My Self-Imposed MFA

I have neither the time nor inclination to pursue an MFA in poetry. So, I intend to go a little more Horatio Alger and do it myself. I have over 50 books on differnt aspects of writing poetry. I will be choosing a book, and working through every exercise. I will post these exercises and my work on this blog. Hopefully, there will be some measurable results when I'm done with it all.

I will begin with one of the more generalist books. It looks good.

Writing the Life Poetic by Sage Cohen

Where there aren't exercises I'll try to provide observations and feedback to the author's points.

Rant: Maya Angelou is so bad

I've read poetry consistently for over 25 years, and somehow I missed Maya Angelou. I would have thought that that would have been a horrible deficiency. I now see that it a blessing in disguise. She has some of the most cliched, predictable garbage I have ever read.


I now know why the caged bird also sings. It isn't for freedom. It's hoping to lose its voice so that when it goes down into the mine shaft with Maya, it will be unable to warn her of the poison fumes. We need to honor that bird's sacrifice.


I will write a poem with that title (I also know why the caged bird sings). I will.


Here's are some of her more famous poems. If you are worried about choking when you vomit in your mouth I would encourage you to stop reading now:


Phenomenal Woman (poemhunter ranks this as the # 1 poem)


Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.



Or this gem,



Touched by an Angel (the #5 poem on poemhunter)



We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.
I'd post more but it's too painful.

Raving: Why my Son isn't ready for a pet yet

My two-year old son Zane was doing what he normally does every evening: running through the house like a class five tornado. Eventually, and it's always eventually, my wife Erica and I hear a loud bump followed by a cry. Zane steps into view slapping his head with his palm and saying "BOMP". He then preceeded to slap the breakfast table so that we would know what hurt him. Our son is a master of pre-language charades.


Erica asked him if he would like her to kiss his owiee--which he did. He came running up and lowered his head for her kiss. Smiling he returned to play, OR SO WE THOUGHT. He walked over and grabbed his Tom Kitten Beanie Baby (pictured below)

For this dramatic reinactment the part of Zane Wylie will be played by Tom Kitten




Zane then proceeded to take Tom and slam him face first 4-5 times hard into the breakfast table leg. He then ran back to his mother and held Tom up for a kiss.


Having his own kitty is many many years away.

Dabbling in Form

On one of the poetry websites I frequent, they got a new moderator. She is an expert (though I bet she'll hate that term) in meter and formal poetry. My poems are largely free verse. I have found form stiffling and haven't really done a lot to develop any skill there. There seem to be two camps among poetry people: There's the free verse side that wants no restrictions and finds form archaic and irrelevant. There's the form side that finds free verse poetry unstructured and in the extreme--not poetry. There are of course the hundred shades of gray in the middle.


So, this moderator decided to put a poetry practice out to get us used to meter and form. We were asked to write a Kyrielle. Here's the background and the form for those of you that are adventurous:


The word kyrielle comes from "kyrie eleison", Greek for "Lord have mercy" -- a popular refrain in Christian Mass. A kyrielle consists of quatrains (at least three, but without limit to the number), each with the refrain as the last line. The form is generally written in the hymnal meter (iambic tetrameter) -- whatever meter you choose, it should be consistent enough that the rhymes fall in the right places.


The rhyme scheme is:


a-a-b-B
c-c-b-B
d-d-b-B
and so on...


with B being the refrain.


So, I read this over-and-over again and try to decide what I'll write. Here's how I finally got the idea.


My convoluted thought process:

• I talk with my friend Brendan from Vermont and we make a reference to bad dental hygene by the people living in the backwoods up there.
• I write down the phrase: The Land of Bad Teeth
• I think of the nightmare where your teeth fall out.
• I think of Nightmare on Elm Street
• I think why did Freddie Kruger target teens (probably a "don't have sex or you will die message"). I also figured teenagers don't have the same type of fears that the older set does. Maybe just maybe they would welcome death.

So, I tell my wife, Erica, what I'm writing about, and she get's annoyed with me for taking something pretty like an Anglican Mass and tying it to a 1980s slasher movie.


I finished the poem and while our meter expert did acknowledge that I stretched the meter on one line she said that in her opinion it was perfect iambic tetrameter which felt really good (people hear stresses differently so it's likely that others may hear the poem with a different meter). I was pleased that she at least thought so. I've resisted form also because it felt like starting over. What I found out though was that isn't really true. I used to be so concerned about rhyme that I ignored imagery. I feel that didn't happen here. I'm happy with how this one came out. In fact, the form actually made some lines better when I had to shift words around for it's sake.


Here's the poem:

My Nightmare on My Street

As knives stretch from your fingertips,
the boiler's hiss, the darkness drips,
but young men's fears aren't mine to take.
Could I please die before I wake?

I understand you didn't need
young teens who only wish to breed.
I'd kill them too. I've lost that ache.
Could I please die before I wake?

Each day I sit in asphalt haze,
a brake light death of small delays.
Of this communion I partake.
Could I please die before I wake?

The miles form a metronome
of cell phone calls and shining chrome,
a slow decay with each mistake.
Could I please die before I wake?

From empty cube, to empty room,
the jasmine scent of stale perfume
a window blackened now, opaque.
Could I please die before I wake?

Faces: Jimmy Hoffa

The Great Jimmy Hoffa Scavenger Hunt

His voice still ghosts as angry static
over the twisted
pair of copper phone lines. You only see
an empty Green Pontiac,
an open driver’s door.
Yet, the steel drums remain full
of possibility, rusting
sentinels in Jersey City landfills. You imagine
Giants Stadium could frame his bones—
as if he cared for childish pursuits
played by that pussy Bobby Kennedy.

We do not see his tears
bleed from statues,
or his face form in a clump
of mashed potatoes, and mistake him
for Abraham Lincoln, or Jesus,
or David Cassidy—as if any of them ascended
from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox.

This is no skin-scraping, finger-bone-divining séance.
There is no tap we wait to hear.
If you must look to the dead for guidance,
ask Mary Jo, the drowned girl,
to write her prophecy in the grease
trap drippings scrawling
with her limp finger:

That which is dead
will not remain so.
That which is buried
will rise.

Faces: Harry Houdini

The Amazing Sexual Exploits of Harry Houdini

He liked to be handcuffed—
and not with those
fuzzy pink novelties.

He liked the ones that bite
against the wrists,
the ephemeral challenge
of something like helplessness.

There was always the foreplay
of card tricks, the predictable appetites
of birthday-entertainers
with store-bought illusions.

Old pleasure is a faded stage
bouquet of plastic flowers,
a dehydrated dove.
Magic’s raw essence is misdirection.

Showing off a new spectacle,
suspended upside down,
bound and lowered
into this baptism

of black water. Each second
like the pulse of a metronome,
the faint ripple of eternity.

Escape while possible,
is unsatisfying—
not the same as release.

Any amateur could perform
in private. The thrill
was in being exposed.

Poetry about People

My other option besides reworking my Gospel of John poetry is a collection I want to call faces. So far, I have a lot of "H" named people. I'd like to make about forty of these poems. My method is to read biography after biography to find the angle of approach.

So far I have:

• Howard Hughes (already posted earlier)
• Harry Houdini
• Jimmy Hoffa

There was a collection being done on Amelia Earhart that I got an invitation to submit to. The problem is after studying her I've concluded that she was a media creation and not all that interesting. There's still a possiblity to add her to this group, though the rendition wouldn't be that flattering.