CASCADIAN FROG SONG FAREWELL

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It's the last day! April 30, and I've actually pulled it off—I've written a poem every day this month! Not only that, but the majority of them were written right on my blog with minimal editing. There are probably four or five I'll play with some more. 

Learning to trust the practice of writing and putting it out there at all but the same time did not come easily to me. Readers of this blog may remember I do an August postcard poem exchange, and Cascadian poet Paul Nelson, who co-founded this particular iteration of the exchange is also one of the main organizers of the Cascadia Poetry Festival which starts tomorrow night in Seattle! 

Today I'm off to Seattle for the Cascadia Poetry Festival. There I will be surrounded by so many poets I may just explode! I'm borrowing this précis of what it's about from Paul's SPLAB website: "There will be 6 poetry readings, 3 Living Room (free, democratic, open) reading sessions, five morning panels, one workshop and one talk given by an expert on Cascadia and bioregionalism."

And last night I was at the first reading by four Brick Books poets: Joanna Lilley, Karen Enns, Arlene Paré and Jane Munro. These ladies are about to go on tour across Canada. If they come to your city, check them out.  

In the realm of poetry, a lot gets said. As it is the last day of April, and therefore the last day of doing the poem-a-day exercise, I thank everyone who's read bits of my posts here and there and especially those who've taken the time to make comments. 

So, without further ado, today's poem. The prompt is to write a "farewell" poem. Anyone else hearing Seasons in the Sun by the inimitable Terry Jacks? (Hit that link and you'll be hearing it all day!)


In the Scheme of Things ~ Cascadian Frog Song Farewell


Last night a chorus of frog song sang me to sleep.
I knit a sweater of thoughts; knit one — sustainability,

perl one — persistence. Three minutes is all we have. 
Keep breathing. The treadmill of life is a real doozie. 

Silk Road beckons, waits with red tassels in its teeth.
Today we will buy milk and do taxes, for if only one of us

in the world is doing taxes, we all are, and if only one of us
needs milk, we all do. Last night, a frog chorus — 

which one started it, which one was the very first,
how do they know to join in? Do all species love to sing?

And suddenly it's spring! Not just ooh-the-sun-came-out-
for-ten-minutes-this-morning-and-it-was-actually-hot sort of spring

but full-on, all-day spring-shine that brings out new
leaf green on everything — water lilies in the pond,

fronds appearing, bite-sized, up from the ground of fern, 
new growth on fir tips, grass emerald-lush against 

stark of stone. The way things are going 
the frogs are probably chirping a prolonged farewell 

to the planet, the rape of which appears to be 
almost complete. We say goodbye to arms 

but find more places and ways to kill each other. 
Say we should do something about fossil fuels and water

and over-population while the spectre of Wasteland 
moves gently from possibility to likelihood.

Words are relegated to part of the unremitting babble 
brooked by technology. We give up day-dream time—

the brain's opportunity to file things,
the soul's opportunity to work on empathy

(which may or may not be a natural impulse)—
yet here we are this perfect day; frogs quiet,

pond still, leaves dancing in brindled sunlight,
a god's-in-his-heaven glad-to-be-alive day,

good for reflection and rejoicing,
and for that we are thankful.


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IF YOU READ TO THEM, THEY WILL SLEEP

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Dear god. Just when I was hoping for something along the lines of "write a short, no more than six- or eight-line, poem about a freesia in a pickle jar standing in front of a mirror, the  penultimate poetry month poem day produces a prompt worthy of hair-tearing. Get this:

"This may remind you a bit of the “New York School” recipe, but this prompt has been around for a long time. I remember using it in a college poetry class, and loving the result. It really forces you into details, and to work on “conducting” the poem as it grows, instead of trying to force the poem to be one thing or another in particular. The prompt is called the “Twenty Little Poetry Projects,” and was originally developed by Jim Simmerman. And here are the twenty little projects themselves — the challenge is to use them all in one poem:

1. Begin the poem with a metaphor.
2. Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
3. Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.
4. Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).
5. Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
6. Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
7. Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
8. Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
9. Use an example of false cause-effect logic.
10. Use a piece of talk you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don’t understand).
11. Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun) . . .”
12. Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
13. Make the persona or character in the poem do something he or she could not do in “real life.”
14. Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
15. Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
16. Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
17. Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.
18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.
19. Make a non-human object say or do something human (personification).
20. Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that “echoes” an image from earlier in the poem."

