Posts Tagged ‘Poetry’

Published by Associate Editor on . This item is listed in Issue 24, Issue 24 Poetry, Poetry

Septuagenarian Flashback by Bruce Boston

Septuagenarian Flashback by Bruce Boston

Illustration by Sue Babcock

Stumbling into the humid
jasmine-scented dark
from a midnight cinema
playing an iconic art film 
rife with sidewalk cafes

and laconic actors whose
monochromatic silences
confabulate to a toxic 
conundrum of pale angst
and lost existential loves,

my venerable thoughts 
segue to foggy mornings 
in a metropolis by the bay,
wandering the slantwise
streets of stoned youth

and the fleeing tendrils 
of a Guatemalan high,
a great golden bridge
aglow with the blurred
headlamps of early traffic

rising out of the mist,
glittering like some fabled 
and fantastic behemoth 
that would carry me to 
a chameleon tomorrow.

Bruce Boston is the author of more than fifty books and chapbooks, including the dystopian sf novel The Guardener’s Tale and the psychedelic coming-of-age-novel Stained Glass Rain. His poetry has received the Bram Stoker Award, the Asimov’s Readers Award, the Gothic Readers Award, the Balticon Poetry Award, and the Rhysling and Grandmaster Awards of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. His fiction has received a Pushcart Prize, and twice been a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award (novel, short story). www.bruceboston.com

Published by Associate Editor on . This item is listed in Issue 24, Issue 24 Poetry, Poetry

“*” by Simon Perchik

narrated by John C. Mannone

* by Simon Perchik

Illustration by Sue Babcock

*
This spoon all night on tiptoe
listens for the careless splash
that will never make it back –the cup

half hazelnut, black, half-filled
so its prey can be tracked in the dark
the way one mouth finds another

feeds on the voice that can’t escape
–hour after hour being eaten
by the silence longing for the light

though even with the walls in place
even with her hands over your eyes
begging you from behind Guess who?

you circle the room, flying blind
spread-eagle, and hear the You
no longer moving between your teeth.




Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, Poetry, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. His most recent collection is Almost Rain, published by River Otter Press(2013). For more information, free e-books and his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.

Published by Associate Editor on . This item is listed in Issue 24, Issue 24 Poetry, Poetry

The Near Shore by Michelle Markey Butler

The Near Shore by Michelle Butler

Illustration by Sue Babcock

The wagon stubbed over a rut. 
Byre bumped, shroud shifted, coins fell from closed eyes.
Hidden beneath the linen. No one saw. 

But, then, he could. 
A half-sight not of eyes but spirit
Unencumbered by the winding sheet.

How strange to watch his own burial. 
Bound form lowered into a fresh scar
In a graveyard maimed by too many, and too new. 
He felt as much as heard the coins slip,
Lost in folds until they fell free.
One to the turned soil beneath, one to the sparse grass beside.

The baker's boy scooped it up, fast as a frog. 
 
Habit, perhaps, kept him near the mound
As it greened, and sunk. 
Where else should he go? 
Without passage, the farther shore was barred.
He had no wish to haunt his relations.
He had been well-tended in his illness despite their fear, 
Well-treated until the waggoner grew careless and no one saw. 

Soon enough, more graves joined his,
And no relations remained to haunt.
 
He had known burials did not stay 
In crowded churchyards. His eviction was still a shock. 
He brooded his scattered bones like a hen.

When the anatomist came on a moonless night, he followed.

Coins changed hands 
But did not come near the empty sockets of his eyes. 
A pang, that. He felt trapped, as he had not since 
The first moments the dirt sat down upon his shroud.

Days spun themselves into weeks,
Wove into years like fine linen. 
The alchemist collected coins until he could buy books.

The far shore, it was said, was unchanging.   
Not so the alchemist's rooms. 
Men visited, bought and traded 
A tidal crew of glass and gold, gems and needles.

His skull braced the alchemist’s favorite volumes,
On a shadowed shelf lest they catch an eye. 
The ones that stayed. That he loved, and meant to keep.

