If you feel up for it, be sure to share your favorite poem from the first 15 days of the challenge here.

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For today's prompt, I want you to pick a color, make that the title of your poem, and write a poem that is inspired by that color.

Here's my attempt for the day:

"Blue"

Eyes in the morning
look for the moon
unsure of the time
they wake. An ache
for violence, dull
throbbing of wind
through trees. She
doesn't know how
things got to this;
she doesn't know
what will be next.

*****

Looking for more poetry information?

• Check out our poetry titles (on sale in the month of April) HERE.
• Read the most recent WritersDigest.com poetry-related articles HERE.
• View several poetic forms HERE.
• See where poetry is happening HERE.

 

Jennifer VanBuren, the editor of Mannequin Envy, recently suggested that I allow poets to pick their favorite poem from the first 15 days of the challenge. Since more than 10,000 poems have been posted to the blog so far this month, I think this sounds like a good way to let poets read some of the highlights of the month so far.

The idea is to pick your favorite poem of the ones you've written through the first 15 days of the challenge. I'll probably provide a similar post at the end of the month for your favorite of the last 15 days of the challenge.

Here's my favorite so far (of what I've written):

"Whale"

Would you know my name
if found out of water? I hold
my breath for hours and sing
across the spaces where I dream.
Would you believe I was ever
vulnerable? I find the part
you love most is the monster
lurking in me, that unknown
quantity hiding beneath
the surface. If I could swallow
you whole and hold you within,
would you call out my name?

*****

Looking for more poetry information?

• Check out our poetry titles (on sale in the month of April) HERE.
• Read the most recent WritersDigest.com poetry-related articles HERE.
• View several poetic forms HERE.
• See where poetry is happening HERE.

 

Since I love French forms, it came as a surprise to me that I haven't covered the rondeau on this blog, yet. As with other French forms, there is an element of rhyming and repetition in the rondeau. In fact, the rondeau is related to the triolet--one of my favorites.

The rondeau is comprised of 15 lines across 3 stanzas with the first word or phrase from the first line represented as a refrain (R) and a rhyme scheme of 2 rhymes throughout (A and B). The rhyme and refrain scheme looks like this:

A (R)
A
B
B
A

A
A
B
R

A
A
B
B
A
R

The A and B lines are usually 8 or 10 syllables in length. The refrain is usually 1 to 3 words (or so).

To help illustrate a little more, here's my attempt at a rondeau:

The mother thinks

The mother thinks she is killing her son
with his shampoo--his hair coming undone
in her hands over time. He feels no pain
says the son. But she knows he'll feel again
the loss of his dad always on the run.

The mother remembers the morning sun
slanting on a messy bed of just one.
No note or cash--she remembers the pain.
            The mother thinks

there is something she could have done. Her son
was not wanted by his dad. "No more fun,"
he said after learning. Heartbreaking pain
when instead of joy, he often complained
of her weight gain. Then, of course, he was gone,
            the mother thinks.

*****

A fellow native of Dayton, Ohio, Paul Laurence Dunbar, wrote one of the most popular rondeaus in the English language: "We Wear the Mask."

Here's the Wikipedia entry for rondeau.

Here's the Poets.org entry for rondeau.

Here's another explanation from Ariadne Unst for rondeau.

*****

Looking for more poetry information?

• Check out our poetry titles (on sale in the month of April) HERE.
• Read the most recent WritersDigest.com poetry-related articles HERE.
• View several poetic forms HERE.
• See where poetry is happening HERE.

 

After today's poem, we'll be half-way there. 50% of the way. It's all downhill from here. And other half-way stuff. (For some reason, I've got Bon Jovi's "Living on a Prayer" song running through my head. "Ooooooo, we're half-way there; woooooo-oooo, living on a prayer; take my hand, we'll make it I swear..." Err, or something like that.) ;)

For today's prompt, I want you to take the title of a poem you especially like (by another poet) and change it. Then, with this new altered title, I want you to write a poem. An example would be to take William Carlos Williams' "The Red Wheelbarrow" and change it to "The Red Volkswagon." Or take Frank O'Hara's "Why I Am Not a Painter" and change it to "Why I Am Not a Penguin." You get the idea, right? (Note: Your altered poem does NOT have to follow the same style as the original poet, though you can try if you wish.)

Here's my attempt for the day:

"O Baby! My Baby!"

O Baby! My Baby! You bend me
and shake me like a ragdoll ghost
of a lover you once had. It ain't
bad, but I've noticed a hook or two
stuck in my heart leading to you.

