Tag Archives: literature

Driftwood Days

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Driftwood Days

 

The sea has examined me into this shape
I have come so far only because of what is left

How can I not accept it gratefully how can you not
if the entire sea can do it I would say give it a try

I do not have the power to observe you into love
but something of us both has been examined

Wave by wave into a lean slightness no vessel
because it goes all directions at once having come so far

with its hollows and whorls soothing to the waves
no difference between inside and outside

It no longer matters what is missing it never did it turns
out it was always this floating thing and never that

Evening Sky

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Liz Doyle

Liz Doyle

Evening Sky

from a painting by Liz Doyle and a photo by Ann Koplow

Night had already begun to hug the lowlands
when his back to the pale faces of the outbuildings

their remnant glow against the forgetting day
I thought I saw Turner out there

tying himself to a piece of sky shadow
to ride out the violent vault into night

A mile up the day was still swirling
like love thundering in the chest well after

the details have been lost still Turner
tearing clouds with his brush into the idea

of clouds wonders if he’s leaving
something out he’s never believed

the details mattered although they meant
all the moment could form into and change

From the cumulonimbus he sees an old man
preparing a thatch hut against the wind

And a town lobbing light into the sky
The man’s thoughts are fireworks reflected

In the village fountain and to Turner who feels
the clouds free him who feels he let go first

the fireworks in the fountain some times
are clearer than the fireworks in the sky

Ann Koplow

Ann Koplow

Poem for the Back Cover of a Book

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Poem for the Back Cover of a Book

 

This book does not care if you buy it.
This poem does not care if you buy the book.

Even I do not care if you buy the book.
The three of us have been waiting here

To tell you this, but even more—perhaps
you have just been thinking of that person

Whose love has kept you alive without you
knowing it these many years, perhaps  you

Are remembering that person now.
Are they right beside you, unaware your

Love flows stronger than ever? Have you
not exchanged words in years? We are here

To tell you—put down this book, do not look
back, you were never looking back but always

Straight through the eye of his soul.
Put down this book now and go to him.

Or, if you are still here, at a loss for words,
I will help you. Go buy this book

And leave it face down where he
will find it, and notice this poem,

That is why we are here, after all,
And we will see what can be done.

Weakness

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Weakness

 

At night when my heart sets out to find you
my weakness follows clumsily waving a lamp
behind me casting shadows making still things
seem to move and moving things
impossible to identify: I don’t spend much time
with my weakness but it finds me easily enough
I don’t talk much about it or even look at it
straight on though when it speaks its volumes
increase when it is seen it is familiar
I know I cannot shake this thing which is not a thing
but like the part of our bodies we cannot see
When I see that part through others it wears my face

The Left Lane

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The Left Lane

Sometimes the present is the bird of prey: on the long morning highway towards work, I see half a mile ahead of me a steady migration of cars from the left lane to the right. This often happens when a driver becomes preoccupied with something other than driving; there’s an equation somewhere for this coefficient of attention and the resulting diminished pressure on the one’s acceleration across this moment of paved lane, and the next thing you know there are cars streaming by to the right, some drivers keeping their eyes straight ahead knowing that they are breaking road protocol by passing on the right, some pausing to stare at the offending driver before gunning past them. Because on a two-lane road winding through the foothills and with as many trucks as vultures settling on the occasional and equally inattentive deer, such behavior is considered rude and is answered in kind, namely by this stream of cars passing on the right while the offender is trapped in the wrong lane, unable to adjust their location to the speed they are going, while a long line of angry and virtually late commuters drifts by. Because to the one being passed, it’s not like someone going eighty miles an hour, it’s like people walking by you who are simply walking faster than you and have no idea why you are walking so slowly. It takes time to be passed when trapped in the left lane.  This morning (though who knows what morning it will be when you read this, maybe one in which you have sped by someone yourself) I follow my basic rules of the road—never be the fastest or slowest on the road, never give the person behind you a chance to ruin your day, never do the same the person in front of you. From the left lane I stay in queue and glide into the right lane behind the car ahead of me, and pass this slow car like every other vehicle is doing. In that comfortable slipstream I glance back into my side rear-view and for just an instant see the distraught expression of the driver—she is old, she is driving a little over the speed limit, she is caught in this pocket of wrong lane by things happening too fast for her to keep up with, and by people who will not let her move over. She’s not doing anything wrong! All this I read in a half-second’s reflection through a windshield coated with morning sun’s glare.  I feel like it is her mind that is glaring off the windshield, not the sun. It is blinding in its clarity.  I want to take my foot off the pedal, let her pass me and take up a position back in the left lane, behind her car, to shield her from the assault of everyone trying to get to the future faster. Is this not the trip my own mother takes each day, alone in a vessel already traveling too fast but not fast enough to catch up to the past or avoid the future? But it’s too late, the driver in a pickup truck behind me is already pushing me forward, and the car behind him, so I tap on the pedal to speed up further, and when I look back again the windshield is dark in the diminishing image in my mirror. And I’m no mind-reader; I’m just another driver passing by, part of the unremitting assault of the present.

