The Charis-and-poems news...

Once again, I'm guilty of being lively on twitter and facebook but ignoring the blog! Hope all you passers-by have remained healthy and sane in the midst of topping chaos. A few new notables are below:

I've updated the Charis in the World of Wonders page with some new comments and review clips. A review from novelist H. S. Cross is forthcoming, and another from Robbi Nester, as well as an interview. And the book will be featured on writer Marjorie Hudson's Kitchen Table Writers, an interesting group to join if you're a budding writer. Though it has been sad to have a book come out mid-pandemic (my crazy history of launches timed at disasters!), I hope that Charis--being an indomitable sort--will find her way through the wilderness of this strange time.

Remember how you used to read as a child, stretched out in the grass or on the couch, lost in the magic of a book.... Be prepared to re-enter that world of magical reading, being so engrossed in the world of the book that you never really leave it, living in a dreamy haze of words and beloved characters. Marly Youmans' new novel, Charis in the World of Wonders (Ignatius, 2020) will put you there, into that trance of reading and joy, as though you had never left it.
               --The Hollins Critic, Fall 2020

This I can't skip mentioning; I have several poems in the new issue of Mezzo Cammin edited by the late Kim Bridgford--that's her picture above. It's a lovely, thoughtful image of a bright poet and professor who brought many interesting projects into being and added to the sum of beauty and truth and goodness in the world. Nine of the thirteen poets in this round (Maryann Corbett, Wendy Sloan, Myrna Stone, Jane Scharl, etc.) were chosen by her. As my poems have appeared there many times under her editorship, and I was once lucky enough to be her featured poet, I am glad to be in this issue.  It's not the end of Mezzo Cammin, but it is the close of Kim's actions in the world, though she leaves behind publications, editorial work, the Poetry by the Sea conference, and much more.

Taste of the poems, a title and two lines for each:

House at the Edge of Sleep

She dreamed this: in the field she built a house.
She lugged the stones from streams and built a house.

and

The Watering Place

We wished the stream to be alive, as rinsed
And quick as a twisting blue rill of thought.

Grateful thanks to Anna Evans for continuing Kim's work.

Here's a review of the anthology, The Slumbering Host, by poet Lisa McCabe in Front Porch Republic. I only had a couple of poems in it (reprinted from North American Anglican), but she talks about one of them.

5 more PP-preorder days--

Art by the great Clive Hicks-Jenkins of Wales.
Design by Elizabeth Adams.

Five days left to pre-order The Book of the Red King in hardcover or paperback from Phoenicia Publishing, nab a discount, and support the small press directly. (Hardcovers will only be available from the publisher; paperbacks will be available widely.)

Praise for THE BOOK OF THE RED KING

"Marly Youmans is brilliant, perhaps a genius. Her poems tell a story, offering us a vision of, well, I would say the Trinity, but that is only one possible interpretation. After a difficult and sometimes dangerous journey, a Red King, a Fool, and Precious Wentletrap converge into one, a resurrection that is heavenly. Is it true, or is it fable or fairytale? "When I want to write a new book," she has said, "I run across the land and leap off the edge of the known world." Her formal poems are impeccable and include sestinas, villanelles, rondels, rhyming schemes she may have invented, and perfect metrical patterns. Every poet can learn from this poet, and the reader—the reader will be spellbound."
--Kelly Cherry, poet, novelist, and former Poet Laureate of Virginia

"The Book of the Red King by Marly Youmans is an ambitious, magical book about the nature of power and language.  The Red King and the Fool, while they control different realms, make us consider whether it is better to rule on earth or in one’s imagination. In these gorgeous poems, Youmans makes the case for both.  Whatever side we take, Youmans reminds us of the paradox in each.  Even if we side with the Fool in this world of “hurt joy,” we are left with the realm of poetry.   It is not a bad trade.  For those who love well-formed poems and for those who love fantasy, this is a must-read and a distinctive, evocative voice. There is no one like Marly Youmans."
--Kim Bridgford, celebrated poet, editor, and director of the global conference, Poetry by the Sea
​
"Marly Youmans occupies an imaginative space that straddles both the present and the mythological past. It is the territory of Yeats and Tolkien, and Youmans shares not only a taste for primal imagery with these great poets, but also their love of rhyme, rhythm and sound."
--A. M. Juster, award-winning poet and translator

*

Clive with St. George, the dragon, maiden,
and his late, lamented little jackanapes...

