A Poet's Double Life

For poets working outside the literary world.

Tag Archives: Creative Process


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April Poem-a-Day Challenge, Day 3


Thought I would try a villanelle for today’s prompt: Write a tentative poem.

Tentative

All of life’s plans are unlikely to be kept,baby_steps
but we push forward and stumble in the dark
unsure, urgent like a baby’s first step.

I cannot remember the last time I slept
soundly in a man’s arms. My mind’s at work
planning ahead, hoping our promises are kept.

You say taking it slow is better, except
my desire is left hanging like a question mark—
unsure, urgent like a baby’s first step.

But my only fear is that you’d rather let
our time wind down in a natural arc.
No need to make plans unlikely to be kept.

I’m used to giving my all and receiving neglect,
reaching for true love (an arbitrary benchmark?)
that is urgent and unsure like a baby’s first step.

It would be easier for my heart to accept
your goodbye kiss and not this irreverent spark
that plans for a future unlikely to be kept
like the unsure urgency of a baby’s first step.

~Pamela L. Taylor © 2013


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April Poem-a-Day Challenge, Day 2


Prompt (Two for Tuesday): Write a bright poem. Write a dark poem.Bright_Moon_in_the_Dark_Night_by_nightmares06

Bright/Dark

We worship suns,
shoot for stars,
land on moons.
Light shapes our days
adjusts our moods,
drives us to walk down
life’s cold and lonely
tunnels, led by outstretched
hands, stumbling over
our own feet. We’d rather seek
hope’s pale flicker than live
in a darkness that obscures
our vision, forces us
to hands and knees
in its presence, until
we are frozen in place
by the fear of solitude
and the internal mysteries
we long to embrace.

 


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April Poem-A-Day Challenge: Day 1


For the fourth year, I am participating in the Poem-A-Day Challenge in celebration of National Poetry Month. Along with other Living Poetry members, I use prompts from the Poetic Asides blog for the 30 days. As I promised myself, I am going to share my poetry more by posting the PAD challenge poems to the blog. I hope you enjoy!

Prompt: A new arrival

When Boredom Comes

She slips in under the doorjamb, dragged in

by the last crossed off item on your to-do list.

She loosens her clutches and plops down

silently on your clutter-free desk. She triesyawn2

to be helpful—rearranging the office supplies

to your liking: shifting the tape dispenser to the left

side then back to the right, placing the stapler

next to it—no, behind it—separating paper clips

from binder clips, sorting and counting each type

by size. You watch her straighten and re-straighten

pictures on the wall, line up chachkies, knick-knacks,

and doodads along the tops of bookcases, make

the books stand erect and alphabetized. She’s given up

dusting, but doesn’t mind a mop and broom or washing

a window or two. But before long, she’s done everything

she can and leaves you alone to finish what she started.

~Pamela L. Taylor © 2013


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March: In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lion


march-lion1March was a busy time for me—this post is only the 4th one I had time to write this month. I did manage to blog about the most important things that happened in March: AWP and the six women writers that inspire my work.

But this month brought a lot of transition at work—moving into a new role where I lead projects and manage people. I am also spearheading a process to compile ideas for the next 15 projects we will complete over the next two years. I am no longer behind the scenes, but rather, have become a point-person to answer questions from my colleagues and do special projects for my boss, including being the staff support to the big bosses. We are also interviewing for four positions, so I spent a lot of time combing through 50+ applications packets to narrow down the few who might be my future colleagues.

I didn’t worry about writing in March because I knew I would need all that inspiration for April’s Poem-a-Day Challenge. But I did attend three open mics, including a new event at Matthew’s Chocolates in Hillsborough. With little emphasis on writing, I decided to focus on reading a novel—The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht was chockfull of imagery and rich language, and had an intricate story line. I was so enamored by this book, I posted quotes as my Facebook status and convinced five other people to read it. I finished up Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Selected Poems by Sharon Olds, and Final Poems by Rabindranath Tagore and checked out several from my favorite library:

Of course with all that reading material for inspiration, two poems found their way out, “Childless” and “Bicycle.” Today and tomorrow, I’ll be working to edit these and other poems for March 31st submission deadlines and preparing my manuscript, Black.Woman.Professional, for submission to the Cave Canem  first-book award contest.

And I got word that my science poem, “Transit of Venus,” won second place in the Carolina Woman Writing Contest! Suddenly, I’m feeling a little Helen Reddy: I am woman. Hear me roar!


