent.

I enjoyed hearing the boy play his flute in the evenings. I heard those notes flutter up into the air, and I tried to see them, but never could. I never stopped trying, though.

The one thing I couldn’t eat was cheese. The few times I tried it I vomited. On the first occasion that happened I tried to eat it again. If I got the chance now I’d manage it, I’m sure. Who would not like to be a dog in the sun? A dog in the sun, like I used to be, long ago. It was an honor.

Source: Poetry (January 2017)

The Next Meeting

The next meeting will be on September 6, 2018. That’s three weeks, plenty of time to write a prose poem.

Other Jabber

August 2, 2018

August 2, 2018

Poets’ Roundtable

Another excellent meeting. We missed MaryGrace. And we welcomed Steph.

Here is a link to Grammarly:

It is a spell and grammar checking application that I use a lot. There seemed to be some interest in it. Read my notes below so that you know some of what to expect.

Grammarly:  https://www.grammarly.com/native/windows

You will probably have to create a Grammarly account online and keep in mind that the editing occurs online. I make sure to delete everything I check when I'm done. Otherwise, I use the program a lot and find it excellent. I first save the original version that I want to check, then copy it and paste it into Grammarly. Then, after running Grammarly, I delete the original selected text and copy and paste the Grammarly corrected text back into the original document. (It's a lot easier than it sounds.) You will lose some formatting but the spell and grammar checks are worth it. Additionally, I often run my word processor spell check just to see if there is anything it catches. 

Welcome

Welcome to all and thanks for being here on this warm, summer day. As for me I no longer spend summer days thinking long, long thoughts, as the poet said:

 "A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." That’s by Longfellow and the entire poem may be found at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44640/my-lost-youth.

Although we’re not at that youthful stage, from what I see I can safely say we haven’t passed our sell-by date yet.

News and Jabber

Those breathlessly awaiting my next book will have to take a breath. I am revising it from the third person singular to the first person singular. This means I have to change not only nearly every personal pronoun but all of their attached verb tenses. I have good tools for this but it is still time-consuming and precipitates quite a few attendant revisions to surrounding words, line breaks, page breaks, pagination, table of contents entries, page numbers and so on. Hopefully, early September.

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2018/jul/21/american-life-in-poetry-my-cousin-milton/

I reprint this link. Ted Kooser is finding some delightful American poetry here. I don’t know how often he posts to this but it’s worth checking out, again.

Here is Dru's poem for this meeting:

if the ocean would just settle down

i could dive in and lose these hounds

that tail me at every turn

i’ve found them persistant

i must be the top of their wish list

a bloodlust i have discerned

way high up in the branches

i’ve slightly increased my chances

if i can befriend the winds

to calm the squalls

and ease my fall

and be free yet again

but if i am to hit my mark

what of the sharks

who must certainly live below

it seems each environment

has its own tyrant fit

to end all that i know

so sharks or hounds

either way, i’ve found

that i can never be set free

that is unless

i no longer want to guess

just what is eternity

it was that day

the first saturday in may

i decided to make the leap

their barks disappeared

as my arc persevered

and i left the shaking tree

the sharks weren't there

but i did not care

for time was out of stock

despite my pleas

i saw the water recede

as i landed on the rocks

so now years on

if you close in upon

the tree on jumpers cliff

and its early in may

you can hear the hounds bay

ending with a thud of a stiff

Poet’s Word powers home past Crystal Ocean to win the King George

You can read the entire write-up here: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/jul/28/poets-word-powers-home-to-win-king-george

The Current Assignment

If the group is again large and productive we will change our reading format just a little. First, I’ll talk less. Second, we’ll pass copies around at the beginning. I would also like to try two readings, the first by the poet with the rest of us closing our eyes, the second by the person next to the poet, all eyes open to the manuscript.

Do we need a timekeeper?

The Next Assignment

The assignment for next time is a formal exercise. Write a poem in three-line stanzas, the last two of which rhyme. Any length, any topic although I was thinking of poems about horses earlier due to the story about Poet's Word winning the recent race in England.

Here is an example from Anne Sexton:

And One For My Dame by Anne Sexton

A born salesman,
my father made all his dough
by selling wool to Fieldcrest, Woolrich and Faribo.

A born talker,
he could sell one hundred wet-down bales
of that white stuff. He could clock the miles and the sales

and make it pay.
At home each sentence he would utter
had first pleased the buyer who'd paid him off in butter.

Each word
had been tried over and over, at any rate,
on the man who was sold by the man who filled my plate.

My father hovered
over the Yorkshire pudding and the beef:
a peddler, a hawker, a merchant and an Indian chief.

