Channeling Richard Wilbur's "Junk"

Do you know this poem by Richard Wilbur, written in Anglo-Saxon accentual-syllabic meter, titled "Junk"? I believe I first came across it about twenty years ago, when I was trying to learn something about poetry while enrolled in the MFA program at the University of Washington. I found that one of the best ways to do that was to go back and read all the poetry textbooks I pushed aside as an undergrad in favor of my plant taxonomy textbooks. Anyway, "Junk" gets anthologized a lot. At first I didn't understand what was going on, never having really grokked Beowulf, but I think it was Shannon Borg (fellow UW student) who helped me to understand, finally, the kenning and the caesura, in a way that I could teach it to others, which I started doing about ten years ago at Bellevue College, but I could never find the right subject for this kind of verse -  I would write ten lines of consonant lines with a break in the middle, but the poem would just die there on the page.

Another student in the UW program at the time, I think it was Allan Nicoletti, pointed out, about form, that the point was having them all in your tool box at the ready, just in case you were in the middle of drafting a poem and realized you were writing a villanelle - I mean, imagine if you hadn't written a dozen or so bad villanelles, read all the best villanelles out there - where would you be?

So last night I looked at some notes from the day before, and I had that moment of recognition: this poem wants to be written in accentual-syllabics! How exciting to know that my twenty or so years of thinking about "Junk" and its predecessors would finally pay off. Here's the draft, but it will go poof in a day or two as I continue to revise and revise.

The Architect of the Inevitable

Assurance aborter

                                    Advocate of decay

Begotten breaker

                                    Boisterous blotter

Crusher of the coke-like rush

                                    Corrupter of the trance of can

Chaos concocter

                                     

                                    Dream dismantler  

Discovery douser

                                    Sudden duster

Elegantly-erected eraser                                   

                                    Effacer of the ferociously forged

Excitement expunger

                                    Giddily gotten gutter

Hacker of the handsomely honed

                                    Aha! moment hexer

Indeliblizier of the inky known

                                    Junker of gesso of gypsum

Kick-ass kenning killer

                                    Limberly-delivered leveler

Leisure liquidator

                                    Muffler of myriad maelstroms                                   

Negater of the generate

                                    Obliterator of the opining pontificator

Concoction toppler

                                    Plunderer of the impulse to pulsate

Quasher of the waxing quail

           

                                    Ever-reveler of the unraveling

Spackling and speckles slayer

                                    Aspiration striker

Savorer of Destruction Soup

                                    Tearer off-er of timpani at the dotted line

                         

Undoer of the done

                                    Vampire of the vampy chutzpah

Having Avenue Violator

                                    Wrecking the resolutely risen

X-er outer of exhilarating sparkle

                                    Un-yesser of the uppity nod

Zany za za zing zapper

Day 19 of Poem a Day in May

At this point I've lost all perspective on whether anything I've written this month is any good, and I reckon that's probably where I should be. When one is focused on creating new work day after day, one cannot also be worrying about whether the work is "good"; the whole point is to focus on getting words onto the page, right?

I have done things I've never tried before, mainly because I have to come up with tricks to get a poem onto the page. One spontaneous idea this week was to end every line with a word that has an "er" sound. It helped me fill up a page and a half with couplets, though the poem needs a lot of work to make it into something worth sharing with an audience, even a small one such as the one called Readers of Blue Positive, unless that audience recognizes that I am not sharing this poem because it is finished, or "good," or "worthy of publication," but only in the spirit of this thing called creating a life where it is possible to turn one's attention to one's art most days of the year.

For me, writing a poem a day means I am working on poems most of the time, because when I am walking or preparing dinner or folding laundry I am thinking about what I wrote that day, asking myself What if I added more Confucius into that poem? or What does it mean to make art for the sole purpose of watching it disintegrate from exposure to the elements? Or making notes to myself to re-read the part in Madness, Rack, and Honey where she (Mary Ruefle) talks about the moon. Or thinking: hey, maybe I could moosh together the poem with the cicadas and the one about the artist who creates disintegrating sculptures? In other words, writing daily turns a life into a creative life.

