Stag's Leap (by Sharon Olds)

One of the RHC categories is "a collection of poetry published since 2014."

Originally I'd selected Dome of the Hidden Pavilion, a collection of James Tate's from 2015. I got through about half of it and gave up. I love James Tate's work, but this felt both formulaic (surreal scenario with surreal dialogue in a prose poem paragraph) and padded (it felt endless). Most of the poems are also more cerebral than emotional.

In contrast, Stag's Leap grabbed me by the heart immediately. It's a collection written about her divorce, which her husband initiated by leaving her for a colleague after 30 years of marriage. It captures the bond of marriage so beautifully that I've spent the past couple of days clinging to Ian and saying you can never divorce me! Divorce hurts so much and our love is too beautiful.  

Here's an excerpt from he title poem:

Stag’s Leap

Then the drawing on the label of our favorite red wine
looks like my husband, casting himself off a
cliff in his fervor to get free of me.
His fur is rough and cozy, his face
placid, tranced, ruminant,
the bough of each furculum reaches back
to his haunches, each tine of it grows straight up
and branches, like a model of his brain, archaic,
unwieldy. He bears its bony tray
level as he soars from the precipice edge,
dreamy. When anyone escapes, my heart
leaps up. Even when it’s I who am escaped from,
I am half on the side of the leaver.

As I'm looking this up, I notice Stag's Leap was written in 2012 and was awarded the Pulitzer in 2013 so it actually doesn't qualify for the RHC. But I loved it nonetheless and am grateful I read it.  

Anxiety of Words: Contemporary Poetry by Korean Women (by Ch'oe Sung-Ja, Kim Hyesoon, Yi Yon-ju, trans. Don Mee Choi)

This was one of the harder categories for the Read Harder Challenge: collection of poetry in translation on a theme other than love.  Based on recommendations on Goodreads I selected this volume of contemporary Korean poetry by women, and I'm glad I did.  It's been a while since I sat down and read a book of poetry cover-to-cover, and these poems churned up emotions around womanhood, depression, suicide (one of the poets ultimately killed herself), motherhood, and more. Here's one I particularly loved:

What's New?

I've been thinking I should start a writing blog. And then thinking you know mo pie there is such a thing as having too many blogs at once. And then oh wait, there is no reason the book blog cannot expand to encompass all literary ventures such as writing. And then I am dumb why did I never think of that before? So after a lot of thought--hee--I am expanding this blog to include writing-type things. I will use handy-dandy tags to keep it organized.

I decided this after a delightful breakfast with my mentor from Pope Hilarius. We discussed our various writing projects, publication, and even the nature of creativity. (His wife is a painter, so all three of us had projects to talk about.) It made me realize that although I am currently teaching, what I'm missing out on is that kind of push-pull of talking about teaching and talking about writing with other like-minded people (like the fabulous Laurie Mac). I will try and carve out that space here.

I'm currently working on an academic paper about teacher-student interaction over the Internet, and an abstract that I'm excited about. In the poetry realm, I have an upcoming publication (in Sentence ) that I'm very excited about. Just knowing that I'll be included among writers of that caliber (and the table of contents on that page should give you an indication) is inspiring. I have new energy regarding sending out my poetry. If I get a book published, I might be able to get an academic job teaching poety. I decided the other day that I should just manifest that and make it happen.

As for poetry, I am still tweaking my prose poetry manuscript (lost objects) mainly to include my series of board game poems. I have been feeling like that series is coming to an end (although I have an idea for a Scrabble poem yet to be written) and that I might be ready to move on from prose poetry to whatever the next thing will be. I don't know what that is, but

With that said, here is a small prose poem I wrote recently (I was reading Finnegans Wake and put it down in the middle of a chapter to write five poems; it must be doing something):

Magic Kingdom

Walt Disney created animatronic men, and their mechanical hearts beating and the boats of the guests still floating by. I want to call out to the pirate chasing the wench, you'll never catch her! Though ever wilt thou love, and she be fair.

The pacemaker was so twentieth century. By this time we should all have them. Why I know just the guy, 93 years old and I'm beginning to think he'll never die. Or maybe he's dead already and the pacemaker keeps him going through the motions. You never can get much conversation out of him.