A published poem! (Barcelona Notebook #4)

Happy Valentine's Day! I've had a poem published in Vox Mom (Mom Egg Review) in a collection on the theme: LOVE OF IDENTITY/IDENTITY OF LOVE, curated by Sharon Dolin. If you would like to see the poem without further introduction, head right here (mine is number three).

My poem, Face card: Queen of Shadows, is a Barcelona poem from June 2015. On day eight of the workshop, we went to the Museu Picasso to see Picasso - Dalí   Dalí - Picasso, which paired works by the two artists at various stages of their careers. Sharon Dolin had sent us off with the suggestion to write a poem in a form. She offered the cinquain as a starting point. Five-line stanzas with the following syllable counts: 2, 4, 6, 8, 2. Here's a self-explanatory cinquain.

Syllable Game

first two

then double that

another pair makes six

now stretch the line way out to eight

and back

I was taken by an early Dalí portrait, paired with a somewhat earlier one by Picasso. Dalí reworked his portrait after meeting Picasso for the first time in 1926. To see the effect of Picasso on Dalí, follow this link and scroll in EXHIBITION until you find a page that looks like this:

There you will see Dalí's Portrait of My Sister (1923) on the right, as I saw it in the museum in June, paired with Picasso's neoclasical Portrait of Olga (1917).

The primary gesture of the poem "wrote itself" as I stood in the gallery, making notes and sketches. I turned it into a cinquain. My poem has four stanzas of five lines and follows the syllable pattern (with one change inspired by the portrait's shape).

Dalí's painting is owned by The Dalí Museum of St. Petersburg (Florida). Interestingly, this museum presents the painting on its website the other way around, with the "older" face on top. While the frustration of the mentee/mentor relationship between the two artists may be at the heart of the aggression I sense in the painting, it may also come from tension between the two siblings, as the St. Petersburg site suggests.

I've learned a bit more about the cinquain. The originator of the 22-syllable stanza was Adeleide Crapsey (1878-1914). Her cinquains are one stanza long and have a quality of the tanka or haiku. My poem is its own version of the cinquain, an enjoyable syllable game.

The Great Poetry Disruption (Barcelona Notebook #3)

Readers of Chapter This may have stopped wondering what happened to this blog. Where did it go after an intense daily series in the month of May, scattered postings over the summer, then silence since September?

The answer (more or less) is poetry.

In June of 2015 I joined a 10-day workshop called Writing about Art in Barcelona with poet/instructor Sharon Dolin. In fact, I attempted to start an occasional series on this blog to report on the experience. I made it to Barcelona Notebook #2. I chose the workshop for two reasons. 1) I wanted to return to Barcelona, a place I had visited with my one-year-old son 17 years earlier, when he was a healthy little guy and life felt lucky. This Barcelona visit was a way to honor his memory at the time of his 18th birthday, a decade since his death. 2) I wanted to write about art and memory in Barcelona.

Jiwar reading room
June 2015

I planned to write in prose, although I knew the workshop would focus more on poetry.  During the ten days, we visited a plaça with a bomb shelter; Gaudí's Parc Güell; museums dedicated to Miró, Picasso, and contemporary art; Gaudí's Casa Batllo. We toured an artist's studio, met a Catalan poet.

Each day at the Jiwar center, we workshopped the previous day's work and discussed a new assignment. We learned about different ways to consider ekphrasis, i.e., writing from art, and Sharon's taxonomy of ekphrasis was exhaustive and inspiring: describe an artwork, write of the artwork without explicitly saying you are doing so, talk of art-making, write of museum experience, give an artist's portrait, and so on. A handy basic reference is Art and Artists: Poems, edited by Emily Fragos.

View from Parc Güell
over Barcelona

Before we left for each day's outing, Sharon also offered guidance on a particular poetic form to try. For example, when we visited the sprawling, inventively tiled Parc Güell, she suggested we write in a mosaic way. On another day, she suggested we write a poem in a strict form (a cinquain, or perhaps a villanelle). The six of us - five participants and Sharon - scribbled in our notebooks, snapped photos, and walked around with our eyes in the clouds. Sometimes my husband and daughter joined us on these excursions. (If you ask my daughter, we all looked pretty weird.)

Everyday, I produced a poem. I did not write prose. Over the 10 days, my poems progressed from idea-laden prose-like texts (with line breaks) to something freer, more playful, and somehow much less. That is, I began to see that despite the many ideas wanting to crowd their way in, I would find the heart of the poem when I left most of the "stuff" out.

It seems I've lost my head. Take a look at my posts July-September 2015. The anniversary of Simon's death and some dragonflies yanked me back to memoir/prose, but otherwise the impulse to write in verse has become powerful and, well, disruptive. I posted a few poems. I even posted about being confused about writing in verse or prose. In the "back end" of this blog, I count seven draft posts along my "old" lines over the past six months. Unfinished, unposted.

I've been busy, and, I promise, I'll be back.

Flash poem

Where the rainbow is

It isn't where the rainbow is
that matters
it's where you are

because it's your eyes that make
a rainbow
isn't it?

Hear rain rumble the glass rooftop
like scampering hooves
then stop.

