Come On

The cherry tree blossoms are already gone.  Lilacs, though, are everywhere and I'm trying to inhale as much of their scent as is possible.  Baltimore Orioles are back at the path and the grass is still sprinkled with white and purple violets. 

I will be reading in New Hampshire this Thursday at 8:00 at the Crackskull's Coffee and Bookstore.  Come on out and here me read some of my poems.  Bring a friend. 

Also, you should swing by Dancing Girl Press and pick up Kristin LaTour's chapbook Agoraphobia here.  I'm sure you could find a few others to round out the 5 for 25 mix-tape offer Kristy Bowen has going on there.

New word for me today:  capacitance.     Also? This title is awesome in its double negativity-ness. 



I Cannot Say That When I Saw You You Did Not Look Like a Lover

 Chloë Joan López     
  
I.
But I fear our
palms, held
distant, hold more than
palms pressed
close. Desire is capacitance. Usually. In my case

it is needlework and pain—that
is capacitance—with a glowing
pinpoint that threatens
to defect, desire mere field
lines gathered alongside.

Wafers of distrust wedged between. 

II.
Between
the planetarium and its dome, I have
finally learned. 

Learned to savor. Learned to dwell. Learned to live
on the nourishment of glass
beads and air that leave
only texture on the tongue. To leave the skin
an unfurred cloth that weeps
its charge. To harbor only untried faiths. 

III.
Poised above the star-
gazers' stiffening
necks, amid dialects

and loss, I am reckoned
 45 as among the supergiants: We decay,
or arc to ground.
Verse Daily

Such A Beginner

It is truly glorious around here of late--the weeping cherry tree in pink bloom, pretty little white and purple violets sprinkled on our un-mown lawn, and the birds are in high song mode.  Just last night I was listening to a wood thrush in the woods out back trilling that magnificent almost metallic melody he or she has...utterly gorgeous. 

And speaking of gorgeous, check out the new Escape Into Life May Flowers feature here, which includes my poem, "Self-Portrait As Farmer's Market."  The artwork is, as always, fabulously stunning and I'm so proud to be in the company of poets whose work I very much respect and love, such as Kelly Russel Agodon and Martha Silano and Risa Denenberg.   And great to find new poets, too, to fall in love with.

I am taking a karate class, just starting in my very white uniform (or gi).  Working the different muscles, punching and kicking the heavy swinging bags--well, it's just been amazingly refreshing and awakening to start at something new, to be such a beginner at something.  Which is also why I haven't done much blogging here.  But I hope this beginning at something so challenging will benefit my poetry, too.

Which, speaking of poetry, I signed on for a write a day in May which, ummmm, I've done like two or three poems.  It's that constant starting and stopping and I feel I'm using the same words over and over in my poems.  It's the opposite of feeling like a brand new beginner with lots of opportunities to learn.   Clearly, I need to get out of my poetry habits and put myself in a new place with poetry.  I just have to figure out how. 

Although I do have a bit of good news I can't quite share yet but will hopefully very soon. 

Winner!!!

And the winner of the 2013 Big Poetry Giveaway is......(drum roll please):

Sarah Jane--of The Rain in My Purse!!!

Congratulations Sarah!  Please email me your address at bergcaro at gmail dot com and I'll send those two books to you right away.

Thank you all for participating and be sure to visit again next year.  Or just visit, as I may have other poetry giveaways, before next year's poetry month.   


And Happy May!!! 

A Tiny Jittery

Wood ducks with their gorgeous face markings, fabulous red-headed pileated woodpeckers,  a tiny jittery brown wren.  The cherry tree just beginning to bud and in Boston, the magnolia trees in their white and purple magnificence.  This is today.

My son was on school vacation this week so yesterday we took a very long walk along the river and watched the high schoolers practice their sculling--at least that's what I think it's called.  We saw teeny tiny fish and bugs out and luckily no tics.  We met some very friendly little dogs.

Just a reminder that I'm giving out free poetry books--just comment here. 

The poems are, well, not daily but sporadically happening.  It's always a joy just to write, even when I absolutely hate them afterward. 


And Having Broken Into Blossom
        after James Wright

there is no against 

just to and fro 

and where before I wondered 

what and why now 

I shyly bend and blend

into the sensible breeze


if there were anything
 more to say 

this pink of pink of pink 

that I am 

would be answer 

enough


Copyright © 2013 Eloise Klein Healy All rights reserved
from A Wild Surmise Red Hen Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission

Full Of Curves

On my run today, there were ducks flying over head, loudly squawking and splash-landing into the pond rather joyously, it seemed to me.  There is a place in the pond where a pipe passes water from one side of the path to the other and five or six beautiful dark fish were undulating back and forth.  I want to say they were trout, but then I want all the fish I see to be trout and I'm not sure these were.  But they were darkly gorgeous.  I heard an owl singing about how it would cook for you, really, and a large meeting of red-wing blackbirds creating some random chorus but still full throatily singing.  Also, some sort of may-fly has hatched and unfortunately dying on my front door.  They are such interesting looking insects, with their back full of curves.  I just went out to take another look and picked it up and it flew away!  So apparently, it was just sleeping off the cold.