 

Michelle Markey Butler is a Lecturer in the College of Information Studies and the Honors College at the University of Maryland College Park, where she teaches medieval literature and Tolkien. She has published on medieval and early modern drama, but her current research project focuses on internet memes as literary and cultural criticism. She is the author of SF/F stories and a debut novel, HOMEGOING, which releases in December 2014 from Pink Narcissus Press. michellemarkeybutler.com.

Published by Associate Editor on . This item is listed in Issue 24, Issue 24 Featured Poet, Issue 24 Poetry, Poetry

A Different Kind of Motion by Roald Hoffmann

A Different Kind of Motion by Roald Hoffmann

Illustration by Sue Babcock

	 for Katelijne Vanduffel
	
The wolf-child creeps around the clearing
where children build a campfire. She hears
a new sound, laughter, cross talk. Upright
shapes jump blurred across the fire. But
they have dogs that smell her, so she can’t
get near. After they run off, she sniffs
the fruit skins, some colored paper they
left. She raises a paw, then tries to stand,
as she saw the children stand, but her rear
legs remain bent, she falls over and over
and over. She hitches away, in her crab-
like motion, fast as the rabbits she catches
and eats. From the edge of the forest
the wolf-child watches men hoe the fields.
They’ve begun to set traps for her. She
tries again to stand, her front legs
on a tree trunk, leg over leg up the bark,
rearing up so the sun coming through
the leaves hits her muddaubed belly. Her 
back legs hurt, like the day she tried to lope
after the wolves, before she came on hitching.
She falls away from the pain, with a grunt,
not the tinkling water sound of children
in her ears. In time, she learns to hobble
leaning on a stick, and the wolf-child comes
on stage with a different kind of motion.

 

Roald Hoffmann was born in 1937 in Złoczów, then Poland. He came to the US in 1949, and has long been at Cornell University in the USA, active as a theoretical chemist. In chemistry, he has taught generations how to think about molecular orbitals.

Hoffmann is also a writer, carving out his own land between poetry, philosophy, and science. He has published five books of non-fiction, written three produced plays, and six volumes of poetry, including two book length selections of his poems in Spanish and Russian translations.

Published by Associate Editor on . This item is listed in Issue 24, Issue 24 Featured Poet, Issue 24 Poetry, Poetry

Crossing the Mekong by Roald Hoffmann

Crossing the Mekong by Roald Hoffmann

Illustration by Sue Babcock

The sun touches the treetops. In,
among the middle branch leaves,
ruffed gibbon faces. They stretch,
lick fur dry. It’s time, to greet
neighbors with the morning’s old
songs, time to check the soft-spined
rambutan fruit. Climbing high
for the launch, spread out flat,
changing direction in midleap,
shaping out of air a vector
tunnel of openings and branches,
the yelping gibbons' arboreal swing.

Their children cling,
				ours crawl.
We invented the beauty parlor,
				but take out our own splinters.
				They groom each other.
Apes have dominant males
				who defend estate, sexual
				territory. We get married.
				Gibbons are almost like us.
And when the stranger comes,
				swinging in an out-
				of-season coat, armed,
				smelling of his feed, we
				just look, furtively, look.
				They scatter to howl away
				the green-brown sky.
If mother is taken far
				apes cower, babies cry.

When a man of the Hmong dies
the gibbons know. They come
from the highlands in the night,
stand guard, eat the offering.

The monkey king gently wraps
the man's soul in a white cloth
bears it off in phantom leaps
the stars’ tree limbs meeting
his confident long hand reach,
across the muddy river, back home.

 

Roald Hoffmann was born in 1937 in Złoczów, then Poland. He came to the US in 1949, and has long been at Cornell University in the USA, active as a theoretical chemist. In chemistry, he has taught generations how to think about molecular orbitals.

Hoffmann is also a writer, carving out his own land between poetry, philosophy, and science. He has published five books of non-fiction, written three produced plays, and six volumes of poetry, including two book length selections of his poems in Spanish and Russian translations.

