VOICE LESSONS: Craft Tip and Prompt

Below you will find my Craft Tip from Diane Lockward's Poetry Newsletter, Oct. 2011.  I highly recommend that you get your name on her email list to receive this Newsletter every month and also order a copy of her revised edition of The Crafty Poet.  You can find more information on this site:    http://www.terrapinbooks.com/the-crafty-poet-a-portable-workshop.html. 

Diane has gathered together a trove of poems from which she has drawn prompts, followed by a Craft Tip by a well-known poet, including Cecilia Woloch, Baron Wormser, Dorianne Laux, and Lola Haskins.  A second collection of prompts and poems will be published soon, The Crafty Poet, II.    

Here's more about Diane at her website and her blog. 

Sign up for her free monthly Poetry Newsletter  and

visit Terrapin Books, her small press for poetry. I blurbed her latest book, The Uneaten Apples of Atonement,  which I heartily recommend. 

VOICE LESSONS

       

       I grew up wanting to be a singer.   I sang solos in church.  I sang to the cows in the pastures.  I sang quietly into the window of the  bus as it made its long journey home from school every afternoon.  Neither the window nor the cows gave me stage fright.  Singing solo in church did.  Would my voice be there?  What would I hear?  Anything at all? Remembering my anxiety as I opened my mouth to begin “In the Garden,”I  recall  Fred Chappell’s comment that the blank, mute page  makes every honest writer feel a surge of doubt.  Even opera singers confess to an occasional loss of  voice  that renders them unable to sing what was once their signature arias. 

       Like most young poets I worried about “finding my voice.”  Now in middle age, after serving for five years as our state’s Poet Laureate, concentrating more on a public voice than my inner one, I now worry about finding  it again.

       Reading soprano Renee Fleming’s memoir The Inner Voice set me wondering about what advice she might give. Maybe she would tell me I ought to take this mystery of voice  literally.   Maybe I should try to think of  voice as a real singer might.     “Stop worrying about having lost your voice and start singing,” she suggested.  “Try singing your own lines from earlier poems when you were ‘in voice,’ even if only as recitative and not aria.   Really hear those lines, bodily, in every part of you “ 

      “Oh, and by the way, sing along with the cd player while driving.  If you keep punching back to a song numerous times because you love the way it feels in your ear and in your mouth, you are on to something important.   Take the  song that makes your hair stand on end and write from it, generating words that rise out of the song’s lyrics. “

       So, ok, I took Renee’s imagined advice. On walks, I’d sing, quietly, lines from my poems, when I was sure nobody else was around.  In the car I sang along with Etta James, Nina Simone, and even Renee herself on her Dark Hope album.  Driving back over the Blue Ridge mountains, I listened to Dolly Parton’s version of “Silver Dagger” from her bluegrass collection.    I listened to it over and over again, goose bumps rising on my arms every time, and when I got home, I began singing it onto the page, letting the first word of the song become the title.

 Don’t

sing love songs to me 

lest you waken the blade 

that seeks marrow, my heart’s

muscle,  bone-chain

 that carries me deep

 into shady groves where 

I hear naught but my own

blood dissembling.  

I hadn't a clue where this poem was going, where this woman’s voice was leading my own, but lead me it did. (You can find out where it carried me at Blue Fifth Review, where it’s just been published--http://bluefifthreview.wordpress.com.) ;

      With the impetus of language that approximated the original lyrics, I suddenly heard wildflower names bursting through, along with words like “reft”  and “dissembling” that I’d never used in a poem before.  I heard --no, I felt  my “voice”  cracking the whip, a live wire again.    Living as I do in the Blue Ridge mountains, I find that old ballads and folk songs wield special power for me, but jazz and blues do, too. I’m sure that Nina Simone’s “Lilac Wine”  is waiting for a poem.   Maybe  “Vissi d’arte”?  “Nessun dorma”?