Roosevelt! Willkie! and war!
How suddenly gauche I was
with my old-maid heart and my funny teenage applause.

Each night at home
my father was in love with maps
while the radio fought its battles with Nazis and Japs.

Except when he hid
in his bedroom on a three-day drunk,
he typed out complex itineraries, packed his trunk,

his matched luggage
and pocketed a confirmed reservation,
his heart already pushing over the red routes of the nation.

I sit at my desk
each night with no place to go,
opening thee wrinkled maps of Milwaukee and Buffalo,

the whole U.S.,
its cemeteries, its arbitrary time zones,
through routes like small veins, capitals like small stones.

He died on the road,
his heart pushed from neck to back,
his white hanky signaling from the window of the Cadillac.

My husband,
as blue-eyed as a picture book, sells wool:
boxes of card waste, laps and rovings he can pull

to the thread
and say Leicester, Rambouillet, Merino,
a half-blood, it's greasy and thick, yellow as old snow.

And when you drive off, my darling,
Yes, sir! Yes, sir! It's one for my dame,
your sample cases branded with my father's name,

your itinerary open,
its tolls ticking and greedy,

its highways built up like new loves, raw and speedy.

The Next Meeting

August 16, 2018

Other Jabber

Anne Sexton

Jeffrey Skinner
re The Company of Heaven, not only is the poem good, but read the book as a work in toto and you'll find that it is a work of integrated parts.

July 19, 2018

Poets’ Roundtable

Welcome

News and Jabber

In #192 he writes:

If true (and it is) that with body's final breath

the soul, cut loose from the flesh (which it only bore

because heaven imposed that chore),

breaks free, it feels only then supreme delight,

becoming divine in death

as sure as we're born, down here, with death in sight.

No sin in this; we're rightfully

to change funeral woe to mirth

when we stand about to mourn the newly dead,

for the soul, escaping earth

and the frail remains, then, there, on the deathbed,

finds perfect peace instead.

Such their true friends desire, in equal measure

as pleasure in God transcends all earthly pleasure.

Michaelangelo

Also: This link will take you to an article about Martin Espada. He has long been a favorite of mine, is worth the look. You who have borrowed his books that I brought in will hopefully enjoy the reading.

 https://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2018/07/11/martin-espada-wins-top-poetry-foundation-prize

https://www.omaha.com/living/ted-kooser-s-american-life-in-poetry-july/article_9cbde887-4cd8-5dcb-becc-2e5024a7c397.html

The Current Assignment

The Next Assignment

The next assignment is to write a poem which begins with:

If the ocean would just settle down

That's it. Riff on that and see what happens.

The Next Meeting

The next meeting will be on August 2, 2018 at 12:30 PM, 12:30 PM, 12:30 PM, 12:30 PM, 12:30 PM!

Other Jabber

July 5, 2018

Poets’ Roundtable

Welcome

MarLou will not be here, but she sent a poem:

  Waves Lapping

Body buried 

in wet sand near

waves lapping

Hop to water’s edge

Feel cool sand on feet

Trace patterns with toes

Back to sand hole 

Brain dripping serotonin

I think she's beginning to get it.

Dru Martin also  sent a poem:

i will arise and go now

no need to try and stop it

i have slid down mountains

staggered through deserts

scythed a path through this madness

and am no better off

for each step takes me 

 further away

i will take nothing as i go

for its as perfect as it can be

and there is no lack of light

that has shone upon me

there are scant few moments

as ready as this

eventhough there are

things to miss

i will arise and go now

and leave a fading shadow

that falls upon the slow burning

pyre of tomorrow

for this door is outside of time

where we all return to dust

i will arise and go now

miss me if you must

News and Jabber

Poet Timothy Murphy died this past week. Largely unknown to us in the East, this native o Minnesota, was a pretty good poet featuring local themes. Here is an example:

Eighty-eight at Midnight

A black calf bleats

at shrivelled teats.

Incessant heat

withers the wheat

and wilts the silking corn.

Too few, too late

the spotty showers

mock my stunted flowers.

Too late I shrink from debt.

Like a spitted calf I turn

over a bed of coals

while the pastures burn.

Timothy Murphy

From The Deed of Gift, Story Line

Press, © 1998.  Reprinted by

permission of the author and

Story Line Press, Ashland,

Oregon.

In the last meeting I pointed out that there are lots of good poets and that maybe the audience isn't there. This time I'll point you to an article from The Pacific Standard that notes that, according to a major survey, more people are reading poetry now than just six years ago, putting the number at 28 million. Go to this link to find what the story has to offer: https://psmag.com/education/why-are-more-americans-reading-poetry-right-now.

