WordParty Poetry Challenge - Day 30 - Work Poem

Day 30

by Ingrid

Work Poem

Sadly, today is the last day of April, which means this is the last prompt I will be posting for National Poetry Month. I hope you have enjoyed the challenge and encourage you to send your poems to wordparty@gmail.com

I also hope that you will come to the WordParty on May 15^th and read some of what you wrote during the challenge.

Let’s face it: writing poetry is hard work. Revising that darn poem for the 23^rd time, trying to find the right word, sound, rhythm, meaning, yes it can be challenging. But as poets know, the unnamable mystery, beauty, and magic that a poem can offer is so worth the work.  

So, for this last prompt, write a “work” poem. Take it however you like: don’t have a job but want one, did have a job but lost one, have a job but hate or love it. Write about how you avoid work, or how you are always late to work, or someone at work you admire or dislike.

With Love and Poetry,

Ingrid

FAILURES IN INFINITIVES

by Bernadette Mayer

why am i doing this? Failure

to keep my work in order so as

to be able to find things

to paint the house

to earn enough money to live on

to reorganize the house so as

to be able to paint the house &

to be able to find things and

earn enough money so as

to be able to put books together

to publish works and books

to have time

to answer mail & phone calls

to wash the windows

to make the kitchen better to work in

to have the money to buy a simple radio

to listen to while working in the kitchen

to know enough to do grownups work in the world

to transcend my attitude

to an enforced poverty

to be able to expect my checks

to arrive on time in the mail

to not always expect that they will not

to forget my mother's attitudes on humility or

to continue

to assume them without suffering

to forget how my mother taunted my father

about money, my sister about i cant say it

failure to forget mother and father enough

to be older, to forget them

to forget my obsessive uncle

to remember them some other way

to remember their bigotry accurately

to cease to dream about lions which always is

to dream about them, I put my hand in the lion's mouth

to assuage its anger, this is not a failure

to notice that's how they were; failure

to repot the plants

to be neat

to create & maintain clear surfaces

to let a couch or a chair be a place for sitting down

and not a table

to let a table be a place for eating & not a desk

to listen to more popular music

to learn the lyrics

to not need money so as

to be able to write all the time

to not have to pay rent, con ed or telephone bills

to forget parents' and uncle's early deaths so as

to be free of expecting care; failure

to love objects

to find them valuable in any way; failure

to preserve objects

to buy them and

to now let them fall by the wayside; failure

to think of poems as objects

to think of the body as an object; failure

to believe; failure

to know nothing; failure

to know everything; failure

to remember how to spell failure; failure

to believe the dictionary & that there is anything

to teach; failure

to teach properly; failure

to believe in teaching

to just think that everybody knows everything

which is not my failure; I know everyone does; failure

to see not everyone believes this knowing and

to think we cannot last till the success of knowing

to wash all the dishes only takes ten minutes

to write a thousand poems in an hour

to do an epic, open the unwashed window

to let in you know who and

to spirit thoughts and poems away from concerns

to just let us know, we will

to paint your ceilings & walls for free

WordParty Poetry Challenge - Day 29 - Memory Poem

Day 29
Memory
by Ingrid


Write about an event you see differently now that a little time has passed. Perhaps you have grown in some way that makes you see the situation differently. Perhaps not. What and how do you see the situation now? Has the memory faded or is it still clear as daylight?


Perhaps the event is ....the time you called up an ex-boyfriend after 5 margaritas to tell him what you REALLY think about his new girlfriend, listening to gangster rap while at your grandmother's house, your wedding, a friend's wedding, birth, death, anything really goes here!


