February Is Writing Challenge Month!

screed

noun

1. a long discourse or essay, especially a diatribe.

2. an informal letter, account, or other piece of writing.

3.       Building Trades.

          a. a strip of plaster or wood applied to a surface to be plastered to serve as a guide for making a true surface.

          b. a wooden strip serving as a guide for making a true level surface on a concrete pavement or the like.

          c. a board or metal strip dragged across a freshly poured concrete slab to give it its proper level.

4.       British Dialect . a fragment or shred, as of cloth.

5.       Scot.

          a. a tear or rip, especially in cloth.

          b. a drinking bout.

verb

6.       Scot. to tear, rip, or shred, as cloth.

I found myself looking around at my desk at work for a pen and paper. I didn’t have a poem in my head or a Hallmark card saying I needed to write, or even a quote I wanted to remember and blurt out at parties as though I hadn’t rehearsed it five times before…

I didn’t have the need for perverse punctuation time rhythm or form line

breaks or caesura. I just wanted space and line –  to smell ink on pen. To write a love letter! To who? To tree? Too deep. To Mother Nature and all other likely incantations for their likely existence on my creativity? Too cliché.

My love letter is to Dictionary.com and it’s inspiration for me to write. To write blog pieces based upon the words my bulk emails give me in my appreciable inbox at work. Now that’s contemporary writing.

So I’ve decided to post my word of the day from Dictionary.com here on my blog everyday for a month for a writing exercise as my “February Is Writing Challenge Month!” Blogs are a great way to share your work and a great way to workshop pieces. Let’s see what pieces (Poetry, Short Fiction, Prose, whatever your heart desires) you all come up with! I’ll post, too!

Poetry Book Review of the Week

The Art of Recklessness: Poetry as Assertive Force and Contradiction– Dean Young

Poetry, is above all, an art. Those of us who write for a living tend to ‘sometimes’ lose touch with creative reality. We write as a Kantian means to an ends (metaphysical representations) such as book publishing deals, journals being read, awards being won; which in its simplicity is all well and good. However, where does the sentimentality go? The passion? The creation? Dean Young attempts to have us reveal to ourselves our own definition of creation by using recklessness as a backdrop for discussion. Young writes about Dada and surrealism and its influence on art and how it has the power to ground imagination. For me, young’s illustration is not simply about aesthetic recklessness and the contradiction therein; yet, it is about the balance between imagination, creativity, art, and the concrete literal world. Of course we can create an innumerable amount of creative works, but then we must walk the thin line of writing for ourselves as well as writing for the reader.

Poetry mitigates just as fire does, by witnessing its own necessary recklessness and senses of the sacred, its ability to combust the ancillary, to grow and make everything itself eve as it confronts us with the outcome of its conjugation, with ash, with death, (Young; The Art of Recklessness; page 7) Poetry. As fire. Such a powerful statement for Young to draw our attention to. At first, it may that Young will write an entire book that basically “preaches” to the proverbial “choir”, but here, the reader can see that he is writing truth. Poetry, like fire, can and does diminish, but it can also create, destroy, and consume the reader, as well as itself. Poetry, like the writer, knows of its power, but it is up to us to act correctly on the knowledge and power.

My favorite concept of Young’s is poetry’s atrophic force in the world and contradiction. This poetic weakening stems from losing touch with human existence, feeling, and creativity-the process. We lose touch with our sense of art in order to please the common good, if you will, “Poetic practice has changed throughout time to the increase of the riches of poetry in genera, by poets doing what they have told not to or sensed were discouraged/disallowed from doing. At the center of any artistic practice is a resistance as well as a contrary impulse to identify, to stand-off from the tribe and to be part of it, (Young, page 37). Young values this contradiction very much; he writes that poetry is an assertive force; it must be poetry on purpose, not by default, such as his Marianne Moore example. Obscurity and unrecognizability do not make a poem, but focus does. There is nothing wrong with abstract poetry, however, one cannot write something that only the writer understands, and perhaps they don’t either. That is once again talking about the barrier between creativity and concrete; the necessity for “others” to understand our senses and experiences as writers, poets. In his own creation of this book, Young challenges himself to do just that. He pushes himself into the prose realm in The Art of Recklessness as well. His ambition drives him through a world of not simply a book about writing, reading, and understanding poetry, but through a world of the art form as well.

