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)

welcome to poem. redux 2009

Welcome to poem. a virtual poetry group. jill & carolee, poets, artists, moms, have tried for years to gather our poet friends together for weekly or bi-weekly poetry meetings, to no avail. While we do, on a pretty regular basis, get together IRL to write (dish) and talk about poetry (husbands, crushes, our hair), we still have a mad desire for more talk about poetry. Resourceful Northern girls that we are (born and raised on the far east coast where life is tough and women are tougher), we decided to create our own poetry writing/discussion group, right here in the blogosphere.

That's how poem. will work--just like a weekly poetry group, only we have decided to space things out just a bit to accommodate all of our busy lives. (And no-one can see how much you're eating or drinking amidst all the discussion!)

Week one:
At the beginning of every month we will post a link to a poem by a well-known or lesser-known poet. Read and re-read the poem. Take notes. Read it aloud. Make copies and pass them out to friends, family and strangers! Join us all week in discussing the poem. What worked for you, what didn't. Words you liked. Questions you have. A virtual classroom (coffee shop, bar), you might say.

Week two:
We will post a prompt related to the poem.

Week three:
Participants can post the link to their response to the prompt for comment & critique.

Week four:
Week four is a free week. Stop by for surprises. This time around, we're hoping to have interviews with our featured poets, maybe even a virtual Q&A, if the poet is willing (tricked, coerced, kidnapped)!

At the beginning of the next month, we'll do it all over again with a new and amazing poem!

Stay tuned for our first poet & poem, arriving on Sunday, March 8. (Sunday will be the day we'll try to launch each week's activity. Add us to your Google reader or other thing-a-ma-bob so you don't miss the slow beating of our sincere little hearts.)

Summer Vacation

Dear Loyal poem. Readers/Writers,

We will be taking a summer vacation! Gone fishing. Wish you were here. Have a great trip. See you next fall. Hmmm... I'm out of corny metaphors!

Please use the remaining days of June, or all summer if you wish, to post links to poems you may have written is response to our latest poem, You Heard the Man You Love by Margaret Atwood.

If you are new to the site, and happen to stumble by in the months of July or August, please come back in September where we will begin the school year with a new poem to study!

Thank you to everyone who made this blog an interesting and insightful poetic stop on the cyber superhighway! (Will the corny metaphors never cease? Can you see why a vacation is needed?)

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!

tell the truth: you're excited to post your links

It's time for show and tell. Use the comments section to post links to poems you've written based on our "truth" poem. Hope you had fun with it!

inspired by "a true poem"

now it's time for you to do some writing based on our discussion of "a true poem" by lloyd schwartz. are you inspired to write something about the precipice you teeter on in your own writing process? are you imagining a piece about your own fears about the subjects that arise in your poems?

of course, there are many other places to go with this, as well. what kinds of subjects make tricky writing because of their implications? relationships. yes. secrets. yes. wounds. yes. grudges. certainly. maybe you'll write that true poem schwartz alludes to, the one that can't be shared, and maybe you'll share it.

another angle would be to think about your reader, the one who may be hurt, reading your poetry. describe that occurrence. what is the reader's reaction? what happens to you as a result?

you have a whole week to write your poems. come back next week and for the invitation to post links to your poems.

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!