Bad poetry crossword puzzle

I'm not going to lie. I'm not a big crossword puzzle person. Occasionally I do them on road trips with my wife. But I don't do them alone because I am terrible at them. As a poet, I find this kind of humiliating since I'm supposed to be good with words or whatever (see? proof, right there).

In any case, here is a crossword puzzle worth doing. Via The Awl, we have a puzzle by Alex Pareene titled "Bad Titles for Poems" that takes its answers from "the most oft-submitted titles of poems to an award-winning American publication." Get out those pencils. And hope that none of the answers are the titles of any of your poems.

UPDATE: So my wife and I did the puzzle. We spent about two hours on it. We got 8 correct on our own, 2 correct using the Internets, and the rest, well, we didn't get. It's a hard puzzle and some of the clues don't make sense, even after we read the answer key (we're looking at you 17 Across). I think I'll stick to search-a-words. Much more OCD friendly.

"On Losing a Home" by Mary Oliver

I stayed up until 4 in the morning reading Valerie Laken's novel Dream House. It was most excellent. Laken, by the way, is a graduate of UofM's MFA program (holla!).

Dream House made me think of the poem "On Losing a Home" by Mary Oliver.

On Losing a Home

1.
The bumble bees
know where their home is.
They have memorized
every stalk and leaf
of the field.
They fall from the air at
exactly
the right place,
they crawl
under the soft grasses,
they enter
the darkness
humming.

2.
Where we will go
with our tables and chairs,
our bed,
our nine thousand books,
our TV, PC, VCR,
our cat
who is sixteen years old?
Where will we put down
our dishes and our blue carpets,
where will we put up
our rose-colored,
rice-paper
shades?

3.
We never saw
such a beautiful house,
though it dipped toward the sea,
though it shook and creaked,
though it said to the rain: come in!
and had a ghost --
at night she rattled the teacups
with her narrow hands,
then left the cupboard open --
ad once she slipped -- or maybe it wasn't a slip --
and called to our cat, who ran to the empty room.
We only smiled.
Unwise! Unwise!

4.
O, what is money?
O, never in our lives have we thought
about money.
O, we have only a little money.
O, now in our sleep
we dream of finding money.
But someone else
already has money.
Money, money, money.
Someone else
can sign the papers,
can turn the key.
O dark, O heavy, O mossy money.

5.
Amazing
how the rich
don't even
hesitate -- up go the
sloping rooflines, out goes the
garden, down goes the crooked,
green tree, out goes the
old sink, and the little windows, and
there you have it -- a house
like any other -- and there goes
the ghost, and then another, they glide over
the water, away, waving and waving
their fog-colored hands.

6.
Don't tell us
how to love, don't tell us
how to grieve, or what
to grieve for, or how loss
shouldn't sit down like a gray
bundle of dust in the deepest
pockets of our energy, don't laugh at our belief
that money isn't
everything, don't tell us
how to behave in
anger, in longing, in loss, in home-
sickness, don't tell us,
dear friends.

7.
Goodbye, house.
Goodbye, sweet and beautiful house,
we shouted, and it shouted back,
goodbye to you, and lifted itself
down from the town, and set off
like a packet of clouds across
the harbor's blue ring,
the tossing bell, the sandy point -- and turned
lightly, wordlessly,
into the keep of the wind
where it floats still --
where it plunges and rises still
on the black and dreamy sea.

(Mary Oliver, from What Do We Know, 2002 Da Capo Press)

Rock & Roll poet M.L. Liebler

M.L. Liebler, a man who makes poetry happen -- and matter -- in Detroit, is on the cover of this week's Metro Times: "At his core, Liebler's all about devotion and honesty, and the unending search for the poetry in everyday life. He has a million yarns born of experiences ... but his story is embedded in Detroit, rooted in his route to find religion. The connective tissue that ties it all together? Poetry and rock 'n' roll, which, for M.L. Liebler, are two legs attached to the same vagabond body."

Or, as M.L. himself puts it, "I see poetry as a way of life, an essential nutrient to everyday life for every person — not just for intellectuals, people who went to college or those who just read a lot. I think poetry is something that people need and can use, but they have to be exposed to it in an accessible way. Some poets don't see their mission that way, and that's fine, not all poets need to see things that way, but, for me, that's the only way to do it — get out there and bring it to the people."