       Wait a minute, though.   If I’m going to continue to think like a real singer, I have to practice don’t I? I  can see Madame Fleming nodding her head, like my piano teacher, who once told me I didn’t practice hard enough.  Thanks to newsletters like this one,  suggestions for poetic practice aren't difficult to find.   One of the best ideas I’ve heard lately, however,  came from a renowned pianist who described his daily practice as playing the same Mozart sonata, finding something to learn from it each time.   Why not come back each day to a poem that has stirred us,  reading it aloud, learning it by heart, listening to its inner voice over and over again?  Our own voices will  respond to that voice, taking shape on the page, in our mouths, in  our ears.  After all, voices long to sing back to other voices.   My inner Diva’s advice?  Let them.

*********************
Here's Dolly singing her version of Silver Dagger, followed by Joan Baez, whose version I first heard  many years ago.  I still like that first haunting version the best.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=009vp-2bB84
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Xlmb8gG7HU

PROMPT:

WITHOUT THINKING TOO MUCH, CALL UP A SONG THAT GIVES YOU GOOSEBUMPS, THAT HAUNTS YOU, ONE THAT YOU WANT TO LISTEN TO AGAIN AND AGAIN.  AFTER LISTENING TO IT AS MANY TIMES AS YOU WANT, FIND THE LYRICS AND LISTEN TO THEM IN YOUR OWN VOICE.  BEGIN TO WRITE FROM WHAT HAUNTS YOU, LETTING THE LYRICS OF THE ORIGINAL POEM LEAD YOU ON….AND ON INTO YOUR OWN MUSIC.  

RIGHT NOW I'M WORKING ON A POEM THAT IS ITSELF HAUNTED BY "THE DEMON LOVER," AS WELL AS ONE IN THE VOICE OF "PRETTY POLLY. " 

My ancient black shawl

 Here is one that grew out of "Long Black Veil,"  particularly these lines.

She walks these hills in a long black veil
She visits my grave when the night winds wail
Nobody knows, nobody sees
Nobody knows but me

Long Black Veil

                             “She walks these hills in a long black veil,

                               visits my grave while the night winds wail...”

She could never herself weep

above any man’s grave for so many 

bad nights,  unmindful of hailstones  

and wind wailings.  Where’s the woman

who would? Still, she wonders who

wrote this song, who set it roaming.  

She’s glad to be done with her own 

bad nights drawing her out

where the  wind can whip

even the slightest of lacy threads

wild at the edge of a shawl.  She 

had thought it was flesh to flesh

she wanted, long as the nights lasted.

That was before she pulled back

from the heat of him seeking her own

and saw limbs thrashing outside 

like nothing that she could recall

ever hearing a woman sing.

No wailing romance in that vision,

only the locust leaves hammered

by lightning to quicksilver

tongue-shapes that silenced her.

How dare a woman walk out

into such revelation, much less

set it throbbing to music 

that’s even now winding its song round her, 

length after length of it, her hand

reaching out for the door handle?

first published in Poemeleon

WHEN I STOPPED WANTING TO BE EMMYLOU HARRIS

Here's a recent blog post on South85journal.com,  a literary site well worth visiting.    I'm using this post to begin some commentary on my workshop at "The Gathering" in Winston-Salem, NC, back at the beginning of April.  This popular literary event, sponsored and presented by Jacar Press (whose founder Richard Krawiec, is a man of many talents) in Durham, NC, has become one of North Carolina's most welcoming and enjoyable literary events.  The title of my class was The Legato Line, and its presumed focus was the music of the poetic line and how one can weave a poem together in ways that approach the art of singing.  Each participant had an individual approach to structuring a poem, so in the posts to follow I hope to touch on a few of those poems, featuring lines that made my ear take heed and listen.    

           

      Why not submit some of your own work?  Or just enjoy the various offerings here, especially the blogs.   Here's the link.     http://south85journal.com/blog/

When I Stopped Wanting to Be Emmylou Harris

on APR 22, 16in BLOG, FEATURED BLOG POSTby SOUTH 85 JOURNALwith NO COMMENTS

Kathryn Stripling Byer

It took me a while.  After all, who wouldn’t want to wear fancy boots, lots of fringe, and sing, not to mention write, songs like “From Boulder to Birmingham”? Even now I marvel at how long it took me to realize that the poetry I was writing was my way of singing.  After years of Emmylou envy, I began to hear my voice, as I gave readings, approach song.  I began to focus on poetry as sound, as what Richard Wagner came to call even years before he’d inscribed the first note of an opera, “sound landscapes.”  Of course this poetic landscape encompasses all the elements of poetry, syntax, image, lineation and so forth, but more and more I began to listen, really listen to where the language was leading me.

