Tag Archives: Poetry

End of October 2024: Going Forward


"This Room" by John Ashbery:

The room I entered was a dream of this room. 
Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine. 
The oval portrait
of a dog was me at an early age.
Something shimmers, something is hushed up. 

We had macaroni for lunch every day
except Sunday, when a small quail was induced
to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things?
You are not even here.

I want to write with the luminous clarity of Ashbery. He paints a picture of something mundane, something routine. But he sees the portal in it: the refraction of daily life sparkling underneath. Suddenly, something makes sense, or we learn something about ourselves. Or about someone. “You are not even here.” We haven’t solved everything, but there is a moment of realization and the poem becomes a photograph. He finds gems embedded in sedimentary rock. He polishes them and sits them on his desk.

This webzine and blog is dedicated to going forward. I try to keep myself grounded by living through the mundane, seeing and logging moments of luminous clarity. It is really hard sometimes, and it was hard this month. We can peel back layers of the past, but I want to keep going forward. I want to keep discovering more about myself and the world, even though it can be so hard to be. But as long as we are still willing to walk into the opaque mist, there will be more to find.

I hope you enjoy November and find some peace and clarity. I wonder how things will change, improve, and progress next month. We’ll just have to see.

End of April 2024: Poem for You

Hi out there. April is National Poetry Month and also National Make Sophie Incredibly Busy Month. April is also my yearly reminder to never let people forget I majored in Creative Writing. So here is a poem for you from my most recent zine. It is my favorite of the few poems I have written in the last couple of months. [An Ars Poetica is typically a poem about the craft of writing and poetry itself.] Enjoy your spring! Rooting for you!

Ars Poetica

I'm going on Survivor
to write about nature.
It will be brutal,
but the wilderness calls. As Whitman says
in "Song of Myself,"
these are the days that must happen to you.
Out here I am born, winds
slice like machetes
and the sun is my flint,
but my team is so sick of me
I hear them plotting all day:
Why do we keep the poet around? 
She works so hard, 
but she is not strong.
I say, Do you see the blue hermit crab
inhabit a room
to inhabit itself? 
Don’t you know "stanza" means "room"
and the sky is a house?
So they vote me off 
and I leave on a boat, now
I write this to prove
I am still from the world,
my poems and the waves
both taking me back.

Resolution

When I brush my teeth I think about dying
and how the seafloor's dissolving
and how it rains a blanket 
so we stay inside, my posture 
as bad as a gallon of water.
Dad voiced a half-thought
It is good to wake up—
He thought of the lake, saw the news
and stopped. The year so far
is taro chips, movies,
"The Leanover," 
and accepting at last 
that I am not a good reader. No, I am 
not ready to enter the world again.
Will a good jacket cure me?
A phone call for once?
A frozen swim? Will the fish in the trenches 
know I am better? I'm relentless,
the shaker, moving the clock,
all to say 
at the end
that I loved it.

End of 2023: Bookshelf of Hours

Happy end of the year! I hope you found 2023 fruitful and fun. It was an interesting year that left me optimistic for 2024.

I think I had a good year! It flew by. It was kind of a year of putting my head down and working hard on the tasks in front of me. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose! All work and no play doesn’t make me a dull boy. But also: there was play! Some days, I felt so so lucky. Lots of great adventures and some very fun hours. Lots to be found in the small spaces of the weeks and days. Lots of unexpected laughs! And little life-affirming conversations and interactions. My interior life was fulfilling and lovely.

Do you have goals for 2024? I haven’t really thought about resolutions this year. I think they come to me over the course of January. Some years I need a fresh start more than others. Like many, I wonder if a new routine can heal me. Probably?! Like everything, that remains to be seen.

I am excited to write more in 2024. Rereading some of my old work has inspired me to reach back into that corner of my brain. 2023 left me feeling stuck in one style of poem. I wrote this while looking at the ocean:

I shelved a version
and took out another:
the book of _____ 
on the shelf of _____.

I am looking forward to 2024 and feel good about it! Staying optimistic at this juncture. (Maybe, for once, I am looking forward more than I am looking back and reflecting.) I hope you have a nice new year! May 2024 be filled with good luck for all of us!

