Tiger Tracks

Informally Formal with Carol Frith

2012-01-24T15:48:00.000-08:00

Because the Sky is Savage Blue

The sky is a savage blue, too bright.
It cuts like a knife. An ice-clad gum tree
exfoliates in the wind. I cross the street.

There is a library on the corner, care-
ful stacks, quiet mahogany tables.
Because the sky is a savage blue,

I enter the library to read Eliot.
Outside, the skyline rises around me—
jagged verticals in the wind—street

after street of buildings I do not know.
But I am in Eliot’s London, fog curling
in the alley ways, no blue sky at all.

I am a claw. A mermaid. A footman. I am
reading Eliot at a mahogany table.
Outside, a gum tree exfoliates in the wind.

Vertical buildings cut the frigid sky as if
they were knives. The wind is devastating.
The sky, a savage blue, is too bright, but I—
I am walking into an alley in the London fog…

Studying Baroque Art

I’ve read too many art books. My weary eyes
are filled with staunch Aeneas leaving Troy
and Saint Theresa’s Ecstasy, the joy
of Rubens’ rendering of flesh—his rise
from point to counterpoint to catechize
the nude—Cornaro and Bernini’s ploy
to pair Theresa with a pagan boy.
I turn the page and Mannerism dies.
Chiaroscuro abbeys, colonnades
and formal gardens, spacious avenues,
and chapel after chapel breathing prayers.
Oh, those hand-rubbed pomegranate balustrades!
I’ve all the Grand Baroque that I can use.
Bright nudes and Spanish saints, get off my stairs.

Writing Formal Poetry
Carol Frith

While I write a good deal of free verse, I very much enjoy writing formal poetry as well. Over the years, I have tackled various European and Asian fixed forms, all of which I have found to be challenging and rewarding. I believe that writing formal poetry not only enhances the understanding and appreciation of the poetry of the tradition, it tends to smooth and improve one’s free verse, as well.

When I began writing formal verse years ago, I found it helpful to familiarize myself with metrics before tackling the even trickier combination of meter plus rhyme. Since the iambic foot is the most commonly used meter in English poetry (English being, after all, a predominately iambic language), I focused initially on writing blank verse. After I became more or less comfortable with blank verse, I moved on to the writing of fixed forms that incorporated rhyme. I’m particularly partial to the sonnet, that restrictive (yet liberating!) “narrow room” with its fourteen lines of iambic pentameter and its strict rhyme schemes.

The music of formal poetry is somewhat different from the cadences of free verse. It is at once steadier and more regular. My husband, Laverne Frith, and I take frequent walks in our neighborhood. Laverne is not only a gifted poet, he is also an excellent photographer who frequently carries his camera on our jaunts. His unerring “photographer’s eye” often directs my attention to subject matter for poetry, and the steady, rhythmic pace of our walks sometimes suggests a formal metric for the piece. I have written many sonnets as a result of our walks together.

I often say that my work is “informally formal,” which is one way of reminding myself that even free verse contains a good many formal elements. The very fact that a poem is line-broken differentiates it from prose by introducing the formalizing element of the poetic line. Stanza patterns—couplets, tercets, quatrains, etc.—when used in free verse, impose an additional element of structure.

Formal verse often contains its share of informal elements as well. For example, unrhymed, unmetered poems using the stanza and refrain patterns of the villanelle are becoming increasingly popular. I enjoy these poems very much, and I often write them in addition to writing formal villanelles.

After many years of writing both free and formal verse, I can definitely say that I remain devoted to both disciplines. My husband, Laverne, often says that I am an enthusiastically committed (in)formalist.

Bio, Carol Frith

Carol and her husband, the poet Laverne Frith, live in Sacramento, California, where they co-edit the poetry journal, Ekphrasis. Carol has received a “Special Mention” listing in the 2003 Pushcart Prize Anthology and has two sonnets in Sonnets: 150 Contemporary Sonnets (University of Evansville Press, 2005). She has chapbooks from Medicinal Purposes, Bacchae Press, Palanquin Press, Rattlesnake Press, two chapbooks from Finishing Line Press, and a chapbook forthcoming from Gribble Press. Her full-length collection was released in 2010 from David Robert Books. A winner of many prizes and awards including the MacGuffin Poet Hunt, Carol is a seven-time finalist for the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award.
Her poetry has appeared in Seattle Review, POEM, Spillway, Midwest Quarterly, Atlanta Review, Rhino, Tiger’s Eye, Rattle, Poetry Kanto, Lake Effect, Willow Review, Eclipse, Redivider, The Literary Review, Porcupine, Measure, Clackamas, Smartish Pace, Valparaiso, The Formalist, Karamu, Iris, River Oak Review, Interim, Phoebe (NY), Switched-On Gutenberg, and in many other journals.

The Will and Impulse to Let Poetry Happen

2011-11-23T17:20:00.000-08:00

Asymmetrical Me Remembered
(for Edita)

how certain lonely nights
spanning nearly a lifetime,

sometimes collude on the field
of dreams, as a collection,

an ongoing angst that lingers
there, and in other spaces

and places throughout
each day and night.

There is nothing linear
about them, only distortions

of trusts, of enduring love,
of almost everything of value

held so dear.

On Contemplating Just A Bit
Of My Growing Up

On certain days, I wished to know
what Mother thought as a means,

however temporary, of coping
with each day, the things I imagined

she must have had to do to get
through the complications,

the miseries of her failing health,
the scheduled and unscheduled work,

the almost certain chaos of a brood
of children, her outside jobs,

demands of Dad, and a less than
perfect house . And then,

there were the passions
of her own beliefs to factor in,

some not shared with Dad.
What did she think that made her work

tirelessly on? Or did she really have
time for much reflection? Did she

just know, by some magic mothers
often have, how to walk the paths

she trod, to finally get us through,
to turn us loose to fly?

Why Am I The Way I Am In Poetry?
by Laverne Frith

Books have played pivotal roles in my life’s picture from the earliest beginnings—preschool through my early education in Muskogee, Oklahoma schools (including Phillis Wheatley Elementary, Paul Laurence Dunbar Junior High School, and Manual Training High School, schools of excellence in instruction, values, engagements, schools that demanded the best and gave the best in return.

Why I write is probably inseparable from what I write about. I say this, knowing full well that the complex roots of why we write are deeply entrenched, widespread and entangled. Why indeed am I not able to control the impulses to read, to explore, to examine, to reflect upon and about the world around me, or, as R.W. Emerson might have said as in his essay, Nature, how do I somehow grasp firmly the relationships I cannot fail to sense with the natural world, the natural order of things? A near-lifetime adventure with photography has been of inestimable value for me in this area. And I certainly do not mean to exclude other valuable genres, such as music, dance, theater, et al.

So I share, and attempt to share the sheer joy that poetry in all its most sentient aspects unveils, uncovers, reveals, the doors to which are open and available to all with the will and impulse to let poetry happen all over again, ever deeper, ever more abundantly, and in so many new and often unexpected ways.

This is only a function, a small function of the motivation, the sine qua non, of why I must continue to write, to encourage others through my poems, my suggestions for unblocking the writing process, with ideas for new approaches, all of which I have personally explored, and through which I have achieved results. I have pursued this through presentation of workshops, through editorship of journals, through the writing of columns for Senior Magazine (now SeniorMagLive) through its extensive distribution and presence on the Worldwide Web. This particular monthly column has been the source of directions in poetry continuously since February of 1996.

In addition, my wife, Carol, and I, edit the poetry journal, Ekphrasis, focused on poems about art, perhaps the most rapidly expanding genre in poetry. Our journal was founded in 1997.

There is no one answer, no one source, for poetic inspiration and guidance, but a multiplicity of them. The poet, however, must be of an exploratory nature, must be inquisitive, experimental, and open to finding his or her own true way.

Read, read, read, or take whatever path you might, but be open to the ideas that have framed the scene as we know it, ideas that will still be valuable wherever that path takes us in the future.

These are just a few of the things that come to mind when I consider the who, the why, the what I personally represent in poetry—as I struggle to be the poet I really want to be. Test, test, test you own work. Work to become your own best editor, your own best critic. Learn through process to be a fair judge of your own writing. And I would be remiss indeed if I did not draw particular attention to the many years of sharing the wonderful adventure of poetry with my loving wife, Carol, and with so many welcoming and supportive poetry communities broadly.

