Wedding Bells!

Well, there’s no excuse not to blog now – a lot has been going on in the last month or two. First and foremost is #2 son’s wedding this past weekend. What a wonderful day! He and his bride have gone together for several years, and he (finally!) proposed at Christmastime last year. She’s a lovely person and they complement each other very well. The wedding was in our home town of Cherry Hill, at my wife’s home parish. Both older brothers were groomsmen and youngest brother was the altar server. Weather was picture perfect – sunny and high in the upper 70’s. The mass was beautiful and the reception was a blast – everyone commented on how much fun they had, including the 89-year-old mother of a friend of ours who spent half the evening on the dance floor.

Of course, gearing up for the big event was a bit hectic. One of the perks of being the father of the groom is that you don’t end up putting out a huge amount of money and effort, but still get much of the credit. But God bless my wife. She helped with much of the planning, especially making 72 small floral centerpieces – rose arrangements in martini glasses. The back apartment part of our house became the back of a florist shop, as well as the flower fridge – she turned the AC all the way down to keep the roses fresh, and it got below 55 degrees in there. But in the end it was all worth it, and son and new daughter-in-law are now enjoying their honeymoon in Dublin, Ireland.

The other big development is that we are hosting an international student for the year. He is from South Korea and beginning his senior year at a local Catholic high school. I was corrected early on: He’s an “international student”, not an “exchange student”, because his main objective is to complete his education here. After graduation, he hopes to attend an American college or university. So far things are going well – he’s a nice young man, curious and eager to learn with a sense of humor, and he speaks pretty good English, though we’re trying to help him improve it enough to do better on the SAT.

Poetry: My poetry has obviously had to take somewhat of a back seat to the other things going on, but there have been developments there as well: I recently read at the Manayunk Art Center in Philadelphia with two other local poets, and I have another coming up on the 24th in the Mt. Airy section of Philly. I’ve also had a few more poems accepted: The Barefoot Muse has accepted my blank-verse sonnet “Taking It All Back”, and Tilt-a-Whirl, a journal devoted to “repeating form” poetry, has accepted two poems: “Poe Boy Blues” and “All I Want”. I’m still hoping to attend at least one or two conferences or festivals in the upcoming “poetry year”, but other domestic and family matters may prevent some of that from happening.

Baseball: As big a Phillies fan as I am, I hadn’t attended a game all season till last night, when my wife’s cousin’s husband invited me to a game against the Braves, with whom the Phils are fighting for the NL East title. We had great seats – first row, second level right behind home plate. They won 3-1: Cole Hamels had another great outing (8 innings pitched, 6 strikeouts) and Brad Lidge was bringin’ it in the 9th. It was amazing to see 45,000 fans on their feet, cheering and waving their souvenir “rally towels” over their heads to spur Lidge on to get the save, putting down the Braves 1-2-3 including two strikeouts. You could feel the energy going out to him, and he even acknowledged that after the game. The Phillies are now 4 games up in first place over the Braves and their “magic number” is 8.

Music: My wife, my youngest son and I are all big fans of the men’s a cappella group Straight No Chaser. If you don’t know them by name, they’re the group of ten guys who met and performed years ago at Indiana University and reunited for a concert a few years ago. They performed an amusing version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” that went viral and made them virtually overnight sensations. Now they’re PBS pledge-drive favorites, with two Christmas albums out and a more recent collection of pop songs. They’re an entertaining, often funny , and extremely talented group. They were artists-in-residence at Harrah’s casino in Atlantic City, and we all went to see them last month. They put on an amazing show, a song revue of pop hits from the 50’s to the present, and afterward they had a “meet-and-greet” – every one of them were there, signing autographs and chatting with fans, and they stayed till everyone in the long line got to meet them. They are a swell bunch of guys.

Poem of the Month: I would like to post the poem I wrote several months ago in anticipation of my son’s wedding, but I’m shopping it around for publication so that may have to wait. Instead, I will offer a love poem I wrote to my wife (who was also beautiful as mother of the groom). This appeared previously in the online journal Word Catalyst:

Time Travel

Maybe it's in the memory of skin -
a certain touch, chemical connection,
a circuit of nerves completed.

