Flush skin on concrete,

arms press     bud of magnolia     deep through your chest—

I suppose you deserve it

this 6’ 4”, 300 lb body

dislocated rib splicing the fan of tendon and muscle

we are in awe when the darkest side of his arms makes a bruise the shape of Sugarloaf

against your throat—

thirty minutes after you approach him,

compare the bone white sclera to the night sky complexion

of this man from Eureka Springs, who—at twenty—had mapped the woods’

claustrophobic topography

nests of six species of lark

loved a white woman and the seeding stars bloomed below her waist

—you, boy, cried hard into my grandmother’s heart

until she couldn’t pull the soft crown of your head above pooling water

boy, ignorant boy, who shot the .22 target pistol, small hands held

wood and steel wrong; so, you, little white boy stung by the nettle

spend an entire summer with an old black man, remembering

forty years later,

pressed into parking lot pavement

his arms over yours    forefinger and thumb cast firm over your grip     the chicory

scent of his breath as it sung a hymn

just loud enough for you to hear over the concussive blast

I’ve been working through Carson’s translations of Sappho. For me, working through a text is something more closely aligned with being overcome by it, the language grafting into my mouth in conversation and the sweetest images more real than those taken in by my steady gaze, cast over the page in those plentiful moments of beauty. With Sappho, beauty is so terribly present; yet, by the nature of the fragmented form and the way in which the words dissolve into the blank space (by no means, a space void of meaning, though) the beauty seems distant, unapproachable, and I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to feel anything more wholly.

Perhaps, it is in this way that I came to liken the places of absence in Sappho-either in form or Self-to a memory I have of a sermon given in my grandparents’ church. One should know that my grandparents had been raised devout, loving, God-fearing Christians, and, as such, the Church of Christ remained close to their hearts. Being with them meant loving the God that dwelled in their home, the force which-in the South-seemed to me the most inescapable manifestation of sorrow I’d ever known. I saw, in them, the idea that the body and soul were riddled with wounds. I imagined that if I stood long enough behind their bodies, I might see some tremendous light flooding through the chest wall-a brightness in the space where the lungs would normally press back and forth into the ribs. My thoughts of what it meant to be “Southern” by the age of ten were confined to a state of lack, to the desire to be being filled with something so large and so dominating that I, too, might be illuminated. To be loved by something which could inhabit the interiority…absence and all.

I’ve envied the relationship my grandparents had with God-for the reverence they had in the Southern identity as an innately sacred experience. I worry about what it means that I don’t feel that as a truth in my own life? How I’ll retain the lineage and culture without feeling like a fraud. Maybe, poetry is that substitute. Poetry, I hold, often negotiates a divine connection in our lives-whether or not we call this “God.” I recall reading Neruda for the first time, and how I desperately needed the world of his poetry without even knowing it. Looking back, the poetry became not so different from the sort of quiet retreat which, so often, found my grandfather waking early to read the Scripture and tend to the garden, motioning to his finches and phoebes.

I feel less inclined to sadness when I think about these things now, more inclined to write through them…to be overcome by them. Tonight, I’ve begun a series of fragments. They’re unified, perhaps, only in their common theme of place, childhood, and a culture which draws on the heritage of memory and faith. I’ve included the written presentation (as they are now-unedited) and a recording of them, too.

Fragments

I.

what moves through you—

slake          rudiment                 elegy

course

in the uppermost

ligament

II.

Tess and I tell each other   at age twelve

we’ve never been engulfed in the deluge

during the same touch we see his face—

uproot

in the ashflake     Tess and I at age twelve

tell each other we’ve never been dead

like the body of a boy from the Eastside

staggers

from his head       nine miles to rest

at our feet       Tess/I     have never been dead

III.

: eternity is more like the ruffle of a dress than anything else

let what moves be foliage asunder

gathered fraternal love of uncommon eyes,

earthward glance to the hemlock, or else

our mother might move through you

as I through middle dark in Wheeling, West Virginia

sick of little light

carry the deer to brush beyond mile marker 36

IV.