People use language for two reasons: to be understood and to not be understood” (Young; page 38). This quote is an exemplary way to continue Young’s views on contradiction and Dada and to advance my own point about the balance between aesthetic recklessness and concrete reality. There is a constant struggle, negotiation between the communicative state and the expressive state, “They are the two forces that form must come to terms with,” (Young; page 39). In relation to the Dada and the Surrealist, they pushed the boundaries between accepted “form” and art. Surrealist art itself is more philosophical and metaphysical in nature then focusing on the concrete tangible world. Yet, that is the way that art should be, creation, beautiful, unique. Young cites a wonderful personal example of this when he accounts an artist he met, Charles Spurrier, was working in his studio at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, “His work was cataclysmic, patched together, slashed apart, set on fire. A piece was more temporarily abandoned than finished for the formality of a show, and if it wasn’t bought, it went back into the system, quite possibly to be sawed, painted over, or melted down from some more current work…The risk in Charles’s work was that it flirted with, even embraced, forces and attitudes toward materials that to some extent eradicated the art itself, yet this contradiction did not lead to canceling out,” (Young; pages 42-43). An elongated explanation for, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Recklessness allows for great art to be born. Great art to whom? It does not matter when we are creating for ourselves. We must move away from making things that are planned and allow art to happen through hazard and coincidence.

Although Dean Young’s contribution to The Art of series was albeit resounding, it did have some weak points as well. The writing was almost impenetrable and at first read the work was somewhat elitist in nature. Understandably, Young was using this work as a tool in order to make his own writing stronger. The reader got to both enjoy and perhaps ridicule the outcome as well. I found Young to be, at times, inexplicably pretentious. Although, he knows what he is talking about. This creation would not be something for either the faint of heart nor for the writer who believes that writing is work, Young basically dismisses the claims and says that writing should be for the self, reckless, inhabited, “It [poetry] itemizes as well as lurches; its coherence is not a matter of linear development or consistency but rather one furious momentum through gushes and spinning in obsessional eddies,” (Young; page 98). I as a self-proclaimed, newly re-birthed formalist poet, should shudder against some of the ideals that Young represents, however, I am also a realist and a devout reader of all works philosophical from Kant to Heidegger to Descartes to Nietzsche, thus I am bound by such philosophical evaluations to oddly agree with Young, surprising myself. That is not to say that I will cease in creating formalist poetry, but it will certainly be created in a new light, with brighter eyes and awareness. I believe that MFA students fall victims to spending so much time on craft that they/we forget about the art. We forget about the all-encompassing spirit of creation that has lead us to the university in the first place; we forget the feel of the page, the pen. I think that Young says it best when he says, “ Desecration makes visible what is intended to be invisible, marks over what is intended to be the final mark or blankness,”(Young; page 60). Coming from a psychology background, I can relate to this quote. Defilement, breaking down a barrier reveals what someone has hidden, hidden thoughts, feelings, desires, and writing is no different, which is why it is used in so many therapeutic techniques.

Perhaps what Young is trying to prescribe is a therapy session: a reckless, uninhabited, creative therapy session. When do I start?

*Certainly…A MUST read*

Poetry Book Review of the Week-Love Through the Poet’s Eyes

I have heard the name Mark Doty spoken in different poetry circles at various events and I have also read a select amount of poems by Doty as well so I figured that I would further my experience of his poetry by reading a collection of is. Though I did not know very much about his life, Doty’s poem “The Embrace” in his collection of selected poems Fire to Fire immersed me into his world with such passion and artistry, I could not put the work down and had to write about it.

This same effect goes for Paul Eluard; although I have read much less of his work than Doty, I knew that Eluard was a poet of love and that in itself drew me towards his collection of poetry Last Love Poems. Eluard’s poetry has a way of consuming you with imagery and accessible detail about his lover and at times gives you a glimpse into his own heart. His poem “Absence”, like Doty’s “The Embrace” is very much about love, but about loss as well.

