October 2019 – Ken Craft

“The Water Turned Her Skin Sky.”

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While reading the November 2019 issue of Poetry, I came across a poem that lends a bit of magical realism to its grammar. Though some readers might object to using words in unusual ways, I find it refreshing to read and one of the chief joys of poetry.

The poem is “América” by Sarah María Medina, a newcomer to the magazine whose work has appeared in Prelude, Black Warrior Review, and Poetry Northwest. I will only share the first third or so of the poem to illustrate a few moves that look simple but are actually not (if you’re the one trying to think of them, anyway).

Alas, the HTML does not allow me to reflect the visual aspects of the poem, as each line is indented by various degrees in double-spaced succession. See if you can pick out the words that come across as more “poetic” than most:

From “América” by Sarah María Medina

The river was deep & wide.
Wild girls grew along
the riverbanks. Wild strawberries grew
among the wet grass. A girl tramped barefoot.
Her tips arrowed. The tracks wept
in the distance. She scavenged
wild strawberries. The river water stung her mouth.
The water turned her skin sky. Alone
the girl knelt to sift water
through her fingers. There was once a dock
with a wooden boat. Once a general.
Once a sister. Once a mother who hid
behind the general. Once a machete.
Once a girl who swallowed salt.
She held the resonance of chromatic
harmony. The quiet of faded mist…

The first unusual word is “arrowed” in L5. Arrow is a well-known noun, but less often seen as a verb. That said, Merriam-Webster provides three definitions of “arrow” when used as a verb, the first being the intransitive version, “to move fast and straight like an arrow in flight.”

What I like about the usage is its subject “tips.” This word immediately brings arrows to mind, even though it is referencing the tips of the girl’s feet. Good poetry enlists words in refreshing ways. It gives the reader pause, and any time a reader pauses for a good reason, the poem can be said to be “working.”

Directly thereafter we get “The tracks wept / in the distance.” (L5/6) Personification works best when it works twice. Yes, it is a poetic device, and yes, we don’t often think of tracks as weeping, but when you consider looking back at your own tracks over any damp grounds and how the soft the imprints look wetter due to your weight, you see the appropriateness of “wept” as a predicate for “tracks.”

Finally, in L8, we get “The water turned her skin sky.” Again, the reader pauses at the unusual word pairings. Water? Turning skin “sky”? You might first fear that the poor girl is turning blue, but it makes more sense to see the girl as one with the natural world she apparently lives in each day. River water, sky, girl. And a “double” is scored in that we get alliteration “skin” slides into “sky.”

At this point in the poem, a narrative tempo begins to pick up. Anaphora is used in a series of “Once…” lines presaging story. And story you will get. One that might help answer the accent aigu found in the title.

If you’re interested, you can find the complete poem in a copy of the magazine for sale or at the public library. Meanwhile, as a reader and a writer, note and consider how language is used in unusual, thus effective, ways as you read poems. Grammar is important, yes. But it is never a tyrant in the Kingdom of Poetry. Poetic license and creativity provide the checks and balances. And thankfully, the rule the realm.

Are You My Reader? The Story of a Newborn Poetry Book

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With apologies to P.D. Eastman’s classic children’s book, Are You My Mother?, here’s what it might look like for a first poetry collection written by a new-to-the-scene poet. (It happens every day!)

are you my mother

A poet worked on his manuscript.

The manuscript grew.

“Uh-oh,” said the poet, “my manuscript will be ready for submission. It will need a publisher!”

“I must send my manuscript out to poetry publishers. I will check the submission guidelines and mail it as an attachment.”

So away as a pdf. the manuscript flew.

The manuscript was rejected. It was rejected, and rejected, and rejected.

Then came an acceptance! The book was published!

“Where are my readers?” the book said.

It looked for them.

It looked up. It did not see them. It looked down. It did not see them.

“I will go and look for them,” the poetry book said.

Down in the Amazon best sellers rank the book went.

Down, down, down! It was a long way down!

The book could not sell on its unknown author’s name alone. It had no budget. It had no PR help. It had no reviews.

“I will go and find my readers,” it said. “I will go to poetry readings and events!”

The book did not know what its readers looked like. It could be passing right by them.