Don't they know I have a ferry to catch?

Mutter, mutter, mutter. Well, let's see. Number 11 could double as the opening line, I guess.

Here goes:

We are cooking here! And speaking of cooking, on the ferry coming over to Vancouver Island I was leafing through a book about kale and noted an odd spelling of the word "kail" in one of the recipe headings. Turns out it's old Scots.

So this one's really odd. I think I managed to stuff in all the required elements. No one said it had to make sense! (Yet in a curious way it does, to me anyway). 

And now I'm very much looking forward to going to a poetry reading in Victoria tonight!

If You Read to Them, They Will Sleep

In the frivolous rooms of funhousery are webs of spiderless deceit 
where sun squeezes shut your pupil-pinprick eyes 
and moss crouches crew-cut soft beneath your feet. 

The air is full of saliva-inducing hints of soon-to-be-dipped-in-chocolate raspberries
and the kail sounds like Gilbert and Sullivan arguing over a plinth.
"Where do you think you're going?" asks the barbed wire 
when you squeeze under the fence to save the two-bit entrance fee. 

"Eat, eat, you too skinny!" will be the word from your almost mother-in-law.
Happily, there are no pendulous rules for when you will comb the cake. 
No rules at all, in fact.
The first thing you have to do is as you're told. 

Your feet will be blistered from walking on moss.
Willow Point cows will spackle-dot the field with calves and cow plops. 
A ripe riposte from the septic field will remind you shit always needs attention.

You will touch the fire, taste its orange-purple smoke—chacun a son gout— 
then fall asleep beside the baby who's worn out several diapers with his sandpaper skin. 

This is about as far as this poet-person will go, 
trying out the funnering to see if it fits. Right, Curly? 
Cicadas drum a solo to the coming night.
You ask the spider where is the way out 
and it tells you clearly its web has broken into shards of silver, 
drops of blood from the barbed wire fence a Jackson Pollock landscape.

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MOURNING THE WORKER-DAY JOB

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"Today I challenge you to find a news article, and to write a poem using (mostly, if not only) words from the article! You can repeat them, splice them, and rearrange them however you like. Although the vocabulary may be “just the facts,” your poem doesn’t have to be — it doesn’t even have to be about the subject of the news article itself." 


So says the prompt at NaPoWriMo today. I'd like to try this one, but have to be out the door en route to Vancouver in about an hour. Van is about eight hours away, driving, so I think I'll just do a little article, and fast!

So, back to my email and into the trash where I just sent CBC News and the Globe and Mail after pursuing the headlines.

From CBC, the first few paragraphs of an article on Workplace Safety:

"Today is the National Day of Mourning to remember workers injured, killed or afflicted with an occupational illness while on the job. And if it turns out to be an average day for workplace safety in Canada, three workers will die.

In 2012, the most recent year for official statistics, there were 977 workplace-related fatalities in Canada, according to the Association of Workers’ Compensation Boards of Canada. But those numbers only cover workplaces where workers can receive provincial compensation benefits.

"Hundreds more die from under-reported illnesses and occupational diseases that go unrecognized in the compensation systems," says the Canadian Labour Congress, which first established the National Day of Mourning exactly 30 years ago this year.

The number of work-related injuries has fallen dramatically since the late 1980s, according to federal government and AWCBC statistics. In both 1986 and 1987, there were almost 50 work-related injuries per 1,000 employed workers in Canada, according to federal government calculations. By 2010 that number had fallen to about 15 per 1,000.

Health and social service industries accounted for the highest number of injuries on the job, according to the AWCBC. That's 17 per cent of the 245,365 workplace injuries in Canada in 2012.

Manufacturing was second  and construction third on the injuries graph."

Work-related injuries falling

The AWCBC numbers, which only cover workplaces under the workers' compensation systems, suggest that ratio likely continued to drop in 2011 and 2012.

The labour movement attributes much of that drop to improving health and safety standards in the workplace.