About Clive Hicks-Jenkins

Clive Hicks-Jenkins was born in Newport, south Wales, in 1951. The early part of his career was as a choreographer and stage director. In the 1990s he turned away from theatre to concentrate on painting. He has been praised by critics in The Independent, Modern Painters and Art Review. Simon Callow has called him ‘one of the most individual and complete artists of our time' and Nicholas Usherwood in Galleries has described his work as ‘reflective, expressive painting of the highest order.’

New poems at Mezzo Cammin

Three newish poems online at the polar bear issue! Bites from the openings:

Melville at Mooring

So frail and nearly mad, too old for seas,
Recalling Greylock like a cresting wave,

and
Zodiac

One of them is wandering with Bartram,
Tasting breast-of-heron, vision shaken

and
Family Storybook: Peter Rabbit

In the yard with the thrum of hummingbirds,
With zinnias rioting from coffee cans,

I see lots of familiar names, including old friend Jeanne Larsen. Thank you to poet and editor Kim Bridgford.

2 at Mezzo Cammin

Two newish poems are up at Mezzo Cammin: the tetrameter "The Soul Considered as a Boat" and "The Thursday of Mysteries," an ekphrastic pentameter poem (after "Christ Washing the Feet of the Apostles" by Meister des Hausbuches, 1475.) 

Kim Bridgford, poet and editor and more, with a comment on Facebook: Delighted to share the new issue of Mezzo Cammin! Thrilled to feature so many wonderful poets including Catherine Chandler, Rebekah Curry, Anna M. Evans, Nicole Caruso Garcia, Vernita Hall, Katie Hoerth, Michele Leavitt, Barbara Loots, Joan Cacciatore Mazza, Kathleen McClung, Becca Menon, Diane Moomey, Sally Nacker, Stella Nickerson, Samantha Pious, Monica Raymond, Jennifer Reeser, Jane Schulman, Katherine Barrett Swett, Paula Tatarunis (Featured Poet), Ann Thompson, Jo Vance, Lucy Wainger, Gail White, Cheryl Whitehead, Liza McAlister Williams, Sherraine Williams, and Marly Youmans. The featured visual artist is Alice Mizrachi, whose cover is based on a quote by Russell Goings. Wendy Videlock has written a beautiful essay on the work of Paula Tartarunis, our featured poet. For my own part, I was happy to spend some time with new books by Luann Landon and Alexandra Oliver, both of whom address issues of home. Thanks from the bottom of my heart, as always, to Anna M. Evans for all of her digital time and expertise, and to Pete Duval, my husband, who has provided technical time and support on every issue.

Poems at Mezzo Cammin

New at Mezzo Cammin: "A Curious Incident," a poem from the manuscript of The Book of the Red King; and "Rider Entering a Ruined City," a poem I wrote for painter and occasional penpal Graham Ward (UK.) Unfortunately, I cannot find an image of Graham's painting--thought I had saved it--but shall post later if I unearth one.

At Mezzo Cammin

Update: Now we know that I'm either insane or very much too busy because that's not the new issue! Not only that, but I read it and wrote about it earlier. I'm going to go put my head in a bucket. Good night!

Again I'm in one of my very favorite online 'zines, Mezzo Cammin, edited by poet Kim Bridgford. Mezzo Cammin is home to formal poems by women. Here is a taste--titles and opening lines. To see more, click and leap here.

Notes on the poems: 
The poem about Carolyn Wyeth (one of Andrew Wyeth's daughters) was written after seeing a Wyeth family show at the Fenimore Museum in Cooperstown. Until then, I didn't know much about the two daughters as painters, as one hears mostly about N. C., Andrew, and Jamie Wyeth. And here's a link to a piece about and photograph of the bride, groom, and magnolia bouquet (my maternal grandparents.)  "My Lover Sang to Me" is for Michael, my husband. "The Dream of the King's Clothes" was written after looking at photographs of cloth made from the silk of the golden orb spider. The beauty of the material and the slowness of the Peers and Godley project interested me. The setting for "Eldest" is the Cathedral of All Saints (Episcopal) in Albany, New York. That one's for Benjamin.

