A Fresh Perspective

As you can see, I've not posted anything new recently. I have decided that my energies are better spent concentrating on my poetry. I miss doing the blog but can't do everything. My priority is the poetry.

I've been lucky to have found a writer's group, published a little, won writing competitions, completed a writing mentorship. I am nearly finished my first poetry manuscript. 

I want to complete the work I've begun and do it well. That requires commitment and self discipline. It requires focus and settling down to what it most important. Poetry.

Thanks for reading my blogs and following my journey. Wish me luck with the next steps.

Brother

One of the methods I've used to learn more about writing poetry is to copy a poem by someone else, then study how that poet created the images and made the poem work. It sounds simple, but isn't.

I copy the poem longhand and leave every second line blank. Then I make several photocopies and use the pages as study work sheets. I begin by going over the poem line by line and making my own notes in the blank spaces about what happens and how in the poem; what metaphors are used and how they are working together; how the sounds of the words echo each other and echo the sense of the line, and any additional ideas this study process creates. This is a messy but fruitful project. I end up with many pages of notes.

Sometimes I learn something new about how to write, the importance of enjambment for example, the uniqueness of where the poetic line ends, or keeps hanging until the next line.

Sometimes this process leads me to a poem of my own. This poem "Brother" is loosely based on Ted Kooser's poem "Mother" from Delights and Shadows.

Brother

(after Ted Kooser's poem "Mother" from Delights and Shadows)

Late August already, and the mountain ash

sways, weighted with fruit, clusters of orange.

Colour so bright, it stops my breath.

You have been gone thirty years today

and have missed my two marriages and one long

divorce. I sat in that smothering house,

restrained inside my own ribs, until the memory

of your words pulled me out

gasping.

Late goldfinches exchange ragged feathers

for fearless wings. Hydrangeas bloom.

Sturdy white blossoms deepen dusky pink.

This season bursts into the one coming

and the air is delicious.

This poem was published in The Nashwaak Review, Volume 34/35, the Summer/ Fall Issue of 2015. Thanks to TNR for this opportunity and permission to share.

For additional information on Ted Kooser, click here. For a copy of Delights and Shadows, click on the title.

The photos and poems on my blog are copyright 2014-2016 Carol Steel, unless otherwise noted.

My Interview by Quest

I am delighted to have been interviewed by Quest, The Prayer Bench newsletter.

Here is a link to the interview, in which I respond to questions about my poetry and which includes two of my poems: The Late Season (published by Galleon III) and The Orb Weaver (published by The Nashwaak Review).

Thank you to Janice MacLean for asking me to be part of this month's communication to the followers of The Prayer Bench. To find out more about The Prayer Bench, click here.

All work by Janice is copyright to her; my poems and photos are copyright to me. The photo of me reading at the Attic Owl Reading Series, which is included in Quest, was taken by George Griffin, used with his permission.

Common Mergansers

Hello again.

I'll share some poems on my blog from now on, but only ones which have been previously published by literary journals. The reason? Most journals consider posting on a blog to be "publishing" and will not accept anything which they consider to have been previously published.

This poem was included in the Summer 2015 Volume 46, No. 182 of The Antigonish Review. I am happy that TAR accepted one of my poems and thank them for that opportunity.


Common Mergansers

We heard them coming,
              notes out of tune,
                           flying low and straight,

racing their shadows
              over the water.
                            They splashed down

to drift and to fish,
              in front of the cottage.
                           "There's something about

these ducks," you said,
             "they take every damn trout.
                           Fishing isn't as good

as it used to be.
              Nothing is."
                            I felt the mud

cold sludge
              between my toes,
                           the strike of your hook.



A friend told me that fisher folk hate Common Merganser ducks as they are capable of cleaning out entire fishing holes with their hooked bills and efficient diving tactics.

I hope you enjoy this poem. I think it captures those moments in relationships when we each say unkind things to one another. Because we know each other so well, we know where to sink the hook.

You can find out more about The Antigonish Review literary journal by clicking on this link. Thank you to TAR for publishing my poem.

Attic Owl Reading Series, January 28, 2016

January 28, 2016, I will be one of the readers at the Attic Owl Reading Series in Moncton at Café C'est la Vie. On the Attic Owl site, there is a link to my blog in order for people to learn a bit more about me. That is a problem for those searching out my poems.

Because poetry which has been shared on a blog is deemed to have been published, I don't put my poems on my blog. That way, they are eligible for consideration by literary journals. I have just started to submit my poems to publishers in the past fifteen months. Six have been published in Galleon III and IV, in the Nashwaak Review and The Antigonish Review.

