Pushcart news

Thanks to Joseph Salemi, editor of the print-and-also-pdf magazine Trinacria, for nominating "The Nuba Christians" for a Pushcart Prize. The poem and another called "The Midden Cross" are in issue 11--first time I have sent there. Mr. Salemi is a highly opinionated poet and professor, but his strongest demand for poetry appears to be that it be formal and well-wrought.

As guest editor at The Raintown Review, he once accepted a poem of mine, "A Fire in Ice" (a riposte to a Billy Collins poem, "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes." That one has proved to be popular, as such things go... Here's a video of it.

I think this is my third recent nomination, but I have been quite bad about keeping track of such things, so who knows? Shall resolve to do better... I think that the last one to get a nomination was "I Heard Their Wings Like the Sound of Many Waters" (click for digital copy and audio version), nominated by qarrtsiluni in 2011 (Dave Bonta and Elizabeth Adams, founders and managing editors, Fiona Robyn and Kaspalita Thompson, issue editors.)

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Update: I just remembered another recent-ish one. The late (and very great inventer of 'zines) Paul Stevens nominated "The Clock of the Moon and Stars," published in his 'zine, The Flea.

The Tree Finder

Follow Marly's board The Foliate Head (UK: Stanza Press, 2012) on Pinterest.

Here's a poem from The Foliate Head for tree-and-word lovers. It originally appeared at the Dave Bonta and Beth Adams e-zine, qarrtsiluni, as part of "Two Poems from the Plant Kingdom." A recording and lots of interesting comments on the poems are here. (As it's not as freely available in the states as a US-published collection, I'll just add that the book is available by ordering directly from Stanza Press (UK) and the usual online sites, as well as by special order via indies.)

WIELDING THE TREE FINDER

Do you ramble the ground—are you a tree and yet a forest,
     does your great bulk blossom in one night
     like an elephant singing a love-song to the moon,
     do you transform to a reservoir for water and stars,
     do you grow hollow for whistling,
     do you become an ossuary,
     do you hold African mummies in your heart,
     are you baobab?

Were you sacred to healers and priests who haunted oak groves,
     golden shoulder pins on their woven garments,
     your parasite branches in their hands
     —the raspberry girl slaughtered, seeds between her teeth—
     were you sharpened to a Norseman’s spearpoint,
     did your mischief kill a god, fairest of the Aesir,
     do you draw warmth of kisses to an orb of leaves,
     are you mistletoe?

Are the rosy pastors and the bulbuls feasting on your seeds,
     are you red and hairy like Esau,
     are your flowers good in bowls of curried pottage,
     are you a tree of red silk cotton,
     bombax malabarica?

Were you a thousand scented pillars
     around the forecourt of an emperor,
     are you malleable in the whittler’s palm,
     are you swooning-pale and infant-smooth,
     are you a parasite tethered to roots of others,
     are you sandalwood?

Are you loose-tethered, a yielder of leaves to wind,
     are you a sender-out of roots, are you clone,
     is a forest of your kind a single sentience,
     and in fall are you quivering yellow,
     boreal, afflicted with melancholy,
     a breather of mists and cold,
     are you quaking aspen?

Do your flowers steam with fragrance as the heat increases,
     do the chrysomelids rut within your clutch of petals,
     do your blossoms shatter as the beetles copulate,
     are you Amazonian—are you annona sericea?

Are you a kingdom, are you castles in the air,
     are you a garden of Babylon in mist,
     are your branches colonies of dreaming epiphytes,
     are the flicking tails of lizards lost inside your cities,
     are you flying above the prayers of the Maori,
     are you kauri, the tree that must forgive?

Were you as dense and black as mythic thrones of Hades,
     were you strong, were you midnight ripped in lengths,
     were you foretelling gleams—Victoria’s jet beads—
     were you heavier than the fat man’s coffin,
     were you Pharoah’s favorite chair,
     are you ebony?

Are you dawn redwood or frangipani,
     are you whistle thorn or cannonball,
     are you linden, myrtle, jacaranda,
     are you sourwood or silverbell,
     are you a branch of good and evil,
     are you the lemurs’ Ravenala,
     are you Yggdrasil, axis of nine worlds,
     are you a cross whose branches reach forever,
     are you water-tapping, cloud-catching, sun-devouring,
     are you leaf, are you branch, are you root, are you tree?