Swoon
by James Tate


One of Daniela's breasts fell out of her blouse
during dinner in our favorite restaurant. I liked
looking at it and didn't say anything. The waiter
liked looking at it, too, and just smiled. The other
diners tried not to stare, but some of the men couldn't
help themselves. Daniela takes a certain pride in her 
breasts, so perhaps it wasn't an accident. I knew I
should say something to her, but i was also getting
really turned on. It was as if I had never met this 
woman before. The public aspect of breast exposure
had a mystery to it that I couldn't name. I said,
"The fileto tre pepe was exceptionally good tonight."
I stared at her breast as if it were about to speak.
"The gnocchi was delicious," it said. "You're looking 
especially beautiful tonight," I said. "It's good
to get out and see the people," it said. Daniela
had gone into a swoon or trance of some kind, and the 
breast had taken over. When the waiter came for the
bill, he said to Daniela's breast, "Very nice to see you tonight."
The breast blushed, gently swaying in the candlelight. 

Sleeper Wave

by Ingrid 

The chill was damp, deep in your bones

there simply was no warming up.

Memorial Day at Dillon’s Beach

was filled with grey hues:

the sky darkening

sand cool to the touch

salt in the air, everywhere

the sea a darker shade than the sky,

the sea like a rabid dog

waves foaming at the mouth along the shore.

My family members never seemed to notice

the froth and intensity.

I ran up the beach

playing in the dunes.

They turned their backs to her,

and she raged, higher and higher in the sky

The water was a wall coming toward us.

I screamed “LOOK OUT”

but no one listened to a 5 year old

it overtook, swallowed them like small fish.

I sucked in my cheeks

jumped up and down

held my breath

counted 1-2-3-4

they were all still there, when the water receded.

Laughing. They were laughing!

My mother with her head swung all the way back,

her wild and free belly laugh,

wobbling on the wet sand like a drunkard.

Aunt & Uncle dripping

with the sea’s ravishing act,

one helping the other up.

Missing-in-action,

my Father’s red and white plastic flip-flop

the cheap kind from Walgreens

eaten by the ferocious jowls of an angry sea.

WordParty Poetry Challenge - Day 28 - Heroic Poetry

Day 28

Little Heroes = Big Poems

by Bear

"I like it when a flower or little tuft of grass grows through the crack in the concrete. It’s so fuckin’ heroic." -George Carlin

Write a poem about something really small that you find heroic. Write about it using "large heroic" language. This is a chance to really run wild with hyperbole.

WordParty Poetry Challenge - Day 27 - Seasonal Poem

Day 27

Seasonal Poem

by Ingrid

Today's prompt is: write a seasonal poem. 

Perhaps you are inspired by or depressed by a certain season.  We all know "April is the cruelest month" according to T.S. Eliot in "The Wasteland." Or perhaps you are delighted by spring and summer months floating our way.  

Here are a few examples to get you started:

[in Just-]
By E. E. Cummings

in Just-

spring          when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman

whistles          far          and wee

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it's

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer

old balloonman whistles

far          and             wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's

spring

and

         the

                  goat-footed

balloonMan          whistles

far

and

wee 

Every day You Play with the Light of the Universe
by Pablo Neruda

Every day you play with the light of the universe.
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water.
You are more than this white head that I hold tightly
as a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands.

You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.
The rain takes off her clothes.

The birds go by, fleeing.
The wind. The wind.
I can contend only against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.

You are here. Oh, you do not run away.
You will answer me to the last cry.
Cling to me as though you were frightened.
Even so, at one time a strange shadow ran through your eyes.

Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle,
and even your breasts smell of it.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.

How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the gray light unwind in turning fans.

My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
I go so far as to think that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want
to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

 

WordParty Challenge - Day 26 - Love poem

Day 26 

Love Poem
by Ingrid

This prompt is meant to be playful: Write a love poem from your right hand to your left hand. Or, from your left hand to your right hand. What does one hand do for you that the other cannot? Vice Versa? Look at the appearance, skin, color, nails, scars, and write about it. Which one is dominant? 

A HAND 

By Jane Hirshfield 

A hand is not four fingers and a thumb.

Nor is it palm and knuckles,
not ligaments or the fat's yellow pillow,
not tendons, star of the wristbone, meander of veins.