Laverne Frith's Biography

Laverne Frith is co-editor of Ekphrasis, a journal of poetry in which each poem focuses on a single work of art. He is a long-term poetry columnist for the widely circulated Senior Magazine (now SeniorMagLive). Laverne has chapbooks from Talent House, White Heron Press, and three chapbooks from Finishing Line Press—Drinking The Light and The Range Of Seeing, both of which were nominated for The Commonwealth Club of California’s California Book Awards, and Swimming In A Southern Reservoir, which has just been released. Another chapbook, Celebrations: Images and Texts, was released from Rattlesnake Press in 2009. Celebrations: Images and Texts features Frith’s photography as well as his poetry. Laverne was runner-up for the 2004, 2005, & 2006 Louisiana Literature Prize in Poetry. His poetry has been accepted or appeared in Poetry New York, Christian Science Monitor, Song of the San Joaquin, Tiger’s Eye, Sundog, Comstock, Montserrat, California Quarterly, Dalhousie, and numerous other publications. He has a Pushcart Prize nomination and honors and awards in many poetry competitions. His full-length collection from Cherry Grove Collections (WordTech Communications) was released this spring. He and his wife, Carol, authors of Practical Poetry—A Guide for Poets, have presented many workshops on poetry subjects over the years. They have co-authored reviews for the national Literary Magazine Review.

A Land Not Mine

2011-10-20T12:40:00.001-07:00

A Land Not Mine
by Anna Akhmatova
(Translated by Jane Kenyon)

A land not mine, still
forever memorable,
the waters of its ocean
chill and fresh.

Sand on the bottom whiter than chalk,
and the air drunk, like wine,
late sun lays bare
the rosy limbs of the pinetrees.

Sunset in the ethereal waves:
I cannot tell if the day
is ending, or the world, or if
the secret of secrets is inside me again.

I am thinking of another time of chaos, one where Akhmatova joined Mandlestam and Blok at the Stray Dog, I envision those rebels reading their words in the basement club. What remains of that time is not their fear, but their passion. They spoke up, spoke out, instead of hiding from the reality around them.

Who among us could foresee our own faces in Akhmatova's mirror? Who would have imagined the shuttered homes, the empty auto malls, the two-party system an engine running out of gas? We built our house of glass on the backs of the poor, with a belief that greed is sustainable. Most of us are either affected, or can foresee being affected by the malaise of an over-inflated government that has backed and been in-turn supported by big business. Did we really expect not to pay a price for our greed, for colonizing countries and "giving" them our democracy, our religion?

My sister in verse, Anna Akhmatova, the woman who grabbed me and spoke to me from the grave, is still breathing her words, her sorrow, her verse into me. This is what poets give birth to, another generation of poets who are not afraid to tell their truth.

Colette

Cleo, Dressed for Fire

2011-10-06T09:44:00.000-07:00

Dressed For Fire

Dressed for fire, low along the ground,
I wait for air to lift me,
puff sleeves into the scarlet wings I desire,
shoes into mercurial sleekness.

My breath steams against coolness
as I ride upon air, ride within air,
become air, high,
then low along the ground.

Our life cycle, air and fire, fire and air,
I am dressed for fire, my love,
I am dressed for you.

The Devil If There Is One

The devil if there is one
appears at dawn, smoky hair flying,
hands full of memories, my memories.
She says they are indelible.
I long to believe her
but my yesterdays are liquid.
Soon there will be nothing of me.
That would be acceptable,
but, then -- she brings me
sly hints that things
might be better -- or worse --
than the deeper sleep,
that had I been different, nicer,
there might have been a sweet white place
but now, probably there will be
the red-coal place,
and wouldn’t either be better than nothing?
If I will just believe her,
touch this red-hot coal against my soul –
(soul, are you real, will you feel the burn?)
if I will believe her
she will dance forever with me
in the sin-fed flames
and kiss me with her hot hard morning mouth.

Cleo Griffith, in her own words . . .

As soon as I started school I knew I wanted to be a writer, the thrill when the teacher opened a box, took out a book for each of us, the unique fragrance of the printed word on new paper.

I have written many words by this seventy-fifth year, the last eleven the most productive and successful. Dreams of becoming a fabulous author of books – those have narrowed down to the happy reality of poetry.

I do not have a single focus or theme. Any book I would ever print would be a compilation of family, fantasy, the scenes around me, the influences of friends. I love the actual work of writing, from the initial lines through all the revisions to the completed work. (Always available for another revision.)

The fellowship of other poets and writers is a thrill. I am delighted to be included. Of course, we include each other in our subjects folder. Those poems are usually kind. Everyone and everything is available for our inspiration. I dote on the world.

Magic, Illusion and Simon Perchik

2011-09-01T13:01:00.000-07:00

G63
by Simon Perchik

Palms up, you're used to winter
as the sound not yet these rocks
breaking off between one clearing

and the other—you already know
what's to come, pull up
the way piece by piece still remembers

the first snow and now the Earth
keeps everything to itself
though what you lift is always cold

starting over, filling each stone
by hand, further and further
almost in two and frail.

MAGIC, ILLUSION AND OTHER REALITIES

Where do writers get their ideas? Well, if they are writing prose, their ideas evolve one way. If, on the other hand, they are writing poetry, their ideas evolve another way. Perhaps some distinctions are in order. Distinguishing the difference between prose and poetry may not be all that simple; there are many definitions, all of which may be correct. For the purpose of this essay allow me to set forth one of the many:

It seems to me that there is available to writers a spectrum along which to proceed. At one end is prose, appropriate for essays, news, weather reports and the like. At the other end is poetry. Writers moves back and forth along this spectrum when writing fiction.

Thus, prose is defined by its precise meaning that excludes ambiguity, surmise and misunderstanding. It never troubles the reader. To define it another way, prose is faulty if it lacks a coherent thrust guided by rules of logic, grammar and syntax. It will not tolerate contradiction. Poetry, on the other hand, is defined by its resistance to such rules. Poetry is ignited, brought to life by haunting, evasive, ambiguous, contradictory propositions.

This is not to say poetry is more or less useful than prose. Rather, they are two separate and distinct tools, much the same as a hammer and a saw. They are different tools designed for different jobs. If an essay is called for, the reader wants certainty; exactly what the words you are now reading are intended to give. If, on the other hand, consolation for some great loss is called for, the reader needs more: a text that lights up fields of reference nowhere alluded to on the page. This calls for magic, for illusion, not lecture. To be made whole the reader needs to undergo an improved change in mood, a change made more effective if the reader doesn't know why he or she feels better. Exactly like music. That's where poetry gets its power to repair; an invisible touch, ghost-like but as real as anything on earth. A reading of the masters, Neruda, Aleixandre, Celan...confirms that a text need not always have a meaning the reader can explicate. To that extent, it informs , as does music, without what we call meaning. It's just that it takes prose to tell you this.

This is because prose is a telling of what the writers already know. They have a preconceived idea of what to write about. With poetry it's the opposite. The writers have no preconceived idea with which to begin a poem. They need to first force the idea out of the brain, to bring the idea to the surface, to consciousness. With poetry the writer needs a method to find that hidden idea. If the originating idea wasn't hidden and unknown it isn't likely to be an important one. Let's face it: any idea that is easily accessible has already been picked over. It's all but certain to be a cliché.

To uncover this hidden idea for a poem the writers each have their own unique method. As for me, the idea for the poem evolves when an idea from a photograph is confronted with an obviously unrelated idea from a text (mythology or science) till the two conflicting ideas are reconciled as a totally new, surprising and workable idea.

The efficacy of this method for getting ideas is documented at length by Wayne Barker, MD. who, in his Brain Storms, A Study of Human Spontaneity, on page 15 writes:

If we can endure confrontation with the unthinkable, we may be able to fit together new patterns of awareness and action. We might, that is, have a fit of insight, inspiration, invention, or creation. The propensity for finding the answer, the lure of creating or discovering the new, no doubt has much to do with some people's ability to endure tension until something new emerges from the contradictory and ambiguous situation.

Likewise, Douglas R. Hofstadter, in his Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid writes on page 26:

One of the major purposes of this book is to urge each reader to confront the apparent contradiction head on, to savor it, to turn it over, to take it apart, to wallow in it, so that in the end the reader might emerge with new insights into the seemingly unbreachable gulf between the formal and the informal, the animate and the inanimate, the flexible and the inflexible.

Moreover, the self-induced fit is standard operating procedure in the laboratory. Allow me to quote Lewis Thomas, who, in his The Lives of a Cell , on page 138. describes the difference between applied science and basic research. After pointing out how applied science deals only with the precise application of known facts, he writes:

In basic research, everything is just the opposite. What you need at the outset is a high degree of uncertainty; otherwise it isn't likely to be an important problem. You start with an incomplete roster of facts, characterized by their ambiguity; often the problem consists of discovering the connections between unrelated pieces of information. You must plan experiments on the basis of probability, even bare possibility, rather than certainty. If an experiment turns out precisely as predicted, this can be very nice, but it is only a great event if at the same time it is a surprise. You can measure the quality of the work by the intensity of astonishment. The surprise can be because it did turn out as predicted (in some lines of research, 1 per cent is accepted as a high yield), or it can be a confoundment because the prediction was wrong and something totally unexpected turned up, changing the look of the problem and requiring a new kind of protocol. Either way, you win...