I was reading Emily Dickinson earlier this week and came across, for the first time #861:

By Emily Dickinson

Split the Lark—and you’ll find the Music—
Bulb after Bulb, in Silver rolled—
Scantily dealt to the Summer Morning
Saved for your Ear when Lutes be old.

Loose the Flood—you shall find it patent—
Gush after Gush, reserved for you—
Scarlet Experiment! Sceptic Thomas!
Now, do you doubt that your Bird was true?

Here is a link to a very good analysis of the poem: https://splitthelark.wordpress.com.  I want to point out that this spinster really had the capacity for language and expression we often think not associated with our stereotype of the reclusive woman. The poem is laden with violence, injury, rot (sceptic/septic). Read the article. 

The Current Assignment

The Next Assignment

Write a list poem. Here is a link to an article about list poems:

https://www.poetrysoup.com/poems/list

Here is one by Shel Silverstein:

Sick

“I cannot go to school today,”

Said little Peggy Ann McKay.

I have the measles and the mumps,

A gash, a rash and purple bumps.

My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,

I’m going blind in my right eye.

My tonsils are as big as rocks,

I’ve counted sixteen chicken pox.

And there’s one more—that’s seventeen,

And don’t you think my face looks green?

My leg is cut, my eyes are blue—

It might be instamatic flue.

I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,

I’m sure that my left leg is broken—

My hips hurt when I move my chin,

My belly button’s caving in,

My back is wrenched, my ankle’s sprained,

My ‘pendix pains each time it rains.

My nose is cold, my toes are numb,

I have a silver in my thumb.

My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,

I hardly whisper when I speak.

My tongue is filling up my mouth,

I think my hair is falling out.

My elbow’s bent, my spine ain’t straight,

My temperature is one-o-eight.

My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,

There is a hole inside my ear.

I have a hangnail, and my hart is—what?

What’s that? What’s that you say?

You say today is… Saturday?

G’bye, I’m going out to play!”

The Next Meeting

The next meeting will be on Thursday, July 19, 2018

Other Jabber

June 21, 2018

Poets’ Roundtable

Welcome

Ed will not be with us today. I don't think he sent me a poem. 

News and Jabber

I started this section with "another good poet, unknown to me, dies." This led me to Paula Meehan and then to Carolyn Kizer. I had never heard of Macdara, Meehan or Kizer just as I had never heard of poets I discovered and mentioned in the last couple of blog posts. I guess my point is that there are a lot of good poets; poetry is alive and well. And undiscovered. Given the number of ways to get published nowadays, there is also a lot of bad poetry, too much of it discovered.

The following link goes to an article in the Irish Times about Macdara Woods that gives more information about him than his Wikipedia listing.

Macdara Woods

WHEN ALL THIS IS OVER . . .

After all the heads have rolled

and the young insurgents put up against the wall

by the firing squads

when the puppet masters 

have taken their seats in the boardroom

and the bombardiers are sipping drinks

with the chiefs of police

when the journalists change sides again

and the commentators 

redefine what they meant in the first place

and the judges sell their shares

in revolutionary understanding

and the clergy decide

that forgiveness was always forgiven

and educators rediscover

the meaning behind the meaningless

when poets grow tired

of too long battling futility

when arrogant financiers 

have poisoned all the blood banks

and the drug companies

have rendered us venomous

unfit for social consumption

when we see that things have returned again to how they are

we want to believe

that the ruthless men in the big black cars

are lonely as sin

behind their bullet proof glass

and that it means something

that they may have doubts

in the middle of the night like we have

only worse

we pray

because maybe they can do something about it

before the eagle 

stoops and tears their liver out

© 2013, Macdara Woods

From: Irish Times, 2013

Paula Meehan


Paula Meehan is an Irish poet and playwright. Born in Dublin in 1955, Meehan studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and at Eastern Washington University.[1]

Paula Meehan was born in Dublin in 1955, the eldest of six children. She started school at St. Elizabeth's in Kingston upon Thames, England, where her parents had travelled to find work. She subsequently attended a number of primary schools around Dublin. She finished her primary education at the Central Model Girls' School in Gardiner Street.

She began her secondary education at St. Michael's Holy Faith Covent in Finglas but was expelled for organising a protest march against the regime of the school. She studied for her Intermediate Certificate on her own and then went to Whitehall House Senior School, a vocational school, to study for her Leaving Certificate. Outside school she was a member of a dance drama group, became involved in band culture and, around 1970, began to write lyrics. Gradually composing song lyrics would give way to writing poetry.

At Trinity College, Dublin, (1972–77) she studied English, History and Classical Civilization, taking five years to complete her Bachelor of Arts degree. This included one year off, spent travelling through Europe. While a student she was involved in street theatre and various kinds of performance.

