Thirteen Blackbirds Poetry

Nominated for Pushcart Prize

enudelman@msn.com (enudelman) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:51:25 PST

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I've received word my Poem, "Two Sides of Self," was just nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Prize. Here's a link describing the award: The Pushcart Prize and here's a link to the poem, published in the April 2009 issue of the Shine Journal (click here).

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Uncle's Birthday

enudelman@msn.com (enudelman) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:45:08 PST

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Uncle’s Birthday

Clarity, that aging cohort who sat cross-legged
on his bed every night with pen and pad in hand
jotting down notes into a daily planner

now dresses in gray flannel and one slipper,
now wheezes every time he speaks, now coughs
a rosy tinge into his lace handkerchief.

Strange companions, these sounds and shapes
passing through a room he doesn’t occupy.
Strange soul mates, confusion and chaos.

Uncle tries to remember his last birthday,
tries to bellow his weakened rib cage
into a small engine of effort and purpose.

Riding on air, tiny sailboats of memory;
faint glimpses and telltale remnants.
Smoke’s furtive swirl, as the wicks collapse.

EDN, 11/09

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Poems in OCHO

enudelman@msn.com (enudelman) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:06:59 PST

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My poems, "Dialectics of Reason and Doubt," (p17) and "Dark Thoughts That Illumine," (p44) just appeared in the latest edition of OCHO. If you look closely at the cover, my mug is pictured along with some other poets, painted by Didi Menendez, editor and publisher (middle, first row). Click here to view OCHO: link to OCHO

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Block

enudelman@msn.com (enudelman) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:45:07 PST

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Set upon my crimson throne
in purple robe betwixt early
sparks and latent explosions,
my pen an inky shadow cast
upon a white wall, my memory
an image-conjurer, tied by knots
in the hierarchy of its own
futility, set poised to write
or not to write, omnipotent
if only for the sake of a few
well-positioned words made
illustrious by my own muse.

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Mortis Operandi

enudelman@msn.com (enudelman) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:39:51 PDT

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Mortis Operandi

Red wren. Dead wren.
They die on windshields and sliding
glass doors, but rarely fall lifeless
from trees or cloudless skies.

Seals die at sea or on ice floes
but seldom in backyards or parks.
Amphibians rarely drown.
Reptiles can freeze to death.

No one knows how elephants die.
When they finally tumble over,
nobody knows what to do with
their enormous carcasses.

Ants die all the time without notice.
Whole anthills have perished
without one word said
in the office or grocery line.

We don’t know for certain if beetles
accidentally die or willfully give themselves
up for the good of the fossil record.
And what happens to all that dead krill?

All those marauding bees,
one day buzzzing their final demise
into the warm August breeze.
Still, it’s hard to find a dead bee.

Who knows how many deer have died
in the forest’s thick underbrush?
Cockroaches , on the other hand, die
more easily than urban legends belie.

Scientists immortalize cell lines
in a petri dish at 37 degrees centrigrade.
To cheat death, viruses self-replicate
and bacteria mutate.

At the other end of the spectrum,
mammals must be cared for at birth
and watched closely for many years.
Some require lifelong attention.

When humans die, ceremonies
and eulogies mark the occasion.
Names appear in newsprint.
In sad instances, humans die like ants.

EDN, Oct, 2009

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Morning Has Never Been Electric

enudelman@msn.com (enudelman) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 13:45:26 PDT

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Don’t need alarm clocks anymore.
The morning, in its own peculiar way,
through blinking lights
and a dozen harping birds
(by hook or by crook)
always manages to infuse
something warm and fuzzy
into my brain’s medium-rare
pork loin. The dog, whose
lateral spine forms a wedge
between two old lovers,
never minds the morning,
but sleeps on through
showering, brushing and shaving.
Down the stairs two human
figures follow the light
through the morning's narrow tunnel.
Near the bottom, they hop over
a steel grate posing as a cold-air
return. But all know if they slip
on a bone or the dog’s slimy tennis ball,
they stand a good chance of hurtling
through floorboards and into the furnace.
I stumble trying to avoid the peril
and turn my ankle for the umpteenth time.
Coffee is made and poured.
Forty-five minutes on the couch
wondering how cold this winter will get.
Forty-five minutes of peace and quiet−
if not for mice in walls, sleet,
oil in furnace air, hiatal hernia
and a hundred cars shortcutting their way
through our neighborhood like wolves
through sheep herds.
I want to lean my head out the window
and take one to task, but all I can do is kick a ball
accross the room for the only one around
with alacrity and spunk.
Unlike her human counterparts,
she hops over the furnace trap with skill and grace.

EDN, OCT, 2009

Time in a Blue Raincoat

enudelman@msn.com (enudelman) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:18:44 PDT

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Time in a Blue Raincoat

Drudging down familiar streets
dragging eons in wheelbarrows
and nanoseconds in silver spoons.
He stops to scan the gray
horizon, scowling mercurial eyes
into the dark distance.
Is it light underneath a cloud
or history’s bouncing big bang?
Is it dawn or the end of days?
It rains in all directions.
Intangible vectors in the past tense.
He turns to take a thousand
frozen frames for his memory
book, a folio of frolic and distemper.
He dodges teeth from an angry dog,
ducks into a damp alley scuttling
among city shadows and granite
walls, cardboard boxes and trash cans,
scanning the beat of each generation.
Every succession of thought,
every momentary glimpse.
He runs through rain-soaked streets
yet remains dry beneath the gun barrel
night, ears pinned back,
adrenalin-stoked,
under a hair-trigger’s caprice.
He runs through rain-soaked streets
darting from danger in rabbit mode,
spliced between fear and wonder,
twinkle and shiver.
Fatalist and realist wrapped into one.
Trapped by ultimate limits
and hope’s slender harmonic,
wobbling on a self-made wire,
half-notes from syncopation
and a beautiful lyric.

