Photo by Kathy Kieth, Pollock Pines
NEIGHBORS
—A.R. Ammons
How little I have really cared about nature: I always
thought the woods idyllic and let it go at that; but,
look, one tree, the near pine, cracked off in high wind,
dry rot at the ground, and coming down sheared every
branch off one side of the sweetgum: one tree, trying
to come up under another, has only one bough in light:
an ice storm some years ago broke the tops off several
trees that now splinter into sprouts: one sweetgum,
bent over bow-like to the ground, has given up its
top and let an arrow of itself rise midway: ivy has
made Ann Pollard's pine an ivy tree: I can't regain
the lost idyllic at all, but the woods are here with us.
____________________
VOLITIONS
—A.R. Ammons
The wind turned
me round and
round all day, so
cold it planed
me, quick it
polished me
down: a spindle
by dusk,
too lean to
bear the open dark,
I said, sky,
drive me
into the
ground here,
still me with the ground.
_____________________
Today (Wednesday, August 15) is the next deadline for Rattlesnake Review! Send 3-5 poems, photos, artwork, whatever to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. No cover letter, bio, prev-pubs or simul-subs. RR15 will be out in mid-to-late September.
_____________________
BREAKING OUT
—A.R. Ammons
I have let all my balloons aloose
what will become of them now
pricked they will show some weight
or caught under a cloud lack
ebullience to feel through
but they are all let loose
yellow, red, blue, thin-skinned, tough
and let go they have put me down
I was an earth thing all along
my feet are catching in the brush
_____________________
WHITE DWARF
—A.R. Ammons
As I grow older
arcs swollen inside
now and then fall
back, collapsing, into
forming walls:
the temperature shoots
up with what I am not
and am: from
multiplicities, dark
knots, twanging twists,
structures come into sight,
chief of these
a blade of fire only now
so late, so sharp and standing,
burning confusion up.
___________________
HE HELD RADICAL LIGHT
—A.R. Ammons
He held radical light
as music in his skull: music
turned, as
over ridges immanences of evening light
rise, turned
back over the furrows of his brain
into the dark, shuddered,
shot out again
in long swaying swirls of sound:
reality had little weight in his transcendence
so he
had trouble keeping
his feet on the ground, was
terrified by that
and like himself, and others, mostly
under roofs:
nevertheless, when the
light churned and changed
his head to music, nothing could keep him
off the mountains, his
head back, mouth working,
wrestling to say, to cut loose
from the high, unimaginable hook:
released, hidden from stars, he ate,
burped, said he was like any one
of us: demanded he
was like any one of us.
______________________
—Medusa
Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their POETRY, PHOTOS and ART, as well as announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com (or snail ‘em to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726) for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets. Previously-published poems are okay for Medusa’s Kitchen, as long as you own the rights. (Please cite publication.)
SnakeWatch: Up-to-the-minute Snake news:
Journals (free publications): Rattlesnake Review14 is now available at The Book Collector; contributors and subscribers should have received theirs by now. If you're none of those, and can't get down to The Book Collector, send two bux (for postage) to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726 and I'll mail you a copy. If you want more than one, please send $2 for the first one and $1 for copies after that. Next deadline, for RR15, is August 15. VYPER6 (for youth 13-19) is in The Book Collector; next deadline is Nov. 1. Snakelets10 (for kids 0-12) is also at The Book Collector; next deadline is Oct. 1.
Books/free broadsides: June's releases include Tom Miner's chapbook, North of Everything; David Humphreys' littlesnake broadside, Cominciare Adagio; and #3 in B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series, this one featuring Jane Blue.
ZZZZZZZ: Shh! The Snake is sleeping! There will be no Snake readings/releases in July or August. Then we return with a bang on September 12, presenting Susan Kelly-DeWitt's new chapbook, Cassiopeia Above the Banyan Tree. See the online journal, Mudlark, for a hefty sample of poems from her book; that’s http://www.unf.edu/mudlark/. Also coming in the Fall: new issues of the Review, Snakelets and VYPER [see the above deadlines], plus more littlesnake broadsides from NorCal poets near and far, and a continuation of B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series—including an anthology of interviews to be released for Sacramento Poetry Month (October).
