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

Listening to Home: The Poetry of Lisa Parker

I met Lisa Parker several years back, when I came to Hindman Settlement School to direct the poetry workshop during the summer writing conference. I was the one being directed, though, as I soon realized. Young poets like Lisa, and not so young ones like Steve Holt and Jane Hicks, were doing most of the directing, bringing me their poems day after day in the workshop and convincing me that in the coal country of Kentucky there was a powerful lot of good writing going on. Top on that list was a young poet named Lisa Parker!

Since then, Lisa has won her share of literary awards, been published in national journals, worked in New York and Washington, DC. No matter where she goes, however, she carries her mountain landscape and its voices with her. Not to mention her mountain language. A people's language does seem to rise up from the leafmold, the rocks, and the moss, as Seamus Heaney claimed. The poems I've chosen illuminate that truth.

Lisa's first book, This Gone Place, published last year by Motes Books, received the Weatherford award in poetry.

Backslid North

I.

I am filled with words like drowned bodies.
Just beneath the water’s surface, they bloat
indignantly. I see their watchful eyes -
pine and mud-colored like mine.
I hear the soft gurgle I’ve reduced them to.


II.

Granddaddy told me once,
Don’t get above your raising.
I call him often to practice my self,
to remember that I am all about
holler and giggin, heared tell of and sigodlin.

I am taking steps.
I talk of craving pork rinds.
I drawl hard.
I write this poem out of spite.

III.

I am full of poems that lie
the language right out of me.
I’ve whitewashed my South Appalachian
to an understandable hue, put those regional words
in jars with lace lids and waited, breath held,
for the scholarly nods. That approval
is almost enough to tolerate knowing
that between what I am and what I write,
something is rotting.

Penitence Enough

If I thought it was penitence enough
for turning my back,
for this fraudulence I wear
like a pond film over my skin,
I’d return home,
and lay deep
in that Old Dominion soil.
I’d pull the hollyhocks close,
sprout pennyroyal - pungent mint
and purple bloom - from my teeth,
my eyes full of nothing
but the backs of Blue Ridge steeps,
ears tipped with corn tassels
and calamus root and nothing
but the roll of the Shenandoah,
the ring of a banjo carried down
on mountain wind.
I would stand still and long
as August heat
till the kudzu took me over,
wound itself through me,
anchored me to that land
I can still see under my nails
after months of scrubbing.
I’d press my face to the cool damp
of the cannery walls,
my knees against the porch boards.
I’d open veins and spill
against the sycamore roots,
give myself over,
give myself back,
and lay me down
in that red Virginia clay -
if I thought it would have me.

Body And Earth

for Clyde Whitt

When I was small, I slept
in Granddaddy's arms, my head
against his chest, dozing
to the rhythmic wheezing
my mama called Black Lung.

He muscled his pickaxe and shovel
into the black guts of the mountains
for twenty-five years, stooped ten inches
beneath the safety timbers
that held the earth.

We sit on the porchswing,
whittling twigs into smaller twigs
while Grandma hums "Over In The Gloryland,"
dips old cornshucks into a mason jar of water,
soaking out the dry age, their brittle edges softening.
She bends them, pliant and fresh again with water,
twisting them into bright, yellow dolls.

I look at Granddaddy’s fingers, knuckled deep and bent
around his knife, lean against the sagging point of his shoulder
and listen to the steady huff and whistle of his breath – a sound
like mud daubers buzzing,
encased in their tunnels of dried earth.

Fear And A Country Breakfast

Chicken feed
swirls crazy in autumn wind,
buckshot of cornseed and gravel
in my eyes.
Grandma’s feet,
heavy in plastic-soled slippers,
crunch on feed and pebbles.
Her pastel flowered robe
brushes the ground,
swings into a squall of feathers.
My fingers,
nails full of hickory bark
from my desperate tree-clutch,
shove against my eardrums,
against the final snap -
like a maple twig in deep winter.
Grandma yawns her way
to the shed,
white feathers dangling from her hand -
twitching, still clucking insanely,
one finger around the axe handle, two,
one more yawn on the downswing.
After the dull thump of the axe,
the scratching claws
run over feed and gravel,
and where I run,
the spastic death legs
point, propel the blood-
soaked body in a staggering
chase, so close
to dancing, these
intricate circles
toward each other,
and always
Grandma kicks the head
to the cats
before I can see
if the eyes follow me.