Portrait of Carolyn Wyeth with Leaves

Leaves moving in the evening light and air—
Some are lit from within, irregular


Bride, with Magnolia Blossom

The piano-and-fiddle tune is faint,
As light as eyes in the daguerreotype…


My Lover Sang to Me

He sang a ballad in my ear;
     Song echoed like a shell.


The Dream of the King's Clothes

Seven years we toiled, collecting the orb
Spiders at dawn, coaxing the spinnerets


Eldest

Firstborn, strange in the womb, too-late turner, brow-positioned—
     In the cathedral I wandered to the Lady Chapel

Hodgepodgery

Chapter header by Clive Hicks-Jenkins for Glimmerglass
Photo from the Artlog

On the Move 

I'll be off soon, abandoning the rest of the family to do some events for Glimmerglass and attend to some other matters. Events are scheduled for: Norfolk, Virginia (SIBA trade show and "Moveable Feast of Authors" plus "Double Trouble" reading in town with Luisa Igloria); Athens, Georgia (a reading with Philip Lee Williams); Sylva, North Carolina; Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Take a look at my Events page to see those and other upcoming readings, talks, or signings. Safe mayst thou wander, safe return again! --Shakespeare

excerpt, Dr. Dalrymple on Hamlet

The lines that seem to me crucial in Hamlet are those that occur in act 3, scene 2, in which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern seek, at Claudius’s behest, to sound out the reasons for Hamlet’s strange behavior, so akin to madness. Hamlet asks Guildenstern to play upon a pipe. “I know no touch of it, my lord,” he replies, and when Hamlet insists, pointing out the stops, Guildenstern says, “But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony; I have not the skill.” Hamlet then says:

Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me. You would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery. You would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak? ’Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.

This passage is of enormous significance on many levels—personal, philosophical, psychological, and even political. For the mystery of Hamlet, that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern would “pluck out,” is the mystery of what it is to be a human being. If we could pluck out that mystery, then we should be able to play upon people as upon a pipe, treat them as objects rather than as subjects. (More Dalrymple on Hamlet here.)

Kim Bridgford and poetry

Please see the foot of the prior post on how to support poet Kim Bridgford in the current trying situation at West Chester's Poetry Center. And in the meantime, here is a snip from an interview with her.

Poetry is an intimate art, and it communicates intensely about the most important moments of our lives: birth, death, marriage, love and loss, heartache. It delights in language and form, and shares that delight with others. We wouldn’t perish without poetry, but we would be considerably less.

Poems at Mezzo Cammin

What Consoles the Fool

Glossary by Twilight

Invisibles

Take a look at the new issue--lots of familiar and not-so-familiar names in the realm of women-who-write-formal-poems. Also, please look at the just-prior and brand new post about "The Magician's Card," an essay written for Fujimura Institute.

6 poems at Mezzo Cammin

Update: I suppose this is a hat tip to poet Ned Balbo for saying on facebook that he especially liked "Legends of the Virgin Martyrs" because that made me suddenly realize that the post should be "7 poems at Mezzo Cammin." The unfortunate virgins have suffered yet another injury . . . .

* * *

I'm feeling celebratory, as I'm just home from a tournament--child no. 3 won two matches (one technical fall and one pin) and had a forfeit (and yesterday won his dual with a pin as well)--and my husband will be home from Kyrgyzstan in the small hours of this very night. And so it's good to have a little flourish of my own to share--some poems at Mezzo Cammin, edited by poet and West Chester Poetry Conference director Kim Bridgford. Thanks to to her for much hard work of sifting and and arranging!

Love for a Stranger

Sixteen Hundred Years

In the Outer Darkness of Middangeard

The Village Whispers

Yeats Wishes to Be Magus

Sir Gawain to His Shield

And there are lots more poems in the issue. The poets are Liz Ahl, Shaune Bornholdt, Rebecca Guess Cantor, Joanna Cattonar, Claudia Gary, Carrie Jerrell, Ann Kolakowski, Jenna Le, Diane Lockward, Barbara Loots, Katherine McClung, Susan MacLean, Angela O'Donnell, Jessica Piazza, Rosemarie Rowley, Maxine Silverman, Katherine Smith, Linda Stern, and Karrie Waarala.

