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Peonies: For Jill
By Joan Gelfand
She won't sell the country house. Not yet!
And not because of Locust Lake, sailboats in summer.
Alders in snow. Not because of the long view of the Poconos,
Those graduating waves of forest green fading
To watery sage tiered like a chiffon dress.
Lost in those folds, the dizzy roller coaster
Of marriage, sickness, the push pull of desire.
Paul planted peonies. She, a lover of Japanese.
Woodblock prints, bamboo, and toro nagashi:
Lit lanterns set free on a river,
Golden rice paper houses inscribed with ancestor's
Names reflecting orange glow on black water.
Vertigo. Her tears water the earth where peonies proliferate.
In life, he betrayed, but in death transmogrified,
Missed. At night, she denied him the touch
The skin he craved. You can't have it both ways,
She reminded. Just now, she wants it exactly
Both ways. Perfect in life. Perfect in death.
The condo and the country house. The peonies and the lake.
While her resentment foments like the mulch he piled on the roots.
Now that he's gone, her loneliness blooms. Tissue thin,
She is married to the million petalled profusion of pink.
The peonies are her private toro nagashi, his soul reunited
With hers. She needs, him, and his perfect peonies.
"Besides," she cries, "It's such a short season."
People Like Me
We are held air in iron-banded lungs
we sear in our own fires,
inside flesh falls off like fat off a roast
we are oven we burn or
burst like weeds, swell like a malignant lump
in some breast, becoming bloated
bogs in our own shadows inside
where people like me can forget
what sunlight feels out of glass.
We die before we die
consumed by our fusion reactions
swallowed by our inside shadows
until we are nothing more than
eggshells, with the white and yolk
blown free
Our garden is rock.
Shale and granite and limestone
road rock is our garden
and any blossom, any green, any growth,
is pulled burned and poisoned
as a weed.
People like me haunt doorways
never completely in, never completely out,
never to be here or there, we are nowhere,
doorways and cracks and in between spaces, lost places
lost people like lost keys lost in between
and we can be found on the bottom of dry riverbeds,
see us walking there, people like me,
we who walk through the silt and dust
of desert canals, we
don't live long, people like me.
How long can a person live
with gasoline for blood
we are raped by our intensity
wasted, wraithed by it, we don't
live long, we weren't meant to.
Copyright 2006 by J. Malcolm Browne
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem, J. Malcolm Browne's "People Like Me", takes us inside the psyche of someone who is battered and shipwrecked by his own emotional storms. Wisely, the author does not "diagnose" the condition in clinical terms that would permit us to label and distance ourselves from the speaker. We are left to speculate about the reasons why he might experience life as alienation and nightmare: hallucinatory drugs, mental illness, the aftermath of a tragedy, or the morbid romantic temperament of the artistic genius. By speaking not only for himself but for a shadowy cohort of "people like me", the narrator makes an almost political demand for empathy and recognition. (I was reminded of the line "Attention must be paid" from Death of a Salesman, whose theme of invisible desperation finds its echo in Browne's poem.) The poem makes us feel these sufferings as our own, thereby revealing our common humanity with the self-destructive or delusional characters we might otherwise stereotype.
What impressed me about this poem's technique was how the author provides just the right amount and type of information to avoid being either too prosaic or too maudlin and gothic. Both of these pitfalls are common when writing about depression and emotional disorders, and both stem from an excess of self-consciousness. The prosaic poem uses the vocabulary of the medical or journalistic observer to define the condition from outside, never allowing us to see the sufferer as more than a statistic. At the other extreme, the poet is too aware of talking about his own feelings, and over-adorns the poem with blood and devils, like a bad action-movie director throwing in more and more explosions to add punch to a dull plot.
By contrast, Browne takes us directly inside the surreal realm that his characters inhabit, reporting their experiences through images of ordinary objects (an oven, an egg, a garden) gone terribly wrong. In this, the poem resembles Anne Sexton's masterful, disturbing "Angels of the Love Affair" series from The Book of Folly. Some of the most affecting images for me were "inside flesh falls off like fat off a roast" (you can just see that, however much you don't want to); "eggshells, with the white and yolk/blown free"; and "gasoline for blood".
The jagged rhythm and headlong rush of Browne's run-on phrases ("we are oven we burn"; "lost people like lost keys lost in between") convey that the speaker is being driven wild by his own emotions, his agitation mounting as he strives to make others hear his plea for understanding. The abrupt, broken-up lines of the ending are just right, a final failure of breath. I loved the disjointed repetition of "people like me" in the penultimate stanza, breaking up the grammar of his sentences like a madman's interior monologue that is bleeding through into his conversation.
Browne's incantatory use of repetition is another thing that gives the diction of "People Like Me" its poetic quality. "Free" verse is something of a misnomer, because good poetry always requires structure, only here it is the hidden musical structure of language rather than an obvious pattern. I personally feel that poetic speech needs to sound different from ordinary dialogue and description: more intense, compressed, almost prophetic. Paradoxically, sometimes this means using more words than are necessary simply to convey the plot. Lines like "consumed by our fusion reactions/swallowed by our inside shadows" and "any blossom, any green, any growth" reveal the same thought from multiple angles, in the tradition of the two-line verses of Psalms and Proverbs. Such repetition, if not done to excess, can add emotional intensity and increase the musicality of the poem. Preachers and politicians know that catchy rhymes, alliteration and grammatical parallelism help the message stick in the minds of the audience. Good free verse takes advantage of this fact in a more subtle way.
