Dorianne Laux's How to Sleep

It's a brand new Sunday in a brand new month, so that means a brand new poem for us to discuss! This month, we invite you to read Dorianne Laux's How to Sleep. Just click on the name of the poem to follow the link to Verse Daily.

Take the poem to bed with you. Read it as you fall asleep, read it the minute you wake up in the morning. Trouble sleeping? Sit up in the middle of your tossing and turning and read the poem aloud.

Stop by all this week and discuss the poem with your fellow poets/sleepers.

Vacationing With Sylvia Plath by Kelli Russell Agodon

Hi everyone! This month’s poem is by Kelli Russell Agodon, from her collection Small Knots.

Read it once, twice, three times. Read it aloud. Watch your breath. Try to pace yourself so your reading flows like the sea.

Make note of your impressions, the thoughts inspired by the poem. If you feel so motivated, read a little Plath, then come back to the poem.

Whatever your thoughts are, be sure to come back and leave them in the comments section. Then, Tuesday, June 16, stop back and check out our writing prompt based on the poem.

Enjoy!

PS: We still have a collaborative sestina that needs some tender loving poem-ing! Check it out and give us some poetry love!

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Vacationing With Sylvia Plath


Maybe I should have come alone.

Maybe if the clouds didn’t resemble
tombstones and I had brought something
more upbeat to read
the ocean wouldn’t seem so final—
an ongoing thought carried to shore
then taken away,
washing the same green sock
over and over again.

Maybe if I was taking medication
or at least St. John’s Wort,
maybe if I had a chocolate bar
to eat between breakdowns
the seagull’s cry would be more of a sigh
and the waves wouldn’t seem so blue.

Maybe a lot of things. Maybe
if I could slip into Sylvia’s mind,
sort out the spices in her spice rack,
alphabetize them and dust them off.
Maybe then I’d understand how
it’s the little things that pull you under.

from Small Knots (Cherry Grove Collections, 2004)

evaporation, by brent goodman

This month, poet Brent Goodman has given us permission to discuss one of his poems. We've selected "Evaporation," which appeared December 30, 2008, as the weekly installment of Linebreak.

Read the poem several times. What are your first impressions? What story is the narrator telling? How does he feel about the story? Remember: for purposes of discussion, always assume the narrator is different from the poet. In your initial read of the piece, try to simply absorb the characters, the settings, the images, the "happenings" and the emotions.

Then read the poem out loud. Read it out loud again, but slower this time.

How has the poet crafted the piece? What devices is he using to deliver you the images, happenings and emotions you grabbed the first-time through? Remember: the poet is the author. He has placed his words exactly how he wants them to "make" the poem. On these reads, think about things like repetition of phrases or sounds, stanza breaks -- or the lack of them and line length. Think about the strength of each word: how precise the verbs are (cuts, splices, confides) and how specific the nouns are (MGB instead of "car" and moraines instead of "hills" or "ridges").

Use the comments section to discuss any of these ideas or let us know what the poem brings out in you. Next week, we'll propose a writing prompt based on our discussion!

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Brent's debut poetry collection, The Brother Swimming Beneath Me (2009), is available from Black Lawrence Press. He is the author of two chapbooks: Trees are the Slowest Rivers and the award-winning Wrong Horoscope.

Be sure to go visit Brent at his blog (the brother swimming beneath me) to thank him for offering up "Evaporation" to us and to encourage him in his recovery from a recent heart attack. He's making wonderful progress!

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Administrative note: As you may have noticed, we got off track a bit last month. We're catching up now. If you're interested in how it happened, you can check the housekeeping note here. Welcome back!

moth, by ivy alvarez

A new month, a new poem! This one is from the collection mortal by Ivy Alvarez (poem reprinted here with her permission).

Read it again and again. Read it out loud as many times as the people around you will tolerate. Send it to your friends. Think about the words, the sounds, the images. Share your thoughts about it in the comments section of this post, just as though you were sitting around a circle at a "real life" poetry group. Discuss the piece 'til your heart's content. (Next week, we'll offer a prompt based on the discussion.)

moth

pale white body against the glass
wings pressed towards the light

I am a pulse
I cannot stop beating, beating
so drawn to the alien thing

there is no time to care
the light beckons and I am there

call me ephemeral

soon the crickets will sing their cacophony
and the grass will have my dry wings

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And don't forget about our collaborative sestina here. Contribute some lines?

