Introducing a new book One of the most productive experiences of my career as a poet was conceiving and editing Joys of the Table: An Anthology of Culinary Verse. Yes, it was a lot of work, but it put me in touch with a wonderful group of talented poets, among them Zilka Joseph, whose evocative “Eating Puchkas” appeared in the anthology. Wayne State University Press has just published a full-length collection of her work, Sharp Blue Search of Flame. Here is a poem from the book that resonates with a haunting beauty and sadness:

The Blessed
By Zilka Joseph

wings still glossy, she’s slouched

in the shade of the marauding fig
wild roots swallowing
cracked bricks

at the lip of our kitchen window
she waits, lopsided

tail ragged
as if rat-bitten

gaze deeper than hunger

my hands scrape down my plate
some meat I leave on the bones
extra grains of rice

she hops near
balancing this edge

who will care for us, little sister
we who are broken but not by our own hands

tap-tapping her beak
she picks cleanly

it’s for bullies I keep watch
my eyes scour the sun-white rectangle of sky

small cousin of the rook
and of the hard-beaked raven
how cruel are our kind

do we not bleed do we not die

we are not ravaged by fury but fear

so eat at my house, my one-eyed beauty
rest here then O bent-bodied bird

my wild, starved, one-legged one

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Dessert anyone? Speaking of Joys of the Table: An Anthology of Culinary Verse, the other day I took advantage of the season’s bounty and made a fruit salad. Combining blackberries, strawberries, cherries, nectarines, peaches, oranges, and apples, I realized that each of these fruits is represented by a poem in the anthology. As are other luscious desserts, including cream cheese cookies, apple goody, poppyseed cake, chocolate cake, pavlovas with berry topping, peppermint chiffon pie – even Emily Dickinson’s recipe for gingerbread. If you’re getting hungry for some delicious poetry, spiced with a handful of recipes, copies of Joys of the Table are still available. Bon appetit

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Your Name Here

That’s what I called a brief essay I wrote recently for the Mothers Always Write blog The 25th Hour. I’d been thinking a lot about getting my poems published, in print or online, and I came up with some tips for other writers hoping to do the same. (See the post here.)

My advice was nothing startling: know the market, submit often and widely, keep careful track, follow the submission guidelines, and above all, don’t give up. You’ve no doubt read similar suggestions already. But the real trick is putting them into practice

This morning I got another impersonal rejection email. Too bad, but I guess at least it shows I’m trying. The other day I counted up my submissions so far this year. I’ve had 10 acceptances out of a grand total of 78 submissions, a 12% acceptance rate. (Rejections are running at 23%, with many submissions still “under review.”)

Is 12% good? I don’t know, but I’ve learned one thing: don’t take those rejections personally. When I was a magazine editor, I rejected far, far more over-the-transom submissions than I accepted. After all, a print magazine has only so many pages. And even online, where page counts don’t count, there’s no accounting for taste. One poem that was dear to my heart was rejected 10 times before an editor accepted it. So I keep on.

By the way, writers who are parents should take a look at Mothers Always Write, a fresh young site for parents of all ages. Fathers welcome, too, I understand.

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Coda

From Beat to Buddhist to Sufi poet, Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore was an American original, a prolific poet who wrote playfully, insightfully, ecstatically about the Big Questions of life, death, and the divine. He was also a dear friend, and we mourn his loss from a cancer that he faced with characteristic grace and humor and sweetness.

Here’s how my husband, Arabic-script calligrapher Mohamed Zakariya, described him on the back of one of the poet’s many books: “Abdal-Hayy lives the poetic life. He is the real thing. He has been there. He has seen it, written of it, and come to tell us, in his own voice, all about it. If you want to know what ‘it’ is, ask him and he will tell you, with cosmic music, with wit, with the intensity of a well-banked fire that warms but never burns.”

At a recent gathering, I read a few of his poems, ending with this small gem:

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Feeling Flaky

Eliot may have said “April is the cruelist month,” but around here, it tends to be February or March, not to mention January. Snowmageddon, snowzilla, la tormenta de nieve di diablo—whatever you call it, we’ve had a lot of it lately, including dustings like lamb’s wool as March came in. Hence two poems about snow:

Late Snowfall
Conrad Geller

All that bluster, and only a little meaning,
for only a little while. The flowering quince
can wait it out, forsythia bide its time,
but crocuses, tuned to another reckoning,
appear on cosmic schedule anyway,
it seems, in spite of interruption.

It doesn't matter. Order will be restored
by afternoon, when schoolgirls coming home
will make their plans without regard to weather.

((first published in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Spring 2014)
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