Poetry and writing by Dave Jarecki

SHAINDEL BEERS WORKSHOP THIS WEEKEND

Dave Jarecki — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:29:58 +0000

Oregon poet Shaindel Beers will be making her way into Portland this weekend (from Pendleton, where she teaches at Blue Mountain Community College) for a one-day workshop at Writers’ Dojo.

During the three-hour workshop, writers will explore the voice that begs to cry out in their work, discuss ways to access and drive a strong, personal style throughout their writing, explore personal history as springboards and much more.

THE FACTS

DATE: Saturday, November 7th

TIME: 2-5 p.m.

PLACE: Writers’ Dojo, 7518 N. Chicago Ave., Portland, OR, 97203

COST: $59

MORE
This workshop is part of the Dojo’s upcoming November workshop series. Register and find out more about this and other upcoming workshops at the Dojo’s events page, or by calling 503-706-0509.

MORE ABOUT SHAINDEL BEERS

Shaindel Beers’ writing, including poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies. In January of 2009, Salt Publishing released her first full-length poetry collection, “A Brief History of Time”, which is steeped in personal narrative, internal musings, and the personal longings of a girl reared in a flat country. Beers is currently an instructor of English at Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton, Oregon, and serves as Poetry Editor of Contrary.

You can learn more about Beers and her work by visiting her newly launched website.

GOD BLESS YOU, MR. SKYLIGHT

Dave Jarecki — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 01:16:58 +0000

The following review of Ed Skoog’s first full-length collection, MISTER SKYLIGHT (© 2009, Copper Canyon Press ), is part of Read Write Poem’s ongoing virtual book tour series. Keep an eye on all upcoming reviews here.

I’d been in a funk when MISTER SKYLIGHT showed up. A writing funk, sure, but also a reading funk. They feel the same when you boil them down. Nothing inspires, nothing motivates, nothing comes. Every book in the house felt like television fuzz. Not you, MISTER SKYLIGHT. I could tell you were different as soon as I pried you from your Copper Canyon envelope, you with your sepia cover image that spoke of walls and distance, your rusted font and your shot of Ed Skoog on the back cover standing in front of what appeared to be a trailer.

You had poems entitled “During the War”, “Party at the Dump”, and “Memory Loss” right there in the first 14 pages. You had weird sounding stuff later on – “Early Kansas Impressionists,” “Punks Not Dead”, “Pier Life.” MISTER SKYLIGHT, I hadn’t even read a poem yet and I knew you were after my soul.

Then I jumped in.

The truth of this collection is the same truth you’ll find in the nearest skylight. Go stand under the glow. Tell me of the sun, the weather, the clouds. Now tell me of the mites trapped in the screen, the bird shit, the exoskeletons of life. Skoog’s first full-length collection captures and presents the truth of the truth: our under-analyzed, overlooked, often fragile existences on earth.

PLACES, REAL OR OTHERWISE

The collection succeeds, in large part, because of its all-too-real intensity, even as the poet makes no bones about the fact that many of the bones within, while borne of truth, take shape in the imagination. As Skoog mentioned during a recent conversation, “Giving yourself over to the imagination — and I’m not the first person to say this — allows you to express deeper truths than what are factual.

“You begin to approach poems with more liberty with regards to what the ‘I’ is, and what the subject is or isn’t.” Going forward, it allows a writer — Skoog or otherwise — to go deeper, even if a poem, on its surface, may not be about anything.

Many of the poems owe their strength to Skoog’s clever return and reliance on place, right down to times, dates, neighborhoods, streets and rooms. No matter how imaginative and inventive the language becomes, the reader is never lost. Still, Skoog’s places — his Topeka, for instance — are the imagined places of dreams. And not the idle daydreams that help pacify our minds during business meetings or dinner with in-laws. The dreams of MISTER SKYLIGHT are weird midnight visions that flicker along our internal movie screens, the ones that replay your childhood bedroom at an 80% reduction. The furniture is familiar but something is off. Reality becomes temporal, the present is fleeting, and our memories are forever liquid and ever-changing.