Published by Associate Editor on . This item is listed in Issue 24, Issue 24 Featured Poet, Issue 24 Poetry, Poetry

Volition by Roald Hoffmann

Volition by Roald Hoffmann

Illustration by Sue Babcock

A gold coin centers this landscape.
It is drawn standing on edge,
so that we can see the ridges and a hint of the design,
which seems to be the Russian imperial eagle.
The coin is teetering,
and this is shown in comic book notation,
with some short curved lines.
The coin would fall
(and it is not clear to which side)
were it not for two dark arrows
contending
to push it over,
one from each side.
The arrows are each impelled by intricate machinery -
gears, cams, even engines and boilers.
This machinery is controlled
(we see two trailing wires)
by a man below
pushing buttons on a panel, and it is clear
that he directs both arrows.
At this point we notice that the floor around the engineer
is littered by loose letters in various fonts.
The composition is quite symmetrical:
to the left of the man is a fence, a big wave
about to break into it.
A dragon is partway over.
Some small figures are hurrying about
trying to unroll a hose against the dragon,
others are trying to pull out some bayonets
that have penetrated the fence.
Some of the figures gesture at the man at the control panel,
who should be giving them orders.
But he doesn't look at them,
not at the panel (though his fingers are on it). Instead
he looks to his right
at a sitting woman in a red and black dirndl.
She faces away,
painting what seems to be a landscape with two roads.

 

Roald Hoffmann was born in 1937 in Złoczów, then Poland. He came to the US in 1949, and has long been at Cornell University in the USA, active as a theoretical chemist. In chemistry, he has taught generations how to think about molecular orbitals.

Hoffmann is also a writer, carving out his own land between poetry, philosophy, and science. He has published five books of non-fiction, written three produced plays, and six volumes of poetry, including two book length selections of his poems in Spanish and Russian translations.

Published by Associate Editor on . This item is listed in Introductions, Issue 24, Issue 24 Poetry, Poetry

Introduction to Poetry in Issue 24

by John C. Mannone

John C. Mannone

John C. Mannone

The line-up for the Fall issue is stunning; it is an eclectic mixture of poets. Some are scientists (or related), while others are literary professionals—they bring you a diverse collection of literary-speculative poetry. And as a chemist and physicist, I feel very much at home with these fine poets: Roald Hoffmann (Theoretical Chemist), Simon Perchik (Attorney), Michelle Butler (English Professor), Bruce Boston (Computer Scientist), Kate Gillespie (Microbiologist), David Kopaska-Merkel (Geologist), John Reinhart (High School English Teacher).

Our Featured Poet, Roald Hoffmann (Ithaca, NY), is a Nobel Laureate in Chemistry (1981), who is also impassioned with the arts. His poems (“A Different Kind of Motion,” “Volition,” and “Crossing the Mekong”) bring a chemistry of their own. He speaks of their genesis in the interview.

Simon Perchik (East Hampton, NY) continues to dazzle us with magical illusions and other realities with his poetry (“This spoon all night on tiptoe”). Michelle Butler (College Park, MD), who teaches Medieval Literature, shares a ghostly poem (“The Near Shore”). The multiple-winning Bram Stoker poet, Bruce Boston (Ocala, FL) crafts a poem with luxurious language (“Septuagenarian Flashback”). Another poet from where I grew up, Kate Gillespie (Baltimore, MD), skillfully incorporates metaphors from her studies as a microbiologist in marine biotechnology (“Harboring”*). Our scientific professions often provide fresh metaphors. In David Kopaska-Merkel’s (Tuscaloosa, AL) poetry (“Hard Row”), the geological influence is very clear. Finally, John Reinhart (Wheat Ridge, CO) leaves us with a short, surreal poem (“dream”) that is fanciful and pensive—a good final note.

* I am reminded of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, which now serves as a model for developers across the country, but I remember before it was cleaned-up, when it was a place for refuse, and too many times, a setting for crime. Now, it’s a tourist stop.