In the spirit of self-examination that I urged on readers at the beginning of this critique, Browne's poem got me thinking about the darkness of modern poetry. Why does it seem that the majority of good poems are depressing, or at least contain significant suffering and gravity? The connection between creativity and bipolar disorder continues to be debated, but if that were the whole story, one might expect to see more happy poems from the manic phase. Perhaps happiness makes us more completely absorbed in the moment, to the point that we would break the spell if we stepped outside to describe it, while in sadness we look for an imaginary world in which to rewrite or escape the present. Are we more likely to reach out for companionship from our readers when we feel insufficiently loved and understood in our personal lives?
For myself, the impetus to write has often been a problem that I needed to work out, struggling to reconcile my duties and desires, or what lesson to draw from a mistake I made. Happiness seldom needs to be "solved" in this way. There's a reason theologians talk about the "problem of evil" and not the "problem of good". Maybe we poets really are optimists, or at least idealists, believing that suffering, however widespread, is an aberration whose causes we need to discover so that Browne's "people like me" can live a little longer.
I invite our readers to send me their thoughts on this topic, in poetry or prose. For extra credit, tell me about a well-written classic or contemporary poem (think Wordsworth's "daffodils" poem, not greeting-card verse) that you consider uplifting, joyful or optimistic. The poem should not only have a positive intention, but succeed in making you, the reader, experience that mood. We may publish some of your responses in our July newsletter.
Where could a poem like "People Like Me" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Boulevard Emerging Poets Contest
Postmark Deadline: May 15
Prestigious journal Boulevard offers $1,000 for poems by authors with no published books
Five Fingers Review Awards
Postmark Deadline: June 1
$500 each for poetry and fiction from journal with a preference for experimental work; 2006 theme is "foreign lands and alternate universes"
Bridport Prize
Entries must be received by June 30
High-profile award offers 5,000 pounds each for unpublished poems up to 42 lines and fiction up to 5,000 words
Bellevue Literary Review Prizes
Postmark Deadline: August 1
$1,000 apiece for poetry, fiction and essays about themes of health, healing, illness, the mind, and the body; no simultaneous submissions
This poem and critique appeared in the April 2006 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Periodically Speaking
Presented at the New York Public Library and co-sponsored by the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, this reading series showcases poets and prose writers from influential literary magazines, introduced by their editors. Videos of past readings can be viewed on the NYPL website.
Persistent Armageddon
(dedicated to Joseph Campbell)
I deserve to die in Potter's Field
Fall on my face in the dust.
A place for those who have no name
Because they have no reason.
I have crucified all I have and all I am
And still left empty.
This is Your struggle, not mine, not ours.
You let Lucifer dabble.
Alienated at Babel.
Heels are bleeding
Crushing the constant snake.
Why am I talking to You so?
I told You. You are deception.
Created the Kings of the North and
Sovereigns of the South
Only to amuse Yourself
Watching them raze.
This is Your struggle, not mine, not ours.
Horsemen driven
By your monotony.
A One incapable of monogamy
Desires one, seven, seventy.
They battle in the valleys, you dry their bones.
And raise them up to brawl again.
Your many illicit sons—doctrines without foundation,
Tenet against tenet fighting over You.
Offerings approved, rejected—brothers killed.
Inheritances taken by trickery You instilled.
I told You. You are deception.
Did you spin the clay
Only to bury it here
In this sand with weapon in hand?
Truly the Potter's option?
That's their opinion, your bastard canon
Persist to create a printed desolation.
Abomination? In the True Creator's eyes—
Latent, covert, dormant. It seems so.
I will not die in Potter's Field.
A truth revealed, a heart healed.
This is not Your struggle, nor mine. Not ours.
Only Confusion re-written,
Mythology-smitten
That placed me in this furrow
Chained-metal in hand.
Paradise intended, perilous game and
It ended.
With every event has transpired.
Benevolence warranted, you determined it,
I will expect it to stand.
I will shore up for the race, I will arise to your face.
I will see through the glass before long...
Copyright 2006 by Charlet C. Estes
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem, "Persistent Armageddon" by Charlet C. Estes, stands in a tradition of spiritual protest literature as old as the Biblical book of Job. Some see doubt and anger as incompatible with faith, but one could also consider them signs of a mature faith, like the shadows that show an object to be solid and three-dimensional. (For a classic example of this tradition, see Gerard Manley Hopkins' "dark sonnets".)
The more deeply we commit to our spiritual path, the more we may become pained by the gap between our ideals and reality. Hence doubt arises: do these beliefs really fit human experience? do they cause more suffering than they cure? and can they be implemented in this imperfect world? And anger: at human beings who pervert spiritual teachings, at the Creator who made us this way. As we see in Estes' poem, faith and doubt go hand in hand because we may need to see through false dogmas in order to reach a faith that fits the truths of the heart.
"Persistent Armageddon" is an example of a poem based on literary allusions (in this case, to the Bible), yet one that can also be understood and appreciated by readers who are less familiar with the source tradition. One of the pleasures of studying literature is finding these keys that unlock multiple levels of meaning in a poem, so that one suddenly finds one's self sharing an experience not only with the individual writer, but with an entire community of writers who have pondered the same issues.
