Sunday, April 7, 2024

The Return of Poetry Month: Lost in Westchester

Yesterday, at the Tarrytown Reservoir

April is, of course, Poetry Month -- a fact that should strike fear and wonder into the hearts of anyone reading this blog.

I am, of course, once again, following a random poetry prompt to write a poem each day in April 2024. Some of the poems will undoubtedly wind up here because I consider myself in the Prehistoric Man phase of my poetic path. My MacBook Air provides durable pigments, and this blog provides the walls of a cave that will go undiscovered for melleniums.

Yesterday, I sought inspiration at the Westchester Poetry Festival. My ticket claimed the festival would be held  at the Hudson Valley Writers Center at Philipse Manor Station in Sleepy Hollow. Which turned out to be deserted when I arrived. I didn't take this as a metaphor. I didn't take this as a practical joke or as a sign I was unwanted. No, I persisted.

A flyer at the haunted train station informed me that the festival was instead being held in Dobbs Ferry, a mere 6 miles away as the foreboding crow flies, but a 25-minute odyssey amid winding roads and long stop lights in weekend Westchester traffic.

I eventually arrived there. There, being The Masters School, a complex of buildings surrounding a crowded playing field, which was absurdly trafficked and crowded despite seemingly no athletic event in progress. Then again, perhaps it was track and field.

Still, I persisted. I found the festival, which looked like this from above:


I enjoyed myself There. I ate free cookies and brownies. The poets informed, provoked, and inspired me. Arriving back home, I prompted myself to create my own "writing prompt" poem. This:

A Dozen Poetry Prompts Inspired by a Visit to the Westchester Poetry Festival

 

1.        The Tony Soprano Rest Area on the New Jersey Parkway is under constant renovation. Is there a poem you are constantly revising? Why, and when do you think it will be finished?

2.        Consider the beauty of the bird-of-prey wingspan of the Tappan Zee Bridge. What work of architecture inspires you? Animate or personify it.

3.        Imagine you are lost in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Are you anxious, frustrated, reminded of a recurring nightmare? Write about your emotions.

4.        While driving and still lost, you approach a scenic waterfall and reservoir in Tarrytown. Do you pull over to admire it, perhaps take a photo? Why or why not?

5.        The site the festival isn’t clearly marked amid a complex of school buildings. You chance to see an old man in a skull cap with an oversized scarf draped around his shoulders walk out of one building, so you decide to enter where he exited. Describe someone you would suspect is leaving a poetry festival.

6.        The festival’s location is indeed a seemingly abandoned mansion. Write about a place or a person you think has been abandoned. What meaning does this place or person hold for you?

7.        Arrive at intermission. The MC advises that student poets have already read their works and the “Capital P” poets will soon read from their books, for sale at the table near the refreshments. Write about the difference between a poet and a Poet, or about an intermission in your life.

8.        Louise Gluck wrote a promotional blurb for one Poet’s book. What poet or Poet, living or dead, would you want to review your work? What do you hope he or she would write?

9.        Imagine that you are a Poet who teaches literature. Write a poem that weaves in lines or images from Shakespeare’s “King Lear” or Checkhov’s “Gooseberries.” Alternately, write a poem about Donald Trump without mentioning “Donald Trump.”

10.  One Poet reads a ghazal poem, (pronounced “ghuzzle” although you hear “huzzle”). You are meant to hear a repeating rhyme or phrase at the end of each of at least five couplets of the same length. Write a ghazal about love, human or divine.

11.  One Poet didn’t show up. Write about someone who didn’t show up for you. What was the cost to you, to them?

12.  One Poet was inspired by this fortune cookie: “We are made to persist. That is how we know who we are.” Open a fortune cookie. Write a poem.

 

First thing this morning, on the Seventh Day of Poetry Month, I received this prompt in email from Another Poet (say hi to Dimitri):


I promptly scratched this into the wall of my virtual cave:

Lost in Dobbs Ferry,

where Westchester poets hide.

I seek to destroy.