I’ve asked you

in the worst winter to strike

Appalachia country

in twelve years

how I’m supposed to tell her

I won’t stay

if not for lines weighed lax: ice, cluster of house sparrows

—tendril ribbons

hung from locked-foot—

I am sure you would’ve answered

V.

the origin of blindness overtakes

a horse in rain

at the closest edge of the field;

where, presently, you call my name:

I—hesitant and drunk—

in the company of others

speak of low-lying stars over Memphis

doubt                        absolution                 bonerattle

of a body falling

away from us—

the closer edge of a field

in rain      a horse      alight, as a tipped coffin

VI.

I am doing this wrong

not the written thing

before this moment,                                 this moment/splitting

stem                                                                  ledge

we’ve been doing this,

for some time, had we strung water

under soft stone          turned dove

in the axial wellbody of division, this dry season from the one in which the crops died—

delta parched from Baton Rouge to Mobile

its alluvium breathe a tin-type photograph of our mothers’

incantatory hands, slaughtered hog hung awkward against the rail,

a prayer we learn as children to distinguish the spotted spurge

among the chickweed overgrown in the Pryor lot, still hearing him

speak of Job on a Sunday morning in Searcy, still speaking through smoke

that this is the best fucking idea we’ve ever had:

to love what cannot love us in return

XI.

I have never known the four Japanese words for house–
written with ashed underside of valerianella radiata
across the concave ridge of spine, as if soft built structures
in halflight, the oblong frame of a pear conspired
to divide in five rooms at your touch.

Lost for days in the city of plums and cedar,
I will recall lovers separated by the Watauga River,
their mouths mimicking the dulcet tenor of pine siskin,
a call to which, it is said, the Southern heart wilts–

and six thousand mils away the children in Otaru clamor
the tide before dawn, a mother carries her ill son with arms crossed
over his chest, so he might feel the meter of waves.
Here, you have risen early, fleshed anatomy of a violin–

curve of your body outlined by light, canvas,
painting corridors of wood, image of a house in four parts–
indigo, cerulean, rose, alabaster–
sparrow with granite-eyed glance, fur against bone,
suspended cluster of peonies welling in the doorway.

In this case, it was a writing prompt given in a poetry workshop last week where a fellow MFA poet asked use a rap sheet as source text. He had stated that the rap sheet in question would be one with ‘words whose meaning has changed over the centuries.’ A quick Google search yielded frustration, so I went with the next best interpretation: rap sheet as in criminal record. The difficulty with using someone’s criminal record, even if it becomes transfigured and manipulated, is generating the necessary psychic distance from the trauma of this individual’s actions during the act of writing. When I read over the horrific crimes, I felt-for the first time-that poetry’s limitation might be in tackling death in an authentic manner. The approach I came to is one which acknowledges that Raul Meza wasn’t just the one committing murder, but he was a deeply wounded young man, too. To write about Meza meant writing from a place of rage and disgust, as well as from compassion.

The poem feels close, but I’m not totally convinced it’s ready for the next round of submissions to the Virginia Quarterly Review, New Delta Review, or The Georgia Review. Sonically, I’m pleased with the moments of incantatory repetition. The images seem tight, the language relatively toned down from the sometimes unwieldy hyper-lyric, and the stance of the speaker seems to do the work of resisting martyring Meza while owning the possibility for expression of indictment.

