Margin Notes from Charles Dickens' Teacher

 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,

A nice beginning, Charles, but perhaps a little bit undecided? You want a good strong direction to your opening. Try to choose one or the other and build on it!

it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness

Please refer to my first remark!

It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,

Very nice, Charles, but when you read this to the class today, you pronounced "epoch" as "e-poach." The correct pronunciation rhymes with "luck." It was wonderful, though, to see you come out of your shell! :-)

it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness

Unless you are referring to titles or proper names, capitals are not needed here. 

it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair

Don't forget that setting is crucial, Charles. What season is it? Do not confuse your reader!

we had everything before us, we had nothing before us

Charles... I can see that you're trying very hard on this assignment. Good for you! However, and once again, you want to be more definite here!

We were all going direct to Heaven,

Oh Charles. Religion is such a touchy subject and in class we want always to be as inclusive as possible. How about "direct to Des Moines" instead?

we were all going direct the other way--

Good, Charles, good! Everyone loves a travel story!

in short, the period was so far like the present period

We'll cover punctuation next week-- periods, commas and so forth. Just stay with your narrative--you can always go back and edit these things later, after we've covered that material. 

that some of its noisiest authorities insist on being received, for good or for evil,

Never let your writing lapse into moral ambiguity, Charles. While it's true that the AP English class will be studying "Les Miserables", here we want to stick to basics. Remember, you can't be The Polar Express until you've mastered being The Little Engine That Could! 

in the superlative degree of comparison only. 

This last sentence seems muddled to me, Charles. Did you mean "degree" as an indicator of the season, as brought up in your earlier line?  Moreover, all comparisons should best be accomplished by means of simile and metaphor, not by flat statement. 

Charles, don't be discouraged. We all err! You've made a fine beginning here, and with work and patience (and listening in class instead of drawing stick figure soldiers doing battle on the side of the page!) I believe that you can achieve a mastery of basic writing skills! Keep at it. I very much look forward to helping you to learn and improve as the school year continues! 

C+

_____________

for Diving Into Margins over at Dverse, with Queen Cool Dora.

Music: 10,000 Maniacs You Happy Puppet

 

In Case Of Typhoon

"Lion Afternoon" by Jacek Yerka

In the event of typhoon, 
hurricane,
sandstorm
or other natural upheaval,

the gathering of certain objects and creatures is advised.
Clocks, for their numerical appeal and sense of order;
flowers in vases whose delicacy illustrates contrast;
and lions, generally useful in all situations.

When traveling by public transport, always be sure
that you have fed your lion beforehand. 
Consult with drivers before installing fountains, saplings,
or other decorative additions.

When hosting relatives, serve ham w/ pineapple;
if a lover, light cakes or honey tea.
When arriving as a guest, be sure to bring your own seating and lion,
as your hosts may lack these essentials.

Finally, treat typhoons, tornadoes, landslides and such as equals--
talking down to them or shouting does no good.
Invite lions into your home.
Serve hors d'oeuvres made from antelope or cape buffalo.

Follow these simple instructions and avoid high winds,
use bus and train systems without worry,
and assure yourself of being welcome in the best venues
in tandem with a lion who neither owns you nor is owned.
________

for Sunday Muse #69. Carrie kindly stepped in for me with this fantastic image, because, like a blithering fool, I simply forgot I was supposed to do the post today!

5 Things To Do Before Writing A Poem

1. Obtain necessary materials.

Get a library card and ask the librarian for Lorca, Dickinson and Ginsberg. Avoid book stores, they'll only have Jewel, Richard Thomas and Suzanne Somers. If you see these, beat the book store manager to death with them.

Convince the head nurse that you can be trusted with pens or pencils. Summon up your old beauty contestant smile. Keep a sugar cube and any medications under your tongue; you can spit them out later. Don't waste the pens by making them into shivs.

Get the warden or the matron to let you out of isolation. Only authors of memoirs can write with their fingernails in the dark. Poets need light.

2. Ask others to look at things you've written up to now.

Show your previous poems to relatives or friends. Most of them will tell you it's brilliant, others will advise you to stop with this nonsense and go to secretarial school. Regardless, it won't matter because if you want to be a poet, you'll have shoved your pens through your ears beforehand. 

Show your work to someone who tells you it isn't good enough, that it's derivative, tired, meandering and lazy. Get as angry and butt-hurt as you like, but keep showing everything you write from now on to this person.

Do not show anything you've written to your spouse, lover, priest, employer or attorney. They'll urge changes, codicils, repentance and cessation. 

3. Think about what you'd like to write about.

Ha, j/k. 

Fuck what you'd *like to* write about. There are plenty of rhymes about love or flowers already, on the insides of greeting cards scattered in landfills along with the authors of same.