Nevertheless, an average of 672 workers were injured every day on the job in Canada in 2012, as counted by the AWCBC."

And now, without further ado, my poem:

Mourning the Worker-Day Job

Under reported, unrecognized, falling,
cover the numbers, the worker-day job
related to systems' continued construction
that cover the benefits, worker-day job
hundreds and hundreds will die without service
hundred and hundreds will die every day
hundreds and hundreds will die under standards
cover the injuries, the worker-day job
fatalities recent, fatalities counted
statistics drop health to to the graph of the day
there the numbers and numbers, official and under
reported and recent, they die every day
statistics drop service related to illness
statistics drop health on the worker-day job
counted by standards of average service
hundreds and hundreds will die every day

And that is as far as I'm going with this one. "Not her best work," is how it would be marked, if it were to be marked, but it isn't, and I have to finish packing, and I'm out of here, so have a good one and for heaven's sake play safe out there!

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PUTTING DOWN A FRIEND, IN VOWELS

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Not writing to prompt today. No time to figure out the intricacies of a "curtal sonnet". (Think Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins as an example of that). No. Instead, I'm running about the Kootenays, getting ready to leave here Monday as I'm going to the Cascadia Poetry Festival in Seattle next weekend! 

I've been trying to find a printer driver for my trusty little portable Canon IP90 (which, when I think of it, I must have had for more than a decade; I know I had it with me at a 2005 event in Victoria and I got it before that for a Fed. BC Writers' conference/AGM in Prince George, if I remember correctly). No joy. It just won't talk to the current operating system of my Mac and that is that. 

So...

Putting Down a Friend, in Vowels

All your life you talked poetry
       spitting out page after page of crisp black words

Even when you had to, say, print a letter or a photograph
       your head cleaner chatted and whirred and I knew

I could trust you to be up for it
       no task too big or too small

Oh, the times we've had, the trips we've taken, the words we've pondered
       at events I've forgotten the names of, hate to say it but you're
       
Useless now, you refuse to talk to my Mac's OS and I mourn you like an old pet
       who hopefully jumps into the car for that last ride to the vet's

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AFTER THE FIRE

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"Anaphora is a literary term for the practice of repeating certain words or phrases at the beginning of multiple clauses or, in the case of a poem, multiple lines. The phrase “A time to,” as used in the third Chapter of Ecclesiastes, is a good example of anaphora." Today's prompt is to find a phrase and stick with it, see how far you can take it. There will now be a suitable break while I mull over what phrase to use. 

..........

..........

Well, that was a long break. It's now after eleven. I've been here and there, most recently at a wonderful poetry reading by Tom Wayman and Bruce Rice. But right now, it's poem time!


...........

...........

what if the reason ... nope

before the red tide ... nope


After the Fire

after the fire was everything, everything
after the fire came mongrels, staggering
after the fire we sketched pictures in scorched earth
after the fire swallows mourned their immolated nests
after the fire you sang and sang and sang and sang
after the fire the wee ones hunkered down
after the fire sand poured like salt between our toes 
after the fire a stone cracked and would not be comforted
after the fire cotton candy air tasted of ambrosia
after the fire memories opaque as isinglass swaggered in the smoke
after the fire you waited for me at the corner 
after the fire I didn't come to bed because I had to write a poem
after the fire was nothing 

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WOODEN FENCES

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Today, it's to be a poem "that features walls, bricks, stones, arches, or the like."

Which puts me in mind of a wonderful book I read years ago, non-fiction, (googlegooglegoogle—ah!) Stone Work, by John Jerome. He moves to the country, has to mend a fence, and the book becomes a meditation on how good it is to get out and build something, and how building a stone wall is learning how to put "one stone on two, two stones on one". I wonder who we lent that book to; haven't seen it around here in yonks.

And as it's nearly ten at night, and I'm actually in the middle of alphabetizing my chapbooks, this is going to be a short write. 


Wooden Fences

One of the panels in the curtilage fence collapsed.
The replacement's not yet grey like its companions,
but it won't take long.

That's the thing about wooden fences;
they don't last forever.
No matter. Neither do we.