Epic and epic hair!

An epic adventure and adventures in epic hair

Thaliad

Here's link to a qarrtsiluni podcast of a fragment of that wild adventure in verse, Thaliad--one in which the children make an early, terrible mistake that colors the rest of their lives. You can also find pieces of the poem at Mezzo Cammin (scroll down) and Scribd.

Seni Crines

If you have an interest in ancient art, you will be fascinated by the video of how hair stylist and scholar Janet Stephens recreated the seven-braid crown seni crines hairstyle worn by Roman vestal virgins with only simple tools--a comb, t-pin, bodkins, and a woolen cord. She bases the design primarily on the vestal virgin in the Uffizi but looks at many models as well. Her aim was to prove that vestals did  not have to be wearing wigs to achieve their complex fashion.

More on hair archaeology

Stephens also is looking at aristocratic Romans and their stylings, such as edifices of hair worn by Faustina the Younger and Empress Plotina. Another video here.

Northern Lights

Northern Lights x 2

Here's a new digital picture by my daughter Rebecca, who finished up a second year in filmmaking at Bard College and is soon going off to The Center for Cartoon Studies. Northern Lights. See more here. To go with it, here's a poem of mine (published last April) that has to do with the northern lights. There's a podcast of my reading of the poem as well.

He lives in a bowling alley!

Managing editor of Weird Fiction Review and copy editor of Cheeky Frawg e-books, Adam Mills reviews "Childe Phoenix" in a roundup piece (you can read the entire roundup here):

“Prolegomenon to the Adventures of Childe Phoenix” by Marly Youmans: Lightspeed Magazine recently reprinted this story, which I enjoyed immensely. It’s a coming of age story, more or less, that uses its fabulism and imagery as an extension of the protagonist’s emotional state. His father is an alchemist, his mother is a ghost, his sister lies in a glass coffin in suspended animation, and the house is falling apart around them. The sheer strangeness and poignancy of it is what keeps you reading. In a way, it reminded me of the intense emotional fantasy of some of Bruno Schulz’s stories.

The thing that I loved about this tiny review (aside from the fact that I am compared to Bruno Schulz) is that it made me see my own story in a new light; I had not thought of the mother as a ghost, not at all, but I can see that it works as a way to read the story--and certainly her nature is just as strange, appearing and disappearing without rhyme or reason, and as helpless to stop what she does not like.

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.

Good morning, world--

Coughing the dark to bits means rolling out of bed and having time to watch the sun leak into the late-winter, early-spring sky. A wan sunrise over Sleeping Lion (or whatever it's called. Lying Lion? Meatloaf-position Lion?) Kingfisher tower just an admonitory finger from the shallows of the lake. Chill northern birds attempting with faint cries to rooster the sun into its proper place. Everywhere, a summer craving. The whole world bent on a desire for sun's bright roistering.

New online:
Last night: "The Fugitive Light" at qarrtsiluni 
In the past week: "Sakura" at International Arts Movement's The Curator
Also: chapter one of A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage at Scribd

The Fugitive Light

qarrtsiluni

Imitation
January-April 2012
Editors: Siona van Dijk and Dave Bonta

"The Fugitive Light" is up at qarrtsiluni, one of those interesting 'zines where one can leave comments and have a discussion with readers. So I shall turn comments off here in honor of the hard work of Siona van Dijk and Dave Bonta. This one is, I believe, my favorite issue so far. qarrtsiluni is managed by Dave Bonta and Beth Adams.

Note on the poem: “The Fugitive Light” pays homage to the young Richard Wilbur of The Beautiful Changes and Other Poems (1947). However, the subject matter of the death of the beloved comes from the elder Mr. Wilbur and his poem “The House” (Anterooms, 2010), evoking his late wife and the longing that comes after death parts those who had the fortune of a happy marriage. Likewise I have ended with the simplicity of his late poems.


Read or download chapter one of A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage: at Scribd.

La dame aux camélias, no. 1

Beth Adams--publisher-editor of Phoenica Publishing, qarrtsiluni managing co-editor with Dave Bonta, writer, artist, singer, and much more--has posted the first part of an interview with me.