Delta Flight 659: to Sean Penn, by Denise Duhamel

Welcome to poem: an online poetry salon, of sorts! Our poem for the month of March is Denise Duhamel's Delta Flight 659: to Sean Penn from her latest collection of poetry, Ka-Ching!

Read it once, twice, or twenty times. Read it out loud. Read it to a friend. Copy it into your favorite notebook, word by word. Absorb the poem. Be the poem. Consider the poem. When you're ready to talk, you are invited to stop by and discuss the poem in the comments section.

Next week, we'll post a prompt for writing your own piece inspired by the poem. Thanks for stopping by! Enjoy the poem!


Delta Flight 659
to Sean Penn


I’m writing this on a plane, Sean Penn,
with my black Pilot Razor ball point pen.
Ever since 9/11, I’m a nervous flyer. I leave my Pentium
Processor in Florida so TSA can’t x-ray my stanzas, penetrate
my persona. Maybe this should be in iambic pentameter,
rather than this mock sestina, each line ending in a Penn

variant. I convinced myself the ticket to Baghdad was too expensive.
I contemplated going as a human shield. I read, in open-
mouthed shock, that your trip there was a $56,000 expenditure.
Is that true? I watched you on Larry King Live—his suspenders
and tie, your open collar. You saw the war’s impending
mess. My husband gambled on my penumbra

of doubt. “So you station yourself at a food silo in Iraq. What happens
to me if you get blown up?” He begged me to stay home, be his Penelope.
I sit alone in coach, but last night I sat with four poets, depending
on one another as readers, in a Pittsburgh café. I tried to be your pen
pal in 1987, not because of your pensive
bad boy looks, but because of a poem you’d penned

that appeared in an issue of Frank. I still see the poet in you, Sean Penn.
You probably think fans like me are your penance
for your popularity, your star bulging into a pentagon
filled with witchy wanna-bes and penniless
poets who waddle towards your icy peninsula
of glamour like so many menacing penguins.

But honest, I come in peace, Sean Penn,
writing on my plane ride home. I want no part of your penthouse
or the snowy slopes of your Aspen.
I won’t stalk you like the swirling grime cloud over Pig Pen.
I have no script or stupendous
novel I want you to option. I even like your wife, Robin Wright Penn.

I only want to keep myself busy on this flight, to tell you of four penny-
loafered poets in Pennsylvania
who, last night, chomping on primavera penne
pasta, pondered poetry, celebrity, Iraq, the penitentiary
of free speech. And how I reminded everyone that Sean Penn
once wrote a poem. I peer out the window, caress my lucky pendant:

Look, Sean Penn, the clouds are drawn with charcoal pencils.
The sky is opening like a child’s first stab at penmanship.
The sun begins to ripen orange, then deepen.

(reprinted by permission of author)

You heard the man you love

Sorry for the delay, poem-lovers! But we're back! And here is our poem for the month: You Heard the Man You Love by Margaret Atwood.

Read it online. Print it. Read it out loud. Read it to a friend. Copy it into your favorite notebook, word by word. Absorb the poem. Be the poem. Consider the poem.

All this week you are invited to stop by and discuss the poem. Discuss Margaret Atwood. Next week, we'll post a prompt for writing a poem inspired by "...the man you love."

Thanks for stopping by! Enjoy the poem!

poetry and other sharp objects

we're starting this month with a poem by lloyd schwartz called "a true poem." you can find it here at the website for the academy of american poets.

whether you did a lot of "extra" poetry writing last month because of napowrimo or whether you write a lot, a lot, a lot of poetry all the time or even if you're only vaguely attached to concept of poetry -- this poem is worth reading over and over. it addresses not only what many of us believe about the truth in poetry (that it can be dangerous and is often painful) but also what many of us contend: that we are compelled to write, sometimes inexplicably and against rational thought.

let's spend some time this week talking about the risks of poetry and the need to write it. in addition, of course, we'll discuss the poem itself. "a true poem" goes beyond telling us about the narrator's tangle with poetry; it wraps us up in it, as well. how does it accomplish this? what is the role of repetition in the piece? what other devices does the poet use? do you read the piece as sarcastic or as a description of genuine struggle?

in about a week, we'll post a prompt based on our discussion. until then, see you in the comments section!