Isn't it reasonable to conclude that the defining distinction between applied science and basic research is the same as that between prose and poetry? Isn't it likewise reasonable to conclude that the making of basic science is very much the same as the making of poetry?

In a real way I, too, work in a laboratory. Every day at 9 am I arrive at a table in the local coffee shop, open a dog-eared book of photographs, open a text, and begin mixing all my materials together to find something new.

For the famous Walker Evans photograph depicting a migrant farmers wife, I began:

Walker Evans Farmer's wife
Tough life, mouth closed, no teeth? Sorrow?
Not too bad looking. Plain dress

This description went on and on till I felt I had drained the photograph of all its ideas. I then read the chapter entitled On Various Words from The Lives of a Cell. Photograph still in view, I then wrote down ideas from Dr. Thomas's text. I began:

Words --bricks and mortar
Writing is an art, compulsively adding to,
building the ant hill,
not sure if each ant knows what it will look like when finished
its too big. Like can't tell what Earth looks like if you're on it.

This too goes on and on with whatever comes to mind while I'm reading. But all the time, inside my brain, I'm trying to reconcile what a migrant farmer's wife has to do with the obviously unrelated ideas on biology suggested by Dr. Thomas. I try to solve the very problem I created. Of course, my brain is stymied and jams. But that was my intention from the beginning.

Sooner or later an idea from the photograph and an idea from the text will be resolved into a new idea and the poem takes hold.
No one is more surprised than I. Or exhausted. The conditions under which I write are brutal. My brain is deliberately jammed by conflicting impulses. Its neurons are overloaded, on the verge of shutting down. I can barely think. My eyes blur. The only thing that keeps me working is that sooner or later will come the rapture of discovery; that the differences once thought impossible to reconcile, become resolved; so and so, once thought impossible of having anything to do with so and so, suddenly and surprisingly, has everything in the world to do with it. Or has nothing to do with it but can be reconciled with something else it triggered: one flash fire after another in the lightening storm taking place in my brain.

Getting the idea is one thing but the finished poem is a long way off. And to get there I abstract. Abstraction and music are soul mates and poetry is nothing if not music. For each poem its opening phrase is stolen shamelessly from Beethoven. He's the master at breaking open bones and I might as well use him early on in the poem. Then I steal from Mahler whose music does its work where I want my poetry to do its work: the marrow.

Perhaps marrow is what it's all about. Abstraction, since it contradicts the real world, is a striking form of confrontation which jams the brain till it shuts down confused. It befits the marrow to then do the work the reader's brain cells would ordinarily do. And though what the marrow cells put together is nothing more than a "gut feeling", with no rational footing, it is enough to refresh the human condition, to make marriages, restore great loses, rally careers.

Of course abstraction is just one of the ways writers arrive at the poem with their idea. But however they come they all leave for the reader poetry's trademark: illusion. It is that illusion that builds for the over-burdened reader a way out.

Perhaps, as you may have already suspected, a poem, unlike a newspaper, is not a tool for everyday use by everyone; it's just for those who need it, when they need it.

SIMON PERCHIK

From Red to Yellow, Mary Jo Balistreri's Writing Process

2011-07-14T10:12:00.000-07:00

Loggerhead

Belly-up on sand,
a position I’d never seen

Three of us rolled him
over

Black sockets
Vultures had eaten
both eyes

Barnacles pocked his great domed shell
Tangles of seaweed, clumps of mud

Water, wind-whipped
sea-cold spindrift

The helpers left

He was alone
like me

Something tumbled between us

I Believe

in legacies—Limoge dinnerware, black pot-bellied love cups,
sweaters, hand-knit; jewelry, real and costume,
Hopi kachinas, Sioux arrowheads, stones, oaks and shagbark
hickories, holly, sharp-edged, blood-red berries. Hawks,
and the plains ironed flat, fields scored with the history of wind,
blizzards and black ice, days of white out, prairie silence,
its ever present music; quiet refrains of the soil, inner landscapes
and seasonal moods. I believe in grasshopper plagues, a murder
of crows, conversations among the dead and the living.
I believe in the oracular, the secretive, cerulean blue
gentians, their bright trefoil, the arc of memory
and the stardust we’re made from—gods, all of us,
in the womb of time.

My Writing Process
by Mary Jo Balistreri

In thinking about my writing process, I realized that a number of things have changed due to a basic change within me—I am less will-driven and more cyclic. I wane and wax like the moon, the tides, the seasons. Steady but not driven, I come to my writing in increments the way night slowly opens to day.

First is meditation, and then coffee at the kitchen table where I do nothing
but look and listen. When in Wisconsin, that means the movement of the trees, the rhythm of the pond, what birds fly in, who’s at the feeders. My notebook is open, dated and the day already entered. I jot down these particulars in the red college ruled notebook. I use drafting pencils and never leave home without one. I take my time, sip at the coffee and when I begin to get a feeling for the shape and color of the day, I read two or three poems and then walk. I like the physicality of my body’s involvement. My mind is freed by the walk and ripe for ideas, images, whatever catches my attention in the landscape, or nothing.

By the time I arrive back home, have showered and changed, I am ready for my yellow legal tablet, for I start my writing longhand, do as many revisions as I can before ever going to the computer. And that might be it for the day, or I might be lucky and a poem will catch fire and I will lose sight of the time and be shocked that the afternoon is well on its way.

When I’m in Florida, the process changes slightly although the meditation is still first. I walk for 3 miles immediately after and I carry the book of poems I’m currently reading and my red notebook with the slip-in slide for the pencil with me. This "on the go" brings gifts for the entire day. I encounter otters, alligators, spiders in the mangroves, varied shore birds that feed in the tidal flats, and estuaries. I walk alongside of them on berms or planked paths through the trees. The last leg of my journey is along the shore of the gulf, where crabs, snails, shells, and fallen coconuts attract my interest, along with schools of minnows, ibis, egrets, colonies of terns, and the ubiquitous seagulls. Sometimes there are dolphins and on those days I feel like a divine ray has zapped me on the shoulder.

And then I am at the Sandpiper, an open-air restaurant and workout place, where I write most mornings. The coffee is free until 11 o’clock and I take a table next to the railing and look at the water, read, write, whatever happens to present itself. It can be a noisy place with aerobics and occasionally loud conversations, but here is where a hearing loss is an asset. All becomes a bizarre kind of background beat, a thrum that is just part of the scene. People often come over and talk to me for a few minutes and it feels okay. And I think, like being in Wisconsin, it is okay, these intrusions, because the day has been allowed to unroll at a pace I can take it in. We’re comfortable with each other.

What comes of this is hard to say. Certainly appreciation and gratefulness of the world we live in, and sometimes happiness that comes out of nowhere or sadness too. As for my jottings, well the same process as I described above, nothing mechanical until much later. Some of the fragments remain as they are—my witness to this day, this particular space and place in time.

As to a finished poem, I try not to hurry the process. I learned from years of playing the piano professionally that even when one thinks the piece is finished, it usually isn’t. It needs to sit awhile, so if possible, I like to do that with my poems. Very few come directly from head to paper. I also believe finished is a relative term. Even poems that were published years ago, and I thought were good, are reminders of just how shaky that word is. There are also folders full of poems that just never got off the ground. But for me, the joy of writing is in the process itself.

You may read this and say well, who has that kind of time? I believe my answer is everyone—life is theme and variation. There are days skewered with medical appointments or family crises, and I can’t find this time totally my own, but I can always find parts of it, and if writing is a process, then this is part of the process too. To be a writer, you are always thinking of writing, even when the words won’t come, and in this respect, writing is like a friendship you spent years cultivating. You take your friend with all her quirks, and virtues, her nasty habits and her admirable qualities. It’s all of a piece. And at the end of the day, you are left with Thank you, and that seems like enough.

Bio:

My husband asked the other day, Why do you always have to carry that red notebook? And my reply, to give witness to the day. And maybe my own existence in this day. He seemed satisfied. Poetry is the path I have chosen to walk or perhaps it has chosen me. In any case, it is like a burr on my leg and I can't shake it off. It has become part of who I am. I am grateful to have shared some of these poems in publications such as Crab Creek, Windhover, Echoes, Verse Wisconsin, Passager, Spindrift, and others. Bellowing Ark Press published my book of poems, Joy in the Morning.