As I stated before, when I chose Doty’s work, I did not know anything about his life; I did not know that he was a homosexual and that his lover was diagnosed with AIDS and died rather young. I am glad that I decided to read his work before I knew any background because it allowed me to remove myself from any type of bias or preconceptions. I loved the sensitive moments of this piece, the ease at which he flowed through line-by-line and stanza-by-stanza, and also how we never get lost in either the emotion or the trail of events.

When I came across the information about his life, I turned my attention back to his poem “The Embrace”. The raw emotion alone truly resonated with me, as it is the first thing that I look for when reading a poem:

You weren’t well or really ill yet either;
just a little tired, your handsomeness
tinged by grief or anticipation, which brought
to your face a thoughtful, deepening grace. (Doty, 1-4)

Here, Doty has set the story in only four lines. The reader already knows that there is a relationship here, and assumes that it is a romantic one with tender word choices such as “handsomeness” or “tinged” and “grace”. The reader also notices that there is something of great loss in the author’s voice; his loved one is sickly but is still admired.

It is in stanzas three and four that I began to realize the true craft of Mark Doty. Not only was he able to captivate me in the first stanza with powerful language and emotion, I did not even notice how the lines wrapped so eloquently (something that I myself strive for in my formal work, such as the sestina). At first glance, I thought that it might be a sestina because of the six stanzas, but when I realized there were no repeating end words and only four lines to each stanza, I was pleasantly surprised that the stanzas were simply beautiful quatrains:

We seemed to be moving from some old house
where we’d live, boxes everywhere, things
in disarray: that was the story of my dream,
but even asleep I was shocked out of the narrative

by your face, the physical fact of your face:
inches from mine, smooth-shaven, loving, alert.
Why so difficult, remembering the actual look
of you? Without a photograph, without strain? (Doty, 9-16)

In these two stanzas, Doty elongates the lines as they wrap around each other making this narrative poem seem effortless. This way of wrapping the lines is very effective as it allows us to stay immersed in the story without forgetting the plot or the sentiment.

Finally, “The Embrace” illustrates Doty’s overall ability to write narrative poetry. Although this is apparent in the entire piece, the final stanza demonstrates a stanza of completion of both feeling and plot:

Bless you. You came back, so I could see you
once more, plainly, so I could rest against you
without thinking this happiness lessened anything,
without thinking you were alive again. (21-24)

The poem takes a complete full turn and brings the reader from the moments of reminiscing to reality: the lover is gone but still very much alive in the author’s heart and of course memory.

.The second poem that I chose to write about, “Absence” is the epitome of a love poem in my eyes. Much like the previous poem, it opens in a grandiose yet sentimental style that captures the reader’s attention:

I speak to you over cities
I speak to you over plains
my mouth is against your ear
the two sides of the walls face
my voice which acknowledges you.
I speak to you of eternity. (Eluard, 1-6)

“I speak to you over cities/ I speak to you over plains” is almost breathless as Eluard begins his poems. He allows the reader to truly be inside of the poem and experience everything themselves as the account unfolds:

O cities memories of cities
cities draped with our desires
cities early and late
cities strong cities intimate
stripped of all their makers
their thinkers their phantoms (7-12).

The repetition of the word “cities” gathers momentum in the middle of the piece which is needed in order to keep the poem from being a dull list of places that the lovers may have visited or talked about visiting. The language alone is enthralling and takes the written images on the page into the dreamscape that is being unfolded before our eyes. It utilizes ideals that are very common to poems about love such as the feelings of longing and undying hope, but adds different elements as well. There are colors, textures, sounds, and major affectations that make this piece a remarkable love poem:

Landscape ruled by emerald
live living ever-living
the wheat of the sky on our earth
nourishes my voice I dream and cry
I laugh and dream between the flames
between the clusters of sunlight
and over my body your body extends
the layer of its clear mirror (13-20).

