‘Something Like a Life’

Putting it out there. That’s what poets do, day after day, hoping someone, somewhere, will respond. I can’t count how many rejections I’ve received (well, I probably could, but I don’t really want to). But each rejection makes that out-of-the-blue acceptance all the more gratifying. Even thrilling.

That’s how I felt when one of my favorite online poetry journals, Gyroscope Review, accepted my chapbook “Something Like a Life,” due out the end of April. Like a lot of my writing, the poems in this chapbook are about family and love ... not exactly exciting subject matter, but themes I think many people can relate to. If you’re one of those people, you can order a copy here. Meanwhile, here’s the title poem:

Ode to Trash
by Sally Zakariya

Something like a life
spills from the bin
breakfast egg shells
yesterday’s junk mail
a torn glove and its mate
worthless alone
like many of us

We have the capacity
to love entirely, even
bits and pieces we’ve
discarded--outdated,
unneeded, unwanted
until it’s too late

Love is a process of loss
the off-hand see you
the tossed-out letters
the distance from the other
the final farewell

I take out the trash unsure
the bin is big enough
to hold it all--all the debris
and detritus, the mistakes
and missteps, unsure
if I can live without
what I’ve cast away

My thanks to Gyroscope editor Constance Brewer for her thoughtful work bringing this little book into being.
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A Friend Writes …

Perhaps I should say “an email friend.” And perhaps it’s presumptive of me to call a woman I’ve never met a friend. But that’s one of the wonders of our interconnected cyber-society. Put something out there online, and you never know who, if anyone, will read it. But recently I got an email that began: “Thanks, first of all, for existing! And thanks for offering to let us lonely poets share a poem. I live in France where it’s hard to get much feedback. I hope someone will have thoughts on the poem below…”

The writer was Julia Frey, and my thoughts on her poem are that it’s a strong and visual narrative that tells a moving story. Here it is:

For Ron, Dead Ten Years
   by Julia Frey

Today, I could swear I saw you crossing
the rue du Four a block ahead, in that black-visored cap
you wore before, and your worn bomber jacket
from the second-hand store in Trastevere market
complete with stab wound
and “Nicola” written in ballpoint pen on the label.

That summer we sublet in via Mamele,
though later we found a better Boob City, Jerusalem
breasting with cupolas. Rome too polluted to milk
for our long rambles. We came home coughing
from the catacombs.
Even then death hovered.

Today you looked just like you
before you were sick, confident profile
gangster chic, out of sync with the hesitant walk
you'd developed. When you took the last fall in New York
my shock, to come back to Paris and find
your letters kept coming, weeks after.

What on earth made you fall for
a nouveau pauvre Southern belle with worn-out
Persian rugs, an arm-long pedigree and a potty mouth?
Me the effete, you the resolute Bad Boy
from Brooklyn, bourgeois-hating, astoundingly reliable
in money matters. Always out to get laid.

You, who loved words too much to
defile with a one-night stand. To say fuck or shit
or read trash novels. You said it was the sex.
It kept us together
in beds and on beaches
for twenty-five years.

Now I'm a fresh fish drifting
in a different salt sea. I see France
from my bedroom. But beach-combing in Cannes I still watch
for a letter in a bottle. And I still go back to Paris
where certain days I
wear Nicola’s jacket.

When I asked Julia for a photo to accompany her poem, she sent this one, explaining it’s one she plans to use if/when she publishes a book of poetry and photos by her brother, a retired Associated Press photographer. “It’s not an illustration but a free association,” Julia wrote, “a photo showing a complex facet of disorientation in a foreign culture.” I couldn’t agree more.

Nuns on an outing in Florence, photo by Cameron Bloch.

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Biblical Truths

Poetry plays many roles, not least of which are healing and connection. Consider Manna in the Morning, by Jacqueline Jules, just published by Kelsay Books. In 40-some graceful poems, Jules reaches back to the Old Testament to bring valuable lessons to herself and her readers. It’s a book you’ll want to read with a friend.