Published by Associate Editor on . This item is listed in Interview, Issue 23 Poetry

Interview of our Featured Poet Sue B. Walker by John C. Mannone

Sue B. Walker

Sue B. Walker

Introduction:

Sue Walker is the Stokes Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama and the Poet Laureate of Alabama from 2003-1012. She is the publisher of Negative Capability Press and the journal’s editor.

~~~

Sue Brannan Walker is known nationally and internationally for her poetry, as well as for her critical articles on poets and writers such as James Dickey, Marge Piercy, Margaret Atwood, Carson McCullers. As Editor and Publisher of Negative Capability, she has published numerous Alabama poets and writers, providing them a greater audience and some of them their first opportunity to be published. She has continued this work since 1981—a distinguished effort recognized by Writer’s Digest when it ranked Negative Capability Third in the Nation in Poetry in the early 1990s out of approximately 2700 markets.

Her poetry, prose works, and community service have deservedly garnered numerous awards, grants, and fellowships. She has published 9 books of poetry and a critical book on James Dickey: The Ecological Poetics of James Dickey.. One of the poetry collections, Blood Will Bear Your Name, won Book of the Year from Alabama State Poetry Society and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

As the Stokes Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing, she was formerly Chair of the University of South Alabama English Department. Dr. Walker’s works also include a a biography of Jefferson Davis in sonnets; and work on Flannery O’Connor and Kate Chopin. She has just finished a hybrid book that is prose poetry/memoir/history/cultural study/abecedarian about a crone. (See discussion below.)

~~~

Interview:

Thank you Susan for taking the time to do this interview. When your name first appeared in our magazine’s queue, I sensed a familiarity I couldn’t quite pin down…until I read your bio. It was last year while attending a Southern Christian Writers’ Conference (June 2013) in Tuscaloosa that your name camer up—you had been a featured speaker there in the recent past.

We have been fortunate to have had many excellent and notable poets grace the pages of Silver Blade, but this is the first time we’ve had a state poet laureate! Thank you for honoring us.

1. John C. Mannone (JCM): I feel compelled to begin with how your interest in speculative poetry developed. Include your influences

1. Sue Brannon Walker (SBW): Perhaps I became interested in speculative poetry in a former life – when I was Isis or maybe Greta Garbo. I’ve always been good at acting-up, acting-out, abreacting, co-enacting, re-enacting. I like S.T. Joshi’s Emperors of Dreams: Some Notes on Weird Poetry.

 

2. JCM: I’m not in favor of such distinctions, but many writerly folks make them all the time—please say anything you’d like about genre (in particular, speculative) vs. literary poetry.

2. SBW: I resist categorization and affirm hybridity. I like the way that traditional genres can be integrated in varying ways: fiction as lyrical; poetry as lyric essay, and creative nonfiction as literary criticism; ekphrastic poetry, concrete poetry, a merging of forms–prose abecedarians, prose sestinas and the like. The creative cosmos is expanding.

 

3. JCM: What can you share about your writing process? And for those who get stuck, what advice can you give them?

3. SBW: I think that “getting stuck” might be associated with fear of failure or fear of rejection, even more than with lethargy or busyness. Nobody likes to be rejected, so after two, three, or more rejections, there might be a tendency to fold up the tent and quit trying, Yevgeny Yevtushenko said that to “believe in yourself is indispensible.” Unfortunately we’re schooled in failure—those red marks teachers put on student papers that highlight mistakes. I think teachers are sometimes too quick to designate “wrong” and may be remiss in pointing out how something might be improved, which is a different slant on learning and teaching. Of course, we need to learn how to use MLA documentation and perhaps the Chicago Manual of Style if we’re in college or getting a Masters, but maybe the desire to learn should be connected with goals and ambitions—a road to success in which the things that might improve a paper (a road sign that says turn right) will get you where you’re going a lot sooner. I read where William Stafford did not give his students grades. In writing, I think the focus should be on revision.

I revise and revise and revise 10, 20 or more times. I go back to a poem or a story or a manuscript after a couple of weeks or a month. I’ll see it, then, in a different light; I’ll see things I missed when writing the first draft or the 2nd or the 3rd . I am, however, impatient; I want to get on with something new. And I’m still learning after many years that patience is, indeed, a virtue—at least when it comes to writing and publishing.

I also have a few trusted friends who are also writers, and I value their suggestions when I’m editing and revising.

 

4. JCM: Backstories to poems are often as fascinating as the poems themselves. Would you comment on them for the poems appearing in this issue?

