Miriam’s Well Announces Its First Book Publication–Migrant Moon by Barbara Robidoux

This spring, Miriam’s Well is very pleased to announce the publication of its first print book! We hope to do more such projects in the future.

And here is some selected text–haiku and haibun:

moonwashed
a dry river bed
remembers water

MIGRATION

Three bottle nose dolphins circle the harbor off Nantucket Island. It is a cold December day and they should be out to sea on winter migration south. No one knows why they have come into the harbor. An old woman stands alone on the shore. she watches and listens.

“they have come for me”
she tells
no one.

For ordering information, click here.

Teacher Movies: To Sir With Love

The first poetry class I ever taught at SFCC was about seventeen years ago. They were sprawled on the floor outside the classroom–maybe during a break or small group work.
“You look like hoodlums,” I said.
One student stood up, spread his arms wide, and burst into a rendition of Lulu’s “To Sir With Love.”
As a child, I loved that movie. But I didn’t think I was going to be the Sidney Poitier character–I just wanted to look and sing like Lulu. My fate–to be a short white ordinary looking version of “Sir.” That is, to be a classroom teacher.
Both my parents were teachers. But I think teacher movies influenced my self image as much, or more. Didn’t I want to change hoodlums into students who’d excel? (Insert details here. Charismatic/anti-authoritarian, outcast teacher. Excel at chess, poetry, math, behavior, etc.)
Summer is starting and I’m not in the classroom. So its on to the celluloid one for me. I’ll be posting next, I think, about Mr. P. in the fourth season of “The Wire.” And I’d love to blog anything YOU want to write on the topic.
Tell me what your favorite teacher movies are!

I Took A Big Scissors And Cut Up Willa Cather’s SONG OF THE LARK

I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time. SONG OF THE LARK is one of my favorite novels. Cather’s prose has haunted me since I was in high school. I kept feeling–there is a poem buried in here.
Bought myself a second hand paperback.Started cutting out sections and pasting them into my journal. Breaking those sections into poems.
My rules: subtract but don’t add; keep text in same order.

Here are the first three poems–there are nine in total.

***

Song of the Lark

#1

Seen from a balloon
Moonstone looked like a Noah’s Ark town
Set out in the sand
Lightly shaded by tamarisks
And cottonwoods. The frail
Brightly painted desert town
Was shaded
By the light-reflecting
Wind-loving trees whose roots
Are always seeking water
Whose leaves
Are always talking about it
Making the sound of rain.

The roots
Break into wells
And thieve the water.

#2

She took up one of the white conch shells
that bordered the walk
and held it to his ear.
“You hear something in there?
You hear the sea; and yet
the sea is very far from here.
You have judgment, but if you are fooled
it is the sea itself.”

The sound startled.
it was like something
calling one.

#3

There was a picture
her picture
nobody cared for it
it waited for her.

That was a picture indeed
“The Song of the Lark”
flat country, early
morning light
wet fields, the look
in the girl’s heavy face.

They were all hers.

The picture was “right”
a word that covered
the almost boundless satisfaction
she felt
when she looked at the picture.

Whatever was there
was all hers.

5 Haiku and a Tanka by Basia Miller

Basia Miller

sand in my slippers
in the folds of your letters
it lies three years’ deep

summer dust
footprints lead to rill
and disappear

ear cocked for bird-song
refrigerator drone
is all I hear

Sprint girl
crosses spring campus
invisible green

flat tarred roof
rain drops fall to kitchen
through hidden chutes

neglected ivy
all her leaves facing the light
back-opening gown–
humbled by hospital rules
patient looks good to others

Tres Chicas Announces the Publication of Elizabeth’s Jacobson’s New Book!

The Rejection Form Letter by Susan Nalder

The Rejection Form Letter

Dear poetry editor (insert name)
Thank you for your letter of (insert date)

After careful consideration
I regret to inform you
I am unable to accept
your recent rejection

This year I got
an unusually large number
of rejections-
letters and postcards,
even email

It is the proverbial
embarrassment of ditches

Despite your excellent reputation
Your years of experience
reading and rejecting the lyrical
I find your rejection
does not meet
my needs at this time

Go ahead, do print
my recent submission
in spite of it all

I look forward
to reading myself

Best of luck
in rejecting
future submissions

-by Susan Nalder

Haiku Rejection by Meg Tuite

Why no haiku?
Most poetry magazines
Won’t accept haiku

Does it leave the editor
Too much empty space to fill?