Tuesday, March 19, 2024

3 Poems, With Thanks to Dimitri Reyes


I love following prompts for inspiration to write poems. A poet I follow, Dimitri Reyes, offers a prompt every Sunday on Patreon, and the virtual me recently attended one of his (highly recommended) Saturday workshops.

"Write a poem about a bird," Dimitri said one recent Sunday, which prompted a haiku about the keepsake pictured above. It serves as a memento of my late uncle, a priest. The cardinal is a bird of remembrance, a sign that those who have passed are with us in spirit.

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Haiku in My Living Room


Pray to my uncle,
Now a stained-glass cardinal.
Church, a bamboo cage.

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"Write about a favorite TV show," Dimitri suggested on another Sunday. So I flew back in time to write about a favorite episode, "Tomorrow Is Yesterday," from the first "Star Trek" series, a guilty Thursday night pleasure for Dad and me when I was young.

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Tomorrow Is Yesterday


It’s a Thursday night in March 2024,
And I have conjured my father in this poem.

Dad is a thousand miles away from me
In the same TV room in New Jersey.

He has boldly returned from the dead,
And we are watching “Star Trek” together.

Dad loves to pretend he’s Captain Kirk.
I love to pretend Captain Kirk is my Dad.

Suddenly, on the fluorescent screen before us,
Multicolored lights begin to flash. Sirens sound.

Dad holds tight to the arms of his chair,
Rocking side to side in an exaggerated motion.

The crew of the Starship Enterprise surrounds us.
We slingshot around the sun and land back in our TV room.

It’s a Thursday night in January 1967,
The day 2 feet of snow fell in Chicago.

My father sits in his easy chair, 57 years ago,
775 miles away from the storm.

He is still a thousand miles away
From the boy nestled on the room’s orange couch.

I join my former self there. I place a protective arm
That envelops my small body. I whisper in my ear.

“It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK,”
I say over and over again.

Soon, a tractor beam surrounds me.
Its light absorbs me.

My grasp on myself dissolves,
As credits begin to roll.

An otherworldly vessel -- this poem --
Takes me home, this image implanted in my brain:

Dad, like Captain Kirk, at the conn,
Exploring strange new worlds,

Changing my future forever.

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During Dimitri's Saturday workshop, we talked about our weaknesses as writers. I thought about how -- with the ability to try anything, accomplish anything, create or destroy anything -- I so often fall short of my ambitions. "On a blank page, I can do anything," I often think, with a boldness that rarely surfaces in my work. So, when prompted, I became a hollow men in 11 lines, and even ended the poem, with apologies to T.S. Eliot, with a whimper.

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About Me


Behold the hollow man.
Behold the writer without a soul.
Behold my face,

The lines that formed and hardened
When my brow furrowed in suppression,
When I pursed my lips and kept silent.

Hear the poems I never wrote.
Imagine images I dared not share.
Watch the ghost of me dissolve.

As I disappear,
without a whimper.


Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Ruthlessly Pruning My First Sonnet


One interesting assignment in a recent poetry class was to take a poem I've written before and pare it down by focusing on the economy of language.

I'm all for economy of language. As a journalist and editor in my past life, I let hardly any adjective or adverb survive.

But life has changed. At recent readings, I've been captivated by the performance aspect of poetry, less so with classical poetic form.

So I took this opportunity to take the first sonnet I ever wrote... for a girl... in college... when I thought I was so smart... and ruthlessly prune it to reflect my current life... for anyone who might care... right here... when I simply crave relevance and connection.

This is...

Sonnet 1

There's something in the air, or so they say. 

It's certainly not magic or the heat. 

It's just the moon, white-full and young -- the way, 

like water, people splash and spill beneath. 

 

And you and I remind me of the tides. 

We hate and love; we rise and fall. It scares 

me that I don't know why or that I find 

no fault in us, just something in the air. 

 

So still above us rests the moon, content 

and seemingly unmoved. It doesn't hate 

or love; it doesn't care -- without relent, 

without a passing judgment of our fate. 

 

The moonlight falls like smoke between the mist. 

What fools we are compared to such as this. 


---------

And this is...

Sonnet Unbound

You and I are tides 

under a faithless light. 