This listening can take its own sweet time, and waiting is, as far as I’m concerned, a key component of good writing.  Several years ago, while visiting a good friend in Oregon, I joined her and a few of her poet-friends for a workshop. As a prompt, she offered up a poem with a train in it.  I can’t recall much of the poem, but the sound of that train pulled me into the first line of a poem that took me a long time to sing to its closing notes.  “So long, so long, the train sang,” I wrote in my notebook. And so began the first notes that kept calling and calling to me, haunting me, even down to the final days of my father’s life, as I lay in my childhood bed, trying to weave this poem together, finally.  I was, as I now realize, “listening” this poem to completion.

“Legato,” that is what I was trying to achieve–the legato line.  Singers know it well, and so indeed do poets, though they may not know it…..yet.  The opposite of legato is staccato, and I knew the sound landscape for this poem was not at all staccato.  This poem’s legato line was a moaning, all the way down through the flatlands, sounding like Georgia blues singer Precious Bryant singing, “I’m goin’ home on the morning train. That evening train may be too late, so I’m goin’ home on the morning train.”

I was going home, too. I’d been going home since that first line jotted down quickly so many years ago in Portland, Oregon.  “So long, so long, the train sang/ deep in the piney woods, well out of sight…. As sound only, it found me…long vowel reaching for nobody I knew as yet,

sounding an emptiness

deeper than I thought  could blow through

the cracks of this song where I’m kindling a fire

for my fingers to reach toward,

a kindling that transforms whatever it touches

to pure sound, a pearl, say,

that’s cupped in my palm

like a kernel my teeth cannot crack,

the pulse of it strung note by note round my neck,

that old rhythm and blues beat

I can’t stop from singing me home

on this slow morning train

of a poem, its voice calling

downwind, What took you so long?

This morning train of a poem became the first poem in my most recent book,Descent.  And its question still haunts me.  What took me so long to give up Emmylou and let go into my own legato line?  My own lifeline bearing me home again?  Maybe it’s the same journey we take over and over again with each new poem we write.

Precious Bryant.   More about her on a later post. 

Kathryn Stripling Byer, a native of Southwest Georgia,  lives in the mountains of North Carolina. Her poetry, prose, and fiction have appeared widely, including  Hudson Review, Poetry, The Atlantic, Georgia Review, and Shenandoah.   Her first book of poetry, The Girl in the Midst of the Harvest, was published in the AWP Award Series, followed by the Lamont (now Laughlin) prize-winning Wildwood Flower, from LSU Press.  Her subsequent collections have been published in the LSU Press Poetry Series. She served for five years as North Carolina’s first woman poet laureate.

Photo credit:  By Yogibones from (Flickr) [CC BY 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

Greening Up the Mountains Student Poetry Celebration, 2016

Greening Up the Mountains 

Student Poetry  Celebration,
  2016

SPECIAL NOTE

This marks the third year for the Greening Up The Mountains Poetry Contest.
The contest celebrates our mountains
and our connection to them in our everyday lives. All Jackson County students in kindergarten through 12th grade were invited to participate.
We offer special thanks to our judge this year, Ms. Darnell Arnoult,
poet, novelist, short story writer,
and professor of English and creative writing at Lincoln Memorial University.
All of the students who participated in the contest are to be commended for their creativity and effort.
We also appreciate the participants’ teachers and parents for encouraging them to write and share
these wonderful poems with all of us.

Kathryn Byer  and City Lights Bookstore 

                

FINAL JUDGE:    Darnell Arnoult, poet, novelist, short story writer, Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lincoln Memorial University.

Darnell Arnoult

     

Sponsored by City Lights Bookstore, Sylva, NC, and Kathryn Stripling Byer, NC Poet Laureate Emerita.