First Southern Love, Done Right

First Southern love, when it’s with the raised-right,
still boy enough not to wanna wait,
man enough to do it right,
that’s the kind not suited to backseats.
No vinyl for this sweet zinnia,
no Lynrd Skynrd on the stereo or radio commercials
for A&P and Booth Feed; not when she can have
the sway and sway of a wheatfield
or the quiet of a hayloft. Mountains and valleys
can sneak her into coves of wild fieldgrass,
or overhangs of tulip poplars and sycamores
that blow across her skin and cool the sweat
where it stands.

It’s not about, I’ll call you some time.
It’s about the rounded rock he’ll pull,
smooth and cold from the riverbed, and wrap
in cattail fluff to hold against her
until the bleeding stops.
When it’s right, he won’t sit too close in church
or blush in front of her daddy.
They’ll wait, on slow simmer, until they can put
a valley or two between themselves and everyone,
find sun against their skin,
an audience of bluejays and cardinals,
and a river to swim in when being naked
is the only way to be.

THE GIFT OF POETRY FOR THE HOLIDAYS: Julia Nunnally Duncan's AT DUSK

One of the great pleasures of being a writer in North Carolina is the literary community that helps introduce us to each other. I've known Julia Nunnally Duncan for many years, discovering her work while a reader for Appalachian Consortium Press. That discovery was Blue Ridge Shadows, a collection of short stories. I was so impressed that I contacted her, after which we became literary "sisters," so to speak. Julia has studied with Lee Smith, among others, and has published several collections of fiction. Her poetry, however, is what I'm celebrating today--her second collection of poems titled AT DUSK. Several of the first poems in the book seem appropriate for this time of year, especially the one about a wood stove! This would make a good winter-time gift for yourself or one of the readers on your holiday list.

(Julia Nunnally Duncan at Malaprop's Bookstore last December, after a reading with Cecilia Woloch and me. She read poems from her recently published book, below. )

Please order from Old Seventy Creek Press at http://oldseventycreekpress.books.officelive.com/Julia.aspx. This small press is located in Albany, Kentucky.

Utensils

I polish the utensils

one at a time—

knives, forks, and spoons

emptied today

from my mother’s kitchen drawer.

Forgotten fork, long-pronged

and mismatched;

I didn’t want it put

beside my supper plate.

What difference does it make?

my mother asked through the years,

but I still refused to lift it to my mouth,

sure that it would taint

the taste of the food.

Floral-patterned stainless steel implements,

bought through the decades

at the Roses Five and Dime;

and tarnished silver plate pieces

that were saved from my grandmother’s set

or unearthed when the garden was plowed—

all have waited to be caressed by me.

I finger the years

with a cotton cloth:

clean, rinse, and polish,

till I conjure my inverted image

in the spoons’ embrace.

Wood Stove

In my mother’s kitchen

I sit near the wood stove,

shying away from other cold rooms.

Here she bakes biscuits

and boils pinto beans

and dries her hair

at the opened oven door.

In my early childhood

before the luxury

of a finished bathroom,

I took my baths at the wood stove:

buckets full of cold water,

kettles full of hot

that steamed as she poured them

into a galvanized tub,

the water cooling too soon

in the shadows of a winter evening.

It seems I am always drawn back

to this embrace of heat;

and as the pine wood hisses

and embers glow,

frost lacing the windows early tonight,

I sit at the wood stove,

close my eyes,

and enjoy.

Volare

In some woman’s Ford—

I can’t remember exactly whose—

I slouched in the hot back seat

and nibbled warm Swiss cheese from a grocery bag—

too hungry to wait for dinner.

My mother and the driver sat up front talking

while the radio blared Volare.

Now—

forty-five years later—

when I hear that song,

I taste the waxy blandness of Swiss cheese

and feel the heat of a summer day.

I am a child again,

set apart in a stifling back seat,

hungry,

impatient to get home,

bored with the unintelligible

talk of women.

Roadside Stable

The Appaloosa gelding at the roadside stable,

where a tourist could get a trail ride for two dollars,

was too weary to care where the trail guide led us

and too bored to buck when I nudged with my heels

its bony sides.

I thought to canter would be impressive

to the acne-scarred boy who led us into the woods

on his buckskin mare.

But he never noticed my posting,

or the new black boots I wore,

or the riding crop I’d gotten at Sears—

my English style so wrong for my Western mount.

The guide wanted only to get us back

to the dusty gravel parking lot,

where my father and mother waited,

impatient to drive on to Cherokee.