But don’t take my word for it. “Manna in the Morning is, quite simply, a lovely book,” says Erika Dreifus, author of Birthright: Poems and The Practicing Writer newsletter. “As she revisits holy texts, Jacqueline Jules gracefully connects ancient stories with modern times, gaining insights into her own quandaries and gently suggesting paths through which all of us may traverse our conflicts and crises.”

I grew up on the same Bible stories as my friend Jackie did (though through an Episcopalian, rather than a Jewish, lens), but it takes a special poet to gently tease out their meanings for modern-day life. What lesson might the parting of the Red Sea, for example, have for us today? Here’s Jackie’s trenchant take:

Crossing the Red Sea
   Jacqueline Jules

The rabbis say
Reuven and Shimon
crossed the Red Sea,
eyes down, grumbling,
so engrossed in grievances
they missed the miracle
of the waters parting.

Fleeing affliction,
I’ve been guilty, too,
of seeing only
the mud beneath my feet,
dwelling on the bricks
and burdened backs of Egypt,
ignoring outstretched arms
ready to hold me until
I reach the other side.

Jackie relates these ancient stories with nuance and sensitivity, but not without humor. In “Joseph’s Fortune and Mine,” a tale of “good fortune following calamity” she reassures us: “But no worries, [Joseph] found success as a slave / in Egypt. Appointed head of household / until Potiphar’s wife brazenly pursued / his beautiful biceps.”

These are poems of faith and hope, of grief and consolation. Observing the sky in the gorgeously titled “Consolation of Clouds,” Jules feels sunlight streaming through clouds as if it were “fingers / reaching down / to wipe the tears / from my cheeks.” To which I can only add Amen.

Learn more about Jacqueline Jules here and here.
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Poetry of Place

Look at a map of Washington, D.C., and you’ll see what might have been a perfect square but with a good chunk of land cut off by the Potomac River. Part of that chunk, which was ceded back to Virginia some time after the city was founded, is Arlington County. It’s an almost-urban suburb that probably has as much in common with the District as it does with the state. And it’s full of poets.

One of the best known is Arlington Poet Laureate Emerita Katherine E. Young, who compiled an impressive collection of Arlington poems, Written in Arlington, published by Paycock Press. With its YouTube companion Spoken in Arlington, the anthology mirrors the county’s diversity in content as well as contributors. As Katherine puts it, “The poets whose work appears in Written in Arlington range from nationally known page poets to spoken word artists to high school students just beginning to write and perform, as well as a few ‘tourist’ poets who have written about Arlington while passing through.”

The bike trail, a local hardware store, the animal shelter, a pink house, hillbilly music, the cemetery, a couple of neighborhoods, a car covered with poetry magnets … these subjects and dozens more add up to a rich tapestry of place, add up to a community.

And yes (you knew this was coming), I do have a few poems in the collection, including this one:

September Song
   Sally Zakariya

It seemed like the ruination
of everything yet we went on
some things got better, some got worse
and we were left marveling
at what we could handle, wondering
what would come next

Three miles from the Pentagon
we saw a rain of objects, stuffing
from airplane seats, floating,
drifting, insubstantial yet
consequential, some landing
on the office roof while inside
we watched it all unfold
in real time on the screen

Years later we are still wondering
… wondering after a summer
of destruction overseas, disparity
at home, slaughter of innocents
in the streets, dreading now
what could come next

My thanks to Katherine, and to Arlington, for being part of such an endeavor, and such a place.

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Bees, Again

When I retired and started writing poetry instead of magazine articles, I joined a writers’ group sponsored by the county’s senior programs. A few months in, one woman asked why I kept writing poems about insects. Why indeed? It wasn’t on purpose, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that insects are not uninteresting. As I wrote in the intro to my resulting little book Insectomania, “… who can fail to be moved by a life cycle that starts with years of grubbing, followed by a short span of mating, and then death. Rather like our own lives, writ small.” The poems weren’t my best, but I had fun padding them with trenchant quotes on bugs and Victorian naturalists’ illustrations of the creatures. It seems I still write about insects every now and then, and I’m delighted to say a new literary journal called Mycorrhizae is publishing a poem of mine about bees in its very first issue, now on the press.