Direct Address

I take every thought of you to the very end
like a train, or a space shuttle, idle
and warming the dark side of a planet, a phone book
under my feet and a cold pulse against my sore arm, today
I understood how sadness can be called a "gulf";
how karaoke may be the closest I come to another me;
how to peer off the cliff of my mind; how to devour books on the floor; 
how Juliet and Romeo should have really talked it out;
how every person makes every other person disappear;
how the coldest stars in space glow red, red, red; how
post offices are either closed or too crowded; how I can handle everything
but I am good at nothing; how I love outer space and the seafloor
and never want to be scared of you; the ocean stirring itself forever;
I take every thought of you to the very end.

Things to Love

Dear world. To save myself from finals-related spiraling and from listening to way too much Lana Del Rey, here is a blog post slash poem slash meditation slash prayer.

Lately, my days are not very dynamic. I am severely vitamin D deficient and I feel like my body is hibernating while my mind works too much. So I have been compiling a list of things that are life-affirming to me. I am inspired by a poem called “Love” written by Alex Dimitrov, who is one of my favorite poets (and also my former professor). Every line of his poem starts with “I love” and it continues indefinitely on Twitter, one line a day. Anyways, as an exercise in gratitude and poetry, here are some things that I love. They make me feel more real. Here is the (non-exhaustive) list now while I am feeling earnest. Thank you for reading and I hope all is well with you!

THINGS TO LOVE:

* A good night of sleep
* Orange juice
* Friendships that last years
* Sunlight and how it streams in through the window unapologetically 
* Laughter that hurts the ribs
* The color red
* Hearing people talk about what they love
* Preparedness, until it doesn't make sense
* Sweaters and my favorite jeans
* Doing nothing because I can't help but think about everything
* Being alive because it is so hard sometimes
* My pothos plant 
* Music that people put their entire souls into
* Seasons and what they represent to people
* Calendars
* Cinnamon rolls 
* Aestheticism, beauty, things that exist for no practical purpose
* The solemnity of mornings 
* The solitude of nights
* The squirrels that run across the power lines outside my window and chase each other 
* Impractical clothing
* Birthdays (not mine)
* Dusk
* Writing letters to friends, of course
* This poem by Eileen Myles, called "At a Waterfall, Reykjavik":

	I still feel like
	the world
	is a piece of bread
	
	I'm holding 
	out half
	to you.
	
* Brutality (only in theory)
* Bone broth 
* The feeling that I am becoming my own person 
* Movies with stunning combinations of sound and color 
* Looking forward to other things
* Dvorak's New World Symphony
* Flowers as gifts
* Clarity 
* And bravery (may we all have it!)

Reverb

Everyone returns. Lately 

I cannot stay awake enough,

the coffee eats itself to bits,

I missed the blood moon

and blamed the weather. Turns out

I missed the rain too. No, 

it's true. I cannot keep my mind

from clouding up with knots,

vitamins, pine needles, 

and futurisms. A tough word,

futurisms. I don't mind. 

Nothing makes me more sure of time

than the solemn close of the year

for this is just for now. The sound:

an open window in the living room,

water running, another person,

a plane overhead, and then,

The Planets, by Holst, everyone 

trying again for a feeling. Oh

how the day feels slow

waiting for you, waiting for cold air.

Yes, I missed the cold air.

On Living: Mary Oliver and the Woods

So I don’t post much on this blog beyond my end-of-month posts, but today I was absolutely floored by a Mary Oliver poem and had to put my thoughts down. Here is the poem:

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.


“In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver, from American Primitive. © Back Bay Books, 1983.

I don’t know what to say. But here are words anyways. Mary Oliver is a genius. I don’t know how she gets away with so much little repetition, yet manages to keep pace in this poem. I don’t know why the choice of “three things” works so well when this is not a fairytale. I don’t know how she can get away with using the word “salvation.” I don’t know how I can see the Blackwater Woods in my mind now, though I have never been to Cape Cod.

I love the woods. I love the cyclic nature of the woods. I love the peace and the slow growth. I love big existence. Nature is a trope that is all at once so overdone, so necessary, and so true. I don’t know! This poem makes me so emotional; it makes me think about how there are so many things and people I want to hold against my bones. And how everything is so ephemeral. But still, it is better this way.

Here are some songs that give me a similar feeling: the bigness of life and existence. The smallness of today in the scheme of everything. Enjoy them today and every day.

I think this song is in a famous movie from the past thirty years. I don’t remember which one.
This song is so phenomenal and so beautiful. I think the title is genius too.
This song makes me want to be in love.