IKEA Instructions for a Pantoum

Yes, I have covered the pantoum form before, but sometimes step-by-step instructions are necessary or at least helpful in writing a new form. The awesome Rachel McKibbens provides such instructions on her blog. Please jump to Writing Exercise #89 on her blog.

There is absolutely no reason for this photo other than I like it. 

Rachel provides an amazing sample poem on her blog, but if you want to read the poem I created using her prompt, check it out here. It was posted on the blog of Denise Wueve, editor of the temporarily closed Wherewithal, which I truly hope will return soon.

Sam Sax at the Ugly Mug Tomorrow Night!!!

The amazing Sam Sax will be featuring Wednesday, Dec. 13th. Bring $3 for cover and $ money to buy books!!!

Faerie Tales Revisited—A Prompt from Two Idiots Peddling Poetry

From my last post, you know how much the Two Idiots Peddling Poetry reading series means to me. Along with providing amazing features, supporting local poets and providing a welcome home for zombie and Star Trek poems, co-host Steve Ramirez posts prompts every day for April’s 30/30 challenge.

Here is a prompt from Steve posted way back in 2013. He even provides sample poems, bless his heart. 

Btw, Steve began his own blog. Check it out.

Because I am personally focusing on poetry right now, I have neglected all other forms of writing. I will try to do better in the future, but Steve’s prompt lends itself equally to fiction, whether flash or longer pieces. Check out Jan Stinchcomb’s story published at Rose Red Review.

To read more of Jan’s amazing fiction, visit her website with its links to her other published stories. And buy her book. ;-)

Discussion about Community

As you must have noticed, most of my blog posts mention (or center around) the Two Idiots Peddling Poetry reading series hosted at the Ugly Mug. This reading hatched me as a poet. I had attended and learned from other writing groups, but only after I became a regular at the Ugly Mug did I begin the real work of developing technique and discipline (though the latter remains tenuous at best).

As the ugliest duckling ever—all mucus-slimed and squawky—I imprinted on Ben and Steve and on several of the other regulars (the many James, for example). I had the opportunity to hear regionally and nationally celebrated poets feature. Sometimes their brilliance was an unintended disincentive, but I worked to develop an ear for lines and for syntax, an eye for metaphor, and a voice. I met poets at all stages in their careers and became part of a community.

Through that initial introduction, I joined other communities housed within the larger SoCal writing community. I joined the Poetry Lab and consider Long Beach another poetry home. I have learned so much from Danielle’s workshops and those of her guest authors...and have so much yet to learn. I love attending other readings and desperately wish I could go to all of them: so many fabulous readings in Long Beach (Cadence Collective, Definitive Soapbox, etc., etc.)—the Redondo Poets, Shout in Fullerton, the Rapp Saloon in Santa Monica, Beyond Baroque in Venice, really any reading/workshop led or promoted by Brendan Constantine, and so many more.

At a recent Poetry Lab workshop, that session’s visiting author, Eric Morago, asked who we wrote for. What audience did we have in mind when composing? Some the participants said wrote for a particular demographic; others wrote for themselves—that if they themselves liked it, they believed others would too. I answered that wrote specifically for the Ugly Mug (and honestly for the Poetry Lab too). These are my communities. What is your community? Who do write for? Who do you listen to?

Reading Tomorrow Night at the Ugly Mug for Incandescent Mind: Selfish Work!!!

Just a reminder, I get the chance to read with the amazing Jennifer Martindale and the evil (but brilliant) Steve Ramirez at tomorrow night’s feature for the anthology Incandescent Mind: Selfish Work.

The reading begins 8-ish at the Ugly Mug (261 N Glassell St., Orange). Don’t forget to bring $3 in cash to give Phil, or he may harvest a body part!

Incandescenct Mind: Selfish Work is published by Sadie Girl Press. I am grateful to Sarah Thursday for this opportunity and for all of the work she does for poetry community.

Monuments

What monuments do you build to your loved ones? A tower on a mountainside, a mausoleum of marble regret, a pyramid among shifting sands, paper hearts or paper cranes, a cairn of stones? Will your monument endure after your loved one is gone? Or was the beauty in its transience? 

What does your choice of media say about your love or about your loved one. Stone hearts or paper hearts? 

The Temple of Your Body

If your body is a temple, whom do you welcome inside? Do you keep the doors open, or is there an iron padlock, a bar across your doors, a moat with drawbridge and alligators? Is your temple guarded by fire-breathing dragon or yipping chihuahuas or cooing doves?