POET OF THE DAY: JULIA NUNNALLY DUNCAN

Julia Nunnally Duncan has been a friend for many years. Her work came to my attention when I was on the reading committee for the Appalachian Consortium Press and found her story collection Blue Ridge Shadows in my hands. I liked it so much that I contacted her after the selection process. We've been in touch ever since. Julia was born and raised in WNC. Her credits include five books: two short story collections (The Stone Carver; Blue Ridge Shadows); two novels: (When Day Is Done; Drops of the Night) and a poetry collection (An Endless Tapestry).

She has completed a second poetry collection At Dusk and continues to write and publish poems, stories, and personal essays. Her works often explore the lives of the unemployed, the socially outcast, the lonely. She lives in Marion, NC, with her husband Steve, a woodcarver, and their eleven-year-old daughter Annie. She studied creative writing at Warren Wilson College's MFA Program for Writers and teaches English at McDowell Technical Community College in Marion, NC.

English Leather Lime

The rectangular box was stored

in my parents’ dresser drawer,

kept perhaps to hold loose change

or sales receipts,

too small to be very useful

but well enough made

of light soft wood

to make my mother think

it too important to throw away.

I pulled it from the drawer

while looking for some high school memento

from my cheerleading days,

and opening the box and holding it

to my nose,

I thought I caught the smell:

a citrus scent evoked

by the illustration of a lime

on the green label:

English Leather Lime.

The cologne the box once housed

had belonged to my brother

forty years ago.

I recognized that scent

in 1969

when the handsome

seventeen-year-old boy—

star of a rival basketball team—

passed through my parents’ front door

on a November evening.

It was my first date,

and I was afraid

to sit alone in the living room with him,

so my mother stayed close by

in the kitchen

while he courted me.

On our second date, though,

I savored our closeness

as we sat in his car

at our town’s drive-in theater

and awaited the film Thunder Road.

The speakers crackled B.J. Thomas’s

Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,

and when rain suddenly began to fall outside,

we looked at each other and smiled.

When the movie started,

he scooted closer and

coyly rested his dark head

on my shoulder,

his lime cologne mingling with the remnants of my

Love’s Fresh Lemon Cleanser.

He might have kissed me in a moment,

but when he reached to turn the ignition key

for heat and windshield wipers,

the engine would not start.

After that, he rushed around,

some tool in hand,

tinkering for a minute under the hood

and then trying the ignition again.

His efforts were useless, though,

and as if to admit defeat

he finally called his father

and then mine—

a courageous move indeed

since he was supposed to have taken me

to our warm downtown theater

to see Kurt Russell starring in

The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes.

When my father did drive up

in our red Mustang

to rescue me,

I never heard goodbye

from the boy

who huddled beside his father,

their heads bowed under the car hood,

both of them soaked and shivering

in the December rain.

Lady in the Truck

Lady in the Chevrolet truck,

parked beside me at Wal-Mart,

I can tell by the way

your blonde head leans against your window pane

and your side presses into the passenger door

that you cannot get far enough away

from the driver.

I know by the angle of his head,

the way his dark tangle of hair

shakes when he shouts at you,

that his anger couldn’t wait

until he took you home.

What are you thinking

when you peer out of the grimy window?

Do you take to heart

this man’s hard words?

Do you hurt when his fingers squeeze your arm

to make you listen?

I can see by the way he looks straight ahead now,

tight lipped,

leaning to start the ignition,

that though his rage is not over,

he has spoken his mind.

I see by the way your head is lowered,

your hand covering your face,

that you do not want him

to spy your pain.

You are a young woman still,

and though I can’t discern your face,

I know it is a face

that another person could love.

Your mouth could smile at a lover’s whisper;

your eyes close at a caress.

Yet more so I know that

tonight when this man

pushes his body

close to yours

in your sweltering bed,

his voice calm,

cajoling you back,

you will look at him

and hope that his words

won’t be so cruel again,

that his love might be

worth your faith.

SOPHIE, by Lisa Parker

I met Lisa Parker the first year I taught at Hindman Settlement School. Right away I knew that she was "the real thing," a poet who plumbed her place (the Virginia mountains) and her place in it with passion and intuitive skill. Lisa is also a photographer who's had a show in NYC. She was living there during the 9/11 attacks and immediately went to help, being trained in triage. Her first collection will be published soon by Motes Books.