Seeds by Kevin Prufer: Our April Poem

Thank you, everyone, for all of your wonderful suggestions! So much great poetry to choose from. The truth is, our choice, Kevin Prufer's poem, Seeds, was our immediate choice because it resonates for both Carolee and I, what with hospitals and mortality being our own personal "white elephants" of late.

We hope you approve, enjoy, read, think, respond! Discussion begins today and will continue through Saturday, April 19. Sunday, April 20, we will post a prompt related to this poem. You will have all of TV Turnoff Week (April 21-27) to write a poem! (Aren't we thoughtful?) Then, Sunday, April 27, you can come back and post the links to your new poems.

Consider the entire month of April your "free-for-all!" After all, many of us are attempting the 30 poems in 30 days challenge, and that is tough enough!

Thanks for poeming with us!

Our Third Poem: The putting away of dolls by Denise Duhamel

Our March discussion will focus on Denise Duhamel's "The Putting Away of Dolls" from her collection The Woman With Two Vaginas: Poetry based on Eskimo mythology. (The entire collection, which won the 1994 Salmon Run Poetry Prize and was nominated for an American Library Association award, is available online through the Contemporary American Poetry Archive.)

The Putting Away of Dolls

This is what they called the day
her first blood came, the day she was too old
for her long slender doll made of reindeer bone.
It had taken a long time for her to learn
how to sew seal intestines without tearing them,
how to guide the ulu
so no part of an animal's hide was wasted.
She'd given her bone doll a wolverine ruff
because breath would not freeze
on that kind of fur. Though her father
carved her a doll with no arms,
she'd made parka sleeves from the seamless skin
of a ground squirrel's front legs.
She'd crimped the doll's moccasins with her teeth,
double checked each stitch to make sure
no wind or ice could pass through it.
An ill-sewn garment could mean death.
An ill-made marriage could mean unhappiness.
Her dolls' outfits were perfect as her mother
packed them away. The sticky blood,
slow and strange between her legs. She grew
dizzy as her family began to talk
of husbands and babies. She was an animal
strung upside-down, drained before drying.
Her hands never to touch skins that small again.

(Reprinted with permission from the author.)

Spend some quality time with the poem. Read it again and again. Make sure you read it out loud at least once. Slowly. Then share your thoughts, observations, questions and impressions in the comments section of this post.

Upcoming: Next week, we will post a prompt related to the poem!

Our Second Poem: My Name by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Welcome to February here at poem! Our poem for the month is My Name by Aimee Nehukumatathil. It's from Miracle Fruit, her first book of poetry. * (In case anyone is worried, we actually have Aimee's permission (!) to use this poem! How cool is that?)

As a reminder, this week, all you need to do is read the poem and enjoy a lively discussion of it! Think about it, sit with it, say it aloud, read it to family and friends...then post your thoughts, observations, questions and impressions here in the comments section.

Next week, we will post a prompt related to the poem. The third week of the month you can post your links to your own "name poems," and after that...surprise, surprise, surprise!

Enjoy!

My Name

At four, I was ready: fat pencil and paper, lined
the way I like it best--two strong sky blue lines
with a dotted line in between the two, a soft ceiling
for the tops of lower case letters to brush up against.

In New Guinea, to identify a person's family, you ask,
What is the name of your canoe? My seventh grade
social studies teacher made up a dance to help him
remember how to pronounce my name--he'd break it

into sharp syllables, shake his corduroyed hips
at roll call, his bulge of keys rattling in time.
I don't remember who first shortened it to Nez,
but I loved the zip of it, the sport and short of it,

until the day I learned Nez means nose in French.
Translation: beloved nose. My father tells me part
of our name comes from a flower from the South Indian
coast. I wonder what it smells like, what fragrance

I always have dabbed at my neck. Scientists say some flowers
don't have a scent, but they do--even if it's hints of sweat
from blooms too long without drink or the promise
of honey from the scratchings of a thin bee leg, feathered

with loosestrife and sage. I wonder if I've ever smelled
our flower, if the smell ever wafted clear across the ocean.
I would swim out to meet it, brush the salt and bits
of pink shell away, apologize for the messiness of my hair.

Cold Poem by Mary Oliver: Our 1st poem. poem

Here is a link to the first poem up for discussion:
Cold Poem