La dame aux camélias: talking to Marly, part 1

Please take a look! You'll not that there's evidently a poet's rule that Beth and I must wear a black shirt, similar glasses, have hair of a certain length, and no makeup--bit comic. Unfortunately we couldn't both manage tall. The picture was taken across the street from my house by Beth's husband, Jonathan Sa'adah.

Comments are off here, as I'd much rather she have them.

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Cooperstown-Oneonta area readers, the reading at The Green Toad Bookstore has been changed to April 12th at 7 p.m.

My Christmas card, 2011

Graham Ward, "Angel Entering a City"
Pilfered from Clive Hicks-Jenkins's Artlog--
thank you, Graham and Clive!


It is the last of Advent, and what a strange time it has been! Beautiful, lucky things have happened--heartfelt letters from writers I respect and homecomings and unforgettable hours.  My children are all in the nest, and we are five again.  One deeply sad thing has happened--a friend, self-slain--that reminds me of our great human hunger for love and mercy, now and always.

Today is Christmas Eve, and there is much to birth before the day is done. Greetings to you and a merry Christmas to you and wishes for that ever-desired love and mercy to follow you all the days of the coming year.

Attributions:  The painting by Graham Ward has already been shared by my friend Clive on his Artlog. I picked it in honor of the now-underway collaboration I'm doing with Graham, to be finished by June in time for an opening.  Original source for poem:  http://qarrtsiluni.com/2011/11/16/i-heard-their-wings-like-the-sound-of-many-waters/#comments  Forthcoming in The Foliate Head (UK:  Stanza Press.) Thanks to editors Dave Bonta and Beth Adams for nominating the poem for a Pushcart Prize. Thanks to issue editors Fiona Robyn and Kaspalita for their long work of editing.


“I HEARD THEIR WINGS LIKE THE SOUND OF MANY WATERS”

In the dark, in the deeps of the night that are
Crevasses of a sea, I heard their wings.
I heard the trickling of tiny feathers
With their hairs out like milkweed parachutes
Floating idly on the summer air,
I heard the curl and splash, the thunderbolts
Of pinions, the rapids and rattle of shafts—
Heard Niagara sweep the barreled woman
And shove her under water for three days,
I heard a jar of fragrance spill its waves
As a lone figure poured out all she could,
Heard the sky’s bronze-colored raindrops scatter
On corrugated roofs and tops of wells,
I heard the water-devil whirligigs,
I heard an awesome silence when the wings
Held still, upright as flowers in a vase,
And when I turned to see why they had stilled,
Then what I saw was likenesses to star
Imprisoned in a form of marble flesh,
With a face like lightning-fires and aura
Trembling like a rainbow on the shoulders,
But all the else I saw was unlikeness
That bent me like a bow until my brow
Was pressed against the minerals of earth,
And when I gasped at air, I tasted gold.

Q-looniness abounds!

Thank you to managing editors Dave Bonta and Beth Adams for nominating "I Heard Their Wings Like the Sound of Many Waters" for a Pushcart prize. And to Fiona Robyn and Kaspalita, editors for the current issue.  I have enjoyed my contacts and new friendships with qarrtsiluni editors and readers (and my own one-time stint as editor with Ivy Alvarez) and am well pleased.

And I was interested to hear that "Two Poems from the Plant Kingdom" is one of the most-visited posts of the year, and that "Self-Portrait as Dryad, no. 5" holds the all-time record for visits--1,359 as of yesterday. Even without including those who choose to have qarrtsiluni delivered by email, it's hard to think of that level of readership from a print-only magazine.

Thank you so much, qarrtsiloonians!

"I Heard Their Wings Like the Sound of Many Waters"

New poem up at qarrtsiluni, brainchild of Dave Bonta and Beth Adams--this issue is edited by newlyweds Fiona Robyn and Kaspalita Thompson. I suppose if editing q-looniness didn't throw them off, nothing will! If you want to leave a comment, please leave it there, as I would rather qarrtsiluni receive the attention. Having edited an issue with Ivy Alvarez, I know it's a fair bit of labor to publish.

The Flute Seller

Today I visited Windy Skies for the first time and encountered the figure of an itinerant peddler, attempting to sell his flutes in the midst of Indian traffic. The image struck me as an apt metaphor for the poet in the 21st century—a wanderer with a sheaf of songs and hand reaching out with a handmade gift while the world whirls by, faster and faster, not like a dervish but like a manic child's top.

