Something Old, Something New

In 2015, I assembled a couple of chapbooks with old poems, and sent them around to a couple of contests. Predictably, neither of them found a home. Collections I've published in the past have never been based around a theme, or even written at the same time. Poems in the past have come to me one by one, and the only discernible theme has been, "me, me, me."

I did try a couple of years ago to write poems around the theme of horses. As it turns out, I had a tenuous connection at best with these beautiful creatures, although growing up on Long Island, next to a corral and next door to my grandfather's barn, they were common as squirrels. Of course, that very estranged relationship could be what I was supposed to be writing about in the first place, and not just a bunch of portraits of, "Horses I Have Known."

So, I have four or five decent poems about horses, and Long Island, and childhood. I have other poems about childhood too, so my last attempt at putting together a manuscript from poems I've already written will be to combine childhood poems with horse poems. This could work. Again, they have been written over twenty or thirty years, so they will require major revision to hang together, in my opinion. So, that project is in the pile.

This year, I decided to write one poem a month with the starting off point of current events in my life. The weather seems to open most of them, but after warming up, I think I've come up with eleven (so far) decent poems. These, perhaps with a couple others that I wrote outside of this exercise, should make a decently cohesive chapbook. As I wrote them, I just typed them up and put them in a folder, so perhaps my memory of them is a bit rosier than is warranted. We'll see in January.

I began a rather experimental project too, inspired by the works of Katrinka Moore, Anne Gorrick, and Adam Tedesco, among others. I stumbled on an old paperback copy of Valley of the Dolls over the summer. I copied ten random pages, then cut out pill-shaped chunks from the middle. I then switched around the cut pieces, and typed up rough, abstracts drafts of ten poems. I intend to make each successive draft looser and less connected to the original gibberish, but of course the results make more sense than you would think. This seems to be a good project to jump into when I can't think straight, or I'm too tired to write a "real" poem. Not thinking straight is absolutely required for this kind of word play. 

Basically, I am cutting myself some slack over the holidays, concentrating on relaxing (!) and enjoying the season. I'm also planning a trip to Florida in mid-February, via Amtrak, a less stressful mode of travel for both myself and my Roommate. I'm letting life lead for the time being. The poems wait, will wait, have waited, will be waiting. And will demand to be written when they will, always.

Notes on Process, Part I

    Last year I tried to write a chapbook about horses. It seemed like a natural subject. I grew up surrounded by horses. As a kid, my grandfather exercised thoroughbreds at Aqueduct. My father got a 
license to train thoroughbreds in middle age, and for a few years pursued that dream pretty actively, with
mixed results. There was a corral next to the house where I spent the second half of my childhood. Horses were as common as squirrels or sparrows. So, naturally, one would think I had a treasure trove of memories to draw from, and combined with the hindsight of 50+ plus years, several volumes of horse poems were surely just waiting for me to extract them from the depths of my subconscious.

     As it turns out, not really. I have rarely written with a theme in mind, although I respond well to prompts. Prompts, however, only lead me back to myself. I am an expert at making a conversation come back around to me, me, me, and prompts are the first sentence of poetic conversations. For this chapbook, I started with only the vaguest idea-- something to do with horses. The few poems I attempted that dealt primarily with horses were drawn from my memories of them. I do not see many horses in my day to day life at this point. The poems are imprecise, dreamy and totally rootless. I always meant to go out and find some real horses, to add some fresh observations to my ancient memories. I never even got around to Googling the damn things.

     What I discovered is that my connection to horses is superficial at best, despite close proximity for almost two decades. My sister turned out to be the cowgirl in the family, and still rides today whenever she gets a chance. She has a beautiful barn in her backyard, and her property is adjacent to a state park. She's got an amazing amount of room to ride in a suburban Long Island neighborhood.

     I was afraid at first, and never overcame that fear. As a kid, we were led around my grandparents' corral on Princess, an sedate Palomino who was the last of the many horses my father and his siblings grew up with. I'm sure I pulled out a few hairs from her brittle blonde mane, I held on so tightly. Now that I'm older, and that much more aware of the consequences of a fall, I am all the more frightened.