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Memorizing Poems


memorize

Every first Saturday, Living Poetry meets at Panera Bread in Brier Creek for our monthly poetry brunch. I love this event because it combines two things I love most: breakfast and poetry. Reading poems always leads to discussions about craft, what it means to be a poet, the relevance of poetry today, teaching, and whatever non sequiturs Don the Brunch brings up. Before I know it the two hours are up.

In the last year, the event has encouraged attendees to “bring a memorized poem”. And I am always up for THAT type of challenge. I grew up reciting lines in church plays and ready to spout off a bible verse whenever asked, even at the dining room table (Jesus wept). Lately, if I find a poem I love, I memorize it. Learning the lines and the exact order of words brings me closer to the poem—as if I am a mechanic looking under the hood of car, disassembling and reassembling the engine. I know I have to get the poet’s word choice and line breaks right in order to convey the same meaning and feeling to the listener.

To memorize a poem, I often start by writing it by hand, which puts me in the mindset of the poet who penned it. Then I read and repeat the first two lines until I know them well, add two more lines, and repeat the first four lines until I can say the block of words with ease. I find it much easier to memorize poems with stanzas and punctuation than one-sentence poems like my favorite from Jack Gilbert:

The Abandoned Valley

Can you understand being alone

so long you would go out in the middle of the night

and put a bucket into a well

so you could feel something down there

tug at the other end of the rope?

In addition to the Gilbert poem, I’ve memorized three other poems: Ego Tripping (There May Be a Reason Why) by Nikki Giovanni, Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden, and Topography by Sharon Olds. After the poetry brunch, I plan to add three more to my collection:

I love memorizing poems because you can carry them with you at all times—rattling around in my brain, tucked in a corner of my heart.


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After “One Love”


Last week on Valentine’s Day, over 2,200 14-word poems were handed out throughout the Triangle as part of the 14 Words, One Love event. I wrote over 40 poems in less than two weeks—and was ecstatic to learn we had surpassed our original goal by 800 poems!

And then I hit the wall. Runners often talk about the runner’s high—that rush of adrenalin that keeps them going during a marathon. The 14-word event definitely fed all the good poetic energy and reading and commenting on other people’s poems increased that positive vibe. That energy stayed with me throughout Valentine’s Day when I handed out poems to my office colleagues, distributed poems at an off-site meeting, and made special home deliveries to a few of my friends. But afterwards, I felt rung out like a worn rag. I couldn’t think about picking up a pen, let alone convincing my mind to conjure up an image to bring to life on the page.

That’s probably why it has taken two weeks to get back in the blog saddle. I had to re-group, feed the space that opened up after the “one love” was gone. So I turned to poetry books: first, to Rabindranath Tagore’s Final Poems, and then, to Sharon Olds’ Selected Poems. I spent time memorizing one of my favorite poems by Olds, “Topography,” which is now the fourth poem I know by heart (more on that later). Monday’s visual prompt for Living Poetry ended the drought.71752_518868581492385_1203357513_n

Danish “Heart Book”

Closed, it is a question
mark missing the finality
of the dot that holds
its fragile curve in place,
half of what it could be.

Opened, a great yearning
lives in the curlicue of each letter,
yellowed pages burdened by the black
ink of a centuries-old plea: for misery
to end and turn into good.

After that, two other poems I had jotted down in my journal and on my iPhone finally started to take shape on the page. Now I feel like I’m back on track.


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14 Words, One Love


For the last week, I’ve been supporting my fellow double-life poet, Jodi Barnes, in her effort to collect 1,400 14-word love poems to distribute on Valentine’s Day. The first day, I wrote one poem, but since then I’ve written no less than three poems each day and as many as six! The 14-word challenge has been a great way to build up to a daily writing practice, strengthen the mind-paper connection, and focus on crafting concrete imagery.

I’ve written a series of poems, “to understand love / you must understand <blank>,” where I fill in the blank with an object or concept and then find seven other words that both describe the object and the idea of love. Here are some examples:

to understand lovegenes

you must understand genes—

their endless patterns

uniting, splicing, reforming, reborn

to understand lovedogs

you must understand dogs—

waiting by doors, tails wagging

in anticipation

to understand love

you must understand rings—

encircling delicate fingerssaturn_false

and all of Saturn

to understand love

you must understand tea—tea

slow sips of honey

warming your hands

I haven’t counted them yet, but I have three typed pages of the “to understand love” series, and about six 14-word free form poems. Every evening I come home eager to prepare the next day’s patch of poems, and every morning I wake up excited to post what I’ve written and watch the number count creep closer to the goal. Most importantly, I am having fun while supporting a worthwhile effort to spread love throughout the Triangle.

Try your hand at a 14-word love poem by leaving a comment.