On the other hand, a poem heavily reliant on allusions will be frustrating to the uninitiated, unless there is something evident from a first reading that directly touches the emotions. Without this personal connection to the poem, the reader may not be motivated to puzzle out the additional meanings. Though the argument of "Persistent Armageddon" may be hard to follow absent some familiarity with the Bible, one instantly recognizes its heartfelt anguish at the problem of evil, expressed in traditional apocalyptic imagery.
Estes' poem dares to call God to account for the "persistent armageddon" of human warfare, especially religious war. With the reference to the Potter's Field, the speaker boldly identifies with Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Jesus who was buried there. One can imagine a remorseful Judas, as he tosses away his thirty pieces of silver, saying that he has "crucified all I have and all I am/And still left empty." A potter's field, whose soil was not good enough for growing crops, was traditionally used for burying unknown or indigent people. The speaker of the poem here groups herself with those outcasts. She is opting out of the system that took everything from her and gave nothing in return. This rebellion is not without guilt ("I deserve to die") but it is the only honest course she can take.
The next stanza tells us why: "You let Lucifer dabble./Alienated at Babel." Was it not God, she asks, who allowed evil into the world? Having divided the human race into mutually uncomprehending tribes, can God really be surprised that we have descended into warfare? "Heels are bleeding/Crushing the constant snake" is a reference to Genesis 3:15, where God curses the snake after it tempts Adam and Eve: "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel."
In frustration, the speaker concludes that God must not care about His creation. He created us and watches us suffer "Only to amuse Yourself". God, not the devil, is the great deceiver. Therefore, we should refuse to keep playing His game of fighting over "doctrines without foundation": "This is Your struggle, not mine, not ours." Her argument reverses all the traditional attributes of God—not truth but deception, not creating but devouring, not faithful but "incapable of monogamy". The sonorous stanza "Horsemen driven..." inspires a chill of horror at this merciless, insatiable deity.
Subsequent lines continue to indict God for our fratricidal ways. "Offerings approved, rejected—brothers killed./Inheritances taken by trickery You instilled." These references to Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, also describe a universal pattern of human misbehavior.
Now the poem truly takes an interesting turn, as the speaker realizes she has other intuitive knowledge of God that cannot be reconciled with this cruel theology: "Did you spin the clay/Only to bury it here/In this sand with weapon in hand?" Surely life cannot be that pointless.
Perhaps the God that the warring factions invoke is not the "True Creator" but an erroneous image of Him. "That's their opinion, your bastard canon/Persist to create a printed desolation." It was false mythology, not the will of God, that put the swords in our hands. The somber refrain is given a new twist: "This is not Your struggle, nor mine. Not ours." The dedication to Joseph Campbell, the great scholar of world mythology, suggests that critical analysis of religious traditions need not be an obstacle to faith, but instead may help us gain perspective on destructive misconceptions that we accepted as dogma.
"Heart healed" by this new discovery, the speaker readies herself for a more constructive struggle, namely the effort to see God more clearly and to bring that peacemaking knowledge to the world. "I will shore up for the race, I will arise to your face.//I will see through the glass before long..." (an echo of St. Paul's words in 1 Cor 13:12, "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known").
I found the first five lines of the final stanza somewhat confusing. Though I grasped the general idea—God's intentions for His creation are good and faithful after all—the manner of expression seemed unnecessarily convoluted. "Paradise intended, perilous game and/It ended" has a satisfying cadence. Does it mean that God intended paradise for us, but we chose to put it at risk? Or does the speaker still feel that God was playing games?
The lines "Benevolence warranted..." suggest that she has rejected the latter idea. Still, I wasn't wholly comfortable with the use of "warranted" in this context. Is the poem saying that we "warranted" benevolence, in the sense of "deserved" it? Or that God made a promise ("warranted" in the legal sense, i.e. "swore") and we can "expect it to stand"? The multiple meanings are intriguing, but the insertion of "you determined it" adds confusion with the unclear reference to "it". I might prefer simply "Benevolence warranted, I will expect it to stand" (with or without a stanza break in there). "With every event has transpired" did not make grammatical sense, nor was it clear to what it referred.
When analyzing this poem, I was impressed by Estes' ability to compress so many ideas into a small space. She was able to rephrase or economically hint at many familiar Bible passages, while for the most part steering clear of cliche. Like a military drumbeat, the strong rhythm of these lines propelled the poem forward and created an ominous tension, gladly dispelled by the hopeful last lines.
Where could a poem like "Persistent Armageddon" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Mississippi Valley Poetry Contest
Postmark Deadline: April 1
Top prize of $250 plus smaller prizes including a $25 award for best religious poem; sponsored by the Midwest Writing Center, this contest is now in its 33rd year
This poem and critique appeared in the March 2006 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Peter Elbow, Teacher of Writing Teachers
Dr. Elbow, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Massachusetts, has come to enjoy substantial influence over the teaching of writing. "Over the years," he tells Critique Magazine, "I've finally concluded that safety in writing is my highest priority.... I must make a classroom where safety happens, but due to the lack of safety in some classrooms, student writers don't take risks; they don't feel safe when they write." Read Dr. Elbow's complete interview.
Pexels
Pexels is a curated archive of free stock photos that writers can use to illustrate their blogs, book covers, or promotional materials.
PhotoBloom
Fine art photographer Carol Bloom's landscapes, street scenes, still lifes, and abstract images are composed with the care of Old Masters paintings, as charged with dramatic tension as an Edward Hopper scene. These evocative works would be suitable for licensing for a poetry collection, literary fiction, or memoir book cover. Locations include New York City, Paris, and Israel.
