I’m delighted to be the featured presenter at the next Young Willamette Writers meeting, set for Jan 3, 2012 at the Old Church in downtown Portland. You can find out more about the Young Willamette Writers here.

We’ll be doing an hour of poetry, starting at 7 p.m. The Old Church is located at SW 11th and Clay, and the event is FREE. It’s a great way for young writers to start the new year off with some new words.

RED DEPENDS UPON WATER

so much waits upon
rain

ten thousand pewter
trunks

dry gray barrows of
bark

cinnabar leaves fractured red
wheels

ready and willing to
decay

— B. Campbell Ford

so much depends
upon

a white wheel
rolling

through a white sky
agitating

molecules until atoms breathe out
blue

so much depends
upon

a white wheel
mounding

scattered clouds
glazing

gray undersides
coral-red

so much depends
upon

a white wheel
tearing

through static
wool

freeing whorls of white
rain

loosening skeins of black
thunder

so much depends
upon

a white wheel
spinning

purple-black opaque silk
shielding

our eyes from the
plasma-

maddened Midas
touch

of the white-wheeled
sun

— Pattie Palmer-Baker

WHITE RAIN DEPENDS, WHEEL

the world depends
upon

the wheel turning
steadily

moving the earth
surely

keeping the seas
contained

maintaining mountains’ upright
positions

sending flowing rivers
seaward

always the wheel
turning

earth and sky
singing

all systems dancing
gaily

world radiant in
white

from hot sun
shining

and cool rain
shimmering

wheel keeps turning
turning

— Mary K. Moen

–

The Reed piece is a profile of the poet Elyse Fenton, “Rugby, Nails and Verse,” while the Chronicle piece, “Hunting Spiders,” is a review of the book, Silk & Venom, and a conversation with its author, Greta Binford. Have a read.

RL) Can you talk about process vs. content? What’s the significance of cultivating a process?

DJ) I think we live in a highly content-driven society and it starts affecting us at a very young age. The focus is on the product, the final grade. When I teach at public schools, I tell students that it’s okay to make a mess. Rather than dictating a word count or a due date or a structure, I emphasize the drafting process. When I work with adults, I tell them they need to write 1,000 words to get 100 good ones.

I had a dream once that Hilary Clinton and I were at a conference and had to write a haiku. She insisted on writing the perfect haiku, and I was trying to convince her to write a mess. We went back and forth with battling philosophies.

I maintain you have to trust the mess and trust that you will work your way out of it. Most people become gifted writers over time, with practice. I think of Malcolm Gladwell’s “ten-thousand hour” rule. You have to put in those ten thousand hours. The more you trust process and the mess that comes, the faster you will arrive at the “right words,” if they even exist.

And here’s a link to the interview in its entirety.

Enjoy, and thanks for reading!

If you head over to ye olde listen page, you’ll find six poems added to the online radio. These are audio clips from a recent appearance on “Talking Earth,” the twice-monthly poetry program on Portland’s KBOO radio. The poems, in alphabetical order are:

• The Distance Between Here and Montana
• Feeding Emu
• Marital Affair
• Sand
• Seeds
• Why Men Fly Into Buildings

Wait, there’s more . . .

You can also find some other clips from “Talking Earth” as well as a few Caffeinated Art performances over at Archive.org.

There’s still more . . .

Finally, I’m pleased and honored to be included on Oregon Poetic Voices, a site that provides a “comprehensive digital archive of poetry readings that will complement existing print collections of poetry across the state”. Stop by and have a listen to more than a 100 different voices from across Oregon.

Thanks for reading and for listening. It’s good to be back.

For more info, check out the Mountain Writers site.

Thanks –

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

A few months ago, I went into great detail about the power of Mister Skylight, and I’m delighted to share another poem from the book. “Party at the Dump” leaves nothing out, but rather than get too metaphorical or mystical with “one man’s junk” type thoughts, Ed thrusts us through disillusion and old fashion weirdness as the scene shifts in and out of darkness and light, dawn and dusk, and all the sweet filth that makes possessing a body such a strange, joyous ride. Take your time and let it unfold.

