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Welcome to
But Does it Rhyme?
We're a small, but
hopefully growing, band of poets who like to
talk about our craft and share what we've
written. We'll highlight favorite poets, review
new books, and explore the process of writing
poetry from inspiration to conclusion. (We might
venture into essays and short fiction, too.) We
hope you'll like our blog — and contribute your
own thought and poems.
Sally Zakariya, Poetry Editor
Richer Resources Publications
Charan Sue Wollard
(LivermoreLit)
Kevin Taylor
(Poet-ch'i)
Sherry Weaver Smith
(SherrysKnowledgeQuest)
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| ARCHIVES |
Introducing a new book
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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: |
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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
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?
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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.
(Mini Epiphany En Route to Athens, GA)
Abdal-Hayy always seemed to have one foot in this world and one in the next. Now he is fully there, no doubt writing poetry in paradise.
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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:
In an airplane there’s really very little
between you and the air
In this world there’s really very little
between you and the next
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
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.
Geller, who calls himself an old poet from Boston, now lives in Northern Virginia. His amusing poem “Foodish” was the opening act in our 2015 anthology
Joys of the Table.
And speaking of old, here’s a poem I wrote some years ago:
Lullaby for a Winter Evening
Lie down and let me tell you about snow br /> about geometry and silence
two parts cold to one part marvel
let me tell you of the twofold
mystery of its nature
how a single flake
dissolves at once
how two flakes linger
when they gather
whitely on the ground
Lie down and lift your face to snow
drifting down like petals
in a spring orchard
taste it on your tongue
a fleeting kiss of ice
Lie down and listen to the
wind wind through the apple trees
twisting the bare twigs
into complex runes
against a curtained sky
spelling out a recipe
for snow
((first published in
Innisfree Poetry Journal, Spring 2014)
What Are You Writing?
Why should we get all the bylines? Submit your
latest poem—just one for now—and we’ll publish
the poems we like best in an upcoming blog post.
Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please
let us know if the poem is accepted or published
elsewhere. Send your poem, plus a few lines
about yourself, in the body of an e-mail message
to:
poetryeditor@RicherResourcesPublications.com
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