     The best poems to come out of this effort are not about horses at all. They are about horse people, family, friends. They are about the affect horses had on others, and about the affect others had on me. One
poem is about a gold charm I have in the shape of a horse, and what it symbolizes. Another is about my grandfather, who died when I was 13 at the age of 57. We had very little in common then, and less now. Of the group, maybe five poems are worth reworking and sending out to find a home somewhere.

     Ultimately, they are Long Island poems, which I will never stop writing. They fall in line with the theme of my life. Poetry, writing is the way I explain myself to others, and to myself. It's a way of sorting out the pieces of the past, and clumsily ordering the future. Horses are certainly a part of my life. Just not enough to inspire more than a few poems to add to the archives.

**Of Ice and Men: An Overdue Publishing Announcement!**

This past spring, my latest chapbook, MY MINNESOTA BOYHOOD, was published by Post Traumatic Press in Woodstock, NY. Contrary to its title, I neither had a boyhood nor grew up in Minnesota. It is a collection of poems inspired by a close friendship with a man who did, comparing and contrasting, through fantasy and present experience, his childhood there and mine on Long Island.

As do most fantasies, this one was obligated to end, somehow, in its final pages of course. Following is the last poem from the book. I give away nothing by sharing it here. There is no secret story told in the rest of the poems. It is simply a gentle admission that, indeed, returning to New York, now, was at the last, the necessary and healthy thing to do:

Leaving Minnesota

Rail's the only way to go, fast

and yet you can still make out

faces at the depots, houses, coffee shops.

By car, you stop and start as you please,

deviating for a last pretzel or Orange Julius

at the Mall, or strong coffee, a slice of

rhubarb pie before hitting the highway.

Airplanes are efficient, surreal, as you

board in one part of the country,

say, the part that's cold, filled with frozen lakes

and men who insist on fishing them,

and get off in another world where

winter is for satellite TV, writing poems about places

you never really knew, green fields and blue lakes

you've heard about on Public Radio.

But it's time to go, before reality sets in,

before that sentimental journal sees another sunrise,

shows wrinkles in your smooth imagination,

before daylight proves you're alone.

Leaving Minnesota any way is best, but leaving is key.

Let memory ripen like a plum on a spring bough,

let flowers bloom on the untouched branch.

Let the lakes melt, boats return to the water, fish begin

the happy cycle of love, of life, of rushing off to hook or harbor,

their bright tones fading with summer and sun.

Let the small houses rest onshore,

waiting for other summers, other expeditions.

Let the giant walleye, as its name implies,

look to its future with one eye on winter past,

remember indigo twilight of November,

the real freeze that comes before buds

burst into one more verse of their same song.

MY MINNESOTA BOYHOOD is available for $8 from  either myself or Post Traumatic Press, at PO Box 544, Woodstock, NY, 12498.

*Poem: "Thanksgiving"

Thanksgiving

Nibbling on crackled turkey skin for lunch,
delayed Thanksgiving roast on my own,
plenty of sage to make it right,
surprise of granny apple in the homemade stuffing,
of course I remember you, Ma,
and the smells, the good behavior, the heat
of the kitchen spilling into the open living room,
big olives pushed onto my fingers
imitating Buckingham guards,
pound of mushrooms shrinking to nothingness,
tiny pile of savory at plate's edge,
nuts we knew by a dirty name,
impossible to open, then not worth the trouble,
green olives settled for when the black ones were gone,
parade on TV featuring an occasional Long Island band,
though somewhere in New York was enough to satisfy,
balloons and early risers,
Betty White and Lorne Greene days,
sometimes cold, sometimes wet, and relatives dribbling in
to squeeze around the picnic table, our kitchen table,
sturdy and large and red and cheap,
crescent rolls left to burn, annual sacrifice,
yams from a can heated through before serving,
ours not a marshmallow family,
the pumpkin, the apple pies, the mincemeat tarts
apparently only you and I loved,
all covered, all pies with real cream, whipped
and sugared with a careful hand,
my mother's giant iron arms
handy for such a task.