In the Matrix with May Sarton

May Sarton is the pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton (May 3, 1912 - July 16, 1995), an American poet, novelist, and memoirist.

Her father was a science historian and her mother was an artist and she seems to have acquired interest in both of those worlds in her own life's work.

For some reason, the first writing of hers that I encountered had to do with nature and I assumed she was a "nature poet."

Actually, reviews of her poetry, fiction, and autobiographical writings are more likely to be described as "inspirational, touching, honest, and thought-provoking" and concerned with themes like "love, friendship, relationships, and the search for self-knowledge, personal fulfillment, inner peace, and social and political concerns" such as feminism and sexuality.

One of the poems of hers that caught my eye was "A Country Incident" that open with the lines "Absorbed in planting bulbs, that work of hope, / I was startled by a loud human voice." I loved that idea of bulb planting as the work of hope. A lifelong gardener, I always feel hopeful putting bulbs and plants into the ground hoping for some future harvest of food or flower.

In searching for that poem online, I found a lovely piece by Katie Eberhart that says, "Naturally, the poet is gardener, nurturer of words and ideas, and the gardener who chooses from many plants�whether for duration of blooms, size, or color�is poet and artist working on page or canvas of fenced yard, or creating a meadow out of a plowed field."


And though I know now that nature was not her main focus, I recently came across her journal, Journal of a Solitude, that chronicles her garden, the seasons, and her daily life in New Hampshire.


This book begins "I am here alone for the first time in weeks to take up my 'real' life again at last. That is what is strange�that friends, even passionate love,are not my real life, unless there is time alone in which to explore what is happening or what has happened."

Long before I heard anyone use the term "the matrix" in the way many of us think about it today, she wrote in this journal, "I hope to break through into the rough, rocky depths,to the matrix itself. There is violence there and anger never resolved. My need to be alone is balanced against my fear of what will happen when suddenly I enter the huge empty silence if I cannot find support there."

Louis Jenkins and Prose Poems

Louis Jenkins is an American prose poet. His poems have been widely published and has a guest on the radio program A Prairie Home Companion numerous times. His book, Nice Fish: New and Selected Prose Poems, was winner of the Minnesota Book Award in 1995 and Just Above Water: Prose Poems won the Northeastern Minnesota Book Award in 1997. Jenkins has lived in Duluth, Minnesota, for over 30 years with his wife Ann.


I first encountered him at the 1996 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in New Jersey. When I heard him read, I did not know he was a prose poet. I heard line breaks in his narrative poems and only realized that they were prose poems when I bought his book and asked him to sign it.

I had issues with prose poems back then. I wasn't sure what to think of them as poetry. I wanted line breaks and stanzas because, in my mind, that's part of how poems are made.

A poem he read that day was "Too Much Snow" from Just Above Water

Unlike the Eskimos we only have one word for snow but we have a lot of modifiers for that word. There is too much snow, which, unlike rain, does not immediately run off. It falls and stays for months. Someone wished for this snow. Someone got a deal, five cents on the dollar, and spent the entire family fortune. It's the simple solution, it covers everything. We are never satisfied with the arrangement of the snow so we spend hours moving the snow from one place to another. Too much snow. I box it up and send it to family and friends. I send a big box to my cousin in California. I send a small box to my mother. She writes "Don't send so much. I'm all alone now. I'll never be able to use so much." To you I send a single snowflake, beautiful, complex and delicate; different from all the others.

Some people say that prose poetry shouldn't be read as poetry or as prose, but as its own form, a fusion of the two. Then why is it "poetry"?

It is because the language has the heightened attention that we associate with poetry, and also more emphasis on figurative language than traditional prose.

I'm not sure we would want to read a 250 page novel written in the way that a prose poem is written. T. S. Eliot was opposed to prose poetry as a form. When he wrote an introduction to Djuna Barnes' highly "poeticized" 1936 novel, Nightwood, he said that the novel should not be called "poetic prose" as it did not have the "rhythm or musical pattern" of verse.

But the form does have prose characteristics such as narrative, sometimes even dialogue and perhaps more of an expectation of an objective truth than with poetry.

I like the opening of an article about the prose poem form that says "Though the name of the form may appear to be a contradiction, the prose poem essentially appears as prose, but reads like poetry."

Another example is "Spring" by Jim Harrison (who writes novels,non-fiction and poetry)

Something new in the air today, perhaps the struggle of the bud
to become a leaf. Nearly two weeks late it invaded the air but
then what is two weeks to life herself? On a cool night there is
a break from the struggle of becoming. I suppose that's why we
sleep. In a childhood story they spoke of the land of enchant-
ment." We crawl to it, we short-lived mammals, not realizing that
we are already there. To the gods the moon is the entire moon
but to us it changes second by second because we are always fish
in the belly of the whale of earth. We are encased and can't stray
from the house of our bodies. I could say that we are released,
but I don't know, in our private night when our souls explode
into a billion fragments then calmly regather in a black pool in
the forest, far from the cage of flesh, the unremitting "I." This was
a dream and in dreams we are forever alone walking the ghost
road beyond our lives. Of late I see waking as another chance at
spring.

As a teacher, I used Jenkins' poem "Football" from the anthology Poetry 180.  (That excellent anthology is also a website that was created by Billy Collins and the Library of Congress when he was Poet Laureate to be used by teachers.)  My middle school students would hear me read the poem first, then see it on the page - the same way I did at that poetry festival. But they had no problems with the form.