Evening sunshine burns hot enough
to trigger auto-blinds. What's the angle?
Where's the rainbow stage?

Follow the shadow line of a tree
it should point the way, but
no rainbow.

Start a poem. Look one more time
there!
Chalky pastels draw an arc

then fade

A stroll on Killesberg (Stuttgart)

Saturday afternoon, we took a long stroll through Killesberg Park in Stuttgart. Markus' mother and father live a short distance from the park, and they know its winding ways. This hilltop once housed the convention center, which has since moved to the Stuttgart airport. The area has been tastefully redeveloped. A wide expanse includes the gardens that remain from the 1993 International Garden Show, and that's where we walked.

Markus and his mother, both known for
spotting ripe nuts and berries along the way.

Tucked into the public lands are some private gardens. Here's one that includes the most charming display of the Gartenzwerg that I've ever seen.

Gardening dwarves.

Music and sports.

Readers.

We also passed a pond with water birds.

Conversation.

Ruffled feathers.

And endless plantings of blooming dahlias, their voluptuous heads wide open to the skies. Now through early October, you can wander amid the groups of flowers, mark your favorite on a ballot, and see which one wins the most votes.

Fringey.

Cupped.

Simple elegance.

Fireworks.

My personal favorite--where pink meets yellow
and all that's in between.

Being present (flash post)

Keeping to my own rules for a flash post (write it fast, almost no editing), I came home needing to write a little scene. I jotted it down by hand because I had a pot of soup to start, and then I came to my computer to blog. And here's what happens: I start to wonder if I need to break the lines. Is this supposed to be a poem?

Today's result is two poems. The first is a prose poem. The second, a lined poem. Each form, of course, drives different choices. Editing today is a particularly astute process because I've re-read Strunk and White's Elements of Style for an article I'm writing. Still not done, but this is a flash post! Since there are two versions of the "same thing," your are welcome to vote on your favorite!

I.

Walking away from the small town supermarket this evening, past the outdoor fruit display, past the cluster of middle-aged cyclists paused in front of Town Hall, weaving aside for pedestrians, I saw a lady walking toward and past me. She smiled warmly as as she said, "See you soon," into her phone, and I wondered if I'm ever that genuinely pleased. Certainly not on the phone, because I dislike talking on the phone. But ever in my life? Do I inhabit a moment with such generous appreciation? I grasped at my bike helmet to open the strap and rounded the corner toward where I had left my bike. And in the moment of asking do-I-ever a radiant field of magenta burst into view--a flower box plump with petunias hanging from a window of the old Rathaus. Sensory pleasure filled the air like the chimes of shimmering bells.

II.

Walking away this evening
from the small town supermarket
past an outdoor fruit display
side-stepping pedestrians
past a cluster of cyclists

I saw a lady walking toward
and past me who smiled warmly
as as she said, "See you soon,"
into her phone, and I wondered
if I'm ever that genuinely pleased.

Certainly not on the phone
because I dislike talking on the phone
but ever in my life?

Can I feel a moment like that?

My fingers undid my bike helmet strap
I turned a corner
and my eyes filled

with radiant magenta--
an effusion of petunias
hanging from a window
in the old Rathaus

like bells chiming shimmery tones in every
molecule of the air.

It's August 6th again--11th anniversary of missing Simon

Sometimes simple is the best way to go. Eleven years ago today my son Simon died. We miss him. We remember him.

I have written about the day he died. The opening of my essay "Objects of My Attention" takes a direct look at the events of that day.

Last year for the 10th anniversary of Simon's death, I posted a video slide show of his seven years, accompanied by a lovely and thought-provoking song written in Simon's memory by Laszlo Slomovits, "You've Crossed Over". Today to mark the anniversary, I'm opening the video to visitors again for several days. Follow this link and when you get there, enter this password: SimonAug6th. Most of the other children in the photos have grown up and are off to college. Had Simon lived, he would have been ready for college this fall.

This evening, Miriam and I went to the recent Pixar release, Inside Out. (Markus is attending the annual Academy of Management meetings in Vancouer, BC, so tonight we're missing him, too.) We enjoyed many Pixar films with Simon--the first two Toy Story movies, A Bug's Life, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo. Simon never got to see The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up, or Brave. We keep him very much in mind when we watch, and re-watch, the films he knew and the ones we know he would have liked.

Pixar's newest: life in an 11 year old's mind

Like Monsters Inc. and Up, Inside Out is directed by Pete Docter. In 2003, Simon received an invitation to tour Pixar Studios with Pete Docter himself while on a medical visit to San Francisco. (Pete is the first cousin of a friend, and he was generous with his time and some signed artwork for Simon.)

Emeryville, CA December 30, 2003

Posing in front of a Finding Nemo shark model:
Grandma W., Mary, Simon, Rowan W., Miriam, Pete Docter and son

How cowboys know where to go to the bathroom at Pixar

Classic Simon outside Pixar:
magenta coat, half-lotus legs, investigating

While looking for photos, I found two more from the fall of 2003. I enjoy remembering my healthy-looking boy, fully inhabiting his life.

At home, September 2003

Yellowstone National Park, October 2003