I began writing poetry after I retired early from a career in mental health education and promotion, and following two serious illnesses. Epiphanies. Now or never moments. Write, right now or else....

While visitors to my blog won't see poetry, they will discover my love of photography and the natural world, plus my lifelong fascination with how relationships work, or don't.

I will read some of my poems at the Attic Owl Reading Series this Thursday, 6 pm at Café C'est La Vie in Moncton. Come listen. Enjoy the work of botanist, novelist, artist and poet, Jane Tims. There will be music. The Café is licensed, serves great meals and will be full of lively folks interested in the arts. 

There will be a donation box to accept your coins and bills which help defray the costs incurred by Lee D.Thompson, who does such a great job of promoting and organizing these events.

I hope you will come and enjoy the evening.

Words in colour will take you to another site with more information, if you click on them.

Dear Elizabeth

Dear Elizabeth

It’s New York at the Women’s Project Theatre, a full house. The audience settles and reads the Elizabeth Bishop poems left as “A Poem for your pocket” on each seat. Programs rustle, anticipation mounts, the house lights brighten then dim, a cockroach scurries beneath a desk on the stage. We are there to watch Dear Elizabeth, a play written by Sarah Ruhl, originally published as Words in the Air in 2008.

The play is based upon the thirty year correspondence and friendship between the poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. Their relationship is complicated.

Pulitzer-winner Bishop, who was lesbian, was left financially stable enough to be able to travel as she wished, a love for travel reflected in her work.  Lowell, also a Pulitzer recipient was twice divorced and his third marriage ended when he died in 1977.

All the words in the play are taken from their letters and their poetry, and force the audience or reader to look at their lives not as story, but as lives lived.

Bishop’s and Lowell’s admiration for each other’s work is immediate and their letters are full of compliments and professional observations and suggestions. Their friendship is an ever-evolving affection, with each seeing the other as that rare person who understands the need for a balance of solitude and public image. There are oblique references to infidelity, depression and alcoholism. (BWW Review, Michael Dale)

The play begins with the poets as adults, so no mention is made of Elizabeth’s childhood in Great Village, Nova Scotia, her Canadian connection.

Dear Elizabeth unfolds as letters are read from two wooden desks placed on opposite sides of the stage. The cast frequently changes. The evening we attended, the actors were Ellen McLaughlin and Rinde Eckert, with Polly Noonan as a kind of stage manager, stationed in an upstage corner.

Familiar with the work of each of these 20^th century poets, the play is a delight for me. As a poet, I value the profound effect of friendship and knowledgeable critiques of one’s writing, as well as the necessity of dealing with real life while writing.

I appreciate the kindness and generosity of my daughters in taking me to see Dear Elizabeth, as I know their own tastes would have led them to another sort of play. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and appreciated the evidence of their recognition of me, as poet.

The cockroach provided a play within the play, scuttling around Rinde’s shoes during the evening. When foot work became too active, it took off for the safety of the travel props at the back of the stage.

Life intrudes into our stories without warning.

Words is colour will take you to another site with additional information, if you click on them.

#enlargethepicture

Photo is not mine but comes from the CBC news story linked below.

#enlargethepicture

(Twenty Facebook Statuses)

1.      You need to know

2.      The past is just a story

3.      #enlargethepicture

4.      Open to anyone who wants to enter

5.      A woman’s body is not dangerous

6.      #feelconnected

7.      At the school, buns are rising

8.      #gowiththeflow

9.      The boys are lined up

10.  Jelly doughnut dimpled down the middle

11.  One share, 9 people like this

12.  A woman’s body will not make you do stupid things

13.  That black you see is your shadow

14.  What does this mean?

15.  The answer is honest, candid, resonates

16.  #feelssoright

17.  If you do stupid things

18.  #twelvesecondslater

19.  it is because you choose to do stupid things

20.  Write the next chapter 

.

The idea for the poem comes from “20 Imaginary Facebook Statuses” by Natasha Tiniacos. Click here to learn more about her.

My poem is composed of actual Facebook statuses posted by friends and acquaintances, pulled from my account on May 19, 2015 -- just an arrangement I put together.

The assignment this week is to write a political poem in a style I haven't used before.  Here I understand political to mean taking a stand. I chose gender politics, the stereotypes and biases which fill our world. 

In particular, I am interested in and annoyed by the fact that a 

young woman was disciplined in her high school recently, for

coming to class wearing a sundress with her bra straps showing.

She was accused of distracting the male students and of being an 

enticement to bad behaviour. Click here for link to CBC story.

Aren't young men and all men responsible for their own choices of 

behaviour? Aren't we all, each one of us?

I apologize for the uneven spacing of the previous lines. Blogger is misbehaving.

