When I don't write like myself...

Who am I writing like?

Sunday School Agnostic
by Rachel Pinkstone


Her star shines like an emblem of certainty against her neck.
It rests in the hollow, six points of direction, not the five I place on top of the tree.

And that is the only place I put it. There’s no place in me for that.

Her star comes with a purpose and a plan; not just a religion, but a life.
While I was pulled from the womb and immersed- cold, wet, clean of my sins,
she was born into a warm cocoon of faith, family and tradition;
a chrysalis that will house her until the day she dies.
Her unmarked body will be buried in the family plot.

I had planned to be spread against the wind--blown far away.

 I pass the synagogue on my afternoon run; the song and the prayers rise out against the murmur of traffic. It hurts to hear the passion and the practice of their tune, 
but I can’t help myself from listening—there’s no song I hear for me.
They say the covenant was made between God and Abraham, that Moses had given them books; that each life has a place and a part in the song.

I can barely recall the last time I even bowed my head to pray.

I wisecrack about the opiate of the masses,
but I’m still just waiting for the drug.

This lady seems quite swell!

RACHEL ZUCKER

Rachel Zucker was born in New York City in 1971 and raised in the landscape of Greenwich Village when not traveling around the world with her parents on Wolkstein's folktale-collecting trips (her mother was a folk-story teller and her father, a novelist). After graduating from Yale with a B.A. in Psychology, Zucker attended the University of Iowa where she received her M.F.A in poetry. Zucker has taught at Yale, NYU and Makor. From 2005-2007 she was the poet-in-residence at Fordham University where she taught writing and literature classes to undergraduate and graduate students.

Her works include four books:
Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts and Affections, (with Arielle Greenberg). 2008
The Bad Wife Handbook, 2007
The Last Clear Narrative, 2004
Eating in the Underworld, 2003
A Chapbook:
Annunciation, 2002
Contributions to several anthologies of both poetry and prose:
Not for Mothers Only, 2007
Structure & Surprise: Engaging Poetic Turns, 2007
Legitimate Dangers, 2006
Poetry 30: Thirty-Something Thirty-Something American Poets, 2005
Isn’t It Romantic, 2004
The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries, 2004
Best American Poetry 2001
About What Was Lost: Twenty Writers on Miscarriage, Healing and Hope, 2006
(Not to mention a laundry list of journals to which she has contributed.)
She is currently working on her fourth collection of poems, Museum of Accidents, which will be published by Wave Books in 2009, and a novel for which she provides little information.
_______________________________________________________________________
REVIEWS
"Zucker has the confessionalist's knack for turning personal and difficult into universal and transcendent, and the experimentalist's gift for fearless, associative play. The combination is unsettling and groundbreaking: a vitally necessary book for our age." 
-Arielle Greenberg, author of My Kafka Century
"The poems in The Last Clear Narrative find a path to the unspeakable. By way of a fractured narrative, Rachel Zucker painstakingly documents death and birth, taking us deep into the experiences of that 'stubborn body.' The Last Clear Narrative seeks, and finds, a remarkable language the body can speak." -Elisabeth Frost, author of The Feminist Avant-Garde in American Poetry 
THE MOON HAS A REPUTATION
FOR BEING FICKLE by Rachel Zucker

I read the instructions twice and pee on my hand by mistake.
I wait.
I try again and then, in the 2 minutes 15 seconds it takes to get the first response
I watch Ponch deliver a baby in a trailer the CHiPs pulled over for speeding.
The woman's screaming.
Ponch pours water from a canteen over his hands and kneels between her legs.
Thirty-five seconds later he emerges from the trailer, pulls on black leather
riding gloves, there's no blood, and
one pink bar
on the plastic view screen.

I think I may have been Channeling Stewey Griffin.

Carpet
by Rachel Pinkstone

I can see it in front of me: yellow and mocking. I don’t remember leaving it there.
But it’s there.
The carpet itches my palms, however, it’s much better than the kitchen: cold and tiled. 
Where is that duck?

Yes, there it is in front of me. Maybe if I rock to the left—no—right. Where is she now?
This time I truly need her.

I don’t remember if she prefers mother or mommy. Mama, get off the phone with Sue.
That duck, further still, in front of me.
No matter where I lurch I only move backwards, just a wiggle with my pampered tush.
Now what it I was looking for?

There he is: orange bill and yellow plumage. Why must you tease from across the room?
Don’t mock me, Duck! 
Mama! MAMA! Can’t you see the 
duck and I belong together?

Jordan asked me to write a poem about Christmas.

Up on the Rooftop.