Chris Wilcox

Kathryn Byer

With invaluable assistance from Jackie Methven, Smoky Mountain High School Media Coordinator.  

Jackie Methven

    

Grades 9-12

Brittney Davis, 11th grade, SMHS,  Dedicated to Dianne Gholson.

COLORS OF THE WORLD

The world is shaded in many colors.

Each contains emotion.

And that emotion is significant to each and every living thing.

Pacific blue; the rapids of the sea with beauty and veracity.

Mahogany; the wood floor you pattered on as a child.

Outer space; wonder in a universe that we have yet to know.

Robin egg blue; the memory of your numerous Easter holidays.

Sunset blood orange; the unspeakable gorgeousness as the sun goes down.

Scarlet; the color of lust and secrecy.

All hold the world's secrets.

You just have to be willing to uncover them.

Dianne Gholson and friend

Kelly  Morgan, 10th grade, SMHS, Ms. April Bryson’s class                              

Lullaby

She said to him: tread carefully, my love,

For the weight of our feet can break the world.

He said to her: I will walk on a beam of silver glass

Treading carefully, for all the world below.

A girl whispered to her friend: I cannot,

It is too much to hold in a single hand.

Her friend whispered back: take it,

You can, you need not use only your hand.

The brother cried: onwards! to the sky!

Brandishing his mighty silver sword.

His brother yelled: let us charge!

And pressed his fist against the mighty sun.

Rocking back and forth, she crooned:

Lullaby, lullaby, I will carry you to the moon and sky.

I will wrap you in stars, my little one,

You will have all the world spread below.

And the child in her arms lay with eyes closed,

Small fingers curled around her hand.

Brandi McDonald, 9th grade, SMHS, Ms. April Bryson’s class

A Blank Page is a Playground for Imagination

A blank page is a playground for imagination 

you can go on the journey of a lifetime

or find your true love.

You can do anything, 

or be anything.

Go travel the world, 

or maybe other worlds.

Go as far as your imagination

 can take you.

Become 

a  knight,

 fairy,

    or whatever your mind can create. 

   There are no limits in this new world

 you can do whatever

you set your heart to do.

Enjoy these days on that playground 

because soon,

it will fill up with dreams

but you can always 

get a new blank page.

Become that knight again 

travel the world again

 just don't stop dreaming.

Let your imagination 

flow through you 

and be happy. 

Grades 5-8

Dan Hacskaylo, Fairview School, Ms. Pamela Martin’s class

We Would

We would braid each other’s hair,

Twisting and knotting.

We weren’t allowed around sharp objects, like scissors, so our hair grew long,

But that’s okay because you always wanted me to have long hair,

And I loved the way the caramel feathers fell soft around your face

We would run through the rain,

Skipping in puddles and racing for awnings,

Laughing when our braided hair got wet

I didn’t like being damp, but that’s okay

Because it just meant huddling up in duvet forts later in the afternoon.

We would weave daisy chains,

Building them into flower crowns and knisthing each other in turn

I didn’t deserve to be prince,

But that’s okay because you though I did,

And the glittering assurance in your eyes was hard to resist

We would gaze at the stars,

The unfathomably distant fairy lights making us feel small

I would breathe into your neck and know that someday I would lose you,

But that’s okay because you would be happy,

And that’s all that really concerned me.