Without further adieu:

Thy Neighbor’s Rap Sheet

On New Year’s Eve 1975, 15-year-old Raul Meza
walks into a convenience store five miles
from his house–

Austin, Texas is on fire before
dawn, a shelled sagebrush and deer rifle:
in Austin, houses are built dead; until,
inhabited by Meza’s right arm, a swelling

of cement   heat   shot dead

in the back
of a dumpster in southeast Austin,
Kendra Page withers evenly
for a week   of purpled vetch,   foxglove
alive in the small crescent bruise–

seven times for four years, Meza denies none of this–

under Texas law, he must be led into a clearing
to swallow dirt, dismember a cactus with bare hands–
I have never felt sorry for his cracked lip,
rib against shade or wide light tracing
staggered footfall two guards smoke, ash the barrel
in the back, they aim for the back–

back like a rabbit, Meza
is crying and no one cares that he’s pissed himself,
rubbed pebbles in the wounds above solar plexus,
bled for six hours–

he might enter quiet/anonymous
from Huntsville, a newspaper editor makes him famous–
I have nine words for this man,
for this man, I have sadness for many months:

Meza populates Austin with candles after parole,
their painted saints watch over each division

and this is not a blessing–
this is not a blessing   I am not blessed   not a blessing.

With a new group of students, most of whom have limited experience with creative writing, I’m able to enjoy a new range of exercises tailored to their fields of study. Their improvement and comfort in finding a voice of creative expression shows me that writing truly offers everyone with the patience to ask of themselves the questions of Self, worth, and one’s place in the world. How inspiring it is to teach a group so willing to learn, and with such a fervent desire to grow into their own abundant possibility as writers-not to say that they strive to be the next Welty or Lorca, but that they are slowly uncovering the figure of a writer which most serves their passions, be it in the midst of being an engineer or a biochemist.

A few students have already taken on the challenge of approaching the technical elements of our craft, visiting to discuss outside readings and a few extra assignments they might take on. So, to this…I say, write on and write well! I am struck by one student who took my daunting task of reading, analyzing and then re-structuring the Benjy chapter from Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury to heart. The goal of this damn near impossible task was to focus on the use of imagery, self-reflection, and syntactical variation. I certainly didn’t expect that this student would then proceed to read the entire novel, and seek out more Faulkner, too. It’s been a blessing in disguise, I suppose; I am able to utilize the works to help guide the student into the richness of language, emphasizing the ways in which one might learn to study themes of psychology, fracture, and place…but I’m constantly adding caveats in our conversations, saying “Remember, this is Faulkner’s voice. How does one appreciate and synthesis this to uncover their own?” I tread lightly with Faulkner, often feeling his presence and liquored breath looming over the page-silently criticizing. On the tail end of a lengthy discussion with a fellow MFA, I was asked about the role of Faulkner in my own work. Without hesitation, I stated that he is at once among the primary inspirations, and also the motivation to set myself apart from the lineage of Southern literature. They’ll be more on this eventful banter in a subsequent post!

I’ve also been returning to some of the poetry which I’ve put off reading for the past few months. I’m particularly pleased with Maurice Manning’s latest collection, Bucolics. As a series of lyrical elegies to the “Boss” (here, read Spirit, God, stand-in for a lover, etc.), the language thrives in the lushness of its attention to conflict, force, and power struggles-between the natural world and the body, between the heart and the fear of the Boss’ disapproval. How Manning navigates the line between country lyric, the Southern spiritual, and existential meditation is the joy of the work. His grasp of rhythm and the line’s need to be broken are stunning, too. Here’s a sample from the 2007 release:

7.

O boss of ashes boss of dust
you bother with what floats above
my chimney what settles to the ground
you wake the motes from sleep you make
them curtsey in a ray of sun
they hold their tiny breath as if
they’re waiting for the little name
of the dance that’s coming next then they
will take their places Boss if I
were smaller I would join them O
I’d cut a rug or two I’d slap
my hand against my shoe if that’s
the kind of fuss you’re raising Boss
you know I never know for sure
I only know you bother me
from time to time you’ve caught my breath
a time or two you’ve stirred me up
before which makes me want to tell
you Boss I wouldn’t mind it if
you bothered me a little more

Here’s a sample from The Cortland Review:

The Doctrine Of An Axe

Of all times, now is not the time,
given the world’s old vague condition,

to hang in my mind the plumb-bob weight
of original sin and watch it twist

around like a tire at the end of a rope
looped over a tree branch. Once

my sister came within a hair
of getting bit by a snake asleep

in the tire she’d hooped around herself.
She was wearing a dress, my friend, just home

from church; her patent leather shoes
kicked at the air just twice before

she shed the tire and screamed. I chopped
the copperhead to pieces. What kind

of parents allow their child to play
with an axe? Well, mine, I suppose. I made

them proud that day. The sin was how
I let myself be proud, a pride

that wore like whitewash from a fence.
Now you might think I’m being stern

and unforgiving. After all,
I was only six and could not have known

about sin. But I did; I knew it like
a nursery rhyme, or the Now I Lay Me

bedtime prayer. I once got drunk
on a Sunday morning; I don’t know

if that was sinful, but it proved
that nothingness is absolute,

a naked shameful nothing left
beneath the shade tree in my heart,

the rusted axehead long since stuck
and buried in its trunk, a bone

caught in its living throat, a wound
I made in its side and can’t undo.

We should both be doing something good;
we should be kind to someone now.

http://www.cortlandreview.com/features/07/spring/manning.html

Last night was the release party for Copper Nickel, Issue 13. With a room filled with some of Colorado’s finest poets and fiction authors, I couldn’t help but feel the power of a meeting of creative minds gathered in solidarity with our works and the continuation of tradition: an expression of support in the literary journal. Where academia is preoccupied with the fall of the “literary journal,” I assert that the release reading was the act of taking a stand for its importance to our communities.

I absolutely encourage you to order yourselves a copy of CN13, which you can check out here: http://www.copper-nickel.org/

The reading portion of the evening, inaugurated by chief editor and accomplished poet Jake Adam York, began with a stellar performance by Adrian Matejka. Please check out some of his work here: http://www.fishousepoems.org/archives/adrian_matejka/index.shtml

Subsequent readers, including Noah Eli Gordon, Scott Beck, Leia Darwish Clark, J. Michael Martinez, Jef Otte, Ashlie Schweitzer, myself and others, led the evening into a rich display of style, form, and tone.

All in all, it was/is an honor to be included alongside many of my mentors and amongst so many authors who have served as inspiration in my journey.

Here’s the first video link…I’ll talk with Noah and see if I could include the video of his reading, as well:

While I was waiting in the store, I discreetly borrowed one of their kiosks and did some writing. Here’s how things went:

5-Minute Prompt #3: To be or not to be
(source text for first line: As I Lay Dying)
Before he put the Mississippi River between them,
its easterly bank caught fire—sweet, ostinato swell
threaded banjo wire at oblique angles
over the slick foreheads of the pastor and congregant;

two men held a stolen player piano from Charleston above waterline,
reel and note pitched soft in the murk,
young water moccasins, lace stitch
in the right eye of Pritchman’s arthritic mare.

As for the music prompt, I wrote to spastic tune selection provided by a group of teenagers who were scouting out potential iPod speakers:

5-Minute Prompt #4
I awake to my palms full, a robin egg and needle—
not surprisingly, I’ve forgotten the name for this
and for a nine-count absence of sound,

blue phlox, sorrel, and Indian mallow cascading the far-end of the yard,
spitchatter mouth of the Savannah towhee clenched round willow,
or hawk’s claw pressed taught against sternum.

I blush only to pull lips back, to grin
as my grandmother did (or didn’t,
and crying was mistaken).

Somewhere, I am bleeding; my teeth stained,
taste of pomegranate, Tennessee whiskey—
leaving you in La Follette is like this.

We’ll start out today with a few excerpts from Forrest Gander’s Science & Steepleflower. I highly recommend the collection, which can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/Science-Steepleflower-New-Directions-Paperbook/dp/0811213811/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_2

Field Guide to Southern Virginia

True as the circumference
to its center. Woodscreek Grocery,
Rockbridge County. Twin boys
peer from the front window, cheeks
bulging with fireballs. Sandplum trees
flower in clusters by the levee. She
makes a knot on the inside knob
and ties my arms up
against the door. Williamsburg green.
With a touch as faint as a watermark.
Tracing cephalon, pygidium, glabella.

