Weeding the sidebar

Folks, I try to make my poems readily accessible as possible. However, the "Index to my published poems" on the sidebar now contains over 100 links, with more to come. I have therefore decided that, with the exception of a few poems that have only recently become available online, I will shortly delete the 40-some links to poems in my 2011 collection Unglobed Fruit. This book, which contains 75 poems in all, is available for $11 at amazon.com as well as at lulu.com. Lulu also offers it as an e-book for $4.99.

Featured poet in KIN Poetry Journal

Walter Ancarrow, one of the editors at KIN, approached me last summer about being a featured poet. It was supposed to happen in November, but was postponed due to my husband's illness.

It has finally come together, beginning with an interview. Four poems are to be published this month; the first, Oxydoxes and paramorons, is up. It intersperses the lines of John Ashbery's "Paradoxes and oxymorons" with Ogden-Nash-style rhyming prose lines. The others - "A day in the life of....", "Once in a fit of abstraction", and "Whistle like a bird" -- will be added to the sidebar as well as to my author page at KIN.

KIN has published several other poems of mine as well since I last reported: Bootstrap of the genie, a variation on the Oulipian S+7 technique; Gallery opening, a sort of permutation poem; Les six: Concert program notes, a sestina; and Hucksterism 101, a rondel prime. I pretty much owe all this to Walter, who saw "Les six" on Eratosphere and invited me to submit it to KIN.

Oulipo, NaPo and me

In January, Janice Soderling posted a call for submissions on Eratosphere for Sein und Werden's forthcoming Oulipo issue. I sent three poems, and received an acceptance within hours.

The Oulipo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentiale) was formed in France in 1960, as reaction against the surrealists' emphasis on the aleatory and the subconscious. It aims to invent constraints for generating literature as an alternative to received forms. Perhaps the best known are the lipogram (leaving out one or more letters of the alphabet) and S&7 (originally replacing all nouns in a text with the seventh noun following it in the dictionary). Oulipo also "adopted" pre-existing constraints such as the sestina (and worked out the mathematics of the quenina, a generalized form which can be adapted to a variety of stanza-lengths).

Upon perusing an online French list of constraints and the 2005 edition of Mathews & Brotchie's Oulipo Compendium - the best resource on The Oulipo available in English - I discovered that, in addition to the Oulipoems I had written knowingly, I had unwittingly written many others. Some constraints I had taken from prompts I encountered here and there without knowing they were oulipian; others I had arrived at independently.

I then decided that Oulipo would be my focus during National Poetry Writing Month. This was the eighth year I did NaPo and it was by far the easiest; I had a list of things to try and a clear focus, and only found myself at a loss once or twice; it was even easy to make up what I had missed by being out of town for five days. It was an added encouragement that folks who were also doing NaPo on The Waters were at times inspired to try some of the constraints.

I will provide links to some of my Oulipian efforts in a future post.

Back again, I hope

I haven't been able to give much attention to poetry this past year. Starting last summer, my husband had a serious bout with cancer, and lost an eye as a result. We were blessed to have good support during this time, from family and friends and from the wonderful doctors and staff of Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. We hope we are out of the woods, at least for now (at our age one is never out of the woods completely).

Several new poems have been published in the meantime. I am now updating the sidebar. I was able to participate in National Poetry Writing Month in April – more about that later.

Recent publications: The Ghazal Page

The June 2013 issue contains three of my ghazals:
The Cosmos,
Out of context, and
To be light.

Altogether it's a great issue, with contributions that push the boundary of the ghazal in this way and that. I was particularly intrigued by Karla Linn Merrifield's fractal/ghazal hybrids. As always, Gene Doty adds his comments on each poem.

You can find more about The Ghazal page and my contributions to it in the post for May 30, 2010. It contains links to all of my ghazals previously published there. (Published later but never noted here in a post was Change. In that one, I maintained the monorhyme but rung changes on the radif.)

Recent publications: Disembodied Text, KIN, Danse Macabre

Disembodied Text is a fledgling themed zine which has recently changed from weekly to monthly. The editors see it as a sort of gallery space where literary, visual and auditory works around a given theme can interact. Issue 5, "Disembodied animals and abstraction," includes my poems "Leave thy low-vaulted past" and "Perspective".

KIN, aka Kin Poetry Journal, is a form-friendly zine with an adventurous spirit. Issue VIII includes my rubliw, Dispatch from the Kremlin. The form was invented by Richard Wilbur and named by Lewis Turco ("wilbur" backwards).

Danse Macabre is a quirky zine in more ways than one. Their new server apparently doesn't allow them to link to individual pages within an issue, so I can't post links to individual poems on the sidebar. Issue 68 contains three poems of mine on the theme of unwanted communications: "From the circular file," "From the spam folder," and "The unknown caller." If you're feeling tntrepid enough to seek them out, the above link should take you to the issue home page (Heimat / Cosmos). Clicking on "Poetry" at the pink menu to the left should produce a turquoise menu. Click on the 4th one down, "Tre entro tre". There's a cameo NNW of the picture on the right, at the top of a light-colored vertical bar. That's the scroll bar. If you drag the cameo thing about 3/4 of the way down the picture frame you'll come to my first poem.