“Even when the names of places are accurate, the poetry takes place in the imagination,” Skoog says. “If I say, ‘Topeka’, it’s different than ‘Topeka’ in an essay, and different than taking a picture and saying, ‘This is Topeka.’

“There are a lot of places in the book,” Skoog continues. “Some are places where I’ve lived or visited. Some, like the Skeleton Coast of Namibia, are places I’ve never seen. They’re all imaginary places as far as the poems go. Each place means something different to me, and each has associations that, when you put them into poems, become art associations. They become the aestheticized Topeka, the aestheticized New Orleans.”

UNIVERSAL TIMING

Skoog wrote these poems over the course of a decade and a half, the earliest dating back to around the time he was finishing his M.F.A. at the University of Montana. The bulk of these poems, however, come from an intensely creative period between 2001 and 2006. During this time, Skoog was immersed in the richly creative community of New Orleans, a city the poet credits with having, in his mind, the greatest literary heritage in the country, and our most thriving contemporary literary scene.

“New Orleans was a place to mature, and to do so in an interesting way,” Skoog says. After growing up in Topeka, and living in places like Montana, Southern California and Seattle, Skoog relished the city’s life, art, and color.

“It was different than being off in the suburbs teaching as an adjunct in the middle of nowhere. Aside from growing up and becoming more understanding of the world, New Orleans affected my relationship with poetry in a number of ways.” Skoog found himself as part of a community of “magnificent writers”, each with their very high standards with respect to meaning, music and form.

“They had a lot of different interests, not all of them being of American traditions.”

During this period, Skoog was on the faculty of an arts high school was founded in the ’70s by Ellis Marsalis and other New Orleans musicians. His colleagues helped expand Skoog’s view of poetry and the meaning and role of verse.

“They demanded that you take poetry seriously, which was different from other poetry friends I’d had. For five years I taught with this great group of three other writers. All we did was read, write and talk about poetry, both among ourselves and with some very talented New Orleans kids.”

BOTH SIDES OF THE MASK

Beyond the conversations, study and crafting Skoog experienced in New Orleans, the city itself affected his work in a profound, deliberate sense. As Skoog mentions,

“The nature of the city as being very public and carnivalesque was unbelievably exciting to me,” he says. “But also, the other side of New Orleans, more of the Latin side, is very private and reserved. I found it to be dignified and reflective in ways I’d never encountered. Those two sides of the mask became very important to me, my view of life, and my understanding of how poetry should be written.”

It is from this understanding that the poems in MISTER SKYLIGHT truly begin to open up. For every midnight tramp — the poem “West Coast,” featured in Narrative Magazine, is a fantastic example — Skoog consistently brings us back to a place of reflection. The narrator’s long, drunken night with an old friend concludes with a walk through the present moment as well as past haunts. The poem distills down to the following:

“Our high-minded speculation fades
as we try to find the car, remembering
only that it faced the ship locks,
and when we find it we eat the fries
cold, and let the paper bag be taken
by the wind along the water, and settle
onto its currents, among the rustling gulls.”

While Skoog understands and adheres to the belief that the aim of poetry is serious, he is mindful not to take himself or his role as a poet too seriously. In Recent Changes at Canter’s Deli, a poem in which the narrator, like an earlier version of Skoog, finds himself teaching poetry to affluent teens in Southern California, we read,

“Poetry’s just the form
of unimportance I teach teenagers above L.A.
under slanted windows that kill, by surprise,
the birds we then write about, gathering bonfire
around the small corpses, because it’s cold here.”

This idea of unimportance, similar to giving yourself up to the imagination, proves liberating.

“It’s making a claim for unimportance,” Skoog says. “How wonderful to be unimportant. What liberty and freedom there is to being unimportant in a world where so many things are deemed important.”

Throughout MISTER SKYLIGHT, Skoog does an excellent job guiding readers through the subterranean landscapes he creates. Even when our footing seems unsure, his mastery of narrative and linguistic manipulation — seemingly stretching meter, meaning and rhyme at will — ushers us along. While he is more trickster than sherpa — he may very well duck away and hide on you for a few seconds, and don’t expect him to carry your bags — he keeps us in a close proximity, reminds us that we are all underwater together.

