Slowly Getting The Poem Back In

I've been dead. Getting back to life, slowly, and finding blogs I want to link to, photos I want to share, snatches of poems I want to listen to and lift out. First steps:


1. Found a great great visual art blog: Accidental Mysteries: and today's post is "Poultry In Motion" -- great poem bird pun. Here. I won't plagiarize the photos, but do go look. My favorite ones are the face out of toilet paper tubes, and the Newspaper Blackout Poems. Here's one of them. Make sure you click on it to enlarge and read.



2. I've had some little poem publishing success. The 2009 issue of The Sand Hill Review has two of my poems, one of which is technically in four part. 'The Wife' (which I already need to revise) and 'Concussion Sonnets'. Am currently thinking about Depression Sonnets. And Anxiety Sonnets. I'm grateful to Janice for asking for my work. I don't get "out" much any more these days.

3. I also had a line of mine accepted into Nils Peterson's project: Santa Clara County: A Family Album 2009. Nils is the poet laureate of Santa Clara County and he invited poets (like me and you) to submit short lines, which he wove into a single ode to the valley. It was fun, and even though I got my entry in late, I got it in! You can read the poem here. My line is, 'with my wet laundry, I startle a doe.'

That's enough -- two days worth of posts. Whew. I'm reading Suite Francaise (thanks to Ray for the suggestion) and just finished Wind in the Willows again, although I'm not sure I ever read the whole thing before. What a dreamy book. My husband's favorite children's book.

Silicon Valley Poet Laureate?

Who knew? I live here, and I didn't know.

Nils Peterson is the grand old poet of San Jose, that's true, but I'm not sure his old orchard slow poems are representative of the nasty snatch and squeal I think of when I think of Silicon Valley. Still, who am I to tell?

Poetry Center San Jose has a good range of information on him and his work.

A very cool thing he is doing is having a contest of 13-syllable poetry lines, which he will assemble into a word collage. I heard him on the radio describing how this is like an elegy -- interesting poetic form to use for a up-and-coming valley. See my comment above about his old-timer's view.

Santa Clara County recently chose its first-ever poet laureate. Nils Peterson was named to the honorary post, and one of the first things he's done is to put together an unusual competition. He wants county residents to submit a single poetic line about life in the Valley. One hundred lines will be chosen for a special 'word collage.' We take a peek at some of the early submissions. [If you're a Santa Clara Valley resident, you can submit your own line of poetry. Email your 9-13 syllable line to poet.laureate@ceo.sccgov.org or by mail to Santa Clara County Poet Laureate, Office of Public Affairs, County of Santa Clara, 70 West Hedding St., 11th Floor East Wing, San Jose, CA 95110.]

A nine to thirteen syllable line? Here's mine.

With my wet laundry, I startle a doe.

PAD 7: Not A Baseball Poem

Jackson's team didn't win today, but almost, it was very close. He made a diving catch behind first base and dropped the ball, even though everyone thought he had caught it, even the umpire. Your son has a problem with honesty, said another parent, which I guess is true since he told the umpire he dropped the ball and the runner was safe. We all laughed, even Jackson, who takes these games so lightly, I wish he took his life lightly, too, the anxieties of his adolescence creep up around him day and night.

Today's poem starts with baseball and ends with pregnancy. I'm grieving for Stella who is separating from me so easily, and I am realizing that after my life of keeping my distance, of holding my mind separate from her, she is going to leave for real very soon, just as I am learning to love her with my mind as well as my heart.

(Suddenly) The Doe

After Jackson’s baseball jersey, number 10,
dries, the Gatorade splots, ketchup smeary and
grass-stained dirt scrubbed out quickly in cold
water, I open the front door to move
back against the house my pink folding chair,
on which I had dried it, actually on which
it lay while the April sun dried the damp
places, and step into the yard, and there
see her leap up, too awkward to leap
quickly, it’s more of a slosh and heave,
like a dinghy too heavily laden with
children in life jackets, the bag full of lunches,
and the blanket, soft blue and oyster shell plaid
I remember from my childhood, bumping
against the side of the bigger boat as the last
kid steps in, and he falls into his seat, as
the little boat soon turns and lumbers away
toward the beach, an up stumble onto her sharp
small black hooves, butt and tail caught in old
holly, before she backs off and escapes through
torn chicken wire and falling fencing, long
ineffective again her and others of her
kind, brown deer who continue to thrive
at the edge of the city of Cupertino in
shady garden corners, like this one
where she rested until I came, with her
burden in her brown belly, with my clean clothes.

I think it might be fun to write a whole sequence of poems, in which the word 'suddenly' never appears, but which describe a series of events that do happen that quickly, in a present that doesn't really exist, between the series of moments that are either the past the past the past or the future the future the future.