#sharingpoetry

"un lieu sûr sans lieu

nulle part

ici

mais il n’y a plus grand monde

aussi

sauf une tête une langue

tant que tête

et langue

après

ce sera vraiment fini"

—

"et l’eau ne lave plus l’eau

l’eau ne lave plus

la neige efface notre langue

le couchant

la moitié d’air

le lait est lent

et nous érigeons des lèvres

une tourbe du soir"

—

THE POETRY WORK GROUP

Dayton, Ohio is awash with literary folks, poets and writers. I feel so lucky to live where I do. Over the past several months, a few of us who write poetry have been meeting one Sunday afternoon a month to share poetry and provide each other with feedback on work-in-progress. This evening, I finished up some edits that came from thoughts from today’s group. There were only three of us this afternoon, but that was fine with me.

A work group doesn’t need to be large. It just has to be comprised of people you trust and who’s perspective you value. That’s critical. And, it’s not just about specific feedback. If anything, it’s as much about the act of talking about poetry. For me, it becomes an internal vocabulary I can use as I work alone at my desk later. For instance, today, I was listening to someone talk about what a poem “means.” I realized that sometimes a poem can create the illusion that it must mean something, when it doesn’t have to mean anything at all. And, indeed, some poems are intentionally trying to mean something. (But this is a discussion for a longer post at another time.)

Anyway, I was thinking that it’s interesting to observe what kind of dialog a poem evokes. Maybe that’s a good question to ask yourself as you write: what kind of discussion would this poem evoke if people were going to talk about it?

Truth:  A while back, when I was binge listening to the Poetry Foundation Magazine Podcast, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/audio?show=The%20Poetry%20Magazine%20Podcast (which is fantastic, BTW) I used to think about what the editors would say about a poem I had written as they bantered back and forth. It’s a fun exercise. When that conversation was not crystal clear to me, I knew I had to go back to the drawing board. Whether or not my poems will ever be discussed in that manner, is not the point. The point is, it’s useful for me to think about them that way. And, that’s at least one thing I get from my poetry work group—poetry talk.

standing in its rapture- from the deep of my bones, the clouds climb over my mind to clear the sky,

constellations reveal on my skin in the light of moon, evaporating such haze

As I look up, shadows speak in secrets to the warmth of the wind

the perfection of it all-  insatiable with will, in hope, thoughts carry my kiss from the night to the days…….

Say tomorrow doesn't come.

Say the moon becomes an icy pit.

Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified.

Say the sun's a foul black tire fire.

Say the owl's eyes are pinpricks.

Say the raccoon's a hot tar stain.

Say the shirt's plastic ditch-litter.

Say the kitchen's a cow's corpse.

Say we never get to see it: bright

future, stuck like a bum star, never

coming close, never dazzling.

Say we never meet her. Never him.

Say we spend our last moments staring

at each other, hands knotted together,

clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.

Say, It doesn't matter. Say, That would be

enough. Say you'd still want this: us alive,

right here, feeling lucky.