Telling Stories

Billy Collins is one of the first poets I lighted on while foraging to find poetry that spoke to me.

In my search to improve my writing, I sought read writers whose writing allowed me to hear their messages. The idea of constantly appealing to others for decoding is not appealing to me. I prefer to read through the lines, sift through my knowledge base, and query the verses.

Trolling the poetry shelves at my local Barnes & Noble, the first thing that caught my eye, of course, were the titles. First one gem than another. Finally, I was mugged by The Art of Drowning ©1995, by Billy Collins. The title caught hold of my imagination, and I immediately had to know what that title meant.

After reading a few of the poems, I made the happy discovery that it was easy for me to be swept up in his lines-become-the-breeze of relating. And so I figured out that not all poets write to befuddle and confound me into giving up. That was about ten years ago. And I’ve enjoyed reading and hearing his poetry ever since.

Below you can listen to Billy Collins reading The Litany, one of my newer favorites, from The Trouble with Poetry ©2005

While reading through Ballistics ©2008, I found this jammed between the pages.

Inspirational Writers

Billy Collins makes me
want to write;
Lucille Clifton makes me
retire my poet’s pen and paper.
Sometimes
they swap inspirations.

© 2008 Shari Lynne Smothers

Billy Collins’ poems make me work in good ways, to understand his meaning. He tells me about beautiful things and simple treasures in the small moments. And he can make me laugh out loud, like in The Lanyard. His writing draws me in until I’m almost looking through his eyes, and I can see the world with new eyes, and new appreciation.

Below are just a few of his poems I’ve enjoyed, that I was able to find online.

• The Art of Drowning from The Art of Drowning ©1995
• Directions, from The Art of Drowning
• Forgetfulness, from Questions About Angels ©1991
• The Lanyard, from The Trouble with Poetry ©2005

Many of the poems in Collins’ collections are unrhymed, free verse, and are subtly rhythmic. Collins writes accessible poetry. He paints lovely, intricate latticework, detailed and strong enough for readers to cross over to that place where understanding is there for the sharing. Here’s one from The Apple That Astonished Paris.

Etymology

They call Basque an orphan language.
Linguists do not know
what other languages gave it birth.

From the high window of the orphanage
it watches English walking alone to the cemetery
to visit the graves of its parents,
Latin and Anglo-Saxon

Some poetry readers and writers may not appreciate this quality, preferring instead to draw blood from us and themselves. I am of a different ilk. I try not to share my poems that no one else will get except for me and my best friends. I think when a writer publishes, the goal is to impart something comprehensible and meaningful for her and for we readers to share. Billy Collins accomplishes this very well for me. So, I thought I’d say so.

One of Collins’ books, Sailing Alone Around the Room ©2001, is a nice selection of poems from older collections, The Apple That Astonished Paris (1988), Questions About Angels (1991), The Art of Drowning (1995), and Picnic, Lightning (1998).

As National Poetry Month 2010 comes to a close, I think of this important voice that has gone from this life. Selfishly, indeed, I will miss her. I was originally going to post this in early February. Time got away from me and then poet, Lucille Clifton, passed away. That threw me for a bit. Now, as I’m getting back on track, I think it works to post this now.

For Lucille Clifton

birth: June 27, 1936   death: February 13, 2010

The poetry of Lucille Clifton influenced me greatly. Her wit and rhetoric, and rhythm in delivery are such that they keep me reading and returning to her work. This National Poetry Month, I think on her more often since there are no new words to come, since she is newly gone from us—from me.

Lucille Clifton embraced her gift for poetry, and fortunately we have it to relish, enjoy and learn from. Her poems are prayers, celebrations, indictments, remembrances, and observations. So much more and so moving. Her work embodies the life and times of an entire culture through the eyes of one who was born to see. And I am better for having read her accounts. As, her talent inspires me to strive to improve my skill for poetry.

I want to share with you one of my many favorites of her poems, from her award winning collection Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000, © 2000. It has no capitalization, which is how Ms. Clifton writes them.

study the masters

by Lucille Clifton

like my aunt timmie.
it was her iron,
or one like hers,
that smoothed the sheets
the master poet slept on.
home or hotel, what matters is
he lay himself down on her handiwork
and dreamed. she dreamed too, words:
some cherokee, some masai and some
huge and particular as hope.
if you had heard her
chanting as she ironed
you would understand form and line
and discipline and order and
america.

I first came across Blessing the Boats, thanks to my friend Kirk Byron Jones. I was so amazed by her writing and the way she was speaking to and teaching me, directly. I often write back to what I read—I believe that’s what margins are for. I am not a critic so much as I just like what I like. And when it moves me I’ll put it in the margin. In the margin of the above poem I wrote, WOW. That was all I dared write. Later, in the back of her book, I wrote:

After reading Lucille Clifton

I am awed and inspired
but first daunted. Before
inspiration to pick up my pen
takes over me,
the dauntingly simple profundity
overwhelms me.
And I am knocked speechless
from mouth and pen
to utter any word.

© 2003 Shari Lynne Smothers

Some years earlier, Bonnie Fastring gave me Clifton’s book Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980, © 1987, which I returned to with renewed interest. Since then I have read and loved several of her other collections too. Hers are verses I revisit in good and bad times, to be enthralled, consoled and inspired by her messages, and by her talent for weaving the words.

