#genuinely saw a poem she wrote today about how she’s a poet who writes about ugly things to reflect the ugly things she feels inside and

[steelycunt]

that lancali girl who keeps popping up on my social media talking about what a successful poetic writer she is and then she shares something she’s written and every time with no exception it is one of the worst most embarrassing pieces of literature ive ever read like the cringiest purple prose you can imagine and everyone in the comments is talking about how it’s history-making and the most be beautiful thing they’ve ever read..and yes i do blame taylor swift for this

[the-end-of-art]

Sewn into his jacket an incoherent note

How to Make Love, Write Poetry, & Believe in God by Nin Andrews

A few weeks ago, I was part of a Hamilton-Kirkland College alumnae poetry reading, and after the reading a woman asked a simple question: “How do you write a poem?” I didn’t have an answer so I suggested a few books by poets like John Hollander, Mary Oliver, and Billy Collins. The woman said she had read books like that, but they didn’t help. She wanted something else, like a genuine operating manual—a step by step explanation.

I, too, love instruction manuals, especially those manuals on how to perform magic: write a poem or know God or make love, if only love were something that could be made. Manuals offer such promise. Yes, you, too, can enter the bee-loud glade and the Promised Land and have an orgasm.

I love the idea that my mind could be programmed like a computer to spit out poems on demand—poems with just the right number of lines, syllables, metaphors, meanings, similes, images . . . And with no clichés, no matter how much I love those Tom, Dick and Harry’s with their lovely wives, as fresh as daisies. I can set them in any novel or town in America, and they will have sex twice a week, always before ten at night, never at the eleventh hour, and it will not take long,time being of the essence.

I love sex manuals, too: those books that suggest our bodies are like cars. If only we could learn to drive them properly, bliss would be a simple matter of inserting a key, mastering the steering wheel, signaling our next moves, knowing the difference between the brakes and the gas pedal, and of course, following the speed limit.

A depressive person by nature, I am also a fan of how-to books on God, faith, happiness, the soul, books that suggest a divine presence is always here. I just need to find it, or wake up to it, or turn off my doubting brain. That even now, my soul is like a bird in a cage. If I could sit still long enough and listen closely, it might rest on my open palm and sing me a song.

God, poetry, sex, they offer brief moments of bliss, glimpses of the ineffable, and occasional insights into that which does not translate easily into daily experience, or loses its magic when explained.

In college, I took classes in religion, philosophy and poetry, and I studied sex in my spare time—my first roommate and I staying up late, pondering the pages of The Joy of Sex. As a freshman, I auditioned my way into an advanced poetry writing class by composing the single decent poem I wrote in my college years. The poem, an ode to cottage cheese, came to me in a flash as a vision nestled on a crisp bed of iceberg lettuce. Does cottage cheese nestle? I don’t know, but the professor kept admiring that poem. He said all my other poems paled by comparison.

This was in the era of the sexual revolution,long before political correctness and the Me-Too movement. My roommate, obsessed with getting laid, said we women should have been given a compass to navigate the sexual landscape. She liked to complain that she’d had only one orgasm in her entire life, and she wanted another. “What if I am a one-orgasm wonder?” she worried. The subject of orgasms kept us awake, night after night.

In religion class, my professor told the famous story about Blaise Pascal who had a vision of God that was so profound, his life seemed dull and meaningless forever afterwards. He never had another vision. But he had sewn into his jacket an incoherent note to remind him of the singular luminous experience.

The next day in religion class, a student stood up and announced that the professor was wrong—about Pascal, God, everything. The student knew this because he was God’s friend. He even knew His first name, and what God was thinking. The professor smiled sadly, put his arm around the student, and led him out of the classroom, down the steps and into the counselor’s office. When the professor returned, he warned us that if we ever thought we knew God, we should check ourselves into a mental institution. Lots of insane people know God intimately.

But, I wondered, what would God (or the transcendent���or whatever word you might choose for it: the muse, love, the orgasm, the soul, the higher self) think of us? For example, what would a muse think of a writer trying, begging, praying to enter the creative flow? All writers know it—that moment when inspiration happens. The incredible high. And the opposite, when words cling to the wall of the mind like sticky notes but never make it onto your tongue or the page.

What would an orgasm think of all the people seeking it so fervently yet considering it dirty, embarrassing, unmentionable? And then lying about it. “Did you have one?” a man might ask. “Yes,” his lover nods. But every orgasm knows it cannot be had. Or possessed. Or sewn into the lining of a coat. No one “has” an orgasm. At least not for long.

What did God think of Martin Luther, calling out to him in terror when a lightning bolt struck near his horse, “Help! I’ll become a monk!” And later, when he sought relief from his chronic constipation and gave birth to the Protestant Reformation on the lavatory—a lavatory you can visit today in Wittenberg, Germany.

