A lovely trailer for IDES: A Collection of Poetry Chapbooks.
Book Trailer for IDES: A Collection of Poetry Chapbooks
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Category Archives: Poetry
Celan, 1970
Celan, 1970
From frame to door,
the obvious defers, denying
entry as if
an eye could reclaim
or separate
the fallen tear
and the river’s skin,
or return
those words to
thought, water to
stone, intent
to cold
reason,
now to before.
He stepped into release.
One of the most influential (and difficult) European poets of the 20th century, Paul Celan survived the horror of World War II but never escaped its shadow. A brief biography may be found here.
New Release: IDES, A Collection of Poetry Chapbooks
Thrilled to be part of this!
Silver Birch Press decided to celebrate the year 2015 by asking 15 poets to each contribute 15 pages of poetry to a chapbook collection, which we’ve entitled IDES (released on the ides of October 2015). The result is a diverse mix of poetry by authors from coast to coast. Our poets hail from California, Florida, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, the Carolinas, and Texas—with one from Canada. Featured poets include:
Jeffrey C. Alfier
Tobi Alfier
Carol Berg
Ana Maria Caballero
Jennifer Finstrom
Joanie Hieger Fritz Zosike
Robin Dawn Hudechek
Sonja Johanson
Ellaraine Lockie
Daniel McGinn
Robert Okaji
Glenis Redmond
Daniel Romo
Thomas R. Thomas
A. Garnett Weiss
As art, we’ve selected paintings by Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920)—primarily work he created in his prolific year of 1915. A century later, we celebrate him as a visionary artist who accomplished much in his very short life.
A special thank you to the…
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Window Open, Closed
Window Open, Closed
We enter daylight in the shape
of praise, little words
billowing through wire mesh. Across
the highway a busboy questions time
and the concept of never, while
someone plucks leaves from the bay
tree and plans her day. Roger Bacon
longed to manipulate the inner essence
of inanimate objects, to harness their force,
and a lonely man swallows prescription drugs
deliberately, releasing their attributes over time.
My eyes redden from juniper pollen as the moon
spins invisibly above our roofs, tugging at the
clouds. I once traced in a building of music
the organ’s sound to the woman I longed
to attract. Now, the window prevents the passage
of solids, but waves penetrate. I spread my fingers
across the glass, but feel no vibrations. Distant
sirens announce a procession of cause and intent,
of carelessness and indecision. Somewhere a voice rises.
This originally appeared during Bonnie McClellan’s International Poetry Month celebration, and is included in The Circumference of Other, my offering in the Silver Birch Press chapbook collection, IDES, which is now available on Amazon. A recording of the poem may be found on Bonnie’s site.
Calvin Coolidge — Live or Memorex?
This poem is dedicated to haiku master and good friend Ron Evans, who sponsored the title for the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project fundraiser I participated in during August. I firmly believe it is the worst title in the history of the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project! Ron is moving to Indiana, where he will, alas, no longer be able to find kolaches, breakfast tacos or Texas barbecue. I will of course send him lavishly photographed and detailed reviews of my adventures with these foods. Take care, Ron. We will miss you.
Calvin Coolidge — Live or Memorex?
They say the wind in Alvarado bypasses closed doors, slips through
book-laden walls and plate glass and into your dreams where it circles
and accumulates, whirling, whirling, steadily gaining force, gathering
loose pages and errant thoughts and memories too combustible to
burn, ignoring time’s compression and the gravity of dying suns, forever
counting, talking, thinking, looking up and out between the long nights.
unable to sleep he opens a window daring the wind
The 30th President of the United States breathes and writes at the junction
of an invisible house and a wheat field in Alvarado, in the guise of a
74-year old haiku poet. No longer the solemn ass, Cal laughs and speaks
and observes his two birthdays, recalling Harding’s scandals and Dorothy
Parker’s “How can they tell?” with equal relish. Sometimes he dresses
in tails and top hat, and speaks in 17-syllable phrases. Sometimes.
spitting out sake in the shadow’s glare death forestalled
Alvarado’s laureate is leaving it all behind – the presidency, the books,
the kolaches – catching the next breeze out of town, a silver-tongued
dust devil riding the word, spewing puns all the way to Indiana. But
buried in a waterproof box near Oswald’s grave, 314 cassette tapes
capable of shattering crystal carry his voice further than their unwound
lengths, whirring incessantly, celebrating life, praising the long wind.
standing in the sun wisdom blows by no questions today
Self-Portrait with Blue
Self-Portrait with Blue
Darker shades contain black or grey. I claim
the median and the shortened spectrum, near dawn’s terminus.