A hand is not the thick thatch of its lines
with their infinite dramas,
nor what it has written,
not on the page,
not on the ecstatic body.

Nor is the hand its meadows of holding, of shaping—
not sponge of rising yeast-bread,
not rotor pin's smoothness,
not ink.

The maple's green hands do not cup
the proliferant rain.
What empties itself falls into the place that is open.

A hand turned upward holds only a single, transparent question.

Unanswerable, humming like bees, it rises, swarms, departs.

MY FATHER'S LEFT HAND

By David Bottoms 

Sometimes my old man’s hand flutters over his knee, flaps
in crazy circles, and falls back to his leg.

Sometimes it leans for an hour on that bony ledge.

And sometimes when my old man tries to speak, his hand waggles in the air, chasing a word, then perches again
on the bar of his walker or the arm of a chair.

Sometimes when evening closes down his window and rain
blackens into ice on the sill, it trembles like a sparrow in a storm.

Then full dark falls, and it trembles less, and less, until it’s still.

WordParty Poetry Challenge - Day 25 - Bar Poem

Day 25

by Bear

Bar Poem

Write a bar poem of no more than 25 lines where you meet a fictional/mythological/historical/character(s) for drinks.

Is it a modern day dive bar or a old-time pub?  What do you and your compatriots drink and discuss?  Are you talking, playing darts or pool?  Dancing?  Making out? All of the above?

Here are some ideas to get you going:

• Maybe you go to a bar with Miss Piggy and she gets into a jealousy driven fight with another woman.
• Maybe you meet Mary Poppins at a pub and she feels completely out of place and says nothing sipping on her Irish coffee.
• Maybe you go to a sushi bar with Izanami and she goes into a drunken rage because people stopped worshiping her for Buddha.
• Maybe you meet Richard Feynman at a bar who spends the evening correcting all your errors.
• Maybe you spend the evening being condescended to by T.S. Eliot.
• Maybe you and Benjamin Franklin people watch at a tavern and make snarky comments.
• Maybe a Galileo marvels at the new technologies of a present day bar.

Title the poem with the name of the bar (I.E. At The Pie 'n' Mash, At The Elbo Room etc)

March 2012 WordParty - This One is for the Ladies

We celebrated the month of March with the theme of Women’s History Month, poets came to read their poetry for and about women! Our first featured poet, the luminescent Susan Browne electrified the audience with her reading of “Braless” from her book Buddha’s Dogs. We also especially loved the poem “Dear John.”

Nova Jazz was SMOKIN’ hot and the poets were ecstatic to have them perform during the entire night! Thanks Daniel, Geordie, Leslie, Oliver, Sheldon & Herman.

Our beloved drummer, Geordie Vanderbosch celebrated his birthday with multiple cakes and brownies, and he read a poem by Jayne Cortez “If the Drum is a Woman.” See it here!

In addition, we had many of our other regulars, Rusty Rebar, CaraVida, Nicole Henaras, Ted Walker and Justice Morrighan who read amazing poetry throughout the night. 

We’ll be back in April to celebrate National Poetry Month with a poetry challenge, and our featured poet, Jack Hirschman!

2.12.12 Poetry Festival Santa Cruz

2.12.12 - it is very interesting that this year every time I look at the clock I see the same numbers come up! It might not be a coincidence as the 2012 Santa Cruz Poetry Festival brought poets and artists from every style, generation and cultural background together in unison to celebrate poetry. Connection and unity was in the air. The event was organized by Daniel Yaryan of the Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts events and took place at the famous Coconut Grove on the Santa Cruz boardwalk in it's beautiful cabaret theater space, complete with disco-ball! There were many local poets and publishers set up with tables next to the main theater, a full bar with food and snacks.