If your body is a temple, what hymns are sung inside? Is the hymn book from your childhood? If not hymns, what music or rhythms move your body—jazz, pop, waltz, dirge? What instruments play inside you? Pipe organ, piano, harp, trombone, flute, bagpipe? Or is all the music of your body percussion—the beating of drums and the clanging of cymbals? Or is the only sound inside that of a small fountain or the surrounding waves?

If your body is a temple, what incense is burned? Frankincense and myrrh, sandalwood, lavender, patchouli? Or do you burn sage to drive out negative spirits? Why do you need to? Or do you fill yourself with the scents of vanilla and cinnamon to make yourself a sweet warmth for your congregation? Or do you spray Febreze to cover the odors you cannot drive out? If so, describe those odors. What creatures do they attract?

Who are your temple’s worshipers? How many? Are all your pews filled? Standing room only or barren?

Is your temple domed or turreted or simply a covered courtyard? Is a breeze allowed in? Does sun shine through stained-glass windows? If so, what colors? Red only through your panes? Or is your temple in darkness, shrouded? Can your worshippers see cracks in the walls, crumbling tile, debris on the floor? Or is your temple draped in velvet, lit with crystal chandeliers, and gilded to welcome only the worthy? Is the pulpit polished mahoghany or stainless steel or tarnished brass? Who stands there? Who speaks your message? What are the words?

Show Your Answers—the Questionnaire Prompt

Questionnaires are dry and clinical even when the subject matter is anything but impersonal. Use a form or questionnaire as the jumping off point. Answer the questions with essential truths—the metaphorical truth—rather than a list of symptoms. Let the family tree bear fruit. Show the worms and the rot and the sweetness. Or take an insurance form, as dry as a cracker in the desert, and make it bloom. If you need a sample questionnaire, refer to this form, which includes general medical questions along with a checklist of occupational and environmental exposures plus questions specific to the asbestos program. Good times.

For inspiration and/or intimidation, see Oliver De La Paz’s powerful answers to an autism screening questionnaire for his son in the poem “Autism Screening Questionnaire—Speech and Language Delay” on the Poetry Foundation’s site. Listen to the poet read his poem. So beautiful.

Or be dazzled by Nicole Sealey’s “Medical History” published at The Account. How she takes standard medical questions and transforms them into a wonder—I am awed.

Neil Aitken Reading This Wednesday at the Ugly Mug!!!

Come hear the incredible Neil Aitken feature at the Two Idiots Peddling Poetry at the Ugly Mug on November 29th. Neil's poetry is insightful and inspiring in its weaving of history, technology, the human mind and soul.

The Ugly Mug is located at 261 N Glassell St. in downtown Orange, CA. Free parking is usually available after 7:30 near the corner of E Maple and N Orange St. The reading begins at 8 (or whenever everyone stops chatting for Ben to start hosting). Bring $3 cash to avoid Phil's wrath. 

For more about Neil's accomplishments and general brilliance, read his bio and weep (as copied from the Ugly Mug's event page because I am lazy):

"Neil Aitken is the author of two books of poetry, The Lost Country of Sight (Anhinga 2008), which won the Philip Levine Prize, and Babbage’s Dream (Sundress 2017), as well as a chapbook of poetry, Leviathan (Hyacinth Girl Press 2016). He is the founding editor of Boxcar Poetry Review and his own poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, American Literary Review, The Collagist, Crab Orchard Review, Ninth Letter, Southern Poetry Review, and many other literary journals.

Born in Vancouver, BC, Neil grew up in Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, and various parts of western United States and Canada. His first book explores the themes of home, exile, and return through the lens of memory and forgetting. The poems in his second book draw heavily on the history of the computer, the life of 19th-century mathematician Charles Babbage, various AIs from film and literature, the lyric nature of programming language, and his own experiences as a computer programmer. These topics also figure prominently in both the creative and critical parts of his dissertation on 19th-century literary and popular representations of artificial intelligence.

Neil holds a PhD in Literature & Creative Writing from the University of Southern California and an MFA in Creative Writing from UC Riverside, as well as a BS in Computer Science with Mathematics minor from Brigham Young University. He has collaborated with a number of talented music composers, including Juhi Bansal, Brandon Scott Rumsey, Jeffrey Parola, and Daniel Gall.