O Baby! My Baby! Our bed must
hate us--the way we get crazy
one minute, then totally lazy. If
we had the time, it'd be working
all day. Even with nothing to say,

O Baby! My Baby! You're the Coca-
Cola of my mornings, the cheesecake
of my evenings. When I'm dreaming,
you're always right by my side, smiling
and happy to be along for the ride.

(Original title "O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman)

*****

Looking for more poetry information?

• Check out our poetry titles (on sale in the month of April) HERE.
• Read the most recent WritersDigest.com poetry-related articles HERE.
• View several poetic forms HERE.
• See where poetry is happening HERE.

 

Since I know this interview is a little on the long side (which is a good thing), I won't spend too much time introducting Katy Evans-Bush, who recently released her first collection of poetry Me and the Dead through Salt Publishing. She also maintains the very popular literary blog Baroque in Hackney.

As I've come to expect from titles published by Salt, Me and the Dead was a very enjoyable read. Here's one of my favorite poems:

Or Something

You told me the universe is doing something.
I forget what: expanding or flapping
in the wind or something--no matter which,
it's only one infinitely possible universe.
It's only ours and imperfect anyway.
Somewhere somebody else's universe
is either expanding, its particles drawing strangely
away from one another as if in horror but still,
I suppose, part of the pack--
or even shrinking (did we consider that?)
which would be caused by the atoms huddling
close for warmth or comfort
against that flapping wind or something;
rubbing together, the friction,
the blanket of static, creating our electric
storms and other interesting diversions.
The universes are, in their multitudes,
unending and also infinitesimal. Some say
they're parallel while others talk of layering.
Oh, the layered universes--I picture them
piled high like feather beds, the feathers inside them
brushing across each other or something.

*****

What are you up to?

 

Right now? My boyfriend's daughter just took me out for a slap-up lunch (with cheesecake) for my birthday! She's nearly 15 and she earned the money herself, so it was a huge treat.

 

Other than that, I'm reading up on Oscar Wilde and Henry James for a long poem called (so far) Speculation and Conjecture. It's half done, and I'm thrilled that it's going to be published in January as a pamphlet by Rack Press in Wales.

 

Then there's the next collection from Salt; they'd like a manuscript by the end of the year.

 

Then there's this novel idea.

 

And I'm a bit behind on essays and reviews promised.

 

Then there's work, kids, laundry, the kitchen…

 

You maintain a very popular blog at http://www.baroqueinhackney.wordpress.com. How do you feel poets can benefit from having a blog? Also, do you feel all poets should have a blog?

 

Well… there are maybe three ways in which a poet can benefit from having a blog, but spending time writing blog posts instead of poems probably isn't one of them!

 

It's a great way to establish a web presence and build a readership. BUT, it is incredibly time-consuming. Really, you need to be doing it for its own sake. You need to have something to say, and be unafraid of saying it. (Yes: I have had fear. Mainly when you realise beyond the shadow of a doubt that the poet you wrote that thing about has just read your blog. It's a great lesson in circumspection. I'd apologise here but that would mean admitting I said it in the first place.)

 

You also have to be interesting, so that people will come back and read you. This may seem obvious! But there are some very boring blogs out there and they reek of the devoir. (Of course, there are also lots of great ones.) Maybe it's just about looking as if you're interested in things. Humour helps, but deep thinking and being interested go a long way.

 

Mine is only partially a poetry blog. I say it's about all the same stuff as poetry, which of course includes poetry; but I write about anything. I maintain multiple blog identities: poetry, local neighbourhood, arts & culture, home life anecdotes, certain political issues, and grammar/copy-editing etc.

 

A blog is a great way to lay out your stall – if you have one to lay out: this is the "having something to say" caveat. You can use your blog to position yourself, identify and deepen your aesthetic (or other) stance, work up material even. You can establish your credentials as someone who can, for example, write reviews; editors might take you more seriously because they can see you are seriously engaged in the cultural dialogue. But this will only work if you really are engaged…

 

And you have to love your blog. You need to work long and hard at internet-networking, registering on blog directories, reading other blogs and commenting, building up a blogroll you can stand by, getting to know the landscape, working out RSS feeds… It all takes time. I don't want to put anyone off, but I really don't think it is for absolutely everyone and no one should feel they have to write a blog. There are other things you can do to raise profile. If you're just doing it to get a web presence you'll resent it. And if you don't do all that, you won't get the readers anyway so it won't do so much for your web presence. Also: it's a long haul. I've built up my reader base over nearly three years.

 

The third benefit, of course, is your readers. Mine are wonderful. I'm always amazed by the great comments they leave. Such interesting people; I really think I have the best readers in the world. I love them. And I'd never have had them without writing my blog!

