POETRY FRIDAY - Oulipo, Lipo, O, O, O

O, O, O, So many different kinds of bodies.....

Over at the Miss Rumphius Effect this week Tricia asked us to compose lipograms for the Poetry Stretch. Technically, a lipogram is "a kind of constrained writing"  in which a particular letter or group of letters is left out. Obviously, leaving out letters like x, z, or j isn't difficult. But leaving out vowels is a little harder. The most famous extended lipogram - novel length - is probably Georges Perec's  La Disparition, translated by Gilbert Adair into English as VOID - leaving out "e," the most common letter in both French and English. Imagine writing a novel without using the word "the"? (And up to the end of that last sentence, I used 43 e's!) The Oulipo group, which Perec was part of (as is Italo Calvino)  encourages a lot of this kind of word play.

So here is a much much simpler solution to the challenge - no novels for me! The only vowel I used was "o" - though I tossed in a y. Simple or not, I had fun. I love the way restrictions actually free you up from what you might produce if all you tried to do with poetry was "express your feelings." This poem expresses mine, but I wouldn't have gotten there without the restriction.Thanks again, Tricia.

BODY KNOWS

Body
knows how

to go
slow now,

to fool Doom,
to bow down -

to grow
old.

Body
knows not

how to grow
cool, nor cold,

knows not
how

to stop,
poor sot.

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Poetry Friday today is being rounded up by Jules at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast. Check out what other people have posted! Since I'm going to be very busy tomorrow, I'll post now - Poetry Thursday!

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Poetry Friday: From the Wishing Bone Cycle - Howard Norman

One night I was wishing things all over. 
Then, I thought there were too many stars
in the sky
and not enough light down under,
in the earth. 
That's when I wished a star down
for that mole
to carry on his nose. 
He took it down under. 
He walked around with it under there
and tried it out. 
Now he comes up sometimes
to let his star talk to the other stars
in the sky. 
It's dark down there
but his nose sees where he's going.  

I often cite W.H. Auden, Seamus Heaney, James Merrill, Dylan Thomas, Kay Ryan, and Richard Kenney as my favorite poets. If I'm thinking about kids, I include Lewis Carroll, Walter de la Mare, A.A. Milne, and now Alice Shertle and Joyce Sidman. But if I had to grab one book of poetry off my shelves as I was escaping a burning house (do other people think about things like that?) I might just choose The Wishing Bone Cycle, a collection of narrative poems from the Swampy Cree tribe, gathered and translated by Howard Norman. I often take it out and read it; it never disappoints me. The poems are, as Jerome Rothenberg says in his preface, beautiful in a "gentle, crazy" way. I hope you will all look for it - it's out of print, but it's worth hunting to find a used copy. Reading the poems straight through (which is something I rarely do with a book of poetry) has a cumulative effect that is unlike anything other gathering of poems in a single volume. Howard Norman, of course, has translated them brilliantly - no surprise there, considering his own gifts as a poet and novelist of such books as The Bird Artist and Devotion. Here is one more sample:

One time I wished myself 
into a moose deer.
I was lying down and sleeping
with my own shadow
and then you came along
saying the sun was in your mouth, 
saying you were thirsty! 
I wished you to where you drank tears. 
It was a lake
everyone cried into,
full of people's tears. 
At night
some of the tears left
to look for sad faces
to fall down. 
Then the whole lake cried. 
Some said it was the loons. 



Poetry Friday today is being hosted by the people over at the PaperTigers blog . Papertigers.org celebrates multicultural writing from all over the world, with a particular emphasis on the Pacific Rim and South Asia. I hope you will go to their blog site to see what people have posted for Poetry Friday this week. And click here for an interesting article about the art of translation.

I also hope you will read the Wednesday 4/7 post on Cynsations, where author Cynthia Leitich Smith provides information about how to help with Operation TBD - 10,000 Books to Be Delivered on Native Reservations and Tribal Land - a worthy cause, putting books right into the classrooms and librariess of young Native American kids.

Poetry Friday: Asking Questions

 

Imaginary Menagerie by Julie Larios 
Illustrations by Julie Paschkis

Mermaid

Listen to the waves

break on the shore--

half song, half roar. 