If you're really meant to be a poet, you'll be told what to write about. It may feel a little like really needing to be sick, or like a medium-sized lizard is crawling up the inside of your throat or under the skin of your fingers. You may think you have an STD or that someone dosed you with Spanish fly, but in your head and heart as well as your sex. You may feel like you're dying, or that it's one of those dreams where you forget to get dressed before going to work or church. If you're a poet, it's not a dream. 

4. Consider your poem's length and form.

If you write haiku, and it's the usual lazy shit, please go through the door on your left and into the crocodile swamp. The door will lock itself behind you once you've gone out.

If you've chosen a form with a rhyme scheme or a syllable count, don't forget all about it by line three and go careering off into the weeds. Don't jam in words that don't belong or make sense, just to satisfy said rhyme scheme or syllable count. That's like shoving a hand grenade smack in the middle of an apple pie and then serving it like nothing's wrong. Don't be a fucking idiot. Form is like bones, it makes a meat bag functional, pleasing, and upright. The knee bone's connected to the thigh bone, not the shoulder bone. Them bones them bones gonna walk around, but it's up to you whether they shamble or dance.

If you choose free verse, that doesn't mean to make it a journal entry. That doesn't mean make it the same as the shit you write in your diary about your ex-boyfriend and similar tiresome claptrap. That doesn't mean break bullshit into lines and call it poetry. If you're going to do that, please swallow this--it's quick and painless.

5. Place your bets.

Being a poet means accepting a certain level of commitment--what the unenlightened might call obsession, insanity, a certain hemophilia of the soul.  If all you want to do is post a picture of a flower above a breathless made-up love ballad every day on your blog, please take up knitting or hosting YouTube videos about boy bands or something, anything, else. 

To survive as a poet, you've got to frack for the black gold way beneath the surface--as well as avoid painfully poor comparisons like this one--and then hold on during the resulting earthquakes. Wear a hard hat. Don't place a lot of stock in the gathered well-wishers shouting "We have to let you go," or "You crazy motherfucking bitch!" from the sidelines of your life--that is to say, work, family, responsibilities. 

Do all of this, and you'll soon see your work on page 32 of Brick Spoons, the quarterly journal of the University of Southeast Nebraska State Normal School, or in an e-zine called The Vagina That Yodeled. Best of luck to you, Padawans, and

happy writing!!!!

_____

for Out of Standard, "List With A Twist" at Toads.

HOW NOT TO WRITE A LOVE POEM

1. IT'S ALIIIIVE! Make *everything* alive. Sighing hearts, weeping skies, smiling trees, warbling coffee tables, all of these are good, and will make your poem both busy and awful. Whee!

2. STOP DROP AND ROLL Use "burning" and all its variations liberally. Burning lips, fiery fingertips, barbecued bosoms--go for it, Sparky, and you'll have one smoking pile-up of a poem.

3. LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN And again and again. Be sure to use antiquated, flowery contractions like "e'er" and "ne'er" as often as possible. Pretend it's 1750 again. Use a quill pen. Die of some extinct plague like cholera. Please. Right now.

4. FORMALITY IS NEXT TO BANALITY Sprinkle your love poem with lots of comically overstuffed words like "dost" and "thee." Wear a hoop skirt or frilled sleeves. Get run over by a horse and carriage. Do it for literature.

5. BEGINNER'S LUCK Forget what you've heard and write about what you don't know. Make it clear you've never so much as held hands, but have decided to compose passionate odes to breathless desire. Or, if you've sampled the entire Boston Symphony Orchestra, write something fluttery and virginal. Go for it! Use your imagination!

6. GO WITH OLD RELIABLE Finally, don't give yourself a headache trying to jam clever words and phrases into your awful love poem. Go with moon/June, love/dove, palpitate/regurgitate and before you know it, you'll be employed by a greeting card company. Good luck, writers!

Cleansing

Occasionally, one must be cleansed.
Sure, you could wait on a bench at the train station for Jesus to return,
surrounded by clergymen offering judgement and asbestos underwear.
But Jesus,
in white shirt and tie,
running the afternoon shift at Chicken Barn,
would take you aside from your deep fryer duties and tell you--
cleansing should be a private thing,
a personal thing,
not subject to "likes" and "shares" or other public scrutiny. 

Come, get still within yourself.
Lay out the things you'll need:
the towel,
the candles,
the knout and the noise-reducing headphones. 

Concentrate on necessary rituals;
the curly fry placed upon your tongue,
the orange soda in the tiny dixie cup.
Find the kernel of eternity and meaning inside the absurd and the preposterous.
What I'm saying is, look within.

Take the cloth and the sweet-smelling detergent to the tabletops
of your personal dining room.
Prevent disgusting build-up of
lies,
conceits,
aggressions,
and wild profane outbursts.
Stop sleeping with everybody who asks.
Make today a changing day in your life.
Turn off Dr. Phil.  

