Poetry Postcard month has to end sometime, though I still have so many cards left. If you’d like to receive an original postcard poem from me, sometime in September, please send me your address:
bethany.alchemy@gmail.com
This morning I woke up at 3:30…gave up trying to go back to sleep around 4:20…and crawled out of bed. I am officially between novels (don’t know how long that will last — one will come back, or I’ll dig out the one I plan to work on next), so I wrote a long time in my journal, then I reread a short story that I would like to submit somewhere. After that, feeling too restless to revise the story, I resorted to listening to inspirational podcasts on my laptop and tidying my office (which badly needs it). I didn’t make a huge amount of progress on the tidying, but I did find a CD of family photos, given to me by my sister a few years ago.
Among the photos I found this postcard from 1917. The text reads, “Dear friend how / do you like the East / by this time / I will write more next time / anser soon / Thurman.” It’s addressed to my grandfather, Eugene King, in Sparta, North Carolina (in the military?) and the picture is of a driveway (if the caption is to be believed) in Sheridan, Oregon. I think the bottom line on the back of the card says, “In car of JT Carpenter.”
Here’s my poem for today. (If it’s a poem.)
While you’ve been in Sparta
the world has tipped sideways
and spilled out a barrel of shiny new things.
Among which, J.T. bought a Ford.
When you get home we’ll fix you up
with Hazel M., who, if you look
hard enough you’ll see peeking into
your future from the rumble seat.
When I Met My Muse
I glanced at her and took my glasses
off — they were still singing. They buzzed
like a locust on the coffee table and then
ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the
sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and
knew that nails up there took a new grip
on whatever they touched. “I am your own
way of looking at things,” she said. “When
you allow me to live with you, every
glance at the world around you will be
a sort of salvation.” And I took her hand.
–William Stafford
August is Postcard Poetry month. I hadn’t taken part in the last few years (August is always so busy!), but this year I decided to rejoin, and I’m so glad I did. The idea is to write a new, original poem, on the back of a postcard, and send it to someone on the address list. Each day, someone sends a postcard poem to you. The postcard images are the inspiration…but the received poems and postcards start to mix in, too.
I prepared by collecting short poems that I loved, by other poets, and thinking about what it was that that made me love them. I decided that it has to do with the way a short poem quickly captures an image, and then makes something more of it, something symbolic and surprising. In this poem (above) by William Stafford, you don’t expect the glasses to sing or buzz, but while you’re distracted by that, here comes a new voice, “belled forth,” and the awakening is so keenly drawn that even the nails in the ceiling insist on a role in it.
This awakening, it strikes me, is what all poetry is really about. Be awake. See the world with new eyes. Be saved by what you see.
The poem itself is a pair of glasses. And then there’s the legerdemain — the magic — of the seeing with/without them at the same instant.
image from wikimedia.org
Along with a whole bunch of other poets and writers, I will be reading at Colophon Cafe in Fairhaven/Bellingham tonight, visiting the Chuckanut Sandstone Writers. Open Mike sign-up is at 6:30; reading commences at 6:50. You should join us!
And if you watch the Events tab, I’ll soon be announcing a whole line-up of readings in November, both close to home and in Portland, Oregon. (If you know of a great venue or open mike there, let me know!)
But why should anyone wish to read to a live audience?
When I was a poetry student at the University of Washington, I was lucky enough to be invited to read at the Castalia Reading Series, hosted by the one-and-only Nelson Bentley. I read every quarter, and sometimes more often, and I found a huge difference between writing for myself, secretly, or at least privately, and writing for others. You can experience this to some extent simply by sharing your work with a small group, and by sending your work out to journals. But performing your work aloud, to an audience? That’s magic.
It’s partly hearing the words aloud, which of course you can do in your room all by your lonesome. Except, it’s partly knowing that other people are hearing your words — knowing, as you prepare, that they will hear your work. When it’s your turn to get up there, you notice what your audience responds to, what sort of trills and riffs resonate. Sound matters, and (I’ve found) something happens to the images, too. You see what makes people sit up and pay attention. Then, all of that information has an effect on revisions, and on future poems. For me, it was a long process of becoming more and more my best writing self.
Listening to other readers is a whole ‘nother part of the experience, of course. All of it extremely scary (at least the first time) and extremely valuable. (Take notes!)