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Pericardium goes put put patta patta ping!(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

 

Every poet has one, that filler poem you send out just because the guidelines say at least three poems, but you only have two that you really feel are a good fit for the journal. The one you never expect to have published, that, secretly, you admit to yourself isn’t very good. The red headed stepchild of your repertoire, as it were.

 

For a long time my filler poem was one called Poetry Odetry. It was written in about fifteen minutes as an example of alliteration for my students. These guys were members of my after school poetry club, and ranged in age from eight to thirteen, so I wanted something very basic, not fraught with a lot of metaphor or heavy meaning. I just wanted a lot of words that started with the letter P, just like my last name, since the exercise I was going to have the kids do would be to write an alliterative poem around their own last names. It wasn’t something I wrote with the intent of having it published, except for removing a section of the poem where I had a list of P words, I did very little editing before sending it out as my plus three. And that was OK with me.

 

So imagine my surprise when Every Day Poets not only accepted P.O. and published it in November, but used it as an example in Every Day Inspiration. Reasons for the acceptance were cited as it being a fun poem that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Which, of course, it doesn’t.

 

That makes me want to take a second look at the poems that haven’t found a home yet, that I think are far and away better than my alliterative exercise. Do they take their themes too far, and border on the melodramatic? Am I saying something in them that’s been done to death?

 

It’s amazing what you can learn from filler poems. Not least of which, that you’re not always the best judge of what in your poetry works, and what doesn’t.

 

Have you had a poem or story accepted that you never thought would ever find a home? Tell me about it in the comments.

 

To read Poetry Odetry, click here: http://www.everydaypoets.com/poetry-odetry-by-helen-r-peterson/

 

To read the Everyday Inspiration post, click here:  http://www.everydaypoets.com/every-day-inspiration-51/

 

 

 

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Who knows what lurks in the fridge? 

 

 

 

 

 

There are times when the influence of the poets that have come before you become very apparent in your work. You write a poem or a story, and you can see Emily Dickinson or Wallace Stevens or Robert Frost in there, somewhere. In my poem, To My Recent Ex, recently published by A Few Lines Magazine, there is a glimmer of William Carlos Williams’ “This is Just to Say”.

 

 

 

There are two very different camps when it comes to the interpretation of Williams’ poem. Some believe it to be a simple and moving look into a loving relationship. The other camp, where I stand, sees the chill and formality within it. Forgiveness is not asked, it is demanded. Ending with the word cold implies, to me, a chilly relationship, where communication is handled solely by notes left on the fridge.

 

 

 

My poem was written at a time when my soon to be ex-husband and I were communicating in like manner, though with us it was texting, we no longer shared a fridge. The isolation in Williams’ poem resonated with me, and I wanted to take it farther, more graphic, more cynical.

 

 

 

And so, instead of sweet fruit, the persona in my poem eats a bowl of spaghetti past its prime instead. The results are stomach turning, in more ways than one.

 

 

 

You can read my poem, and the other great poetry in Issue IV of a Few Lines, by following this link here to the pdf:

 

 

 

http://www.keepandshare.com/doc/4016299/vol1iss4-pdf-may-22-2012-12-13-am-1-4-meg?da=y&dnad=y

 

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Zygote in My Coffee April 2012

 

To read the issue, go here: http://www.zygoteinmycoffee.com/100s/issue137contentsradnads.html

 

First, let me just say how happy I am that Zygote came back. They were one of the first to publish me, and so many of those early online zines have gone dark. I’m ecstatic they’ve published my poems, Sapiosexual and Glottophagy, this month in issue #137.

 

Both Sapiosexual and Glottophagy continue the series I’ve been working on of Three Dollar Poems, poems that have long and/or archaic words for titles that then go on in the body of the poem to define the word in some way.

 

A sapiosexual is a person who is turned on by another person’s intellect, and not their physical appearance. Glottophagy is a term that refers to when a language is completely taken over by another, so that the words themselves are lost. This is commonly referred to as language death, but glottophagy, let’s admit it, is a lot more fun to say.

 

I am so excited to see these two poems published together, as they are both inspired by the new man in my life, and the impact these changes have had in both my point of view and in my writing. Glottophagy especially encapsulates this, since I had been in such destructive relationships previously, it was hard for me to reclaim the language necessary to write poems and fiction that reflect happiness and true love. Working through the poem was a gateway for me to a whole new range of images and metaphors that had been closed off to me before.

 

I am eager to see what new poems will be inspired by this amazing new journey in my life, and I can’t wait to share them with you, my fans and supporters. I think, in times like these, we can all use a few more happy poems, don’t you?

 

 

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Image via Wikipedia

http://www.vagabondagepress.com/00901/V3I2PT7.html

Battered Suitcase is an online journal run by Vagabondage Press that has a special place in my heart, as it was one of the first places that published me  when I was starting out. They’ve done me the honor of accepting another poem, this one entitled “When Even the Neighbor’s Cat Feels Sorry for Me”, a good one for today, when I am down in the dumps.

This was a napowrimo poem. What is napowrimo? National Poetry Writing Month, the month of April, when I, and a number of other poets in the US, challenge ourselves and one another to write a poem a day, for the whole month. It’s a momentum I wish I could maintain all year. During April of 2009, I had just moved into a new place, had chosen to end my reproductive years, and was looking at a relationship in decline.  On this particular day, I hadn’t found my poem yet, was washing dishes, listening to the Beatles, when “Fool on the Hill” came on. Music is a huge influence on my writing, as are tasks that have a rhythm to them, such as scrubbing dishes. Close your eyes and think of it, the sounds and movements. Scrub scrub, rinse, stack, scrub scrub rinse stack. Sccrit, scrrit, woosh, clanck, scrrit sccrit, woosh, clanck.

The beauty of ordinary things, washing dishes, humming a tune, is good therapy to cure the blues. You either write a poem or take a nap afterwards, but either way, you’re feeling good. It all swirls away down the drain with the tortilla crumbs.  Take some time today to become aware of the rhythms of your own domesticity, and put it down on paper.