This is the second entry in our new series, Process. Each month, mid-month, we will showcase a poet who has been in, or will be in, the pages of Tiger's Eye. Mary Jo has two poems in the upcoming issue. Next month we will feature Simon Perchik, one of our first poets and one of our favorites. Simon also has two poems in issue twenty-one.

Submitting to Creation

2011-07-02T08:12:00.000-07:00

http://americanlegacyfinearts.com/wp-content/gallery/christopher-slatoff-in-the-studio/promo3-2.jpg

Your job as a writer is to deep-dive within yourself and bring out all the good stuff. If you’re looking at the marketplace, you’re looking in the wrong place.

-Ray Bradbury

No matter our skill level, our track record, or our reputation, publication matters. It is what holds us up, keeps us engaged, and reinforces our decision to become poets. And it is the least important element of our writing.

The little nuances that make a line our own, the years of craft development, and the time we pour over the keyboard or the iPad or the yellow legal pad, are what define us as writers. The struck flint, the kindling caught fire, these moments are what we live for.

Publication is the goal for most poets, and for me, a surprising disappointment. When I see a poem or essay or book of mine in-print or online, I am pleased, but it never compares to the moment of its initial creation. Maybe I am the exception, but I don't think so. There is a bittersweet feeling when we see our exuberance and passion grounded in print.

Although publication is our ultimate goal, it should be forgotten completely as we invite the creative energies to flow through us, as we apply pen to paper. As Ray Bradbury advised, "deep-dive" and keep your eyes off the marketplace.

Colette

Roger B. Smith's Editing-By-Fire

2011-05-22T09:15:00.000-07:00

sapling
--by Roger B. Smith

navy seals killed the monster
the one america trained to kill russians
the one the country does not think is dead
the one the barber remembers went to harvard
the one who isn’t really dead
the one who was living in a mountain cave
but languished in a mansion instead
swooning from room to room on K street
having a late lunch with Elvis
then taking marilyn to the forum
to see the prize-winning documentary
about good people killing bad people
and hoping it will never end

during my sweet winter
I couldn’t bare to cut the branches
always hoping dormant twigs
will be next summer’s blossom

The following essay was written after I asked Roger to tell our readers about his writing process. He had made a comment to me about his monthly chapbooks, and I was hooked. Who collects work like this? Who destroys their own work? I wanted to know more. And I thought our readers would too. Because of our collective interest in "process," a kind of writer's voyerism, we decided to make this a monthly occurence. Roger's essay is the first entry in a series simply titled "Process."

Colette

How I Write
--by Roger B. Smith

Thinking in words and writing the words is the process of making thoughts available to the future. Acknowledging the physicality of life as I accumulate information via my senses is the first step.

Margaret Atwood wrote that a poetic idea escapes like a “dust bunny scurrying under the bed.” In order to scoop them up before they disappear I often scribble a clue on the small piece of paper I have folded in my pocket. So, my writing starts with a scribble on a scrap of paper. Or it may begin as one of my daily journal entries in a black-&-white, marble covered composition book I purchase at the supermarket.

I’ve been journal writing for more than fifty years. My journal can tell me what the temperature was at 6:20 a.m. on Friday, January 16, 1953. Writing the date, time, temperature and day of the week is my way of being born into a new day, my way of saying, “yes I am here and it’s snowing, raining,” or “a deer is staring at my window” or “the sunrise is hiding behind the night.” As I write and accumulate information about the day and my feelings both physical and emotional, I begin sorting through the sensations, influences, and expectations coursing through my brain. My average journal entry is two hundred words. I have, on rare occasions, written “I have nothing to write today,” and then proceeded to write a page on why I don’t feel compelled to write or my frustration over being stymied by my lack of access to any powerful impulses and ideas.

Most of my ideas for poems and stories start in my journal. It is there that I begin to match language with form. My journals contain circled words I have read elsewhere and want to revisit when I’m searching for the perfect fricative or plosive, or the sound, accent and number of syllables to match my idea – in other words, the perfect word or poetic line. I make good use of my thesaurus to investigate the meaning and usage of a word I may have read in a poetry journal, book, or even the New York Times Science section. After noting the word in my journal I may hi-lite it or circle it in red if it fits into a poetic scheme. For instance, I may be looking for a two syllable word that coincides with the concept of freedom and using the word free would be too redundant and obvious so I may choose the word frequent, “free” for freedom and “quent” as an opportunity to introduce the word “quench,” as an inner-line rhyme.

The lines may read:

frequent air above the ocean/
came to me as a pulsing quench/
slippery as a longed-for kiss

Once the idea is written in my journal, I record the page of the entry in the index in the back of my journal. From there the poetic idea begins its journey to becoming a poem. The next step is writing the idea as a poem in my grist file in my computer. The grist file is a month’s worth of word sketches that I print in chapbook format, reading, revising and re-revising, rearranging or crossing out words and lines, as needed. Most months yield two or three ideas worth pursuing, sometimes more depending upon the reliability and faithfulness of my muse. The surviving poetic idea then gets its own Microsoft Word file in my computer and I revise yet again, using the notes and arrows and crossings-out I made in the grist book. At some point I read the poem aloud to test its flow or, if it’s meant to be humorous, to judge whether or not the imaginary audience is laughing. Recently I read grist poems to a coffee house audience. Readings are often followed by tweaks of language or re-alignment of lines.

A final revision takes place immediately before I submit poems for publication. I ask myself, if the strength and expression of the thought is sufficient to stir the reader. As Robert Frost said, “No tears in the writing, no tears in the reading.” Sometimes, after many revisions, I reject a poem before giving an editor the opportunity to do so because the expression is unworthy or the idea ill-conceived.

Lately I have asked my wife to read my revised grist chapbooks. Gratefully, she treats my work with the same impartiality she affords her community college writing students’ efforts. While she may often find my poems inscrutable, she may also like some of them, a few of them.

Much of my writing results in destroying what I write. Last winter I sat on a rug in front of my fireplace with a decades-old notebook full of grist poems in my lap, poems I thought at the time of writing were worthy of manuscript status. After an afternoon of editing-by-fire, fewer than twenty poems survived, and of the twenty, only a few hi-lited lines found their way into rejuvenated poems.

For me, the distance between the initial written idea and the final poem has to be sufficient to enable me to read the work as a reader would read it and not as the writer has written it. I need to put aside the conditions under which the poem was written so that I nay determine if it successfully creates its own world for the reader, as every good poem should.

On only one occasion I can think of, have I written a poem in one sitting and sent it immediately as a submission: Number 10 Atkinson St., a sixteen-line poem written in the winter of 1981 and published the following spring. Not since that time thirty years ago have I been so certain of a poem’s impact that I failed to put it away for at least a week or sometimes several months before submitting it for editorial consideration.

Oh, I have been absolutely certain on some occasions that the poem I just finished was ready for an editor’s scrutiny but I put it away anyway. I have always been grateful for my patience. Every poem needs the test of the fireplace reading.

Roger Bernard Smith was born in Rochester, NY in 1939. He grew up on a fruit and dairy farm in rural Wayne County, studied painting at The Art Student’s League in New York and the San Francisco Art Institute. He also earned the Associate of Arts Degree from Monroe Community College, Rochester, NY.

His poems and stories have appeared in Beginnings Magazine; State Street Press; Tiger’s Eye Journal; Love After 70, (Wising-up Press Anthology); The Sun Magazine; Coming Together Anthology, (Center for Positive Sexuality); Exercise Bowling Journal; The Body Attacks Itself Journal; and upcoming issues of The Haight Ashbury Review; and March Street Press.. He publishes a thirty-two page chapbook, Juxtaposed Diorama quarterly and distributes it to bookstores in New York.

Smith has kept a daily journal since 1954, his freshman year in high school. He teaches journaling at the Mohawk Valley Institute for Learning in Retirement (MVILR) at SUNY-IT in Utica, N Y, and with inmates in Utica area prisons.

He worked for many years as a photojournalist, with photo credits in The New York Times Sunday Magazine (Cover), TIME Magazine, RollingStone Magazine and many other publications. His photographs of the American anti-Vietnam War era/activities, are being archived as part of the Peace Collection at Swarthmore College in PA.

Smith lives in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains with his wife Susan and their beloved cats.

You can contact Roger @ rbsmith@ntcnet.com

Laverne Frith Imagines the Self

2011-04-25T15:34:00.001-07:00

Laverne Frith’s poems are succinct, spare, precise. After reading just a few, you know that the poet is as much a philosopher as a writer. In his new collection, Imagining the Self, Frith considers self in the context of his personal history, within the natural world, and through relationship.

