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Accomplices in Poetry There is nothing more exciting than encountering and coming to know a new poet's work. Part of the excitement in traveling to Romania is the opportunity to meet a writer, Corina Stirb, whose work has both amazed and inspired me. I fell with you I was allowed to exit the labyrinth when the clouds have proved to be your shoulders when the tears that I lost were but a soft rain to wet the flower and haven't left me dried. My living wing soon followed the other one which lies for some time upon that tree's root which, you know, is the chapel of all my discards. I raised for him and fell with you. When I returned to Chicago in 1979, after a year in Hollywood, (boy, was I not built for Tinseltown), I encountered a thriving arts community on the primarily blue-collar south side. One of those artists was a poet named Robert Klein Engler, who has been a constant source of beauty and craft in the decades since that time. .FINAL EXAM. Essay Question: Compare the touch of a lover's hand on your shoulder to a red leaf falling on the grass. Are the weight of these gestures enough to break a heart? Make sure your answer includes a note of frost. Multiple Choice: a. To live without your lover is a waste of the body. b. To live with one you don't love is a waste of the spirit. c. The body and the spirit are like the moon above a black lake. d. All of the above. True or False: Nothing is whole that has not first been broken. Fill in the Blank: I had a drink with a man I knew in college years ago. He confessed he slept with the one I could never have. That night I dreamed I had a sore on my thigh. I squeezed it, and gold pus oozed out. Extra Credit: Find the Metaphor- salt bone snow During that same period I became one of the editors of an eccentric literary magazine, Midway Review. One of the contributors, way back then, has become one of the most profound and popular poets in America today: Lyn Lifshin. One could spend weeks immersed in Lyn’s work, so be warned. Once you start reading her poetry, there is no escape. Check out some of these titles: Blue Tattoo: Poems of the Holocaust, Before It’s Light: New Poems, Cold Comfort: Selected Poems 1970-1996, and Tangled Vines: A Collection of Mother and Daughter Poems. BARBIE WATCHES TV ALONE, NAKED She's got her bride clothes on the floor, her cancan skirt, pale ruffly fish net tights and a cameo choker tossed around the bed like a moat. Now she's got the remote control clicker and can switch and change, not be at someone else's whim, her body twisted, dressed and un- dressed, a slave to another's fingers as if her ankles were bound in leather, chained, legs spread apart. Travel Around the World with Barbie stamped on her fore- head in catalogues from Sears. She is sick of having a rod jammed up in side her, of being boxed in with a hair brush that usually goes where it shouldn't. She wants to lie in tv light, not have to hide what she is missing: a belly button, skin that smells like skin, doesn't want to have to keep smiling as any stranger who buys her twists her arm out of its socket or throws her out An opportunity to visit Cuba (1984, hello Cold War), and during that amazing journey I came to know Phyllis Janik, who is a great teacher and writer who has served honorably in the trenches of young minds for decades. Here is a segment from BURIAL AT SEA from her book, Fuse: Voice. Voices carry slowly over water, sound taking its time. The Echoes of a rockslide years back still heard by some sensitive instruments. Light that reaches us after long after the fact. It is also true nothing is ever lost only displaced or gnarled beyond recognition. Too brutal to imagine. Terry Quinn’s poetry is as enjoyable on the page as it is coming from him live onstage. You can see and hear Terry read one of my favorites from Mad For Newyorktown at the Vivisphere Media Cafe Digital Stage. THE SIREN IN NEWYORKTOWN There’s something sweet in Newyorktown that kills, something soft that strokes and snaps the neck. What’s sweet the native does not taste or smell as much as feel pulsating in the breastbone, making it hum to the strains of an unshared song. What kills betrays itself in rabid eyes, in mouths whose lips two kinds of pain have twisted: pain received and paid dished out with glee. I fled this city once but have returned with greater strength and equilibrium. Yet now my blood runs slow. My senses all seem dulled. I long to feel once more the silken touch, the fell vibration. To listen again to the soft, sweet chant of the Siren in Newyorktown. There is this writer who sees colors where others only look at invisible air. Karen Daniels is one of those deceptive writers, whose work seems to float on the surface of simple waters, until you realize that what you thought was an icecube is really an icecberg. WOMAN Fortuitous dining; clam sandwiches and pickled strawberries float on an island of fatty layered cake, surrounded by succulent chocolate kisses; salty slips of nibbled melon linger, full of juice; tiny bits of lemon tart, moist berried bread; fortuitous dining partaken of from the woman’s bed Teal Hutton is the editorial genius at Vivisphere Publishing . Her powerful intellect and natural talent and instincts have are both and joy and challenge to her writers and poets. 