This year, I let her know that I no longer believed. 
The halls, again decked in lights and temporal keepsakes; 
however, the Precious Moments nativity still claimed a 
Holy place above the TV. “What do you mean, you don’t believe?” 
Tearfully, she remembered the day she lost her St. Nick: 
half eaten cookies, empty bottle, drunken grandpa and the living room 
floor smelling of whiskey and pine needles. Last year he’d forgotten my
 chessboard. Before that, Michelle’s baby doll that could pee. 
“He’s just not the man I’d thought he would be.”

This year, I let her know that I no longer believed; 
however, I slept on the couch anyway. It wasn’t the clicking of
hooves that woke me, or the pleasant resonance of a laugh. No, 
it was the sensation of being lifted, or shaken – an impression I’m
not likely to forget. “So you think you can just forget about me, eh?” 
His breath reeked of venison and mulled cider. Sausage-link fingers dug
 beneath each of my armpits – he was keeping me far from the ground.
“Well, son, here’s some proof -- you know Santa won’t lie.” 
I simply couldn’t wait for a special surprise.

This year, I let her know that I no longer believed
in myself or the people who love me. When the jolly man placed me back on my
feet, he turned me around; I closed my eyes with delight. The wooden floor slightly 
moaned under the shift of his weight, a quick motion I could barely perceive. He bent me over his knee, pulled at my skivvies and slapped my ass with his big ham of a hand. “This. Is what. It means. To believe.” Each line accompanied by a matching 
flat-palm blow. Then a chuckle resounded. Jingle bells chimed.
 After looking up, he was gone.
Looking back now, I was wrong.

Joshua Beckman

JOSHUA BECKMAN

This loverly Thursday afternoon, Joshua Beckman gave a hypnotic reading in the TCNJ Library Auditorium. He performed for us three poems from Your Time Has Come, which was over in a matter of moments as the pieces are so short. It was his reading from Shake that was particularly interesting. He read through the entire first section of Shake, without skipping a poem or a beat. His pace and speech made each of the poems hypnotically ryhthmic, rocking back and forth or side to side as he spoke. While he read, certain themes became obviously important: the repetition, the sound choices, hands, wanting.

His work makes the ordinary and unoticeable into something extraordinary and important. Then many of his poems simply mock this importance. His work mocks modesty in its own humility. His words are seemingly about learning. The constant need to keep learning and moving. Wanting.

After the reading, he answered the questions just as we all thought he would: like a Rock Star.

He claimed that he spends years making the decisions concerning his collections. Nothing is done spur of the moment, and most of his work truly ends up on the cutting room floor. And when asked if being an editor has helped his work he said, " Probably not. It may hurt it, though!"

He was a good man, Charlie Brown. He enjoyed a cookie or two and made sure to sign every book we through at him.

That'll do pig.

On my Fall Break Vacation, I went to Witch Country!

1692

by Rachel Pinkstone

The room, stuffy and dated, filled
quickly with innocents and perspiration.
The voice behind us buzzed below within
our seats, charges vicious with intent.

The lights, dramatic, accusing, and timed,
poked like God’s angry finger at the damned.
The devil’s face flashed gruesome and waxen,
ready to take his heathens below.

They played loudly her voice as she cried 
out the lord’s prayers, “You are with the Devil,
now! The black man is at your back!”

Mr. Corey under boulders, Lady Nurse
dying behind bars, and the nudging
reminder to visit the gift shop. Kitchen-
witches and snow globes on sale.

We watch to learn tolerance.
We watch to avoid persecution.
We watched to receive the free Magick Wand.

Sometimes don't you just want a hot cup of Haiku?

“Fall(ing)”

Up high in the sill
the man in the pin-striped suit
sways calm in the breeze.


“Rent”

She opens them one
by one. Lays them on the desk.
He will never come.


“Five”

Struggling with words,
this language is new for him.
Remember he is young.


“Dow”

Money, paper, pens.
If it falls again, will we?
Try not to invest.


“Stephen-cat”

I reflect the light
on the floor. He likes to play
with his own shadow.

Exercising my Creativity?

“79”
by Rachel Pinkstone

Prologue
The door, unusually open, gushed a flood of welcoming light 
no more inviting than the torrent of expectation behind it. Nine months 
since this threshold was passed last. Nine months of promises made
 into a solid ball of guilt, hard against my stomach. The doorbell 
had the same old chime, that tune we all know, but can’t recollect.  
Her eyes (wrinkled by irritation and our hesitance to walk right in) met 
each our matching set of baby blues. That look said so many things: 
surprise, relief, anger, maybe joy.