The History of Domesticity

I.
Bullfrog bray
No sleep hot
Under sheet
To drink less
Lie wrong love’s
Spot engriefed
A wake in
Skirling brief
Birdsong her
Dream wail soft
Wife as soot
I rake in
Knee crooked
Bare skin there
And foot say
Love to hair
Hours accrue
Taking hours
To

Anniversary

Not to be known always by my wounds,
I buried melancholy’s larvae

And cleaved the air behind you.
Myself I gathered

Like the middle dusk
To the black tulips of your nipples.

For seven days we shut the door,
We scoured the room with bird’s blood.

And for a little while
In the hollow where your throat rose

From between your splendid clavicles,
Our only rival was music,

The piano of bonewhiteness.
Nor did the light subside,

But deepeningly contracted.
The rawness of the looking.

The quiver.

Without further adieu, here are today’s prompts:

1) To Be or Not To Be
Begin with a source text, turn to page 52 (or 14), the first line of text on the page is the first line of the 5-minute prompt poem.
If there are any “to be” verbs in the line they should be taken out completely before beginning the exercise. Just in case, here are some “to be” verbs: Am, Are, Is, Was, Were, Be, Become, Became.
During the five minutes of writing, you’ll be aiming for roughly 8 lines (again, without those pesky verbs listed above).

The beauty of this prompt is simply the chance it offers to bring our attention to the impact those smallest portions of language have on our work. In their absence, what do you notice about image, the directness/immediacy of the language, etc.?

2) For Those About to Rock
For this exercise, you’ll need some music. Anything will do.

The steps are simple:
-Select a track (if it’s longer than five minutes, that’s fine)
-Set a timer for five minutes (NOTE: You want this to be heard! Don’t just keep track silently in your head, make sure there will be an alarm to let you know the time is up.)
-Play the track with the timer, being sure to resist writing (just sit and breathe)
-When the timer goes off, slowly prepare yourself for writing. Whether you write with a computer or with pen/paper, begin by bringing awareness to your movements, breathing deeply and evenly. I tend to think of treating the pen/paper or computer as if they were my bow and I were a student of kyudo (Zen archery). I am going to write the poem, but when I release the words it may not hit the target. If I am uncertain of the end result, I can be certain only of a few things: namely, the precision and attention I bring to every moment before the arrow departs the bow, before the pen lifts from the white of the page.
-When you have become comfortable and acquainted with your writing tools, set the timer for five minutes and replay your selected track. The poem is ready to be written.
-As soon as the timer goes off, immediately stop writing. There is no need to pull your hands from the computer or the pen away from the page in a quick fashion. Take your time. Experience the “ending” or cessation of writing as much as you might normally focus on the experience of “creating” the writing (the doing of writing).

The intent here is to explore the degree to which we might be affected by our writing environment. Whether we write outside or inside, in parking garages or laundromats, alone or in the company of others, the results vary – the smallest of changes in environment, I argue, sometimes produce the most dynamic shifts in writing habits.
For those who already write with music on, here’s a chance to change things up a bit. Just modify the exercise to bring in some silence to your practice. The presence of sound is just as useful in this exercise as is the lack of it; remember, we’re only looking to adjust our typical writing routines.

If a Person Visits Someone in a Dream,
in Some Cultures the Dreamer Thanks Them
-for Reginald Shepherd

Dear Reginald,
It is morning.
I sit at a table
writing a letter
with a needle and thread.

I pricked my finger           A pelican
out of her migratory path,
even her language family-
whose child is gone
yet she absently pecks at her breast.

I write on the bedspread
I am making for you there
May you breathe deeply and easily.
If a person visits someone in a dream,
in some cultures the dreamer thanks them in the morning
for visiting their dream.

I call it dream
not that I am drawn to that which withdraws
but to him pearled, asleep, who never withdraws.

At a hotel in another star. The rooms were cold and damp, we were both at the desk at
midnight asking if they had any heaters. They had one heater. You are ill. Please take it.
Thank you for visiting my dream.