4. SBW: Back stories are, indeed, interesting. Let me begin with “Nature, Like Mother, Is An Improper Name (Shilly Shallying Sin) (A Prose Sestina). I have just completed a book manuscript, tentatively titled Sobriquets in which an older woman (a crone), who was given away at birth, decides to give herself a new identity and a name she chooses herself. She goes through the lexicon and tries on personas: Abigail Adams, Belle Boyd, Coco Chanel and so on, from A to Z. This manuscript/book is a prose poem, abecedarian, cultural study, and memoir that intertwines my own life with that of representative women, including Lois Lane and Olive Oyl.

[Fascinated by the notion of a prose sestina, I deconstructed your piece to better understand its mechanics. In this beautifully rhythmic prose sestina, the repeated words (1 house, 2 road, 3 wood, 4 walk, 5 pines, 6 flowers) are not used at the end of sentences or sentence fragments as they would be used at the ends of lines, rather, it is their sequences that are preserved throughout the prose piece. Think about the word sequences as groupings instead of stanzas:

123456

615243

364125

532614

451326

246531

123456

In this one-paragraph prose poem, we can look at the text and see the proper sequences of the words. But note that there is the use of homonyms (wood/would; road/rode) and extra repetitions of words, as well as variations of some words: house/housing; walk/walked, flowers/flowering, etc. JCM]

 

5. JCM: The first one in the sequence is a fascinating found poem, “What Is Found There.” I think writing a found poem is a wonderful way to create, but is misunderstood by many poets.*

5. SBW: I like playing about with form , so “What Is Found There” (Title borrowed from Adrienne Rich) is an ekphrastic prose-poem cento. A cento, by definition, is a poem that is made of borrowed lines from other poets or other sources. It is a patchwork or collage poem, I decided to pull an odd assortment of books off my shelf and see if I could make something of various lines in these randomly selected books—an idea that I got from Barbara Henning. I think that finding a voice in the writing of a cento has to do with the author’s selection process, both in terms of the message conveyed and the manner of conveying it. Some cento poems are written in lines, but others, as in the case here, the cento is written as a prose poem. John Ashbury has a poem entitled “The Dong With The Luminous Nose” http://www.english.txstate.edu/cohen_p/poetry/Ashbery.html. Edward Lear also has a poem by that title, but it’s not a cento. Theresa Malphirus Welford edited a collection of collage poems entitled The Cento, published in 2011. This is a great little anthology of cento poetry.

[*Some poets express a fear of not finding their own voice in someone else’s words, while others worry about copywright. Clearly, you have shown your own voice. And the footnote references should allay any fears one might have about copyright, especially since new work is being created. JCM]

 

6. JCM: David and Bathsheba make excellent poetic subjects, if for no other reason, the steamy affair between them. I can here the song, “Hallelujah” play in my head (as sung by Rufus Wainwright) as I read your poem. You sent me an image of Jean-Léon Gérôme’s late 19th century painting, “Bathsheba,” which inspired your poem, as well as the music. But you mentioned something else triggered your poem “Bathsheba Bathing On The Roof” and that it started as a prose sonnet.

6 SBW: “Bathsheba Bathing On The Roof” started as a sonnet; I wrote it in 14 sentences. Later when I was working on my memoir, I thought about Bathsheba as one of the persona figures for the abecedarian book, and I rewrote the poem as lyric essay. Then I decided that I wanted double alphabetical names or characters if possible, so I chose Belle Boyd, who was a Confederate spy, instead of Bathsheba for the book. The story of David and Bathsheba is a fascinating one—and as I was writing, I listened to Leonard Cohen singing “Hallelujah.” I could listen to him sing me to sleep every night.

 

7. JCM: The linguistic gymnastics of the poetic prose piece, “Committee By Fiat?,” is intruiging, especially with politics and religion. How did this one evolve?