Since Beth Adams of Phoenicia Publishing and qarrtsiluni and the cassandra pages just wrote me that she is now reading The Throne of Psyche (my new book from Mercer University Press, May 2011), I feel inspired to post the first section of the title poem.  You will find it below--I'm afraid that even a piece of a longish poem breaks up the short post rule and dances on it! A good many poems from the book have been reprinted on the site, but not the opening of the book.

Well-made poems are creations that reward re-readings. If you have liked the poems from The Throne of Psyche posted on the blog, I hope you’ll consider owning a copy of your very own to read over time. As a physical object, the book is unusually beautiful in design and production. As for the contents, I have strewn the blog with samples so that passers-by may taste and see . . .

Also available for bloggers by request (contact me here or via email or facebook or twitter): uploads of audio readings from The Throne of Psyche; uploads of videos by Paul Digby with me reading poems; images; copies of poems, links to related material, etc.

For more information about the book, please go here and here. For information on how to order my books, go here.

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THE THRONE OF PSYCHE (opening section)

A soul’s mysterious as any tree—
It drives a root as deadly low as hell,
It stretches peaceful branches heaven-high,
It harvests light with leaves of memory.

I. HER GIRLHOOD

You see the limestone wall that catches light—
Those olive trees inside the circuit of stone?
The gardeners said the eldest one had passed
Three thousand years. It looks as gnarled and scarred
As rind from dragons that survived a war,
And underneath’s the spot where I was born,
The Queen my mother snatched by sudden pains
While walking in the garden. I looked up
And saw the sun like showered stars in leaves.
You think I can’t remember? Yes, I can;
And I remember breeze and branches tossed,
The olive shifting, singing down at me,
Saying I was Psyche, blessed and blessing—
I made a cry and Mother laughed in joy
And drew her knife across the bloody cord.
A Queen is busy like an ant whose nest
Is shattered open by a curious
Small child: the tree became a family,
A secret place to go and talk or hide.
I ate her fruit, I drank her bitter teas
When I was ill, and someone carved a doll
Fleshed in olive wood from wind-thrown branches.
The greenish face with streaks of yellow-brown
Made me daydream strangers from another
World where sky was rose and water purple.
In ours, my sisters married parched old kings
To give my father fine alliances;
I scaled the tree and heard an oracle
Foretell I would not bear a fate like theirs.
The courtiers made me abashed with praise
That I was fair, the people offered gifts
As though I were a goddess from the sky.
I grew afraid and gods grew angry, as
They will—yet why, since time is always on
Their side? I clambered up my olive tree
And harkened to the auguring of leaves:
I’d have a fate called strange and wonderful.
But messengers approached my father’s throne
To tell how I must be a sacrifice
To temper Aphrodite’s jealousy.
A monster tarried on the mountaintop,
My promised bridegroom—winged and scaled from sole
To crown, the color of a stormy cloud
But hard as armor from the gods’ own forge.
I thought of sisters, queens in jeweled crowns,
Of truce between security and looks
And guessed perhaps there was more than one way
To be consumed. All gossiped I would be
A morsel for my bridegroom’s evening feed;
My mother shrieked, my father slashed his robes,
Our people raised a mighty swell of grief.

I tipped the polished bronze from side to side
But could not find why such a fate was mine—
A face in metal or in water is
A dim and shining thing. I clambered up
And listened to more prophecy of leaves,
How I would shiver like an olive branch
Before I tasted fate, how I was meant
To be unlike all others of my world,
How I would grow as radiant as a tree
Below the burning chariot of sun.
So when the people’s loud procession came,
I did not cry or flee. I bound my doll
Of greenish olive wood into my sash
And climbed past aloes to the mountaintop,
Walking as if between two founts of tears:
My mother and father, for whom I tried
To be a comforter despite my dread,
Though all the while I gripped the olive wood
That lived three thousand years, as if the luck
Of living long might sink into my palm
And shin a tree of blood up to my heart.
I was sixteen the night I watched the court
And people winding like a starry snake
Down the mountain’s flank to town or palace,
And wept as one by one the torches died.
It seems a thousand years ago to me
And only instants: how my courage flared
Or failed at noises in the wilderness—
I could not speak for dread of the unknown.
On my last morning of familiar things,
I’d flung my arms around the rugged trunk,
And leaves had fluttered message in my ear:
Inside you is a beauty left untouched
By thrones or the admiring throngs of men,
And seeking at your girlhood’s door is love,
A glistering monster and a child of light,
A mountain errand dark with mystery,
A loveliness that springs up from a seed—
Those leaves of fire, that bright enchanted tree.