Dan Hacskaylo, in hoodie, with teacher Pamela Martin to her right

Sarah Grider, 8th grade, Cullowhee Valley,  Ms. Paula Fox’s class

Winter is Coming

See the world through different eyes

Not of another person

But from the eyes of the world itself

See the trees sleep during a freezing winter

Dreading the aching cold it brings

Hear the selfish birds calling

Mememe me me mememe

Look up and see the clouds

And how they look like they’ve been painted on the sky

Hear how the water is calling

Calling everything to its freezing death

The trees are burned a darkened coal black

Waiting for the cold to drown them in sorrow

They cry tears for the flowers that will

Never bloom; and the dry air laughing at the world

The trees are alone, a ripple

A simple drop of water in a lake

Lane Owen--8th grade, Cullowhee Valley,  Paula Fox

I am a Fraser Fir

Up high I stand

Hidden in plain sight

Six or seven feet tall when young

Sixty to seventy feet tall when mature

I am known as the Mountain Balsam

With pinecones all in my spiked up hair

My skin is pale as if I were a ghost

The blisters on my skin, ooze a sticky sap

It is sweet honey to some creatures

Popular as I am

Celebrations are what make me who I am

Attacked by enemies I might be but

I stand tall

Gazing over the mountains and seas

Up high I stand

Looking out at the populated land

Keanu Ammons, 8th grade, Cullowhee Valley, Paula Fox

"A Sightless City"

And I walk

through the peace and quiet of nature

as the wind booms through the mountains.

It is soft and forgiving as it flows through my hair.

The crunch of sticks beneath my feet is sharp,

like chips in a blender. I see the grass flow in the wind

and watch as a leaf falls to a small pond

like a city on water, it stays.

a single cloud in a bright blue sky 

like a zeppelin spying on me, 

could it be what I see it to be?

I hear a sharp buzz of a nearby power line 

its sound is quite like a spaceship coming in for a landing, 

its sound leaves an echoing buzz in my head.

I hear a harsh rumble of cars on a highway 

blaring and screaming along the way;

I can hear the vibrations from far away.

A clanking sound of a truck is loud and almost disturbing. 

The truck is an earthquake

rumbling through the highway.

I see a large and powerful city in the distance,

it’s along the mountaintops,

it’s in the flat plains bright and standing tall.

A towering space elevator litters the skyline.

A wingless plane darts effortlessly over my head; Is it possible?

 It’s an impressive sight to see for those who can see it.

Buildings are towering leaving there impressive shadow over me.

Then I realize it’s a sightless city 

darker than the darkest night 

for those who try to see it with their eyes,

it’s always been here but only until now have I noticed it.

Honorable Mentions:

Madelyn Tracy, 5th grade, Fairview,  Pam Martin’s class

Music Makers

Music

There is music in the mountains

The mountains make the music

I hear the music of the mountains every day

It will be in my heart and in my soul forever

But not everyone knows the music of the mountains

They don’t know the swaying of the trees

They don’t know the rushing of the river

Or the tweeting of the birds

That’s what makes the music

The music of the mountains never dies

Just like the love for it.

Jared Mincey, 7th Grade, Cullowhee Valley, Kristin Caplinger

Fishing

My grandpa taught my dad how to fish

He passed it down through father and son

Jack Cabe taught my dad

How to tie flies

Fishing has taught me

Many life lessons

Fishing has taught me about my dad

My dad  taught me to from age 12

Through all the catches

All the hangs

Through all the ties

And all the flies

I haven’t given up

On me and my dad fishing

One day I hope

To pass it down

And it starts over

again

Nicholas Boone, 6th grade, Scotts Creek School, Ms. Kim Fiskeaux’s class

"Little Rusted SailBoat"

little rusted sail boat

you sit on the shelf

rusted and torn

you watch the toymaker

make and fix shiny new toys

when will it be your turn

maybe   maybe

could it be

there you go...no

wait for me!

Emma Fox, 6th grade, Cullowhee Valley,  Kristen Caplinger

HOME

My home.

My mountain solitude.

Sparkling dew in the morning.

Shadows in the afternoon.

The place where I was born,

My love laced in the rafters

Of our house,

My room.

Others might love people,

Some might not.

I love the solitude where I can sit and

Write, and hopefully

Inspire others.