In the Shadow of the Jasmine

Below please find a reprint from Mezzo Cammin; if you would like more, there are more poems by me in the same issue, as well in almost every issue in the archives. And, thanks to poet and editor Kim Bridgford, there are plenty of poems in the journal that rejoice in depth, feeling, rhythm, the sound of words, and shapeliness.

Note on the poem and recent publications: This poem appears in The Foliate Head (UK: Stanza Press, 2012.) My other recent poetry books are the long-poem adventure in blank verse, Thaliad (Montreal: Phoenicia Publishing), and a collection, The Throne of Psyche from Mercer University Press, 2011. (My most recent novel is A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage from Mercer, 2012, winner of The Ferrol Sams Award / current ForeWord BOTYA finalist.) All four are available fromt he usual sources, though the hardcover version of Thaliad is available only through Phoenicia.

In the wake of Mark Edmundson's assault on contemporary poetry, I suggest that readers might look beyond the usually-pushed poets. (If you have a favorite, please tell!) I've only read the Ron Charles review but should be getting a copy of the original Edmundson piece today. 

Their poems “are good in their ways,” he concedes. “They simply aren’t good enough. They don’t slake a reader’s thirst for meanings that pass beyond the experience of the individual poet and light up the world we hold in common.” --Ron Charles quotes Mark Edmundson

More to come on that topic, I imagine...

Update. Thanks to Death Zen for an email copy of the Edmundson piece. And, a bit later, thanks to John O' Grady for a link to a .pdf copy: http://treeturtle.com/poetryslam.pdf. I am reading it now and would love to hear what other people think.

In the Shadow of Jasmine 

       in the shade--the eternal jasmine's--
       with immaculate joy.
             --Wasyl Barka, "The Mad Woman"

As white as jasmine though more crystalline,
The snow goes on for miles around the house
Under a freighted, leaning sky of ice.
So it has been for months--first the water
Flowing choppily between us, and next
Torrential time, widening the spaces.
Then came the soft relentlessness of snow.
At first I thought one second was enough
To alter us forever and bereave
My soul of you--and so it was--but then
Your face went slipping through my memory
Like water that no human hands can hold
Until I ran along the banks of death,
Stumbling, cutting my feet, calling your name,
And there I glimpsed the shade of you, not torn
In pieces by mad terror's strike . . . To think,
They've named me mad who had divinest sense
Of love for you that would not ebb and die
As others wished, as others would commend!
I knew your voice, your body wavering
As if in ancient glass--you steadied, were
A vision of full-bodied soul, my love,
Who elsewhere lay in fragments in the grave,
And there along the shrapnel-edge of death,
We made the only vows we'll ever have,
To walk past time into the jasmine shade
Where fragrance may be music, where our love
May fuse with light, where we're not as we were.

At night my sheets are white as miles of snow;
My body, restless, aches for what is not,
And when I sleep my dreams are jasmine-lit.
I wander in the moonlight, break the stems
Of closed-up jasmine flowers just at dawn
And make them into tea. Sun's corolla 
Transforms into a single jessamine.

Above your bones I draw in snow a bloom
That glints as if it were a diamond brooch--
A scentless thing with dust at every heart
Of every flake of snow. No matter how
Broken, each crystal star is beautiful,
Fallen from perfection into a world
Infinitely precious, infinitely
Small against the dark and galaxies.
My love, my love, there is no terror here
But only grief that passes and a joy
I cannot share, these stars upon my skin.
I bend to taste the snow, and it is sweet. 

Mezzo Cammin, again--

Six poems of mine are up at Mezzo Cammin, edited by poet Kim Bridgford. Below find a taste, the first three lines of each. Three of the six poems will be in The Book of the Red King, some day.

If you would like to read more of my poems, check the contributors' notes--mine has links to other poems in earlier issues. Recent in-print poetry books of mine are: Thaliad (just out, a post-apocalyptic epic in blank verse from Phoenicia Publishing in Montreal, with wonderful art from Clive Hicks-Jenkins); The Foliate Head (a 2012 collection of poems from Stanza Press in the UK, also with art--green men!--from Clive); and The Throne of Psyche (a 2011 collection from Mercer University Press.) See tabs above for more about each--available worldwide in hardcover, as well as paperback for two of the books.