As a Chinese-English translator, Neil has worked with poet-translator Ming Di to translate The Book of Cranes: Selected Poems of Zang Di (Vagabond 2015) as well as many of Ming Di’s own first selected poems, which were published as The River Merchant’s Wife. His co-translations of Jiang Hao, Jiang Li, Jiang Tao, Lü De’an, Lü Yue, Sun Wenbo, and Zang Di are also prominently featured in New Cathay: Contemporary Chinese Poetry, 1990-2012 (Tupelo 2013). He was awarded the DJS Translation Prize in 2011 and serves as a contributing editor and board member of Poetry East West."
 

Incandescent Mind: Selfish Works Reading Next Wednesday at Ugly Mug!!!

Please join Jennifer Martindale, Steve Ramirez and me December 6th as we read from Incandescent Minds: Selfish Works for Steve and Ben's Two Idiots Peddling Poetry reading at the Ugly Mug. Yay!!!!

The reading begins at 8 (ish). Don't forget to pay Phil the $3 cover, or he will take an organ of his choosing with dull cutlery. The address is 261 N Glassell St., Orange. Public parking is usually available after 7:30 near the corner of E Maple and N Orange St.

Incandescent Mind is published by Sarah Thursday's Sadie Girl Press. Sarah's description and spelling are much better than mine:

"Incandescent Mind: Selfish Work is a full-color, 8.5 x 11″ journal of poetry, prose, art, and photography addressed to the self. 78 authors and artists contribute to this 90 page collection. Layout, design, and editing by Sarah Thursday with additional editing and selection by Terry Ann Wright, G. Murray Thomas, Marianne Stewart, Keayva Mitchell, and Alyssa Matuchniak."

"Much like popular “selfies”, contributors turn the focus of their work on themselves. Beyond the sake of vanity, these selfies are intimate snapshots of a contributor’s personhood. They address the self of the present, past, future, alternate versions, or physical parts in letters, postcards, warnings, reminders, lists, and loving tributes. Available at the Sadie Girl Bookstore."

"Selfish Work includes contributions from: Alex Diffin, Alexis Rhone Fancher, Allegra Forman, Alyssa J Wynne, Amanda Martin, Amanda Mathews, Amy Bassin, Ana Jovanovska, Angela Topping, Anney Ryan, Armine Iknadossian, Ashley Elizabeth, Avalon Graves, Bailey Share Aizic, Boris Ingles, Brenda Matea, Carolyn Agee, Christine Stoddard, Cindy Rinne, Clifton Snider, D S Chapman, Daniel McGinn, Daniela Voicu, Danielle Mitchell, Don Kingfisher Campbell, Donna Hilbert, E R Zhang, Ed Baines, Edward Distor, Erika Ayon, Fernando Gallegos, G. Murray Thomas, Jenni Belotserkovsky, Jennifer Takahashi, Jettie Krantz, jill emery, Jim Coke, JL Martindale, Jonathan Yungkans, Joy Shannon, Kelsey Bryan-Zwick, Kimberly Cobian, Kimberly Esslinger, Kimmy Alan, Kit Courter, LaLa Deville, Larry Colker, LeAnne Hunt, Linda Singer, Mahssa Hosseini, Marc Cid, Marcela Marquez, Marianne Peel, Matt Rouse, Michael Cantin, Michele Vavonese, Nancy Lynee Woo, Natalie Hirt, Nicole Connolly, Odilia Galván Rodríguez, Rachel Kann, RaeAnn Crunk Yinger, Raundi Moore Kondo, Ricki Mandeville, Robin Axworthy, Sarah Thursday, Sharon Elliott, Shelby Pendergast, Stephanie Harper, Steve Ramirez, Steven Lossing, Sukyi Naing, Tamara Hattis, Taylor Xavier, Terri Niccum, Tobi Alfier, Victor Ladd, and Wynne Henry."

Thank you, Sarah!!!!

Ghost Line—Prompt from Rachel McKibbens

Alas, the time for ghosts and goblins is past, but I was too busy procrastinating to post in October. Nonetheless, let’s talk about ghost lines. A ghost line is a line from a poem or novel or really anywhere that is the jumping off point for your own poem. It is the first line of your poem written in invisible ink. You omit it once you are finished. If you feel the line is necessary, make sure you indicate the line is not yours and attribute it to the author. You could make the line an epigraph if you wish. Even after omitting the line, many poets will acknowledge the poem’s inspiration by adding “after Tarfia Faizullah” or whoever provided that first step.

Because my habitual procrastination has continued into the next month (and probably until my last, put-off breath) but mostly since I enjoy fangirling fantastic poets, I would like you to jump to the site of the amazing Rachel McKibbens for her ghost line prompt.