Maybe it's all in the mind -
a déjà vu of senses,
a re-opened file of valentines.

But when we share a serious embrace
or trade passionate kisses,
there is no need to compare

those kids in the old wedding photo
with what we see in the mirror.
Reflections are irrelevant,

time machines superfluous.
When I am in the moment of your arms,
I am nineteen again.

Miss Me?

My God, has it been two months since my last blog? What a slacker! It's hard sometimes to convince yourself that you have anything interesting to say. I mean, some folks post almost daily and always have something pithy and informative to share (are you reading this, Kelly Fineman?) while others just slap anything that comes into their head up on the page, whether it's interesting, or makes sense or not. I have to find the right rhythm and balance to blogging - I doubt I could do it more than once a week. But once in two months? Shameful!

Poetry: As you may know, I wrote a poem a day in the month of April (actually, a little more than one a day) as part of the Poetry Month challenge on Robert Brewer's Poetic Asides blog. Well, he invited the participants to submit the five best poems that they wrote that month, and out of over 1000 entries, he selected the best 50 and announced the winners on his blog. Two of my poems, "According to Hoyle" and "Mementos", made the list. The only prize is bragging rights, and a possible feature interview on the blog later this year. It's a nice recognition. I also just learned today that my poem, "Rapids Again", is being accepted for next year's issue of U.S. 1 Worksheets, and I may have another poem appearing in a future issue of the formal-poetry e-zine Barefoot Muse.

I'm debating about which poetry conferences I should attend in the coming year. Of course, time and money are always critical factors - ideally I would attend them all, but I'll have to pick one or two of four I have my eye on: (1) Peter Murphy's annual Winter Getaway in Cape May in January (this upcoming year featuring poets Dorianne Laux and Patricia Smith, as well as "regular" Stephen Dunn); (2) The AWP Conference, which will be in Washington DC in February (my friend Anna Evans will be chairing a panel there); (3) The West Chester Poetry Conference, which Anna has been encouraging me for years to attend (and she's actively involved in that one too), and (4) the good ol' Philadelphia Writers Conference, which is the same week as West Chester. I'm leaning heavily toward #2 and/or #3 as they are the ones that I've never done. Oh yeah, and there's the Dodge Poetry Festival in October.

Baseball: It's been one interesting year for my Phillies - fifteen players have been on the Disabled List this season, and currently Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Shane Victorino, all key players, are sitting it out. Pitcher Jamie Moyer is out for the season (and possibly for the career, but after all, he's an "old man" of 47, LOL). Despite all that, as of this writing they are only one game behind Atlanta for the NL East lead. After a huge team-wide slump about a month or two ago, they've started putting things together, getting consistently good pitching (and the addition of Roy Oswalt now gives them one of the best starting rotations in baseball) and some key hitting from guys who until recently were not everyday players (Ross Gload, Brian Schneider, et al.) Anyway, I expect big things if everyone can get healthy again, though I'm doubtful whether they can get back to the World Series for the third year in a row.

Music: Lots of good stuff coming out this year. Just a few of the recent albums that have caught my ear - mostly perennial favorites but also two new "finds":

Mumford and Sons - Sigh No More
The Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
Los Lobos - Tin Can Trust
Sarah McLachlan - Laws of Illusion
The Black Keys - Brothers
Tame Impala - Innerspeaker
Alejandro Escovedo - Street Songs of Love

Poem of the Every-other-month:

I think I'll dust off an "oldie but goodie" - this appeared in the online journal Red River Review several years ago:

Background

Where I live,
in this quiet pocket of
congested civilization,
even on a still night,
windless, moonless
or moon –

there is a constant hum,
subliminal roar, a rumble
like blood rushing in the ears,
coagulation of sounds
just over the threshold –

traffic, planes, air conditioners,
thunder, music, radio waves,
clouds sliding through thick air,
plates of the earth groaning –

and the murmur of souls
only one week removed,
already receding
into the noise.