Revision of Yesterday's Poem

Spring                     

This is spring – the wooing

of sunlight and soil.

Its warm breezes

coax crocuses and squills,

unwrap pungent earth, wake up

the bees.

Now winter has left us, gone 

the snow,

shards of ice,

its relentless 

gales.

Winter teaches us to love

the innumerable greens,

the fertility of melt,

and the return of the robins,

as they stamp,

heads canted

listen for worms.

This is the revision of a poem, using a turn at the line "Winter teaches us to love." What do you think?  Is it better than the version from yesterday, or worse?  I will continue to look at it, to see where I can improve the writing.

Spring -- Yes, Another Poem About Spring

Spring                                

This is spring – the wooing

of sunlight and soil,

now winter has left us, gone with the snow, shards

of ice; its relentless gales

turned to warm breezes

coax crocuses and squills,

unwrap pungent earth, wake up

the bees.

This is the damp season.

Learn to embrace it.

Spring teaches us to love

the innumerable greens,

the fertility of melt,

and the return of the robins,

as they stamp,

heads canted

listen for worms.

Last Sunday, was the first day we had no gritty snow remaining in our yard.  In Eastern Canada, the winter has been harsh this year, so thoughts of spring are an obsession for me. This poem moves from beginnings of spring still attached to winter, turns on the couplet, then falls joyfully into full spring.

This week, the online course I am following is about turns in a poem.  

For example, sonnets have turns.  An argument is implied and developed; the eighth line comes through to the idea of "maybe" and right after, turns the argument in a different direction.  

A second kind of turn happens not as an argument in a poem but at the line end.  If the syntax doesn't naturally pause at the turn, it is an enjambment. We are sucked into the next line by our curiosity about where the syntax is going to go because it's open, it's broken, it's enjambed. 

There's another turn that can be a kind of conflation of a perceptual and a conceptual turn. Within the poem, there can be a complete reversal of the perceptual scenario. And there can be a conceptual reversal, this turn from talking about a subject to talking about how we can talk about the subject, which is in words -- that miracle that there's a possibility of putting what we feel and what we perceive into words, that we have faith that our words will offer up experience to someone else. 

There are turns that make you feel great to be reading a poem, when you end up in a place that you didn't expect at all. That's one of the exciting things about poetry.

The idea for the poem, I owe to Laura Lush’s poem “Winter” from The First Day of Winter,

(Rondale Press, 1997.) To  read the poem "Winter" and to learn more about Laura Lush, click on this link.

Slow Dissolve into Drizzle and Fog

This week, my online studies are taking me into the world of "Formalism and Meter."  Discussions propose the idea that form can liberate the imagination, that the constraints of form can lead to new material and can be a way to generate new poems.

One of the forms we've studied is the pantoum, a poem of any length composed of four line stanzas. In each stanza, the second and fourth lines of each stanza serve as the first and third lines of the next stanza. And the last line of the pantoum is generally the same as the first.  The form removes certain elements of choice for the poet as one adheres to the rules. And that can be kind of freeing. It is a good form in which to tell a story, as the elements of repetition unfold just a bit at a time, as well as offering musicality in the retelling.

The following is a draft of my homework assignment.  I have revision to do, but wanted to share where I am to date. Also, I have discovered that I don't like writing in a controlled form, at least not yet.  I am encouraged to hear from others that this gets easier the more often one does it. I do hope so. Sometimes learning is such hard slogging.

Slow Dissolve into Drizzle and Fog

This memory returns each winter

with February thaw, the slush, black ice.

We skid and climb the foggy air,

and land, buried by snow.

Slush and black ice, February thaw,

fog rises, surrounds, blinds us;

buried by the fog and wet snow.

Motor heat melts the snow keep deeper.

Fog rises, surrounds, blinds us.

Grey car, grey fog, grey morning.

Motor heat melts the snow keep deeper.

I shovel fast to free you.

Grey car, grey fog, grey morning,

we disappear under fog and drizzle.

I shovel fast to free you.

Twice, the tow truck drives by.

We disappear in this drizzle and fog,

after the skid and that slope of air.

The tow truck drives by us again.

Every winter this memory returns.

Words and photo are copyright 2011-2015 Carol Steel

The Colours of Water

...the crocuses bloom the colours of water rethinking itself. 

This word image is from the poem "Crocuses" in Lynn Davies' book, The Bridge That Carries the Road.  I am studying the work of Lynn Davies, as one way of teaching myself about writing better poetry.

To learn more about Lynn Davies and her poetry, click here.