Little Epithalamium

As soul and body join,

As God was born in flesh,

As Psyche married Love,

L-O-V-E

In glittering clouds of snow the Red King sits

And meditates, and the word LOVE is all

His mantra:  L’s the scoop that hurls his thoughts

The Bloodroot Fool

Corm-sprung

And nectarless,

Blown from another world,

Great Work of Time

The Alchemist to the Fool

This you must know:

                                     the world is a bright glass,

Reflecting all the universe

Spring in Fall                      

World new-washed with a raindrop on the tip

Of every yellow leaf, strung and hung

For miles into the distance . . . all dew and new,

The Sheaf of Wheat

Subtle, suffused light in the sheaf of grain

Is pale gold that’s almost silver,

Like, in a certain leaning light, the rain,

The Next Big Thing - author meme

Lovely poet friend Luisa Igloria invited me to join the self-interview experiment called The Next Big Thing. Writers participating get to answer 8-10 questions, and then tag five other writer friends to post their own “next big thing” the following Wednesday. I'll add a list of the writers later.

1. What is the working title of your book?

In 2012, my ninth, tenth, and eleventh books came out--a thing that, combined with a stint as judge for the National Book Award in Young People's Literature, seems and was insanity.

The first was a novel, A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, winner of The Ferrol Sams Award for Fiction (Mercer University Press.) This book combines various threads from family lore into a new fabric of adventure. Soon it will be out in paperback.

Then came a collection of formal poetry, The Foliate Head (UK: Stanza Press), wonderfully decorated with green man art by my friend Clive Hicks-Jenkins. It hasn't been out long but is a limited edition.

And last is December's Thaliad (Montreal: Phoenicia Publishing) a post-apocalyptic narrative in blank verse, centering on seven children who leave home.

So 2012 saw three books in three genres in three countries. As Thaliad is the most recent, I will focus on it. (Upcoming books: Catherwood will be back in print; Glimmerglass; and Maze of Blood.)

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

In July of 2010, the story simply appeared in the curious corridors of my brain. I never expected to publish the poem as a book (an epic poem? in 2012?) but wrote entirely for my own pleasure. I published a section of the fourth part in qarrtsiluni, and afterward received the surprise of several requests to publish based on the excerpt. (Another fragment of the poem appeared in Kim Bridgford's Mezzo Cammin.) One was from Elizabeth Adams (managing editor of quarrtsiluni with Dave Bonta), and I decided she was the most appropriate publisher. And I like her Phoenicia Publishing. In fact, if you don't know her small press, please go take a look.

3. What is the genre of the book?

Blank verse poetry that hews to epic conventions, translated into our day. Some novelistic conventions.

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Why should a book be a movie? That is the proper question. Because for once a mid-list writer might make a living? Because people don't read poetry?

Unknown child actors, for the most part.

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

If I had wanted it to be one-sentence long, I would have written it so!

Their world destroyed, seven children fare forth to make a new world? Children build a matriarchal world in the face of natural-world and human violence after devastation? The long effort to build something of beauty and meaning in the face of catastrophe?

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency/publisher?

Phoenicia Publishing of Montreal. Owned by that native New Yorker, Elizabeth Adams, designer and artist and writer and more.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I wrote it in an intense burst through July and into the beginning of August. Then I fiddled a long time.

8. What other works would you compare this book to within your genre?

I am going to have to take that one as a question about artistic debt, since I don't think the book is like much contemporary work. No doubt I would never have written such a poem if I had never read the Anglo-Saxon poets, the Gawain poet, Chaucer, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, Logue, and others. A reader versed in poetry may detect some homage to Homer, the Anglo-Saxons, Milton, and Cavafy. And though it is post-apocalyptic, I would say that the narrative owes a bigger debt to a passion for fairy tales than to an interest in, say, the current spate of post-apocalyptic novels. I am afraid that I have read none of them, aside from those read in 2012 while on the NBA judging panel, and that was too late to influence Thaliad.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

It blossomed in my head. No doubt the reading mentioned above made a difference. I also have a fondness for blank verse. Every time I try to add a sentence about why, it sounds downright erotic. Flexible. Pleasurable. Easy-to-muscular rhythms.