May 14, 2013

*POOF*

Self-Knowledge, one poem/day at a time

It is getting easier, this poem a day thing, but for a few days I really struggled. Almost gave up, but found a solution: write your daily poem early in the day. Other revelations include the realization that it's hard to start a new poem when you're in the middle of revising yesterday's draft. Here's one from last week, before I started really, really lowering my expectations:

Flower Girl
*POOF!* [deleted]

Day 8 of Poem a Day in May

Another day, another draft.

Seriously, I did not know how hard this would be.

What I am learning about about myself is that once I write a draft I like to work on it LOTS, make it better, tinker ... 

but then it's time to start another poem, ach!

So today I worked on the poem below, started two days ago, but didn't have time to revise the poem from yesterday (which bugged me, kinda), and then I had to start something new, but I was really, really wiped out from getting up early to jog and grading a dozen papers most of the day, so the draft isn't very good and barely legible at that, but at least I started the research and jotted a few notes.

And this is only 8 days into May. I still have ...23 more days? I know it's a problem of the happiest kind, but I am not sure how people do this. 

But there are many bright sides, including: 

1. I am taking more risks with figurative language and line breaks;

2. I am maybe going to have a book of poems way quicker than I ever expected;

3. I do not have to waste my time thinking about where to submit my work - I am too busy writing;

4. I will, at some point, have a lot of poems to submit!

Under the Sun

*POOF*                                

                                    

Poem-A-Day in May ...

I didn't have time (I know - a very lame excuse) to do a poem a day in April, but a poem a day in May is working out much better, maybe because it rhymes. Here it is May 6, and I am going strong, with another poem in my future, and the thought of 31 new poems to continue revising for the rest of the year when I wake up on June 1.

Here's a sample of what I have been up to - very rough, and it will be removed in the next few days. If you did not get a chance to do a poem a day in April, consider a poem a day in June or July!

Dostoyevsky’s Aesthetician

*POOF*

Announcing the Blue Positive Big Poetry Giveaway 2013 Winners!

It's been an exciting couple of weeks watching all the "I'm in!" comments flood in, and today the final winners have been randomly chosen!

Katrina Roberts, whose most recent release is Underdog, is the winner of a copy of The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception, my newest collection of poems.

Michael A. Wells, poet and blogger at Stick Poet Superhero, is the winner of Katherine Larson's Radial Symmetry. 

Thanks to all who participated in The Big Poetry Giveaway, sponsored by poets Kelli Russell Agodon and Susan Rich. The winners can expect their postage-paid books to appear in their mailboxes just a few days after I receive their ground addresses.

Next Beacon Bards Reading Features Rebecca Hoogs & Sierra Nelson, May 8 at 7 pm

Rebecca Hoogs

Sierra Nelson Please join us at 7 pm at The Station Cafe,  2533 16th Avenue South, in Seattle's  Beacon Hill neighborhood Featured readers: Rebecca Hoogs  & Sierra Nelson May 8:  http://www.rockitspace.org/beacon-bards.html  Rebecca Hoogs is the author of a chapbook, "Grenade" (GreenTower Press),  and her poems have appeared in journals such as Poetry, AGNI, Crazyhorse,  Zyzzyva, The Journal, Poetry Northwest, The Florida Review, Cincinnati  Review and others. She won the 2011 Southeast Review poetry contest.  She is the recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony  and Artist Trust of Washington State. She is the Director of  Education Programs and the curator of the Poetry Series  for Seattle Arts & Lectures teaches for the Creative  Writing in Rome program for the University of Washington. Sierra Nelson’s lyrical choose-your-own-adventure I Take Back  the Sponge Cake, made in collaboration with visual artist  Loren Erdrich, debuted from Rose Metal Press in Spring 2012,  and her chapbook “In Case of Loss” is part of the Toadlily  Press Quartet Series (Fall 2012). Nelson is a MacDowell  Colony fellow, a 2011 Hackney Literary Award winner,  and co-founder of literary performance art groups  The Typing Explosion and the Vis-à-Vis Society.  Her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest,  City Arts Magazine, Crazyhorse, Thermos, DIAGRAM,  Tin House, and Forklift Ohio, among others. Arrive early for happy hour prices & a guaranteed seat!  Bring a poem to read at the open mic that follows after  the featured readers. Support local arts & artists  through RockIt Community Arts, sponsor of this monthly series  curated by yours truly.  Please pass the word along about this reading to others who  might be interested - thanks!