Big Life Events!

I admit to not being very industrious or inspired poetry-wise lately.  I know I'll get back on track soon, because writing an average of two or three poems a month is just not like me. Perhaps it's the distraction of "real life", which has brought me two big events in the last two months:

1. The birth of our first grandchild!  My son and daughter-in-law welcomed a beautiful baby girl into the world on June 27th.  Since they only live about a mile away, it looks like we will be very much in her life for a while.  My wife has already stayed over for several nights to help out, and I think she's already bought the baby enough clothes to last at least six months.  This is going to be so much fun.

2. Our 40th anniversary, which we celebrated in the least likely place that anyone who knows us would think we'd want to go: Las Vegas.  But we had a ball!  We went to Graceland Chapel to renew our vows with "Elvis", which was both silly and moving - not only did we promise not to leave each other at "Heartbreak Hotel" and to be a "hunk-a hunk-a burnin' love", but we had "serious" vows, too, which made my bride start to cry.  Afterward, we went to the Venetian Casino Hotel for a delicious gourmet Italian dinner (even the salad was one of the best I've ever had) and took a romantic indoor gondola ride.  Our week was full of activities like a tour to the Grand Canyon, a short road trip to Hoover Dam, two great shows (Cirque de Soleil's "Beatles Love" and a Motown revue by an Australian vocal group called Human Nature), visits to the Mob Museum and two art exhibits in the casinos (National Geographic photos and Andy Warhol art), and a lot more.  We spent a total of 30 minutes actually gambling the whole week, but we came out ahead.  And we didn't try to cram something into every waking moment, so we had time to relax, sleep in, or do whatever we wanted.  We didn't even eat out all that much, taking advantage of the full kitchen in our timeshare unit at Hilton Grand Vacations, about a mile off the "strip".  Our only cause for concern was a large wildfire on the nearby mountain (we smelled the smoke one morning) - it didn't really threaten the city, except for maybe air quality, but it did keep us from visiting nearby Red Rock Canyon.  It was hot, of course (over 100 degrees most days) but the dry heat is no worse than 95 degrees and humid back in Jersey. All in all, we had a splendid time.

Baseball:  The less I say about the Phillies, the better. Suffice to say I don't expect to be watching them in the playoffs in the foreseeable future.  At least I have my fantasy team to distract me.

Music:  It's that time of year again - time for WXPN's Top 885 Countdown.  This year they're doing "Songs of the New Millennium" - the best songs from 2001 to the present.  It will be an interesting list, free of "classic rock" old chestnuts, though some classic-rock-era artists will surely sneak in (like Mssr. Springsteen).  I tried to compile a list of favorites, and narrowing it down to a top 10 was very tough. I know I've probably forgotten at least a couple of favorites here, but be that as it may, here's me "top 40" as it stands at the moment:

1. Adele: Rolling In The Deep

2. Coldplay: Clocks

3. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova: Falling Slowly

4. Sufjan Stevens: Chicago

5. New Pornographers: Use It

6. Marah: Poor People

7.Richard Thompson: Dad's Gonna Kill Me

8.White Rabbits: Percussion Gun

9.The Decemberists: Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect

10. Fleet Foxes: White Winter Hymnal

11. The Black Keys: 10 a.m. Automatic

12. Spoon: Sister Jack

13. The Arcade Fire: Sprawl II

14. New Pornographers: The Bleeding Heart Show

15. The Hold Steady: Slapped Actress

16. Django Django: Default

17. The Shins: Phantom Limb

18. Phoenix: Lisztomania

19. Sam Roberts: With a Bullet

20. The Decemberists: The Rake's Song

21. Drive-by Truckers: This F***ing Job

22. Elbow: The Birds

23. Iron and Wine: Boy with a Coin

24. A.C. Newman: The Town Halo

25. Josh Ritter: Girl in the War

26. Feist: My Moon My Man

27. Gnarls Barkley: Crazy

28. Foster The People: Pumped Up Kicks

29. Animal Collective: Summertime Clothes

30. Of Monsters And Men: Little Talks

31. Elbow: Grounds For Divorce

32. Wilco: Art Of Almost

33. Bruce Springsteen: The Rising

34. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Dig, Lazarus, Dig!

35. Divine Fits: Would That Not Be Nice

36. Death Cab For Cutie: I Will Possess Your Heart

37. Spoon: Don't You Evah

38. Passion Pit: Sleepyhead

39. Wilco: Impossible Germany

40. The Decemberists: The Crane Wife 3

Poetry:  Okay, if you insist, here's a rather sentimental one I wrote for my new grandchild:

Isabel

Baby girl,
just by dropping into our world
you’ve created a mom and dad,
three grandparents,
four uncles and an aunt.