I don’t want to evaluate Luther’s source of inspiration. But I do want to ponder the question: How do you write a poem? Is there a way to begin?

I think John Ashbery gave away one secret in his poem, “The Instruction Manual:” that it begins with daydreaming. Imagination. And the revelation that the mind contains its own magical city, its own Guadalajara, complete with a public square and bands and parading couples that you can visit this enchanted town for a limited time before you must turn your gaze back to the humdrum world.  

But a student of Ashbery’s might cringe at the suggestion that poetry is merely an act of the imagination. In order to master the dance, one must know the steps. And Ashbery was a master. So many of his poems follow a kind of Hegelian progression, traveling from the concrete to the abstract to the absolute. Or what Fichte described as a dialectical movement from thesis to antithesis to synthesis. Fichte also wrote that consciousness itself has no basis in reality. I wonder if Ashbery would have agreed.

In college I wrote an inane paper, comparing Ashbery’s poetry to a form of philosophical gardening in which the poet arranges the concrete, meaning the plants or words, in such an appealing order that they create the abstract, or the beauty, desired. Thus, the reader experiences the absolute, or a sense of wonder at the creation as the whole thing sways in the wind of her mind.

Is there a basis in reality for wonder? Or poetry? I asked. Or are we only admiring illusions, the beautiful illusions the poet has created?  How I loved questions like that. I wanted to follow in the footsteps of Fichte and Hegel and Ashbery and write mystical and incomprehensible books. I complained to my mother that no matter how hard I tried, I could not compose an actual poem or philosophical treatise—I was trying to write treatises, too. “That’s good,” she said. “Poets and philosophers are too much in their heads, and not enough in the world.”

I didn’t argue with her and tell her that not all poets are like Emily Dickinson. Or say that Socrates was put to death for being too much in the world, for angering the public with his Socratic method of challenging social mores, and earning himself the title, “the gadfly of Athens.”  

Instead, I thought, That’s it! If I want to be a poet, I just need to separate my head from the world. Or at least turn off the noise of the world. And seek solitude, as Wordsworth suggested, in order to recollect in tranquility. I imagined myself going on a retreat or living in a cave, studying the shadows on the wall. Letting them speak to me or seduce me or dance with me.

The shadows, I discovered, are not nice guests. Sometimes they kept me awake all night, talking loudly, making rude comments, using all the words I never said aloud. “Hush,” I told them. “No one wants to hear that.” Sometimes they took on the voices of the dead and complained I hadn’t told their stories yet or right. Sometimes they sulked and bossed me about like a maid, asking for a cup of tea, a biscuit, a little brandy, a nap. One nap was never enough. When I obeyed and closed my eyes, they recited the poems I wanted to write down. “You can’t open your eyes until we’re done,” they said, as if poetry were a game of memory, or hide and seek in the mind. Other times they wandered away and down the dirt road of my past, or lay down in the orchard and counted the peaches overhead. Whatever they did or said, I watched and listened.

That’s how I began writing my first real poems. I knew not to disobey the shadows. I knew not toturn my back on them and look towards the light as Plato suggested—Plato who wanted to banish the poets and poetry from his Republic.I knew to not answer the door if the man from Porlock came knocking.

To this day I am grateful for the darkness. For the shadows it creates in my mind. It is thanks to them I have written another book, The Last Orgasm, a book whose title might make people cringe. But isn’t that what shadows do? And much of poetry, too? Dwell on topics we are afraid to look at in the light?

(https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2020/09/how-to-make-love-write-poetry-believe-in-god-by-nin-andrews.html)

Five prose poems by Nin Andrews (formatting better at http://newflashfiction.com/5-prose-poems-by-nin-andrews/)

Duplicity

after Henri Michaux “Simplicity”

When I was just a young thing, my life was as simple as a sunrise. And as predictable. Day after day I went about doing exactly as I pleased. If I saw a lovely man or women, or beauty in any of its shapes and forms and flavors, well, I simply had to have it. So I did. Just like that. Boom! I didn’t even need a room.

Slowly, I matured. I learned a bit of etiquette.  Manners, I discovered can have promising side effects. I even began carrying a bottle of champagne wherever I went, and a bed. Not that the beds lasted long. I wasn’t the kind to go easy on the alcohol or the furnishings, nor was I interested in sleep. It never ceased to amaze me how quickly men drift off. Women, many of them, kept me going night after night. You know how inspiring  women are.