Mademoiselle Bourque

Mademoiselle Bourque

Grade ten, up the wooden stairs, to sit in rows in the room with tall windows of wavy glass, an out of focus outside world. Ready to watch a slender woman with silver hair and crooked teeth teach language. In her French accent, telling us that learning makes dents, deeper and deeper, forms ridges in the brain, holding her fists together pressing them up to show the dent, lowering and pushing them together tight, tight to show the ridge of knowledge held by the crevasses of our brains. “Comme ça. Comme ça,” she’d laugh. “You can remember.  You can do this.” Folding homework into paper planes, flying them to the warped world beyond the windows, sometimes knocking her red geraniums out, too, we made fun of her brown flat shoes, her garnet broach worn every day. We couldn’t imagine her life outside that room, though she’d shared stories of Paris, museums, cafés, a lover long ago. When we returned after Christmas, they told us she had appendicitis.  The supply teacher’s bright lipstick, tight skirts, high heels didn’t say, “You can remember”; the Science teacher across the hall, all her attention.

        Years later, I hear Mademoiselle Bourque’s voice in my brain whenever I fear a failure coming on. “You can do this.” The ridge holds tight. It’s then I think of her, wonder how she survived this narrow English town, and what she lost in love. What dreams did have for her life, that slender woman named Aurora, the shimmering light of dawn?

NOTE of explanation about this prose poem:

In lesson three of my online writing course, Marvin Bell says to learn to write better poetry, “Find poems that knock your socks off because of how they are written, not solely because of what was written about.”

"Pay attention to syntax, the secret of free verse." Syntax refers to word order, the grammar of the sentence, its architecture, the engine of forward momentum, the thing that ties one word to another, one moment to the moment to come.

The homework assignment from this lesson is to:

     1. find a poem that knocks your socks off. (I found “Mr. Philips” by Lynn Davies, from her book The Bridge That Carries the Road.)

    2. use the poem as a pattern or template to create a prose poem

So, here is “Mademoiselle Bourque” from a pattern closely made from “Mr. Philips”, with thanks (and apologies) to Lynn Davies.  Please, note that my poem is a homework assignment and is not meant as a separate, publishable poem.  It is too close to Lynn's terrific original to be considered anything but a writing attempt to learn a new form.  Anything else would be plagiarism.

If you’d like to know more about Lynn Davies’ great poetry,click here

The Edge of Dreams

The Edge of Dreams

Words             g

                        n                                              at the edge of DREAMS

                        a

                        w

t e a s e                                    t a u n t

catch me if you can

wake & wait

                        yearn

                                    for those

                                                                        elusive lines

RUSH      of

                        t

                         u

                          m

                           b

                            l

                             e

                              d                            thoughts

sudden                        s  c  r  a  m  b  l  e                       to spit words                                    OUT

to scribble words

                        o

                        w

                        n   
      

spill the

                                     R  i   P  p  L e  S                     of                                 SONG

In lesson three of my online writing course, one assignment is to write a poem using the whole page. I must think about how to tap the page's white space and resources to surprise the reader with expressive moments, using gutters, margins, headers, footers, fonts, etc., without taking up space merely to use space.

This poem "The Edge of Dreams" is loosely based on an excerpt from "Writing Poetry," a poem I wrote in 2011, published in The Calling, A Collection of New Canadian Poetry.

Spring, a Poem

Spring

Snow pulls your cedar fence apart, pushes it slant.

Crossbars slump into symbols for “less than.”

Winter loosens its hold, sinks into flood, rushes

the downward slope to the river.

A red ribbon rides the melt, dangles on the lip

of the storm drain, bright floss tangled in a gritty grill.

You wait weeks for the slow dissolve of winter,

to discover your yard, wounded.

Then, one morning, above the crocus

and compost, this burst of russet

on a damp grey limb.

A robin sings.

Last week, I posted six objective observations from my neighbourhood, as part of a course I am following. This week, the assignment is to use those observations as the basis for a poem. The poem should also make use of sonic word associations and utilize differing line lengths to create pauses at expressive moments.

It is helpful to begin with a bit of language that holds interest, such as my “slow dissolve of winter” and from that create a word cloud of sonic associations. 

The word “dissolve” produced a word cloud of solvent, ventilation, discuss, discover, concussive, dishevel, solution, ablution, sheen, blue.

The word “winter” gave me a word cloud of winner, nerd, twin, tern, turn, winsome, win some, terrify, wonder, wound her, wound.

I used the words “discover” and “wound”  in my poem because they added sonic echo and because they suited what I wanted to say.

In “Spring”, my line lengths vary as I create brief stops or breaks where I want the thought/image to pause. Often at the beginning of the next line, there is a twist or additional information, a surprise. Line breaks allow me to share with the reader, the places where a pause will help with their understanding of the picture I am painting.