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!

Review and reading of UNGLOBED FRUIT

The March issue of Friends Journal contains a review of Unglobed Fruit by Catherine Wald, the former poetry editor. Here is the conclusion:

I enjoyed this book as an adventurous foray into language and form that is heavier on wit than emotional impact. For this reason, I suspect the book will be of more interest to poets than the general public. I was also surprised that someone so keen on form chose to order her poems alphabetically rather than in terms of thematic or narrative thrust. However there's much to admire and amuse here— so help yourself!

I laughed at her comment on the alphabetical order. I daresay the book would have come out a year earlier if I hadn't been hung up on the arrangement. I read and reread Ordering the Storm, a collection of essays on how to put together a book of poetry; each and every contributor recommended crawling around on the floor, which at my age I'm physically unable to do. So in the end I decided that what was good enough for W H Auden was good enough for me.

Coincidentally, I've been asked to do a book signing and reading at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting library next Sunday, Feb 26. (1515 Cherry St., Philadelphia, 12:30-2 PM. Meeting for worship starts at 11:00.)

Poetry update

After a pause of several months I am in the process of updating the links on this site. The following poetry zines have closed or suspended publication since I listed them, though their web pages are still available (see "Poetry sites" sidebar):

Shit Creek Review published an "End of Days" issue in December 2011, which they indicate will be the last. It was a first-class formal-friendly zine from the land of Oz with a wonderfully un-stodgy spirit.
Pemmican is on "indefinite hiatus," meaning the 2011 issue is the last, at least for now.
Puffin Circus, which started out to be a monthly, seems to have run out of steam after its April 11 "baseball" issue.
Danse Macabre is moving, and will resume once it is installed in its new home. Submissions are suspended until then; the archive is currently unavailable.

As for me, I've been on hiatus too; I've done some revising, but have written virtually no poetry since last June.

I'll be back anon with a list of recently published poems.

Update on "Jens Bjørneboe in English"

The Wayback Machine is in the process of reconstruction, so the link posted awhile ago no longer works. Try this:
Jens Bjørneboe in English You may have to wait a bit for it to redirect.

The site is way out of date; many of the books listed are out of print. According to Amazon, those currently in print are Amputation, Powderhouse and The Silence. I'm not sure about Moment of Freedom, but the whole trilogy is still listed in the catalog of Norvik Press in England.

Jens Bjørneboe: Ballad of Hiroshima Town

Jens Bjørneboe
Ballad of Hiroshima Town (From The Bird-Lovers)
Translated by Esther Greenleaf Mürer


It was a lovely morning
In Hiroshima town,
One summer morn in nineteen five and forty.
And the sun, how bright it shone
From a sky without a cloud,
One summer morn in nineteen five and forty.

The little girls they played
‘Neath the trees and on the grass,
And everything they did just like the big ones.
They dressed their dollies up
And they washed their dollies’ dresses
And the women sliced the bread back in the kitchen.

And there were many children
Yet lying in their beds,
For this was still an early morning hour,
And the dew lay on the meadow
In the lovely slanting sunlight
And the crowns had barely opened on the flowers.

It was a lovely morning
In Hiroshima town,
One summer morn in nineteen five and forty.
And the sun, how bright it shone
From a sky without a cloud,
That summer morn in nineteen five and forty.

--
Jens Bjørneboe, Samlede Dikt, 1995 ed, p 150f (Fugleelskerne, 1966)
©1977, 1995 by Gyldendal Norsk Forlag. English translation ©1997 by Esther Greenleaf Mürer

Poetry archive: Shit Creek Review and Danse Macabre

Generally I avoid submitting to publications with "Review" in the title, expecting them to be stodgy, academic, and humorless. The Shit Creek Review, an Australian zine which is "biased towards formalism, but by no means dismissive of vers libre", is none of these things. I'm proud to have had my poem Kaleidoscope published there.

Danse Macabre, which styles itself "Nevada's first online literary magazine" and part of "the non-academic literary vanguard", has that elusive quality I look for first in a zine: quirkiness. (A rudimentary knowledge of French and German is a help in navigation.) Issue 34 includes my poems Film night and Medical students pay tribute to a cadaver donor. Scroll down to find them.

Call for submissions: Quaker Poetry Anthology

Nick McRae, a poet associated with Ohio State University, is calling for submissions for a book project to be called Gathered: The Anthology of Contemporary Quaker Poetry. There is as yet no deadline. For more information and guidelines, visit www.quakerpoetry.com.

Update on where to get my book

My poetry collection, Unglobed Fruit, is now available from two Quaker bookstores, Quakerbooks of Friends General Conference and the Pendle Hill bookstore, as well as Lulu (has downloadable version), amazon,and (for those who live in Europe) amazon.uk.