The challenge will be
how to bring you up right
without spoiling you,
little apple of all our eyes.

Billboard or Dresser Drawer?

When I took the Poem-a-Day challenge once again last month, I posted all my poems on this blog, some thirty-nine of them, to share with my readers. I was talking about this via e-mail with my “famous poet” friend, who said it was rather brave of me to do this. She said almost anything she writes must wait months, even a year or more before it sees the light of day. She said she’s from an “earlier, perhaps shyer time” (even though she’s my peer age-wise), and this may be why she doesn’t really identify with the likes of a poetry slam, for instance. But, she concedes, others get their joy from putting their work right out there, and that’s fine for them. William Stafford, for example, liked to say he sent all his poetry out in the world as soon as he wrote it, and “let the editors sort out which ones are good”.

Her tactful comments got me thinking, though: Am I “brave” or just “foolhardy”? Am I too eager to get instant gratification by pushing my newest creations to blink in the blinding light of public display? Certainly some of them are not yet in their final, mature form. Now, I’m not an obsessive-compulsive revisionist; if I have to revise a poem more than a half dozen times and it’s still not behaving, I may relegate it to the trash bin. But I’m sure there are some that should have been held back a little longer, at least to allow time for the ink to dry. Despite this eagerness to share my newborns with the world, I feel the same as my friend about slam poetry, which is often too extemporaneous and frenetic for my taste. Yet I sometimes read a poem publicly that I’ve written that same day. I also find the internet is a perfect avenue for getting almost immediate feedback (and hopefully praise) for one’s work. Poetry workshops, too, are a great way to produce something creative and get the immediate reaction of your peers. (I’ve certainly taken my share of those over the years.) So I think my desire to put my poetry “right out there” comes from the influence of those two outlets. Still, there’s something to be said for restraint, letting a poem develop and mature beyond the first flush of creativity before sharing it with the world. It all comes down to the individual: whether you’re more comfortable putting your new work on a figurative billboard or letting it sit for a while in your figurative dresser (or desk) drawer. So what do you do with your new poems, and why? Share your thoughts.

[Warning: Shameless plug ahead.]

Here's a sonnet that appears in my latest chapbook, Twenty-four by Fourteen (Maverick Duck Press, 2012). It's especially appropriate for the season.


All in the Month of May

In those old English ballads, why is May
the most important month? Some folks are wed,
someone's boyfriend always goes away
to sea, or some girl's lost her maidenhead,
Lord Someone gores the lover of his wife
with a beaten sword. Could it be the pull
of spring, rosebuds and lilies come to life,
emotions running high, libidos full?

Perhaps it's just that "May" makes many rhymes,
not difficult to fit into a tune,
which could explain, too, all those other lines,
like why the best moons always shine in June,
and why we are more likely to remember
September, and November, and December.

PAD Day 30

I made it!  Thirty-nine poems in thirty days. And while they're not all classics, it felt good to be productive again and have some fun writing.  On the other hand, I'm kind of glad it's over.  Some days it was a real struggle just to produce something as brief as a haiku. I also wish I'd been more successful some days at combining the two prompts I was using. (But then again, if I had, I may not have written more than 30 poems.) It's a good challenge and exercise in writing self-discipline.

The final April prompt from NaPoWriMo is to take a poem from earlier this month and write its "opposite" - in other words, substitute the original words with their opposites. My Day 21 poem, "Fortune Cookie Senryu", which contained inspirational messages, seemed like a good target for this exercise.  What I came up with here could probably be called "dispirational".

Misfortune Cookie Senryu

Measure failure by 
how low you have sunk, and what

you don’t do down there.

Despite how relaxed
and idle you are, take one
thing off your list: work.

Don’t go out today,
ignore your environment,
don’t reflect on it.

Optimism hates
air, pessimism dies worst
in total vacuum.

My divorce account:
squander laziness and joy,
and I’ll go bankrupt.

Poetic Asides' final prompt is to write a "finished" and/or "unfinished"poem.

Junked

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.

- Paul Valery

The poem sits in a meadow,

rusting in spring rain. Once

it carried me to delightful destinations,

but it wasn't perfect. I  tried tinkering

with it - new engine, transmission,

a different rhyme scheme,

tightening the meter,

a fresh coat of metaphoric paint.

Then just  when I  thought

I fixed it up the way it should be,  

someone would walk by and say,

Do you have the right tires? or

Those door handles look clumsy,

or, I don't understand your imagery.

Eventually, it ended up in a drawer,

and later moved to this field.

Today I found it again, a corroded shell

of what it once was.  I sat down

in the April drizzle and begin to write

a poem about an old abandoned car.