EDN, October, 2009

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Yellow Raincoats

enudelman@msn.com (enudelman) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 14:34:45 PDT

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Yellow Raincoats

Rain bouncing off umbrellas, the sparse
crowd scanning cumulonimbus.
Gas guzzlers queued-up along
the perimeter of his cemetery plot
idling like panting dogs.
For all his time and effort,
an embarrassing turn-out.
He who founded and ruled an empire.
His word, fiat. His product, unrivaled.
He who lived large,
influenced many, got sick
and died alone.
Unforeseen outcomes, gloomy weather.
Circumstances beyond our control.
The coffin returned to its sepulcher
with dispatch, the dim lights,
the beige walls, the unburned candles.
Crinkling coats, cupped hands,
the wind mounting a final surge.
And the low rumble of combustion
slowly increasing, drawing nearer.
Surround sound for the living and the dead.
Nobody gets wet with high quality PVC
and nobody remembers the bad weather.

EDN, 9/09

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Another Review for "Night Fires."

enudelman@msn.com (enudelman) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 14:08:44 PDT

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From Troubadour 21, Writers and Artists in the 21st Century. You can find it here: TROUBADOUR REVIEW OF NIGHT FIRES

ALSO

Review in Oranges in Sardines. Click Here
Once in the magazine, go to page 30-31 (review actually on page 28-29)
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As Good As an Old Book

enudelman@msn.com (enudelman) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 19:09:54 PDT

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Another unopened parcel in a cigar-tinged paper wrapping.
It rests on a coffee table where it spent a few nights
curing in in its familiar fermented aroma.
A couple of days ago it landed on my front step
like an old friend dropping by for a smoke,
unannounced and full of flare.
Russell was an avid rare book collector and dealer.
A savvy Antiquarian tradesman who could hone in
on the one fine volume of Byron in a shop full of dross.
He’d call me up at all hours to describe a great rarity−
but we’d both know he was just calling to talk.
“This one has a marvelous hand-colored frontispiece
resembling the lithograph of Rockport Cove
you gave Carol and me for anniversary…”
Russell loved to suck on a stogie.
He’d buy the best Cuban cigars he could find,
remove the labels and nurse them till kingdom come
in his car, on a walk, or especially
in his book room on the thirty-second floor in downtown Manhattan;
and so what, if it lessened the value (he’d often remind me
with a kind of stolid awareness of his mortality).
Russell only wanted clientele of his liking;
and, inexplicably, I seemed to pass muster on that account.
I opened the package this morning near a window.
Showing its pristine and guileless face: a finely bound octavo
volume in half-leather with gilt tooling and flourishes on the spine.
I got a good whiff of Cohiba or Montecristo,
as well as an instantaneous recollection of laughter
and blinding smoke. I couldn’t see him through the haze
but I could hear his strong voice spinning yarns
and bringing forth ubiquitous charm.
Several years ago he tripped on a slipper
and slid down a long flight of stairs.
In his last days he would point out the irony
of smoking for so many years, never feeling any ill effects,
and then dying from a fall; he’d remind me
of the pleasures of blowing smoke into shadows-
even if it reduced the value of his books by fifty percent.
Near the end, he sold the bookstore
to a youngster, the present owner,
who doesn’t really like old books.
He distributes them like candy− by the box load.
No discounts and no bartering.
But I still buy his books. One at a time.
One every couple of months or so.
Methodically, I opened the Elkin Matthews’ edition of Poems,
by Francis Thompson, first checking the outer margins
and then the inner hinges; thumbing through it with one fan
I finally made my way to the half-title, where the author
had inscribed a short note that read:
“To Norman, as good as an old book, an old friend,
Affectionately yours, Francis Thompson, 1895.”
Based on the very affordable price, the young
proprietor must have missed the association.

EDN, 9/09

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Casting the Nines

enudelman@msn.com (enudelman) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 20:22:15 PDT

Well... nine, nine, o-nine just passed, and with it one of the most innovative poetry projects in years. Casting the Nines is a nine-poem-by-nine-poets chapbook on the topic of the number nine (what else?), released by the nine poets on nine, nine, o-nine to nine strangers with the sole instruction to read the poems and pass it on to eight other individuals. Each poet dated and inscribed the first line and all subsequent readers have a place to sign and date and pass it on. The chapbook's concept was invented, designed, improvised and published by Jennifer Bosveld of Pudding House Publications . A call for submissions was made and poems selected by Jennifer to appear in the book. I had a great time giving "Casting the Nines" to street walkers in Cambridge, MA on a beautiful evening with my wife Susan and Golden Retriever Sofie. I think it was a good move having them come along... so much solicitation nowadays, everyone's pretty wary, but nothing so disarming as a two-year old Golden. I had two opening lines: "Do you like poetry?" and "I'm a published poet." The first worked much better (I wonder why!!). Apart from nearly getting a ticket by Cambridge police for an illegal lane change on the ride over (hey, it seemed legal to me)... everything went smoothly. After the snappy retort, "No, I hate poetry," one couple insisted I read my contribution out loud ("Ninth Curl of the Helix), which I did with a great result. The gentleman no longer hates poetry and said he would read the book with great interest. Lots of other stories, but bottom line, it was a great idea which seemed to resonate with folks. Pudding House is thinking of following this up with a much larger endeavor involving the free dispersal of a much larger number of poetry books and going with interesting and provocative themes. Stay tuned!