Picking the Right Email Platform for Your Indie Newsletter
This December 2022 article at the tech website Inbox Collective compares six of the most popular email service providers (ESPs) for your writer's newsletter: AWeber, Beehiiv, ConvertKit, Ghost, Mailchimp, and Substack. Factors to consider include whether your newsletter is a stand-alone or points readers to a site with additional content; how many emails you can send out for free; the way that you plan to monetize the newsletter, e.g. subscriptions or ads; and how much you want to customize the design.
Pine Trees in Tennessee
By Ruth Thompson
Slow down now. Slow down and sit and breathe. Open your eyes to what is around you! Be in love. Be here....Yes.
We are a grove. This is a word that we like. Grove.... Grove.... Grove. It's a slower word. And this slow respiration groves us, and you with us.
And in the background the showingoff happysong mockingbird! Not showing off as the phrase means, but throwing the gold of song into the air for all to enjoy.
This is what he does, for no reason but to have fun!
Here it is again, Ruth, what we are saying, over and over:
All is for no reason. It is for pleasure. It is for itself knowing itself.
Just throw the gold. Just sing for pleasure, for pure joy.
You have been purposed so much all your life. You have been so earnest! But we say: Fire enjoys fire. Snow enjoys snow. Rock enjoys rock. Wind enjoys wind. Storm enjoys storm. Bird enjoys bird.
All, all in body and not in body, enjoy Being.
This is not a lesson, Ruth, you already know this. It is a practice.
Pinpoint
Pinpoint is a software tool from Google Journalist Studio that makes your research documents easily searchable. Upload PDFs, audio files, images, emails, and other source materials to create a digital archive that you can keyword-search, transcribe, and share with your collaborators and fact-checkers. This tool would be useful for scholars, journalists, and nonfiction book authors.
Pioneer Drama Service: Shubert Fendrich Memorial Playwriting Contest
Free contest from a leading publisher of middle- school, high-school and community-theater plays. Winner receives a $1,000 royalty advance in addition to publication. Pioneer specializes in farce and musical comedy that would be appropriate for family audiences. Postmark deadline is March 1 each year.
Pitch Travel Write
Full-time freelance travel writer Roy Stevenson's website gives tips on how to develop and market original ideas for travel articles, as well as practical information for planning your trips.
Pixie Cut
By Terri Kirby Erickson
for my daughter
Black-eyed, black-haired girl of thirty-two,
I can see you reflected in a mirror
across the room—one of many mirrors and multiple stylists
with tattooed limbs and hennaed heads, clipping
and snipping. And I am thinking that the cloth draped
around your body, catching the sheared locks that tumble
to your shoulders, your lap, the floor, seems as sacred
as white linen on an altar table—your face emerging
like an angel sculpted from the clay
of your long, dark hair. You are smiling
because you see at last, what we all have seen—
how beautiful you are, that the woman you imagined
has arrived—
and she is and always has been, you.
Excerpted from Becoming the Blue Heron (Press 53, 2017)
Finalist, 2015 Ron Rash Award (Broad River Review)
Places in the Dark
Brooding, poetic tale of two brothers whose love is shattered by their passion for the same woman. Cook exploits the conventions of the Gothic thriller to build up expectations that he constantly reverses with his surprising plot twists, ultimately producing a wise commentary on storytelling itself and how it both inspires and entraps us.
Plain View Press
Founded in the 1970s, this independent small press in Austin, TX publishes poetry and literary prose. Editors say, "Our books result from artistic collaboration between writers, artists and editors. Over the years we have become a far-flung community of activists whose energies bring humanitarian enlightenment and hope to individuals and communities grappling with the major issues of our time: peace, justice, the environment, education and gender. This is a humane and highly creative group of people committed to art and social change." Query by email first, and wait for a response before sending the full manuscript. Email queries should include a link to a website that features a selection of your work and information about you, or a short selection of work pasted into the message (no attachments).
Playing By the Book
By S. Chris Shirley. This funny, heartfelt, and enlightening YA novel follows a Southern preacher's kid on his journey to accept his sexuality without losing his faith. When 17-year-old Jake ventures outside his Alabama small town for a summer journalism program at Columbia University in New York City, he learns that the world is more complex than he imagined, and maybe God is too. Refreshingly, he doesn't reject his family and traditions, but instead takes on the adult responsibility of teaching and transforming them.
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
By Toni Morrison. This slim volume of three essays is adapted from lectures that the celebrated novelist delivered at Harvard in 1990. She asks an incisive question that will turn your traditional high school and college reading material on its head: how was the presence of a subjugated Black population a necessary foil for the development of an American literary identity of innocence, rugged individualism, and white masculinity? Rather than debating whether Twain and Hemingway should be "cancelled", so to speak, Morrison is more interested in what all texts can tell us about whiteness as a self-concept. In that way, even (or especially) problematic representation of Black characters is valuable to illuminate occluded power relations, for a key feature of whiteness is that it positions itself as universal, as the absence of race.
Playscripts, Inc.
This service aims at matching authors of new plays with producers who are looking for specific types of work. Searchable database allows you to sort scripts by genre, duration, and casting requirements, and read samples online.
PlayShakespeare.com
This web archive for all things Shakespeare includes the full text of the Bard's plays and poems. Other features include scholarly discussion forums, podcasts, and reviews of Shakespeare performances around the world.