Why I Do Not Trim My Mint
              In the name of the bee--Emily Dickinson

In the herb garden the mint slants
north, each stalk its own compass needle

Finding their way, three bees hover over
the blossoms, drawn by the promise of pollen

Their busy buzz lulls me as I laze
here on the porch, dreaming of blooms

and of the world bees make possible
for us, a world of fields and fruitfulness

Cut the mint before it flowers, they say
but where would these three forage then?

Mycorrhizae, you ask? So did I. It turns out a mycorrihza is a symbiotic association between a fungus and a plant--a fit name for a journal that describes itself as exploring “our lived experiences of place, climate change, and nature.”

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Meter and Rhyme
But Not All the Time

As anyone can no doubt guess from the title of my blog, I’m not a big fan of strict meter and rhyme--especially when they force poets to twist syntax. Some writers handle this kind of poetry well; turns out I’m not one of them.

Turns out, too, that I’m not alone in noticing the lengths people can go to in slavish dedication to meter and rhyme. Recently, Patsy Anne Bickerstaff, a Virginia poet and author of Mrs. Noah's Journal, sent me a little poem she’s had fun with. She has used it, she says, “just to let everyone know what they didn't have to do!” And like me, she says she’s “not averse to verse by meter and rhyme … but not bound to it either.”

Autobiography, Chapter One
              By Patsy Anne Bickerstaff

A poet there was, once ‘pon a time,
Who verses forced to make them rhyme
Or into meter better fit;
Adept she did become at it.

Liberally she used, “you see,”
So well it went with “thou” and “thee.”
Adjectives beautiful and trite
And gay, she’d write with all her might.

Editors she oft appalled
With rhymes that did not rhyme at all.
When offered help, she cried, “Don’t start!”
“I do my writing from the heart!”

Tho’ she submitted, o’er and o’er,
Rejections she received galore.
To shock she tried, with language blue;
The S.O.B.’s sent that back, too:

“Sorry, we accept this not;
Can’t tell we you’re saying what?”

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Block Party

June 19, of all days … the African-American girl across the street chalked some moving words from MLK on her family’s driveway and down onto the street, and a nameless neighbor complained. The county sent workers to power wash the words out. Most of our neighbors were outraged, and families descended on our block with chalk and paint and Black Lives Matter signs. Rains have washed some of the words away, but each time, the chalk team replaces them. The county, rightly, has apologized.

Juneteenth Words
              There comes a time when silence is
              betrayal.--Martin Luther King Jr.

Justice for all--wise words chalked
in bright yellow down the driveway
spilling onto sidewalk and street

Words we must heed in these days
of reckoning, of reassessment
of long-delayed reparations

Black lives matter--words washed
away by county workers with power
hoses on this day of all days

Saddened and outraged say neighbors
who grab chalk and paint to make
words bloom from house to house

Silence is betrayal--it’s time
for us all to speak up

My thanks to New Verse News for publishing my little poem the next day.

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‘The Literary Life’

How has the pandemic affected your work? Most writers no doubt have their own answers, but an interesting collection of responses to that question can be found in the July/August issue of Poets and Writers magazine. “What We Found in Writing: Authors on Creativity in Quarantine” includes essays from 13 writers. Here are brief excerpts from five poets:

• “I think creating during these unfathomable times is both impossible and necessary for me. … There is some breath, some distance, maybe there is even a sense of possibility in despair.”--Ada Limon, author of “The Carrying “(Milkweed Editions)

• I write now to tell off the pandemic, in a way. To prove that writing as an act can and will endure. It might not ‘save’ us, but I do know it will always be here for us.”--Victoria Chang, author of “Obit” (Copper Canyon Press)