A Bar Code to Your Name

enudelman@msn.com (enudelman) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:49:38 PDT

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They figured it out in the tenth calculation
from the tenth derivation. A number popped
out of an equation, fell into a queue and finally
found its way into a car or a laser for incising tumors.
Nobody remembers who found the number
and nobody cares. Eyes circled the room
two point five times then peered out from
the fifty-seventh floor as a passing flock of geese
each with their own equation for lift and glide and dive
nearly distracted the business at hand.
Meanwhile, the earth tilted another 3.7 angstroms
toward the sun, a man in Spain ate 6 eggs sunny-side
up and a dog in Iceland barked nonstop for 37 minutes.
So too, the carbon to isotope ratio in a shoulder
blade of an ox frozen in ice three-thousand years
ago continued to vary just as it varied for the past
three-thousand years. And what of these genes knocking
out aberrant receptors in nerve ganglia, theses numerical
matrices of cause and effect?
Thinking of mortality and the trajectory of a bird
(the distance in meters from here to there)
is a relatively new preoccupation found in only 2.75
percent of the human population, compared to deep
sleep and dreaming whim, or the movements
of the peripatetic mind (87.5%).
Was it a chance event, this flickering notion of identity?
Was it the fruition of time and effort or the slow
distillation of mulling and brooding, this burgeoning
moment of awareness? Another scribble in the log book
of board-room decisions handed down to manufacturers
in sealed documents? This one illustriously gilded with your name
and product description in blazing detail.

EDN, Sept, 2009

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Your Complete Genome Under the Big-Top

enudelman@msn.com (enudelman) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 19:55:09 PDT

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Missiles in miniature hard-wired to fire or misfire,
detonate or flame-out. Pick a target, any target:
gray hair or silver, magnanimous or sleazeball.
Gamer, blamer, lion tamer. Figure out the lock
and key and you’ve got yourself a free ticket
under the tent of dreams, the anything goes.
But who’s behind the scene painting clowns
and saddling pachyderms, bolting high ropes
to tottering poles, oiling torches, pitching tents?
Does it really matter, once you’re inside, once
you’ve got your nose in three rings, buttered
popcorn on every tooth, transfixed by balance
and mystifying artistry, the raw bluntness
of unknown possibility, an incalculable merging
of suspense and resolution? Does it really
matter, when the house lights go down
and the elephants march? Tip-toeing by
in profound unison, these purring cats.
The untamed heart led out into the open.
The rogue distemper of a bucking bronco,
relinquished by a painted face and a rolling
barrel, two steps between chaos and order.

EDN, 8/24/09

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Pyrotechnic

enudelman@msn.com (enudelman) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 04:45:31 PDT

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I was the rueful boy
Shriving beside his little fire
Against the backyard fence.

Playing with matches,
It was said, many times
In many rooms;

And nothing ever came of it.
Though a tree nearly burned down
And a closet lit up.

What wonderful forces
Compelling beyond reason
Approaching joy−

The liberating heat
Exhausting every last
Oxygen atom.

Nothing ever came of it.
Incandescent flares;
Borders of discovery

Brilliant in darkest rooms,
Approachable like filtered light
Inside a dreamer’s eyelid.

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Sun Porch

enudelman@msn.com (enudelman) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:51:39 PDT

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Sun Porch

Is it my imagination?
Are there real people in shorts and tank tops
walking by while we chew steak and sip wine
through this humid evening,
burning anti-mosquito candles
to no avail?
Is it too dark or the porch too hidden
to provide something of interest
for the passing couple
hand in hand
saying something about a concert
and fading out with the words:
“You are so strange.”
Just then, I realize you haven’t
seen any of them.
Your eyes, brilliant globes.
Your lips, messengers.

EDN, 08/09
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Something There Is That Doesn't Love a Garage

enudelman@msn.com (enudelman) — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 12:23:33 PDT

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Something There Is That Doesn't Love A Garage

Someone jammed an iron pipe deep into the dirt
at the edge of my garden about a hundred years
ago I think, and I found another at the end of the lot.

It’s a good thing, I now understand; our predecessors
were more savvy, more conscientious, and certainly
more prudent than their capricious modern counterparts

of which I count myself top drawer, land owner par
excellence. As middle class as middle class gets.
A certified independent real estate maven.

My neighbor spends his retirement pruning roses.
He used to work for the City pruning telephone wires.
He knows this neighborhood and he knows his plat charts.