2002 is her year to shine. It's hard for me to be objective about Scott Hutton's book, Waiting to Connect, because he's my son. On the other hand, it's a collection that is uniquely his, and filled with language, ideas, and spirit that quietly invades willing hearts. As for the unwilling, have you ever seen what water does to rock? troubadour chipped edges aside worn sunset strings this instrument ... guitar on the ground, alone it’s inability you would find But upon perpendicular limbs cradled, guided by hard triumph soft heart and fingers forced often to let go a journey has begun... dull plucked vibrations blend and mend a sweet, honey cracked voice metered by the shoe striking frozen liquid stone harmony moves from ears to eyes to this man an island from island melancholy chords smiling and flying holding me in an open onyx gaze... whispers his name beneath the din and there swaying in the breeze of calm revolution sits my soul caught in the grip of belief The best and dumbest thing I ever did was to open a cafe/bookstore when I had no retail experience whatsoever. But one day, in walked this dark-haired, apparently mild-mannered and shy librarian-type, Michelle Collotta, looking for a job. The guise was shed during the first conversation about poetry and writing. Suddenly there was a mad glint shining in the eyes, and in answer to a request to see some of her poetry, out came this porcutiger (Tigerpine?), a nettly beast with sharp literary teeth. Chew on this one: IN PAINT REFRACTED van Goghs moon was not a blood-blister. I didnt even want to touch. I didnt want to smear the glowing stars into snowdrift dreams where face is a dishtowel and voice, a soundless clot. In that museum, van Gogh had his hands tied behind his back. I forgot to think of him in Saint Remy- the pressure of a fruit tree stepping through glass sitting beside him with folded arms, pressing a branch, an eager finger, on his forehead, until the brush was wet. You stood behind me like a fire-escape- your lime eyes dulling his canvas ox-hoof brown. I raised my head like a sunflower, hoping your face would reflect from behind me in every window of his lucky, short-stroked town. J.D. Rage tattoos the paper the way she has tattooed her body. It's not just ink in her pen, she uses the hot brand of angry truth and hard realities to vulcanize her poetry into your eyes. A fragment from Frankenstein pain is the name of my main game baby your essence is already a fried marble waiting for the flick of my fingernail to turn you to dust I will wink at you give you my most sultry glance displaying the best side of my china doll face Don't think that you can conquer this world without years of practice without finally arriving at the place where knowledge means nothing, is useless where no point is well taken because there is no point where you understand completely and with no reservation without words or voice to say them without detailed explanations by the professors without blackboard diagrams or amplified computerized intelligence that you can never win anything until you have surrendered submitted your entire essence to this feeling this ultimate emotion I will fill you as I would a vessel with ultimate emotion but only at your request and if I do you can never leave you will always wear my collar it will be unseen like a thin healed scar but you will always see it and everyone else will feel its existence when I observe you, I will see a vision of the bolts on the neck of Frankenstein my own creation fashioned of our combined fear nightmare shades embarrassing moments, bizarre leanings secret forbidden desires Don't make that mistake again the final fatal error of loving your own belief in the possibility of a last minute escape that you can leave by remaining very quiet by holding your breath until you turn blue Don't make that mistake I have already tried it I have engaged in high sacrilege by chanting the holy prayers backward three times for three nights in a row at midnight beginning on a full moon I have lived with the Devil visited him down in his burning pit I have shared