You can feel this poem (“ I laugh and dream between the flames/between the cluster of sunlight/and over my body your body extends/the layer of its clear mirror”) and that is what true poetry is about, an experience. Eluard, like Doty, has allowed us to be a part of his heart and its voyage, become a part of his life through words. These two poems are wonderful examples of love poetry, although Doty’s is much more of an emotional narrative while Eluard’s has no concrete storyline but much more abstract emotion that is enhanced by scarce punctuation (which I take very well to), and Eluard’s piece and overall writing is much more traditional in both content and style and Doty’s subject matter and form are much more contemporary. However, they have brilliance in craft certainly in common as well believable emotion. Mark Doty and Paul Eluard showed us that love does not discriminate but is welcome to all walks of life.

*Mark Doty has a blog! Please check it out 🙂
http://markdoty.blogspot.com/

Quickie: Light Verse & Why I Write It

Like I always say, I have plenty of influences. Plenty of these poetic voices you probably have heard of such as Emily Dickinson (I’m sure you could have all guessed her abundant influence on me from the quote alone), Sylvia Plath, etc… But I also gain plenty of influence from light verse writers. You know the type of writers that make you just…see the glass as half full instead of half empty. The kind of writers that put a sarcastic, humorous spin on life-they make you turn that proverbial “frown upside down!” Wendy Cope is one of the main reasons why I write light verse.

That isn’t to say that I didn’t go through my, “Dying is an art, like everything else” phase…I mean what poestess poet hasn’t? It’s a right of passage, really. But there is a silver lining. What is that silver lining you ask? Laughter. Laughter truly is the best medicine. I’m not saying that I go everyday burying my head in the sand, but there is always one moment in everyday (usually countless moments) that makes me laugh, and I write about that moment. I try different takes on different situations. I wanted to try something… (EEK!) I was going to do a spotlight on a particular author (Wendy Cope) but I figured I’d save her work for next time and I wanted to share some of my own pieces with you…light verse of course 🙂

Salt to Pepper
I do not know what I would do
Without your spice of life;
Forever at my side. We a pair
Of balance: I am the taste that
Purses the lips, you the heat,
The flavor that coats within.
There can never be one without
The other; in excess, we draw the
Liquid of life to lips. You are the
Yin to my Yang, the indigestion
To my high blood pressure.

Published in Mezzo Cammin: an online journal of formalist poetry by women

Exchange of Hearts
…but bitter, it has never been so sweet.
I tell them and they just don’t understand
The way I feel for you…you’re mine to keep.

And yes, our kind of love’s no easy feat:
You tend to do things that I cannot stand.
But bitter, it has never been so sweet.

I’ll even take the bad. You lie; I cheat.
It’s not like we have that gold wedding band.
The way I feel for you…you’re mine to keep.

We play the field, and yet our hearts still meet
Same time, same place. We live on love’s command.
But bitter, it has never been so sweet.

I love the taste of heartbreak. It’s so neat,
Tied in a bow and swapped from hand to hand.
They way I feel for you…you’re mine to keep.

Your heart belongs to me: no gift receipt.
I try to work my way through love’s demand
…but bitter, it has never been so sweet.
The way I feel for you…you’re mine to keep.

Welcome To CosmopolitanMuse

I began wondering about where I draw my inspiration from in my own writing. Was it philosophy? Sociology? Art? Nature? Romance? Humanity? I realized that my inspiration encapsulates all of these things and more. Why? Because of the very innate human nature of observation. We take in our surroundings, categorize them, store them, recall them from memory. That is what truly makes us different from the tree, the bird, the fish, isn’t it?

Our 5 senses not only draw us closer to Earth, but in a way, separate us from the kingdom to which we belong because of reason alone. Now, without becoming too philosophical, that is what I am attempting to do with this blog: find a place of balance between this rich and modern (cosmopolitan if you will) world that we live in, full of vibrancy and vitality which can sometimes pull us away from our innate sensibility to admire our world and observe, wonder.

Quite a bit of my blog will also have to do with contemporary poets that I enjoy reading such as Kim Addonizio, Wendy Cope, Billy Collins, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, and Kay Ryan to name a few.

I hope that this blog brings forth even more contemporary poets that readers have not heard of and I have never heard of, gives some writing exercises and spawns discussion!