When asked if the early '70s poetry scene then "puts to shame what we have today," M.L. replies, "Are you kidding? I think that's all romanticized. We were struggling to get seven people in a room back then. We just did a big poetry walk in Chelsea — different readings at different venues with a ton of different poets that concluded with me and beat legend Michael McClure back at the library. There were probably 500 people that participated. The next day we were at the Scarab Club with McClure, a Republican writer, three women from the suburbs and a lesbian from the city. People were standing, sitting, leaning, crouching, just squeezing in together."

Hey, guess who that "lesbian from the city" was? Though, in truth, I live in Ferndale. But I am really close to 8 Mile...

Poet missing in Japan

Via Slog, a poet named Craig Arnold is missing in Japan after exploring a volcano. The Poetry Foundation is carrying the same news on their blog as is the New York Times. I hope that he is found and that he is safe.

Bird-Understander

Of many reasons I love you here is one

the way you write me from the gate at the airport
so I can tell you everything will be alright

so you can tell me there is a bird
trapped in the terminal      all the people
ignoring it       because they do not know
what do with it       except to leave it alone
until it scares itself to death

it makes you terribly terribly sad

You wish you could take the bird outside
and set it free or       (failing that)
call a bird-understander
to come help the bird

All you can do is notice the bird
and feel for the bird       and write
to tell me how language feels
impossibly useless

but you are wrong

You are a bird-understander
better than I could ever be
who make so many noises
and call them song

These are your own words
your way of noticing
and saying plainly
of not turning away
from hurt

you have offered them
to me       I am only
giving them back

if only I could show you
how very useless
they are not

(Craig Arnold, 2009)

You can read more of his poems at the Poetry Foundation Web site.

To paraphrase Peter Gabriel: "[Seize] the Monkey"

Bad monkey smugglers. Bad. (via Slog)

"Mother Dance" by Samara

This is my wife, dancing at a recent hafla in Utica. She is, as you'll notice, quite pregnant. She's been belly dancing for years and, though I love her so, I must admit that the whole hafla/belly dancing/Ren Fest scene is so not my thing. But this particular dance is an exception to the rule. I could watch it over and over again. And have.

Of course, the "super powers" of most pregnant women are a little more, well, mundane. But no less super.

Superhero Pregnant Woman

Her sense of smell is ten times stronger.
And so her husband smells funny;
she rolls away from him in the bed.
She even smells funny to herself,
but cannot roll away from that.

Why couldn’t she get a more useful superpower?
Like the ability to turn invisible, or fly?

The refrigerator laughs at her from its dark corner,
knowing she will have to open it some time
and surrender to its villainous odors.

(Jessy Randall, from A Day in Boyland, Ghost Road Press, 2007)

"Grief" by Matthew Dickman

I can't remember exactly, but I am pretty sure it was Karyna McGlynn via her review of Dickman's book on Goodreads.com, who turned me on to Matthew Dickman's poetry. I'd heard his name here and there but decided to Google him and see if I could find some of his stuff to read online. Sure enough, I found two poems on TheStory.org, which is the Web site of the NPR show hosted by Dick Gordon. Matthew was the subject of a February 29, 2008 episode of The Story titled "The Manny" about his time working as a nanny for the Nakayama family (you can listen to the episode and even download it on the Web site). He looked after the Nakayama's young son, Gilbert, and also helped look after Isamu, Gilbert's father, who was dying of brain cancer. It is an incredible, touching story. And now I want Matthew to be my nanny, because this is the kind of man I want my son to be around.

Not only that, but I also now love the poems I've read so far and can't wait to get his book All American Poem which won The American Poetry Review First Book Prize in Poetry last year.

Grief

When grief comes to you as a purple gorilla

you must count yourself lucky.

You must offer her what's left

of your dinner, the book you were trying to finish

you must put aside

and make her a place to sit at the foot of your bed,

her eyes moving from the clock

to the television and back again.

I am not afraid. She has been here before

and now I can recognize her gait

as she approaches the house.

Some nights, when I know she's coming,

I unlock the door, lie down on my back,

and count her steps

from the street to the porch.