I hope you've all had a great National Poetry Month!

PAD Day 29

Today's prompt from NaPoWriMo is to write a poem that uses at least five words or phrases from a foreign language, I took some liberties with this one and came up with what I think is a rather amusing commentary:

This is America, Buddy

So if you want to order real American food
in my diner, like pizza, crepes,
or frankfurters and sauerkraut,
you’d better speak English, capice?
Don’t be a schmuck and give me your lip –
we can go mano-a-mano any time.
So what if I’m gung ho about speaking the language?
If you don’t like it, c’est la vie.
And don’t forget, Friday’s Karaoke Night –
we’ll all be singing “Gangnam Style”.

The second prompt, from Poetic Asides, was to take a line from one of your April poems and make it the title of a new poem. I took it a step further and wrote a poem comprised of one line each from twenty of the poems I wrote this month (including the title). In other words, I wrote a "cento".  All are the original verbatim lines, too, except for one which I broke into two lines.

How Complex You Are

Okay,

I'll tell you unequivocally,

Nature: I love and hate you.

I'm dopey enough to tell you how I feel.

We've breezed through laughter,

slogged through tears,

promises, engagements, hearts,

casting aspersions, doubts, accusations

when you betrayed me. Still I held back rain.

Pessimism loves a vacuum.

The ants are in the peonies again.

Ghost-faced owl dives, curls talons.

Please keep your wrath at bay -

we can't let the dark possibles dictate us.

Sun plus warm equals melt -

then take a walk, admire daffodils.

Let's go on a holiday to the borderline.

Our bodies respond with madness,

like a town crier on Doomsday,

lips puffed beyond the natural,

with fireworks of purple.

PAD Day 28

Today's dual prompts: (1) Write a "color" poem, and (2) write a shadorma.  A "shadorma" is allegedly a form that originated in Spain (though it's more likely an invented contemporary form) of six lines with syllable counts of 3,5,3,3,7 and 5.  As such, it's a similar discipline to haiku or tanka.  So here's a string of shadormas I wrote on the topic of color:

The Color of Azalea

In my yard

an azalea bush

celebrates

my birthday

with fireworks of purple

flowers every year.

Yet "purple"

doesn't do justice

to its hue -

amethyst,

perhaps (that's my niece's name)

or heliotrope.

Maybe plum

(no, that's way too deep),

lavender,

violet

or lilac (those don't work, they're

other flowers' names).

Puce or mauve?

Both are ugly words.

No artist,

just a guy,

I'll be content with "purple" -

it suits me just fine.

PAD Day 27: Happy Birthday to Me

Oh joy. Today I am now officially old enough to collect Social Security.  My prompts for today are (1) Write a "mechanical" poem, and (2) follow along with me now - take the first three words of a popular phrase or "old saying", plug it into a search engine, and use the first three pages or so of results, picking out interesting words or phrases you can use in a poem.  Maybe I'm using the wrong "old sayings", but this exercise just didn't quite work for me.  The first poem I produced came out dark and disturbing, and though it was an entirely fictitious narrative poem, it might have shown up on some homeland-security radar, especially in these sensitive post-Boston bombing times, so I chose not to share it.  I did plug in the beginning of an appropriate old saying for today, and I was reminded of a tired old analogy, which inspired this short and pithy piece:

You're Only as Old as You Feel

"A little age can be a wonderful thing.

Take a fine bottle of scotch for example...."

Okay.

That's it.  And here's my "mechanical" poem:

Birthday Robot

 I need a robot to absorb all my birthdays,

so he will be the one who needs service

and repair, more often every year.

He'll be the one who everyone will tell,

"You look pretty good for your age,"

and "You're only as old as you feel."

He'll get all the snarky getting-older birthday cards. 

and he'll be the one who will worry

what will happen when his warranty runs out.

And while he's fretting about circuits

that don't connect so quickly any more,

blockages in circulation, dimming light sensors,

joints that creak with every movement,

I'll be lounging on an island somewhere,

no older than last year, sipping a piña colada

and sending him a snarky birthday card.

PAD Day 26 Part Deux

So here's my second poem of the day, in response to Poetic Asides' prompt to write a "casting" poem.  I'm posting it separately only because it's so totally different from my other poem today.

O'Reilly Goes Fishing

Took my favorite rod and flies,

waded out hip-deep, where the river

bends to the right, and started casting

aspersions, doubts, accusations,

reeling in my catch, one after another.

Tonight I have bigger fish to fry.

My fans won't even realize that I've

filleted my dish of reason, logic,

and fairness, nor will they notice

when I choke on the bones.