In “Barbequed Kid,” “On the Hunt in Oklahoma with Dad,” and “Of Remembering,” we meet a boy entering the adult world, the tastes and scents emanating from the pages. Frith shows us how the presence of a lizard in the desert can diminish us "In a Yosemite Summer." In "The Blue Water," he takes us into the blue water with the blue woman, and we check our hands to see if the book has been submerged in his blue water, turning our own fingers blue.

Frith never directs or convinces, instead he asks us to see what he is seeing, feel what he is feeling. We follow trusting his instincts. Although there are several poems with a philosophical bent, as well as those that mention writing, the ones that interest me the most are the ones that center on dailyness. The lines, the spread tossed aside, the sheets disarrayed, the potatoes full of eyes, seeing me everywhere I look, and the little finger whorls into the nape of the neck, startle me, make me reconsider the ordinary moment as anything but ordinary.

In “The Old Tea Shoppe,” Frith ends with the words, My wife and I being so very careful, even in this shoppe, to get it right. This is a man who in his studied carefulness does get it right. His poems are the rock you find after washing the sand away. Smooth, cool to the hand, always to be kept close.

Colette Jonopulos
Editor, Tiger's Eye Press

Jeanne M. Leiby

2011-04-22T13:34:00.000-07:00

Two days ago the literary community lost Jeanne M. Leiby, fiction writer and editor of The Southern Review. No one imagines such a loss, such an unexpected finality. We at Tiger's Eye would like to offer our condolences to Jeanne's family, friends, and all of those she worked with and influenced at LSU.

Two days ago I bought the latest issue of The Southern Review. I was impressed with the maturity of the poetry, how studied and adult the poems are, how the prose poems by Jane Springer and Sara Dillon Pennington are given the same respect as the free verse. I have carried this copy with me, and have felt something solid and valuable in my hands. How disturbing that the editor who chose the poems and worked against a deadline is no longer here. How difficult to accept this loss.

In the front of the Spring 2011 issue is a brief Q&A with Jeanne M. Leiby and Jen McClanaghan, The Southern Review's resident scholar. I will quote Jeanne from the article:

"I like objects, and, like you, I'm drawn back to the objects of my childhood. But I've also always been attracted to the dark corners, the unopened doors, and the unturned stones."

This seems oddly presentient, and I am left with an image of a door just opening.

Colette

http://www.lsu.edu/thesouthernreview/

Janice D. Rubin

2011-03-25T20:58:00.001-07:00

Interstate 5

Driving Interstate 5
from Eugene to Portland
I pass Albany
pulp and paper
boxcars, filled with sawdust.

“The Lucky Eagles”
Casino sign,
mile posts that fly by like a bullet train
shout out the distance to go,
motels with a view of the beach.

Green state highway signs announce
the radio station for a weather report.
Harley motorcycles
manufactured homes.

While traveling in France
I went to see
One flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
filmed in Oregon
during the credits
a flash of Interstate 5 rolled by.

Homesick for the winding black ribbon
that runs up and down the valley
rock quarries, horses
lying down to rest
in fields along the highway
rain drenched Sundays.
I took out my wallet
and held my return ticket
between my palms.

One of "our" poets, we say this possessively about anyone we've published, Janice D. Rubin, has a new chapbook, Transcending Damnation Creek Trail, published by Flutter Poetry Press. We recently interviewed Janice, and are excited about sharing her thoughtful answers with our readers.

Tell us about the process leading up to having your chapbook published.

In 2000 I sent a poem written many years ago, to Flutter Poetry Journal. The poem was titled Rebequitta, it was about a relationship long ago. I originally discovered Flutter Poetry Journal while looking for poetry journals I thought might be interested in publishing a single poem. The editor of Flutter Poetry Journal, Sandy Benetiz liked the poem I sent in and offered to publish it in Flutter Poetry Journal’s September 2008 issue. At the end of the year I was pleasantly surprised, pleased and a little shocked that she nominated the same poem, Rebequitta for a Pushcart Prize.

In 2009 I decided that one of my writing goals for the year was to have a first collection of poems published. I had been a member of a poetry writing and critique group for about four years. I was very interested in publishing a full length poetry collection. I submitted a manuscript of 50 poems to Silver Fish Review for the Gerald Cable poetry book contest. This was my very first contest and I realized how challenging it was to have a full length collection published.

Around this time I decided to choose 20 poems from my original full length poetry book manuscript and to create a chapbook manuscript focused on the theme of love, loss and transcendence. I entered six chapbook contests in 2009 and 2010. The reading fees were anywhere from $6.00 to $20.00. I was feeling a little frustrated with contests. At this time I became aware that the editor from Flutter Poetry Journal which had published my Pushcart nomination poem Rebequitta was also the Editor of Flutter Poetry Press. I sent her a query e-mail and asked if she would like to see my chapbook manuscript of twenty poems. She responded, she would like me to send the chapbook manuscript, then she notified me two weeks later that she would like Flutter Poetry Press to actually publish my chapbook.

Would you do anything differently?

I was very happy with the publication process, the Editor of Flutter Poetry Press, Sandy Benitez was great. We communicated well, even through e-mail. One area I would change was the graphics. Each of the poem titles was underlined and written in bold, this was the way I submitted the poems and titles. I think graphically the poems would come across a little differently if the titles weren’t underlined and bold. The font and graphics have an impact on the poems, even subtle.

Has seeing a larger body of your work in print changed the way you write?

Seeing a larger body of my work in print has made me more aware of the importance of craft. When I read my poems in my published chapbook the poignancy of each poem is there and I re-live the original experience again in all its immediacy. The poems complement each other and support the theme. My tendency is to want sharper and clearer images, leaving nothing extra on the page.

What do you see for yourself in the next five years?

In the next five years I would like to publish at least one full length poetry collection of fifty or more poems, maybe two full length collections.

Tell us about your writing process, from first idea to taking a poem through its edits to the finished product.

My writing process starts with an idea, a thought but more often a feeling or an image that I want to capture. I think of sketching, a term Kerouac coined in his essay on Spontaneous Prose. I try to not limit or censor the idea, feeling or image, but to allow it to flow from my mind to the page unimpeded. After I have captured the poem lines or idea on the page I go back and work with it. I think the poem helps to write itself once the poet has something on the page. I go for a solid feeling that the poem is communicating.

Most writers have self-doubts that limit their productivity, as well as their ability to finish. Does your Buddhist practice help you overcome these negative thoughts?

My Buddhist practice is a reliable source of revitalization and renewal for my writing. I chant each morning and evening. Morning is setting the course of my day, a vow, a determination, a prayer. Evening is chanting from a sense of appreciation. My practice is based on the Lotus Sutra. Like a Lotus flower that sinks its roots deep into the mud of the everyday world and uses day to day experiences to nourish life. The title of the Lotus Sutra is Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. This sets the course of my day.

My prayer along with many other prayers in 2010 was to have my chapbook published by the end of the year. Intellectually I didn’t know how this would happen but as I continued to chant over the year I felt a growing confidence that my prayer would be answered. I did hear from Flutter Press in November.

What keeps you writing?

The joy of writing, of capturing an incredible image, the right combination of words, the joy of polishing a poem. Going back to it and changing one or two small things that will make a big difference in the entire poem.

Poetry has always been a way for me to document those moments in my life and experience that are significant or universal. Writing allows me to relax, to reflect and create something universal that the reader understands as a common or uncommon experience.

I have always loved art, culture, literature and poetry, it revitalizes us and makes us human and I have always seen myself as a poet. I work in human services as a vocational rehabilitation counselor and so have to be very disciplined. There is discipline in writing but it is at my own pace and it provides enjoyment and perspective.

You can purchase Janice's book at:
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/transcending-damnation-creek-trail/14439396

With so much happening worldwide, Japan, the Middle East, etc. etc. etc., we come to our poetry broken. And what we've discovered is that poetry heals the broken places. Now more than ever, we need to speak the unspeakable with our words, to give names to the things that we cannot otherwise comprehend.

Colette & JoAn

Into the Rose Garden

2011-01-22T13:24:00.001-08:00

--from "Burnt Norton," The Four Quartets
T. S. Eliot

I

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.

I was discussing change with my neighbor, and how our lives can move from comfort and security to chaos overnight. We have an ideal, a dream, we may even be living inside that dream, and then it is over. How jarring, how frightening, when our lives give way and we have no foundation left to balance on.

After eight years of personal ambiguity, my current mind-set is to live within it, to even thrive in it whenever possible. I've discovered it is possible to stand on the lip of failure, of disaster, and declare sanity and peace for oneself.