After college she travelled again, spending long stretches in Greece, Germany, Scotland and England. She was offered a teaching fellowship at Eastern Washington University where she studied (1981–83) with James J. McAuley in a two-year programme which led to a Master of Fine Arts degree in Poetry. Gary Snyder & Carolyn Kizer were among the distinguished visiting writers to have a profound influence on her work and on her thought. She returned to Dublin in the mid-eighties. Her poem "Seed" was used in the 2010 Leaving Certificate examination as the unseen poem, although (critically) the department misprinted 'useful' as 'useless' which somewhat diminished the meaning of the poem. In September 2013, Meehan was installed as the Ireland Professor of Poetry by President Michael D. Higgins. http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/paula-meehan-named-ireland-professor-of-poetry-1.1526752[2]


OLD SKIN - Poem by Paula Meehan

staggering towards me
I've cast you off

years ago
shrugged you off

left you, put you down at the side of the road
for ravening

by any passing predator
old skin - when your face splits open

in recognition -
you know me now

but not what bar you left me in -
what else would you say but

‘how're ya, me oul skin'


Seed - Poem by Paula Meehan

The first warm day of spring
and I step out into the garden from the gloom
of a house where hope had died
to tally the storm damage, to seek what may
have survived. And finding some forgotten
lupins I'd sown from seed last autumn
holding in their fingers a raindrop each
like a peace offering, or a promise,
I am suddenly grateful and would
offer a prayer if I believed in God.
But not believing, I bless the power of seed,
its casual, useful persistence,
and bless the power of sun,
its conspiracy with the underground,
and thank my stars the winter's ended.


Paula Meehan




Carolyn Kizer

Awards[edit]

• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1985), for Yin^[10]
• Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize (1988)
• American Academy of Arts and Letters award
• Award of Honor of the San Francisco Arts Commission
• Borestone Award (six times)
• Pushcart Prize (three times)
• Frost Medal
• John Masefield Memorial Award
• Governor's Award for the best book of the year, State of Washington (1965, 1985)

BY CAROLYN KIZER
for John

At a party I spy a handsome psychiatrist,
And wish, as we all do, to get her advice for free.
Doctor, I’ll say, I’m supposed to be a poet.
All life’s awfulness has been grist to me.
We learn that happiness is a Chinese meal,
While sorrow is a nourishment forever.
My new environment is California Dreamer.
I’m fearful I’m forgetting how to brood.
And, Doctor, another thing has got me worried:
I’m not drinking as much as I should . . .

At home, I want to write a happy poem
On love, or a love poem of happiness.
But they won’t do, the tensions of every day,
The rub, the minor abrasions of any two
Who share one space. Ah, there’s no substitute for tragedy!
But in this chapter, tragedy belongs
To that other life, the old life before us.
Here is my aphorism of the day:
Happy people are monogamous.
Even in California. So how does the poem play

Without the paraphernalia of betrayal and loss?
I don’t have a jealous eye or fear
And neither do you. In truth, I’m fond
Of your ex-mate, whom I name “my wife-in-law.”
My former husband, that old disaster, is now just funny,
So laugh we do, in what Cyril Connolly
Has called the endless, nocturnal conversation
Of marriage. Which may be the best part.
Darling, must I love you in light verse
Without the tribute of profoundest art?

Of course it won’t last. You will break my heart
Or I yours, by dying. I could weep over that.
But now it seems forced, here in these heaven hills,
The mourning doves mourning, the squirrels mating,
My old cat warm in my lap, here on our terrace
As from below comes a musical cursing
As you mend my favorite plate. Later of course
I could pick a fight; there is always material in that.
But we don’t come from fighting people, those
Who scream out red-hot iambs in their hate.

No, love, the heavy poem will have to come
From temps perdu, fertile with pain, or perhaps
Detonated by terrors far beyond this place
Where the world rends itself, and its tainted waters
Rise in the east to erode our safety here.
Much as I want to gather a lifetime thrift
And craft, my cunning skills tied in a knot for you,
There is only this useless happiness as gift.


Carolyn Kizer, “Afternoon Happiness” from Cool, Calm & Collected. Copyright © 2002 by Carolyn Kizer. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press.

The Current Assignment

Was it a joy? Who did it?

The Next Assignment

I have long used phrases and words from other poets as prompts to get me going. So, I thought why not make an assignment of it. I'll provide you with a source and the assignment is to write a poem prompted by any selection of consecutive words within "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by Yeats. Here is the poem:

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

W. B. Yeats, 1865 - 1939

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

The Next Meeting

The next meeting will be on Thursday, July 5, 2018. 

Other Jabber