needles with him walked into the street wearing his bathrobe with blood streaming down my legs and no, if you make your pupils into permanent pinpoints it does not stop the light no, the light never de-intensifies itself it just hurts that much more Kris Scuccimarra was hit by a car in October, and he relates that as he lay on the pavement (fractured pelvis, stitches, etc.) he tried to remember all the poets he'd read in his life. Once he was sure his noggin wasn't broken beyond repair, he felt at his scalp and came away with a handful of blood-and he went right to sleep. To his friends he is know as Loon Boy, author of The Loon Box. He has a fine madness and is treasured by all who know him. By his book so he can afford to hire somebody to teach him to walk like a human again... (He does scuttle a bit these days). ROUTE 64 ARIZONA Sun slams down on asphalt black tar, spine yellow nerve streaks- shiny cars glittering glitzing their way across America Fast good restaurant I brush my teeth under corporate faucet steal their prefabricated sugar A family stands at counter flashy fat father takes charge stuffed snake skin wallet oozing Crisp crooked presidents He orders, children hang heads Wife shifts side to side, Wringing her hands- white knuckles husband hard eyes, "I'll take a 3, with a sprite a 7 no onions, a 2 hold the mustard She will have a diet 4 and they will hve two 5's And like it" he adds to the two young faces with firmly pressed purple lips, a pudgy diamond ringed hand withdraws an Andrew Jackson Indian Killer, He has fists just like soap in a sock, does plenty of damage but leaves no visible marks Kimberly Snow came to my attention via Tom Steinbeck, and it was one of the best literary gifts I ever received. There is something fine about encountering a true writer in process of creating herself. Kimberly is not active in the politics of poetry, nor does she wander around flexing her literary biceps... she just writes, and well. Fire & Mirth is just the beginning. PRAYERS OF A FEATHER If I were a German dove, pure white, I would soar to the rafters of the highest cathedral and bask in the stained-glass colors, and I might coo in a minister's ear, or watch them pray to me. Or maybe I would circle God and my little heart would flutter with joy. And then I might take a bath in the basin of holy water, and they would see me and say that I am a holy bird of God. If I were a sparrow in California, I would plunge from the red tiles of the mission, down into the garden, where the saints are buried, and I would eat the seeds. Or I might sit in the tower of bells at dusk, when they ring, and I would sing their song from my tight chest. Or I would sit on the head of Father Serra and sing a song of sorrow for Indians woes, before the bats came out. If I were a raven in Rome, I would peck the rubbish scattered outside the gates of the glorious basilica, and as the pope strolled by I would screech, "Amen!" And my shiny black feathers like switchblades would spread across the cobbled way, and I would watch a boy pick them up, and give them to his mother. Richard Harteis is a tireless scribe. One never knows where he will be appearing, either in this country, across Europe, or in his adopted homeland of Bulgaria. His book, Provence is a brilliant compilation of the collision between craft and experience. You can hear him read at the Vivisphere Digital Stage. REPORT FROM THE TERRACE The azalia has shed its vulgar blossoms, gone green, and incognito, back to bush. For a month the petals hung so thick and purple If you bit into them they would stain your teeth like red beets. The flowering cactus is a wreck failed pink and limp, as though resting after orgasm. Now the cumquat takes center stage. Seagulls dive bomb in attack while morning doves, more delicate, embrace the tree with rainbow wings and jostle the little orange eggs to the terrace. The channel is busier than an L.A. freeway with commuter tourists coming and going. The student sailors down from Paris, have come in for their two hour lunch. Six little boats like ducks in a row towed by a rubber dinghy, a German Shepherd mascot in the bow like a fancy hood ornament, erect, through the waves, barking "en avant." Three months ago I ran to the gardener slightly panicked by the bather caught, it seemed, in the current and floating off to Africa. The workman only laughed, of course, and I have since learned these waters, bob myself on occasion far beyond the lighthouse. I had hoped to take you there. Funny, how we put a place on like a second skin, how accustomed we grow to birdsong and the shining wave, and must teach ourselves to see and hear anew with time or loss. Soon it will be bat hour. Lovers on the