With our words, we can add to the apocalyptic images of our planet, or turn toward hope. We can renew our personal lives when necessary, as well as our overtaxed earth. We can collectively choose the positive scenario over the cataclysmic one we are being bombarded with. The key may be in the bending, in the acceptance of a slow recovery that is monitored like a child's first smile. There it is, fleeting but real.

Write from experience, from the gut, but write with a sense of responsibility. In my latest poem, "Against Despair," I attempt to acknowledge both private and planetary woes, and at the same time suggest renewal, hope. My metaphor for hope is unexpectedly the rose. The one flower I did not like until I moved to Sacramento. And now that I can truly see it with all of its mysterious folds, it haunts me, the single yellow flower has captured me.

Choose one element, one item, one image, and use it as your own. Obsess over it. Write about it. Taste it. Retreat from it and return. And quite possibly in this dance of familiarity, you will find, as I did, that within an image the entire universe resides.

Colette
Eugene, OR

A Kind of Sewn Poem

2010-12-11T16:18:00.001-08:00

How is it possible this is the last month of 2010? Why are there never enough hours or enough light? Issue #20 will be printed after Christmas.

Sometimes we mention the absurd and the surreal in our lives. It is not very editorial to do so, nor is it very professional. In reality we are two women who love literature, particularly poetry, and who live in the swirling energies of two large families. We try to balance the demands people put on us with the ones we put on ourselves. Women have always done this.

At some point, usually when I'm finally worn down, I question how to balance anything. Does the ill child take precedence over an editing job? Of course. Beyond that, the lines become blurred. It seems everything I need to do for myself is off-set by someone else's needs. I watch my daughters struggle with this, and realize it is about being human, but it is more about being female.

I was watching Bright Star, the movie about John Keats and Fanny Brawne and I found Jane Campion's Fanny, played by Abbie Cornish, more interesting than the iconic Keats. Fanny is mercurial and curious, outspoken and talented. From a review in Slate: By emphasizing sewing as Fanny's creative outlet, Campion shows the social constraints on women in Regency-era England and also gives the poet's muse an art form of her own: When Fanny presents Keats with an exquisitely embroidered silk pillowcase, it's a kind of sewn poem.

I sent JoAn a copy of Bright Star. I am wondering when she'll have time to watch it.

Colette

Oops

2010-10-09T17:45:00.001-07:00

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.
Samuel Beckett

Mistakes. Errors. Failures. We all like to think they are an aberration in our lives, but in reality they are a constant element. It took me a long time to accept my editorial (and otherwise) imperfections, and to keep going. I can still get pretty spun-out by a misspelled word, a lazy ending, something that should have been caught, but wasn't.

Our personal literary errors are more easily handled than the ones we make in Tiger's Eye. Our latest issue of the tiger includes the same person's bio under two names. We hate this kind of mistake. And yet no matter how hard we work at perfection, or how many proof-readers we have, it happens.

In the latest issue of the Writer's Chronicle, there is a repeated quote in big bold type. I love it. I love that even they mess up. It gives me a sense of freedom for my own creativity, a permission to fail. When I drop the self-critic, the little guy banging on the inside of my head, a broad field of possibility opens up.

And this is what I am talking about: the messy world of creativity. Creation includes mistakes, anomolies, loss. It includes disappointment and being humbled. And it gives us a chance to fail and then to fail better.

Colette

Following Ezra

2010-06-04T13:03:00.000-07:00

If a nation's literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.
Ezra Pound

In a Station of the Metro
by Ezra Pound

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Notes for Canto CXX
by Ezra Pound

I have tried to write Paradise

Do not move
Let the wind speak
that is paradise.

Let the Gods forgive what I
have made
Let those I love try to forgive
what I have made.

The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter
by Ezra Pound

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?

At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-yen, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-Sa.

In this age of easy online publication, as well as journals taking in poetry that at best can be named, heartless, clever, and gimmicky, who do we look to for direction? And how to we insure we are not just putting more unnecessary words into the world?

It does little good to point fingers at programs, professors, or editors. It comes down to the individual poet who must consider the history and tradition each has inherited. We need to have a knowledge of other poets, of poetry from other countries. We must read, read, read.

When a poet tells me he or she does not read poetry, I am dismayed. Reading a wide variety of poetry only enriches our own. To think reading poetry will weaken or change our own writing in a detrimental way, is faulty thinking. Different voices inform us, challenge us, move us, or in some cases, bore us. But never, never does learning more harm what is inherent. In what other venue would we consider ignoring our peers beneficial for growth?

We owe it to our poetic forebears, and to our peers to develop our skills to their breaking point. No one wants to read another half-thought-out poem. Consider the reader, why a person would turn to poetry at all. If we hope to inspire, educate, scare, or titillate our reader, we better do it with craft, not cleverness.

This moment in history is ours to document. We all recognize that we are in the most rapidly changing time on record. We can react with quick-and-dirty writing, or we can document this movement with knowledge and poetic control, with an openness to possibility, and with respect for our reader.

It is not about getting published; it is about writing something important enough to be read. If what we write is beautifully honest, well-crafted and edited, if we bring the tradition of our past forward in our writing, our poetry will not only be published, it will change lives. Anything less is just more unnecessary words.

Colette

Joanna Rosinska's Desires and Cravings

2010-05-22T17:26:00.000-07:00

Upon each awakening
I promise myself to divert my attention
toward less consequential
desires and cravings

Joanna Rosinska's Absurdities is a multimedia feast for the eyes and ears. The book demands the reader enter into Rosinska's secret obsessions and undeniable passions. Her desires and cravings are expressed in poetry, photography, sketches, and in an accompanying spoken-word CD.

Absurdities has an Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole kind of feel. I moved through the book, turned back, questioned, laughed, asked myself if the poet had as much fun putting it together as I had reading it. I found myself following Rosinska down the rabbit hole. I came up for air, only to get pulled under again. Did she really do the sacred Rain Dance backwards? Stick her finger in an electrical socket? Dig through the neighbor's trash? Is she serious or is she playing with me? I suspect both.

One of Rosinska's obsessions is numbers:

My love affair with numbers
extends beyond my cubicle,
I look for them everywhere

And so do we. In a bold move, Rosinska has opted not to use page numbers. At first I was annoyed, and then I realized it is part of the book's charm, a quirky calculated move to further make me question order and expectation. The large and colorful titles down the sides of the pages help the reader to access a favorite poem, and to direct other readers to a particular page. As Rosinska recently told me, Life is not linear. Neither is her book.

It is hard to give Absurdities a proper review. You need to hold it in your hands, and listen to the different voices (accompanied by original music by Rosinska and Anthony Hicks) on the CD in order to fully understand what she's done. You need to actively follow the poet into her surreal world of obsessions, possessions, cravings, and impecunious intentions. Don't worry, I had to look it up, too.

Absurdities is much more than a book; it is an experience. You can buy your copy from Primary Remiges. This is their first multimedia publication. www.primaryremiges.com

Colette Jonopulos, co-editor
Tiger's Eye: A Journal of Poetry

A note from the author:

This is only one direction (satirical/surrealistic) in my poetry. I do write in pictures, hoping to evoke a deep emotional response with my poems. I like Robert Frost, and admire the sense of action/rhythm in his poems. I like slam and stand-up comedy, and hope I've incorporated some of that feel in my Absurdities. Joanna

Dianna Henning's New Release

2010-04-26T11:28:00.001-07:00

Book Review: The Broken Bone Tongue by Dianna Henning

Dianna Henning’s title poem begins with these words: There were things she could say/and things she couldn’t say . . . . Her new book, The Broken Bone Tongue, contains the things Henning can and does say with an eloquent honesty. Her theme of bones ripples through the pages with an expert’s observation, like her butcher’s cleaver, her intentions exact.

Bones are an appropriate theme for Henning’s collection; she takes the meat off of relationships, leaves the reader with the bare and sparse feel of bones left in the desert, bleached of all pretension. From the butcher’s apprentice “wiping his bloodied hands across his white cotton apron,” to shaking hands with her own tongue, we are asked to intimately share Henning’s unique view of the world she inhabits.

Henning offers us other images, of animals and man, but her poems featuring bones, the ones where she tells her deepest truths, where she uncovers the tenderness and temporality of the body, are the ones we will return to for comfort, for understanding. We are haunted especially by the poem “Instructions for Cleaning the Aphrodisiac Bone,” a short two-stanza poem we have previously published in Tiger’s Eye, consisting of a rare and fragile beauty. We reprint the entire last stanza here, as one line is not enough to exhibit the delicacy of Henning’s imagery.