Plenitude Magazine
Based in Canada, Plenitude Magazine is an online literary journal publishing poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, graphic narrative, and short film by queer creators. No submission fees. Editors say, "We define queer literature and film as that which is created by LGBTQ2S+ people, rather than that which features queer content alone...Plenitude aims to complicate expressions of queerness through the publication of diverse, sophisticated literary writing, art and film, from the very subtle to the brash and unrelenting."
Plodding Through His Own Death
At eight-and-twenty,
When the immunity eaters—
The weird invisible troop—
Encroached his every marrow,
He was sentenced to sleep and wake alone.
So the immunity eaters
With their shapeless hunger,
Catalysed by Loneliness,
Won all the seats
In the spouts beneath his porous skin.
His shadow, his tears, his paper...and his pen
Became his only kin.
Like a house
That cries for renovation
Or fresh paint—
Unfit for habitation,
Repelling population.
He suffered unforgiving separation.
A desert-isle, bound by moats
Dug by opprobrious disdain,
Inaccessible to carers' boats
Like the iceless morgue.
His senses, all,
Daily dined on emptiness
In isolation's cask.
His tears could not atone.
Captive in varied briers of scorns,
His life bled, leaving behind a convoluted trail,
Like earthworm that crawls
Upon the salty slush
With loneliness as chaperone.
Loneliness rode all his nerves.
His cheeks got profaned with brackish streams.
His eyes locked in the ridges of sour ecstasies,
And mirrored a lost battle.
His heart cried this woe I cannot bear!
Like a wounded snake
That inflicts its fatal wounds
With its lethal fangs,
He pierced his wounded, lonely self with grief.
Life leaked out
In hours, minutes, seconds...
Like cherry trampled underfoot bleeding,
Writing his epilogue....
He dragged and dragged and dragged,
But when he got to thirty-and-one
Then plodded through his own death,
His head never turning sideways or back.
He left behind his breathless frame as proof
Like a punctured tyre that has given up its breath
To let them know that they are
As guilty as the HIV-AIDS they accused.
Since they deprived him
of what to hold or lean upon.
As they look at him
With clinical hands
Cushioned in pockets full of sneer.
Copyright 2008 by Emmanuel Samson
Critique by Jendi Reiter
This month's critique poem comes to us from Nigerian poet Emmanuel Samson, who writes with compassion and prophetic anger about how social stigma compounds the physical suffering of HIV/AIDS patients. "Plodding Through His Own Death" has political force behind it, yet does not come across as preachy or shrill, because Samson keeps the focus on the protagonist as a real person whose pain we feel.
Another temptation in poems about social issues is to fall into journalistic, literal patterns of speech, which Samson wisely sidesteps from the very beginning with the words "At eight-and-twenty". This elaborate, old-fashioned way of stating someone's age can be used to add gravitas and poignancy to a poem about youth: think of A.E. Housman's "When I was one-and-twenty" or François Villon's "Le Testament" ("En l'an de mon trentiesme aage"/"In the thirtieth year of my age"). Here, it signals that the author will take an epic, lyrical approach to his subject, not a flat and factual one.
The opening stanza is tightly paced and holds the reader's attention with original imagery: "When the immunity eaters—/The weird invisible troop—/Encroached his every marrow,/He was sentenced to sleep and wake alone." The combination of enforced solitude (with some connotations of loss of sexual intimacy) and "immunity eaters" suggests that this is a poem about HIV, which is confirmed in the penultimate stanza. Rather than mention the disease by name at the outset, and risk calling up whatever clichéd or hostile thoughts we may associate with it, Samson brings us directly into the experience of the sick person, breaking down our ability to dismiss him with a stereotype.
In this poem, Samson occasionally repeats the same image or phrase too many times within a short period. I found this most problematic in the stanza beginning "Like a wounded snake", which uses "wound" three times in four lines. The rhymes "habitation/population/separation" felt too sing-song; one or two of those lines could be cut without losing the meaning. Similarly, to end a stanza "with loneliness as chaperone" and immediately follow with "Loneliness rode all his nerves" risks diluting the impact of a word that has already appeared once before. I would end the preceding stanza at "salty slush", since the image of the chaperone somewhat mixes the metaphor—not a fatal error in a poem this surreal, but still a technique to be used guardedly so as not to give the impression that the author's thoughts are muddled.
There is a fine line between controlled, intense weirdness and an overwritten poem that throws in too many powerful but unrelated images. Most of the time, Samson's wording is so interesting that I am willing to suspend disbelief, carried along by the emotional impact of the sensations he describes. Since "Plodding Through His Own Death" is about the disintegration of a man's body as well as his social identity, this disjointed style generally enhances the meaning.
For instance, when he says the immunity eaters "Won all the seats/In the spouts beneath his porous skin", we're switching from the metaphor of HIV as invading troops to the metaphor of a parliamentary election, with the unrelated image of "spouts" thrown in for good measure. But it works for me because it's such a creative comparison. Samson is tossing off multiple variations on a theme: AIDS is like being invaded by invisible soldiers, and like a hostile government taking power, and like an abandoned house, and like a lowly, wounded earthworm. It's as if he will never run out of ways to restate this wrongness because it is so immense, so impossible to get one's mind around.
Whereas a one-sided focus on the protagonist's passive suffering would have dragged, the poem remains dynamic by cutting back and forth between different perspectives. The sick man maintains dignity and agency by writing ("His shadow, his tears, his paper...and his pen/Became his only kin"), and at one point speaks aloud ("His heart cried this woe I cannot bear!") rather than being merely spoken about. Samson wants to show that one of the patient's worst afflictions is this transformation from a feeling subject into an object for others to discuss or shun. Thus, at the end of the poem, he widens his lens to scrutinize the community that abandoned the dead man.