There’s a record downtown, and another on someone’s deed
that says whoever lives where I live doesn’t own a garage
even though I fill it up with old paint cans and smelly couches.

Then there’s this aerial photograph of my house and yard
with a white line around the whole thing neatly excluding my garage.
My neighbor said I should check to see if I pay taxes on my garage.

I should do that. But I’m warming up to the idea of not owning
a garage. I can fill it up with garbage, bags of leaves, old clothes,
worn-out appliances, even my broken-down Toyota Corolla.

I rejoice! For our thoughtful antecedents. For their iron markers.
My neighbor said I’m lucky; it’s rare to find them any more.
Yesterday I found him in his Laurel hedge with a metal detector.

EDN, 8/09

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Review of My Book, "Night Fires" by O & S

enudelman@msn.com (enudelman) — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 06:00:32 PDT

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Oranges and Sardines, one of the top poetry journals with a print and online platform, has just reviewed my first book of poems, Night Fires. I hope you can stop by their site and read it. After you go to their site, click on the page advance arrow at the end of the page sequence and the review is on pp. 28-29.

Click here: Oranges and Sardines' review of NIght Fires.

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Breakfast Chat

enudelman@msn.com (enudelman) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 13:46:28 PDT

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Breakfast Chat

She spoke of the holocaust
in the same way she spoke of making eggs.
Pulling back the veil only once for me
as I waited on a wooden chair in the corner
of her kitchen, the smell of rich butter
wafting my way, thickly intoxicating.
The eggs were moist and barely cooked.
Henry mumbled Hebrew idioms
intermittently as she explained it to me.
When she finally sat down, I learned how many had died.
And how they died.

EDN, 7/09

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enudelman@msn.com (enudelman) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 05:05:25 PDT

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Dead Man Talking
The communication of the dead is tongued with fire
beyond the language of the living. T.S. Eliot

Who said the dead are silent?
Sleeping magnanimously on their backs.
Was it a poet, or one of those epithets
extracted from I Ching?
And these mummies crumpled
in their sagging skin…
haven’t they better things to do
than muster somnambulist
souls for a quick jaunt
among the living?
These dead waves and particles
luminescent in our darkest
rooms, these trophy ghosts
bouncing off walls
and lighting on couches and chairs,
dancing and dabbling
in our sticky world.
Who said the dead rest?
The dead have work to do.
And so do we.

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Just Received Copies of My First Book of Poems

enudelman@msn.com (enudelman) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:46:15 PDT

Just received author's copies of "Night Fires," from my publisher (Pudding House Publications), which was a semi-finalist for The Journal Award (2009), also known as the "Charles B. Wheeler Prize." This is an annual competition to select one poetry maunuscript for publication, sponsored by OSU poets. I'm elated with the printing and the cover art. They did a great job. There are 30 poems in the book, a sort of reflection on early events and circumstances that were important to me in my childhood and early adulthood. I hope I was able to provide a different look at what are no doubt common and perhaps identifiable themes. You can order the book directly from the publisher for $10 (not including postage): Pudding House Publications/ 81 Shadymere Lane/ Columbus, OH 43213, or find it at their website: http://www.puddinghouse.com. I also am offering, on a first-come, first-served basis, inscribed copies from my own pile sitting in the study. If you want to reserve a copy, just email me at: enudelman@msn.com and/or send $14 (postpaid) to Ed Nudelman/125 New Balch St./ Beverly, MA 01915

Here's one of the poems from the book:

Matinees

My father abandoned me.

Left me for hours
with the Saturday morning weirdoes
on Pike Street to watch gorilla
movies one after another
while the poker star
went upstairs following smoke
or downstairs or across the street.
God knows where he went
to play his cards.

When he finally returned
I’d be on a swivel-chair
next to the popcorn machine

where a pal from his war
made sure I was discreetly
sequestered, cool and dry
and bleary-eyed.

When I got home, the smoke
from my cigarette-laced clothes
still reeked. And worse,
the gorillas kept on dying.

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January Poem of the Month by Grace Cavalieri

enudelman@msn.com (enudelman) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 08:34:49 PST

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What I Won
by Grace Cavalieri

The sack dress was in style then
with a single strand of pearls.
The sack dress was designed to see
the body move lightly beneath.
That's why I wore it to my first poetry
contest in Philly,
leaving my four-month old at home.
Of course my husband had to
drive, as nervous as I was
so he waited in the car all
day while I sat in the big room, first time out
since I found my mother
dead and then had a baby two weeks later.
My husband stayed all day in that
car in the snow. I won first prize about
wanting my mother but
it was said much better than this,
as you can imagine, to win first.
It even began with notes upon a phantom
lute, although The Poet
said what do we know of lutes now?
But what did he know of
walking into her bedroom and finding
her a pale shade of lilac.
That just goes to prove I guess I was talking
about the wrong thing in the poem,
and The Poet was surely on to something.
I have to say I looked wonderful,
gaunt with grief and colitis, 1956,
hurrying across the street
where my husband was waiting to take me home,
the first wrong victory in my hand.

Explication
by Edward Nudelman

“What I Won,” a poem by Grace Cavilieri, takes us through experience’s strongest gift, memory, to illustrate how something sought (such as a poetry prize) can fade and lessen in importance in the face of sweeping grief or hardship. Grace provides us with a very specific account traveling with her husband to a poetry contest, with fear and trembling, allowing the seamless movement of the poem to inform us, and herself, of what really matters and what is supremely valued.