I asked them. "Is this a poem?" The majority said yes. "But where are the line breaks and stanzas," I asked.  It didn't seem to matter to them. I even asked them to put in line breaks and stanzas where they thought they might "help the reader." They did it. They did it pretty well. But why did I ask them to do it? My own poetic insceurity, no doubt.

I have come around to my students' acceptance of prose poems as their own form. Where the lines do end up breaking depends on the layout on the page. In a book, they will often end up breaking by character count - say 60 character wide.  In the Harrison poem above, you see that there is a word broken at the margin and that the final word, "spring," has its own line. Coincidence of layout or intentional? (I used the source layout as my guide here.)

For this April prompt and your submissions, the lines will all break in the same place based on the "page" width. Those of you with a bit of poetic OCD or control issues will have to let go of some line break control. You can submit as a block of text since the breaks will be determined by the web page layout. Therefore, I will give you complete control over the subject of your poems. If you get blocked on what to write about, feel free to choose from any of the prompts we have used in previous years on the site. There probably are a few you never attempted.

Finally, my own personal prompt for writing this post and prompt for you was that I will be attending a workshop that Louis Jenkins will be doing on May 11th at The Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, NJ (per-registration required).  There will also be a free and open poetry reading by Jenkins and M. L. Liebler at 1 pm that day. Maybe Jenkins will surprise all of us and assign us to write a sonnet.

More on prose poems
A Look at Prose Poetry
Poems by Louis Jenkins on The Writers Almanac


BOOKS





"Spring" by Jim Harrison, is from Songs of Unreason

April Is National Poetry Month

Since 1996, April has been National Poetry Month, a month-long, national celebration of poetry established by the Academy of American Poets.

It's a month to get some media attention to the art of poetry, to living poets, to our complex poetic heritage, and to poetry books and journals.

The Academy of American Poets has led this initiative from its inception in 1996 and along the way has enlisted a variety of government agencies and officials, educational leaders, publishers, sponsors, poets, and arts organizations to help.

The goals of National Poetry Month, according to the Academy are to:

• Highlight the extraordinary legacy and ongoing achievement of American poets
• Introduce more Americans to the pleasures of reading poetry
• Bring poets and poetry to the public in immediate and innovative ways
• Make poetry a more important part of the school curriculum
• Increase the attention paid to poetry by national and local media
• Encourage increased publication, distribution, and sales of poetry books
• Increase public and private philanthropic support for poets and poetry

Easter, 1916 by William Butler Yeats

Easter, 1916
by William Butler Yeats

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our wing�d horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse�
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.


For an interesting explication of this complicated Easter (as in "Easter Rebellion") poem, look at this article.

Two Poems by Wang Ping

from The River
in Our Blood

A Sonnet Crown



I



The geese are painting the sky with a V, my lord

The Mississippi laughs with its white teeth

How fast winter flees from the lowland, my lord

And how�s the highland where songs forever seethe?



At the confluence, I sing of the prairie, my lord

My joy and sorrow soar with rolling spring

Its thunder half bird, half mermaid, my lord

No

UniVerse, a United Nations of Poetry

UniVerse, A United Nations of Poetry is an anthology and public program to encourage universal dialogue, compassion and peace. It is an archive of visionary poets and �Teach This Poem,� a free, interactive teaching tool featuring questions and writing exercises.

It celebrates the belief that "Poets comprise an international community practicing sensitivity in desensitized times. By writing and reading poems, one participates in the faith that truth-telling will lead to healing and growth; that the practice of pure intention will create peace; and that there will be someone, somewhere, listening."

There is United States representation by poets like Yusef Komunyakaa,  Li-Young Lee, W.S. Merwin,  Adrienne Rich and| Meghan O'Rourke. But there are many other countries represented that are usually underrepresented and often unknown to American readers.

Do you know any poets or poems from Bulgaria, Iran, Nigeria, France or even any of the Native American nations, such as the Assiniboine-Sioux?

Dorianne Laux's Family Stories

I will be attending a workshop and reading on April 6, 2013 with Dorianne Laux at The Poetry Center in Paterson, NJ where she is receiving the 2012 Paterson Poetry Prize for her collection The Book of Men.

I first found her poetry after reading The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry which she co-authored with Kim Addonizio. That book with its brief essays on the elements of poetry and writing prompts and exercises was one of the things that encouraged me to start the Poets Online website and later this blog.

Recently, I saw this poem of hers on the American Life in Poetry site. I think it is a good example of her poetry which Publishers Weekly described as being in a "descriptive, storytelling vein: the at-hand, the matter-of-fact, the day-to-day are rendered in an earnest tone both sensuous and nostalgic"

Family Stories

I had a boyfriend who told me stories about his family,
how an argument once ended when his father
seized a lit birthday cake in both hands
and hurled it out a second-story window. That,
I thought, was what a normal family was like: anger
sent out across the sill, landing like a gift
to decorate the sidewalk below. In mine
it was fists and direct hits to the solar plexus,
and nobody ever forgave anyone. But I believed
the people in his stories really loved one another,
even when they yelled and shoved their feet
through cabinet doors, or held a chair like a bottle
of cheap champagne, christening the wall,
rungs exploding from their holes.
I said it sounded harmless, the pomp and fury
of the passionate. He said it was a curse
being born Italian and Catholic and when he
looked from that window what he saw was the moment
rudely crushed. But all I could see was a gorgeous
three-layer cake gliding like a battered ship
down the sidewalk, the smoking candles broken, sunk
deep in the icing, a few still burning.




Dorianne Laux's most recent book of poems is The Book of Men, (W.W. Norton & Co., 2011)  "Family Stories" appears in Smoke, (BOA Editions, Ltd.)