If I'd done this during daylight, I'd have added a picture of the offending panel!

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SPACE IS A MALADY OF LIFE — HA! — A CONTRADICTION

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SPESSO IL MALE DI VIVERE HO INCONTRATO


Eugenio Montale

Spesso il male di vivere ho incontrato:

era il rivo strozzato che gorgoglia,

era l'incartocciarsi della foglia

riarsa, era il cavallo stramazzato.

Bene non seppi, fuori del prodigio

che schiude la divina Indifferenza:

era la statua nella sonnolenza

del meriggio, e la nuvola, e il falco alto levato

What's that, you may well ask? That is a poem by the great Italian poet, Eugenio Montale. Today's prompt from the good folk over at NaPoWriMo is to take a poem in a language you're not familiar with and "translate" it into English based on how the words look and sound.

The trick for this one is to find a short poem. A haiku would be nice, but they tend to be in languages that don't use the alphabet which would be really challenging. So I'm going to play with this eight-line poem I found by Montale. 

Ready? Here goes:

Space is a Malady of Life — Ha! —A Contradiction

Space is a malady of life —ha! — a contradiction:
its aura is riveting, strong; gorgeous,
its aura carted off down into the foliage
behind; its aura caved in, stranded.

Benevolent, not insipid, fjords in a prodigious dell
it shuns divine indifference:
its aura a statue that knells somnolently
in the miraculous dell; and the nova, it is false, although it levitates.


So there. Done. Strange little exercise, this one.

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GRANDMA WEEK

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Phew. A kinder, gentler prompting today. Write a poem for a child. I'm dusting off my exclamation points for this one!

Grandma Week

It's Monday, it's Monday,

and Grandma is coming!

We build things and draw things

and play trucks and cars,

and then, when it's dark out

we look at the stars.

It's Tuesday, it's Tuesday,

it's greens, reds, and blues day!

Out comes the paintbox,

the crayons, the clay—

our hands are a mess

when we finish our play.

It's Wednesday, it's Wednesday,

it's paper and pens day!

Sometimes we write poems

that don't even rhyme 

or make up new words

to put in them next time.

It's Thursday, it's Thursday,

it's feathers and furs day!

We take the dog walking,

we brush down the cat,

and later we'll all 

fall sleep on the mat.

It's Friday, it's Friday

it's cookies and pie day!

We put on our aprons

and tie them up tight,

I'll lick the bowl after

and sleep well tonight.

The weekend I'll spend

with my Dad and my Mom.

We'll read and we'll cuddle,

have plenty of fun.

Then Monday will come

and I'll walk down the lane

to meet her; can't wait 

to see Grandma again!

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WHAT IF I'D STAYED IN VAN, RICHARD (REGRETS, I'VE HAD A FEW)

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Start spreading the news... da dum, da dum

Today we're going to try writing a poem in the style of the New York School. Poets like Frank O'Hara. John Ashbery. Kenneth Koch, Ron Padgett, and Barbara Guest who lived and wrote in New York in the fifties and sixties. So we're looking for a conversational tone and we're going to try to stuff as many things from the following list into the poem as we can. 

1. at least one addressee (to which you may or may not wish to dedicate your poem)
2. use of specific place names and dates (time, day, month, year)--especially the names of places in and around New York City
3. prolific use of proper names
4. at least one reminiscence, aside, digression, or anecdote
5. one or more quotations, especially from things people have said in conversation or through the media
6. a moment where you call into question at least one thing you have said or proposed throughout your poem so far
7. something that sounds amazing even if it doesn’t make any sense to you
8. pop cultural references
9. consumer goods/services
10. mention of natural phenomena (in which natural phenomena do not appear ‘natural’)
11. slang/colloquialism/vernacular/the word "fuck"
12. at least one celebrity
13. at least one question directed at the addressee/imagined reader
14. reference to sex or use of sexual innuendo
15. the words “life” and “death”
16. at least one exclamation/declaration of love
17. references to fine art, theater, music, or film
18. mention of genitals and body parts
19. food items
20. drug references (legal or illegal)
21. gossip
22. mention of sleep or dreaming
23. use of ironic overtones

It's already after two. I'm on the hunt for a specific chapbook in my collection and am about to embark on the messy but obviously necessary task of alphabetizing them by author. My trade poetry books are shelved that way, but until now I've not bothered with the chapbooks.