Listen to the beach 

answer back--

half cry, half laugh. 

Underneath it all 

you might hear a splash, 

you might hear a call ,

or you might hear a sigh, 

long and low. 

What does she say,

part woman, part fish? 

I wish....I wish....

I seem to have a soft spot for questions, especially questions that can be answered more than one way. To me, ambiguity - different understandings of a single object - is exciting. It's at the heart of poetry, because it's at the heart of metaphor. For me, a poem is richer if its images and its meanings are open to interpretation.

I heard a teacher once ask her students,  "What does the snow stand for?" when discussing Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. I listened to the kids (these were junior high school age)  try to come up with what they thought the teacher wanted to hear. They started guessing. Someone said, "Winter?" and the teacher said, "No...." and someone said "Things that get in the way of what we want to do?" Another student asked, "Old age?" and the teacher said, "Almost...you're getting close...." and then someone said, "Death?" and the teacher said "Yes! Death!" I was glad to hear Frost's poem reach the ears of those students - and God bless teachers who use poetry in their classrooms.  But I think the poem was done a disservice. A good case could be made for the snow's "meaning" to be any of those three, plus multiple others. The job of the teacher is not necessarily to teach the "right" meaning of the poem's images - it's to teach how poetry lends itself to our multiple interpretations, and does so with beautiful language and fresh images.

That's why I like to put questions in poems. I want a poem to go out and puzzle people, so that they need to come back to it a few times before they decide what it means to them.  I don't want it to be completely opaque and difficult - I'm not a Language poet -  but I don't want it to be completely clear. There should be some mystery about the meaning - there should be some ambiguity.

In one of my book for kids, Imaginary Menagerie, I ask readers to answer many questions for themselves; sometimes I provide half answers, or riddle answers. What does a mermaid say who is half woman, half fish? "I wish...I wish..." is the only answer. "What does she wish?" kids ask me when I read this poem at schools. "What do you think she wishes?" I ask. You would be surprised how many answers kids come up with.

Who will sing a golden song to a firebird? Who will set it free? "Would you?" I ask. And off the kids go, to imagine their courage, and to imagine what they would sing. I ask whether we believe a centaur can be half man, half horse. "The answer is no. And yes, of course."  The kids ask, "How can the answer be yes and no?" And I answer with a question, "How can the centaur be half man, half horse?" So we go around in circles!   A cockatrice who is half snake, half rooster, asks if he should crow or hiss. The kids aren't sure, but they all have an opinion. The desert sand asks, "How Why? Where?" and the kids want to know "How what? Where what?" But the poem goes on to say, "No one can answer the sand." The poem about the gargoyles asks, "How can a beast speak with a stone tongue, with a stone throat?" There isn't just one answer - "And that's the beauty of poetry, isn't it?" I ask.

The Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted today over at Book Aunt. Check out what people are sharing - and wow, they're sharing a lot, because it's APRIL - it's National Poetry Month!! Go celebrate!

Poetry Friday and Nancy Bo Flood

Welcome!! It's Poetry Friday (well, I'm actually posting this on Thursday night so that all of you East Coasters can post before you go to bed!) and I'm pleased The Drift Record will be providing a spot for the round-up this week. You can post your Poetry Friday topics in the Comments field (at the end of this post.) Be sure to provide a link when you comment, since I will not be summarizing during the day outside the Comments field.

Meanwhile, I want to introduce you all to Nancy Bo Flood, a fine poet and author whose debut novel for children, WARRIORS IN THE CROSSFIRE, has just been released by Front Street Books.

 Old turtle, 

Little crab, 

Where should I go? 

Where can I hide? 

               -from Warriors in the Crossfire

 

Warriors in the Crossfire is the story of two boys, Joseph and Kento, caught between the battling Japanese and American forces on the island of Saipan during WWII. Each chapter is introduced by a quiet, koan-like poem that invites reflection (and often breaks your heart.)  I love the simplicity of the poem I opened this post with (titled "Courage.")  Here's another, which opens the chapter titled "War":

Moonlight 
Shines silver 
Across breadfruit leaves., 
Broken shards of light, 
Broken dreams, 
Broken. 