Place your mouth flush to the bone’s hollow center,
call out the creature it was in real life,
its ghost reminiscent of a god.
Notice how it stares at you, as though all bodies
began as eyes, form following sight.

We recommend this book to our readers, and hope you will experience the same sense of wonder we have whenever reading Dianna Henning’s work.

Colette & JoAn, Editors
Tiger’s Eye: A Journal of Poetry

Reconsidering Poetry of Place

2010-03-24T11:15:00.000-07:00

Spring-like weather here in Eugene is gently moving us out of our vitamin-D depleting days. I hear from my daughter in Denver that it is snowing, a friend tells me it is raining where she lives, another just came in from the beach. Place, our specific location, influences how we feel, our activities, and what we write about.

Poetry of place is not my favorite poetry. And yet I find myself questioning and reconsidering my prejudice. Since moving to the Pacific Northwest, I have watched how place works itself into our bodies and then into our words. Many people who live in this damp, lush environment are writers. And their work is often about the rain, the land, the ecosystems, the proliferation of dark days. They are a sensitive bunch. And their writing reflects this. Kathleen Dean Moore, Sherman Alexie, Ursula K. Le Guin, to name a few. And of course, William Stafford, who is a literary icon in the PNW.

Whether we are born to a location or transplanted, place is profoundly important in the creation of an individual's work. The Sacramento Valley poet and the Willamette Valley poet are recognized not only by their diverse subjects, but by their moods. Sometimes their moodiness. Our environment does more than gently influence our writing.

When I lived in Sacramento, many of the poems I wrote were based on my suburban neighborhood, nature something I went to. The extreme summer heat made its way into many of my poems. Now it is difficult to conjure the feel of that blasting heat, let alone allow it to influence my writing.

I don't consider my poems poetry of place, and yet, what poems aren't? If that place happens to be the memory of picking up rocks in the Nevada desert, or my mother standing on the curb smoking a Herbert Tareyton before walking into Woolworths to start her workday, or a sensual memory of skin and teeth, is that not a place?

I live near a river now. The water, the cormorants and red-winged blackbirds, even the people and dogs on the path along the river are more than subjects for me to write about; the feelings they conjure are watery, light, and mysterious. I could say my work is more watery because of this, which it is!

Take a long walk (even if there is snow on the ground), study your neighborhood, the miles you cover between home and the park, home and the grocery store, home and your place of worship or work. What does your habitat feel like? Like me, you may be surprised at the richness of your descriptions, the joy of getting a location just right, and how that scene is metaphor for so much more. You may discover that poetry of place does not have to be boring or predictable; held in a particular tension, place can carry the weight of our emotions, our fears, even our inconsistent moods.

Colette

Earth Dweller
by William Stafford

It was all the clods at once become
precious; it was the barn, and the shed,
and the windmill, my hands, the crack
Arlie made in the ax handle: oh, let me stay
here humbly, forgotten, to rejoice in it all;
let the sun casually rise and set.
If I have not found the right place,
teach me; for, somewhere inside, the clods are
vaulted mansions, lines through the barn sing
for the saints forever, the shed and windmill
rear so glorious the sun shudders like a gong.

Now I know why people worship, carry around
magic emblems, wake up talking dreams
they teach to their children: the world speaks.
The world speaks everything to us.
It is our only friend.

2010-03-09T14:53:00.001-08:00

Our print journal is not large enough to accommodate reviews, so we are going to begin posting reviews on our blog. The following review is for the new title, The Broken Bone Tongue, by Dianna Henning. The reviewer, Marilyn Jurich, is an Associate Professor of English at Suffolk University, Boston. The publisher is Black Buzzard Press, Texas.

If you have a book you'd like considered for review, contact us at tigerseyetracks@yahoo.com or tigerseyepoet@yahoo.com.

Colette & JoAn

Book Review: The Broken Bone Tongue

In coming to Dianna Henning’s poems, the reader is continually surprised—everything is alive, has a significant presence, and resonates beyond the page. The Adirondack chairs (in the poem by the same title) actually communicate their feelings:

their longing spread between armrests,
soft currents of breath
floating upwards between them.

In another poem, “To Canoe the Possible/Face the Direction of travel” the object, this canoe, which has been made with love, becomes part of its maker who offers “the quiet turned in the paddle of the hand.” This “canoeness” reverberates and transforms: “lovers with their canoe bodies/skidding over the pliant sheets.”

In Henning’s poetic universe, all things and beings are conjoined; one poem begins, “There was the deer I wanted to be and the deer I couldn’t be.” As the poet watches the injured doe and her new-birthed fawn, she cannot retreat from the immanence of the doe’s death. She shares both that tragedy and glory: “I could smell the scent of solitude inside myself.” How the sacred bond between human and animal has severed “the wholeness of the world,” she reveals in “Animal Mission.” It is this wholeness she means to recover through her poems.

Several poems discuss the poet and her making of the poem, such as “The Broken Bone Tongue” which recognizes how the poet must speak to the immediacy of life, or what she experiences and fails to record will wither and fail to be roused.” What remains are “only bones…their marrow dry.” Yet, it is apparent that Henning has retrieved what matters to herself and to her reader; the bone, used symbolically in many of her poems, is not only what remains after “the flesh” disappears, but is what exists now as memory and possibility.

Other images vibrate for their sensuous expression, as well as for their transcendent evocations. In “Advent of Dark When the Day,” the poet speaks of young love and a love-making that extends through the night: “Sunshine/blistered on water and the ocean’s brazen spears/of rainbow pierced the sky.” Often, as in “Fleshing the Tongue,” Henning constructs dramatic scenarios; she also imagines whimsical conversations, such as those in “The Grace Kingdom.” Many poems, like “Instructions For Cleaning the Aphrodisiac Bone” can be daring and audacious; some, notably “A Journey to the Father on the Gurney” are heart-wrenching. What Henning reveals in the most persuasive of these poems are the truths that arise through our attempts and abilities to connect with all that surrounds us. Our participation in these poems as readers frequently becomes a redemptive experience.

-Marilyn Jurich, Associate Professor of English, Suffolk University, Boston, author of Defying the Eye Chart (2008), a collection of poems and Scheherazade’s Sisters, Trickster Heroines and Their Stories in World Literature.

Here we are on a bridge, I think, a river . . .

2010-03-07T23:53:00.001-08:00

It is not so much about events that I'm curious, as about myself. There's many a man thinks he's capable of anything, who draws back when it comes to the point... What a gulf between the imagination and the deed! And no more right to take back one's move than at chess. Pooh! If one could foresee all the risks, there'd be no interests in the game!... Between the imagination and a deed and... Hullo! the bank's come to an end. Here we are on a bridge, I think, a river... Andre Gide, The Vatican Cellars

These are tough times, and it is natural to blame one another for our angst, for the widening gaps in what we trusted and what we can no longer trust. We want to know why the money/person/security that was there yesterday is no longer available to us.

How easily we slip into blaming other, sometimes Other, for our difficulties. The Buddhist idea, that each of us just wants to know happiness, comes to mind. This simple truth illumines the darkness in our motives, erases the energy behind our fears. We do want the same things, peace, happiness, prosperity. And ultimately, we are in this soup together. What happens to you affects me. And vice versa.

Does this have anything to do with poetry? It does. Whether or not we support one another, take joy in each other's successes, work tirelessly to promote one another, matters. There is enough room at the poetic table for all of us. Look at the number of journals available to us, the online sites, the contests. When I read the list of winning names in any given contest, they are almost always new to me. A lot of poetry is getting published, and a lot of poets are winning awards. Don't ever doubt that there is room for you and your work; there is.

Unfortunately, we've had to adjust to the economy, the competition, and possibly our lack of savvy in advertising. We've discontinued our annual poetry contest. If you've entered our 2010 contest, you will be getting your check back in the mail ASAP. Thank you so much for entering; we know how much time and energy and nerve it takes to put a package together and mail it. Any questions about your entry or your check, please contact us at tigerseyejournal.com.

Tough times, but we'll get through them together. The bridge is for getting to the other side.

Colette & JoAn

Creating Crow

2010-02-13T21:00:00.001-08:00

Creating Crow
—after Pablo Neruda

by Colette Jonopulos

I am the crow I fly
above your walking legs
then in a broad careen
of charcoaled feathers
I grab you lift you
into a swirl
of spiraling rain.

To my tower
my dark eyrie
I take you to live alone.

You hide yourself in downy feathers
fly beyond my sight wait
motionless on the ledge.

New crow drop
onto your prey
claw life from the ground
that rushes underneath throbs
together we will lift
into our wild flight.