It came to a best-seller reader holding a John Grisham. “Are you my reader?” It said to the best-seller reader.

The best-seller reader just looked. It looked and looked, but did not say a thing.

The best-seller reader was not its reader, so the book went on.

Then the book came to a mystery, thriller, and suspense reader holding a Michael Connelly. “Are you my reader?” it said to the mystery, thriller, and suspense reader.

“No,” said the mystery, thriller, and suspense reader holding a Michael Connelly book.

The John Grisham buyer was not its reader. The Michael Connelly buyer was not its reader.

“I have to find my reader! But where? Where could he or she be?”

Then the book came to a YA reader holding a J.K. Rowling book. “Are you my reader?” it said to the YA reader.

“I am not your reader,” said the YA reader. “I am a YA reader.”

The John Grisham buyer was not its reader. The Michael Connelly buyer was not its reader. The J.K. Rowling buyer was not its reader.

So the book went on. Now it came to a history reader holding a Doris Kearns Goodwin.

“Are you my reader?” the book said.

“How could I be your reader?” the history reader said. “I am a history reader.”

The John Grisham and Michael Connelly buyers were not its reader. The J.K. Rowling and Doris Kearns Goodwin buyers were not its reader.

Did the poetry book have a reader?

“I did have a reader,” the poetry book said. “I know I did. I have to find him or her. I will. I WILL!”

Now the book did not wait for readers, it ran looking for readers.

Then it saw a Shakespeare reader with a mustache. Could that person be his reader? No, it could not. The book did not stop. It ran on and on.

Now it looked down. It saw a Robert Heinlein reader. “There he is!” said the poetry book. It called to the reader but the reader did not look up. The reader flipped the page.

The poetry book looked way, way up and saw a St. Billy of Collins reader. “Here I am, reader!” it called out. But the St. Billy of Collins reader did not notice. The St. Billy of Collins reader knew St. Billy of Collins and liked St. Billy of Collins and so read St. Billy of Collins religiously.

Just then the poetry book saw a big thing. This must be his reader! “There she is!” it said. “There is my reader!”

The book ran right up to it. “Reader! Reader! Here I am, reader!” it said to the big thing.

The big thing was a small group of friends and relatives. The friends and relatives were thankful for the poetry book and read some of its poems. The friends and relatives said kind things, even though most had not read a poem since that Robert Frost one in high school that the teacher had spent 5 1/2 classes analyzing, utterly destroying it.

“Oh, you are not my real readers,” the poetry book said. “You are a friends and relatives who are kind. I want my poems to have new friends who actually find them relative. They are my real readers!”

Then something happened. Time passed and the friends and relatives put the poetry book in magazine piles or on book shelves or in the local consignment store bin. They were not sales. They were not marketing. They could not give the poetry book’s author any word-of-mouth sales.

Finally a poetry reader never seen before decided to adopt the book after a reading. The poetry book felt important. It had a buyer and a reader, and for the newborn, first-time book, the hands of the reader felt as warm and feathery as a nest.

“Do you know who I am?” the poetry reader said to the poetry book. “I am a poetry reader, very rare and seldom seen in the wild, but a poetry reader.”

Having learned the hard way, the poetry book said, “Yes, I know who you are. You are one poetry reader. You do not make a blip on the Amazon sales list and you will likely not write a review, but you are a poetry reader and I cherish you,” said the poetry book.

“You are not a John Grisham reader.

“You are not a Michael Connelly reader.

“You are not a J.K. Rowling reader.

“You are not a Doris Kearns Goodwin reader.

“You are not a Shakespeare or Heinlein or St. Billy of Collins reader.

“You are someone who loves poems and is willing to buy a new book with a new name because you actually liked what you sampled. You are a true poetry lover, someone a poetry book could love.

“You are my reader.”

The End

Doors as Metaphors

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Here is the opening poem to the National Book Finalist, Be Recorder, a collection written by Carmen Giménez Smith and published by Graywolf Press.