Party at the Dump

What can’t be seen under the thrown
was home. The sky and its turbulent guard
fresco the kestrel storm harmless and east,
arrive like a hostage, an ear, a finger in the mail.
Wind unhooks the mirliton vine, kisses each begonia.
Shadow bricks the window shy. Cups fly.
There are times one ought to charge or fall back.
What I win from masking-tape tic-tac-toe
on the bedroom’s nine windowpanes,
I spend in silver, spend in empty hallway.
No one’s my brother tonight, watering his lawn.
So I take my chair to the roof flat as the hour.
Wind hangs laundry on the gable.
The hour is suitcase and landmine.
The moon rises over the abandoned town
like cutlery on the high shelf.
Our fishing camp is hip-deep now,
at the end of tidal song. Westbank cattle swim
to the east bank, and wind turns wood
in high cello. Sunset ripens and ruptures.
If I were nothing I’d be home by now
in Hemet, or Anza, or Los Angeles,
below the moon’s IV drip. From the pueblo
of the anesthesiologist and soup spoon
there is some wandering up. No one there is
my brother watering his lawn, and he calls
to see how I’m doing. And this is where I start,
at Mr. Samuel’s Tire Shop on St. Claude Avenue.
Life must be worth something
for the loss of it to hurt so much.
Take the foreign policy of weather,
palmetto bugs caravanning up the lime tree.
Winds crater power lines, and from these,
an empty and alone beauty busters down,
bullies the shotgun house, keeps a body
up late. Dogs know, the wild ones,
wheel-scarred and healed, that the storm
brings from hiding to scratch a deaf ear,
to sneak short lifelong sneaks brave to live:
I know the secret is to stay low,
adventure between calendar and heart.
Today’s hurricane flag only waves in photos.
The ocean opens Grand Isle like a casket.
We hit the beach late, dimple blanket
beside the fishing pier, where children seal,
spell with sparklers the Fourth of July.
Roman candles fire green artillery into the sea.
Teenagers park, sneak through scrub
to beach, and burn driftwood distinctions
between lie, lay, lain. My interest
is in things that disappear, ten men in dark
jackets staring asea, some foreign orchestra.
Is that you in the seat ahead of me?
You’ve never been here before.
This frog comes halfway in the open door
of Butler’s Bar and Restaurant. So it must be
frog time. Saturday night scouring levees down
into the gutters of Tchoupitoulas.
Then it’s Sunday and I’m at your doorstep.
Between Mr. Samuel’s and the cop garage:
water. As a kid, I knew the magic show
was a shape of eternity. And somewhere else
the desert smells like fresh belts and sweetly
tries to take us down. We went to look at what
was being forged, a quarrel in the mountains,
sketchbook avalanches covering up the world
and its passports, any business what the mountain does.
Hostages wash up at the embassy, unharmed.
Seven days after the storm those who did not want
to leave, or did, find ground in the laughter of loss.
When the wind turns along the fence, when the gray
horse rounds the turn, blue arguments gnarl
podiums of sky. Wind knees its August februation.
The boy with the web painted on his face
pursues his thoughts through the vineyard.

**

A Poet a Day is a month-long celebration of poets and poetry, in honor of National Poetry Month. Writers reserve all rights to their work, and all work appears with their permission.

**

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

After a quick walk through Nathan’s work, you begin to recall any number of pleasure centers you forgot about. The first line of the following poem sets the stage for agitation. What chaos awaits? Just a little reordering of our known world.

Business Casual Pajamas

Panic plans the day’s shape. A confusion of chains. Steady:
no one stole the toothbrush. My portrait is not centered
in a haze of candle smoke. Even so, during the instant
of preoccupation, the aquarium goes green and my daughter
diapers the cat.

I shake stock props from a box: a bootlace, an object
that remains unnamed. Elevators and highways rumble
through my personal anecdotes. My precious crescent
is brittle like an antique handgun but shiny like the sheen
of soap on a daffodil.

There’s no teaching what the neighbor’s know: frozen
balloons and fishnet. Minutes are ellipses. Now is
the hour when gnats binge on heat. I’ll paint the trees
to resemble street lights and eliminate cover. Still,
a melody begs . . . the whirring nowhere.

**

A Poet a Day is a month-long celebration of poets and poetry, in honor of National Poetry Month. Writers reserve all rights to their work, and all work appears with their permission.

**

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

Artists and writers wake up to their unique callings every day, only to wake and wake again to new callings but never quite getting over the trick and difficulty of acknowledging, realizing and honoring the truth. In the following poem, our narrator flings a wide-angle lens out to the world, brings the view back to herself, then goes further inward, trying to capture the moment when this life as a writer began.

The Artist Feels Small

Pin-striped brokers wearing black market gold
watches negotiate timber contracts on Russian
forests over dinner in Prague. Medics in white lab
coats wipe fly eggs from the matted eyes of Somali
children under bed nets. Rail thin models giraffe
the Paris runways after a last drag of a Gitane back-
stage. Latino gangs with pierced tongues howl
at midnight in the empty streets of Albuquerque.
And in New York City exotic queens glue silver
feathers to their skin for the gay pride parade.

And I? I search the trash for words to describe,
pile behind me discarded lines, the refuse, the steaming
heap of redo forcing my plastic lawn chair
to the edge of a road lined with dusty date palms
that leads to San somewhere. A caballero on his skinny,
bare-hoofed mount quick-steps by.

I’ll do what I can to fledge a writer’s life of sorts
but these choices are hard. It started when I was small,
and downstairs heard others’ voices or, forgotten inside
my dark and airless playhouse in the middle of the living
room floor, listened in on their conversation. It started when
I stopped to watch the galloping river from a motionless
shore, listened to its instantaneous hello, good-bye.

**
A Poet a Day is a month-long celebration of poets and poetry, in honor of National Poetry Month. Writers reserve all rights to their work, and all work appears with their permission.

**

As with yesterday’s poem from Celeste Thompson, Mark puts us in the water again. In this case, the reader, along with the narrator, merge with the calm, placid scene of pale stars that dot the lake, and shove off into the coming darkness.

Moving Into Night

After dinner dishes have been washed and put away,
I walk down to the dock.

Clouds hover against snow-capped peaks.
The sun, already below the horizon, turns glaciers pink.

Shadows stretch across the hills
like blankets being drawn up for the night.

Along the distant shore,
one last fisherman trolls for kokanee…

Below my feet, trout meander between pilings
glide over dappled stones.

The moon rises. On the water,
it is shattered by each wave.

With cupped hands, I scoop up a brilliant shard
and wash my face with wet light.

Soon, the wind dies, and the moon is again whole.
Pale stars, floating lanterns, dot the lake.

I untie my boat, shove off,
and lifting the oars, row across the heavens.

**
A Poet a Day is a month-long celebration of poets and poetry, in honor of National Poetry Month. Writers reserve all rights to their work, and all work appears with their permission.

**