In the end, there is no "end."
You'll need to repeat this, like lines in a stage play,
but lines that change with each new performance.
Buck up, Bo Peep.
Jesus stands ready with company protocols and his wonderful crooked grin.
His hair is long, he likes the extra crispy sandwich, 
a good joke, women, kindness.
Present the clean crescents of your fingernails to Him.
Approach your duties with pride.
Go home, empty your mind, forget the hectic lunch rush.
Be at peace.
Do it all again tomorrow.
__________

The Crow In My Eye

There's a crow in my eye
remembering you.
I could be smiling or
lying or
out of my mind,
but the crow won't forget
your face, and he won't be kind.

You frustrate him, 
by law of similars.
My crow likes trinkets, toys,
and fresh-killed love
or such like that my crow thinks of.
_______

a 55 for my BFF.

Pictures of Heartbreak, Poems in the Spokes of a Wheel

Here is how I imagined my heart:
blood compromised, made thin and blue by work schedules,
thoughtless words,
kindnesses forgotten,
mad-making obstacle dreams and stale air
arriving at the right atrium like someone stumbling in out of the snow;

Received like a guest, served coffee and cookies,
surrounded by the biological greenery outside the atrium,
this blood eventually slipping through the delicate leaflets 
of the tricuspid valve into the guest room quiet of the right ventricle.

Shall I go on? Isn't it obvious, the druggy dream of the pulmonary artery,
the bloom of new love in the left atrium,
the free fall through the mitral valve into the left ventricle
with its clocks and chimes, and finally the aorta into the unknown?
This was my concept, my imagining.

Reality was this:
An endless rain, the filth of the floodwaters bringing
boards, bodies, houses, livestock and death on a black surge,
an ink to begin my poetry with.
Within my chest, the wheel, the weird carnival,

All I had ever consumed or breathed gathered in ceremony,
children being born and let go but never let go,
the shout above the wind, the wonderful stupidity of the church tower
or widow's walk in a lightning storm,
the stanzas, the strophes, the angeldust afterbirth of all I needed to say.

Go ahead, tell the one whose love you need the most
that you are dropping out of med school,
that you are bisexual,
that you have knocked over a bank and shot the President;
they may forgive you, or at least pretend to.

Finally, tell them you are a poet and watch them walk away.
Feel the flood, the fever and fire--
then, dear heart, start writing.
_______

for Fireblossom Friday at Real Toads

 

 

For Young Poets

First, stop banging away at silence 
like you would with a snow shovel against the ice.
A poem is not a dancing dog,
summoned to perform on its tiptoes at parties.

Put away all spirituous beverages.
Those who write while pitching in a sea of booze
do so in spite of such idiocy, not because of it.
If you haven't the imagination to see things differently without such props,
then become a mail carrier or a bus driver.

Read.
Read Lorca and rip your hair out til you're bald.
Read Neruda and flail, little fledgling on the cliff-side!
Read Plath, tuck your children safely in their room and then
to the kitchen with you to contemplate why cowards can't be poets;
at least not for long.

All you wild spastics shouting at the coffee bar,
waving pages and thinking volume and auctioneer-speak make poetry?
Sit down. Have someone duct tape your cake hole shut.
Think about what you haven't done, until you're ready to join us.

Now, to purge.
Write several great long hunks of unreadable shit,
staggering along on broken syntax,
with words strung together willy-nilly like last year's holiday lights,
all the similar-colored ones in a row, and half of them burned out.
Write haiku about a yew tree or a cherry blossom.
Get your paper plate-eyed friends to declare it all "brilliant!"
Then throw it away and we can get started.

Light candles.
They won't help you to write, but I like them.
Lock the door and don't answer it;
your husband will find his favorite golf shirt on his own,
and your children are already ruined anyway.
Let's do this thing.

The hard part is already done!
The lonely rejections and upheavals of childhood,
the sexual confusions and self-destructive rebellions of youth,
they're over with.
The burials, the pointless treks, the lovers who laughed and left,
the beetle of doubt and otherness digging its burrow behind your heart--
all of this is long complete.

Now, just stare out of the window at the sorrowful blue of the sky,
and the silver beauty of the impossibly distant moon.
Bite your knuckle if you have to, but stillness is best,
even to the point of drooling and apparent catatonia.
"What are you doing?" you'll be asked.
Working. Slaving. Making art.
Understand this, give yourself permission for this,
even as the dishes fester in the sink and the baby cries;
The seeds of greatness will germinate inside the still soil of you, The Poet.

It's not an easy road,
but there is soul and pride to it.
Your poems will be your own particular inverse garments to wear,
heart and guts to the world.
You have joined the cabal of those who possess a true talent:
unicycle riders have their uncanny balance,
lesbians their tongues,
demons their blackness;
now you have your poetry and people to admire you and say,
"It's nice",
"This is what you were doing?"
and "Huh."

Or,
you could still apply to Beauty College.
It's up to you.
________

for Get Listed at Real Toads, this time with Brendan.