Tonight she brings a pencil and a ream of paper,

tells me to write down

everyone I have ever known

and we separate them between the living and the dead

so she can pick each name at random.

I play her favorite Willie Nelson album

because she misses Texas

but I don't ask why.

She hums a little,

the way my brother does when he gardens.

We sit for an hour

while she tells me how unreasonable I've been,

taking down the pictures of my family,

not writing, refusing to shower,

staring too hard at girls younger than my sister.

Eventually she puts one of her heavy

purple arms around me, leans

her head against mine,

and all of a sudden things are feeling romantic.

So I tell her,

things are feeling romantic.

She pulls another name, this time

from the dead

and turns to me in that way that parents do

so you feel embarrassed or ashamed of something.

Romantic? She says,

reading the name out loud, slowly

so I am aware of each syllable,

each consonant resembling a swollen arm, the collapsed ear,

a mouth full of teeth, each vowel

wrapping around the bones like new muscle,

the sound of that person's body

and how reckless it is,

how careless that his name is in one pile and not the other.

(Matthew Dickman)

Poetry from the brain trauma center

Poetry is a weird kind of writing. I don't know what makes a person want to write it, but I do think there is something in a poet's brain that facilitates unusual connections between ideas and words and sounds.

I recently read A Three Dog Life by Abigail Thomas. In it she recalls her life with her dogs and with her husband who suffers a brain injury after being struck by a car. It is a sad and humbling account of loss and the comfort people take in animals. What is most fascinating, however, is that after her husband's accident, he often says things that are strange and beautiful and, well, poetic.

"In the first weeks after his accident, Rich spoke in mysteries. It was as if he were now connected to some vast reservoir of wisdom, available only to those whose brains have been altered, a reservoir unencumbered by personality, quirks, history, habits. 'It is interesting to think that one could run farther and longer and perhaps find the answer,' he said one evening, drifting in and out of delirious talk. 'What would you get to?' I asked, eager for the answer. 'The allure of distance' was what he said, a dreamy phrase" (p. 17).

When his youngest daugter, Catherine, visits him in the hospital: "'Do you eat field mice?' he asked, a strange question we thought, until I realized that the first three letters of her name spell 'cat'" (p. 18).

Upon going down a hospital hallway for a CAT scan: "You always know you're in for it when you're going down a long hall with nobody else in it" (p. 22).

After the author tells Rich she loves him he says, "That's worth twenty hats and all the signatures in the world" (p. 33).

On living in a facility: "'I'm alone,' he says waving his arm down the hall. 'Hundreds of single beds,' he says, 'hundreds of single beds with old men lying in them with their boots on'" (p. 51).

"'You squeezed all those colors from fruit,' Rich observed the other day. I was knitting a scarf out of red and purple wool" (p. 62).

Believing his foot is going to be amputated, Rich asks his wife as she strokes his foot, "How much sensation makes a toe?" (p. 136).

"I feel like a tent that wants to be a kite, tugging at my stakes" (p. 162).

The book, like many I've read lately, also mentions monkeys. "Through this tube, which resembles a monkey's tail as it curls out from under the covers to the IV pole, they give him nourishment and medicine. The shape of the tube may be what gives rise to Rich's belief that there is literally a monkey in the bed. 'There's no monkey,' I tell him. 'Don't be so sure,' he says, lifting the sheet to peer beneath it" (p. 22).

Inaugural Poem Remix

Granted this is a day late and a dollar short, but while searching for songs with the word "movie" in the title on the Hype Machine I stumbled upon a song called "Sparklesharp: The Movie" by Pflaphpschoen. I clicked to listen to it and it was this weird ambient violin music with a lady talking and saying random things. I saw it was from WFMU's Beware of the Blog, which often posts extremely weird stuff. So I checked it out. And what do you know? WFMU apparently asked for folks to submit remixes of “Praise Song for the Day,” Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem. The best ones use Alexander's own voice and are kind of cool (PLU + RIAA's "A Golden Induction" and Sick To The Back Teeth's "Take Out Your Boom" for example), while the worst ones skip using her voice entirely, opting instead for a supposedly "funny" but more often stupid voice. Many are unlistenable (spare yourself any of the Fatty Jubbo remixes). But it's a cool idea regardless of the resulting execution (and I definitely mean that in every possible way).