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Visit the Guest Writer page to read five poems from MISTER SKYLIGHT. Read part 1 of our interview here.

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HOW WE RECAP THE GAME WHEN OUR WIVES COME HOME

Dave Jarecki — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 04:16:19 +0000

Because she’ll ask. She’ll want to know
if the team won. Not that she knows
the difference, but she knows
you want her to ask, and even if
you don’t want her to ask,
you expect she’ll ask because you expect
she expects you to expect her to ask.

So she asks. Did they win. Maybe she knows
by the look in your eyes, but if you’re home alone
listening, not watching, but listening
the way no one listens anymore, and if
you’ve been crying because baseball
sometimes makes you cry – if you’ve been crying
then she might have no idea
whether they’ve won or lost, because crying
goes both ways with baseball – if she sees
you’ve been crying she’ll certainly ask,
after she asks “What’s wrong?”, because
her first thought will be something’s wrong,
he’s on the couch crying, the radio is off,
the dog is snoring and he’s crying in the corner
of the couch, his drink is empty, just the bottom
of bourbon-yellow ice, and his eyes are red.

So she asks, “What’s wrong,” and you say,
“The game, that’s all.” You shake your head
and she shakes hers. “I’m sorry.” But you say,
“Oh no, it’s OK, they won.” “They did?” “Yes.”

“How?” She’ll ask how and you’ll tell her
as she buzzes through the living room
into her closet to strip from her pants and top,
a quick dance into house clothes, the pre-sleep wardrobe
of fleece on top of fleece for the Northwest’s fall.

“Well,” you say – you chink the ice around
in your glass and suck what’s left.

“They were down, you see, down by two,
then by one. They hung around. And in the ninth,
the big closer out for a save, he walks a guy,
hits another, the next guy pops out – there are
two outs now, see, and the leadoff guy…well,
that’s not important. A little guy – later, after the hit
it’ll be all set up for David and Goliath stuff.
But for the time, the little guy, before he turned
into David, took an oh-one pitch to the gap
in right. Both runners dashed home. That’s what
I imagine, at least, a dash – there are no dashes
on radio. Just swings and pops and the announcer
going crazy. All the dirt and dust gets swallowed
in the soft static. And you’re left with the win,
which is enough to make you cry, not because
you missed a thing, but because you sat and listened,
you never saw it coming and you knew all along.”

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THE KIDS WILL ALL WRITE

Dave Jarecki — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 01:34:24 +0000

As part of my ongoing adventures as a writing workshop instructor, the following piece owes a lot to this year’s third-grade class.

Some eight-year-old boys drool. In the four years in which I’ve worked with third graders, at least one boy has drooled in the middle of at least one class. Sometimes it’s from frustration, but mostly it’s a result of over-excitement coupled with a blood sugar spike.

This year’s drooler is Ben. He’s now drooled three times in two sessions, which means he has six more sessions to break the all-time drool-per-session record of seven. Ben’s in-class snack of choice is a juice box. His teeth are coming in at jagged angles, leaving plenty of gaps through which saliva can escape. And writing excites the hell out of him.

I say the record is his.

Read the rest @ ReadWritePoem.org

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FIRST CHAPBOOK JUST RELEASED

Dave Jarecki — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:03:49 +0000

I’m happy to announce the release of “Backwards on the Train”, (c) 2009 Imperfect Press. The limited first edition of 111 hand-bound, hardcover volumes contains 11 poems, a few of which have appeared in previous drafts on the site.

The chapbook is $8.00, plus $2.00 shipping for any mail orders. Please email at info (at) davejarecki (dot)com if you’d like to order a copy, or visit ImperfectPress.net – their shopping cart will be up shortly.

Thanks to everyone who’s ever offered feedback and insight. I appreciate it, and the book wouldn’t have happened without honest readers.

Dave

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WORDS ALL WEEKEND

Dave Jarecki — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 03:56:32 +0000

Wordstock’s here – one of the biggest literary parties on the whole Left Coast. With plenty of words to chew on, I’d like to mention a few things in which I’ll be involved.