Why We Should Save School Music Programs

I’m quite proud of my eighth-grader’s musical accomplishments this year. I attended his middle school’s spring concerts last week (yes, that’s plural – there are so many kids and groups involved that they had to spread them over two nights), and I must say I was impressed by the virtuosity that they displayed. My son himself was in seven groups: concert band, jazz band, jazz combo, orchestra, string ensemble, chorus, and boys’ mixed chorus. One of the highlights for me was the jazz combo: about 10-12 kids performing “Moanin’ ” by Charles Mingus. Their director said that this piece, which is mostly improvisational, would be difficult even for high-schoolers to tackle, but after having heard another group perform it, they begged her to let them give it a try. After several weeks of intensive practice on this one number, they were ready. My son laid down the beat with an opening solo on the baritone sax, and the band took off from there. It was amazing – possibly the best jazz performance I’ve ever heard from a school ensemble. I also enjoyed the choral works: my son was in a boy’s a capella group who sang the old doo-wop song “Come and Go with Me” and the Straight No Chaser arrangement of Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours”. Excellent! Both nights were filled with good music, everything from Bach (a movement from the Brandenburg Concertos) to an Iron and Wine song played by a marimba/percussion group. The second night finale – about 300 middle-schoolers singing “We Are the World” in perfect harmony – was enough to give one goose bumps. Here’s the icing on the cake: the music students went to a school music competition in Hershey PA last Friday, and they came home with first place trophies for the concert and jazz bands. Sweet!

Poetry: Not much going on lately on the poetry scene. I had to skip both of the two poetry events this weekend that I would have liked to attend - The West Chester Poetry Festival and the Philadelphia Writers Conference, partly due to parental obligations. My friend Anna Evans is going to West Chester again, and this time she will be a member of panel there. I wish I could be there to see her in action, meet some esteemed poets, and see Natalie Merchant, who is a featured performer, promoting her new album of songs based on children's poems.


Music: Run out and get (or sit down and download) Bettye LaVette's latest ablum, Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook. Ms. LaVette is in the midst of a major comeback after achieving some success in the 1960's and 1970's only to have her debut album inexplicably shelved by Stax Records in 1972. She fell on hard times for years afterward, but now she is back with a vengeance. This collection of classic British rock and pop songs, from the Beatles and The Animals to Traffic and Pink Floyd, is a tour-de-force as she puts her own interpretative touches on each one. She practically stopped the show at last year's Kennedy Center Honors when she wailed an amazing version of The Who's "Love Reign O'er Me", and she reprises it here. You may not recognize some of these songs the first time through, but once you do, you'll say, "Wow! I never heard it that way before." Her voice is an amazing instrument, and you probably will not hear a more soulful album this year.

Baseball: My Phillies seem to be mired in a major collective slump. They've already been shut out as many times this year as they were all of last season, and until a few nights ago they went through a two-week stretch where they couldn't muster up more than three runs a game. Thankfully, the pitching has been generally decent, and Roy Halladay recently tossed only the second perfect game in Phillies' history. Coincdentally, that same day I was wore a new Roy Halladay Phillies shirt, a gift from my wife, for the first time. I guess that makes it my lucky shirt, or maybe his.

Poem of the Post: Here's an "oldie" that was published in 2002 in the non-defunct print writer's magazine ByLine:

Appeal to the Captor

Dear Editor,
It has been six months since I sent you my poem.
I’ve received not a word, not a ransom note,
not even a stanza cut off and sent as a threat.

Is my poem alive and well?
When it’s returned to me, will it have lost its baby fat,
appearing instead as wiry, muscular, concise?

Or has it undergone some metamorphosis,
a bird, perhaps, feathering its nest with string
and self-addressed stamped envelopes?

Has it ensconced itself in your in-box?
Has it transformed to sconces itself,
like those eerie ones in La Belle et Le Bète,

the gilt-coated arms that move with you
as you cross the room, shadows shifting,
changing the lighting of walls and words?

Send me some word,
a photograph of it holding yesterday’s newspaper;
a tape of it, reading itself back to me.

Even a rejection slip – you pick the format:
wrapped around a rock through my window,
letters cut and pasted from magazines.

Until then, I await the day when it appears,
smiling wanly at my doorstep,
or singing choruses to the world on your page.