—A.R. Ammons
How little I have really cared about nature: I always
thought the woods idyllic and let it go at that; but,
look, one tree, the near pine, cracked off in high wind,
dry rot at the ground, and coming down sheared every
branch off one side of the sweetgum: one tree, trying
to come up under another, has only one bough in light:
an ice storm some years ago broke the tops off several
trees that now splinter into sprouts: one sweetgum,
bent over bow-like to the ground, has given up its
top and let an arrow of itself rise midway: ivy has
made Ann Pollard's pine an ivy tree: I can't regain
the lost idyllic at all, but the woods are here with us.
____________________
VOLITIONS
—A.R. Ammons
The wind turned
me round and
round all day, so
cold it planed
me, quick it
polished me
down: a spindle
by dusk,
too lean to
bear the open dark,
I said, sky,
drive me
into the
ground here,
still me with the ground.
_____________________
Today (Wednesday, August 15) is the next deadline for Rattlesnake Review! Send 3-5 poems, photos, artwork, whatever to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. No cover letter, bio, prev-pubs or simul-subs. RR15 will be out in mid-to-late September.
_____________________
BREAKING OUT
—A.R. Ammons
I have let all my balloons aloose
what will become of them now
pricked they will show some weight
or caught under a cloud lack
ebullience to feel through
but they are all let loose
yellow, red, blue, thin-skinned, tough
and let go they have put me down
I was an earth thing all along
my feet are catching in the brush
_____________________
WHITE DWARF
—A.R. Ammons
As I grow older
arcs swollen inside
now and then fall
back, collapsing, into
forming walls:
the temperature shoots
up with what I am not
and am: from
multiplicities, dark
knots, twanging twists,
structures come into sight,
chief of these
a blade of fire only now
so late, so sharp and standing,
burning confusion up.
___________________
HE HELD RADICAL LIGHT
—A.R. Ammons
He held radical light
as music in his skull: music
turned, as
over ridges immanences of evening light
rise, turned
back over the furrows of his brain
into the dark, shuddered,
shot out again
in long swaying swirls of sound:
reality had little weight in his transcendence
so he
had trouble keeping
his feet on the ground, was
terrified by that
and like himself, and others, mostly
under roofs:
nevertheless, when the
light churned and changed
his head to music, nothing could keep him
off the mountains, his
head back, mouth working,
wrestling to say, to cut loose
from the high, unimaginable hook:
released, hidden from stars, he ate,
burped, said he was like any one
of us: demanded he
was like any one of us.
______________________
—Medusa
Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their POETRY, PHOTOS and ART, as well as announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com (or snail ‘em to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726) for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets. Previously-published poems are okay for Medusa’s Kitchen, as long as you own the rights. (Please cite publication.)
SnakeWatch: Up-to-the-minute Snake news:
Journals (free publications): Rattlesnake Review14 is now available at The Book Collector; contributors and subscribers should have received theirs by now. If you're none of those, and can't get down to The Book Collector, send two bux (for postage) to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726 and I'll mail you a copy. If you want more than one, please send $2 for the first one and $1 for copies after that. Next deadline, for RR15, is August 15. VYPER6 (for youth 13-19) is in The Book Collector; next deadline is Nov. 1. Snakelets10 (for kids 0-12) is also at The Book Collector; next deadline is Oct. 1.
Books/free broadsides: June's releases include Tom Miner's chapbook, North of Everything; David Humphreys' littlesnake broadside, Cominciare Adagio; and #3 in B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series, this one featuring Jane Blue.
ZZZZZZZ: Shh! The Snake is sleeping! There will be no Snake readings/releases in July or August. Then we return with a bang on September 12, presenting Susan Kelly-DeWitt's new chapbook, Cassiopeia Above the Banyan Tree. See the online journal, Mudlark, for a hefty sample of poems from her book; that’s http://www.unf.edu/mudlark/. Also coming in the Fall: new issues of the Review, Snakelets and VYPER [see the above deadlines], plus more littlesnake broadsides from NorCal poets near and far, and a continuation of B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series—including an anthology of interviews to be released for Sacramento Poetry Month (October).