“Origins”
Carmen Giménez Smith

People sometimes confuse me for someone else they know
because they’ve projected an idea onto me. I’ve developed
a second sense for this—some call it paranoia, but I call it
the profoundest consciousness on the face of the earth.
This gift was passed on to me from my mother who learned it from
solid and socially constructed doors whooshing inches from her face.
It may seem like a lie to anyone who has not felt the whoosh, but
a door swinging inches from your face is no joke. It feels like being
invisible, which is also what it feels like when someone looks
at your face and thinks you’re someone else. In graduate school
a teacher called me by another woman’s name with not even
brown skin, but what you might call a brown name. That sting
took years to overcome, but I got over it and here
I am with a name that’s at the front of this object, a name
I’ve made singular, that I spent my whole life making.

It’s a good opener in that it plants the flag of identity, pronouncing one of the themes of the book. It also digs into the concept of names and their importance to their owners because names are more than just letters. Names become everything about you, from Biblical times (think of Esau, who sold his birthright in Genesis) to modern times.

Everyone seeks to “protect their good name,” because names are their calling card, their reputation, their individuality struggling not to be typecast in any way. It seems simple, but is complex. Here, Smith tries to capture it in a brief anecdote about her mother’s encounter with “solid and socially constructed doors whooshing inches from her face.”

Those aren’t just any doors, obviously. They are metaphors. And what’s on the other side of them, when opened, depends on the beholder.

Judging the National Book Awards for Poetry? Good Luck.

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It’s not often I read all five finalists for a major literary award, but this year I’ve pocketed three of five among poetry’s National Book Award Finalists: Jericho Brown’s The Tradition, Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic, and now Carmen Giménez Smith’s Be Recorder.

I’d make a lousy judge on one of these panels. Probably I’d pull a stunt like the judges did for this year’s Booker Award winner: choose two winners when I’m under strict orders to whittle it down to one. But hey, both Margaret Atwood (The Testaments) and Bernardine Evaristo (Girl, Woman, Other) are happy, and I would be, too.

Reason? The old Apples and Oranges predicament. Books are often good in different ways, so sometimes differentiating means asserting that one way is better than another rather than one book is better than another.

Giménez Smith’s Be Recorder is good in a different way than the first two I read. It’s more of a hodgepodge of themes, from the scorched-earth political scene of our times to memory to family to popular culture to identity to race. Hell, even Star Wars sneaks in for a cameo.

So let me choose one of the more conventional poems from the first of three parts in her book. The section is called Creation Myth and the poem is called…

“Boy Crazy”
Carmen Giménez Smith

The echoes of sirens and cicadas,
and the drunk boys who howl
into the trees at 2 a.m. infect
my window while I sleep,
and I’m pulled into a girl I once was,
calling for love into a sky transected
by power lines until sunrise when the town
tightened into itself. I prayed for a boy’s
wolf life, the dream of skulking along
streets with hunger and immunity.
I wanted to cup the moon’s curve
in my hand like it belonged to me,
that was how young I was.

It’s a straight-up identity poem mined from the speaker’s past, and it reminds me mightily of Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, where the protagonist, Esperanza, struggles with issues of self and sexism.

Yes. The boys seem to enjoy a longer leash (or none at all) compared to the girls, especially in the city, but why? And the better question is, what does the young girl in the poem love more—the boys or their freedom?

That’s a good question to ask. The type of question screaming to out in a poem.

Why “Are You a Writer?” Is a Bad Question

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lucille

Some people consider themselves a writer but, when asked, never admit as much. They are the shy and modest ones, I hear you saying. They are the realistic ones, I hear the other saying.

Some people consider themselves a writer and, when asked, explain at great length. They are the outgoing and confident ones, I hear you saying. They are the vainglorious bores who talk better than they write, I hear the other saying.

Some people are found out by their writings. The people who don’t write will say to them, “You should write about…” or, “Let me tell you my story so you can write about it…” as if you are a boy scout obliged by your abilities to do good in the abstract name of God and scout’s honor.

But it doesn’t work that way, even if it tries. Your body can be warmed by another man’s fire, but your inspiration cannot. It remains cold. It will not give of itself.

I thought these thoughts when I read Lucille Clifton’s brief poem below. If you are a writer, quietly or loudly, incognito or out, perhaps you will identify.

why some people be mad at me sometimes
Lucille Clifton

they ask me to remember
but they want me to remember
their memories
and i keep on remembering
mine.