Recent publication(s): Chain ghazal: Chickens

I've been in a dry place and haven't been writing much poetry lately. I hang out now and then at the Sunset Beach section of The Waters – where, besides participating in NaPoWriMo, one may write 7 poems in 7 days at any time in the company of a small but nurturing group of people who cheer each other on. In January I tried a 7/7 and lasted three days. One of the three poems was an attempt at a hybrid ghazal/pantoum, though it came out more like a blues. The first draft had 3-line stanzas; the later version has four, with the third unrhymed to give it the feel of a ghazal's first two shers.

Gene Doty published it in the March issue of The Ghazal Page, and notified me a few days later that Carol Rumens, who writes a weekly column in The Guardian, had asked to use it as her "poem of the week." It appeared there on March 18; when last I looked there were over 200 comments, including many imitations and parodies. On March 20 it was posted on 3quarksdaily, which I'd never heard of, but my son says Azra Raza is his friend's wife's friend's cousin, so obviously it was a put-up job.

I'm feeling somewhat overwhelmed by all this. I had intended to give NaPoWriMo a miss this year, but now I am energized and will be participating – for which I am immensely grateful to Gene and Carol.

My Poetry Archive: Cartographie Curieux, The Centrifugal Eye

Cartographie Curieux is a new zine with an unusual slant: The editors are "interested in the curious geographies that everyone must navigate as they travel through life. We are obsessed with finding ourselves and we are looking for some good maps to get us there" poetry, fiction, visual media, etc. The zine, which is in blog form, officially launched on May 25, and my poem Trail to the Treasure of Al the Awful was the first and so far the only post. Do go to the submissions page and scroll down to where it says "Some maps we’d love to publish". Perhaps you'll be inspired to submit. I'm very curious to see what other cartographies will appear on this site.

The Spring/Summer issue of The Centrifugal Eye is themed "J Is for Jabberwocky: A Glossarium of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Allegory, Myth & Legend in Poetic Form." Two of my poems, World-Saving Poem and Return of the Zed-A, are in the Science Fiction section.

My poetry archive: Lyre Lyre and Infinity's Kitchen

Lyre Lyre is a fairly new ezine of surreal bent; they made me the portfolio poet for issue three, with four poems: "Old Sugar-Spike is dead," "This just in from the footfarm," "Shards of bottled ivory" (a homophonic translation based on Arthur Rimbaud's "Le bateau ivre"), and "The five bats of unhappiness."

Infinity's Kitchen has separate online and print magazines. Issue 5 of the former included my shaped poem Spooked. The print version is so far out I was surprised they'd accepted my work when I saw the company I was in. My very-tame-by-comparison contribution was an antonymic translation. The idea, which I got from a book on Oulipo, is to replace most of the words in an existing poem by their opposites, or the words don't have opposites, something in that direction. Here is the poem; I'll leave you to identify the source:

The Penultimate Going

Straightening, straightening out the narrowing plane
The warbler listens to the warble-ee;
Ideas coalesce, the periphery can drop,
Rank stringency is bound below the sun,
The wine-bright ebb is bound, and nowhere is
The free-for-all of guilt resuscitated;
The worst have no acquittal, while the best
Are void of apathetic listlessness.

There's no proof any concealment is afoot;
No proof the Penultimate Going is afoot;
The Penultimate Going! Softly these deeds are in
When a wee archetype in Corpus Coeli
Oils your hearing; outside rocks of the ocean
A haze without lamb's mind or the foot of a mouse,
Closed eyes crammed and merciful as the moon,
Is resting its fast shins, while irrelevant to it
Unwinds the light of cheerful fish of the sea.
The first time daylight rises, you're unaware
That a single second of warm insomnia
Was pleased to sweet dreams by a static coffin,
And what smooth bird, its moment gone square long since,
Prances away from Golgotha to be killed?

RIP: John Mella, with thanks

John Mella, founding editor of Light Quarterly, died on April 16 at age 70.

As of 2006 Light, a print magazine, was the main if not only venue for light verse in the US. The following poem, which appeared in the Autumn 2006 issue, was my first to be accepted by a literary magazine:

Orientation Speech

A compass
is an object about which it is not worth making a rumpus.
This wretched hunk of magnetite
can't even tell me which is my left hand and which is my right.
The location of north and south is a mystery which I have not the least interest in plumbing;
what I want to know is whether I'm going or coming.
Be so kind as to spare us
your lecture on the virtues of knowing the whereabouts of Polaris.
The wind bloweth where it listeth,
or so the Bible insisteth;
and what direction it bloweth from engageth me as little as how to tell splakes from wrasses.
Just give me a gadget that will point to where I put my glasses.

The poets on Eratosphere, a site which specializes in formal poetry, have got up a thread where members are invited to post their own poems which appeared in Light. It's quite a collection; take a look.

My poetry archive: Winamop

The latest issue of Winamop is out. This is a quirky little British zine that "was conceived on a whim, is run on a shoestring, ignored by the many, loved by the few and has continued unabashed since 2003." Just the place to send light verse - and the editor took three of mine, plus a collaborative poem written by eight of my relatives in 1947. Great to find waiting for me first thing on April Fool's day.

National Poetry Writing Month 2012

April is National Poetry Writing Month, when we are challenged to write a poem every day for 30 days. I have decided to try it again, as I have every year since 2007.

I will be posting my daily efforts on the forum at Poets.org. The section "The Writing Life" has a folder "NaPoWriMo 2012"; my thread is "Esther's Exercises."

The Poets.org forums have had increased difficulty with spammers and hackers, and have toughened their access rules as a result. To view the NaPo threads (or any of the poetry workshop threads) you must join the forum with a recognizable first and last name, and wait to be approved.

Of course, if you join and would like to participate in NaPoWriMo yourself, you can create your own thread!

Publications update

Here's a brief rundown of poems I've posted since the last update in May:

The Fib Review (edited by Mary-Jane Grandinetti, who is also editor of Shot Glass Journal) is a zine devoted not to minor mendacities but to the fib, a form based on the Fibonacci sequence. I had 3 poems in issue #10: "The mailman cometh", "Gift of gab", and "Make your cooking colorful". (I can't the links to work; see "Index to published poems" at right.)

Curio Poetry is a fairly new zine, specializing in "poetry that explores the world at a micro-level: tiny spaces, instants, individual objects, scraps of dreams and memories, et cetera." Issue #3 contains 3 of mine: Summer libation; The sinister spoon; Floaters.

The December issue of Danse Macabre had my cranky holiday poem, "'Tis the season" - I'll post the link on the sidebar when the archive is available again. Two other poems, Literalness is the Devil's weapon; Visitation, were posted on the auxiliary site, Danse Macabre du Jour.

On New Verse News, see my double dactyl Laissez-faire (June 12, 2011) and Sonnenizio on a line by Edward Thomas (March 5, 2012).

The latter is the first poem I've written since last June; time to get in gear for National Poetry Writing Month in April!