Saturday, March 31, 2012

April 30 poems in 30 days...

This is my April 1st poem-a-day for 30 days poetry month contribution.

Glint
After George Vance's poem  De Keersmaeker at Le Manège de Reims 

corps-polygraphy
girlurgling quilted morningsong
spun stunned Persephone
towered dreamwaking from under
the grave dead gesture
of emergence

this

outof infrom
a test’s tasked
quickfreeze tableau
focused

farscape or shouder-point
her-shed
nightyearnings’ link
between known (non) points
a
vector in plainsong
to b
sharing spots, places taken
in turnstyles
being (to be)
a specific sonogram

Thank you CARRIE ETTER for encouraging me to decide to do this. Click HERE to see a full list of authors Carrie has summoned for this year!

Yesterday, just as I stepped off the train at Gare de l'est I was met by 2 lovely poets, Sarah Lariviere and Jane Cope, whose contagious energy as we talked about the exciting writing of Ariana Reines and Bhanu Kapil, Susan Howe, Alice Notley and so many others, made me really jazzed up about April 1st--there are so many people today who may be writers anyway, but have decided all together to put paper to pen and reach to unveil the dark lines of script, to strike at the empty of that page, of its awaiting.

Some poems from this April aprilism of poeming I may stick on rewords, others may never emerge from my little notebook, but even those may open doors, unveil paths, contribute a word or a line or an image to a place or written space I need to go. This is why I am participating in this lovely movement to write a poem a day--because nothing matters more

For anyone thinking "Me, too" but who then stops themself short with "oh my, how impossible it is to put a word on a page then follow it with another"--to you I say--how did I begin? Not with this reworded poem, in fact--first I scribbled some other things, lists of my sadnesses, lines dividing one page from another, mini sketches of here and what I hear in my friend's home as I lie awake and play at making writing here on the cusp of sleep where dream is the perfect poem, vibrant, uninhibited, dangerous, alive... so that is my suggestion--list, sketch, journal, note, look around, do that "smelling of the roses" bit or snow (if in Berlin) and see what happens. As for me, I guess I shall go drift off now to commune with sleep!

And thanks most of all to you, George Vance, who wrote a poem so compelling it needed a lettering back to.

5 comments:

Jennifer K Dick said...

SL wrote to me this morning "I can tell that "a poem a day" will contain exactly the same amount of hits and misses as every day of my entire life contains. and isn't that good enough? YES!"

To which I replied that I too think the point of this April poem a day writing in a semi-public sphere (with all that draft posting can have of stripping naked in front of a bunch of people you may never see again) is to awaken a willingness to throw myself into the different kinds of poems that may emerge on a daily basis and their hit and missnesses and to seek out something in the process of making language into something in the world instead of leaving it dormant under a doorstep.

As for the poem I put up publicly here, I think of it neither as hit nor miss, just as a kind of starting line, a place of beginning the month, even though perhaps it is a miss, not a hit--it just somehow seemed an honest way to begin the month of poems--not on my own terms, in my entirely own voice and vocab, but on the terms of poetry and a poem as dialogue, as hearing another's music (that of George Vance) and seeing where that music might resonate in me. For me, also, I liked that Persephone came to mind. spring. looked under or waking up. to emerge, sprout, spring into the air exposed.

Jennifer K Dick said...

Type-o:

Instead of "Persephone came to mind. spring. looked under or waking up. to emerge, sprout, spring into the air exposed."

It should read 'locked' instead of 'looked'

as in

"Persephone came to mind. spring. locked under or waking up. to emerge, sprout, spring into the air exposed."

K. Lorraine Graham said...

I enjoyed reading this first installment. This in particular is lovely:

farscape or shouder-point
her-shed
nightyearnings’ link
between known (non) points

I've decided to post my April poems as well!

Unknown said...

Hi Jennifer,
We met a long time ago at WICE, where I took one of your courses for creativity.I decided to look for you on the ether last week, as I'm facebooking, blogging and writing "full time" now. I admire your 30 poems in 30 days project, quite an undertaking, which I will follow with pleasure. Thanks
Henrietta Richer (Guay)
P.S. I find the authors etc names in blue on your page difficult to read, but maybe that's my old eyes.

Jennifer K Dick said...

Thanks Henrietta and K. Lorraine for your comments! I will go over and check out your posts, KL! I am not necessarily posting a poem everyday. but am writing one. I did post a poem for April 2nd to0, though, a very different voiced thing, up at rewords.http://rewords.blogspot.fr/2012/04/who-by-jkd.html

As for the blue.... that blue is for links, but I will see what I can do about tweaking it. Click on the blue and you are transported elsewhere in cyberland.

I will also look at your writings and bloggings, Henrietta! So glad you are writing and full time, too!
--Jen