Ginger Murray and Marc Kockinos hosted the event and did a fantastic job. Some of our favorite poets included: Cara Vida, who also showed her paintings, Avotcja and Eugene Warren on upright bass, Jack Hirschman, Ruebi Lynn Jimenz on guitar with Steven Gray, Charles Curtis Blackwell - and our friends from the Quiet Lightening reading series. Jennifer Barone, Daniel Heffez and Geordie Van Der Bosch performed - representing the WordParty! Here's a photo of Geordie getting down on his solo set with Cara Vida's painting behind him:

Next up ::: Come on down to the WordParty at Viracocha on Tuesday February 21st for our Valentine's theme of L-O-V-E in all shapes and forms, our favorite subject!

WORDparty's National Poetry Month and more...

by Ingrid Keir

April was National Poetry Month and it kept us busy here at The Wordparty!
We kicked it off with a Canned Poetry reading at Frankenart Mart, a cool storefront art gallery in the Richmond district. Many of you contributed poetry to be sold in a real CAN! (See photos). Nothing like putting some poetry in the pantry just in case of an emergency!

The following week Jennifer Barone and I performed at New Blood, a reading hosted by our own Jimmy Hammond! We heard fresh new work from some our favorites including Sharon Doubiago, Monique de Magdalena, Apostle and Jesse Whiley.


Yours truly was invited to feature at Poetry Mission held at Dalva. I believe the intimate setting, the low lighting, and that darn sexy backroom put a spell on me. I was so honored that many of my fellow poets came out to listen to me read!

We continued the National Poetry Month marathon at the 2nd Annual Poem Dome at City Hall, the largest open mic San Francisco has to offer! The Wordparty helped out Diamond Dave Whitaker, E.K. Keith and Charlie Getter with this year’s event. I was lucky enough to read a poem during the three solid hours of poetry. I was wowed by the San Francisco open mic scene! It was truly an amazing to hear poetry in countless varying forms.

As if that wasn’t enough, Jennifer Barone represented at the Beat Museum’s own National Poetry Month Celebration alongside San Francisco’s Poet Laureate, Jack Hirschman, Sharon Doubiago, Monique de Magdalena, Jimmy Hammond, Rudy Waltz & Guinevere!

Whew, once April was over, we took a little poetry vacation in the Sutro Heights Park with Clara Hsu and Dan Brady’s Poets with Trees Picnic. This reading was special because it was not only outside, but we had our own Wordparty Tree! Special thanks to Miss Nicole Henares for bringing her High School kids out to the event, many of them participated by reading a poem or two!

Our own Jennifer Barone is the recipient of the prestigious Poet’s 11 award! She was hand picked by Jack Hirschman (SF’s Poet Laureate) for three poems she submitted to the contest, “Santa Lucia,” “I Won’t Speak,” and “A Political Poem”! Please join me in congratulating Jennifer on her award!!

That brings us to some things we did just for fun! Jazz Cat in the Hat, a poetry swap and a button contest! Please take a look at some of the photos we have posted to see how fun it is to get down with poetry! If you have any ideas for poetry themes, please let us know. We are going to continue to bring you innovative & fun poetry themed nights in the coming months.

Jack Hirschman & Jennifer at the North Beach Branch Library

Ingrid, Clara Hsu & Jennifer at our tree at the Poets with Trees Picnic

Ingrid @ Poems Under the Dome

Ingrid Keir Features at Dalva

Frankenart Mart's Poetry in Can

WHO IS THAT BAD ASS ON THE BASS? An interview with Colin

– by Jennifer Barone, featuring some questions from the audience from Tuesday Nights at Club Deluxe!

We've decided to turn the spotlight on one of our favorite and frequent musicians at Club Deluxe–Colin Williams! Not only does he love to play with our poets, he does it well and has been known to sing the blues too. Is there anything this man can't do? Yes, he truly is a "Bad Ass on the Bass." Read our little interview and find out some interesting facts on the man behind the bassline.