rocks below will grow cold and forget their kisses. The sunset will creep along the beach and up into the cliffs like the shade of a sundial eclipsing their orange climax. Cap Canaille will dim into a ridiculous pink Tiki, the lighthouse begin it's monotonous blue pitch: "Eat at Neptune's. Eat at Neptune's. We'll open a bottle of burgundy and think of you there, stuck in Sofia without a visa, and us here, with all the bright world falling into shadow without you. Tammy Faye Starlite, a.ka. Tammy Lang, a.k.a. Tammy Faye Wynette, is the lead singer (see super nova) of the Mike Hunt Band, which is part performance art, part circus, and all dirty, irreverent, blistering rock-n-roll review that has both amazed audiences and pissed off the music (and social) orthodoks across the country. But as a poet, off-stage, her work is as literary as it is searing. Fasten your seatbelt and unbuckle your senses. Annunciation In Spring, and he said, “Not tonight,” She bled her wrists and pled her plight, But rough eristics fed their fight, His finger snuffed the chamber’s light. And so she sauntered to the creche, Where ewes delivered lambs afresh, A silver moon caressed her flesh, As silken strokes with skin enmeshed. Unfettered thighs, from sorrow freed, Her hand began to ease her need. But soon as flowed the honey-mead, A voice cherubic begged her heed: “Lo, damsel fair, before you bleed, A Man upstairs of lengthy reed, Has put me forth His case to plead, Let Him inside to plant His seed.” And she, intrigued, desires fanned, Said, “I’ll accede to His demand, But who is He, and what’s His plan? And why me, who has known no man?” The angel whispered,”’Twill be clear, Just let His fervency draw near. He’ll enter, then He’ll disappear, But know this: He’s not finished here.” So Glory rolled and roared within The maiden’s hole, abhorred by sin, She felt the dawn of Life begin, And knew though gone, He’d come again. She smelled him on her fingertips She smelled him in the hay She rolled her gently swollen hips In circles where he lay The cherry-lover broke the song Of rapture to her bones She blushed the red that stained the bed Of clover where they moaned A memory as newly sweet As when the deed was done The night she spun her wings to greet The morning of the Son DC Gwinup is a sculptor who “did time” at a plastic factory in Arkansas while prefecting her art and (I can’t resist) molding her personality-which we get to see via her writing. All along she thought was just a journal, but when you read her work, you start to see the words, melting like plastic, image after image, person after person, into real poetry. The drunk guy in The Graduate had it right with his advice to Dustin Hoffman. Haettenschweiller Today the words are thin And tall Like a woman on a catwalk. Not particularly attractive Or even interesting, Just gangly and strange Like they don’t belong Here. Only in advertising Or bird cages. Breathing is difficult With sounds of insects Spitting like a Frenchman And cursing like a 3rd grader at What they have Become And what they Could have been. I often wonder how Many have been Eaten By accident And how many I Have eaten by accident. I rather like the idea. Knowledge will bring some Comfort And some will be killed by Bludgeoning. I am never Comfortable And I don’t want to Live That long. I hope I never ate a Spider. That’s worse than a bug. Ann Hutton is the architect of an amazing collection of sculptures called Lila’s Breast, named for her mother who died of breast cancer at the age of 42. She has also authored of five children, each resembling a couplet in their own right. She births poems, and when her book is finally ready, (soon I hope), we’re all going to learn something new about many things we thought we understood. Quake When you gaze at a turquoise sky, watch pink-bellied jets sail into Newark as evening trees darken and your deck boards cool under foot and Maxfield Parrish clouds in the distant west rim birch and oak and indigenous maple taller than the three stories of your house— don’t you long, sometimes, for a little tremor? Just a minor shake to awaken the sensibilities Is it a flashbacked yearning for your youth?