Meeting Beth Adams and Jonathan Sa'adah

Exclamatory caption:
Here are two women in black t-shirts and similar glasses!
They must be artists! Or twins! Or friends...
The shrimp is me. The non-shrimp is Beth Adams.

I am having a very busy week with deadlines--and today is the birthday of my firstborn child, trala, who is now the astounding age of 22--so I've skipped a day or two of posting. Today I am busy with picnic at Three-Mile Point and birthday celebrations of all sorts (and a deadline), so I'm going to share one of the pictures taken of me earlier in the week with Beth Adams (Phoenica Publishing of Montreal and qarrtsiluni and much else besides!) I'd share more, but they really belong to Beth and Jonathan, and I just imagine Beth will use them elsewhere.

In the background is the herringbone-patterned wall of the Pomeroy House, given by Judge William Cooper to his daughter and new son-in-law. Their initials and the date 1804 are set in stone under a side gable. It is, naturellement, haunted, and in fact has three ghosts--a kicking Indian in the wall, a man in tophat in a mirror, and an old lady in black who has on at least one occasion given directions.

It was lovely to have a long chat with Beth (and lots of raspberries and cream) while her husband, Jonathan Sa'adah, took photographs around the village. We talked about many things, including our upcoming book and family and people we have in common like Dave Bonta and Clive Hicks-Jenkins, and I got out my three beauteous Clive-books for her to see. She gave me a book; I gave her a book. Of course mine was my new book, The Throne of Psyche.

Jonathan showed up for more chat and more raspberries. (Yes, they are both interesting and loveable!) Then the three of us rambled up to Christ Church (renovated as a Gothic church by novelist James Fenimore Cooper after his return from Europe), where Jonathan took pictures of the Tiffany windows.

Once again, I had that odd sensation of already knowing and liking the person met for the first time because we already e-knew each other. And that, I think, is my favorite gift of the net:  meeting and joying in people.

The House of Words, no. 33: Luisa Igloria on daily writing practice

The header to Dave's "The Morning Porch."
From a detail of "Paper Garden" by Clive Hicks-Jenkins.

Earlier in the series, Dave Bonta talked about his "accidental" collabration with Luisa A. Igloria. Here the poet and professor discusses her ongoing morning-porch project. Luisa Igloria's ninth and most recent book is Juan Luna's Revolver, winner of the Sandeen Prize (Notre Dame, 2009.) Visit her at her website--and visit her Morning Porch poems and their inspiration via Via Negativa! Luisa was born in Baguio City, the Philippines, and now lives in Virginia, where she is director of the M. F. A. program at Old Dominion University.  She is the mother of four daughters.

Addendum, 12:20 a.m.: I can't resist adding a link to Luisa's latest Morning Porch poem: there is the beggar queen of The Palace at 2:00 a.m., dreaming on her throne of words. And very fine she is, too! Thank you, Luisa!

From having read the fine poetry that Dave Bonta and Beth Adams gather into each issue of qarrtsiluni journal, I have some familiarity with their blogs and websites, and so I’ve visited Dave’s microblog The Morning Porch before. But in a lull just before Thanksgiving last year, I read Dave’s November 20 observation of a pileated woodpecker inching up the trunk of a locust tree “like a pawl on an invisible ratchet”  and I thought: what a cool image, what a cool word-- pawl-- and immediately I wanted to turn it into a poem. It’s been about a hundred and fifteen days since then, but what’s happened is that I’ve been writing daily poems in response to Dave’s The Morning Porch observations. I really didn’t intend for it to turn out into the daily “devotional” that it seems to have become, but now I’m thoroughly hooked.

