Hello. I’m finally on time this week, haha.
This week: out with the abstract, in with the specific & concrete! (wow, look at that nice exclamation mark there.) Peer mentor review was due Monday. A poem was due Thursday. Skype-called my mentor yesterday, which went well. I’ve just been assigned my new peer mentor review assignment/person for next Monday. Will probably submit it today since I’m traveling tomorrow to Ohio! (I’m planning on doing a post for the Kenyon Young Writers Program as well.)
Note: I’ve never been a big fan of abstract poems simply because they’re what they’re called: abstract. which often means difficult to understand. I’m very glad for this week because I feel like I’ve gotten a bit closer to understanding “abstract” poems & writing them myself (two of them, actually!).
Here are a few of my favorite lines from the reading this week:
the symbol (*) indicates a favorite
“I furious in the backseat”, “It [war] more-than pricks. All my blood is still confused, thinks it’s someone’s”, “And exhausting me, you do it best so that / grief I am most awake in you” – “Cactus” by Ari Banias
“the world is no longer mysterious” – “Dirty Valentine” by Richard Siken
“the moon exploding / and the wind picking up all the pieces / like a mother picking up all the dirty clothes / in a house full of children / who never listened to a word she said” – “Gas Station” by Matthew Dickman*
“won’t you clutter the unkissed / idiot stars? They blink and blink / like quiet shepherds”, “Caall them in the dead to touch them. / Let them slip on their own chinks of light” – “Knocking or Nothing” by Mary Szybist*
“Dear sadness–send me away”, “The way we use the dead / to live on” – “Morning Benediction with Dead Baby Syndrome” by Chelsea Dingman*
“how we / miss what is gone, simply because it’s gone”, “and a drift / of leaves hide the buried from their names” – “Waking in the Year of the Boar” by Brian Tierney
“my father is beginning to die. Something / inside him is slowly taking back / every word it ever gave him.”, “And for years I believed / That what went unsaid between us became empty / And pure, like starlight, & that persisted.”, “Look, it’s empty out there, & cold, / Cold enough to reconcile / Even a father, even a son.” – “Winter Stars” by Larry Levis*