Chapter One 
How’syourmother?Whendidyouchangeyourhair?Didweknowyouwerecomingthistime?Whendidyouloseallthatweight?Haveyougottenarealjobyet?Isthereamaninyourlife?Didweknowyouwerecomingthistime?Whenwillyoubringusgrandkids?Whyhaven’tyoucalled?WillweseeyouatThanksgiving?HowaboutChristmas?Didweknowyouwerecomingthistime?Don’twealwaysseeyouatChristmas?Didyouthinkwe’dforgetyourbirthday?Didweknowyouwerecomingthistime?

Chapters Two through Twelve
The clink and tap of utensils, fork against plate, metal vs. porcelain,
was deafening. Aunt ---‘s new crown, third molar in back, twice now replaced, 
made audible effort to bite. Uncle --- gargled his mashed potatoes, 
coughed after a swallow. We watched him for struggle; returned to our meal. 
Grandpa maneuvered his food; turkey slid into place, biscuit rumbled off the plate, 
green beans squelched under the force. I only stirred my drink, repeatedly, 
the ice played like bells. A forty-minute orchestration instrumented, 
entirely, by of our digestion.

Chapter Thirteen

Promisemeyou’llvisitmore,Wewon’tbearoundforever,sometimesIforgetmymedication,Muslimsmovedinacrossthestreet,Promisemeyou’llvisitmore,Ihavetopinchtherosebushbeforethefirstfrost,Rememberwhenweboughtyouthatbike?Promisemeyou’llvisitmore,Didyouseemetakethecolaseorthexanax?Rememberthatweloveyou,Promisemeyou’llvisitmore.

Epilogue
The door closed, unusually, behind us. 

Influence driven Poetry.

"Superheroes"

by Rachel Pinkstone

He emptied his pockets to show
me what he was Worth.
A dirty Quarter from 1978, the year 
his mother was born.
Used tissues, slightly sticky, bloodied,
wadded into a ball.
A Rock, thought an arrowhead,
still enveloped in dirt.
A Note to the nurse, a claim
his dosage had changed.
A Spider-Man tattoo, temporary,
but perpetually his hero.

“I like Spider-Man too. Can’t say
I’m a fan of Mary-Jane.”
He eyed me first, amassed his wealth
and laughed. Turned away, then left 
the classroom, 
Smiling, coughing 
hard on the way out.

Tracy K. Smith

TRACY K. SMITH

This afternoon, Tracy K. Smith gave a fantabulous reading down in the TCNJ Library Auditorium. The turn out was superb which can only mean that the PUBLIC RELATIONS GROUP did their job, top notch.

*wink wink*

(I have to represent for my people, obviously.)

She read a good assortment of her poetry, with special emphasis on Duende, which came to be expected as it is the more recent book. She then let us in on a couple pieces from her up and coming book (the date of its release as well as the expected title have completely escaped me) which was a real treat. The slight, distopian, otherworldly themes that she only slightly touched upon in Duende, are a main focus in her new work. The pieces gave way to wit and humor as well as peaceful beauty and scene. She read with grace and comfort infront of the crowd, which led me to believe she may have some theatre background; however, when asked, she denied anything of the sort. Just natural ability!

After the reading, she was superbly receptive to the questioning, especially when we got down to the hard ones, digging into her nitty-gritty detail. Even when a random crowd member asked her what "her body's question" was, she handled with with a giggle and a joke.

Then rest of the event went on with only a slight hitch...the girl from the bookstore had LEFT!!!! I suppose she got bored and figured, "well, who would want to buy a book and get it signed now that Ms. Smith has read and we know just how great her work is?" I was ready to get fist'a'cuffs! So after I ran back to the bookstore and gave them a piece of my mind, I returned with the books and a man to sell them.

At the end of the day, I think we were all rather pleased.

So how would you write this?

I suppose I would erase it:

And here was the recipe:

"Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something. Don't use such an expression as 'dim land of piece.' It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer's not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol. Go in fear of abstractions. "~ Ezra Pound

The Stretch from California: Joe Wenderoth

  

Joe Wenderoth.
        It is really only right to begin a discussion of Joe Wenderoth with a quote from Letters to Wendy’s. When I was first introduced to those work, I had never seen anything quite like it, and with each new reading I find something new and inconceivable to explore.

“February 8, 1997
Wendy will you not even poke me? Not even a slow poke? I wonder why you treat me so. Am I a wooden board? Am I to be thought of as a simple wooden board? Come on, just give me a slow poke. I’m not a wooden board, honey. Come on, just poke me like you used to. Just a slow poke. Look into my eyes—are these the eyes of a wooden board?” ~Letters to Wendy’s.
 
