Many poets write about the body. Or the mind. Or their mothers. But today’s poem by Robin Ekiss (from her wonderful book The Mansion of Happiness) combines the three elements in a simple and powerful way. Read the poem and then we’ll talk.

The Question of My Mother

BY ROBIN EKISS

Dr. Seuss versus Shakespeare – it’s on!

I was lucky enough to be introduced to Simon and Garfunkel by my father at an early age, and you cannot find songwriters much better than Paul Simon.  One of my earliest favorite Paul Simon lyrics is for the song “The Boxer.” I have taken the liberty of relining the lyrics below:

I am just a poor boy, though my story’s seldom told.

I have squandered my resistance

 for a pocket full of mumbles such are promises.

All lies and jest, still a man hears what he wants

 to hear and disregards the rest.

When I left my home and my family, I was

no more than a boy in the company

 of strangers, in the quiet of the railway

 station running scared, laying low, seeking

out the poorer quarters where the ragged

 people go, looking for the places

only they would know

Asking only workman’s wages, I go looking

for a job, but I get no offers-just a come-on

from the whores on Seventh Avenue. I do declare,

 there were times when I was so lonesome,

I took some comfort there.

Now I’m laying out my winter clothes

and wishing I was gone – going home

where the New York City winters aren’t

bleeding me, bleeding me – going home

In the clearing stands a boxer, and a fighter

by his trade, and he carries the reminders

of every blow that laid him down or cut him

‘til he cried out in his anger and his shame

 “I am leaving, I am leaving”

but the fighter still remains.

This is definitely a poem, if for nothing else but the brilliant line “a pocket full of mumbles such are promises.” Though some may say that the story of the downtrodden boy who moves to the big city is overdone, the metaphor of the boxer makes it more than that, and the rhythmic participial phrases in the second verse (all those wonderful –ing words), the subtle alliteration (“workman’s wages”, “winter clothes and wishing”), and the different depictions of longing in each stanza (especially the fourth) also make it a lovely piece of writing that stands on its own without the harmonies and the haunting li la li chorus.

If You Want to Write:

Try taking some of your favorite song lyrics and relining them as poems – to see if you find poetic elements in them when they are stripped of their music. Or use a favorite line of song lyric as a title or a first line for a new poem.

I had productive, insightful workshops with James Richardson and Laure-Anne Bosselaar and spent time talking poetry and life with my mentor, friend and amazing poet Douglas Goetsch. Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Dunn gave a reading from his work Sunday night, celebrating a new limited edition chapbook of his poems and a retrospective museum display about his career and revision process in the hotel’s branch of the local Noyes Gallery and Museum. And, as one of the highlights of my weekend, I had my butt properly whupped at several games of ping pong by Mr. Dunn and Doug Goetsch on Friday night in the game room. (I will have to practice for next year…)

As usual, Peter’s prompts and the electrifying atmosphere gave me several new and exciting drafts. I also learned a new and extremely effective discussion technique that I can’t wait to try out on my seventh graders. The Getaway never fails to amaze.

If you want to get a hand on Peter’s prompts without the traveling, his new book of prompts and poems inspired by them is called Challenges for the Delusional. Get your hands on it if you love delicious, complicated prompts that can be used over and over again. I cannot wait to go back.

One never forgets a first crush: shy smiles and shaky knees and a desperate yearning to be noticed. My first poetry crush would have to be Robert Frost. Now, judging from the photo above, you wouldn’t think that old Frost would have what it takes to make a girl weak in the knees. However, his naturally cadenced rhymes and visions of the natural world gave him a special place in my young poet’s heart.

Yes, I probably first read “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” or “The Road Not Taken,” but my favorite Frost poem is “Acquainted With The Night.”

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain — and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
A luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night. 

There are many reasons that it is my favorite. One is its form. Although it is a sonnet, it doesn’t announce itself as such due to Frost’s decision to break each stanza at three lines instead of four. It was the first sonnet I encountered other than Shakespeare, and the use of natural language within this formal structure was a revelation at the time.

It is also one of the first poems I read that gave me an understanding of tone – I think it is one of the loneliest poems I have ever read, especially the interrupted cry that is not for the speaker. I could picture that solitary figure stopping to turn at a sound that just might be a tender voice calling out in that dark night.

When I started writing again in my twenties, I initially turned to form, and Frost was there as a mentor.  I am happy to say that I have been acquainted with his work.

If You Want to Write:

Write a traditional sonnet whose stanzas are broken in a non-traditional way. Or write a “modern” sonnet that does not rhyme but follows the other directives of the form. Or experiment with tone – create a scene for your reader that evokes melancholy or terror or peace.

I used to love to watch Inspector Gadget with my son – his bumbling antics and his amazing go-go-gadget arms.  Even if he always needed help, he got the job done. This weekend will be my fifth year at Peter Murphy’s Winter Poetry and Prose Getaway in New Jersey, and with the help of Peter Murphy and all the other wonderful participants, I will get the job done and come home with at least three new poems that are bound to be good.

Not only will I have all weekend with Peter’s prompts, but I will get to see amazing East Coast poets and friends like Rachel Bunting and Doug Goetsch and spend the whole weekend with writers – writing – and eating – and having an all-around fabulous time. Oh, and not to mention the reading by Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Dunn. And the release of the first anthology of Peter’s prompts called Challenges for the Delusional, which features one of my previously published Getaway poems. And did I mention friends? And poems? I am ridiculously excited. Can you tell?

