Readiness (poem)

This is from a prompt Jeanne gave us: write something on “readiness” using the wild word “furnace.” She was talking about being ready if inspiration strikes, but for me, the word “furnace” took over.

We are never quite ready for the unexpected.
Water rising.
Power failure
Flames bursting from the top of the furnace
(But you are already on 9-1-1, having smelled smoke, and the voice says “get out! Get out! We’re on our way!”
But the dog is crated in the bedroom
And by the time you run back and release her
The flames are barring the way to your parka
And it’s twenty below out, but the dog is safe …)
No, we’re never ready
But we cope.

©Sue Ann Bowling

Writing Craft and Practice: Some Suggested Books.

These books are from a list handed out the last day of the Summer Arts Festival. Rather than put in the publisher, I have linked whenever I could to the book’s Goodreads page.

Addonzio, Kim and Dorianne Laux: The Poet’s Commpanion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry.

Addonizio, Kim: Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within.

Behn, Robin and Chase Twitchell, eds: The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises from Poets Who Teach.

Bernays, Anne and Pamela Painter. What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers, 3rd Edition. 

Blythe, Will, Ed. Why I Write: Thoughts on the Craft of Fiction.

Gerard, Philip, Ed. Writing Creative Nonfiction. (Not positive the link is right.)

Gerard, Philip, ed. Creative Nonfiction: Researching and Crafting Stories of Real Life.

Hugo, Richard. The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing.

Kooser, Ted: The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets.

Kowit, Steve. In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet’s Portable Workshop.

Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.

Miller, Brenda and Suzanne Paola. Tell it Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction.

Moore, Dinty W. Crafting the Personal Essay: A Guide for Writing and Publishing Creative Non-fiction.

Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letters to a Young Poet., Stephen Mitchell translation.

Root, Robert L, and Michael J. Steinberg. The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction, 5th Edition. 

Slager, Daniel, ed. Views From the Loft: A Portable Writer’s Workshop.

Teachers and Writers collaborative books.  http://www.twc.org

“Art of” Series by Graywolf Press. (Click on “creative writing” link.)

Wooldridge, Susan. Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words.

On an Exhibition of Photographs by Barry McWayne; 1932-2010

Everywhere water.
River water undercuts trees.
Steam rises, flowering in frost.
Clouds ripple across the sky.
Snow mantles the ground.

And that is but one image.
Ice chunks. Blowing snow. Sastrugi. Frozen waterfalls.
Rock carved by streams and glaciers.
Trees, leaves, even the spiky desert plants
Arise from water
As do we.

Even the sand,
Shaped by the wind in utter dryness
Was once rounded by water.

® Sue Ann Bowling; written durning Summer Arts Festival 2011

Calypso

Twigs and branches, once reaching for the sky
Now bent and held by iron bands
To the likeness of a horse.
But is this not reality?

Sun’s energy,
Giving life to grass and leaves
Which in turn pass on that life
To the newborn foal.
Bound by the iron of blood
To the growing form—
Feet dancing, tail proud, neck arched.

And in the end
Giving itself back to earth
From which grow the twigs and branches
Reaching for the sky.

©Sue Ann Bowling

“Calypso”, a 2003 sculpture by Tamara Schmidt, greets visitors in the lobby of the Museum of the North on the University of Alaska Campus. The poem was inspired by the sculpture, which is life-sized.

Sheep

Sheep are contrary creatures, and these
Not content with the grazing in their pen
Had pushed down the fence,
Gone seeking lusher green
Along the busy road.
“Dot,” I called, “sheep.  See sheep.”
As if she were not already caught, fixated by those sheep far beyond my stumbling reach.
I waited for a break in traffic.
One word:  “Away.”
And after that just wait and close the gate behind the sheep she brought,
Knowing,
As she did,
Far more of sheep than I.

Thunderstorm (Poem)

Only smudges at first–
flecks of white in a sky so deep it seems as blue and bottomless as the ocean,
but the flecks grow,
coalesce,
loom higher,
cover the sky until the white blots out the sun,
and darkens and becomes heavy with thunder
shot through with fire that flashes from sky to ground,
burning, hungry,
threatening to smudge the world with smoke
until the heavy sky can to longer hold the weight of water
and gives birth
to rain.

©Sue Ann Bowling

Things My Dogs have Taught Me

Have patience.  Sometimes what you say, in words or actions, is not what the other hears.

There comes a time, in every life, when death is inevitable and may even be preferable to continued suffering.

Never be afraid to love, even though the end of love is death.

(assignment from Summer Arts Festival, © Sue Ann Bowling 2006)

Love Song

I will not possess you
Nor be possessed.
But we will share

The first, faint light, when sleepy birds arouse
And question whether night is really gone,
We’ll smell the apple blossoms as the sun
Draws back the dew they gathered in the night.

The midday heat, when sun browned children run
Through falling droplets, til a sudden wind
And crash of thunder sends them scurrying
For shelter from the unexpected storm.

The sun descending into flaming skies
And flaming leaves, and both reflected in
The running river bearing off the day
With the first stars aquiver on its breast.

We will go hand and hand beneath the stars,
With snow beneath our feet and in our hair
The frost may creep into our bones, our eyes
May slowly darken, but I will not leave.

© Sue Ann Bowling

I’ll be putting up old stuff for the next few days, as I have to give most of my attention to the proof-reading of Tourist Trap. This, by the way, came out of the Summer Arts Festival. The assignment was to write a love poem without using the word “love.”

In Memoriam: Bill Kloefkorn

Photo of Bill by Don Gray, 2008

One of the sadder pieces of news I received last week was that Bill Kloefkorn, the Nebraska Poet Laureate, died May 19, 2011. He was one of the instructors at the Creative Writing class at Summer Arts Festival, returning several times. Everyone who attended his classes will miss him.

In his honor, here is a haiku I wrote at Festival the last year he taught.

Light between tree trunks.
Is it water that I see,
Or is it the sky?

Old Gods (Poem)

Just for fun, I’m going to put in a writing assignment from Summer Arts Festival (coming again in July!) and the poem it inspired.

The assignment:

Write a poem of seven lines, with an odd number of syllables in each line. The poem must include some form of these eight words: blackberry, raven, canyon, cloud, rock, wall, walk, hover.

My poem:

Old Gods
Sue Ann Bowling

Raven soars high, kiting among clouds.
His shadow slides over rocks,
Plummets down the canyon wall
Hovers over juniper and blackberry,
Paces his brother, coyote.[1]
Raven, do you remember you were a god?
Are those your people who walk below?

---

[1] This assumes the pronunciation “KAI-ote.”  If you prefer “kai-OH-ti” you can replace the comma with a “the.”