Oops, I lied! Another couple of digressions and it's now five o'clock. The chapbooks remain unsorted and my poem for today remains unwritten. I leave all this stuff in here, by the way, because it's how I think my way into the poem. At least, that's how it's been working lately. And speaking of lately, I just want to thank all of you who commented so favourably about yesterday's effort on Facebook and on here. 

Right, then. Today's poem. Here we go:

What If I'd Stayed in Van, Richard
(Regrets, I've Had a Few)

I came to this poetry game late in life.
Oh, not the writing of it; I've always written,
but to the game, you understand, Richard, 
the who's-on-first earthquake of who's-who-ness
in the book department, magazine department,
that's-shit/that's-not school of subjectivity
one must attend if one is to graduate with a fully-fledged
manuscript (manuscriptus interruptus) before one
is taken seriously. Richard, my favourite prof at UBC,
you were the first to say I should get into 
(bed? your pants?) a creative writing class asap
back in '69 when the whole of life stretched out
before me like a roller coaster ride I was just
about to crest. What would you have done
if I'd stayed around instead of getting on the first
end-of-year plane I could find and heading back
to Ottawa to continue getting my heart broken 
by Pierre whose business it was to break hearts.
We'll drink champagne and laugh at the world 
he said after he seduced me—again—
in the back of his '65 Chrysler New Yorker, 
then promised we'd fly to New York to see Hair,
leaving me delirious with hope and happiness
until his girlfriend came back from South East Asia
and that was that. What if I'd stayed in Van, 
taken up writing for real with all those profs
who seemed so old and under the watchful eyes 
of friends like Henry who introduced me to gay bars 
and acid and the lesbians who lived on the second floor?
And what if I'd paid attention when I sent some poems
to Tom Marshall at Canadian Forum and they were rejected
but on one of them he wrote I like the general idea
of this one? Ah well. It was a very good year,
Richard, in spite of my not realizing it at the time.
I climbed the Grind, walked across Lion's Gate Bridge,
saw Hello Dolly three times when I needed something sweet
to get me past the horror of Midnight Cowboy, 
posed for topless pictures for a guy in my class named Roger
who told me, as he shot, how incredible his girlfriend's cunt looked 
right after she came. Wouldn't I love to see those pictures now
but they're gone, locked in the vault of memory, 
a fine remembrance of things past and it's probably 
a good thing, Richard, that I came to this game
late in life after a modicum of sense set in or likely 
I'd be the one they talk about who fucked everyone
back then though if I'm honest, to this day I can't see 
a New Yorker (the car, not a human of) without getting 
moist and I still know all the words to Hair.


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WHAT BECAME OF ME

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Whatever comes out of today's NaPoWriMo prompt should be interesting. It's "to write a poem in the voice of a member of your family." This is followed by various warnings, ie. feelings could be involved. No kidding. Like, what could possibly go wrong? Still, I'm feeling resistance on this one. 

I keep thinking of family members whose voices I could borrow: Dad? Either of my grandfathers, neither of whom I remember meeting because they died when I was a baby? 

Speaking of babies, what about the one I miscarried? I seem to be leaning towards borrowing a voice that is no longer on the planet. 

At least, not that I can see. 


What Became of Me

I can't say it wouldn't have been fun,
you and your crazy friends,
your unexpectedly doting families.

What was it my father said,
"just take it to my mother; 
she's always wanted a grandkid."

And I'd have loved her, too, 
her market garden stuffed with produce,
her prize-winning peaches, 

the way she'd drizzle balsamic vinegar
over thick slices of tomatoes
that lounged seductively on lush green basil.

You really weren't ready for me,
your party days at a zenith, 
less than no money in the bank,

and my father—seriously, 
what would you have done 
with him in your life forever?

Still, I appreciated those few weeks 
I spent with you. I know I was wanted.
It was I who decided against staying.

As for what became of me—
I live on as occasional memory.
It's all any of us can do.


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