The content of the final lines is exactly right, lending urgency and relevance to the dying man's story. This poem hopes to stir our emotions, not for entertainment value or self-flattering sentimentality, but to drive home our responsibility to the sick and marginalized. The ending would be stronger, though, if Samson smoothed out some grammatical bumps in the road. "Deprived him of what to hold" does not sound like standard English. Perhaps he could rephrase it as "Deprived him of all he might hold".
Also, it might be best not to end on an image as confusing as "Pockets full of sneer". I don't think of a sneer as concrete enough to be held in a pocket; it is more associated with the face than the hands. "Sneer" is a good strong word to end on, in terms of sound and meaning, inspiring an instinctive recoil. I'd advise replacing "pockets" with another word that has a more reasonable connection to facial expressions, although on the other hand, the image of "clinical hands/cushioned in pockets" concisely indicts the heartless medical establishment. At the least, I would change it to "sneers" because "full of" implies either a plural of discrete objects or a substance that fills space amorphously (e.g. water, mud, noise).
Despite a few rough spots, "Plodding Through His Own Death" struck me as a memorable, creative poem that will cause honest readers to think twice about their role in perpetuating the stigma of HIV/AIDS.
Where could a poem like "Plodding Through His Own Death" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Poetry London Competition
Entries must be received by June 2
Poetry London magazine offers 1,000 pounds and publication; postal mail, UK cheques only
Bellevue Literary Review Prizes
Postmark Deadline: August 1
New York University literary journal offers competitive award of $1,000 apiece for poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction on themes of health, healing, illness, the mind, and the body
This poem and critique appeared in the May 2008 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Ploughshares
Submissions are accepted June 1-January 15. They publish mainly poetry and literary fiction, with a small amount of creative nonfiction. Ploughshares is a paying market. See website for print and online submission guidelines.
Podcaster Academy
Award-winning radio host and producer Jeff Brown offers classes and one-on-one coaching to create more effective podcasts. The training covers skills such as sounding natural and conversational on-air, mastering the art of the interview, and structuring your content to hook listeners' attention.
Poem of the Week
This website edited by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale showcases previously published work by a different contemporary poet each week, along with his or her biography, blurbs, and an interview with the author. Sign up to receive Poem of the Week as an email newsletter.
Poemeleon Mystery Box Contest
Online journal Poemeleon seeks poems inspired by a "mystery box" depicted in a photo on their website. The winner and runners-up will be published in Poemeleon, and the first-prize author will receive the box. Deadlines are irregular; check website.
PoemHunter.com
Over 25,000 poems by 4,000 poets. Classic authors like Shakespeare and Milton are well-represented, as well as many moderns. Search by title and name (text searches can also be made but results are unpredictable). Free poem-of-the-day newsletter introduces you to wonderful work like Tarantella by Hilaire Belloc.
Poems About War (Academy of American Poets)
Brief overview of modern poets' approach to the subject of war and its atrocities, with links to classic and contemporary authors. Other useful links to World War I poets can be found on their Wilfred Owen page.
Poems for Ephesians
Poems for Ephesians is an online journal of poetry that leaps out of the images, ideas and inspirations of St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians in the New Testament. It is edited by D.S. Martin, Poet-in-Residence of McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, Ontario.
Poems to See By: A Comic Artist Interprets Great Poetry
By Julian Peters. Understand classic poems in a new way through this artistic dramatization of 24 works by Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Carl Sandburg, Maya Angelou, Seamus Heaney, and many others.
Poet Ferlinghetti Chased Subs in WWII
San Francisco Chronicle article recounts the wartime experiences of famous Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and his conversion to pacifist principles after viewing the devastation at Nagasaki.
Poet’s Market 34th Edition
Published by Writer's Digest, this is a leading directory of journals, magazines, book publishers, chapbook publishers, websites, grants, and contests. "These listings include contact information, submission preferences, insider tips on what specific editors want, and—when offered—payment information." Helps you find publishers who are looking for your kind of work.
Poet’s Paradise: A Collection of Helpful Resources
Amsterdam Printing, a maker of personalized pens and similar products, maintains this link directory of literary organizations and reference sites for students and teachers of writing.
Poetic Asides by Robert Lee Brewer
Poetry blog on the Writer's Digest website features interviews with contemporary authors, writing prompts, advice on the craft, and introductions to exotic poetic forms.
Poetics Listserv
High-level poetic debates abound at this listserv populated by published authors and professors, which was launched in 1993 by Charles Bernstein, a founder of the avant-garde Language Poetry movement. As of January 2014, the forum is no longer accepting new posts, but the archives are worth reading.
Poetry 180
A poem a day for American high schools. For teens who think poetry is boring, remote and not for them, US poet laureate Billy Collins has 180 surprises. Comes with welcome advice on reading poems aloud.
Poetry 4 Palestine
Palestinian poet Hiyam Noir launched this website to bear witness to the suffering of Palestinians in refugee camps and work towards an end to Israeli occupation.
Poetry Archive (Arts Council England)
A project of Arts Council England, the Poetry Archive features great poems for adults and children, video interviews with poets, and lesson plans. Their online store offers recordings of classic poetry read by writers and celebrities, and contemporary poets reading their own work.