Jose Angel Araguz on Haiku and Tanka Master Shiki

We’ve been working on haiku and tanka in the poetry class, and thinking about the four masters of the forms–Basho, Buson, Issa, and Shiki. So it was with great interest that I discovered this piece on Shiki from Albuqurque based blogger Jose Angel Araguz.

***

* Masaoka Shiki & life sketches
by Jose Angel Araguz

along this darkling
country road
comes the lonely voice
of a coachman
every so often urging his
horse on
****
The above lyric poem is by Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902), one of the innovators of the modern tanka form *.  Tanka is a Japanese poetic form that differs from haiku in that there is room for the poet.  Haiku traditionally is an image, a moment, a flicker that triggers realization.  With tanka, the poet can present an image as well as turn it a bit.  Tanka means little song, so you could say the poet in a tanka is allowed to sing.
What moves me about the poem above is how it evokes a sense of loneliness and perseverance.  I mean, there are nights where all I have in me to keep me going is the need to keep going.  I read these lines and am taken not only to that country road but to all the roads I’ve been on in the dark.
Shiki had friends who were painters who introduced to him the idea of shasei, which means a sketch from life.  Shiki took this idea and applied it to his tanka, producing ‘life sketches’ whose images embodied the poet’s inner life.
Here’s another, written while bedridden:
no visitors have come
and spring, it’s passing:
on the surface of the pond
these yellow yamabuki petals
fallen, gathered together
- You almost get the sense of a person watching each petal fall as he waits for visitors.
***
Since learning of Shiki I have myself tried my hand at life sketches.  I find the form pushing me to really see the world around me and what it means.  The idea has furthered my conversation with words and led me to a poetry more my own.  When I sit down to write each day, I delight in taking in details, turning them over, letting them sit together.
Here is a small poem I wrote the day before reading about Shiki.  I came back to these lines the day after and marveled at how in spirit they were with Shiki’s aims and ideals.
wanting nothing
but to start over
a friend points out
the clouds
over the mountains
(J, 021312)
****
Happy sketching!
J
 
* I learned about Shiki and his life sketches from an article by Barry George entitled “Shiki the Tanka Poet” in the February 2012 Writer’s Chronicle.  The poems reproduced are, I believe, a Barry George translation.

Two Bird Poems by Theresa Ferraro

The Bosque In Winter

I watch silent
as birds mark time
gobbling grain and spearing fish.

Side by side Shovelers, Pintails, and Buffleheads
go about the business of their day;
flapping wings, tipping tails,
gulping pond scum,
enough to grow fat in winter.

I learn to identify life coming and going.
The shape of a tail, the color of an eye,
tell me who you are.
Slivers of sunlight
green and purple
flash like charms upon still water.

In fading light
a frenzy of wings
black and white
swarm the pink and purple sky,

snowgeese and cranes
so bountiful
on ponds at twilight
I can leap secure
upon the backs of birds.

Your Garden

It is that time of day
when hummingbirds feed frantic
sucking nectar irresistible from red flowers
in a landscape that begs for rain.

I watch acrobatic flights capture sunlight,
flash rufus and shimmer ruby on miniature crafts
so perfect in design.

What would it be like to move like that?
My movement so slow plodding
cannot compare
to the thumping and pumping of a hummingbird heart.

Hovering and swooping
from penstemon to gilia,
beebalm to butterflyweed.

I watch until the chill of night
slows the beating of tiny hearts cold,
seducing little birds to nestle still
in cups of lichen and spider silk,
until the warmth of dawn
stirs their wings once more.

***
Theresa Ferraro has been studying creative writing at SFCC in Terry Wilson’s class.

Wendover Landing by Christy Hengst and Miriam Sagan

Our show opens at 516 Gallery in Albuquerque the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. Here is a preview of the flocks of birds created by Christy, along with her artist’s statement.

***

I came back from Wendover with a strong mood of salt and rust.  In my mind’s eye I see the wide expanse of the salt flats, and the iron residue of military industrial endeavors.  These materials found their way onto the birds;  the pigment is iron oxide, the thin sheen is melted soda.
There is something elemental and yet highly melancholic about some places, like Wendover, that also goes beyond specific details and finds an echo in the soul.
 
Working with Miriam’s poetry, what began to emerge for me most strongly were the lines:
‘it was as if it had happened to me’
and
‘It was as if it was my fault’.
Two sides of the same human coin.

Christy Hengst