For Your Practice on Perspective, My Poem in Ardor Literary Magazine, and More of the Story

First Core

Where the sunsets shimmered

    amber on your shoulders

near the    wide    open window

that looks out at the cypress trees,

I sit at our table, apple in one palm

paring knife in the other, and begin

slicing and coring the last

of the last    I brought home to you.

The fat robin returns, sunning

herself in our tree. She takes

a good look at or

    through me. Noticing how

she watches my hands, I realize,

never in all these years

    have I cored even    one apple

that wasn’t for you.

See the other poem at ardorlitmag.com

For practice: 

1. Tell about loss or grief, or some other strong emotion. Use a symbol from everyday life, respond to it, manipulate it in some familiar or unusual way to signify something dramatic or wrenching. Be careful not to be too over the top, or too on the nose.

2. Describe something occurring, first from your perspective, then from the perspective of some creature in nature, or even from the point of view of a road, a barn, or a highrise window looking at the porch or breezeway or boulder where you stand.

3. Tell a story visually and in a cinematographic way. Recall a movie, a Western, for example, or one of Hitchcock's, where the perspective or angle of the camera changes significantly and meaningfully. Write like that, zooming in towards the details, beads of sweat on a forehead so tense it might crack or condensation on a broken windowpane, moving out to a wide angle shot of a barren field. Now the camera is high, now it's on the ground, now it's skewed at an angle. It goes from darkness into light, and from the light into the shadows. Perspective, when you tell a story, is significant and has energy. Use that.

For your information: This poem, First Core, takes place during the first days after my life-partner died, in 2005. Patricia was the love of my life. The poem is about beginning the difficult process of learning to come home to no one but me while grieving. It's also about the isolation of coming out, for the most part, alone. Happily, in 2007, I met a new love of my life--How can that even be possible? I wondered then. Lisa and I have been together since, traveling, creating, working and living, with the world and my perspective opening up significantly and profoundly.

Chicago, Art, and Humor...

As promised...finally, a few more pics from the Chicago trip. For any writers or others inclined, choose one (or all) of the images and write for 3 - 5 minutes. Tell me, what's the story? Choose a different perspective, if you write about more than one: be yourself, viewing what's happening; then, be one of the people or couples in the photo; finally, be the work of art, itself, looking out at the people who are looking at it, studying or commenting on them.

 

I saw this guy looking at American Gothic with me, and I thought, he could be the son of the farmer and the brother of the daughter. Aside from that, I'm always thrilled to spend time with a familiar painting. It's like finally meeting a longtime friend.

Yes, we were lucky enough to be there, viewing Marilyn, when a wedding party arrived.

And this photo is for Maria, my friend from school. She was a mischievous pal who always came across the most interesting scenarios. Once, she led me down a hallway, miming for me to be quiet. She opened a door that was marked, "Maintenance," and did that "Shhhh" thing, tapping a finger to her lips. Inside, the maintenance woman was on the floor having nice nap. So I took this picture of a guard at a Chicago museum, for Maria. (I rustled my papers as I walked away, so the guard would know her hiding place wasn't very hidden or as private as she might like. I also hoped she was all right--and could see, corner of my eye, she was.)

The Nurses Who Saved Me

"Do you continue to revise poems after they have been published?" Yes, evidently, I do. This poem has just been published in Packingtown Review, a literary journal. However, after I submitted it, the images and ideas continued to needle me until it became this, below. I like to see how a poem evolves. I thought I would share this evolution with you. What about you? When do you know a poem (or a painting, or any work of yours) is finished?

The Nurses Who Saved Me

After she died, I was lost, I wanted to be, like a dry

windswept thing. Memories where we lived were

rusted barbs wrenching into me. So I fled

to the desert. There the nurses were like Sherpas

telling stories of their travels--the old hiker on the peak

attacked and almost scalped one night by a grizzly.

While it ravaged his tent, they dragged him behind a tree

and propped him up against it, digging in on either side

to warm him with their bodies, keeping him awake

with stories whispered all night long so he wouldn’t

freeze or fall sideways, bleeding to death before one

of them could run for help in the morning.

Meanwhile, they were terrified by the bear’s stealth

coming and going, scavenging his busted tent throughout

the long hours--a darkness they could smell but couldn’t see.

Listening to their stories beneath the stars I was

distracted from everything, so close to the fire

my boots turned gooey, the toes started melting.

The next day on a high outcropping we rested

from hiking. I closed my eyes while the wind

buffeted, billowing all around me

and contemplated leaping to see how glorious far

from this world and my suffering its wildness

would take me--but thought the nurses

on either side might try to save me. Not wanting

to risk what could happen to them, I kept hiking

and listening to their stories.

(See the published version at www.packingtownreview.org)

To Remember

Today is the ten-year anniversary of the beginning of the war in Iraq. Here is a version of one of the poems I wrote during that time, published in TOTEM. The photo is of the "I HATE WAR" sculpture at the FDR Monument, Washington, DC.

Petunias

Last night, the ultimatum.

We hold our beloveds and wait.

Flowers in our courtyards

are too fragile
for these days.

Wind whooshes hard ice

parting my hair

so my scalp stings

as I pull aching shoulders

up around my neck.

Petunias hunker down

in the stark light

of an azure sky

that seems too bright

to be ironic.

Everywhere flower bursts

are pushed down,

almost flattened

against the brittle ground

by a searing cold.

After the fires, there will be

monarchs boasting,

dead sons and daughters

--all of them ours,

and even the flowers

will be drenched

in humanity’s shame.

For your journal/discussion:  War, Ultimatum, Fragile, Stings, Brittle, Searing, Drenched, Shame. Choose one word, write for 3-5 minutes, or longer. Then choose another...and another. Use all your five senses, or as many as you can. Then read what you wrote. See if you have the beginnings of a poem. 

My poem about longing (in Avocet, a journal of nature poetry) with more for your journal

Waiting

This longing palpable

     no matter where or with whom.

All these years

     something missing.

Sometimes heard

     in the pining

of the solitary bird

     at the rim of the bluff,

unseen but sensed

     in wind moving

like a hidden thing

     brushing the sashes of the trees.

Calmed by the patience

     of surrounding hills and mountains,

did others feel it?

     Were they waiting too,

like the little songbird I sought

     and followed

that flew just out of view

     but at a pause

resting, came

     and sat in the stillness near the tree

at the edge of the lake

     in the shadow of the mountain

watching the water with me.

1. Choose one of these words, or another, and write for five minutes: LONELINESS, LONGING, CALM, PATIENCE, RESTING, WAITING, PINING, FEAR, JUBILATION, IRRITATION, SERENITY.

2. Describe a scene in nature or in a town, a place that captures a feeling, a space that is itself a metaphor for a feeling you want to convey. Use as many of your senses as you can.

3. Tell of an intense time when you chose or were forced to rest with an emotion, whether grief, anger, anticipation, hope, isolation, joy, or what have you. After a while, what did you do with the feeling? Did it escalate or dissipate as you sat with it? What was the benefit or fallout of simply resting with the emotion?

4. Respond for five minutes to one or more of the images in this post. "What's the story?"

Thank you for visiting my blog. I hope it's helpful. If you know someone who might benefit from it, please share the link: www.dmsolis.blogspot.com. Again, thanks, peace and all good,

Diane