Poetry Bulletin’s Submission Fee Support Circle
Poetry Bulletin is a literary opportunities newsletter curated by poet and essayist Emily Stoddard. Their Submission Fee Support Circle offers funding to help under-represented and under-resourced authors enter contests for book and chapbook manuscripts. Limit of three submissions per poet. If you'd like to donate to support this project, please contact them.
Poetry by Josie Whitehead
Yorkshire poet Josie Whitehead has written over 1,450 poems suitable for children and adults. Her work ranges from humorous to inspirational. Visit her site to search by subject and age group. Whitehead has had many poems published by educational publishers, as well as poems adapted for an animated film and set to music.
Poetry by Soma Mei Sheng Frazier
"No Results for That Place" was chosen by Billy Collins for an Honorable Mention in the 2019 Fish Poetry Prize, and was published in Fish Anthology 2019.
****
The Deepest Hours
Sometimes my infant daughter
wakes in the middle of the night
irrepressibly happy.
My husband and I lull her back
to sleep with our various
Shaolin techniques:
His trick is to stroke her ears and mine, to
put the radio on static and
dance slowly.
These things work like hypnosis, like
narcotics, like prayer:
hit or miss.
Sometimes our desperate trying
reminds me of all the stops
my mother pulled out, years ago
to try and cheer herself up
about life: liquor, crystals, seminars, triathlons
and legal drugs that made her hair fall out.
I remember driving home late
a senior in high school
and seeing her dart
across the road in front of our house
barefoot, eyes wide. I slammed
on the brakes and
when the car stopped
inches short of her
she met my eyes.
We stared
through the windshield and
my mind kept trying to turn her into a deer.
Like a doe she darted off wildly
over the dirt shoulder and into
the dark door of the forest.
My father was waiting at home.
I don't know what to do, he croaked, and
it was the only time in his whole macho life
that he ever admitted as much to me, so
although he was an abusive bastard
I took him in my arms
and swayed.
Sometimes
in the deepest hours
I sway that way with my daughter
to sedate her.
Other times
I remember how
my mother slept
still as a stone, for days and days
when she finally came home.
It was like
she wanted to forget
her husband, her house
her thoughts and me and
recapture the darkness of the woods.
Those nights I
set my daughter on my stomach
facing me, wobbly
and we talk.
Her words rattle up from her little chest
and straighten out into
rapturous ooohs and aaahs.
I tell her
all of my secrets and
sometimes
we stay awake
for hours.
First published in The New Guard
****
Cormorants
In Svay Pak
I met two girls
priced to sell.
They were sisters
six and eight
both trained well
and I spent forty U.S. dollars
to take them for the night.
I bought one a Crush and one
a Fanta, like the sweaty red
fat jolly foreign Santa that I was
and tucked them in.
If there are better things
in the life after this
let the record show that I have
been remiss in earning them.
In the ripe wet air
I watched them sleep
and thought
even if I come up with
a way to keep them
feed them, house them, clothe and
untrain them
still
there will be
more children
opened on damp red sheets
more, bent over
cracked plastic seats, pried
apart
on earthen floors.
There will be more:
their parents'
only stock
sold when they mature or
years before—more.
In a small, idyllic
East Coast town
my father laid
my body down
and opened it.
Poverty alone, then, cannot explain
this unmapped latitude of the
adult human brain and
even when Svay Pak
gains industry
her children
will shoulder this pain.
I thought these thoughts as
I brought the girls back
the morning sun distilling
itself from the sky.
There were Cormorants
circling as we said goodbye and
I remembered that, in fishing towns
the men once tied these birds to boats.
They exploited their beaks and
pulled the fish from their throats.
I imagine that these watchful birds
came to understand
the long and short of human will.
There is something slightly human
in their voices still: something
familiar and forsaking.
Every day after that, in Cambodia, waking
I noticed the echoes of the Cormorants' calls.
They fell gently between the peeling walls
of the brothels of Svay Pak.
****
Play Wedding
For some reason, they both wore dresses
Alina and Shawn—he ten, she twelve
in the corner of Casa Del Lago Mobile Home Park
where a giant mud puddle formed
the closest thing to a lake
in at least three square miles, and
we closed in an expectant knot around them
shaded by scrappy cedars:
twelve scrappy kids
from three scrappy families.
Shawn had lost a bet
(on purpose, we suspected, as each of us
had seen him following Alina—even
since before her mother bought her
the training bra—down root-ripped paths
around the park's square, beige club house
with its frayed lounge chairs and disappointing pool
up the center of the one real road that divided neat rows of
not so neat homes)
and now he had to marry her.
This is a real wedding, we told him
and afterward if we catch you kissing
another girl
even on the cheek
we'll beat your skinny ass.
Maybe, being ten, he hadn't understood
the accoutrements of weddings
how the bride always wore the dress
and the groom, the tuxedo
in the framed photographs our parents kept
or perhaps his big sister
ringleader of the day
had forced him into the drooping white cotton
that slid and slid and slid
off his shoulders. The low sky
went gray and
a bracing wind picked up.
Do it, said the sister in a voice that meant business
and even now I remember
more clearly than I do my own
first wedding, or even the one
that stuck, how a
cold drop struck my shoulder
and a station wagon appeared slowly
in the street, past the trees—paused, backed up
turned around and drove away as
they moved together to kiss
she in white and he in white; how he
leaned with his eyes closed
like a man on the edge of a cliff
his whole body
taut and perspiring
the sudden drop before him
breathtaking.