When death comes, it is never what we expect. The loss of both my mother-in-law and father-in-law within a month, and the failing health of our beloved dog, Tramp, have brought me to a place of surreal beauty and acceptance. It is not what I expected, nor what I've experienced in the past. This cycle began when my shadow, a 14-year-old fiery mutt named Lady, died on my birthday in 2008. To consider that those I've loved were consumed by fire and reduced to ashes is startling. As Temple Grandin says, Where have they gone?

I have posted one of my own poems in honor of their leaving. A crow poem. I have been consumed with crows and ravens for a long time, their mythology a part of my life. When JoAn's mother died, I was visited in a dream by a very large blackbird. I have ever since associated blackbirds with the mystery that separates. I have a painting of the dream crow in my office, as well as a gorgeous crow bowl given to me by Laura LeHew. I am surrounded by blackbirds. In my waking and my dreaming.

On a completely different note: The Book Collector in Sacramento hosted our release of Kathy Kieth's new chapbook, Emily and the High Cost of Living. Kathy was more than surprised that the reading was all about her, and she graciously read with her usual enthusiasm and wit. We would like to thank the Hansen's for putting the evening together, Sam for being more than virtual, and Bud and his print crew at floppy's for creating another attractive book for us. I've been in Sacramento so frequently, it seems odd to be back in Eugene. I truly have two homes.

Our annual contest deadline: February 28th! If you haven't sent, send now! We need at least 65 entries to run the contest, so please fill our box these last two weeks!

Colette & JoAn

Flitting with Emily

2010-01-05T16:34:00.001-08:00

1455

Opinion is a flitting thing,
But Truth, outlasts the Sun—
If then we cannot own them both—
Possess the oldest one—

My mind is flitting, not with opinions; with truth, who knows? I will leave the serious stuff to Emily. My flitting is from this sentient self who has a cold, to the concept of altar-making, to a poem-in-progress. I pick up a book, put it down. Pick up another book. Put it down. Is it the cold, the overcast sky here in Sacramento, or a mood I've carried from Oregon to California?

What if?

What if I listen to all the disparate voices, the clang of dissonance, and make art from it?

What if I take a notebook and diagram the state of my writing?

What if I take a notebook and diagram the state of my heart?

What if you took a notebook and diagrammed the state of your heart?

Every year we offer a Valentine's Day challenge. Reward: one poem published on our blog and a year of Tiger's Eye. Our 2010 challenge: a sonnet. One sonnet for the day of hearts. It does not have to be a love sonnet. Send poems e-mail to tigerseyetracks@yahoo.com or to tigerseyepoet@yahoo.com

Our annual contest deadline is February 28th!! Send. Send often.

Happy new year, happy flitting . . .

Colette & JoAn

let spotted leaves fall as they fall . . .

2009-09-24T09:35:00.000-07:00

Black Rook in Rainy Weather
--by Sylvia Plath

On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident

To set the sight on fire
In my eye, not seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
Without ceremony, or portent.

Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Leap incandescent

Out of the kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then ---
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent

By bestowing largesse, honor,
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); sceptical,
Yet politic; ignorant

Of whatever angel may choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content

Of sorts. Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait's begun again,
The long wait for the angel.
For that rare, random descent.

It is officially autumn. Although it is my favorite season, I'm a little melancholy knowing the cold and wet are on their way. I will soak up all available sun, along with making lists of possible places to submit. Yes, I'm a poet. Yes, I'm as confused as you by all of the offline/online, snail mail/submission manager possibilities.

Like you, I suffer the vagaries of publication. And the dirty little truths. There are just too many journals, thus too many editors, to make blanket statements about acceptances. You can study a market, submit your best work, and still find that damned rejection letter in your mailbox six months later, or in your e-mails a few hours later.

If JoAn and I could offer you any advice, it is to read, study, and write from your gut. Get out of your head (or ours) and forget that someone will be reading your work. At first, it is just for you, what you have to say. When you edit, then consider the reader, and then the editor. Keep us for last.

For me, if I've written a poem I feel passionate about, one that says what I felt/observed/intuited honestly, even if the lines are off and the form is unexpected, that is the poem I'm going to stay with, nurture, and love into full existence. I long ago quit worrying about the end product, but live for that feeling of being lost in the flow of a poem's creation. I do worry, but later.

My father-in-law, Bill, was telling me about writers in Greece, that they have a "thinking place." He said it is an accepted, actually anticipated, activity to go down to the beach, to be alone, and to think. He said I might find my thinking place along the Willamette River. I suggest all poets take his advice: go to your thinking place. On the hammock, at the end of a dirt path, in the corner of the kitchen. Go there often this autumn, and like Sylvia Plath, write with every ounce of your being.

We are working on our Fall-Winter issue, and will send all notifications in the month of October. Some terrific work this time around. And please send early to our annual poetry contest. Deadline: February 28th.

3 poems (any length), brief bio, SASE, $10

Colette

Inside an Editor's Head

2009-07-09T08:06:00.000-07:00

We are accepting submissions for our annual chapbook contest. We will choose our winner on the strength of his or her five poems, so please don't send a full manuscript.

Winner receives $100 and 25 copies.

Deadline: August 31, 2009

send:
five poems
short bio
SASE
$10

Tiger's Eye Chapbook Contest
P.O. Box 2935
Eugene, OR 97402

Inside an Editor's Head

Come inside, take a look around. Today the editor is mulling over the complexities of cover letters. You know, those pesky things that precede your poetry submissions.

Cover letters are difficult. You want to say something that engages the editor/first reader/intern. You sometimes want to impress them, entertain them, seduce them.

I am going to share a secret with you, one that will increase your chances of being published. Editors see so many submissions that they usually pass over the cover letter, head straight for the poetry, and then go back to see who wrote it.

Because our goal is to see you published, not only in our journal, but in Ploughshares and The Paris Review and Yellow Mama, here are a few suggestions that will make editors very, very happy.

1. Leave lots of white space/use consistent fonts/no color.

2. Use an entire sheet of paper for your cover letter. Come on guys, spring for the whole sheet. We get tiny, tiny squares, half sheets, quarter sheets, etc. Possible messages to the editors: I'm not good enough to deserve a full sheet. You're not good enough to deserve a full sheet. I am sending to a gazillion publishers and can get four bios on a page. I'm broke. (this last one is the only acceptable excuse)

3. A little personal information is fun. We like to know who you are. We like to know that you live in Wyoming, work at REI, and that your passion is hiking. We don't want to know that you have blisters on your feet or the name of your podiatrist.

4. Professional letterheads (from your day-job) do not impress. Period.

5. Give just a taste of your publications. Three to five is enough. If you've gotten into Poetry, sure include that one. Imagine your cover letter. Multiply that by 800, 500, or even 200. Imagine the editor.

6. Separately folded sheets. What is this trend and who started it? A cover letter folded into thirds. And then five poems separately folded into thirds. Six sheets of paper to unfold=annoyed editor.

This has been a jarring ride. The caffeine buzz, hundreds of poetry fragments, those occasional moments when the wind pushing the leaves of the lemon tree pulled me away from the computer screen---all of this editorial monkey mindedness you've had to endure. So, go on, climb out of my head. Get back into your own, and write some breathtaking poetry that makes your cover letter a non-issue.

Colette

2009-05-06T13:19:00.000-07:00

"Windswept", Cynthia Reeser

WOLF TALES
by Laura LeHew

Still, she is the first snow.
Scarlet cape cascading
pooling at her dainty feet.
Bite my neck she coos, remember
the woods?

Beneath succulent breast
her heart quivering
yearning

I spied her
sashaying
through the trees,
such a tease
cherries jubilee.

Suddenly shy
I hustle to her.
She feels me.
Moaning softly,
she cries out
eat me?

God those were the days.

Chuckling
Gran's sleeping over
I remember.

Laura LeHew's chapbook, Beauty, will be released in May, and is available for pre-orders. These are fairy tales, but not your mother's fairy tales. Laura's wit and intelligence allow for stunning new interpretations of old favorites.

Send $8 to:
Tiger's Eye Press
Beauty
P.O. Box 2935
Eugene, OR 97402

Tiger's Eye 2009 Poetry Contest Winners

1st Place: Willis Barnstone, "Ah Odessa"
2nd Place: Peter J. Grieco, "Waving of Flags + Crowds"
3rd Place: Karen S. Cordova,
"The Effect of Light on Tar and Lavender Oil"

Congratulations to the winners of our 2009 contest. The competition was stiff, and we appreciate the quality and number of poems entered.

Write because you have to.

Colette & JoAn

Visit Cynthia Reeser's site: www.cynthiareeser.com