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Black * Woman * Professional


Manuscript Section 1That’s the title of the poetry manuscript I submitted to a book contest one day before the January 31st deadline. On the one hand, assembling the manuscript was exactly like organizing the creative thesis for my MFA program—printing out every poem, creating piles of poems with a similar theme, ordering the poems in each themed pile, putting the themes in the order they should be read.  That part was easy.

The hard part was changing my mindset from a “hoop-to-jump-through-in-grad-school” to a “poetry-collection-someone-might-read-one-day.” Making that switch meant I had to treat the manuscript as if it were already a published book. These days, many poetry and prose books have sections break up the reading and the poems or chapters that follow. Some are as simple as Tracy K. Smith’s Life on Mars—One, Two, Three, Four. Others provide more information about the poems or chapters that follow. For example in Casual Vacancy, J.K. Rowling uses quotes from the Local Administration Manual to give a clue to what to expect in the next set of chapters. Having just finished that book on my Kindle Fire, I looked for something to help me tie the sections and the book together.

Then I remembered the book, Our Separate Ways: Black and White Women Struggle for Professional Identity. I read this book about 10 Our separate waysyears ago, and then again in 2011, in my critical thesis semester. Flipping through it, I realized the chapter titles could organize the themes of my collection, and then, chose quotes from the book that connected to the poems:

  • Fitting In (“I feel like a guest in somebody’s house.”)
  • Work Isn’t Everything (“The thing that’s on every single black women’s mind is the whole issue of relationships.”)
  • Their Father’s Daughters (“My life is different from my mother’s and father’s; theirs was a different time.”)
  • The Racialized Self (“I experience myself as being exotic and mysterious to most white people.”)

No matter what happens with the contest, I’m satisfied with how my first poetry collection turned out.


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Writing on the Road


I’m in week 2 of a 3-week vacation. The first week I had access to Wi-fi and blocks of time to pen this blog. Since then, I’ve been without immediate and instant Internet access. There’s a shared mobile Internet card and not enough time in the day to collect my thoughts. This morning, I’m headed to a elyunqueeco-hotel in the middle of a rain forest. From past experience I know that the wireless is spotty at best when it is available, but often shrouded by clouds that perch themselves on the top of the mountain, blocking out the satellite connection.

Whereas blogging has been challenging on vacation, writing has not. Puerto Rican journalist, Hector Feliciano advises us to treat writing as a form of exercise. If you do it every day, it is easy; the longer you go without writing, the harder your muscles have to work to get back into shape.

I have been building to a daily writing practice–jotting down ideas in the Notes on my iPhone, carving out three-minute poems, and using larger blocks of time to scribble in my notebook. Of course, writing on the road must be fed by reading. I’ve brought along the Kindle with several fiction and non-fiction books and 3-4 poems arrive every morning in my inbox. And the ideas keep flowing!


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Poet Resolutions 2013


2013-goalsIn my year-in-review post, I promised to share my resolutions for the New Year. Each one of these goals pushes me a bit outside of my comfort zone:

Teach a poetry workshop: Yes, I think I’m ready. I’ve toyed with the idea several times, but haven’t made the time to do it. Some of the ideas that come to mind are found poetry, erasure poetry, or maybe even a workshop on finding the journal that’s right for your work. Actually that last topic is not a bad idea.

Write a sonnet: To me, the sonnet is the pinnacle of poetic form. I love reading them, but have been very intimated by the thought of writing one because I’ve read so many good ones. But I do have one on my mental list of poems I need to write, inspired by Adrienne Su’s “Asian Driver”. It will probably take me the whole year to find the courage to write it.

Six poems published: Same number as last year. The over-achiever in me wanted to set the bar at 10 publications, but I’m going to try to get her to take it easy this year. Either way means I have to continue to Write! Write! Write! Submit! Submit! Submit! and that’s the part that pushes me.

Share my poetry: Last year I realized that publications aren’t the only way to share my work. I posted my April poems on Facebook, but took them down at the end of the month. The November poems are still up there, so that’s a step in the right direction. But to push myself outside of my comfort zone, I will start posting more poems to this blog, like “Winter Solstice.” Maybe I can make the Three-Minute Poem a regular feature.

Talk to more double life poets: I know they are out there. I read their work, but I don’t reach out to them. I want to feature their work and their creative process on this blog. I want to learn from them.

Blend double lives more: I started doing this when I updated my LinkedIn profile. I don’t know what this will looks like or how to do this, but I have a feeling it will be an interesting journey.

Let me know some of your writing resolutions for the New Year by leaving a comment!