If you’ve never come across Lucille Clifton’s writing, I definitely recommend you get to know her poetry. If you like the poem above, do read more, and listen to her readings. Visit the links below to find out a bit more about the writer and her works. And always a good trip, visit your local library if you want to read more before buying a collection. Enjoy. And come tell me about it, if you get a chance.

Addendum: You can hear more from Lucille Clifton on YouTube. Here’s another I really like, “won’t you celebrate with me” from The Book of Light, © 1993.

• Article: Interview of Lucille Clifton in 1999 at Poets & Writers
• Brief bio at Poets.org
• Lucille Clifton from Neil Reid at Bearly Audible

UPDATE: 3.17.2010 I’ve added a couple of links, to the guidelines at Poetic Asides and the link to receive a poem a day in your email from Poets.org. 3.30.2010 I’ve added the link to the RWP pledge post, also in the sidebar.

April is National Poetry Month. I’m on time this year—for me anyway. So get ready to read about great online poetry sites to experience. Today, I want to share with you the ways I have found to write in community.

A bit about National Poetry Month:

Inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, National Poetry Month is now held every April, when publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools and poets around the country band together to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture. Thousands of businesses and non-profit organizations participate through readings, festivals, book displays, workshops, and other events.

From Poets.org

There’s also a more detailed Q&A about the project and you can read about how far-reaching it. The main goal is to bring poetry in all its glory and beneficence, to the front of people’s minds in the month of April, and hopefully beyond. There are lots of ways you can find groups to write and read with. Read the rest of this entry »

I was all set to tell you about my new adventure when something happened! While surfing and tweeting, I came across some great tweets from someone I just started following, @inkyelbows. And I found a new adventure.

What I was going to tell you before my distraction was that I’m going to try NaNoWriMo again this year. Last year I signed up and didn’t get much further than that. Last year, I signed up on November 1, and fell apart shortly thereafter.

This year I gave myself a little more warning, little more time for self-talk, tools and ideas. Time to play around with the endeavor and sort of slide into next month like it was any other November.

Read the rest of this entry »

I sit at my computer and work;
laboring looks like meditation.
I’m just sitting
staring at the screen.
Searching blank space for the thought
the word, the letter that would
speak to each successive one
indicating the keystrokes to make
like a player piano.

I follow the lead to reveal
the message I know is there,
hidden just for me to find.

My alternative execution
is pen and paper
for calling on Inspiration
to whisper in the text
I’ll soon let spill out of me.

The tactile sensation of
my hand scraping a pen across paper
unearths the verses
that will expose parts of me
I may have wanted to hide.

Thank God for editing time
because once my hands get going
no telling what they’ll put out.
As if a poem makes a thing
less poignant, less painful
and easier to share.

A poem will display me naked
and prostrate before my audience;
and I give it space to have its say.

Before I share anything though
sanity and left brain rush in
and cover me properly
in innuendo using shape, simile and metaphor.

Shari Lynne Smothers ©2009

White House Poetry Jam 2009

Many are tweeting the news. My mom was talking about it today. And I’m very much looking forward to seeing/hearing James Earl Jones tonight, along with Joshua Bennett, Eric Lewis, Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio, Mayda Del Valle and Esperanza Spalding and the rest of the great personalities scheduled to participate. If you want to see it online, visit The White House Live Stream to watch online.

It’s on tonight at 7:45 Eastern Time, Tuesday, May 12, 2009. I’ll be back tonight with my reflection on this great evening. I do wish I was there!

It was a Refreshing Event

It’s always a pleasure to hear James Earl Jones and tonight was no different. He read Shakespeare and did not dissapoint. The Jazz musicians skills were discernible even through my unclear audio.

While I love poetry, I’m not into all the styles. The style Joshua and Jamaica performed is difficult for me to follow. It’s quite exciting. I don’t know that I have the stuff to deliver that style even if I wrote like that.

Learning new artists is quite the adventure. These poets took me out of my comfort zone, for sure. My tastes generally run along the lines of Maya Angelou, written and performed, Billy Collins and Audre Lorde. It was a refreshing change from the more serious political atmosphere. I for one am really glad they did it and shared it online.

I do wonder what others thought. Please share your thoughts if you have something constructive to say.

This poem is my reaction to all the fun I had eeking out a poem a day for the last ten days of April, National Poetry Month 2009.

I said I would put up
one poem daily for ten days
through the end of April.

I’m relieved I made that happen.

Now for my next trick
I think I’ll put up—
content to be determined.

Thanks for stopping by
and I hope you’ll come again.
for more poems for sure,

plus other random things.

©2009 by Shari Lynne Smothers

Reading poems
makes me want to
write my own.
Writing them
makes me want to
read from more poets.

It’s a self-sustaining
cycle that could easily
consume me.
I know this because
I’ve let it loose in me
from time to time.

Beautiful timeless verses
of Audre Lorde in
A Litany for Survival;
The insightful, hopeful
message from Alice Walker imparted by
The Same as Gold.

They, the poets and their verses,
inspire in me this intense
longing to share
in their artists’ collective
with my own verses like Broke.
Still, I hesitate.

Through years of exploring poets
contemporary and long dead
I’ve vacillated between
wanting to participate
and keeping hid the way I can fall far short.

Hiding
wins often
until my verses shout to me
demanding to be shared,
and here is one place I let them out.

These words that demand the chance
to have an audience
don’t ask for or require
safety. So I make the effort
to meet their bravery
and stand by them and listen
to what any might want to say
mostly because I have no choice.

©2009 by Shari Lynne Smothers