The title of the poem, as well as the first few lines, draw attention to perhaps a physical object or prize that might be won. The speaker is dressing for an important event and is taking matters very seriously (‘sack dress in style’, ‘pearls’, ‘designed to see the body move lightly beneath’). Her anxiety over having to go to Philly (we are not told from which city of origin, but the assumption is that it was a fairly long trip) is couched in ambivalent terms. We’re told her husband had to drive (‘as nervous as I was’), but we’re not told if her fears were directly related to having to read, or something quite different, such as an emotional issue or even a physical impairment.

Nearly midway through the poem, however, we learn the crux of the speaker’s difficulty in which she exclaims: “first time out since I found my mother dead and then had a baby two weeks later.’ We find several lines addressing her husband’s loyalty and the speaker’s obvious regard for his willingness to come alongside her in her travail. The speaker will return to this important aspect of support and care later in the poem.

The poem seems to turn, midway, on the phrase, “I won first prize about wanting my mother…” said abruptly and perhaps sarcastically, with the qualifier, “but it was said much better than this… to win first.” Here the speaker is organizing thought around the ambivalence of winning something obviously of importance (poets live for this), while at the same time having to deal with a devastating loss. The close proximity of her mother’s death, the birth of her child, and the poetry contest all mix in to add dynamic suspense to this poem.

The second half of the poem deals with a fictitious poet, referred to as simply, The Poet, and interestingly given a male gender (perhaps to distinguish from a metaphor of the speaker interacting with a mirror poet, or self, though this could still be true). The speaker uses this device as a sounding board to discuss with us the poem which she presented at the contest, which began "with notes upon a phantom lute." While this appears to be a reference to her mother’s death, it could also stand alone as a metaphor for the evanescence and changeability of joy or peace (the lute being a reference to that which could supply either). The speaker goes on to tell us that The Poet asked, "what do we know of lutes now?” What can good things do for the grief-stricken? How can nice words, sleep-aids, poetry awards assuage the pain of loss? In addition, one could ask, how can poetry itself help? The Poet wasn’t there, and so he can’t identify with what happened (the speaker implies, 'But what did he know of walking into her bedroom and finding her a pale shade of lilac’).

The conversation heightens near the end as the speaker goes back and forth rehearsing her arguments before the anonymous Poet. In a moment of either self-effacing doubt or monumental clarity, the speaker throws up her hands, saying: "That just goes to prove I guess I was talking about the wrong thing in the poem, and The Poet was surely on to something.”

The ending, comprising an extremely personal and vulnerable introspection, provides the reader with what they need to take this poem into their world of experience. We find a tired, worn-out, ill person, ‘gaunt with grief and colitis,’ ‘hurrying’ back to her husband who will take her home and continue to love her, even if at that moment she holds in her hand the very emblem of the conflict and dissonance expressed in the poem: ‘the first wrong victory.”

“What I won” is a strikingly intimate poem that lets the reader experience along side the speaker revealing aspects of her emotional life, if only from a snapshot event on one day in Philly, in 1956. It is a poem of love and constancy as much as it is self-discovery. We are privy to the evolution of understanding in the speaker’s heart. What becomes of value necessarily diminishes that which never had value. But much remains. Throughout the poem the speaker is careful to remind us that her husband not only accompanied her, but brought her, waited for her, and finally took her home. The speaker doesn’t ask for sympathy in the loss of her mother, presented as fact. The poem could have gone down that road and reproduced a thousand similar themes. Not that the crystallization of what really matters is not vividly presented here. But the power and excellence in this poem lies in the understated values of love and companionship portrayed, hard commodities to find in this world; but once found, sufficient to assuage the worst of grief.

Brief Bio of Grace Cavalieri
Grace Cavalieri is the author of several books of poetry and 21 produced plays; she founded and still produces/hosts public radio’s “The Poet and the Poem,” now in its 32nd year, now from the Library of Congress. Her new book is Anna Nicole: Poems (Goss183:: Casa Menendez, 2008.) She is book review editor for The Montserrat Review and a poetry columnist for MiPOradio. Her play in progress, on Anna Nicole, is “Beverly Hills, Texas.”

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Does it take 10,000 hours to be a great poet?

enudelman@msn.com (enudelman) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 10:34:47 PST

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Malcolm Gladwell, in his most recent book, Outliers, suggests that it takes 10,000 hours to become great, to obtain a critical mass that could allow, say, a young Bill Gates to leverage what he learned during that time into the global giant that is Microsoft. The Beatles didn’t start out great, he explains, but invested and amassed 10,000 hours of hard work into their craft before things took off.

Much can be said about innate ability. About being in the right place at the right time. Networking. Being introduced to the right people just at the instant you have something to offer them (imagine if Einstein hadn’t been accepted into the American scientific milieu). All are factors that can increase opportunities for success. And yet, all are short-cuts, in a sense. How often do any one of these, in particular, play a prominent role in success? A strong argument can be made (and Gladwell makes one) that there is a far more important ingredient.