7. SBW: “Committee by Fiat” has a bit of a back story. It grew out of a contentious faculty meeting.” The quote by Richard Dawkins came from The God Delusion. Sometimes faculty members tend to think of themselves as “mini deities”–-and I enjoyed writing a slice of academe as jest. I keep a poet’s notebook of bits and pieces/fragments, so notes taken in a faculty meeting resulted in a poem. I am fascinated by poets’ notebooks. See Anna Kamienska’s “Industrious Amazement: A Notebook” http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/article/241270

Other favorite literary notebooks are A Poet’s Notebook by Edith Sitwell and It Depends: A Poet’s Notebook by Eugenio Montale.

 

8. JCM: Negative Capability is such an interesting name for your press and publication. Tell us more on how you chose this name and what your press and publication are looking for. And do they consider speculative poetry pieces, as well as collections?

8. SBW: Thank you for the opportunity of mentioning Negative Capability Press (negativecapabiltypress.org). Also, we’re on facebook—Negative Capability Press Facebook. The title of the journal came from a letter that John Keats wrote to his brothers George and Tom Keats in which he said: “at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” I tend to reach “irritably after fact and reason” so Keats’ statement spoke to me—and I chose it for the title of the journal. The journal was dormant for awhile, but we’re publishing a 33rd year anniversary issue that should be out in late August. We also publish seven or eight books a year. We’re proud of our books and have just published Lissa Kiernan’s Two Faint Lines in the Violet. We will soon be releasing a book by Maurine Alsop entitled Later, Knives & Trees, a book by Philip Kolin entitled Departures,  and a book by Barry Marks entitled Dividing By Zero. Other books in the works are by John Davis, Jennifer Grant, Bonnie Hoffman, Faith Kellerer, Betty Spence and a novel by Joe Berry. This year we have published books by Michael Bassett, John Brugaletta, Melissa Dickson, Rob Gray, Jim Murphy and Mary Murphy (no kin), Patricia Harkins-Pierre, Clela Reed, and Charles and Mary Rodning. And yes, we publish speculative poetry. As soon as our current Anthology is out, we’ll be starting another Negative Capability issue.

 

9. JCM: As president of the Alabama Writers’ Conclave, tell us more about it. Does it have a speculative writing component or anything else that will improve the craft of poetry?

9. SBW:The Alabama Writers Conclave met this July 2014 on the University of South Alabama campus in Fairhope, Alabama—a stone’s throw from Mobile Bay and the place where Kate Chopin’s novel, The Awakening, was filmed. The conference features two days of workshops, all of which focus on some aspect of craft in fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and drama. I believe that AWC is the 2nd oldest continuing writers group in American. We had over 100 participants in Fairhope this past July.

 

10. JCM: Tell us about your successful writing projects; entice our readers so that we’d want to rush out and purchase them. Where do we find them?

10. SBW: My latest published book is The Ecological Poetics of James Dickey, published in 2012. There’s a new review of this book in the James Dickey Newsletter on-line. http://www.jamesdickey.org/

Two articles about Flannery O’Connor and lupus have just been reprinted in Short Story Criticism, vol 195. I wear my heavy-duty prof boots on my left foot— good for slogging through sloughs of water and my pinkpurpleyellowgreen shiek-shoes for poetry.

Check out my work at Connotation Press — http://www.connotationpress.com/poetry/513-sue-brannan-walker-poetry.

See my chapbook from The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature: http://www.deadmule.com/poetry/sue-brannan-walker-how-stubborned-words-mule-how-they-balk-take-their-own-measure-a-chapbook-of-prose-poems/

See also my fun with math at: http://talkingwriting.com/sue-brannan-walker-math-poetry

Please check out our Book Competition ($2000.00 Award) at negativecapabilitypress.org. We will consider additional book manuscripts for publication.

 

11. JCM: Tell us about your new writing projects.

11. SBW:I hope to wrap up Sobriquets in September; like the sound of “Sobriquets in September.” I also want to go back and pick up a verse novel on the Yellow Fever epidemic in Mobile, Mississippi, New Orleans, etc. that occurred in 1878. When I started the project a few years back, I was trying to write a novel about a young quadroon purchased at a Quadroon Ball during the time when the plaçage system was part of New Orleans culture—the time when mariage de la main gauche was prevalent. I wrote about 150 pages as a novel and then decided to write the piece as a verse novel. I want to go back and finish this story in a different form.