FRIDAY NIGHT, 10/9: WARM UP WITH POETRY AND WINE

Come enjoy the poetry and wine with four of Oregon’s most cherished poets. Peter Sears, Shaindel Beers, John C. Morrison and Pamela Steele will be reading their work at Blackbird Wine, 4323 NE Fremont St. in Portland. Blackbird’s Friday night wine tasting starts at 6 o’clock, and includes a $6.00 cover; poetry starts at 7, and is free for one and all.

SATURDAY AND SUNDAY: VISIT SUPER WRITING FRIENDS

While you’re walking around between readings at the Portland Convention Center, stop by booth 423 and say hello to this year’s crop of Super Writing Friends – writers and independent publishers from the Pacific NW.

Joining me this year includes the following cast of characters:

Shaindel Beers
Pamela Steele
John Morrison
Dana Guthrie-Martin
Nathan Moore
Jeremy Halinen
and more

Be sure to drop by and drop your name in the raffle for a chance to win a great stash of poetry.

MORE WORDS ON MONDAY

I’m happy to announce I’ll be joining local writers Arthur Smid and Dennis Yates at Three Friends Coffee (201 SE 12th) for a shared hour of reading, between 7 and 8 p.m. Monday, 10/12. I’ll be reading a few pieces from Backwards on the Train, my soon-to-be released chapbook from Imperfect Press. The reading is part of the ongoing series put on by Show and Tell Gallery.

Looking forward to seeing you over the long weekend.

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SUPPORT LOCAL POETRY, VANCOUVER, WA STYLE

Dave Jarecki — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:11:06 +0000

Vancouver-area poet, Christopher Luna, runs a wonderful monthly reading series that people around the Portland area (and beyond, for that matter) should check out. The next reading is TONIGHT – here’s the info:

Open Mic Poetry, hosted by Christopher Luna 7:00pm Thursday, September 10, 2009, and every second Thursday at Cover to Cover Books, 1817 Main Street, Vancouver McLoughlin Blvd. & Main Street.

TONIGHT’S FEATURED READER: Eileen Elliott:

Eileen Davis Elliott came from a 1950’s Midwest isolation still reeling from the Great Depression and World War II, and has been a time traveler ever since. She has explored the emerging Eastern Europe, women moving from school marms to combat pilots, and her own spirituality, stopping at Buddhism, shamanistic ideas, and revisiting the wisdom of the Golden Rule. She is a psychologist, (PhD from University of Missouri), artist (self-taught), and writer of prose and poetry. She also makes a passable apple pie and has recently taken up mah jongg. Prodigal Cowgirl is a collection of 120 poems summarizing a lifetime of seeking and occasional resolution with the world including the rural Midwest, Central Europe emerging from the Cold War, and the guy on the freeway off ramp. This book asks the questions of who we are and what we might want to do about it.

AN EXCERPT: From CROW’S NEST IN CORN FIELD

Long ago, when a family could make it on a quarter-section
I would climb our windmill by the south pasture
Every time Dad sent Ma to town
To buy parts for mower
Or the combine
Or whatever else lost heart and abandoned him before the final round

I would hang on the ladder by one crooked elbow
And lean way, way out
Filling myself up with the emptiness of the place
The view of flat, and clean, and corn stalks everywhere

I’d drink in white butterflies
And road ditches of wild roses
And hums of tiny insects
On adventures of their own

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VISIT Christopher Luna’s blog to learn more about the series, his own work, and tonight’s event.

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QUESTION OF THE WEEK

Dave Jarecki — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:03:40 +0000

What gets in the way of your writing process?

Post your answers here, or email dave”at”thebreakerboy”dot”com – I’ll be posting a full list of answers from across the webisphere next week.

Dave

LASER LIGHT

Dave Jarecki — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 14:09:14 +0000

The following piece is in response to Read Write Poem’s prompt #90 – an image of a street performer balancing a flaming star. Rather than accessing the scene, making my way down that street or even turning into the performer, I waited for the picture to lead me to a title, via the first words it prompted. Those words were “laser light show”.

LASER LIGHT

Smith decided we should drive to DC for the weekend light show.
It had been ten-years since he, Patrick and I
were there together. A reunion of sorts.