But then, alas, I grew tired of them as well. I began to envy those folks who curl up into balls each night, their bodies as heavy as tombstones. I tried curling up with them, slowing my breath, entering into their dreams. What dreams! To think I had been missing out all along! That’s when I became a Zen master, at one with the night. Now I teach classes on peace, love, abstinence. At last I have found bliss, I tell my followers. The young, they don’t believe it. But really, I ask you. Would I lie?

The Broken Promise

after Heberto Padilla, “The Promise”

There was a time when I promised to write you a thousand love poems. When I said every day is a poem, and every poem is in love with you. But then the poems rebelled. They became a junta of angry women, impossible to calm or translate, each more vivid, sultry, seductive than the next. Some stayed inside and sulked for weeks, demanding chocolates, separate rooms, maid service. Others wanted to be carted around like queens. Still others took lovers and kept the neighbors up, moaning at all hours of the day and night. One skinny girl (remember her? the one with flame-colored hair?) moved away. She went back to that shack down the road where we first met. At night she lay down in the orchard behind the house and let the dark crawl over her arms and legs. In the end even her dreams turned to ash and blew away in a sudden gust of wind.

Little Big Man

after Russell Edson “Sleep”

There was once an orgasm that could not stop shrinking. Little big man, his friend called him, watching as he grew smaller and smaller with each passing night, first before making love, then before even the mention of making love, then before even the mention of the mention of making love. Oh, what a pathetic little thing he was.

One night he tried reading, Think and Grow Big, but it only caused him to shrink further inside himself. Oh, to grow large and tall as I once was, he sighed. What he needed, he knew, was a trainer with a whip and chains. Someone to teach him to jump through hoops and swing from a trapeze and swallow fire until he blazed ever higher into the night. Yes, he shuddered. Yes! as he imagined it. A tiny wisp of smoke escaped his lips.

Questions to Determine if You Are Washed Up

after Charles Baudelaire, “Get Drunk!”

Do you feel washed up lost, all alone? Do you fear that time is passing you by like a train for which you have no ticket, no seat? That you have lived too long in the solitude of your room and empty mind,  that now you are but a slave of sorrow? Or is it regret? Do you no longer taste the wine of life on your lips, tongue, throat? Is there not even even a chance of intoxication? Bliss? No poetry or song above or below the hips? No love in the wind, the waves, in every  or any fleeting and floating thing? No castles in your air? No pearls in your oysters? Are you wearing a pair of drawstring pants?

Remembering Her

after Herberto Padilla

This is the house where she first met you. This is the room where she first said your name as if it were a song.  This is the table where she undressed you, stripping away your petals, leaves, your filmy white roots and sorrows. And there on the floor is the stone you picked up each morning, the stone you clung to night after night. Sometimes she kicked it aside. Sometimes she placed in on the sill and blew it out the window as her presence filled you like a glow, and you thought for an instant, I, too, can fly.

[templeofpoetry]

An Introduction to a Violent Book of Violet Love

An Introduction to a Violent Book of Violet Love

By Ra Sh ( Ravi Shanker)

 Letters to violet @ Kindle 

 “Blue! Gentle cousin of the forest-green, Married to green in all the sweetest flowers— Forget-me-not,—the blue bell,—and, that queen Of secrecy, the violet: what strange powers Hast thou, as a mere shadow! But how great, When in an Eye thou art alive with fate!” – John Keats.

I asked Kuzhur Wilson what the word or name Violet signified to him or to his poems.  His answer was as vague as a poet’s could be. If a poet knew why he was writing or why he used a word and not another, the world would be without poetry. We would all be writing graffiti.

 But, having a scientific temperament, I could not resist checking up on Violet or Violets. What I found is interesting. I learnt that Violet is that last colour that’s visible to the human eye before colours slip into the unknown realm of invisibility. Violet stands between matter and space.  Violet is the ambiguous colour of Love. As one slips into invisibility, there appears a term called ‘Ultraviolet’ which often signifies ‘feminism.’

 So, there it is. The girl or nayika or heroine or abhisarika or kaamuki of this chain of poems could be Ultraviolet, Violet or Violette or even Viola. Whatever, she is not within the grasp of the poet. The poet tries to subsume her, but without success. That’s his fate.

 ‘Letters to Violet��� is a saga of love that spans many centuries and lives. Violet changes forms, attires, attitudes, languages and geography many times. She is a Tamil shepherd girl as well as the daughter of a captain who invaded Kerala. At various points of time, she is Violet, Marva and Martha. At times, she sleeps with the poet in a field of muthanga grass and other times weeps below the cross on which he is crucified.

 Sometimes, the poet lives in the pastoral past of his many lives or many eras of literature. Thus, in the beginning, he is a shepherd from a village in Tamil Nadu. It is also the classic representation of a nomadic poet of the Malayalam literature of the 40s. His poem is often in the wilderness asking spring its name (a direct allusion to one of his poems). This world is the world of Ilanji trees, mynahs, parrots, muthanga saplings, karuka sprouts, paral fish, maanathukannis, poothankiris, ponmaans.

