Mar 13, 2009

RAP: Finding poetry in your work, your wounds, and your grass stains

by Anonymous

A little late with the Random Act of Poetry this week. That’s because Marcus is writing it, and I’m slow at this stuff. Also, I felt like we should give Gordon’s first Covenant Stories post a little bit of time on the home page. (You can still see it down in the Community Favorites for the next few days.)

Because it rained in Texas this week (HALLELUJAH!!), I was going to feature “The Chance of Rain” by Dave (Tongue-tied Poetics). But Dave went and submitted it for real publication with the Penwood Review. Doh! Actually, that’s a great idea to take poems down when you submit, Dave. The blog community helps you identify good stuff, but you aren’t penalized by the creative writing world for having been previously published online. Smart. Everyone, learn from Dave.

Instead of the rain poem (which even had a cool video accompaniment), I’d like to feature a different poem by Dave that was just published at Chronogram Magazine. Here’s the beginning of his sonnet "Your Bright Wounds":

So this is how you nurse your brightest wounds,
when all your bruises bulge like botulin
beneath a field of skin as thin as tin

Wonderful sound devices in those three lines. I love the internal rhyme of skin-thin-tin, which also has end rhyme with botulin. And I love the consonnance of bulge and botulin. Dave really pays attention to the craft of poetry and poetic forms, and I love that.

Since I can’t include all of Dave’s poem here (Chronogram might not like that…), here’s another short excerpt from Elizabeth Weller of Mindwhisperings.

I found grace
painting her toe-nails
along a street filled with graves.

She wore a white-lace hat
and a dress to match,
its bottom corners stained with grass.

I love the movement from grace to graves to grass. It reminds me of Walt Whitman in Song of Myself (part 6). There's a lot of common grace in Whitman, too. Good stuff. Here's the passage that came to mind when I read Weller's first two stanzas.

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is, any more than he.
...
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.
...
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

For the next week, I’m headed off to Big Bend. In the meantime, L. L. Barkat will host RAP as normal. (And I'm sure she'll post on time.) L.L. even has a prompt to help you. She is inviting people to unfold their imaginations (ala Jeffrey Overstreet) by responding to the prompt:

I found my soul...

What did it look like? Was it animal, vegetable, mineral? Where was it sitting, standing, dancing? What else was it doing, or what was being done to it?

L. L. even posted her own response to the prompt. A good teacher is never above her own assignments.

So have fun while I’m gone. But don’t throw any wild parties, ok? Behave yourselves.

Random acts of poetry around the network:

Your Bright Wounds by Dave Wheeler (davewritesright.blogspot.com at chronogram.com)
I Found Grace by Elizabeth Weller (mindwhisperingsphotography.blogspot.com)
A Hardware Store as Proof of the Existence of God by Nancy Willard (chronogram.com - not in the network, but cool)
Drought on the Open Road and The Myth of Grace by Marcus Goodyear (goodwordediting.com)
Love > Death by nAncY (theblogofnancy.blogspot.com)
Grace is a Painted Woman: Unfolding Imagination by L.L. Barkat (seedlingsinstone.blogspot.com)
Spring Training by Jim Schmotzer (thefaithfulskeptic.blogspot.com)
Picture on the Wall by mom2six (mom2six-treasures.blogspot.com)
Beauty and Truth in Fiction by Robert Treskillard (epictales.com - not a poem, but the post has some ideas about aesthetics that are worth your time.)
Promised Paradise by Cindy Hanson (cindyhan111.wordpress.com)
Broken Things by Tim Wilson (thundercatt99.blogspot.com)