Bertha Rogers - Inside and Out

Bertha Rogers is a poetry institution and the pulse of the arts in Delaware County and throughout New York State. An editor, a publisher, internationally published poet of note, visual artist, master teaching artist, gallery curator, and former NYSCA Literature panelist, Bertha has more energy than the sun itself, it seems. We are visiting with Bertha a couple of times this week before we get the pleasure of her reading this coming Friday when she appears with Greg Ames at 7:00 p.m. at the DWC; free, as always.

We asked Bertha to provide a favorite writing prompt and she kindly responded with the following exercise:

Any poem by William Stafford gets everyone in the room, young to old, writing.
I've never seen anything like it! Here's a perfect example:

Ask Me

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.

— William Stafford

-------------------------------
So there you have it! Bertha knows poetry! Sit with this poem and then let your hand go where it wills. Trust yourself and don't overthink it...just respond. Let us know what you come up with and we will also share any work with Bertha to show her the results of her prodding us.

Calm Poem

by visiting author, Matt Hart, who can also be found here.

1.

Several years ago I was in a poetry workshop with Tony Hoagland. During a one-on-one meeting about my work, he noted all the noise and disruption in my poems—all the feedback and chaos—and said “Here’s what I want you to do: write a calm poem and call it “Calm Poem.” Make every line a line of clarity and tranquility.” He said that, or something like it... Anyway, his point was that I was garbling what I wanted/needed to say, clouding the issues in a lot of unnecessary roughness—sabotaging myself with fireworks—which are maybe thrilling for a few minutes, but don’t last very long. Somehow I needed to find a way to keep the lights on in my work, even if what it illuminated was completely weird and chaotic.

Here’s the poem I wrote:

Calm Poem

Of all the calm poems I've written

This calm poem

is definitely my favorite.

It came at the end of a calamitous day—

I couldn’t remember what to say

during a lecture.

I cried while reading

a philosophical preface.

When I looked in the mirror

I saw pieces of a bluejay

and the world turned

my stomach

in the gathering dust.

Forget it, said the poem.

Now you’re safe at home.

Many people love you.

No need to create a scene.

No need to punctuate

the roar of the page.

Go to sleep and dream

you’re a giant paper snowflake.

There is nothing to be afraid of.

2.

What’s interesting to me is that traveling around giving readings and teaching workshops, I often hear people expressing a desire to make their poems wilder, stranger, more surprising and dynamic. Almost never have I heard someone wishing to make their poems calm down and behave. And yet, aren’t there occasions when staying calm is the most surprising and weird thing of all? As a result of this exercise, I have come to believe, even though I’m not always capable of acting on it, that to say a thing plainly and deliberately with clarity—with calm—is among the most poetic (i.e. surprising, strange and depth-charged) ways of saying anything.

With this in mind, I’ve adapted Tony’s assignment to me as one I sometimes use with my own students, especially when they’re being weird for weird’s sake and seem to have more on their minds than mere weirdness. This is how I put it to them:

Write a Calm Poem. In fact, use Calm Poem as the title, so that when we gather round the table next week we can survey the varieties and vagaries of calmness. Is calm merely the opposite of calamity? Is it a warm bath? Is it listening to Coltrane (the early stuff) with the lights down low? Is it chicken soup and sickness and clouds overhead? For some of you it may be soccer, and for others, a Sunday Stroll. For still others, what’s calm is a hardcore band for breakfast. I don’t have any particular designs on calmness (I’m barely calm at all). I’m looking for the truth; I’m looking for a world to kick back in, some place to have myself a bottle of wine, some place with a view of the ocean. Remember, too, that what’s calm in a poem may have nothing to do with its content. Calmness may be the result of purely formal maneuvers—the lengths of your lines, the kinds of stanzas you use, the way you arrange the words (and the white spaces) on the page. Pacing may be everything. What does calmness mean to you and/or how does it go down in language? Be steady, breathe easy, take yourselves away. Nobody panic. Stay as steady and calm as you possibly can. There are a million emergencies to contend with, and someone has to feel at home in them.