Elbow grease, a nearly forgotten commodity in today’s ‘give me’ generation, may be the greatest benefactor to success. Does the math work in the literary world? If it works, then how does one measure success in art, when there are so many different motives one might claim to pursue it seriously?

Not by the almighty dollar, we're quick to reply. Number of publications? Number of books? Do you have tenure in the Literature department at a major university, teach at a community college? Do you have your own poetry blog with thousands of viewers? Most agree that these factors, while certainly contributing, are not prerequisites or determinants in establishing quality and value with respect to matters in the art world (I'm generalizing here, but bear with me). We all know of exceptions to the rule (ourselves, for example), and are quick to point out that intelligence, or academic ardor (institutionally speaking), though perhaps useful tools, are not in and of themselves, key players in the universe of art and artists.

Thanks to internet, we have a 100 million experts. Who’s to judge who’s good and who’s bad? In poetry, for example, which poems deserve to be pushed to the fore and celebrated (if this were even possible), and which avoided at all cost? The hyperbole of such an exercise, to be sure, is distasteful. And yet, I think this is what we do to some degree on a moment by moment basis (especially on the net). From what I’ve seen, most writers care deeply about what they write, and they care about getting better. Most are open for critique. However, many don’t seem to want to seek it out proactively. But looking for critical analysis from peers may be jumping the gun. There may be a much simpler route to success.

I like Gladwell’s 10,000 rule. It puts a stronger emphasis on the value of learning a craft, a talent, even a gift. It puts a premium on rehearsing, on honing, on editing, on revising (not to discount stream of consciousness writing, extemporaneous models, etc.) It’s clear we’d do better to read 100 pages for every page we write. Or a 1000 pages. If you write poetry, then read poetry. Read about poetry. Read about the lives of poets. Read history, when a poem about an historical event strikes you deeply.

Write and rewrite. Show your work to experts, consultants, friends, your dog or cat. Success? Everyone has their own models and values of what this means, but most kid themselves if they reject the ideal. All the writers I know, and I know a good deal, care deeply about what they write, and if they understood what it took to get better, they’d move in that direction. Expectations for success can be incremental and modest; or they can be quantum leaps, the sky’s the limit.

Most who write know they need to spend more time working on their craft. Improvement can be measured a million different ways; but, in the end, little improvement is possible without contributing energy into the equation. Does it take 10,000 hours to write a great poem? Probably not (that’s a lot of hours)… but as you approach that kind of commitment, you’re sure to reap a lasting benefit in the development and mastery of your craft.

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December Poem of the Month by Diego Quiros: Horse Feather

enudelman@msn.com (enudelman) — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 10:58:30 PST

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Horse Feather

This is a horse feather,
white, the calm of clouds.
I saw it fall from the sky
a slow dart from antiquity
swirling its habitual pattern.

Its vane gentle across my lips
its sturdy rachis could pen
a poem or two about
the process of kissing or
stammering ecstasies.

I wondered if the mythical animal
would part the evening sky
with its pale steady silence
turn its crimson eyes in my direction
and rapture me on moon-hooves

over the matrix of skyscrapers
wearing nothing but its ribcage
between my legs.
Nothing is impossible.
I once loved like that.

-by Diego Quiros

SUMMARY
In Horse Feather, a mythical horse, undoubtedly Pegasus, is conjured into awareness by a musing speaker who imagines seeing one of its feathers (white, the calm of clouds) fall from the sky. The anatomy of the feather is presented with respect to the speaker’s romantic love (could pen a poem or two about the process of kissing or stammering ecstasies). In S3, the speaker delineates the power and majesty and passion of such a mythical creature that could ‘part the evening sky with its pale steady eye’ (and rapture me on moon-hooves). In the final strophe, the speaker imagines riding the horse over skyscrapers with nothing but ‘its ribcage between my legs,” and suggests that such an adventure is within the realm of possibility. In the last line the speaker divulges his hidden sentiments, revealing he once loved in the same fashion.

COMMENTARY
Horse Feather, by Diego Quiros, is a striking poem about the possibilities and limitless boundaries of love. It is a poem that begs for several readings, as it presents insights in several diverging directions. On the one hand, the poem can be read as a fantasy narrative, where the speaker muses on the passionate image of riding Pegasus over skyscrapers. Another view of the poem reveals a more subtle, perhaps melancholy desire to rise above the limits of human love and experience an altogether unbound (unearthly) love as characterized by riding this mythical creature.

The poem consists of four strophes, each with five lines. The rhythm begins fairly uniform, nearly tetrameter in the first two strophes, then half-way through, defaults to a more drawn out beat, both in sound and length of line. This shift at S3 coincides with a tone shift where the speaker becomes more open, his feelings more vulnerable.

“This is a horse feather, white, the calm of clouds,” opens the poem with a striking visual picture. It is falling from the sky, this tranquil ‘slow dart from antiquity.” Up front, the speaker wants us to know that he is really talking about Pegasus, that winged horse, sired by Poseidon, an emblem of power and grace. The name, Pegasus derives from "spring or well." Whenever the horse strikes a hoof to earth, a beautiful spring bursts forth. The metaphor aptly sets up the reader for S2 which dissects the feather into its component parts and relates them to sensual aspects of love: the vane (soft, wispy) ‘gentle across my lips; and the rachis (the part used in ink pens) ‘sturdy,’ ‘could pen a poem or two about the process of kissing,” etc.