 

Some of them tell me they've even bought Me and the Dead…

 

You have lived in both the United States and United Kingdom. Do you notice any differences in the voices coming out of either country?

 

Well, there's a massive difference! Just as there is in daily conversation, TV, pop music, etc. As Oscar Wilde famously said, two countries divided by a common language. But then, there is a lot of overlap, as demonstrated in crossovers in all those areas.

 

The UK "voice" is much more wry, ironic, mocking or self-mocking. There's more use of humour. Wit, word play, punning (even the serious papers here have punning headlines as the standard), double entendre – and there is much more metrical rhyming poetry from people who don't consider themselves "formalists." The political divide between "free verse" and "formalist poetry" doesn't exist in the UK. (I think it is a political, not an aesthetic, one; and it's exacerbated now by the fact that a lot of poets write free verse because it's all they know how to do.) Glyn Maxwell is an example of an English poet who writes in form, who isn't a "formalist" poet in the political sense, who has crossed over (as it were) to the USA. Most poets here use rhyme, sometimes, and metre, sometimes, and think nothing of it.

 

There is a sort of earnestness in the US which does spill, to ill effect, I think, into poetry. It doesn't do in the UK ever to look as if you care too much about something. But then, the UK can suffer from a surfeit of politeness and anecdotalism. You want sweep, too, and America certainly has that.

 

I love the multiplicity of experience and the opening-out of the more pronounced Modernist influence. I love DA Powell, and Frederick Seidel, for example. As different as they are; they both use words and cadences in really invigorating ways.

 

My favourite poets come from both sides of the Atlantic; I think either without the other would be much the poorer.

 

Me and the Dead is your first full-length collection of poetry. How long did it take to get this collection together?

 

In one sense you could say my whole life, as I've always read, and written, poetry. But I think the oldest poem in there goes back to maybe 2001, maybe 2000, so in that sense it took seven or eight years. The next book won't take nearly so long – partly because there were poems that didn't fit  in the first book, and partly because I think I'm on more of a roll these days than I was in 2001 – or, clearly, before. At that stage I was finding my feet in terms of what and how I wanted to write. The fact that the first poem in the book is from 2001 must mean that that's when I started to find my feet.

 

Were you surprised by anything during the publication process after your manuscript was accepted?

 

Not really: as I was new to it I had few preconceptions. Also, Salt is a "small" indie press (though they publish many more poetry books than the "big" established ones), so I knew the rules might be different from what you hear about the big publishers. The main surprise I suppose was how closely they worked with me on things like the cover.

 

What do you think makes a good collection?

 

Good poems?

 

Seriously! People talk a lot about narrative arc and all that, and I think it doesn't matter. Why be so prescriptive? Any good book will have engagement with the world. Something to say. Depth, or truth. Either variety or a single idea used well, and fruitfully. Seriousness of purpose – even Ogden Nash had that. It will do what it does, and do it well. It will be surprising and then inevitable, but still surprising.

 

What is your favorite poetic form?

 

I don't think I really think in terms of "forms" as much as structure, or the over-arching idea of form. I write a lot of blank – or blankish – verse. And I am very attracted to sonnets, I love the dialectical structure. But I recently wrote something that feels to me like a sonnet and it has thirty dimeter lines, so don't consider me the expert please.

 

I think "form" is a word we don't really use correctly, anyway. EVERYTHING has form, unless it is "without form and void," like an egg white. I'm not remotely interested in reading a poem like an egg white.

 

Whatever the rules, whether the poet made them up or even became conscious of them, whichever bits he or she has pulled from the prosodic toolbox, every successful poem must have some sort of structure or form – something the poet decided he or she was trying to do with that poem. You know, a poem that uses only every third letter of the alphabet and has three spaces between each letter has a form.

 

High Modernism has form. The higher, the higher.

 

Language poetry and flarf don't interest me overly. Pure chance is just random and not interesting to me. The human brain is designed to seek, and make, and discern, pattern: even when there is no pattern we try to find it. And IQ tests, what they test is our ability to make pattern. Sure, there is value in being able to cope with the unexpected, but the definition of coping would probably be to make it useful in some way: i.e., to find meaning. If something has no meaning it isn't interesting.

 

And so on. I'm very open about what I enjoy reading, but I'm utterly attached to the idea of meaning.

 

Who are you currently reading?

 

James Merrill: I've recently been rereading his Ouija board epic The Changing Light at Sandover, which I always find very beautiful, weird and fruitful. Very funny, and haunting, and deep.