10. What else about your book/your writing might pique the reader’s interest?

Thaliad is a spectacularly beautiful object, from the jacket or cover to the framing full-page illustrations to the title page to the wealth of gorgeous vignettes by Clive Hicks-Jenkins. The design by Elizabeth Adams is immaculate. The profuse art that decorates the pages subtly adds to the narrative.

Marly-links, Mezzo Cammin

It seems that I am the most-published-in-Mezzo-Cammin poet--that's good, since I am fond of the magazine and have respect for Kim Bridgford as editor and poet. Since she directs The West Chester Poetry Conference, I managed to talk to her a few times last week, as well as hear a reading from her poems. I've been in ten issues since first discovering the magazine; here are some links, should you like to ramble around in Kim's picks from my poems: 

2012.1, 2011.2, 2011.1, 2010.2, 2010.1, 2009.2, 2009.1, 2008.2, 2008.1, & 2007.1.

Mezzo Cammin, again--

New poems--"The Fool and the Owl" from The Book of the Red King manuscript, "Self-portrait as Meadow," and "Hurdler, Age 12"--are up at Kim Bridgford's wonderful Mezzo Cammin.

9 poems in "Mezzo Cammin"

Nine bites from the nine poems up at the brand new issue of Mezzo Cammin, edited by poet Kim Bridgford: lots of good company, too!  The last poem is an excerpt from Thaliad, forthcoming from Phoenicia Publishing in Montreal. The eight preceded are from the manuscript, The Book of the Red King. I'll be sending that one out by the end of the year.

The Desire for the Red King 

Certain people live among our kind,
So strange they might be gold or cinnabar,
So different from us in turn of mind.


"My Poor Fool Is Hanged"

Who knows why the pages strung him up?
For nine hours he was hung at tower-top,
Roped by a foot, one leg crossing the other,


Scholastic Interlude

The college came and begged the Fool to teach;
They gave him bags of silver and a wand
For rapping on the desks of boys and girls. 


All Hallowed Angels Say

A rondel of the Fool

All hallowed angels say, not sing
Their messages and starry praise
Because the aura of bright haze


The Fool's Confession

When the Fool confesses to the Priest,
The world reels on its axis, and a gust
Of blackened leaves and feathers tears the field


The Peacock's Tail

Three days of snow. The blackened world turns white.
The garden urns hoist up their wedding cakes.
An iron table lifts the crystal coffin where


The Fool Tells Children a Story at the Solstice

Once was a particle of dust
Named Hob; and one day a big gust

Of wind whooshed him into the air,


The Red King's Word

When your stepmother shoves you out the door
Barefoot, in a gauzy smock and cobweb cape,
Do not repine. Cry not! Draw from your heart


from Thaliad

I. Luring the Starlit Muse

Year 67 After the Fire
Emma declares what she knows about the time before the fire 
and calls on a starlit muse, the only love she will ever have, 
to tell the hero's saga of The House of Thalia and Thorn.

It was the age beyond the ragged time
When all that matters grew disorderly--
When artworks changed, expressive, narcissist,

Praise for "The Throne of Psyche": Kim Bridgford

When I think of Marly Youmans’ work, the word that comes to mind is “magic.” By this, I mean not only her language, but her evocation of mystery. Youmans’ poems always seem utterly new and startlingly familiar. Moreover, she has admirable range in terms of subject matter and tone. While I tend to favor her poems about the mythological, Youmans shows astonishing skill, whatever the subject. She is a poet working at the height of her powers.

          Kim Bridgford, editor, Mezzo Cammin
          Director, West Chester University Poetry Conference

The Throne of Psyche (Mercer University Press, 2011)

This week, Mezzo Cammin twice--

The new issue of "Mezzo Cammin" is up--
work by Taylor Jillian Altman, Sarah Busse,
Nicole Caruso Garcia, Brittany Hill, Lisa Huffaker,
 Jean Kreiling, Barbara Loots, Charlotte Mandel,
Annabelle Moseley, Angela Alaimo O'Donnell,
Ann Walker Phillips, Carolyn Raphael, Hollins Robbins,
Catherine Tufariello, Doris Watts, Joyce Wilson,
and Marly Youmans.
As ever, I am the little red caboose.