• “These days distractions drive my drafts. I’m easily distracted on the page and off--too close to the moment, too anxious about it, to write with any real intention.”--Nicole Sealey, author of “Ordinary Beast” (Ecco)

•  “I feel lucky I think of poems as things that sometimes live on the page and sometimes just happen around me and never find the page.”--Gabrielle Calvocoressi, author of “Rocket Fantastic” (Persea)

• “If, when I return exhausted from a ride, I momentarily forget that I can weather through this, too, I remind myself of the words of one of my teachers, the late poet Philip Levine … ‘The process of writing poetry depends on being alone in a room and being comfortable being alone for long periods of time--amongst reveling in solitude and slow time.’”--Janine Joseph, author of “Driving Without a License” (Alice James Books)
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Writing While Young

Calling all teachers and parents. In these strange new days of ours, a great way to engage bored and lonely young people is poetry … writing about themselves, about the world, about themselves in the world.

Just in time comes Inside Out: Poems on Writing and Reading Poems, by Marjorie Maddox, a professor of English and creative writing at Lock Haven University who has published an impressive 20 collections of poetry and prose. Written for young writers, the book bristles with writing tools and ideas designed to show kids that “poetry” isn’t a bad word. “Chat with personification, dance with iambic, fish for sestinas, and text with a triolet,” Maddox writes on a welcome page. “In 27 poems plus Insider Exercises, this book will jump-start your writing.”

Chapters on how to see, hear, taste, smell, touch, and “befriend” a poem lure the reader into the poetry world, where Maddox provides a bevy of explanations and examples of such poetic elements as simile, alliteration, enjambment, and couplet. She then moves on to exercises designed to limber up the reader’s poetry muscles. Here’s an excerpt from one I like:

Exercise 7: The Short and Long of It

Here’s an experiment: Copy a poem that you like, twice, but take out the line and stanza breaks, so the poem appears as one big block of words. Give one copy to a friend.… Now, this part is secret. Without showing a friend what you are doing, each of you rewrite the poem with completely different line and stanza breaks.… How do the same words now seem a bit different? You may notice that you read a long line more quickly than a shorter one and that you tend to emphasize words at the beginning and the end of lines.… Next, take a poem that you wrote earlier and rewrite it with different line and stanza breaks. What happens? Which version do you like better? Why?

You don’t have to be a beginner in the poetry game to see how eye-opening an exercise like this can be. Try it. I did and was tempted to keep going in this useful and alluring book

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Pollack and Poetry

• Poetry Daily, a partnership between the Daily Poetry Association and George Mason University

• Poem-a-Day, from the Academy of American Poets, which offers lots of specials for Poetry Month

• Knopf Poetry, a daily poem in April from the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

• The Slowdown with Tracy K. Smith, poems “hand-picked” by former U.S. poet laureate Tracy K. Smith, from American Public Media in partnership with the Poetry Foundation

• The Writer's Almanac, from Garrison Keillor

Closer to home, my friend Zeina Azzam, a poet and Palestinian activist, is posting her own selection of poems on Facebook, one each day during April. Her post so far have included wonderful pieces by Pablo Neruda, Jane Hirshfield, Wendell Berry, and others.

Another friend, Mike Maggio, Northern Regional Vice-President for the Poetry Society of Virginia, presents poetry each April day in a feature called 30 for 30, sponsored by Potomac Review. This year, which he’s calling Re(En)Vision, Mike has asked poets to take an original poem, delete every fifth word, and revise the poem, presenting it in stanzaic form (couplets, tercet, quatrains, etc.). The results are intriguing.

Finally, Katherine E. Young, former poet laureate of Arlington, Virginia, is posting a poem each day this month on Facebook. The poems are drawn from Written in Arlington, an anthology of Arlington poets edited by Katherine and forthcoming from Gargoyle Magazine/Paycock Press.

A daily dose of poetry may not cure covid 19, but don’t you feel better?

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Meanwhile, Somewhere in the Universe …