In many languages, one word describes both blue and green.
Homer had no word for it.
The color of moonlight and bruises, of melancholy and unmet
expectation, it cools and calms, and slows the heart.
Woad. Indigo. Azurite. Lapis lazuli. Dyes. Minerals. Words. Alchemy.
On this clear day I stretch my body on the pond’s surface and submerge.
Not quite of earth, blue protects the dead against evil in the afterlife,
and offers the living solace through flatted notes and blurred 7ths.
Blue eyes contain no blue pigment.
In China, it is associated with torment. In Turkey, with mourning.
Between despair and clarity, reflection and detachment,
admit the leaves and sky, the ocean, the earth.
Water captures the red, but reflects and scatters blue.
Look to me and absorb, and absorbing, perceive.
This originally appeared in the Silver Birch Press Self-Portrait Series, and is included in The Circumference of Other, my offering in the Silver Birch Press chapbook collection, IDES, scheduled to be published on October 15.
Wherein the Book Implies Source
Wherein the Book Implies Source
And words form the vessel by which we traverse centuries, the river
stitched across the valley’s floor, easing access.
Accession by choice. Inorganic memory.
Vellum conveys its origin: of a calf.
How like an entrance it appears, a doorway to a lighted space.
Closed, it resembles a block of beech wood.
To serve as conveyance, to impart without reciprocity.
Framing the conversation in space, immediacy fades.
The average calfskin may provide three and a half sheets of writing material.
Confined by spatial limitation, we consider scale in terms of the absolute.
The antithesis of scroll; random entry; codex.
A quaternion equalled four folded sheets, or eight leaves: sixteen sides.
Reader and read: each endures the other’s role.
Pippins prevented tearing during the drying and scraping process.
Text first, then illumination.
Once opened, the memory palace diminished.
This originally appeared in April 2014 as part of Boston Review’s National Poetry Month Celebration, and is included in The Circumference of Other, my offering in the Silver Birch Press chapbook collection, IDES, scheduled to be published on October 15.
My Chapbook, THE CIRCUMFERENCE OF OTHER, is Included in the Silver Birch Press Chapbook Collection IDES
My chapbook, The Circumference of Other, is one of fifteen contained in Ides, the Silver Birch Press one-volume collection of chapbooks scheduled to be released on October 15, 2015. Ides is priced at $15, and rounds out at 283 pages. I believe it will be available through Amazon. Many thanks to editor and publisher Melanie Villines for including my work alongside that of such a fantastic group of poets.
Jackboy’s Lament
Jackboy’s Lament
We define ourselves in movement,
in the uncertain light and forms
shuddering by: fences, the nameless
wave, odors, dark water.
Look at the hills, their lines stretched taut like
smiles, or voices torn from the earth.
Or the creek below us – how its mouth never closes
yet nothing emerges but a shadow
on the wind. Two questions arise,
leaving only the abandoned to consider.
In our solitude, only my self is missing.
I started this piece about ten years ago, after a drive through the Texas hill country with Jackboy the cattledog, who was quite the philosopher and humorist. This is what emerged after several conversations and much reflection over his circumstances (abused, abandoned, rescued). Jack didn’t talk much, but he thought. Oh, how he thought.
It has been sixteen months. We still miss him.
Wasp
Wasp
Outward, the quest for
space and the wings’
hunger to unfold and
shed this home of dark
flesh and encompassing desire.
And each thing remembered, the broken
sheath, the flowering desert’s return,
reflects the notion of being, of intent
in action and its corollary,
the gift of living through death.
