Poiesis Newsletter
2021–11–21
JD’s Jots by J.D. Harms
My friends, writers, new contributors. I feel good about November, largely. It seems like people are coming to read here more, and that’s because you are writing stellar work! Always excited to get to the queue these days: there’s always some epic work waiting for me to publish.
As always, we have received incredible submissions which we published in Scrittura. Whether or not the curation bots always agree, there is some really outstanding work here. I have especially enjoyed the response to the month-long corvid theme: be assured, more theme months will be coming in the future.
In fact, soon there will be some announcements on future exciting events and updates concerning Scrittura that will be put up so make sure you keep an eye out for those. I won’t bother reiterating them all here because...well
Rock on, write on and read on!
Wonderful Words
J.D. Harms Picks:
Straightjacket Wings by Rowen Veratome
The shadow of raven wings
straightjackets my arms.Feathers bark into my surface
skin, snag into the marrow.
But, from which direction?
Am I the bird or its captive?
https://medium.com/scrittura/straightjacket-wings-34b5d35037fa
Threaded Chronologies of Distance by Melissa Coffey
Like Ariadne, I’m holding a finger to the humming thread of us. In the pre-dawn dream of my misted cup of the sky, the thread vibrates — winding words from you, unravelling through your keyboard, permeating sleep’s hazy labyrinth — I wake with the pull of your textual desire … think, from the hedged pathways leading outwards from sleep — you’ve left the room, just for a moment — you seem so close, but —
https://medium.com/scrittura/threaded-chronologies-of-longing-ef7a9b2dfb53
Daydreams by Sydney J. Shipp
Now, I never come around,
unable to meet the hours
that no longer welcome me
I take the mist
rising up out of thin air
and carry it into the shadow
of myself, turning
over its potential
in the dark,
clutching it close, attached
to the expectation
of what today should be
Melissa Coffey’s Picks:
Mechanical Heart by Xandra Winters:
they filled my hollow breast with wired complacency — stitched me up with fibrous lies, and needled pleasure — i could feel the quiet — tick, tick, tick — rattle against my rib cage — biting back the urge to cry — to scream — to die.
a mechanical heart —
Altered Substance by J.D. Harms:
And I try to scale this silence, melt it into something to be brought inside. I don’t see your strings, but why won’t you move?
So Slippy by Lennie Varvarides:
The pen begins an exodus, the handwriting tires of its trance until the drift to somewhere new, to music I will not …dance, two left feet less gracious, more unpleasant in their jolt of foot and a mouth disfigured by the moth the frenzy to kill something smaller than myself.
Zay Pareltheon Picks:
Rapacious Caws by Jeff Langley
it’s time to go rogue — but don’t go postal —
go ahead and tell the coast — it’s time to go coastal —
all this fucking trash — this garbage and shit — all of it at your disposal
the mold by Alex Guenther
as decades pass, he rages under cruel
confusion; fixed protrusions cannot be
snapped off to fit an ever-shifting whole.
Discipline by Andrea Juillerat-Olvera
We ford the river blindfolded and barefoot
walk backward for a mile
do not speak
do not make eye contact
dance with the mountain
find your place in the sky
break the body’s habits
command the steel visage.
https://medium.com/scrittura/discipline-d582da42d0c9
Interview with a Poet by Zay Pareltheon
Sally Mortemort
I think every interview is interesting — in part because I think real people write poetry — in fact, real people write. And people’s experiences are always different, unique — well interesting.
This interview with Sally Mortemort was especially interesting because of all her experiences in the written and performing arts. She writes about it all, with references to experiences that some of us dream about.
She writes about her first exposures to poetry. And I especially like the statement about vowels and consonants.
I had already found a connection with Shakespeare having been introduced to him at the age of 11; the rhythm of speech was also something of a fascination; and I think it was Chekov who talked about the vowels being the river’s flow/the emotion of words, and the consonants are a word’s containment, or the river’s banks. So I see poetry as emotional expression, a story, a flow of words, a picture of words, a river overflowing with thoughts.
If that weren’t enough, her statement about the source of the poetic inspiration is almost poetry itself. We all know pain of one kind or another, or we all know what it means to desire — someone or something. For
Sometimes it is pain. Pain of relationships. Pain of the world. Pain of other people. Sometimes its beauty of love, beauty of nature. A lot of the time it is inequality in society. Sometimes it is just the need to tell a story.
And her definition of what constitutes good poetry is — like much else for her — simple and direct and honest. When I asked what constituted a good poem, she responded,
Simplicity. Honesty. Depth without being overly clever or using words the reader might not understand. A natural flow. I also love a twist.
Check out Sally’s work at the following links
https://medium.com/scrittura/for-all-ad8f56f1545
https://medium.com/scrittura/on-an-accident-despite-6d5ec8c89e88