—those sixties in sunny Anaheim where windows rumbled and chandeliers swung, and when conditions were perfect a TV might zing across the dry air of an otherwise monotonous room? Where you learned as a mom to position your children’s beds a safe distance from toppling objects and they each kept a daypack at school filled with treats and emergency supplies, a comforting book or two— in case it was unsafe to come home? Such nostalgia doesn’t match moist summer air on this East Coast Your home-on-a-hill boasts no structural treatment against movement of the earth, (although I’ve heard that silent fault lines riddle the landscape like out West.) And if Armegeddon proclaimers have their way this perch could shimmy loose one day slide downwards into the pleasant unsuspecting basin of lawn—no doubt surprising fireflies and dining bats disrupting septic fields, readjusting basement walls and thrilling all inhabitants. Oh I must be bored with my peace-infested scenario to wish for a potentially destructive shakedown I might be sinking deep into my own pause longing for an earth-moving encounter that will rattle my bones and cause me to choke on the spit in my own throat fling out my arms to regain balance and rise to tread gently on the tremulous ground Or am I just prophetic as tree roots grip the under soil grasses brace against vibration and sky pilots check for rippling runways? Hold on-- this could be the night Judith Searle is the perfect Renaissance woman. She acts, writes, edits, presents workshops on the enneagram (she might be the preeminent expert, I let her tell you), and has lived an exemplary life in art. Her poetry is as elegrant as she is... Instructions to the Florist for Basil In the spirit of Southern California, this bouquet must be lavish: Startling as crimson bougainvillea on a slate roof, Absurd as a street lined with poodle-tail palms, Dignified as rows of magnolias marching toward the Pacific, Sensuous as the fragrance of verbena on the night wind, Cheerful as the double yellow hibiscus, Nonchalant as the raggedy hobo eucalyptus, Delicate as baby's breath, Improbable as bird-of-paradise, Fresh as the white spikes of amazed daisies, Fantastic as an avenue of flowering jacarandas, Graceful as coral trees doing their arboreal t'ai chi chu'an, Unassuming as woolly bachelor buttons escorting flamboyant pink snapdragons, Exotic as branches of pale-green orchids striped with russet, Languorous as lilacs, Gay as a carpet of nasturtiums, Imperious as a pot of white chrysanthemums, Comical as bottle-brush trees scouring the air, Subtle as fiddlehead ferns uncurling, Blatant as the metallic magenta of succulents, Elegant as calla lilies, Inscrutable as the oriental faces of pansies, Homely as geraniums on an adobe balcony, Tenacious as live-oaks, Sophisticated as bushes of red-and-white camellias, Giddy as a field of breeze-blown poppies, Soporific as the scent of crushed gardenias, Refreshing as the shade of cedars, Aromatic as fresh basil, Noble as the delphinium, rising like a lover to his love, Open as the velvet heart of the full-blown rose. Vivian Allison doesn’t know how good a poet she really is. Her work is clever and full of heart. And irreverent? You ain’t seen nothing yet! BALD TIRES I don't like bald tires though I am one myself, here at the mechanic's shop, sitting on the bottom shelf. My owner kicked me when she left, gave me absolutely no concern, fifty thousand and a retread, damn how that highway burned. I don't like that woman, but the mechanic has a thing for her, see. Yet when he gets a peek under that wig she wears, she'll be sitting right down here with me. OH GAY BUTTERFLY Worn and old his sold's garment changed to winged loveliness. Like a master musician who draws a thrilling sweetness from a cracked instrument. A slight flutter, indeed a delicate performance, and with feminine eye, not to brag, the male caterpiller flew away in drag. (not pictured yet): Elizabeth McGuffey has worked tirelessly, (often against great institutional resistance), to produce a wonderful collection of poetry: Dyed-in-the-Wool: A Hudson River Poetry Anthology. This book is proof that sometimes poetry does indeed lead to marriage. Look for more wonderful books from this talented editor and publisher. Jim Hubert paints with words. He paints with paint too. I envy him for more than his skill and talent. He also paints with his heart and he has made the world more colorful with his quiet effort. Poem All that I once saw fastened has torn loose from itself; Leaves scrape across the pavement in directions they cannot choose, or they tumble like small bones in a trap. Nothing is itself in this season; Not me or the sparrow I saw crash into our window, (seeking itself and its house in the elm tree), A small skeleton of sticks rattling in air it cannot breathe. Kaanii Cleaver- the ever-pixelated hostess of TUESNIGHT TRIVIA--an hour-or-so of barely contained mayhem played almost every Tuesday evening in the AOL/ iUniverse Writers Den Keyword: WCCHAT at 9 pm Eastern. Kaanii has been researching, writing and moderating this wild Trivia Game since 1995 and shows no signs of giving up and getting a real life anytime soon... Support the Artists Where authors and readers come together! Love Poetry ?