         Wenderoth hails originally from Baltimore Maryland and is currently an Associate Professor of English and teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of California. (I site him with the hope that he has family still living in Maryland, and he could possibly use a trip to TCNJ as an excuse to visit family on this coast as well!)

Wenderoth has made a name for himself in many anthologies and has been called “one of the ten best writers under 35.”
 
          Author and literary critic, Calvin Bedient claims that “Joe Wenderoth's brave new poetic talent is like nothing so much as a live wire writing its own epitaph in sparks. [His poems] throb brilliantly with a sense of the 'too much.' . . . But in Wenderoth's case the too much is the too little or the too ordinary-a very remarkable discovery to have made so late in the history of poetry. Philip Larkin and a few American poets have approached it, but Wenderoth's instrument is sharper than theirs; he makes quick cuts in the meat of the ordinary, which is the meat of the impossible."
Besides my own personal fascination, Letters to Wendy’s (2000), Wenderoth has published several other works:
Disfortune (1995)
It Is If I Speak (2000)
The Holy Spirit: Essays Written for John Ashcroft’s Secret Self (2005)
No Real Light (2007)

An interesting tidbit: In 2007, Wenderoth performed in collaboration with Gibby Haynes (butthole surfers) in Brooklyn at the Issue Project Room.



“April 19, 1997

It is rare for a baby to be so bad that it is sentenced to be hanged, and even rarer for the sentence to be carried out, and yet, when a baby is hung, what a pleasant surprise it is for the passersby.” ~Letters to Wendy’s.

*Youtube.com (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zTwb-F7Mtc)

The Gibby Haynes sessions are a litle muttled on youtube, the music is a little low (but the one with the glasses is Gibby) and the blonde man reading, looking like he came in after a night on the street,  is Wenderoth.

*Here, I am including another video by Joe Wenderoth, from a collaboration he has made with several artists, including Gibby Haynes, where they are known as the House Crackers in their Jame sessions.*

"She asked me if I liked Tattoos..."

This is my second workshop poem, written in response to an ill-informed poem about tattoos.

[Untitled]


The pen pierced into my soil, planting 
her favorite flower.
“African Violets,”
 I demanded.

They tried to sell me just a rose.

My blood pooled upon the petals; these 
flowers had no thorns. The air
filled with bees.
Stingers. Buzzing 
down into my bones.

When the flowers fully blossomed, 
 fruits of his labor meticulously 
drawn: She criticized my choices 
but kissed me, 
sweetly,
for the blooms.

Visit this site at your own cost...

...because Erasures are addicting.

When we were Mexican, revised. by Rachel Pinkstone

*Original Text: Bohemian San Francisco by Clarence E. Edwords

http://www.wavepoetry.com/erasures/

Just keep reading, Rachel...just keep reading...

"Tall and tan and young and lovely, the girl from Ipanema goes walking and when she passes, each one she passes goes, "A-a-ah." -  "Girl from Ipanema" -English lyrics written by Norman Gimbel.

D.A. POWELL

If you aren't caught off guard by the obvious need to turn your book sideways in order to take part in some of D.A. Powell's poetry, his use of catchy, and often ironic pop songs will definitely give you a little kick in the pants.

I seem to be drawn most passionately to the poets who are hiding personal pain(of the speaker) or experience right out in the open. Powell's poem, "[tall and thin and young and lovely the michael with kaposi's sarcoma goes walking]" uses a play on this popular song about a beautiful young woman to heighten the power and beauty of living with disease.  The Bossa Nova song, fits perfectly, crooning about a landscape so different from the one provided in the poem; however, the speaker seems to walk with content along the cold beach displaying the battle scars of his disease and little power he still holds in his "final stages." The power of the song, and the movement, and the hope.

Wow. That felt deep.

Anywho, it's D.A. Powell's ability to mold the music that keeps together the frail world that the characters of his poems live in, with the harsh words of the reality that they exist in. 

Reflections on the First Week, pt. 2.

"You know the way Jesus/ rips open his shirt/to show us his heart, all flaming and thorny"

NICK FLYNN 

Massachusetts born with a stint at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and a graduate degree from NYU, he writes in all the right publications and when he isn't teaching at the University of Houston he is "elsewhere."

The above quote does not come from the two poems that drew me to Nick Flynn, but, boy oh boy, it show is one sentence how this poet is able to turn you completely around with the use of one word. Specifically: thorny.

It is, in fact, the two poems entitled "Cartoon Physics, part 1" and "Cartoon Physics, part 2" that caught me.

Contemplating the perceptions of real life pain and atrocities through the eyes and psychological abilities of children, he provides irony, sympathy and playful lyricism.