TWO MORE CALM EXAMPLES

Here’s one by my friend Nate Pritts that’s incredible for its steadfast attentiveness to the moment and also for the way it manages chaos—that’s what calm is in a sense managing chaos in the moment:

Calm Poem

It’s November 15th, 2009, & I’ve never been

Nate Pritts today. I’m 35 with about two months

tacked on & I’m taking your advice. Early

morning & there’s a halo of helicopters

harrowing the blue, sending word through the

static about the crowded intersections—

all that crosstown traffic—& I stepped

right in front of the car. I knew the speed.

I don’t care if it’s calm. It’s okay if it’s calamity.

Early morning & the buzz is circling my head

like a certainty. Three or four times a day,

I feel like I’m about to get shot out of myself,

like there’s a vibration approaching catastrophe

& I need to run. I’m thinking of language

like it’s something delicate I can hold in my hand.

I’m worried this might break. Early morning

& I don’t care if it’s starless. It’s okay that it’s

endless but full of endings. It’s November 15th,

it’s 2009, it’s me taking your advice because I’m

left without my normal faith in talk, that I could

fill a room with voice & tip the scales.

So hard to get through to you isn’t something

I’m saying but something I feel & the you isn’t

you. I don’t care if it’s indeterminate. It’s okay

that it’s not referential. Early morning & sun

gathers slowly in the clouds. November 15th

& I’m Nate Pritts right now more than ever &

the trees are already empty. It’s not fall

in Syracuse. It’s not fall; it’s fell. It’s exquisitely

dark. It’s this terrible. It’s this fierce destructive.

It’s the end of my favorite season ever & the beginning

of my dark poetry & I don’t care if it’s dark

as long as there’s light. It’s okay that I’m on my knees

to restart the fire as the damp wind whips

tumultuous & elegant. My faith is that more & more

will outweigh the less & less, that an I & a you

accumulates. I’m trying to be calm with the bomb

in my hand because it seems right to pretend

I don’t hear it counting down to one from two.

And this one’s by a former student of mine, Scott Dennis, who of course found a way through the assignment to something marvelously SCOTT DENNIS:

Calm

These are the tricks that make us calm:

The last bits of light

burn images of peace

into my skin.

I dream of dream-catchers

and of things salvaged.

I dream of things primitive

and of communication.

Ritual stimulates

me to my grave,

where the shaman takes me

and helps me survey the wreckage,

where my hands will not reach

my weaponry and my

face melts off my skull.

The only thing you have to lose in an exercise like this is pretense and the chains of expectation, but what you have to gain is something clearly and radiantly yourself.

Matt Hart is the author of two full length books of poetry, Who’s Who Vivid (Slope Editions, 2006) and You Are Mist (Moor Books, forth coming), as well as numerous chapbooks. A co-founder and the editor-in-chief of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking, & Light Industrial Safety, Matt teaches at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

Wednesday Writing Prompt

by Steve Almond : www.stevenalmond.com

Join us Friday at the RedHouse for a reading by Steve Almond, author of, among many others, the brand new This Won't Take But a Minute, Honey, which is composed of 30 very brief stories, and 30 very brief essays on the psychology and practice of writing. Here, the DWC brings you Steve's very own favorite writing prompt:

Write about a moment in your life that still haunts you. Could be something wonderful (first kiss) or something horrible (first great shame). But it should be the sort of memory that you can't shake. Now write about the actual moments of peak emotion. This should be a very short period of time -- no more than a minute. It's good to set up the situation with some context, so we know what's going on. But once we do, try to slow down as much as you can and write about what you were seeing and hearing and thinking and feeling in that moment of peak emotion. The idea is to capture everything that's going on -- emotionally, sensually, intellectually, psychologically -- in those moments that matter most.

As Steve would say, Rock on.

See you Friday at the RedHouse.

