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Net Galley Challenge

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Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Extending the metaphor

In Happy family poem, Jane shore writes
Between the sealed lips of each fortune cookie,
a white scrap of tongue poked out


Its through oracles that the future is spoken.

In pg 62 with Jane Kenyon's 'In the Nursing home' Ted Kooser explains extended simile.

What was the first metaphor?


Exercise: Extend each metaphor that you meet.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Novelty of an old book

I'm rereading this book I like. some of the excerpts in the book are something I can relate to now. What Boonie calls leg trap is what I call being snowed in.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Kim Addonizio's line in 'Ordinary Genius'

Life is a constant, unending construction and destruction ...





Cigarettes
Gin
Thom Gunn - The Butcher's son
Elizabeth Bishop - First Death in Nova Scotia
People of the future
Look to the future
Animals are passing from our lives
Common Dreams
Counter punch
The nation
CrooksandLiars

Better second half

When I picked Jamie Oliver: Turning up the heat, I didnt know anything about Jamie Oliver. That part would have been satisfied by reading the first half of the book on Jamie's rise as a great chef with successful TV shows. That could have easily been 'all the story' and then we go home.

But what follows next is 'Oliver's twist'(taking on the already punned) and this is where it gets more interesting. Jamie's bringing about awareness amongst the general public regarding good food change needed in schools by his 'feed me better' campaign, his 'fifteen foundation' for providing resources to talented youngsters are all great things to know.

'He represents the power of the individual, even in a global age when everything is dominted by mega corporations'- Gill Hudson.

'Its a Fame kind of movie,the coach who comes and whips the no-hope baseball team into shape, and changes more than the kids- thats what attracted me to the story.'- Michael Kuhn.

The message and the story are all in the story, only it could have been better told. With too many people quoted in the first half, it was difficult to maintain clarity.I feel that the story would have more life, if it was an autobiography.

3/5. 5.29.2009

Friday, March 2, 2012

A baby

can wheedle
milk
out of grandma's green bangles
out of mama's shin in black tracks

Dreaming proof

In a dream
you are two days ahead
A snack from home is
at the foot of the bed
Eating it I believe
you are home
My parents are changing
the furniture
bringing the bed
to living room
the kitchen is
now where the porch was

I think its a dream
I wake up to find you there
My brothers there too
still a kid
I ask him why he is so
says hes always been so
He came along with his BIL
and 40 other kids on an
express trip here

There are relatives
carrying food for them
I believe you are here
ignoring me

I want to walk away too
but cant too far

with the baby
getting hinged between
the bed her aunt is on
and the wall

with the baby
on a high swing
(who put her there?)
falling down
before I pull a chair
to get her down
she falls onto her
blanket

I wake up
You are still not here

Danger

I hold the baby down
to diaper
A black menacing cat
another mottled one
ready to pounce on
the baby
A dog too around
Strangely even in
their usual size
I seemed to hold
the baby
at their level

For a while
I mistook an older
baby for mine
leaving mine uncared
for and mangled

********
A baby book says consider the undiapered baby armed and dangerous

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Summer game

The game of Jackstraws by Jane Shore.
This game is similar to pick up sticks game which we played in summer holidays. Our landlord's grandson who was a summer bird, an ace at carrom board had this game with him.

Shofar

At first
Reuse

Somewhere
down
the
line
Tuskers are chased
Antlers are staged

Expectations

we dont know them
until unmet

of a person with
broken throat
to not rest
and scream his love

A long shoe string



My mom asks if it is mine
I say its too long to be a
shoestring

She takes it to her room
to see if it goes into
any of her clothes

Nope

It lies in the laundry
basket
waiting to be claimed

Can you create something
out of nothing?

With laundry I have only
seen things lost
except for the one time
I saw money fall out of the
washer

To get there its lost somewhere
which I happily never find out

Like when I put on an oxygen mask
somewhere I'm off of CO2 mask

It figures
it always does
its drawstring of my track pants

the ones I'm using as a
lean against the cold wall

Writing

The Russian doll by Jane Shore. I wonder if it is after a specific poem by Elder Olson.

The Russian dolls that I know are standalone. Inflated. Much like dibble toys. The biggest is as much as a kid. The dolls were stood outside the general store. So much of the internal conversation of Jane shore's poem is missed in these dolls still they could still hold onto whatever conversations they can carry looking at each other all the time.

I used to think that if you had too much time then you wouldnt have too many things to write. Now I see that as you write, associations lead you to so much more, that mere writing down what you want to write about might not capture all of it. Those amorphous thoughts which jane shore put into words very well in her poem.

phone poetry

Poets and writers and many other magazines have epistolary poems and postcard poems as prompts for writing poetry.

All the right things to say

Congratulations
On your motherhood
You must be waiting for your husband
She must be missing her father

In phone poetry, who do the words belong to? The one who said it or the one who they are meant for. Now I get what all those writers mean by once your work is out there in the world, its no longer yours anymore.
I think we can read all poems as a one side phone conversation and write up replies to complete it. Much like a response to the poem that another Poets & writer exercise calls for but in the same medium. Like a response to each line instead of the whole poem at once.
For our digital times, text poetry and twitter poetry are welcome. Twitter poetry seems like the 'Roger .. Over' kinds.