P.S.: Music and a Poem

An addendum to yesterday's post, which I didn't have time for then:

I went to my friend Kelly Fineman's reading at Barnes and Noble in Marlton last night. She was great, and read poems from her manuscript-in-progress: a collection of poetry on the life of Jane Austen. Kelly also has an excellent blog, which you can find here.

Music: Well, the music year is already about 3/8ths over (really - figure it out!) and already there are a bunch of candidates for best albums, so it looks like another good year for music. Here are some of my early favorites:


The Hold Steady – Heaven is Whenever
Beach House – Teen Dream
The National – High Violet
Frightened Rabbit – The Winter of Mixed Drinks
Drive-By Truckers – The Big To-Do
Yeasayer – Odd Blood
The New Pornographers – Together
Natalie Merchant – Leave Your Sleep
Spoon – Transference
Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings – I Learned the Hard Way
Jimi Hendrix – Valleys of Neptune
Vampire Weekend – Contra
Straight No Chaser – With a Twist
Dr. Dog - Shame, Shame
Broken Bells – Broken Bells

Natalie Merchant's new album, by the way, is a collection of children's poems set to music - poems by the likes of Edward Lear, e.e. cummings and Robert Louis Stevenson, along with some lesser-known poets. It's a really fine 2-disc collection with a beautiful hardcover booklet that includes the poems and bios of all the poets. Ms. Merchant will also be a featured artist at the West Chester Poetry Conference (with which my friend Anna Evans is also involved) next month.

Poem of the Fortnight: I thought I'd share my poem that got such a big response when I read it at the Celebration of Literary Journals on Sunday (see blog below). This was originally published in Up and Under: the QND Review:

The Conjoined Twin

Crown to crown, our skulls
a figure-eight, we were bound
by bone and red trees of blood.

I felt your cries, and strained to find you,
always over my head. Sometimes
we chattered in the secret language of twins.

But the doctors - so many doctors –
decided it best to cut you away from me.
In our long sleep, they carved at skin and bone,

reconnected tissue, sewed and threaded capillaries,
relieved our brains from their morbid embrace.
But while I slept, your heart surrendered.

Sometimes I look up for you, sister,
but you have not come back.
The blood we shared still runs in my veins,

and memories flicker in and out,
the loss I felt as they opened, then closed
my head to the heavens.

Journal Fest!

I just returned from the “Poetry Festival: A Celebration of Literary Journals” in West Caldwell, NJ. This annual event is organized by poet Diane Lockward, and features about a dozen poetry journals from the NY/NJ region. Editors of the journals have tables to sell their issues, give out submission guidelines and network with poets. They also invite two poets who have been published in their journal to read two poems each during an afternoon-long reading. There are also poets’ books for sale, refreshments and an assortment of freebies. It’s always a great way to spend an afternoon. I went with four of the five members of my poetry group, Quick and Dirty Poets. Two of our members, Kendall Bell and Anna Evans, represented The Raintown Review and Up and Under, respectively. Up and Under is our group’s own journal, and Don Kloss and I represented the journal at the reading. We were the last readers of the afternoon on the schedule, and Don got a good response for his two poems before I came up. I made some self-effacing remark about the pressure associated with being the closing poet of the festival, and then I read my two poems, “What to Play at My Funeral” and “The Conjoined Twin”. I was amazed at the response I got to the latter poem – about ten people came up to me afterward and told me how much they loved it, and two of them bought my chapbook on the spot, based on my reading of that poem. I sold three books in all that day, though I spent all the proceeds on other poet’s books and sample copies of journals. It was good to see a lot of poet friends and acquaintances there too. If you are within a few hours’ drive of this festival (usually held in May), I urge you to attend next time. Click here for Diane’s website if you would like to keep up with her news:

Also, here’s a list, with links if available, of this year’s participating journals:

Edison Literary Review

Exit 13

Journal of New Jersey Poets

Lips

New York Quarterly

Paterson Literary Review

The Raintown Review

Schuylkill Valley Journal

Tiferet

Up and Under: The QND Review

US 1 Worksheets

38 Poems in 30 Days!

That's my final total for National Poetry Month and the Poem-a-Day Challenge. It's exhilirating for me to be that prolific, because lately I've been writing one or two a week at the most. Again, not all of them will be worthy of publication, but that's not really the point. The point is to write for writing's sake and separate the wheat from the chaff. I have about half-a-dozen favorites that are probably ready, or almost ready, to share with the world at large, and at least half-a-dozen more that will be ready with some revision. I sent five of them off to Robert Brewer of Poetic Asides, who promised to publish his 50 favorites from among all the participants of his challenge. He also will declare a "Poet Laureate" from the April challenge. I don't expect to win that honor, but it would be nice to have at least one of my poems recognized among the best of the month. We'll see.

