Poet's Field Guide

latinx poet, artist, & nature enthusiast. 

[poetsfieldguide-blog]

My mother was a braid of black smoke. She bore me swaddled over the burning cities. The sky was a vast and windy place for a child to play. We met many others who were just like us. They were trying to put on their overcoats with arms made of smoke. The high heavens were full of little shrunken deaf ears instead of stars.

Charles Simic from The World Doesn’t End

[poetsfieldguide-blog]

The ship of my life may or may not be sailing on calm and amiable seas. The challenging days of my existence may or may not be bright and promising. Stormy or sunny days, glorious or lonely nights, I maintain an attitude of gratitude. If I insist on being pessimistic, there is always tomorrow.

Today I am blessed.

Maya Angelou, Letter to My Daughter, 67

[poetsfieldguide-blog]

One of the most common reasons for a waterfall’s existence is difference in rock type. Rivers cross many lithological boundaries, and, if a river passes from a resistant rock bed to a softer one, it is likely to erode the soft rock more quickly and steepen its gradient at the junction between the rock types. This situation can occur as a river cuts and exhumes a junction between different rock beds. The riverbed of Niagara Falls, which forms part of the boundary between the United States and Canada, has a blocky dolomite cap overlying a series of weaker shales and sandstones.

https://www.britannica.com/science/waterfall-geology

[poetsandwriters]

Most times, writing a poem does not require research. Drawing from personal experiences, observations, and emotions, a poem can hold the everyday. Yet, at other times, I’ve learned that research can be a tool to ignite unexpected, needed turns in your poetry….Research doesn’t only have to be reading, it can also be physical….Sometimes, a poem can come just by way of the quiet, a long walk, a dream. Sometimes, research can be just the thing that helps your poems get to where they want to go.

Margaret Rhee, in this week’s Writers Recommend (Poets & Writers, 2018)

[poetsfieldguide-blog]

waterfall

A waterfall is a steep descent of a river or other body of water over a rocky ledge.

for future reference, there is no one type of waterfall.

[poetsfieldguide-blog]

Between seeing and making,                                                    contemplation or action, I choose the act of words:                                                to make them, to inhabit them, to give eyes to the language.                                                    Poetry is not truth: it is the resurrection of presences,                                                                history transfigured in the truth of undated time.

Octavio Paz; San Ildefonso Nocturne

[poetsfieldguide-blog]

Poetry Podcasts: A Roundup of Favorites

This year I found a bunch of new poetry resources, one of them being podcasts. I want to share them with you, because they are especially helpful if you don’t have access to writing groups, w…

This year I found a bunch of new poetry resources, one of them being podcasts. I want to share them with you, because they are especially helpful if you don’t have access to writing groups, workshops, a community, or readings. 

[bostonpoetryslam]

Don’t just think that poems have to be about certain beautiful, noble things. Poems can be about what you’re burdened by in your actual life, or what your deepest questions are drawing toward. Even if you don’t have the answers to them, poems can be useful in that pursuit.

Tracy K. Smith’s advice to young aspiring poets, as told to Erin Woo for The Stanford Daily (via bostonpoetryslam)

[poetsfieldguide-blog]

1: Cocoon II by Catrin Welz-Stein 2: Dark Nebula by Christian Schloe 3: Jungle Head by Christian Schloe 4: A Green Heart by Catrin Welz-Stein 5: Out in the Green by  Catrin Welz-Stein

[poetsfieldguide-blog]

Que me cante el mar un bolero de soledad

[metaphorformetaphor]

The silver sea I am approaching is an old desire, so old it is nameless, like the detailed astonishment of life. I know I am going to walk along the beach, that a tranquil anxiety will invade me, like that of someone longing for repletion, that I am, perhaps, going to possess what I do not have. (The voyage is the presence of absence.)

María Negroni, from “The Telephone Book,” Night Journey (Princeton University Press, 2002)

[poetsfieldguide-blog]

1: Limda Israilova 2, 3, 4: Elly Smallwood

[poetsfieldguide-blog]

Tiler Peck and Tyler Angle perform Christopher Wheeldon's "This Bitter Earth" at Dance Against Cancer in 2015. First saw this performed by Wendy Whelan & Tiler Peck for NYC Ballet, and it brought me to tears. The textures in voice, instrumentation, the movements of the body, the dark stage, the violins. Dinah Washington and the way her voice swells alongside the violins. 

[metaphorformetaphor]

You spoke to me, but from where, I did not know. I felt your voice, your warm, fluid voice, a little hoarse sometimes from the emptiness stuck in your throat. You spoke to me from I don’t know where. Nor could I make out your words. I could only sense your voice being born, like the night, in every point on the landscape. And your voice was like a warm wave that engulfed me, little by little at first, like a gentle tide growing with the moon, then fascinating me like the gusts of a storm swelling on the horizon. It was your voice again. When was it not your voice? The one I heard not only in my ears, but in my very flesh, like a wave of water, or a wave of fire, like a thick wave growing as it came closer. It was your voice, the ghost in my ear. It was the deep, constant feeling in all music, in all words, in all the voices that have sounded in my life ever since I heard your voice. It was your voice, your singular, forever undying voice that surrounded me, came close to me, and subdued my rebellious soul, suddenly shivering. But I never knew where you were speaking from. Yes, it was your voice, your voice of fire and water and hurricane. But I looked around me, trembling, and saw only blank walls of silence.

Dulce María Loynaz, from “XLVIII,”Absolute Solitude: Selected Poems (Archipelago, 2016)

[poetsandwriters]

“Be kind to yourself and to other poets. There are so many people in the world who would conspire against our joy, who would mistake our reverent wonder for idleness. Against everything, we have to protect our permeability to wonder. That’s the nucleus around which all interesting art orbits.”

—Kaveh Akbar, in “The Whole Self: Our Thirteenth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the Jan/Feb issue of Poets & Writers Magazine (2018)

[bostonpoetryslam]

Understanding the history of poetry, and studying what the great writers have written prior, not just the contemporary writers you like, is fundamental to being able to write with force. Nobody is born buff—they work on it.

David Tomas Martinez, for On Poetics, Identity and Latinidad: CantoMundo Poets Speak Out (via bostonpoetryslam)

[poetsfieldguide-blog]

despite the wars you wage and the journeys you are on, you must create a home worth returning to when you need to gather your strength to carry on. whether that home is physical, spiritual, emotional, or lives within those you love, it deserves your attention and nourishment. the effort you put into making it solid and strong will hold you up when your world begins to turn upside down. your home need not look like the one you grew up in, it need not repeat relationship dynamics that create restriction where there should be release. it need not fall into the trap of appearing normal when, dear one, we both know you are simply not. as you align yourself with your highest truth be honest about your relationship to sex, money, and power. be honest if you are recreating oppressive power plays and manipulations. be honest if you are pretending to be more aligned with the universe than you are. the time for pretending is over, dear one. you are encoded with liberation, your body holds world changing revelations, is there really a need to pretend any longer? instead of putting your energy there, may i suggest you put it towards finding your power and purpose? and that work takes you away from the communities you thought you would serve or the friends you would always have, may your determination to be free carry you onward.

Horoscopes for the Week of October 30