What I’m happiest about is how I’ve incorporated it into my daily writing practice, and that the simple rules I’ve set for myself seem to work well in terms of getting me to that place of focus and attention where there is the potential for making poetry happen. My rules are: I don’t have a fixed time for visiting The Morning Porch to read the latest line Dave’s written. But when I do, I try to respond immediately, without premeditation, composing as I go. I try not to belabor what I find in the starting “trigger”-- because I don’t see myself obligated to respond via a form of poetic reportage. What happens instead is that the bit of image or language that first catches my eye or ear, meets what I bring to that moment (a combination of many things- what I may have been reading or remembering recently, what kinds of questions I might be asking that particular day). Finally, I try to do all of this in thirty minutes, forty max; I feel that if I go over this time limit I set for myself, I will be belaboring the whole enterprise too much.

For instance, Dave’s TMP observation on January 28 was “The silence of falling snow. When my furnace kicks on, the three deer digging under the wild apple tree startle and run down the slope.” When I read that, the first sentence, “The silence of falling snow” coupled with the image of “the wild apple tree” had a certain beautiful gravity that felt-- and sounded-- almost biblical. The wild apple tree and the three deer digging also made me think immediately of medieval tapestries, rich with illustrations of plants and animals. From there it was a short leap to recalling stories in bestiaries like the Physiologus. It has these famous animal allegories like the one of the unicorn which only lays its head upon a virgin’s lap, or the phoenix which immolates itself and then rises from its own ashes on the third day; or the pelican that gouges its own breast to feed its young its own blood. I also recalled the famous engravings that Pieter van der Borcht had made of some of these stories, and I refreshed my memory by looking at a few online images. The one I mention in the poem, of the lion and lioness breathing upon a stillborn cub in order to bring it back to life, spoke urgently to me perhaps because some of the difficult questions I am living at this time of my life involve pondering what it means to be a parent, what it means to struggle with raising children with difficulties; pondering what our (my) individual choices have brought to bear on our particular dynamic as a family. All of these came together quite rapidly in the composition of the poem, which I see now is just another form of asking the questions which I continue to grapple with on a daily basis. I don’t-- or the poem doesn’t-- necessarily answer these questions. But there is a certain kind of release in being able to confront them even briefly in this form. The quote from Aquinas that I use as epigraph is something I thought of later, after I’d written the poem.

Intercession

“Adoro te devote, latens Deitas,
Quae sub his figuris vere latitas…”
["I adore you devoutly, O hidden God
truly present under these veils..."]
—St. Thomas Aquinas

The silence of falling snow perhaps is like the hush
that lives somewhere in each moment of great
preparation: as for instance in Pieter van der Borcht’s
medieval copperplate engraving, when you would not know,
unless you read the captions, that the fierce and terrible
mangled faces of the lion and the lioness are from
their desperate expenditure of chi so that their stillborn
cub might live— under the gnarled cypress and rock,
see how its body writhes, stretching and coming to at last
under the double blowtorch of breath. And what of the meal
that the pelican gathers for her young from the cabinet
of her own breast, bright speckled clusters of blood from
the vine? Feathers fragranced with cedar, the phoenix
bursts into flame then crests from its ashes on the third
day; the unicorn comes to lay its head on the virgin’s lap,
and the foliage glistens like a page of illuminated
text. Orpheus knew, afterwards, the dangers of looking
too closely at the silence, of doubting what it might bear.
Think of him ascending from the depths, not hearing
her voice or footfall, not seeing her face. This morning,
also by myself, I bend to attend the furnace’s smolder.
Three deer digging under the wild apple tree
in the garden startle and run down the slope.

The poems that come out of my engagement with the prompts on The Morning Porch do not all have the same tenor. That’s perfectly fine and really to be expected. I’ve really preferred the recklessness of not having a really fixed subject to guide me into the writing. After all, poetry is about “the ineffable”, isn’t it? Some of the poems I’ve written are the result of little happy accidents, like misreading. For instance, on February 4 Dave’s TMP observation was “Dim sun. Trunks and branches still sheathed in ice glisten, surrounded by duller companions like glitterati on the streets of New York.” Perhaps I was hungry, or my glasses need cleaning, or I needed more coffee-- whatever it was, I read “Dim sum” and the result was the (I guess) food poem which I’ve copied out below--


Dim Sun, Dim Sum

Dim sun, your soft
floury edges today
make me think of steam
clouds under a wicker basket,
pillowy mounds of dough
pulled into a pucker
atop sweet or savory buns…

Let the glittery icicles
on twigs and branches trade
their hard-edged, fishnet-
stockinged gossip above us all,
here at an oilcloth-covered table
in a little hole in the wall
where the air is fragrant
with ginger and scallions
and dark plum sauce.