“Spring” is a draft poem, a work in progress. As always, my photos and words are copyright 

©2011-2015 Carol Steel.

What Emerges from the Snow?

Snow pulls the cedar fence apart, pushes it slant. Grey crossbars, twenty years old, rest on each other, make less than signs. Where spikes once held, there are pale ovals with dark holes.

In the spring melt-water, a red ribbon undulates and rides, then stops to dangle in the grate of a storm drain. The water rushes over the edges, gurgles and flows to the river.

Damp earth and dried oak leaves smell of mold and dog poop. The air tastes warm with a hint of ice.

On the spring wind, pale dry maple leaves rise rattling to trace the walls of the house, twirl and descend again. Bleached, broken bits of wisteria vine crisscross in brittle heaps, on a thawed patch of garden beside the pergola.

The magnolia bark, brown-speckled-grey, has tawny splits, rips where limbs broke with the weight of snow. Wounded branches hang and swing, still attached by wood's fibers. They tug and rub, creak in the wind. Squall-torn magnolia buds, encased in hairy brown, skitter across the crust of snow.

These observations, descriptive and objective are part of a homework assignment from an online course I am following. It is a challenge to keep the observations free of metaphor and added imagery. 

I am enjoying the reminders to be a keen observer, using all of my senses, in order to gather the word materials to create poetry. 

Good reminders. Good self-discipline. 

The Skins of a Dream

The Skins of a Dream

Paper birch, way back in the woods,
      whose barks
            curl back like the creamy

skins of a dream...

~ John Thompson ~

To learn more about the poet, John Thompson, click on this link .

Thirst

Learning to write well, and growing in my poetry writing mean finding balance between asking for help and trusting my instincts.

Sometimes, I search for water before I have taken the time to know the depth of my own thirst. At those times, my longing outstrips my patience and I make mistakes. It is necessary to gauge both the depth of what I need and what I can hold, before seeking, before opening my mouth to drink.

When I do not trust my instincts, the flood gates burst open. I get in over my head and nearly drown. Tidal waves carry me away from where I really want to go.  It becomes a question of survival and adaptation ... grow gills, swim, develop another row of teeth.

It is hard to accept that it may take more years to acquire a sense of wholeness in my writing, more years than I had hoped. But I have learned this: My writing requires learning to live with the tensions of my own evolution, learning to quiet my doubts, and yet to proceed.

It requires trusting myself to know what I need to quench my thirst.


This blog post is a part of my reflections from an online retreat study I followed with The Prayer Bench offered by Janice MacLean.  You can find out more about her online retreats at:
http://www.prayerbench.ca 

Stoney Creek Memories

To help me grow in my writing,  I study the work of others and often find a line or a poem which resonates deep within me.  

The line "Only a picture from a blue tin box" and the poem it begins are such inspirations.  The poem is "Cape Enrage"  by Lynn Davies, from her first collection of poems, The Bridge that Carries the Road, published by Brick Books in 1999.

This photo of me and two of my younger sisters was taken during a stay at our grandparents' home in Stoney Creek in 1954.  They looked after us while our parents were moving our household to another city.  

Lynn's poem evoked this memory.  I appreciate Lynn Davies for the beauty, inspiration, education and challenge her work offers.  I learn much about how to write better, examining the way a poem is created by another person.  In this instance, her first line brings a memory and her poem gives me a guide, by which to write this prose remembrance. 

This is my memory-

Stoney Creek

"Only a picture from a blue tin box." The week we stayed while our parents moved to Belle River. My grandfather steadied a brownie camera, told us, "Hold still." The July sun warmed water in the steel tubs, heated the galvanized walls which held us. My little sisters splashed and jumped; drops flew to my grandfather's trousers, 'til he shook with laughter.

In the picture, I wear a red bathing suit, my grandmother found in the attic, a gaudy orange flower sewed to the strap. This tub held Peggy's drinking water when she was alive, whinnying, running the pastures. Grandfather told me she had been a handful. After a drink, she'd hold water in her mouth. When he turned, she'd dribble a shock of cold down his back.

In the slow afternoon, soaked in water and laughter, we worked wonders: raindrops on the stiff gladiolas behind us; magic liniment on bites from black flies; wet-ghost hand prints on grey cedar shingles. We were water sprites spitting water onto a gravel driveway, watching it dry, disappear, dreaming of that horse full of tricks, all mischief gone.


Words in coloured ink will take you to another site with additional information, if you click on them.  I continue to grow in my writing, am aware that I have much to learn, and am grateful to work which shines a light for me.