Q: What jazz tune makes you totally lose your shit when
you play it and why?
A: I like any and all blues. You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To, because no one ever plays it. I also like all the New Orleans Tunes, like Down By the Riverside. So Nasty. As a club owner once told me, "girls with clean panties are nice, but girls with dirty panties are even nicer, heh heh heh." Man, I miss New Orleans.

Q: Compare and contrast: Charles Mingus and Shakespeare:
A: Shakespeare put the ancient world into English. If you read Lucan's account of the witches of Thessaly, you'll see where Shakespeare gets his ideas for the witches in MacBeth. If you read Seneca's Thyestes, you'll see where Shakespeare got his ideas for Titus Andronicus. Shakespeare is the link between the ancient world and the modern.

Likewise, Mingus is the missing link between crazy modern jazz and swing. Mingus was Duke Ellington's bass player until he chopped up a trombone player's chair with an ax. Mingus understood swing, but he went and tweaked it. Most of the crazy modern cats got their start in Mingus' band. Like Shakespeare, he's the link between the elder statesmen and the young turks.

Q: How did you first get into jazz and what song did it for you?
A: David Friesen's Early Morning Rising ! He plucked the strings below the fingerboard, recorded it, and looped it back over and over again. Then he took the bow and rapped it against the fingerboard like a drum, recorded that and played it back so that it was perfectly locked in with what he had down. Then he bowed a melody on top of all that. Took my sixteen-year-old breath away!

Q: Is the marriage of jazz and poetry a happy marriage or a rocky one?
A: It's a Happy One at Deluxe, but I've seen it get ugly at other clubs. Everyone respects each other here.

Q: Any recommendations as to what instructions you'd like to hear when poets ask for your accompaniment?
A: They're actually really clear.

Q: You sometimes take off your shoes when you play. Is it for comfort or because the band makes you?
A: The P.A. System feeds back because I stomp so hard. Sorry.

Q: If you had to ex-communicate one poet and choose one to listen to all night who would they be?
A: Yeah, I'll take the fifth on that one. What question could possibly be more awkward than that?

Q: Who's hotter Jennifer, Ingrid or Katarina?
A:You know, Aphrodite, Athena, and Hera asked Paris the same question. But I think Paris had an easier time of it. It would be easier to find some blemish on any of them, some defect of carriage, some gaffe in any of those goddesses than in any that frequent Deluxe. Suffice to say they have all made my bass skip a beat.

Q: Any favorite musicians on Tuesdays you love jamming with?
A: Shane really impresses me. I love James' energy. Stacy's tone is flawless. We've got a good crowd.

Q: What was the most moving and/or shocking Club Deluxe moment so far?
A: That woman who did a Margaret Cho routine invaded my comfort zone. Man, where did that come from?

Q: What jazz artist and album do you recommend to listen to while between the sheets with a special lady?
A: Oooh, the last track on Joshua Redman's Timeless Tales for Changing
Times is perfect. So is all of Kind of Blue. Don't even try Bill Evans' trio, though; the girl will hate it.

Q: Do you have a favorite poet or poem?
A: Yes! Catullus!

You will feast well with me, my Fabullus, in a few days, if the gods
favour you, provided you bring here with you a good and great feast,
not forgetting a radiant girl and wine and wit and all kinds of
laughter. Provided, I say, you bring them here, our charming friend,
you will feast well: for your Catullus' purse is full with cobwebs.
But in return you will receive a pure love, or what is sweeter or more
elegant: for I will give you an unguent which the Venuses and Cupids
gave to my girl, which, when you smell it, you will entreat the gods
to make you, Fabullus, all Nose!

Q: What's your favorite Katarina Club Deluxe cocktail?
A: I always get wine.

Q: If your upright bass was a woman, what would her name, nationality and appearance be like?
A: My bass is a woman, and she is Romanian, elegant, petulant and
impatient, like all great beauties.

Q: Club Deluxe has seen you tear it up on the bass and sing the blues, will we ever see the day Colin reads a poem?
A: Only time will tell.