 

Also Mick Imlah's astonishing and rich The Lost Leader, which has added poignancy since his early death in January; I've particularly been enjoying the final section, Afterlives of the Poets – and it's only in writing it here that I realise it may be on a theme with the Ouija board romance!

 

I'm just about to write an essay for the Contemporary Poetry Review about Michael Donaghy's Collected Poems and his prose, The Shape of the Dance; so I've naturally been reading those, too.

 

Then there's Rita Dove's fascinating new book, Sonata Mullatica, featuring a mixed-race 18th century virtuoso and Beethoven, which just arrived in the post… and Roddy Lumsden's new collection, Third Wish Wasted, which is just out… and a young Hungarian poet called Ágnes Lehószky…

 

Also I memorised one of Shakespeare's sonnets the other week, and loved it. I said it for days. Lovely shapes in the mouth.

 

And then there's this book about Henry James and Oscar Wilde…

 

And, er, Twitter…

 

If you could pass on only one piece of advice to your fellow poets, what would it be?

 

I'd say, with Henry James: "try to be one of those people on whom nothing is lost."

 

*****

 

You can read Katy's blog at http://www.baroqueinhackney.wordpress.com.

 

Or visit her publisher at www.saltpublishing.com.

 

*****

 

Are you a published poet or poetry publisher interested in having an interview featured on this blog? Click here to learn how we might be able to make that happen.

 

*****

 

Looking for more poetry information?

• Check out our poetry titles (on sale in the month of April) HERE.
• Read the most recent WritersDigest.com poetry-related articles HERE.
• View several poetic forms HERE.
• See where poetry is happening HERE.

 

Important Note (please read): It appears most of the poems posted for Day 13's prompt have been wiped out of the system. There are currently only 49 comments. This means you'll need to re-paste your Day 13 poem into Day 13's prompt. It appears everything is fine with the first 12 days of the challenge however. I apologize for this happening, but this kind of scenario is also why I advised saving a copy before the challenge began.

*****

Today is Tuesday, which means two prompts.

First prompt: Write a love poem.

Second prompt: Write an anti-love poem.

Simple as that.

Here's my attempt for the day:

"Both day and night"

I've been there once
or twice. Waiting
for water, our
hands clasp tightly.
The electric
flickers as we
make the bed sound
like a drum. You
don't realize how
normal you are
until you want,
or how special
until you get.

For today's prompt, I want you to write a poem about an object (or objects). Though you don't have to confine yourself to straight up description, I do want you to focus on object and/or make it a central piece of your poem. One of the more famous poems of contemporary literature does this wonderfully in William Carlos Williams' "The Red Wheelbarrow."

Here's my attempt for the day:

"Brainiac's 'Bonsai Superstar' CD"

"Whatcha gonna do 'bout me," asked
from the start. Let's be honest: I
wasn't so sure the first time I listened.
After all, it was kind of weird, this
little sliver of plastic that symbolized
Dayton, Ohio. Every local show was
an event: Part dance party, part
fashion expo. Broken drums sticks,
nonstop action, and always (always)
over before too early. "Well, look
at me now; I'm a wreck." I was
in college when I heard the news:
Timmy Taylor, the lead singer, died
in an accident. He was the one
who consigned copies of my fanzine/
lit journal--even propped a copy
up on stage. So on the cusp of
"making it" that MTV broke the news.
And that was it: The Breeders broke
up; Guided By Voices faded back
into the alleys and garages. Even
this morning, that disc asks, "Who
do you think you are? Some kind
of bonsai superstar?" And it sounds
cheesy, but for a while there, that's
exactly the way we all felt.

 

In some circles, today is known as Good Friday. In other circles, every Friday is good (mostly because the weekend has begun). For the rest, Fridays aren't anything special.

For today's prompt, I want you to write a poem about Friday. Do you like Fridays? Despise Fridays? Of course, you can also write about something that happened on a Friday--or write an ode to Fridays. Or, as you know, I'm all for seeing you attack this from an angle I haven't thought of yet.

Here's my attempt for the day:

"Whoever invented hangovers"

Should be shot before being drug out
into the street. I remember my first
in high school, thinking I'd done the world
wrong, that it was collecting a debt
on my head. Still had to get up and
into work. But getting older, I don't
even need to drink to feel it in there.
This Friday done knocked me down
before I turned out of bed. Could be
I was up working too late. Could be
this durn Georgia pollen. Could be
the April thunder showers rumbling
outside and threatening to spin out
a twister. Anyway, I'm glad I'm alive,
and thank goodness for pain relievers.