Tickle Me Slow-Lo

Aww, super cute, right? But before you rush off to get a slow loris of your own, you should know they're endangered -- threatened by habitat loss, the illegal pet trade, and domestic trade in Cambodia where "carcasses are dried and smoked for use in ... traditional remedies."

They're also, well, gross. From Cutebreak.com: "As cute as the slow loris is, it is considered an endangered species and not really suitable as a pet. Not only are they illegal to own, but they have sharp teeth and wild-like behaviors. For example, the loris marks its territory with urine... constantly... for the span of its entire life. This is not a habit that can be changed like house training a cat or dog."

And if that doesn't keep you from smuggling a loris home in your suitcase, perhaps their poisonous elbows will.

Not to be confused with Malibu Barbie

Malibu Monkey is a brand of lemonade. Or, more aptly, a lemonade made by a guy who hates Hollywood, but desperately wants to be a part of it. So, really, it is so much more.

"Dale Carnegie famously said: 'If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.' I say: 'If life gives you hackneyed cliches and homespun parables, you are an unimaginative, slope-browed troglodyte, most likely working as a sitcom show runner or writing romantic comedies. If that is the case, then you are wealthy enough to buy my amazing Balsamic Lemonade or Basil-Infused Limeade by the truckload."

And what, really, are you waiting for? Unless, of course, you'd rather "hang yourself from one of 'O's' in the Hollywood sign with a noose made from your Kabbalah strings and rubber cancer-awareness bracelets." That suggestion comes right on the bottle, but unless you're a Hollywood agent, entertainment lawyer, or manager, don't worry. It doesn't apply to you.

Drink up, indeed.

Thanks, Videogum, for bringing this into my life. Or something.

Airport by Emily Kendal Frey

You don't need a lot of words to say something big. Big as a jumbo jet, even. Airport by Emily Kendal Frey is a collection of short poems (because that's the way she rolls) all about the so-called friendly skies and the places we endure while waiting to be airborne. Airport was digitally published by Blue Hour Press, which means you can read the whole thing online for free. And you should. And not just because Emily is someone I know and happen to like (we've never met, but we're totally Facebook friends).

Here's one of my favorites from the book.

Airport

How do we live
much less

breathe
in this place

of potential
disaster?

I don't mean
burning clouds

but the people
on the ground

ready to
forget us

before we
come down

(Emily Kendal Frey, from Airport, 2009 Blue Hour Press)

Cognitive–Behavioral Therapy by Tao Lin

Oh, how I wanted to like Cognitive–Behavioral Therapy by Tao Lin. I wanted it to be the hip, acerbic, witty poetry I aspire to write. But it was not to be.

Ray McDaniel reviewed the book last year and talks about it far more intelligently -- and generously -- than I could.

Still, the first poem in the book, "I will learn how to love a person and then I will teach you and then we will know," is promising and, as a result, a bit misleading.

I will learn how to love a person and then I will teach you and then we will know

seen from a great enough distance i cannot be seen
i feel this as an extremely distinct sensation
of feeling like shit; the effect of small children
is that they use declarative sentences and then look at your face
with an expression that says, 'you will never do enough
for the people you love'; i can feel the universe expanding
and it feels like no one is trying hard enough
the effect of this is an extremely shitty sensation
of being the only person alive; i have been alone for a very long time
it will take an extreme person to make me feel less alone
the effect of being alone for a very long time
is that i have been thinking very hard and learning about existence, morality
loneliness, people, society, and love; i am afraid
that i am not learning fast enough; i can feel the universe expanding
and it feels like no one has ever tried hard enough ; when I cried in your room
it was the effect of an extremely distinct sensation that 'i am the only person
alive,' 'i have not learned enough,' and 'i can feel the universe
expanding and making things be further apart
and it feels like a declarative sentence
whose message is that we must try harder'

(Tao Lin, Cognitive–Behavioral Therapy, Melville House, 2008)

Love in an elevator...

Okay, truthfully this has nothing to do with the Aerosmith song, but I can't help but get the song stuck in my head wherever elevators are concerned. And this post concerns elevators.

A student of mine alerted me to this video of a guy stuck in an elevator in a New York office building for 41 hours. It was a Friday night, he was working late. He went out for a smoke and when he tried to go back to work, the elevator stopped somewhere around floor 13. He had no watch or cell phone, no way to tell the time and no connection to the outside world.