So I am writing a poem a day this month.  Shhhhhhh, though.  Don't tell anyone because I'm feeling very gingerly about writing these days.  I'm pretty sure poetry is quite ready to slip right out my front door and leave me forever. 

(I do have a topic, an argument really, but that's all I'm gonna say about that.  I am really pleased though because I actually wrote an abecedarian for the first time ever today!)

I got the anthology Women Write Resistance from Hyacinth Girl Press yesterday in the mail and know that the critical introduction is worth the price of the book alone.  This is gonna be fabulous, and I can't wait till May when I might actually have time to read it! 

What books are you reading?


Bricolage
        

Go every day a little deeper
into the woods, collect acorns,
twigs, thorns, fallen leaves,
pine needles, a fern's curl,
a bird's nest, a lost feather,
spring air, hot, humid air, a raindrop,
a touch of blue, a ripple,
and why not the hush
of your steps over moss,
the trembling of leaves
at dusk against black bark?

Put it all in a bag and shake it:
you will retrace your steps
within the clearing, hear frightened
flights, watch the rain darken the deck,
flatten oak leaves, answer the root's mute prayer. 


Hedy Habra
Verse Daily

Past The Rocky Part

The world along the path is waking up: today the peepers were peeping, the birds singing, woodpeckers thrumming, and the snakes, well, coiling.  I had been expecting them to be coming out of whatever den they hibernate in here soon and today as I was running past the rocky part I heard them. The sound of unusual hissing. I stopped and sure enough, there was this roiling coil of small snakes.  These two women walking opposite came up to watch and we stood there fascinating, trying to come up with the name of this--I kept wanting to say "coven" but that's not right.  One of them said "gaggle" but no.  Dr. Google says a bed or nest, but that seems pretty tame.  One of the women said it sounded like fire.  What a great image, no? 

The other day I saw a muskrat in the water and then a small bundle of brown fur went shooting from one side to the other.  I caught up to it to see it was a mink.  So beautiful.  My father used to trap mink.  He was quite the hunter back in his day--mink was his favorite.  I couldn't wait to tell him what I'd saw, knowing how much he'd enjoy it, now that he can't get out much at all.  Also that the great blue heron are back flying so heavily overhead.

April is moving right along and poetry is happening in many and various places.  I hope poetry is finding you or you are finding poetry.  I know I'm trying....

Abyss

You and I, when we sleep, we're like whales
because fish swim out of my mouth
and you dishevel the seaweed.

We hear the scent of seashells, the oranges of Sóller:
drifting, taken;
without earth that belongs to us belonging to the Earth.

Two Moroccans inhale glue
and the vapor climbs to our bedchamber;
the city throws its lights against the ceiling,

and perhaps there are cops, and perhaps sirens,
and the air is full of ash,
but our night, our night is submarined.

Melcion Mateu
translated from the Catalan by Rowan Ricardo Phillips

The Paris Review
Spring 2013

The Big Poetry Giveaway 2013

Hey All,

I'm participating in the big poetry giveaway.  I am giving away my chapbook, Ophelia Unraveling, as well as Sarah Hannah's Longing Distance.  Sarah Hannah reminds me often of Sylvia Plath, which is pretty much the highest compliment I can give.

Here's just a snippet from "Rumination":

Were my mouth to find yours in the gloom
Of dying promises--canted, mid-sentence,
Mid-phrase or quotation--were I on a lark
To marry wood, the hard pine panels
Of this room, your lips, the rivulet
Tips of your lingering sweats,
Who would I be then?

So, yeah.  You want this book. Leave a comment between now and April 30 and I'll pull a name out of the hat and contact you.  That's it! 

If you want to participate as a blogger, please check out Susan Rich's info here. 

A little bit about me:

In addition to Ophelia Unraveling, I will also have a chapbook, The Ornithologist Poems, coming out from Dancing Girl Press this next year.  I blog about poetry stuff that's on my mind as well as birds I see out on my daily (-ish) walk.  I'm a writing tutor who lives in Massachusetts and travels occasionally, most recently to Australia. 
 

Good luck and Happy National Poetry Month!