On March 14, Dave’s TMP observation was “Scattered snowflakes wander back and forth like lost souls. I watch one explode against a branch of the dead cherry. The croak of a raven.” That morning, before I visited TMP and before I started working on various tasks at my desk at the university, I was looking at some of the photos on various news websites from the earthquake-devastated towns and cities in Japan. I was particularly riveted by the photograph of a woman weeping, surrounded by broken beams, pulverized concrete. But beside her, inexplicably, neatly lined up, there was a pair of cherry-red rubber boots. And I wrote this poem, where I re-imagined the “croak of a raven” in Dave’s original post as an elegy listing the names of really more than a thousand dead:


Landscape with Red Boots and Branch of Dead Cherry

In a photograph, a woman sits on her haunches
amid a sea of debris. Her feet are bare. A pair of red
rain boots caked with mud perches neatly at her side,
the way they might rest in a parlor. The sky is the color
of rain, the color of heaving things: water a wall
surging over highways, toppling cars and beams
and lorries. The past tense is already active here—
fields have lost their stenciled borders; there’s little left
to read in maps. Above the burning cities, snowflakes
scatter, wandering back and forth like spirits. I watch
one explode against the branch of a dead cherry.
Croak of a raven making the shape of a thousand names.
*

Which is to say, after these examples, that inspiration really comes from many disparate sources. What I try to do in these daily encounters at Dave's The Morning Porch, is to keep myself open, limber, and receptive to the organic totality of all that may come together in the creative process. I think that this is the way most of us work, anyway-- one handhold after another, feeling our way toward that scent, that sense, that feeling which first enticed us with the idea that it might become a poem.

Norfolk, VA; 10 April 2011

The House of Words (no. 28), Dave Bonta and the internet, 8 (qarrtsiluni)

Anne Morrison Smyth
in qarrtsiluni

MY: How and why did you and Beth Adams begin qarrtsiluni? What has surprised you along the way?

DB: Beth and I were part of a group of creative writers and artists, all bloggers, who came together to launch qarrtsiluni in August 2005 as a group-writing/publishing exercise. We took turns as editors, two and three at a time, of what were at first monthly periods of writing and creating artwork in response to a theme. The rest of the group ran out of steam by the following June, so Beth and I decided to take it over as managing editors. It gradually turned into a regular magazine, though we've never gone so far as to issue periodic issue-dumps, as other online magazines do, preferring instead to remain bloggish, with new material at least five times a week, and comments activated for every post. To us, this is the best way to get and maintain readers online. I remain surprised by how many other online journals act as paperish as possible, and how many seemingly go out of their way to avoid being indexed by search engines. On a more positive note, I'm also often surprised and touched by how grateful writers are that we've published them — even some very well-established writers, with many books under their belt. I feel at times as if Beth and I are perpetrating an elaborate hoax.

This has always been a sacred place, a place of healing; the chapel and the Saints are quite recent emanations of this. If you walk west from the chapel, past some prehistoric standing stones, into a wooded ravine, you’ll come to the holy well. In mediaeval times it was dedicated to St Tujan, and has been a sacred place probably since the bronze age; Gallo-Roman remains have certainly been found there. People throw the age-old votive offerings of coins into the well. There is a stone cross and other stone artefacts from who know where set up here. A fallen tree covered in ivy forms an arch in front of it. On the ivy stems someone has inscribed the words ‘Cécile tu nous manques’ — ‘Cécile we miss you.’

Who knows who Cecile is or was and why she is missed, but someone brought their sadness, their angoisse to this particular place of power and left it as an offering in these words, a poignant counterpoint to the marble plaques of gratitude.