But it is in S3 where we begin to see the inner unction of the speaker with respect to love. As well, the poetics and imagery spring more freely from the idea of the mythical animal as having superhuman abilities, both in power and beauty (part the evening sky with its pale steady silence) and in its natural proclivity to rapture (on moon-hooves across skyscrapers).

In S5 we find the culmination of such an adventure, as the speaker alludes to the naked power (ribcage) churning between his legs, a very striking and erotic metaphor which is effortlessly merged into one image. Finally, and importantly, the speaker exhales and draws back from the vision declaring, ‘nothing is impossible.” If he has loved, and loved well in the bounds of his humanity (I once loved like that), why not in the boundless sky? Why not like Pegasus, riding unbound through the heavens?

The power of this poem lies in its central proposition that love is without limits. What makes it click is that the speaker doesn’t dwell on a litany of past experience. What adds to its cohesiveness and beauty is the speaker’s confidence. The poetic, yet blunt tone. It is sufficient to merely say, “I once loved like that,” and the honesty and forcefulness of such a declaration drives the poem home like a dagger.

BIO
Diego Quiros is a poet, artist, and Electrical Engineer living with his family in South Florida. He was born in 1962 in Havana, Cuba, lived in Spain for several years, and traveled to the United States by himself at age ten.

His poetry, has been published in several issues of Ocho, Mipoesias, and Verse Libre Quarterly. Diego also co-hosted the MipoRadio show “Deconstructions”. Diego’s first collection of poems “Alchetry” (click here); a study on the four elements of writing and their relation to the four basic elements; was recently published by Goss 183 (formerly Menendez Publishing) and it is available at Books and Books and Amazon.

He credits all his work to conversations with a Muse he describes as “a woman with long dark green hair, green eyes, and light green skin”. He claims she walks around his home in South Florida and drops subtle whispers here and there while he writes.

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Poetry and Language: Ramblings on the Sweetness of Poetry

enudelman@msn.com (enudelman) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:47:47 PST

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Poetry and Language: Ramblings on the Sweetness of Poetry

It was Auden who said, “A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.” I can only imagine what a sweet love affair it was for one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century, a prolific poet who used language to shape about 400 of the greatest published poems in the Western poetry lexicon.

Still, even Auden must have anguished over his words. I’m sure he had his moments gnawing his knuckles over the bitter inconsistencies of grammar and syntax- the inexorable frustration of having only one set of rustic tools: the naked, two-dimensional cryptograms of an alphabet.

But is it accurate to think of language merely as a tool? Can it ever be more than that? Does it provide discrete limitations to our knowing, or can we supersede the perceived barriers of language by using it in special ways? Mysterious ways?

And what can poetry contribute to this equation? Some would argue that we can move into new rubrics of understanding as we move from prose to poetry, as one might move from a photograph to a painting. I’m not at all sympathetic to such a stretch, but I am open to the notion that poetry is distinctively different than prose; not at any one particular facet or quality: but as one takes the whole of prose and sets it along side what we have in poetry, patterns emerge. One of the most salient of all, it occurs to me, is that of the sweetness of language.

For me, poetry gives language a sweet-smelling savor. Like what I get when I slowly breathe in a Chateau Margaux (1961, please) that has had one hour to rise above the rim of a decanter. In poetry, we ask language to do special things. We ask it not only to convey, but to speak. Or better, we ask it to play music. To bounce, or slide, or glide, or stop nearly on a dime, then whisper inaudibly into our memory. Finally, we ask it to remain on the palate, or in the nose. For a lifetime. Great poetry will do this. And often with only 14 lines.

A crude thought experiment, if you will: what is the difference between the following two paragraphs:

Are you sad, Margaret, because Goldengrove’s trees are losing all their leaves? You are young and carefree, but as you age you’re liable to be much sadder than you are today, much more bewildered and perhaps find that life itself is corruptible; you may cry and still not understand that it is all the same: Spring or Fall- either way- it is still your nature to find sorrow, just like the rest of us. Only now, you are sorry for Margaret, alone.

Versus:

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

I know, the prose section could have been a bit stronger, but you get the idea. Hopkins loaded his poem, Spring and Fall, with the fiery darts of language. “Goldengrove unleaving,” is a masterpiece of innovation, as is “world of wanwood leafeal lie,” and the whole poem uses language, the cadence, the sound, the smell of leaves, short bursts of energy packed into images that can be seen by the eye, all culminating in a rush of identification whereby the reader at the end finally realizes that they have, all along, been where Margaret has been. May be going where Margaret is going.

Human beings have this amped-up gift of appreciating language in all its complexity and nuance. A single word, or small group of words, if properly placed, can strike a hidden neuron in the farthest reaches of the brain, retrieve a memory, a smell; or a fundamental crisis of being.

Poetry works to tweak these neurons. It uses language and the sound of words, and the intermingling meanings and connotations to create something out of nothing. It takes the black ink outline of letters on a page and turns it into a picture. Key to all of this process is the naiveté of the poet, who, like the tiny bee in a hive of a million bees, can have no idea or appreciation for the delicacy that she is making at its center. Yet she works away with ardor, compelled by instinct, or maybe even the prospect of something sweet tickling an antennae. Either way, the honey is sweet. And the bee continues to work. In most cases, without remuneration and without acclaim. And suddenly, one day, the poet looks up from the page and realizes there is something sweet here. And the honey remains sweet.