Thanksgiving Part II—What You Ate

Thanksgiving is a holiday for spending time with family and friends, ignoring the problematic parts of American history, avoiding politics and overeating. Ultimately, the overeating tends to linger longer in my case...as my pants can readily affirm. 

Now is your chance to write an ode to stuffing (or over-stuffing), a sonnet to green bean casserole or that villanelle to repeating heartburn.  

Or if you wish to write a truly depressing poem, research nutmeg and never eat pumpkin pie with a clean conscience again. The politics of the dinner table can be as brutal as those discussed around it, but I prefer not to sob over my dessert on a day off, so my prompt is the cheerful and/or creepy instruction to address a poem to a Thanksgiving dish—traditional, take-out, main course, side or just dessert—anything you ate yesterday. And no judgment from the rest of us. Perhaps you can even zombify it. Maybe it will eat you back—from the inside out. 

Check out Bruce Guersey’s “Yam” on the Poetry Foundation website  .

Thanksgiving—What You Gave

For this Thanksgiving, let’s focus on the giving rather than expressing gratitude for our gifts. Write a poem about what you gave. Use anaphora (repetition of the first word or phrase at the beginning of the line) to tie the poem together. Put a bow on it. This is your present.

Begin each line or, if you prefer, each stanza with I gave.

These gifts may have been unwanted—perhaps they were curses—or maybe they were all that you could  give, but you gave them nonetheless. Who accepted them, and who turned away? What did your gift make?

You can read and listen to Alberto Ríos recite his lovely poem “When Giving Is All We Have” at poets.org. 

Sand Fortress

You build a sand fort with feather pennants, a moat and a tunnel entrance. Who would you invite to live with you in your fragile fortress? Who would stay with you as safety crumbles?

Erasure: Cutting Down to a Poem

Erasure (along with its cousin “blackout poetry”) is the technique of omitting parts of an existing text (whether poem, article, reprint of a speech, a novel or an excerpt) to create a poem. With blackout poetry, the text is left as is with the omitted words, phrases and sentences marked out. Part of its appeal is its dramatic presentation. Erasure typically reorganizes the remaining text perhaps into stanzas.

Some poets take full poetic license in erasure by changing the wording or the forms of words and even combining letters to create words not found in the original as long as the words/letters remain in the original sequence. I admit I truly enjoyed cutting the text of Mike Huckabee’s speech to have him seemingly admit to a torrid desire for a shirtless Vladimir Putin.

While my erasure of Huckabee’s speech was merely silly, erasure is a great technique to use for political snark and for knifepoint observations. A recent article in Fast Company noted the form’s skill in delivering harsh truth. The poet Isobel O’Hare recently applied erasure to the recent statements from celebrities accused of sexual harassment and posted these blackout poems to Instagram. For more examples, check out her website.

Full disclosure, I first came upon Isobel O’Hare’s poems on the Poetry Foundation's Harriet blog, and the next day my stepson sent me a link to her poetry. 

I first tried erasure at Poetry Lab, the inspiring generative workshop run by Danielle Mitchell. This prompt is hers. She gave everyone this block of text from Virginia Wolf’s The Voyage Out and required that we cut it down to just twenty words.

Your prompt is to do the same. Cut this text down to just twenty words:

Chapter XIV

The sun of that same day going down, dusk was saluted as usual at the hotel by an instantaneous sparkle of electric lights. The hours between dinner and bedtime were always difficult enough to kill, and the night after the dance they were further tarnished by the peevishness of dissipation. Certainly, in the opinion of Hirst and Hewet, who lay back in long arm-chairs in the middle of the hall, with their coffee-cups beside them, and their cigarettes in their hands, the evening was unusually dull, the women unusually badly dressed, the men unusually fatuous. Moreover, when the mail had been distributed half an hour ago there were no letters for either of the two young men. As every other person, practically, had received two or three plump letters from England, which they were now engaged in reading, this seemed hard, and prompted Hirst to make the caustic remark that the animals had been fed. Their silence, he said, reminded him of the silence in the lion-house when each beast holds a lump of raw meat in its paws. He went on, stimulated by this comparison, to liken some to hippopotamuses, some to canary birds, some to swine, some to parrots, and some to loathsome reptiles curled round the half-decayed bodies of sheep. The intermittent sounds—now a cough, now a horrible wheezing or throat-clearing, now a little patter of conversation—were just, he declared, what you hear if you stand in the lion-house when the bones are being mauled. But these comparisons did not rouse Hewet, who, after a careless glance round the room, fixed his eyes upon a thicket of native spears which were so ingeniously arranged as to run their points at you whichever way you approached them. He was clearly oblivious of his surroundings; whereupon Hirst, perceiving that Hewet's mind was a complete blank, fixed his attention more closely upon his fellow-creatures. He was too far from them, however, to hear what they were saying, but it pleased him to construct little theories about them from their gestures and appearance.