Below are some 3-line tastes of my poems from the just-posted issue of Mezzo Cammin, edited by poet Kim Bridgford. I hope you are enticed enough to go read the rest--mine and all the other poems! My four poems are from The Book of the Red King, and there are other of my Red King poems elsewhere on the site.

Coming up next: I will be reading at the West Chester Poetry Conference with Mezzo Cammin on Friday morning. Information and listed readers are under the excerpts. Hope to see some early risers there!


The Rose of Laughter, Laughter of the Rose

The cats are tucked in the sphinx position.
The Fool kneels down to imitate the cats.


His hat, a black-and-white boy-balzo, rolls

The Grail

The Fool knows better. He knows all the things
The world says. He knows every rippling field
And every shower of orchard petals


The Fool and the Sublime

And when the Red King sings on top the tower called the Spear
While the full moon, delicate and bright and ringed with rainbow,
Rises like a vast soap bubble over the chimney pots

 
The Red King's Blossom-Tide

The Red King's orchard-close is blossoming,
And fragrance reaches as far as ships at sea
And regions of the far barbarians.





Friday, June 10, 2011
8:15-9:45 a.m.
PANEL 9: Mezzo Cammin Fifth-Anniversary Reading


Kim Bridgford (Chair)
Rhina Espaillat
Julie Kane
Leslie Monsour
Annabelle Moseley
Marly Youmans

 

"The Book of the Red King" at "Mezzo Cammin"

Eight poems from The Book of the Red King, a sequence I began in mid-October and for which I am still writing new poems, are up at the Mezzo Cammin fifth-anniversary issue. I have never written so many poems so quickly, and I find that these are in some mysterious, subterranean way very close to my heart. Perhaps it is because I am a secretly a courtly Fool . . .

Somehow I have a desire for my Red King and the Fool and Precious Wentletrap and the Tarot Witch and the Flower Queen and all the other characters from this sequence to wander out in the world and meet people. I want them to make friends.

Thanks to editor-poet Kim Bridgford, and confetti-with-fish to all the other contributors!

Here's title and opening lines from each of my poems:

About the Red Book

What does it mean to be a king?

To have the birds flock to your arms?
Gather flocks of men or cattle?

The Starry Fool

In a shivering of bells
The Fool comes shining, shimmering
Unseen along the moonshine way.

The King and the Fool

American Skittles, Jeu de Roi, Toptafel

The royal toymaker brings in a game
And sets it on the table by the king.
As wide and long as a coffin for a dwarf,

The Two Tables

The King sets a table for the Fool,
Arranging the cloth and the whittled spool

That's wound with gilt and silver thread,

The Moon of Precious Wentletrap

The moon is ripe, and so the Fool will dream
His moon-round dream of Precious Wentletrap:
Each moon she climbs the staircase of his dream,

The Birthday Cap

It is the Fool's birthday, so the Red King
Gives him another birthday cap: this time
It is yellow, as yellow as a ring

The Turret Stairs

Some nights the Red King climbs the twisted stair
That narrows like a precious wentletrap,
And at the top he pauses to admire

Directions for a Birthday Hat

Take willow peelings, stained to black, and steam
Them in fresh water from a running stream:
Weave into the shape desired--the tea

Now take my hand and jump to www.mezzocammin.com, where if you click on Poetry, you can find many wonders--and me, down at the bottom with XYZ.

Readings for the 12 Days of Christmas: Mezzo Cammin

I stayed up till 3:00 working on a promised Anglo-Saxon translation and talking with my daughter, and now must finish cleaning the remains of the flood--in-laws are due tomorrow. So for today's 12 Days of Christmas reading I shall quickly pilfer some poems from that lovely online venue, Mezzo Cammin, edited by Kim Bridgford and featuring formal poems by women.

Enjoy!

Maryann Corbett

Fist

It looks like knucklebones, the way the lines
fist up in fours, each rhyme a hardened stud
under a leather glove. Or meat-fork tines.
You stab with them; the puncture holes ooze blood.