-EDN, 12/15/08

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November's Poem of the Month, by Aaron Belz

enudelman@msn.com (enudelman) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:55:23 PST

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WHISPERED JOKES

If I’m in such good company, please
explain why I have to keep looking
over my shoulder to see who’s not there:

ghost of the staircase, living
room phantasm—whispered jokes,
unheard and ungotten—or maybe not.

I call them the comedians of chance,
and I have discovered that they’re
completely cornball. Canned.

They’ve written routines
in sharpie on their luminous
hands and keep looking down

to see what comes next. My father
used to laud people who know
“what goes where,” but I swear,

I don’t anymore—it’s all up in the air,
half-visible pins twirling end over
end, and I, their ghastly juggler.

SUMMARY
Whispered Jokes gets your attention in the title and alerts the reader to look for what might be forthcoming: perhaps jokes whispered to self, some kind of cryptic messaging. The opening strophe gives what could pass for a joke: “If I’m in such good company, please/ explain why I have to keep looking/ over my shoulder to see who’s not there.” And who’s ‘not there’ is, namely, a “ghost”, or a “phantasm.” In short, “whispered ghosts,” perhaps unheard or whose punch lines are “ungotten.” The speaker calls the joke-tellers “comedians of chance,” and tells us that they’re “completely cornball.” Further attention is given to how and where they’re written, such as “in sharpie,” and “on their luminous hands.” The processes involved are alluded to as “routines.” There is a tone and content shift in S5 where the speaker speaks of his father who “used to laud people who know ‘what goes where,’” and uses the construct to insert an unsettling sense of ambivalence in personal experience: "I swear,/ I don’t anymore-it’s all up in the air.” The poem ends in a characterization of the problem and consequences of not knowing or understanding something key and fundamental in the evocative image of pins which are “half-visible,” and “twirling end over end,” with the speaker as the “ghastly juggler.

COMMENTARY
This poem, with its seemingly off-handed and light tone, has much to offer in speaking to the fundamental nature of how we learn, how we know, and how we accommodate to things we feel we can’t understand. The poem’s rolls out freely with easy words and syntax. Nothing complex here. And yet, there is a kind of deceptive foil here for an underlying deeper consideration of identity and self-appraisal. Additionally, the formal presentation, though not rhymed (except for 'swear/air' near the end) is nonetheless nicely put together in neat, free-flowing tercets, further directing the reader into the poetics of the speaker.

Some key questions are raised at the beginning of this poem. What is the nature of these “whispered jokes,” who are the people that are saying them… and to whom are they being said? As well, the poem seems to be addressing the issue of how we process what we’ve learned, what we make of past failures, for example. And how do we make order out of what often appears to be a disordered, random world.

We can see by the speaker’s opening interrogative, that there’s some degree of equivocation in his voice. This is not a prescriptive essay or a document on how to solve the world’s problems. It is the speaker sort of talking out loud, remembering his own ghosts and phantasms walking around his house (perhaps as a child), jokes uttered and not heard, or not understood. But the jokes aren't one-liners. These are innuendos, rationale, ways of thinking to ward off other ways of thinking.

The dissonance increases in S3 where the speaker, who has his own expression for these jokesters, “comedians of chance,” makes a decided tone-shift away from self-examination and toward mild invective. Here we find that the speaker has a distaste for the joke-tellers who tell 'corny' jokes; but worse, actually write them down (in indelible ink) and then refer to them as needed. This is perhaps the moment at which the poem turns from inward to outward commentary. The speaker seems to be making an ethical statement regarding meaning. Is it enough to rely on past performance, old jokes or riddles which cannot suffice, in unwrapping the serious issues of life? Indeed, they often return (as ghosts) to haunt, rather than providing any sort of apologetic for living. The speaker references his own father, and relates his (the speaker's) obvious disdain for that kind of philosophy which is blithely self-confident (“people who know what goes where.)” It leaves one wondering what the subtext is here. As with many poets, a father (or mother) theme will pop in and out of poems freely, and the poem gives room and desire to hear more on this subject. Still, it amps up the immediacy of feeling. There is a bewilderment in the voice here, that it should be so easy for these kind of people to be cavalier in their movement through life, that they would have nothing better to do than rehearse old jokes.

This is a direct poem. It tweaks the reader to ask their own questions and assumptions about what makes them sure. Not that we should be fettered with doubt. But the poem speaks to a kind of unguarded optimism that doesn’t examine deeply into meaning. And what is left? “Half-visible pins twirling end over end, and I, their ghastly juggler.” Here we find the result of such thinking: enervating, dangerous, a vacuous pursuit.

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ABOUT AARON
Aaron Belz writes poetry in Los Angeles. He has a Ph.D. in American Literature from Saint Louis University and an M.A. in Creative Writing from NYU. His first book of poetry,The Bird Hoverer, was published by Buffalo: BlazeVOX Books, in 2007. Aaron’s second book of poems, Direction, is forthcoming from Persea. Some of his poems, essays, biographical history and much more- may be found at these websites (just click):
belz blog
belz poetry on wordpress

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