 

We rise and fall, 

splash and spill. 

 

Helpless, 

in the mist. 

 

Reckless, 

in our love and hate. 

 

The moon, 

relentless and immutable, 

 

casts indifferent shadows 

on our foolish fate. 

 

 

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Poem: 'Ja Cie Kocham'

Mary Baron, 1897-1974

Ja Cie Kocham

When I was a boy,
JFK was president in Washington, DC,
And all the words were Polish in Garfield, New Jersey.

All the words were Polish
As I held my grandmother’s sandpaper hand,
And we walked to Sunday Mass at St. Stan’s.

All the prayers were Polish.
All greetings were Polish on the east side of Lanza Avenue.
Everyone around us, an immigrant.

Returning from church with Babci,
We stop to pick a chicken to slaughter.
She haggles with the butcher in Polish.

At dinner, I devour tender slivers of the chosen chicken,
Mixed in a soup with chunks of rice,
As pots of boiled cabbage simmer on her oven top.

I catch her eye in the changing colors of the kitchen window:
A flickering glow from the outline of a neon bottle
Above the door of the neighborhood liquor store.

Babci knows me, although we don’t speak the same language.
She knows I hate the smell of cabbage.
She knows I won’t, I can’t, complain.

English words were never spoken in Babci’s house.
English words were elitist and foreign.
They confused and intimidated her.

Her child, my mother, spoke English rebelliously when she was young,
Loving all the English words she needed for survival,
Instilling that love in me.

Now I am my mother’s keeeper.
We have both grown old.
My grandmother died long ago.

I sometimes catch Babci’s daughter
staring at ghosts outside her kitchen window.
So I whisper in her ear, although I know she can’t hear me.

I whisper the only three words I remember in Polish.

Friday, February 9, 2024

Thank Yous From Newlyweds to My Grandmother (an unrhymed sonnet)

Mary and Jimmy, wearing a white tux.

He has giant hands; she, a slender waist.


Pat and Bill sincerely appreciate

their world in color, freed from black and white.


Rosalie and Rudy peek playfully,

retreating to their honeymoon cabin.

 
Mary and Hugo, dancing center stage,

hands tightly clasped, casting nervous smiles.



Norma and Emil, wearing Clark Kent glasses.

She has dangerous beauty, kryptonite.


Dolores and Libbie’s getaway car.

She stole his heart; he has a dark secret.

Florence and Uncle Charlie, now both dead.
When my aunt smiled, she made the bright world dim.


Sunday, January 28, 2024

Poem: '11 Roses'

The streetlights of my hometown

Project Write Now is a wonderful arts organization based in Red Bank, NJ. If you are interested in writing, or in supporting young writers, check it out.

I'm currently enrolled in an adult intensive poetry course, and below is my first poem from that class. I want to share it here, just because.

"11 Roses" is based on three prompts inspired by lines from the poetry of Eduardo C. Corral, and a discussion of his work, including "The Autobiography of My Hungers" (accounting for "my" poetic phrase in one of the couplets below)...

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11 Roses

I stared at the deer
Because it stared back at me.

I walked my hometown streets at dusk,
Invisible to schoolboys on careless bicycles,

The women in the nail salon, and the families outside the Dairy Queen.
My reflection in store windows, the only evidence of me.

I held my breath as I passed the cemetery at the edge of town.
Where my father lies.

On the recent anniversary of his death,
I had placed a rock on his gravestone.

It wasn’t there.

I walked further, into the woods,
Hiding an autobiography of my secrets.

How my heart is easily broken.
How I never stopped loving you.

How I am a glint of light now.
Not even a ghost.

In the aurora of distant streetlights,
I blend into the ramble and the thorns.

So I stared at the deer
Because it stared back at me.

Monday, January 8, 2024

What Songs Make You Happy?

As a Notre Dame alum, I don't have a rooting interest in tonight's college football championship... except for one thing:

I hope all the Michigan fans are happy at the end of the third quarter.

I hope they all sing "Mr. Brightside." Because, inexplicably, this song makes me irrationally happy.