First published by Kore Press
****
Photographs of Earth
Street love: not sugary-sweet love, CBS or any other BS love
not Hallmark Greetings or business meetings between merging CEOs—
sidewalk love, bruisable but unusable by any outside force, immune
to penetration, lapsed communication, plague of the American nation—divorce—
elusive, tricky, jealousy-provoking, not just mutual ego-stroking, dirty love
just doing it better than Nike and less sinkable than Cheerios because
dirty equals more than bed-breaking sex.
Dirt is what we came from, what we stand on, the bed we'll go to, tectonic flex
of the textures and colors of skin, bone and the long lines of blood within.
Quiet love: not necessarily intelligible, possibly slurred
like the first photographs of the earth—blurred
but unmistakably irreversibly revolving its way around the sun
steadily, not clamoring to be heard.
First published in The Comstock Review
****
Piñata
We called them piñata girls
girls you could fuck the fun out of
otherwise known as
hit it and quit it girls,
cheap girls, girls who got
their lip-gloss at the dollar store, whose
fathers probably beat them
but my brother
he was always a sucker for sweets.
He fell hard for a piñata girl
pretty little thing named Sonia
and against our best advice
he married her. In time the rest of us
forgot what we'd called her, the way
we'd picked on him for wanting her.
Turned out she was a good girl
smart, clean, funny and loyal
part of the family. They were happy
for about ten years.
Then my brother found out
he had lymphoma, right around the time
his youngest son turned three.
His last day at home before
what we thought was to be
a brief hospital visit
but turned out to be a long one
was his son's third birthday.
My brother was a hero
that day, exhausting himself
keeping ten screaming boys happy.
Everyone was happy, all day.
At the end of the party
before my wife and I headed home
I found my brother
hunched on his knees in the yard
picking up ruffles of yellow paper.
I watched him gently patch up
with his big, slow-moving hands
the wide-eyed pony piñata
that the boys had battered open
for candy. "What the hell
are you doing," I asked him, laughing.
My brother looked up at me.
"I'm taping her together," he said
his eyes as wide as the pony's
in the dimming bronze light
"so we can keep her."
First published in Mudfish
****
The Sleeping Couple
For years they slept bound, her
slender legs wound warmly in his
and their faces close, speaking in breath,
bartering in touch, until enough had
been said. Now they lie back
to back in their bed.
There is less physical talk.
Sometimes she feels his fingers
walk across her hip, like a solitary man
crossing a bridge, and once
she woke him with a quick squeeze
but there is little need
for exchanges like these. Outside,
a cold rain washes the trees
and a dim horizon blurs.
Massive clouds merge. Vast rivers join
and there is no conversation
as this occurs.
Poetry Chaikhana: Sacred Poetry from Around the World
Comprehensive archive of mystical poetry from many eras and spiritual traditions, with brief biographies of the authors. Both Eastern and Western cultures are well-represented. Site is indexed by author's name, religious affiliation, and time period. A great way to learn about other cultures. Editor Ivan Granger explains, "A chaikhana is a teahouse along the legendary Silk Road pilgrimage and trading route linking China to the Middle East and Europe. It is a place of rest along the journey, a place to shake off the dust of the road, to sip tea, and to gather together to sing songs of the Divine...."
Poetry Contest Links at Ardor Magazine
The online literary magazine Ardor maintains this annually updated page of links to 60+ poetry contests that the editors recommend. The contests are arranged in date order, with prizes and fees listed.
Poetry Cooperative
Poetry Cooperative is an online forum to share your poetry and win prizes. Basic membership is free, and Gold Tier membership is $10/month. Gold members have the opportunity to be paid $50 for work that is accepted for the Poetry Cooperative Magazine. The site also offers a monthly contest whose prize is one month of Gold membership.
Poetry Daily
From hundreds of books, journals and magazines, one fresh poem is featured every day. Click here for poems from the past year. Occasionally presents essays and interviews with poets. And for every poet who's been horrified by woeful critiques of their work, this poem by Billy Collins feels your pain. Publishers, send review copies here. Beginning poets, don't miss the recommended books page.
Poetry Dances
The writers' forum FanStory sponsors this website for emerging writers, which offers tips on writing in a variety of poetic forms.
Poetry Debates & Manifestos
Thirty-one younger American poets take on some of the great debates and literary manifestos from the history of modern poetry. One of many stimulating compilations from the Academy of American Poets' National Poetry Almanac.
Poetry Express
Fun, attractive site introduces the basics of poetic technique, plus a few writing prompts to get you started. The addictive "e-muse" poetry generator creates surprisingly good free verse by asking you to fill in the blanks, Mad Libs style.
Poetry Films from the On Being Project
Poetry Films, a YouTube channel featuring animations of classic and contemporary poems, is a project of the public radio show On Being (Krista Tippett). Authors in the series include Rumi, Wendell Berry, and Naomi Shihab Nye.
Poetry Has Value
Poet and professor Jessica Piazza started this blog in 2015 to chronicle her plan to submit her poetry exclusively to journals and markets that paid their contributors. She wanted to challenge the prevailing culture that expects poets to be satisfied with publication or prestige rather than making a living. The blog features links to paying markets, interviews with editors and publishers, and essays by other professional writers about the financial aspects of poetry publishing.
Poetry International Web
Editors from over 20 countries collaborate on this site showcasing the best contemporary poetry from around the world, plus literary essays and interviews.