Here is my rough process (scribbled, crumpled and torn):

Even though everyone began with the same text, the final results differed dramatically among the workshop’s participants.

Here is the final version of my erasure from the text:

Virgin Wolf:
Erasure of Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out

Going down was saluted
by the kill.
Plump meat stimulated
by throat—
bones mauled
to rouse the thicket
of spears.

And here is the erasure poem created by another participant, Ben Trigg.

Erasure from The Voyage Out, Virginia Woolf

The dusk electric hours lay long in their hands.
The women of hard silence rouse spears to attention.
Little gestures.

Good luck!

TONIGHT! Poetry Lab Visiting Author Workshop: Eric Morago

Tonight, The Poetry Lab will have Eric Morago lead the workshop, starting at 7 p.m. For this event, the charge is $15. Tickets are available at poetry-lab.squarespace.com. Click the link to check out upcoming events!

The Poetry Lab workshop meets the 1st and 3rd Thursday of the month in Long Beach (235 E Broadway, 8th Fl). Danielle Mitchell is the coordinator. The Poetry Lab specializes in generative workshops and provides special sessions with visiting authors. Critique sessions are available a few times a year. As always, the workshop discusses craft and promotes contemporary poetry.

Lullaby of Teeth reading tomorrow night at the Ugly Mug

Tomorrow night, Mike Cantin, Robin Axworthy, Nancy Lynée Woo, and I will read from Lullaby of Teeth, the anthology from Moon Tide Press, at the Ugly Mug in Orange (261 N Glassell St). The reading begins 8-ish. Sign up for the open reading, and let Ben know if you are a first-time reader at the Mug. Cover is $3. Beware Phil, the proprietor. You must pay him before you can pass. Hope you can make it! I would love to hear you read!

The parking sign is a LIE

Pictures from anthology reading

It was a wonderful evening of poetry. Kate Buckley and Sarah Maclay were of course fabulous. Carrie Pohlhammer provided a touching tribute to John Gardiner and read one of his beautiful poems. I was so excited to be part of the anthology with Armine Iknadossian, Mike Gravagno and Robin Axworthy. Thank you, Eric Morago, for all of your work on the anthology and for allowing me to be a part of it.

L - R: Mike Gravagno, Robin Axworthy, Sarah Maclay, me, Armine Iknadossian, Kate Buckley, and Carrie Pohlhammer

Kate Buckley

Sarah Maclay

Carrie Pohlhammer reading a poem by John Gardiner 

Armine Iknadossian 

Mike Gravagno 

Robin Axworthy

the awkward author...

Eric Morago

Reading tomorrow night!

This Thursday Robin Axworthy, Boris Ingles, Mike Gravagno, Armine Iknadossian and I will be reading from the Lullaby of Teeth anthology by Moon Tide Press. The reading starts 7 pm at the Laguna College of Art and Design Laguna (374 Ocean Avenue, downtown Laguna Beach). I hope to see you!

Femme Fairy Tale Word List

Word lists, yes, word lists. While all of us remember having to write out vocabulary words, exercises using words from one poem or by a particular poet can propel some useful freewriting or even lead into a poem or short story. Just as a form can force our writing into a new direction by its restrictions, word lists and ghost lines can offer a starting point. Sometimes a box opens into a whole new room.  

Below is a femme fairy tale word and phrase list from “Little Red”in Double Jinx by Nancy Reddy.

Choose eight and climb in. See where it carries you.

Gorged                                                                       Kindling

Grainy                                                                         Hearth

Swallowed                                                                  Framed

Rib cage                                                                      Rumbling

Papered                                                                       Hidden

Shelved                                                                       Pinned

Belly plump                                                                Vivisection

Gobbled                                                                      Pink

Roast                                                                           Fall

Cracking                                                                     Inside

Nancy Reddy

Rather than reading the poem that originated the list, which may restrict your own originality, check out the fabulous "The Case of the Double Jinx" by Nancy Reddy.