(Note to Chicago snow: I don’t mind if you finally arrive on Thursday. I get it. It’s January. But please do not affect my flight to the Getaway on Friday. Thank you for your cooperation.)

These first two weeks of the new year, I have been reading posts by several other writers who are summing up the old year and looking forward to the new in terms of how they handled their writing goals, especially in terms of submissions. Kathleen Kirk first alerted me to writers setting the goal of receiving 100 rejections in a year. The idea, I assume, is that in order to receive 100 rejections, you’d have to send out a minimum of 100 submissions.

Although I don’t like to put too much pressure on myself to publish (as writing is the goal), I do try to keep my work out there. So I decided to do a little searching myself to see how I had been doing with submissions/rejections/acceptances.

Currently out awaiting response: 17 journal submissions; one chapbook contest

Journal submissions in 2011: 57.  Acceptances? 14. Still under consideration: 13. Rejections. 30. (That’s a 24% acceptance rate. Not too shabby, I think, considering that writing and submitting is not my primary job.)

Full-Length Manuscript: Submitted to two contests in 2011. No luck there. Will continue to work toward this goal.

As I looked over my records, I tend to send out batches of submissions when I have “down times” – school vacations, summer, long weekends or when my husband is away. If I could get out 57 in this way, I should be able to get MORE out if I am consistent.

So, how can I do this? I have started a new charting system so that I can move groups of poems that are rejected (I tend to think a lot about which poems are going out together) straight into another column to be resubmitted. This way, when I record a rejection, I am more likely to go to my list of possible journals and submit again instead of waiting.

For 2012?

I plan to send out the completed full-length manuscript to at least two places in January/February, and I am working on a second manuscript, applying for summer residencies, and trying to read and attend as many poetry events as my schedule allows.

And I catch the words wherever I can. Some I even get to keep.

Visiting castles and cathedrals always invokes in me a sense of awe and wonder. The stonework. The carving. The stained glass. The sheer enormity and solidity of something centuries old and still standing, strong and undeterred by time or weather.

On a day trip to Norwich for an afternoon football match between Norwich and Fulham, we had a couple of hours to visit the castle and the cathedral before kickoff. The new header above is a detail from some intricate stained glass work at the cathedral. Here are a few other photos for you to enjoy – maybe you will find something to inspire a poem or two.

In high school, a nun named Sister Angele required each student in her junior honors English class to memorize a poem she had selected for us. My selection was e e cummings’s poem “i am a little church”. At first, I grumbled about the strange language – how was I supposed to memorize something that barely sounded like it made sense? But the more time I spent with the poem, the more enamored I became with his style. I eagerly looked for more poems by cummings, and I discovered treasures: poems whose syntax I needed to unlock but whose content moved me once I did.

It is hard for me to choose a favorite cummings poem, but I will, one that I enjoyed in high school and have since taught to middle school students for many years. And, now that I am older, it holds different layers of meaning for me.

old age sticks
up Keep
Off
signs)&
youth yanks them
down(old
age
cries No
Tres)&(pas)
youth laughs
(sing
old age
scolds Forbid
den Stop
Must
n’t Don’t
&)youth goes
right on
gr
owing old

The poem addresses an issue that could seem clichéd: the generation gap, or the inability of a younger generation to accept the advice or platitudes of elders. But the last line takes the poem beyond cliché. It reminds us that all of life is a cycle, that perhaps we shouldn’t worry about whether our advice is heeded or not. One generation will quickly replace another, no matter how many stops or don’ts we hand down.

In terms of structure, the use of the parentheses is unique. In some places, the parentheses seem to be adornments, but in the syllabication of the word trespassing, the punctuation is used both as visual trick and to add layers of meaning. The last syllable sing, isolated after the word laughs, resonates differently as something else that the young do in contrast with the old.

If you haven’t read much cummings, I recommend that you pick up 95 Poems as a starting place.

If you want to write:

Let cummings’s seemingly wild abandon with syntax and punctuation inspire you. Write a poem that breaks the rules of grammar and mechanics. Or, if you are too much the grammarian to do such things, try to write a poem that contrasts two typical opposites and offers a revelation at the end.

Anyone who has ever commented that video installations are not really art must get themselves to the Walker Gallery in Liverpool and see the piece entitled Observance by Bill Viola. (I almost missed it, as it is ensconced in the Renaissance gallery due to its inspiration from the Passion paintings of the period…)

In this ten-minute video, shot in crisp color and then slowed down digitally, the artist asked his actors to line up and step forward to look at something they would rather not see or to say goodbye to someone who had left them. The actors, diverse in both race and age, remind us that grief and loss are universal emotions as they move to the front of the frame, looking forward and down toward something/someone the viewer cannot see. All are stricken with some mix of disbelief, grief, sadness, even horror, and the slow motion captures every nervous tic-every lick of the lips, every blink and grimace.

This gave me as the viewer the unsettling feeling that I was the thing causing them this pain, an unsettling feeling indeed. The woman next to me commented that this felt like watching people file past you at your own wake. Both of us sat mesmerized by the entire ten minutes, and I am not ashamed to say that it made me sad and uncomfortable and awed. In other words, I was deeply moved by it. And isn’t that the purpose of art?

Here is a short clip someone has posted on Youtube – it doesn’t do the piece justice, but it will give you just a little taste.