I interviewed Nancy for The Drift Record, knowing you would love her poems for POETRY FRIDAY:

JL: Can you tell us what drew you to this historical period and setting? 

NBF: We were there. That is an overstatement but when our family lived on Saipan, our first surprise was that Saipan is part of the United States, a commonwealth, first put under U.S. care by the United Nations following WWII. Our second surprise was that the aftermath of WWII was everywhere -- rusting tanks and downed planes in the lagoon, Japanese cement bunkers pitted with bullet holes on every beach, and almost every family still recovering. I taught students who shared with me their family stories. I listened. I asked questions. Old timers were eager to "talk story." They encouraged me to tell their story so that peace would prevail, that their children could grow up with schools, enough food and a future. How seldom we think about the families and especially the children who live where wars are fought. Saipan is a tropical island in the western Pacific, the kind one imagines with sweeping white sand beaches and clear turquoise-blue waters. But World War II haunts both land and sea. I stood at the Suicide Cliff where hundred leaped to their deaths. The presence of war washes in and out like the tide. When I wrote Joseph's story, I wanted to write a story of hope, realistic and honest, but also one that expressed not only the horror and destruction of war but the amazing resiliency of the human heart to rebuild and forgive.

JL: What do you think is the role of the writer for children during a time of war and social unrest? Do you see parallels between the story of Joseph and Kento and the stories of children now in Afghanistan and Iraq? 

NBF: When children grow up in the midst of conflict, they lose everything, including their childhood. "When will we ever learn?" Through story, a writer can create awareness. To be a child surrounded by war, what is that like? Is it about guns and bombs? I think for many children, it is also about losing precious parts of childhood, forever. School, family home, and even pets. In Faithful Elephants: A True Story of Animals, People and War by Yukio Tsuchiya and Ted Lewin, the elephant keeper tells of trying to kill his dear friends, his elephants. Children around the world relate to loving a trip to the zoo and staring spellbound at elephants curling their trunks or flapping their enormous ears. Why would anyone want to kill them? Fire bombs were exploding over Tokyo. No one had food, especially enough food to feed starving elephants. Who thinks about having to leave the family dog or cat behind, or killing all the zoo animals, when war breaks out? Story makes us stop and see with a new perspective. Story gives us hope. In Warriors in the Crossfire, Joseph loses almost everything he cares about . How could he make his dreams come true without an education? How does a young warrior decide? What will help his family survive instead of perish? Joseph discovers that being a warrior sometimes means to restrain, to hide, to wait. He learns that his father's stories, not guns or bullets - his cultures chants, songs and dances - provide what he needs to survive.

JL: You're a wonderful poet - tell us about how it felt to work on this much longer piece of fiction. 

NBF:  Thank you, I am definitely a "poet in progress." Your question, Julie, made me think for several days (and nights!) Here is my "haiku" response:  Poetry captures an essence. /Poetry invites the reader to see anew. Narrative, the novel, captures an experience, usually the unfolding experience of a character in conflict that creates change. Poetry is an essential element through Warriors. Poetry reflects Joseph's transitions from rebel to warrior, from student to teacher. What better source than some of the oldest poetry, Basho's haiku, which is often a riddle of phrases that capture the essence of change, conflict, or a metaphor of the moment. Basho's brief poems invite readers to bring to the poem their yearnings and experiences, to give meaning to make sense to you, the reader, at this moment in your own journey.

JL: Nancy, your poems and now your fiction do just as Basho's poems do -"invite readers to bring to the poem their yearnings...." Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts with readers of The Drift Record. I hope many people will be reading Warriors in the Crossfire.  

On April 15th, I"ll be over at Jacket Knack interviewing Namelos's art director Helen Robinson, who designed the cover of Nancy's book.

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POETRY FRIDAY readers: Please click on "Comments" to find descriptions and links to what other people are sharing this week!!

Proud

I don't post many overtly political comments on The Drift Record, but I am SO proud of the Congresspeople who got the health care reform legislation passed. I know it's flawed, I know it's only a first step in a slow process, but it's historic, and I believe other steps will follow. It moves us closer to addressing the inequality of wealth distribution in this country, and I feel good today.  I'll let President Obama speak for me.