I’m toying with the notion of doing some really hybrid work—something to do with “The Body: In Part.” It will incorporate parts of the body, such as the “scalp”–going back to Herodotus, a time when “Scythian soldiers scraped the scalp clean of flesh and softened it by rubbing it between their hands and using it as a napkin. The Scyth, proud of these scalps, would hang them from his bridle rein; the greater the number of such “napkins” that a man could show, the more highly he was esteemed. Some men made cloaks by sewing a number of scalps together. There’s an interesting ekphrastic representation of “scalping” in the film “Navajo Joe” staring Burt Reynolds. Cormac McCarthy also mentioned “scalping” in Blood Meridian. So, I shall go “head-to-toe”—and by-the-way, did you know that long second toes had been considered as indicators of criminals? Maybe I’ll proceed from bottom to top—and start making lists—write the body from bottom to top. I think lists are great for thinking about what projects might entail.

I also want to do some innovative things with Negative Capability Press and am open to ideas and suggestions.

Published by Associate Editor on . This item is listed in Issue 23 Poetry

Introduction to Issue 23 Poetry by John C. Mannone

John C. Mannone

John C. Mannone

Silver Blade is proud to present a slate of highly accomplished poets for this issue. We hope you savor every poem in this rich meal of words. Many of the poets here demonstrate what is meant by lifting prose into poetry, sometimes by filling our ears with a rich complex of sounds and rhythms. Virtually all of them take risks with conversational language, but turn the line with well-placed images, surreal elements, and daring structures and innovative styles (and I’m not talking about spreading words all over the page, though when done skillfully, can be very effective).

Our featured poet, Sue Brannon Walker, a former Alabama Poet Laureate (2003-2012), starts us with an edgy batch of work: “What is Found There,” a found poem (a cento) whose title is taken from the famous Adrienne Rich poem; “Bathsheba Bathing on the Roof,” an ekphrastic poem inspired by both music and a painting; “Committee by Fiat,” a poetic rant with linguistic delights; and an unusual prose sestina, “Nature like Mother is an Improper Name (Shillyshallying Sin).”

Marge Simon’s haunting piece, “Awaiting Another War in D Minor,” changes the direction of the thrust but sustains the energy from Dr. Walker’s poems. The deceptive simplicity of Mel Goldberg’s poem, “Weakling,” is also haunting, but in a very different sense. Adele Gardner’s “Everything and I,” might look like prose, but do not be deceived by this surreal piece. “Greek Fire” by Darrell Lindsey has many textures (perhaps even a spiritual one, at least for me it did). “All worlds meet at Happy Nails” by Emily K. Bright is playful, yet wrought with precision, light as a feather and heavy as lead. The series is concluded with Vanessa Kittle’s “The Nap Between the Worlds.” This is another deceptively innocent poem leaving me longing for more—the poem lives beyond the last line.

Published by Associate Editor on . This item is listed in Issue 23, Issue 23 Poetry, Poetry

What Is Found There by Sue B. Walker

narrated by Sue B. Walker

(A cento)

What Is Found There by Sue Walker

What Is Found There by Sue Walker Illustration by Sue Babcock

One night after the family had gone to bed under the girders of a causeway bridge to drown themselves in the stark eyes of the moon, and there in the desperation of hard economic times, the little girl said “Is that it then? Are we beside ourselves?” And you sit and think about the puzzle of time passing, of mortality, of human choice—like you want me to answer Jesus of Nazareth, Genghis Khan, and Eva Braun and say Motherhood integrates bio-procreational and social processes.

 

 

References:

William Carlos Williams, Selah Saterstrom, The Pink Institution, Jeffrey Goodman, “Under the Bridge,” Aileen Kilgore Henderson, “The Dreamers And The Realist,” William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury, Pat Conroy, The Pat Conroy Cookbook, Johnny Summerfield, Table Five, Kathleen M. Bolen, “Prehistoric Construction of  Mothering”

 

Sue B. Walker is the Stokes Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama and the Poet Laureate of Alabama from 2003-1012. She is the publisher of Negative Capability Press and the journal’s editor.