Can you breathe all right?
Break the glass                  shout
and break the glass          force the room
break the thread                Open
the music behind the glass.

http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v8n1/poetry/valentine_j/dreamer_page.shtml

Last Monday, I led the class through some informal workshopping and decided to close the creative space with a few of my – I’m sure – infamous poetry writing prompts. Before going into exactly what these were, or how I run these exercises, I should clarify a few things: My philosophy towards the craft of poetry, in my own practice, involves constantly reminding myself that the ratio of shit to gold is always a bit skewed. I’m fine with this. To quiet the voice that demands complete perfection in my writing at all times, I remind myself of the troubled Plath poem, “Ennui.” When this early piece-along with variations on it-surfaced in 2006, the response was certainly less than enthusiastic. Not everything written is great, but I do believe that everything written leads to the potential for something great.

When I tell my students about the theory of “poetic ratios,” I am careful to preface my lecture by explaining that we are given rare moments when writing from a place of intentional play and experimentation that lead us to realize the true nature of our poetry (or, when truly blessed, our project).

As for the Monday prompts, they were structured around the concept of lack. I tend to find that writing prompts work best when they have an element of constraint built in. As poets, we get used to the troubled notion that we’re a bit like the literary Steely Dan–we can take a twenty year hiatus and our audience will still be there waiting for the next hit. One way to combat this worldview is to structure the daily writing practice around the lack of time, of a certain vocabulary, of form, or of a familiar setting/landscape/subject. Slowly strip away the aspects of the writing that one imagines they must have in order to produce “good poetry.” In this way, one breaks down the assumptions and patterns which might otherwise keep the poetry stagnate and lifeless. After all, I’m not Steely Dan, and if I don’t find ways to keep writing…well, I’m hosed.

Anyway, here’s how things went down:

Me: Alright, take out a sheet of paper and a pen/pencil.
Class: Urrgghh. Are we having a quiz?!
Me: No. Okay…how long does it take you to write a poem-say, one of the poems you turned in at the beginning of class?
Class: I don’t know…maybe twenty minutes, an hour? Sometimes longer….
Me: Great! You’ll have five minutes per poem now.
Class: *grumbles, sighs, other noises of worry/frustration*
Me: I’d like you to write the first piece about your best friend’s father. If you don’t remember, make it up. Poetry is as much about writing what you know as it is writing through the lie and lyre. Go.

At this point, I sat down and began writing, too. Here’s what came out:

5-Minute Prompt #1

At dusk, he burns a tender of gulls in the yard
to light the sinew of the underwing
by measured amounts, unraveling a map of bone.
For hours, it is you—course rivulet of muscle
arcing the wood—I behind, stumbling
at the mast. You’ve never loved him,
he is small, awkward, easily displaces
capitals of Eastern European principalities,
but I, I carry wood well, do not squint
as feathers and smoke blot the harbor.

Then:

Me: Put your pens/pencils down. Now, I’d like you to take five minutes to write a poem about place…your childhood bedroom, to be exact…if you don’t remember it, take liberty to be creative. I’d suggest no more than ten lines, beginning with an expansive image (for example, the impression of light as you enter the room) and gradually narrow the poems lens (for example, ending on an image of a carpet fiber). Again, big to small. Go.

Here’s what came out during the exercise:

5-Minute Prompt #2

This is not a birch tree felled
nor the cello in nine parts
it’s bow, ravenous and jealous—
veneer cups the indent on a dresser
in sheen, size of one’s palm;
not so much a fissure, but the coming whole again:
mother paced the body of a boy,
forgot the open window, honeysuckle
in throat,
a battery
exorcised by rain.

Over the coming week, the goal will be two 5-minute prompts a day. I’ll post the prompts/constraints in the morning, and the results in the evening. If you happen to catch this post and want to follow…post your contribution to the “Fall Break Poetry Prompt Retreat” here, as a comment to the thread.