Almost Invisible and Other Good Finds

Image by TrailSource.com via Flickr

Mark Strand has a new book out! I need to order Almost Invisible. It's on my wish list for now because I have too many books in the pile, but I may just have to skip over a few and come back to them! My poem for the week is Strand's "Harmony in the Boudoir" from this new collection.

A few other good finds from this past week:

Another book I can't wait to get my hands and eyes on: Jack Gilbert's Collected Poems 

"How to write a letter to a fan" by Roald Dahl

I love this flash fiction story by Tawnysha Greene in Dogplotz: "Woman Things"


What's going on in your world? What are your good finds of the week?

I'll conclude this post with a tweet that made me stop and reflect on my writing life (I need to listen more!) from Poets House:

We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.
                      -Li Po

The Portable Poetry Workshop: Connecting Content - Thematic Shapes of Poems

Pen and Paper by mlpdesign via Flickr

I know poems have shapes. I've even seen a poem about a rabbit crafted in the shape of a carrot in forum for an online class I was taking. People can get creative with their forms, certainly, but I've never thought about a poem being organized in a thematic shape.

While I don't think a lot of poems are crafted with this in mind, I find it interesting to observe poems with a possible thematic shape in mind. Jack states that in some poems, "the poet's aesthetic sense and the perceptions stemming from the topic create the organizing principle that composes the poem's thematic shape."

The end of the chapter offers writing exercises according to both argumentative and natural shapes. I've shared one from each below along with the example Jack offers:

Argumentative Shapes - Centripetal 
Holding the thesis of your poem in mind, associate images, scenes, and tropes located outside the immediate situation but whose connotations move the material inward toward the unstated central thesis.
An example of this shape is Louis Simpson's "The Silent Piano."

Natural Shapes - Circular
In your closure, return to the same idea that your opining lines suggest, but do so as an "enriched restatement." An example of this shape is one of my favorite poems, Mark Strand's "Keeping Things Whole."

--

And now, because it is Valentine's Day, a centrifugal thematic shaped poem (I think): The Meaning of Zero: A Love Poem by Amy Uyematsu.

Do you have a favorite Valentine's or Anti-Valentine's Day poem or story?

Poetry you wish you'd written

Today, I'm daydreaming about poetry I wish I'd written seeing as I'm having a little difficulty writing it lately.  Wherever I am/I am what is missing.  I keep hearing this in my head and know Mark Strand's "Keeping Things Whole" goes first on this list.

...The secret life 
begins early, is kept alive
by all that's unpopular
in you...
Stephen Dunn's "A Secret Life" was given to me as a little cutout for my pocket by Jack Myers.  This one is a close second to Strand's.

If I took the time to sit and work on a list, I doubt I'd ever leave the chair.  While you're thinking of the poetry you wish you'd written, I'll leave you with words from another I wish I'd written, "The Words Under the Words" by Naomi Shihab Nye:

Answer, if you hear the words under the words
otherwise it is just a world with a lot of rough edges,
difficult to get through, and our pockets full of stones.