2014 Broadside Series: “Drop Everything” (first proofs)

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Some shots of first proof off the press. (All photos below were taken by Emily Hancock of St Brigid Press, as she was doing first proofs.) This is on the bamboo paper.

DE_title proofAnd here’s a look at the entire shape of the broadside…

DE_first proof on bamboo2We’re still deciding what the best paper might be.  Emily ran some proofs on other stock and we’re going to go over them with our magnifying glasses and every nerve of our fingertips to see which looks and feels the best. The typeface is 18 pt Centaur, so the paper has to take the ink from a decent size letter while holding to the fine points and handling ligatures.

DE_proof on four papersOf course, it’s impossible to tell the fine differences in these examples without holding them and eyeballing them first-hand. What the heck good is this internet thing anyway if you still have to hoof it over a mountain to see your proofs? (Though there’s always offering free coffee to your printer to get her to come over the mountain to you…)

More later this weekend…

 

Western Haiku Instruction Manual, two lines of which are cribbed from Google Translate’s English version of Indigenous Metropolitan’s Post “Social Studies (Unpretentious) To Write A Haiku” Originally in Italian [haiku]

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Western Haiku Instruction Manual, two lines of which are cribbed from Google Translate’s English version of Indigenous Metropolitan’s Post “Social Studies (Unpretentious) To Write A Haiku” Originally in Italian

 

A fair game of balance:
(do not respect the syllables)
a life is in your hands

 

See Indigenous Metropolitan’s original post here.

2014 Broadside Series: “Drop Everything”

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Drop_Everything_typeset2

 

Work has begun in earnest on a broadside of my prose poem “Drop Everything” over at St Brigid Press in Afton, Virginia. Resident print guru Emily Hancock sent me the photo above after setting the poem and getting it set up on the press for proofing. Tomorrow we should see some first proofs of the work. Some details on the broadside:

The poem is set in Centaur,  a crisp and classic typeface suitable for both prose and poetry. It also has strong flavor notes of caramel, charcoal and cherry, with a smooth finish that pairs it well with both fish and fowl…wait, I’m getting carried away here.

The poem is part of a larger project entitled The Drift, which somewhat aimlessly uses as its model one of the first anthologies of great classical Chinese poetry, Poems of The Masters, originally compiled in the 13th century and consisting of some of the great poems written in the 7th-13th centuries. This project will pair several hundred short poems,  based on regulated verse of the T’ang and Sung dynasties (which I have been posting on this blog since December of last year) with prose poems dealing with the same subject matter in a very different form.

There are quite a few wrinkles to this large project’s design, and more on said wrinkles much later, but all this is to say that when designing the broadside for “Drop Everything” Emily and I took into account the influence of classic Chinese poetry on the overall project– and also the method of transmission of those poems back over a thousand years ago. This includes printing the poem on a high quality bamboo paper stock in a strong vertical format (probably around 12 x 18 inches).

We haven’t yet decided on the number of this edition, or the price. It will most likely be offered as part of a series of broadsides to be released over the coming year. Still working out all those details, but incredibly happy to be working with Emily again (St Brigid Press printed the haiku coaster set available on the Books page) and excited to share with you images of the first proofs as they come off the press later this week…

You can find the poem “Drop Everything” on the Brand New Stuff page above.

More soon…

Mountains Poured Over Mountains

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Mountains Poured Over Mountains

 

A cloud shadow crawls across the bare mountainside
touching every tree. Small clouds seep and spread

along the ground like water, large clouds drop
heavily like whole trees being painted suddenly black.

One, then another, backlit by the trees still in light.
Funny to think of something bigger than a mountain

pouring over a mountain, its own peaks in constant change
enveloping what seems so changeless

but is really two images in today’s mirror.
Funny to see how quickly it spreads then leaves,

like something huge suddenly not remembered.
Yet it was there. Pushed by the invisible hill of wind

And over on this peak the sign of an old inn groans
and the paper darkens beneath my pen.