--Lucy Kempton


* * *

I am one of those writers who has enjoyed appearing in qarrtsiluni. What I like most about it is the responses of readers. I've been pleased and sometimes startled by the quantity and good-heartedness of replies to work. And by the sheer numbers Dave reports as reader views.
              Long may it wave! --Marly

With Paul Digby and "The Birthday Roses" on youtube

I promised a surprise to my facebook friends, and I promised it by midnight. I hope they'll forgive me for the slowness of uploads. I meant it as a bit of a salute to April Fool's Day, but the Day is tricksy and shook me into the 2nd.

So here's the Fool from my ongoing project, The Book of the Red King. And it's all thanks to the composing and photography and video-making of that lovely man, Paul Digby.

You may find the Fool at youtube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEfrItrLfPA/ or you may look down the right-hand panel of this page and see a smaller version there in the youtube section.

If you would like to see the text of the poem, it may be found at qarrtsiluni as part of Two Poems from the Plant Kingdom: http://qarrtsiluni.com/2011/01/24/two-poems-from-the-plant-kingdom.

The illustration is of a painting by my penpal Graham Ward, "The King in Finisterre." I chose it in honor of the Fool's devotion to the Red King. Looking at Graham's fools and kings set me off in that direction once more back in October. I'd fooled with fools before, but never so much and so foolishly as in these past few months.

Thanks, Graham! Thanks, editors of qarrtsiluni! And most of all, thank you to Paul.

The Dream of the Rood at qarrtsiluni

I have another poem in the current issue of qarrtsiluni. I'd like to thank everybody who went by and read the earlier poems--especially all of you who left comments. What a mighty heap of remarks, all so interesting! This piece is a translation from the Anglo-Saxon with podcast of the wild, rich, decorative, and wondrous The Dream of the Rood. As always, I'm turning off comments here so the 'zine gets any commentary that comes along. Enjoy a mind of long ago!

Red King Red King Red King

The Red King and the Fool are popular fellows. They seem to be liked everywhere they go, thus far. I haven’t sent many out as yet, but here’s where online poems stand.

Up today in The Flea are “The Red King’s Sword,”

http://www.the-flea.com/Issue13/TheRedKingsSword.html
“What the Fool Whispered to the Wentletrap,”

http://www.the-flea.com/Issue13/WhattheFoolWhisperedtothe.html
and “Jeux de Pages.

http://www.the-flea.com/Issue13/JeuxdePages.html

Here are the also out-and-about and the forthcoming:

“About the Red Book” in Mezzo Cammin

“The King and the Fool” in Mezzo Cammin

“The Birthday Cap” in Mezzo Cammin

“The Starry Fool” in Mezzo Cammin

“The Two Tables” in Mezzo Cammin

“The Moon of Precious Wentletrap” in Mezzo Cammin

“The Turret Stairs” in Mezzo Cammin

“Directions for a Birthday Hat” in Mezzo Cammin

http://www.mezzocammin.com/iambic.php?vol=2010&iss=2&cat=poetry&page=youmans

“The Birthday Roses” at qarrtsiluni, with a podcast and more than fifty comments (very pleasing!):

http://qarrtsiluni.com/2011/01/24/two-poems-from-the-plant-kingdom/#comments

You may also find “Wielding the Tree Finder” there!

“The Fool’s Confession” forthcoming in June, Mezzo Cammin.

“The Red King’s Blossom-Tide” forthcoming in June, Mezzo Cammin

“The Rose of Laughter, Laughter of the Rose” in June, Mezzo Cammin

“The Grail,” in June, Mezzo Cammin

“Scholastic Interlude,” forthcoming in June, Mezzo Cammin

“’My Poor Fool is Hang’d,’” forthcoming in December, Mezzo Cammin

“The Fool and the Sublime,” forthcoming in December, Mezzo Cammin

“The Desire for the Red King,” forthcoming in December, Mezzo Cammin

“All Hallowed Angels Say,” forthcoming in December, Mezzo Cammin

“The Peacock’s Tail,” forthcoming in December, Mezzo Cammin

Can you tell that I like Mezzo Cammin and its bright editor, poet Kim Bridgford? Lots of my other poems from forthcoming books are there. And I look forward to meeting her in June.

And a reminder: pre-order discounts are still on for The Throne of Psyche. http://thepalaceat2.blogspot.com/2011/02/throne-of-psyche-pre-order-discounts.html
Photograph courtesy of Vangelis Thomaidis of Athens and sxc.hu.