She sent this message via facebook:

I loved your prompt on your blog today and wanted to share with you a poem about my little feral rescue cat, Sophie, who touched me like no other animal I've ever owned. She was living in a storm drain on the govt site where I work and was rescued by a friend when she realized she was pregnant. Four month after my friend rescued her, I took Sophie and one of her kittens, Leo, home with me. She died suddenly after only a year with me and I found myself just utterly devastated. I ended up writing this poem about her and found it more cathartic than anything else I'd ever written. I wanted to share it with you but it was honestly too much of a downer to put on your blog! So I thought I'd send it to you here. I'll send the poem in a separate email as I think it would be too big here. I love your blog, by the way! I read it at work when I have the chance and it's a beautiful reprieve from the world of discontent that overwhelms me some days. It's a beautiful little light in my day, so I thank you for that. xoxo - Lisa"
-------

SOPHIE

We buried you by half-moon light
in cool October air that steamed
around Dad’s shoulders as he dug
the mulch, dirt and clay, the odd
rock and gnarled root. I dug the last
few inches, still in work shoes, still
in shock to know you lay stiff and quiet
in the passenger seat of my car, wrapped
in a blanket Eric put you in, seatbelted in
as we drove I-95 to Mom and Dad’s house
in the country, a ride I remember only
for the few exit signs I saw without
the blur of tears when my body
forced deep, gasping breaths that slowed
the sobs to a stop, if only for a moment,
if only for that knee-jerk self-preservation
that comes out of nowhere.

We buried you in a garden planted by Dad
who met me at the car that night
with a crushing hug and a Yeah, sweetie,
life sucks sometimes, words I knew
were all he could offer outside the shovel
and fencepost digger I already saw propped
against his boat in the garage.

We buried you in a garden spot they picked
for its loveliness and with a promise
to plant some unique, beautiful flower
over you. Mom, who had never met you,
cried for the loss of anything
that would ruin me so thoroughly
and she whispered toward
your blanketed body as Dad lowered you in,
Thank you for bringing her such joy
and for gentling her the way you did.

By morning, I sat on the porchsteps
picking the caked mud out of my shoes
with the end of a small hickory stick.
Dad watched me from the dining room window
and after a long while, came and draped
his flannel shirt over my shoulders, a quick pat
to my head and a heavy sigh
before he said, It’s chilly out here;
good in the sun, though.

SNOW ON THE MOUNTAINS

SNOW BREATH

Snow on the mountains.

Where did the wind go? I stand with my shawl

wrapped around me and listen.

Snow on the mountains.

The holly-pip red as a blood blister,

thorns reaching out to me.

Snow on the mountains.

Don't beg me to come back inside

lest I catch my death.

Snow on the mountains.

The river a hard road to travel.

My feet slide on ice cobble.

Snow on the mountains.

Gone south, I will say when you shout

from the riverbank.

Snow on the mountains.

Against my ear you held a conch shell once,

ask What do you hear?

So much snow on the mountains,

I hitched up my dress and ran home.

How could I tell you then,

hearing snow on the mountains

refuse to melt, that after so long,

a woman's soul searching

through snow on the mountains

will sink, out of breath, in the silence

of nothing more, nothing less.

From Black Shawl, LSU Press, written in response to an ancient Welsh poem, composed between the 9th and 12th centuries, in which the line "Snow On the Mountains" is repeated throughout.

THE CLOTHES WE WEAR: A Call for Submissions

We are soliciting
Material from women writers in western North Carolina
For a second book project

Celia Miles and Nancy Dillingham want your stories, memoirs, essays/reflections, poems for an anthology about the garments we wear—metaphorically, symbolically, literally---from hair bow to bra to Birkenstocks, from christening gown to prom dress, from waitress uniform to nine-to-five stiletto heels.

We expect an October 2009 publication date, in time to market the book alongside the 2008 Christmas Presence.



General Guidelines


Submit no more than 2000 words
Previously published material is fine–as long as you provide acknowledgments
You retain all rights to your material
Send in an email attachment (or contact us)–in Ms Word or RFT
Formatting for submissions:



Double space with one-inch margins
Left justify only
Center or left justify title



Use 12-point font (Times New Roman preferred) for body and title

Editing is a “given,” but we will try to ask about changes
DEADLINE: MAY 2, 2009
In return for your effort and creativity, you will receive

A complimentary copy of the book
An opportunity to buy additional copies at reduced cost
A publication party and potential readings/signings

Contact Information:
Celia Miles (277-6910)> celiamiles@fastmail.fm
Nancy Dillingham (254-3143)> nandilly@earthlink.net

We are excited about compiling an interesting and entertaining collection of theme-related work from women writers in this region. We know you’re out there! So, we invite you to look into your clothes closet (past or present), and if you have a story to tell, a memory to share, a point of view to espouse, send it along. We promise to treat it with care.