I'm making this a short one, but will still share another poem from April with y'all. This is just a light verse, but a timely one:


(Dis)connected

I blog, I tweet, I text,
I devour whatever is next
in the techno-social soup
that links me to any group.
I’m surfing the net all day
to see who wants to play.
My thumbs are working like mad
to message all the friends I’ve had.
The world is mine for connectionto
anyone of my selection.
My list of friends is extensive,
my tech knowledge comprehensive.
It’s truly a “global village”,
only why do I still feel so lonely?

NaPoMo Update: Review of My Book!

I was very happy to get the new issue of the annual poetry journal, Philadelphia Poets, this week. Last year they published my poem, “Record Store”, and although I don’t have a poem in this year’s issue (#16), editor Rosemary Cappello wrote a very positive review of my latest chapbook, Breathing Out. She said, among other things:

In Breathing Out, a collection of 24 poems, the reader gets a glimpse of the talent of Bruce W. Niedt, a poet who is obviously moved to write about everything under the sun and then some. Niedt has the ability of studying an object—anything from an earth-bound salad bowl to the far-off planet Mars—picking its “brain” and communicating for it. This goes for people as well, whether they’re the long-gone Chinese poet Li Po or the contemporary “Old Man at Bedtime.” […]

When it comes to creating the perfect last line that not only sums up the poem’s intent but adds a thoughtful twist, Niedt is second to none.[…]

Yes, the subjects of Niedt’s poems run the gamut. There’s even one commemorating “Mr. Peanut [in] Atlantic City” and his clocks, “All the Clocks in my House Are Set to Different Times,” which happen to be two of my favorites in this collection. But then, so are all the others mentioned here. Bruce Niedt has proven his versatility as a poet in this impressive collection.

Thanks, Rosemary!

As expected, it’s been a busy Poetry Month – as of today I’ve written 35 poems in 28 days for the annual “Poem-a-Day Challenge”. Two more to go! I also invaded the Big Blue Marble Bookstore in Mt. Airy PA last Friday with my Quick and Dirty posse – Anna, Kendall, Andrea, former (and still honorary) member Rachel, and myself. We rocked their socks! It was a respectable group of about 15, most of them members of Mad Poets Society, who sponsored the event, and it went very well – some of us even sold some of our books. (I’m on the calendar to return there for a solo reading in September.) Tonight is our monthly reading series at The Daily Grind in Mt. Holly featuring Bill Wunder. Unfortunately, I can’t get to all the events that I would like to attend – there are two this Sunday at the same time to which I’m invited, but I probably won’t make either one.

My aforementioned poet friend Rachel Bunting, by the way, has just won the Best of the Net award for her poem, “The Apiary”. Way to go, Rach! (I tried to post the link but it doesn't seem to work from where I'm writing.)

I had a decent birthday on Tuesday, despite hobbling around most of the day on a strained knee. It was nice to get a lot of best wishes from my Facebook and Poetic Asides friends, and I had a nice quiet celebration with my wife and youngest son. (The other three sons called and wished me happy birthday). It was pretty low-key, just the way I wanted it.

So how about a poem? I’ll offer the one that I wrote my birthday. The prompt from Poetic Asides was to write a poem about hope or hopelessness. This is a “parody”, if you will, of Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is the thing with feathers…”


The Thing with Fur

Hopelessness, the thing with fur,
would stalk me in the wood,
and threaten like a predator
that never comes to good,

and track me with its yellow eyes;
I’d stumble on the trail
and it would pounce – I’d be its prize,
my flight to no avail.

I’ve heard its howl – it fills the moor,
like some soul-stealing wraith,
but I need only close my door
and fuel my fire with faith.