Pardon me for this forthcoming long quote, but I feel this is a more than appropriate example:

"Years ago, alone in her room, my mother cut/hole in the air/& vanished into it. The report hung &/deafened, closely by an over-/whelming silence, a ringing/in the ears. Today I take a piece of chalk/& sketch a door in a wall. By the rules/of cartoon physics on I can open this door."

These "rules of cartoon physics" are used as an insightful tool in the speaker's specific perception of the loss of his mother.  The story telling is built around childish ideology, but the  first line ends with cold facts: "my mother cut."

The poem about Jesus is easier to consider with humor as well as the underlying confusion/fear, but the innocence of the cartoon physics saturated in the distance of the speaker intrigued me far more than the thorny Lord.

First reading it, now writing it?

“Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.” ~Percy Bysshe Shelley  

Write a poem that lifts the veil and makes the familiar unfamiliar. 

I do believe this Poetry workshop will be a definite stretch for my creative abilities, as Poetry is not exactly...my bag. Don't get me wrong, as I have mentioned, I happily provide feeble attempts at deciphering contemporary poetry and the grand array of new writers popping up like delectable little mushrooms. Unfortunately, when the pen is put in my hand and I am asked to create in this genre, I often revert back to kindergarten tactics, with childish rhyme schemes and silly imagery.

More often than not, I revert to being funny...because that's what I do best.

All right, then. Here goes. Lifting the veil:

[“Half past the hound’s leg”]
Rachel Pinkstone


Half past the hound’s leg,
noble purpose is spoiled 
by the day’s early waste.

August heat swells and
puckers; still, the air is too moist
for a spark.

Respect and function pass by
these proud pillars rounding 
every corner, alongside power-
walkers and bichons.

That is, until metal clangs and 
sinks cold between the joints, 
prying apart the Johnnie
on Second and Chester.

And, finally, when the pressure
is released and fluid rushes
forward, children squeal with 
delight and relief.

Originally titled, "For the love a Hydrant," I decided to leave and air of mystery in the first few stanzas as this is the only arena where the poem is accompanied by a visual.

Reflections on the first week.

Let's talk about Poetry. Let's talk about Poets. Let's talk about abstracts, obliquity and unexplained line breaks. Let's talk about things I don't understand, but have a burning passion to talk about with authority and delight.

JOSHUA BECKMAN 

I will have you know, it is not simply because he was positioned at the beginning of the alphabet and thus plopped in front of me from the start of Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century that I chose Joshua Beckman as the first poet to indulge. There were a few names and pieces I perused first, but his cut and dry, often comedic, thought-provokers struck me with something special.

However, before I even tackles his use of language, I would like to make note of something in his "blurb." With each poet I encountered, I made a point to labor through their two to three paragraph biographical excerpts. This process put in me a trance of university patterns: Swell undergrad, Super Post-grad, and presumed elite writer's workshop or doctorate. Soon enough, I was beginning to believe that all these poets have ever done was attend school. Beckman, however, states happily his stint at Hampshire College and then his the honest life and writing experience that has followed. I am not saying, that having a PhD in English Literature and teaching Creative Writing in a Princeton MFA program is small peanuts, but it was slightly refreshing to hear that not all poets have to fit the mold.

Ok, here we are: ["I like your handsome drugs. Your pleasant..."]

"Yeah. I go/running in, all ready to show everyone the/karate chop of love. And that girl named Katie./A Barrel of Chicken."

Upon three reading of the same poem, I feel that his work really needs to just be taken in, laughed at, taken in again, and then the reader must reach back into his memory and find the moment where he sat at a party, beer in hand, contemplating the actions of his baffling "friends" and slowly letting reality catch up to him, right before he takes another swig.

The poem reads well with humor. Beckman and his audience give a laugh with the reading. As the is in the present tense and written entirely in short, noun-ridden sentences, it's seems urgent and honest, like the reader is part of the thought-process of the speaker. The fact that there is little "sense" or moral provided by the poem gives it that feeling of unstable acceptance. It's as if we, the readers, are at the birthday party, we may be sitting next to that girl Katie, and as we reach in for the next pieces of fried chicken before he performs the "Karate chop of love."

A play of stupidity? Nostalgic musing? Commentary on youth and booze and drugs and balls and girls? A poetic play of language? Purpose or poetry? Just plain fun?

I don't know, but I am totally into it.

It Begins...

 

[The New one talks like me—She is for ever rid] by Rachel Pinkstone

*Original Text: A Bundle of Letters by Henry James

My work here begins with a piece of found poetry, if you will, in order to ease the reader into the creative, instructive and ridiculous nature that I plan to provide.