You can read more about his experience in Nick Paumgarten's brilliant article "Up and Then Down: The lives of elevators," which was published last year in the New Yorker.

In the article, Paumgarten writes, "While anthems have been written to jet travel, locomotives, and the lure of the open road, the poetry of vertical transportation is scant."

While probably true, I offer you a poem featuring an elevator regardless.

Self-Inquiry Before the Job Interview

Did you sneeze?
Yes, I rid myself of the imposter inside me.

Did you iron your shirt?
Yes, I used the steam of mother's hate.

Did you wash your hands?
Yes, I learned my hygiene from a raccoon.

I prayed on my knees, and my knees answered with pain.
I gargled. I polished my shoes until I saw who I was.
I inflated my résumé by employing my middle name.

I walked to my interview, early,
The sun like a ring on an electric stove.
I patted my hair when I entered the wind of a revolving door.
The guard said, For a guy like you, it's the 19th floor.

The economy was up. Flags whipped in every city plaza
In America. This I saw for myself as I rode the elevator,
Empty because everyone had a job but me.

Did you clean your ears?
Yes, I heard my fate in the drinking fountain's idiotic drivel.

Did you slice a banana into your daily mush?
I added a pinch of salt, two raisins to sweeten my breath.

Did you remember your pen?
I remembered my fingers when the elevator opened.

I shook hands that dripped like a dirty sea.
I found a chair and desk. My name tag said my name.
Through the glass ceiling, I saw the heavy rumps of CEOs.
Outside my window, the sun was a burning stove,
All of us pushing papers
To keep it going.

(Gary Soto, from Poetry July 2001)

Operation April 19th Reading is complete

If you missed the poetry reading at the Scarab Club today, well, sad for you. There was a really good turn out (there were people who didn't even have anywhere to sit). The audience was moved to tears of joy and everyone got a free iPhone.* It was like being on Oprah but, you know, with poetry.

I was one of the readers (really, I was. Even if I am not listed on the Metro Detroit Writers Web site) and I was very happy to be reading alongside some friends and some folks I've never met before. Reading today were Sophia Rivkin, Liz Volpe, Rebecca Rank, George Dila (who read short fiction), Brett Lott (who also read short fiction) and Michael McClure (that's a picture of him on the right).

Seeing/hearing Michael McClure read was an interesting experience. I had never heard of him before today, which probably has a lot to do with my age and the fact that I've never been into the beat poets. But McClure used to hang with Dylan and Ginsberg and Janis Joplin and other people who are dead now.** So, you know, McClure is walking, talking, poetry reciting history.

He reads his stuff in a really growly, breathy way (reminded me of that radio host of Pillow Talk that used to be on Lite FM or something at night when I was a kid. I could never understand why the ladies would call in and say how much they loved his voice) with his mouth really close to the mic. I am glad I didn't have to read after him since I would have wanted to swab the mic with an anti-bacterial wipe. Nothing personal, I just fear germs.

In any case, McClure wasn't really my thing, though he's good at what he does -- not very many people can recite Chaucer in Old English on a whim, for example. At least, that's what he was purportedly doing. For all I know he was just making it up as he went along. In fact, he did make up his own language and he read one of the 99 poems he told us he's written using "beast language." A good lot of it was in English, but then there was plenty of guttural growls and grunts (which, again, could have been Chaucer for all I know), which sounded like noises a male gorilla might make when trying to woo lady apes. As much as I love primates, I have come to the conclusion that poems containing grunts are creepy to me.

The grunting poem made me think of Robert Bly who McClure took a shot at (in good fun, I'm assuming) before reading his last two poems, both haikus. "Now I could be like Robert Bly and read these four times until you got it," McClure said. The audience chuckled because, ha ha, silly drum beating Robert Bly. But then McClure DID read the poems more than once which was, just as when Bly does it, unnecessary, and, because McClure had just made fun of Bly for doing it, annoying. However, his two haikus were quite good and the best thing he read.

The reading was put on by Springfed Arts Metro Detroit Writers. They do a lot of good for writing in the Detroit area, so support them and stuff.


*Not true.

**I know Dylan is not dead.