This past Saturday, my wife Nancy and I were at Jersey Girl Brewing in Mount Olive, NJ, where a local cover band, Not Enough Jeffs, was doing a great job playing popular party songs. People were dancing; everyone was happy. But Nancy was mortified when they started to play "Mr. Brightside."

She threatened to take a video of my reaction, but didn't... because she loves me. But if she had, there might now exist a forever-embarrassing clip that would look a lot like this notable scene from "The Holiday":


Two other songs that my family knows make me irrationally happy are "Thunder Road" by Bruce Springsteen and "River Deep Mountain High" by Tina Turner.

I've previously written about "Thunder Road" here, and "River Deep Mountain High" crept up on me recently (thanks to the Celine Dion cover version) when I attended the musical "Titanique" with my daughter.

My wife and I recently attended a fun and tasteful wedding reception where the couple employed a live fiddle player and a Scottish line dancing instructor. We tried our best to dance, and laughingly failed... but at the end of the evening, I had the urge to ask the otherwise unoccupied DJ if he might play "Mr. Brightside" to end the evening.

Nancy convinced me it wasn't the right setting, so I didn't. In retrospect, of course she was right.

Do I love her? My, oh my.

Not Enough Jeffs performing on a Saturday night in New Jersey

Still, I'm conflicted about these guilty pleasures. Not Enough Jeffs's playlist includes songs like "Flagpole Sitta," "What I Like About You" and "Sweet Caroline" (the "anthem" Trevor Noah cleverly sends up in his latest Netflix comedy special). So I'm thinking that perhaps I'm a cliche of a certain age.

Should I care, though? Isn't it wonderful some songs simply make people inordinately happy, for no rational reason?

What are some of your favorites?

I'm sure there are a few I should check out, to expand my horizons... and maybe learn how to dance.

Thursday, December 21, 2023

A Toast to Frank O'Hara

Lately, I've been haunted by the ghost of Frank O'Hara.

I found many references to the poet on the website and recent event invites from The Poetry Society of New York. They even sell a Frank O'Hara t-shirt.

Then, last night, I participated in an online workshop, led by New Jersey poet Michael Paul Thomas (you can find information about his future workshops... highly recommended... at his LinkedIn or by following him on Eventbrite).

Out of nowhere, Frank appeared.

Michael read from O'Hara's New York City "Lunch Poems," as he led us through writing and revision exercises. He based the discussion around how we develop a consistent practice in creative work.

"Do we always have to wait for lightning to bolt down our arm to the pen?" he asked, then answered with a description of O'Hara's practice of writing a poem a day during his lunch hours in the city. He simply described the world around him, then leveled it up with a poetic twist.

Michael urged us to write what we saw around us last night. So I did, and I've revised it a bit today.

I offer this poem to you, Frank, in Blogger's best typewriter font. I beg you to accept it.

Now, please stop haunting me.

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A Toast to Frank O'Hara on This Winter’s Solstice 

I’m sitting in a house that would otherwise be abandoned.

It’s my grandparents’ old home,

Which is still oddly filled with warmth

On this cold night in western New Jersey.

 

When I was a boy I would walk to the open field in the side yard

And gaze at the stars: the only source of light,

Save for the glow of the house and the headlights

Of a lone, lost, angry traveler bound for Pennsylvania.

Tonight, that sleepy country road is a four-lane highway.

From the upstairs bedroom window, I see spotlit car dealerships

Displaying comically large American flags across what is now Route 46.

 

The back road used to border acres of farmland.

Now, it provides access to the busy warehouses that replaced the farms,

And to the back entrance of TD Bank, whose garish green signage glows

Past the bones of the barn where Nonno used to keep chickens and a cow.

In the backyard, a cell tower looms over the ghost of a small orchard,

Which Nonna used to tend to make homemade wine.

Now, there’s a holiday-lit brewery among the back-road warehouses.

 

The hour is too late to talk to the Sun. When I look to the heavens,

Now, I am surrounded by ever-changing, earthbound constellations.

The stars have fallen from the sky,

And darkness envelops me from above.