Patrick lived in Arlington. We called on the way.
He told us to leave him alone. He had Reserves next weekend.
He wanted to take it easy. By the time
we showed at his door he couldn’t do anything
but offer up his couch and spare cot.

Smith brought acid. He didn’t tell us about the acid until
we were already half-drunk from a few hours
at a Tiki bar along the Potomac drinking Mexican beer.

None of us needed acid at this point in our lives. Patrick
had done two tours in Iraq. Smith spent three-years
in prison. I was an absent father of two children
with different last names.

But we were all feeling good with limes in our beer, fireworks
going off for some nondenominational reason,
together in the nation’s capital remembering the world of 1999

when ours lives went by in a fury of jokes about the president
and thoughts about the end of the world.

Now we were three old lumps surrounded by a table of empties.
Patrick with his razorblade haircut, Smith who smoked
like he was trying to burn himself inside out, me
with the spare tire around my waste that wore like a retread.

We decided to walk through the Capital on our way to the show.
Smith wanted to go see Lincoln. Patrick said we couldn’t.
Jefferson then, the Washington Monument. Patrick said
none of that mattered now, it wasn’t on the way.
We passed all the lights and strange glows in the periphery,
statues kept awake under security and patriotic flares.

Two-hours with the acid in our system, Smith said lasers
were already teeming in his head. Patrick crouched behind things,
regretted the whole night, regretted whole other nights
that didn’t include us. Whole mornings and days too. A whole year
and one whole long episode that was so classified
the hallucinations had a hard time reaching it.

I hadn’t planned on being the smart one, rarely was,
but got us to the field and our seats. We blended in
like we were anyone else, just normal people who’d never
killed anyone or beaten someone to near death
with a bar of soap, had never knocked up
an old friend’s girlfriend then another, never
had to decide which one to send checks to.

Just normal guys riding out a strong trip waiting for the lights
to take our minds off the fact our minds were gone.
People nodded at us like they knew. Tapped their noses
because they saw our eyes and identified.

They couldn’t understand. Our ghosts were our own.
It didn’t matter if one of theirs chased them up a tree.
We were stuck with ours, so far from our skulls
that the only words any of us could mouth
where things like never again and can’t come down.

But there’s that point, like when the Space Shuttle goes up,
where you’re not sure if it’ll break earth’s glass face
and get out toward the moon. Right as the boosters
jump off and the ship’s all alone, just its crew
with rations and the one bathroom they share,
the bird edges a straight line against the sky
and is gone –

That’s where we were when the music fired on. All the world
except for cigarette tips got dark. Then lights zoomed to life
in a panoramic grid, made water out of thin air.
Behind the sudden brightness and noise,
the faintest cry of crickets set the universe soft.

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SCORECARD

Dave Jarecki — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 22:48:47 +0000

My good friend Ryan Mayers sent me a scorecard that I kept when he, Donnie Sabs and I took in a Cubs game a couple of seasons ago. My scorecards are usually a mess, and this was no different – a mix of hieroglyphs, scribbles and meaningless notes that only I could understand. Reading one from two-years ago was a particularly entertaining exercise, and it gave life to the following poem.

SCORECARD

The psychic in the bleachers calls a leadoff homerun
because of the wind and the hitter’s hot streak.
She twinkles her nose like a cartoon witch
and spooks her friends. In the second, a man
with a red foam finger misses the mustard on his chin.
Clouds look like dolphins in the third. A kid points this out
to his father walking back from the john. In the fourth,
fans wave the runner home on a two-out hit.
He’s out by a foot. It’s our fault when the manager gets tossed.
A foul pop in the fifth becomes a struggle for turf.
Flying popcorn. An elbow to the eye. In the sixth,
we anticipate the ritual of the mound trot,
the pitching change. When last call
and the seventh-inning stretch collide, my friend recalls
what Ken Burns said – that Jesus died in the on deck circle.
The sun ducks away long enough in the eighth to lose ourselves
in the slow loft of the wrong team’s deep fly. That’s when
dolphin clouds turn into whales, the sky opens with a quick
sad rain. The last rally fades in the ninth.
The ladies one row ahead cheer for their boys
like Little League moms. All claps and first names.