Steve Almond is the author the story collections My Life in Heavy Metal and The Evil B.B. Chow, the novel Which Brings Me to You (with Julianna Baggott), and the non-fiction books Candyfreak and (Not That You Asked). His new book, Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life, will be out in Spring 2010.

Word Replacement

by Santee Frazier : http://santeefrazier.com

This morning the DWC blog brings you an exclusive writing exercise from visiting author, Santee Frazier. Please join us on Friday for Santee's reading, 7pm at the DWC!

When I find myself not moved by voice, memory, or music, instead of staring at the computer screen, I type out one of my favorite poems. The act of typing accomplishes two things: you get to know the formal considerations of the poet (how they navigated the page), and you gain an intimate relationship with the text. After I have typed the poem I look for artistry, meter, phrasing, etc.... I really don't spend much time deciphering the poem being that interpretation plays little or no role in how this exercise conducts itself. From there I find all of the nouns in the poem, writing out a list, then I pull out my dictionary and begin replacing only the nouns (I usually don't replace the verbs being that I want to keep the structure of the poem).

This exercise will yield varying results depending on how much effort goes in the act of replacing the nouns. I find the best results come when I spend a great deal of time researching then replacing the nouns, rather than using the first word that pops into my head (usually a synonym pops up, boring). For instance using words related to anthropology will drastically change the poem’s meter and tone.

First start out with a short poem, and then slowly build up to something longer (the longest I have tried was Jorie Graham's "What the End is For"). Most of the poems will not be keepers, but the exercise helps build skill set and sharpens your abilities to glean poetry for reasons other than explication.

Rather than becoming frustrated and abandoning your daily writing ritual you can practice this exercise. After a few tries you will notice interesting things happening when the words juxtaposeand begin creating language.

Santee Frazier is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. He holds a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA from Syracuse University. His poems have appeared in American Poet, Narrative Magazine, Ontario Review, and other literary journals. His first collection of poems Dark Thirty was released by the University of Arizona Press in the spring of 2009.

Cento

This morning, the DWC brings you the first of its Wednesday writing prompts and exercises. Everyone's got their favorites — prompts that produce a surprising piece of writing — and we've asked our instructors, our visiting authors and our students to share what's worked for them, what really gets the pen moving. This week, we're featuring the Cento, a favorite of DWC instructor and visiting author, Derek Pollard.

Over the years and at all levels of teaching — from primary school to advanced creative writing workshops — I have had tremendous success with the cento as a simultaneous reading and writing exercise that helps define and contextualize "authorship," collaboration, and self-reflexive creative praxis. Below is the definition of cento as it appears on The Academy of American Poets website:

From the Latin word for "patchwork," the cento is a poetic form made up of lines from poems by other poets. Though poets often borrow lines from other writers and mix them in with their own, a true cento is composed entirely of lines from other sources. Early examples can be found in the work of Homer and Virgil.

Generally, I will invite a group of students to contribute a single line from a text of their choosing (the texts need not be "literary" nor do they need belong to one particular genre) to add to a line I have selected at random from a text. This new collaborative text expands until all the "authors" agree to end the project. In some cases, no order of contributors is observed; in other cases, no "author" can contribute two consecutive lines. The constraints vary depending on the course and the students. As one example, for a cento begun as part of my DWC course last winter, I myself would add lines only from texts written by female authors. I did not impose this constraint on the other "authors," but I suspect that each of us was bringing one or more of these independently determined constraints to the project. The one rule that must be followed in all cases is this: the "authors" cannot include any writing original to themselves or to their collaborators, and all lines must be documented so that we have a record of the source texts. Lines can be selected at random, based on numerical or mathematical formulae, etc. The texts generated in this way pose many critically productive challenges to the concepts mentioned above ("authorship," collaboration, reading-writing) that we discuss in relation to the text itself.

Derek Pollard's work has appeared in American Book Review, Colorado Review, Pleiades, Six-Word Memoirs on Love & Heartbreak, and Zoland Poetry. He is Managing Editor of Barrow Street Press, and co-author with Derek Henderson of the poetry collection, Inconsequentia (BlazeVOX 2009).