Freedom Franks, 6th grade, Fairview,  Ms. Kirsten Morgan’s class  

Silver Tears

Rain is an amazing weather

You feel like someone is there

The rain has emotions

Soft rain is sad and hard rain is mad

When it rains it feels like someone else is crying with you

Rain feels like a person and it changes moods

Sometimes it feels like the rain understands

Sometimes rain can be like a comforting hand

Sometimes it feels like rain listens to you

Rain is a good weather because when you cry no one can tell

Rain is like a mom’s or a BFF’s shoulder

They’ll let you cry and then they’ll wash you up afterwards 

Raindrops look like teardrops, so people mistake tears for rain

When you cry in the rain, the rain washes your face like a wet rag

When it rains your hair gets in your face and hides your face from other people

Rain is beautiful

It’s transparent, which can take color of anything

Rain looks like teardrops which are special because they are like snowflakes

Each one is unique

In the moonlight raindrops twinkle and glow like fallen stars

I love the way raindrops look on a spider web

It’s saying, “Look, God gave you the opportunity to see something amazing”

I also love the way raindrops look on a rose

Rain always makes things greener

At night in the moonlight the raindrops look like silver tears

Bailey McMahan, 8th grade, Cullowhee Valley, Paula Fox

Nature at its Best

The sun shines brightly on my back

a gentle breeze blows though my jacket

as I stroll down the gritty path

the trees, soldiers,  stands tall

as the eagle flies in the a clear sky

boys on the baseball field crouch 

in anticipation of a pop fly

they wait for their chance to shine

a plane roars over head

cars zoom by on their journey to their destitution

my heart, a box of chocolates, waits to be consumed 

by the girl of my dreams

 Grades K-4

Berkley Albritton, Fairview, Ms. Holly Rowan’s class

SPRING

The deer are out in the spring

and the flowers are growing it’s such a beautiful thing

when the flowers are ready to be picked I go and pick them

and when I’m done

I give them to my parents and they give me hugs

and I hear birds singing

and I sing along and it’s such a beautiful song.

Autumn Coggins, Fairview, Holly Rowan’s class

Spring

In spring the grass turns green as the tree leaves.

The sun is bright as burning hot lava.

The clouds are like cotton balls floating in the sky

the wind blows on my face like it is sahing hi.

People laugh like it is Christmas.

People get andy like it is Valentines when it is Easter

The flowers are beaming  little baby animals are born

The birds chip like beautiful music.

Larry Hernandez, Fairview, Ms. Holly Rowan’s class

Spring

The grass is as soft as a pillow.

The sun is as warm as a jacket,

Sunflowers are are a  bright sun.

The golden finches were a flying loop of school buses,

Bees are getting the honey,

The butterfly is getting the nectar,

The bees live in the beehive.

The flowers are purple gems.

The people are playing in the rain,

In the grass there is a bunny in the hole,

It is warm outside and kids play on a slide. 

Miguel Cisneros,  first grade,  Smoky Mt. Elementary, Ms. Clement

Spring makes everybody happy.

Playing in the park

Riding on my bike in the spring

In spring I always play in the dirt.

No more school soon, summer break

Good flowers in the spring.

Ms. Leah Clement

Honorable Mentions

Damien Hermida, Fairview, Holly Rowan’s class

Spring

I have a power like a flower.

I’m a bunny that is very funny.

I’m a deer with one ear.

I’m a clover so scoot over.

My sister

Is a monkey

So very

Very

Funny

My sister 

Is a monkey

So very, very funky.

It’s raining pigs and noodles.

It’s pouring frogs and hats.

Banana brooms and poodles.

I think I have a crack.

Janet Juarez Torres, Fairview, Holly Rowan’s class

In Spring

In spring bees sting me.

In the spring I bring cookies to my mom.

In the spring I sing.

In the spring I bring things to school.

In the spring animals look for food.

In the spring flowers are colorful and pretty.

In the spring deer look for food.

In the spring I see a snake crawling in the grass.

In the spring I see worms in the mud

Addison Blankenship, first grade, Smoky Mt. Elementary, Ms. Leah Clement’s class

           Spring

Sunshine outside gives warmth

Pretty flowers smell so good.

Rain showers and sunshine make rainbows.

In the spring it’s so pretty!

No more winter.

Gardening is fun.

Elle Williams, first grade, Smoky Mt. Elementary, Leah Clement’s class 

Spring

Sunshine makes me warm.

Playing on the rocks.

Riding my bike is fun.

Insects are cool bugs.

Now it’s time for spring.

Gardening makes me happy.