It's built for doing damage. It's compact.
It lays its weapons down in ordered rows,
puts on its ninja costume, silk and black
and disciplined, adopts its kung fu pose,
waits. Is silent.

*************Then it whirls around,
flips on its superpowered X-ray glance,
and THWACK! your nemesis is on the ground.
(And, God, the satisfaction when he lands.)

You feel like watching someone's entrails twist?
Write one of these. A sonnet is a fist.


Jennifer Reeser


from Sonnets from the Dark Lady

1

In the old age black was not counted fair,. . .

The world knows black as universal sin.
No Paris stylist passionately swearing
The chic are rendered chicer, thin more thin,
Persuades the bon vivant into its wearing.
In black, the child is chased away, affection
And understanding, though it clothe demurely;
Compassion, color run from the complexion.
But since life thrives through compromises, surely
Let raven, sable, rook be my disguise.
Make murk my brow, in ashes root my hair,
That while I live, none but my master's eyes
May gain one aureole to find me fair,
And thereby--in fair finding--obfuscate
My mirror's counter and uncountered mate.


Barbara Crooker


Stone Fruit (A Sevenling)

Now they come in, all at once:
peaches, nectarines, plums; thin skins
that can barely hold the fruit, the juice.

But what I'm hungry for is cold soup:
cucumber with dill and yogurt, fiery gazpacho,
velvet avocado, with a curl of shrimp on top.

And at the heart of all flesh, a pit.


Annie Finch

Elegy for Her Mother

For K.V.

When your mother joined October,
took the questions from the earth
with her body, left you shining
with your answers, how did earth
close around her? Was it startled

by a further laugh of grain?
Did a field of hard earth open
over her, till she was grain?

Was she brought to flame again
in the mothers' month, October,
when the dead come closing in?
Was she made to a green flame
by a further laugh of grain?

Did a field of hard earth open
over her, till she was grain?
Was she brought to flame again?

12 Readings in Advent: Kim Bridgford

Twelve days, and then Christmas: as a lead-up to the day and as a kind of aerial gift, I'm going to post poems and excerpts from books that I read this year or am reading now or plan to read soon. (I have such a mighty stack of these that I may have to roll right on through the Twelve Days of Christmas.) I have many friends with new books, and some of these snips will be from their recent books.

The first (or counting down, twelfth) selection is from Kim Bridgford's 2003 book, Undone (David Robert Books). Kim is the bright star behind one of my favorite online magazines, Mezzo Cammin, and she is the new director of the West Chester University Poetry Center. She founded The Mezzo Cammin Timeline Project, a database of women poets around the world. Until recently, she was professor at Fairfield University, where she also edited Dogwood and was a faculty member in the MFA program on Enders Island. She is the author of four books: Undone; Instead of Maps; Sonnets about World Records (winner of the Donald Justice Prize); and the forthcoming Take-Out: Sonnets about Fortune Cookies.

I like what she does here with half-embodying abstractions with leaves and drifts (dead silvery leaves that lead toward her use of snow) and snow (blinding and blotting-out like a calendar with no numbers, endless, white), and I like how she turns upside down that old image of angels dancing on the head of a pin (attributed to the medieval Scholastics, probably falsely) to the pin point and pain. The tears on lashes link up beautifully, as natural as drops of moisture on a sprig of fir. After using rhymes that are almost entirely slant (and sometimes set so far apart as to be merely visual: snow/now, eternity/why), she closes down the poem with the knock of a firm rhyme that unseats us from earth and leaves us in a griefstruck realm of despair and air. Not a jolly poem, but Advent is a good time to think about eternal things . . .

IN THE LEAVES

After all your relatives have died,

There is nothing but the ache of dread,

Or worse: a savage emptiness around

The mutterings that you mistake for sound.

But they're just you--and what your mind believes

Is sorrow wrapped in sequences of leaves,

Like silver drifts of form. You find the past--

What never happened and what doesn't last--

Is like that. You don't know what happens now,

The calendar unthinkable as snow.

But at dawn, startled, you awake to pain

As if your family were dancing on a pin,

Your lashes full of tears. Who would know why

You're the one this side of eternity?

Every evening you are like the air:

Whispers of invisible despair.