 Like a lone tree

That peeks surreptitiously

At the

Muthangha saplings

And karuka sprouts

 A beautiful triangle

In the middle of the river

Paral fishes wallowing in it

Violet coloured maanathukanni[1]

 The ecstasy of

Tiny fishes

Your belly

Like an aquarium.

 But soon, we get to their ninth life when he was Shanmukhan, again a Tamil name.

 Your name then

Was Lara

You were the daughter

Of the captain

A foreigner

A Portuguese

Who had come

To Fort Kochi

Paravoor

And Paliyath

 But, the poet is in a hurry to skip through their many lives like the toggle of a film editing table.

 In the sixth life.

We were

Two nascent bitter gourds

On the pandal  

Spread in the northern corner

Of the farmland

Belonging to a grandmother

In a village in Missisipi.

 But, now he slips back to his third life when he was anticipating the unnamed she.

 I too had bought

A karivala[1]

In the third life itself

Certain that you would come

 Then, he remembers the life before the present one when he had lent some kisses to her.

 Forgot to ask

In the life before the last

You had borrowed

316 kisses

From me

Didn’t you?

 Here, the poet comes to the stage where he identifies her as Violet from a plant. Remember that all his memories are those that also identify him with the elements of nature. The girl is only part of the exotic flora and fauna that exist within him as the guardian angels of his pathetic love.

  You are a violet hued plant

That blooms each month

 Like banyan leaf your belly

Like banyan leaf your waist

Like banyan leaf your throbbing thighs

Like banyan leaf your lower legs

Like banyan leaf your ankles

Like banyan leaf toes

Like banyan leaf your hands

Their fingers.

 He is so much obsessed with her that he doesn’t even care if she changes colour to yellow.

 Be my yellow

In

All my lives

My yellow my yellow my yellow my yellow

  For some reason, from a shepherd he changes persona to that of a writer. He doesn’t mind being Marquez for a change. Or, he genuinely believes he is Marquez and she is a reader.

 Today is the day

Marquez, who wrote

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Departed.

 Its 48 hours

Since you talked to me

 I am the one who wrote

One Hundred Years of Solitude

    But, with another stroke of pen, he also turns back to being a goldsmith.

  One day

At least one day

I want to be a goldsmith

Born to

Pierce your nose

 He goes on and on about the many avatars he takes in life after life, undeterred by the rope of Karma, for in every life his sole objective is to be with her.

 Next life

I will be

A leech

That clings  

To your breast.

 In the seventeenth life

I had an outhouse there

Its floor plastered with cow dung

  In the twenty eighth life

I had a girl friend

She had

Two daughters

And a son

They were

My children

In the previous life

 I walked along

The oblique scapes of Nagapattinam

Looking for you

All Tamil women I saw on the way

I called by your name

  Remember?

In the fourteenth life,

Your name was Marva

Wasn’t it?

 You name is Martha

Isn’t it?

On the third day of Jesus’ death

You were there by the grave

Weren’t you?

 I could have called you

La

Or else Lara

But  

I prefer to call you Martha

 The next life

We should go

To Pallipurath feast

 I will buy you

Glass bangles

  But, sometimes death comes calling and death means the end of love too. But, is it the end of life or love? Life ends, but love keeps the poet alive.  

 In my sixteenth life

You came to attend my funeral

 The violet flowers

On your frock

Made me crazy

As usual

 Love has a special character. It sustains what is left behind as mortal remains. You may meet them in the next life even as you meet your loved one in a new apparition.

 Love owns

Those priceless umbrellas

Left in oblivion, on earth

By the dead

 This is what makes the dead ones smile. Because they know that they will finally get to what they lost in their many previous lives.

  The dead mustn’t cry

You said

 I smiled

Certainly, the dead can smile.

 This desire does not stop with merely meeting the lover. But, in a reversal of roles, in some future life, the poet even wants to be her woman.

 One night

This life

I want to get pregnant

By you

 I believe that this is the moment when the poet reaches for the sky, for the blue sky, the violet sky, the ultra violet sky which is what he has been reaching for always in an effort to be sublimated with that girl named Violet.

 The sky has

Its own rivers

Fishes, birds

Flowers, trees

And toys

 I am going

To the sky

 Let me end my life

  So, even though he is the field Violet abandoned after ploughing and even though he is now a wilderness of weeds, he is sure some day she’ll come this way.

 A book of this kind, even in English translation, is a rare thing. We have not seen such obsession with love in a long time. This is Book for Lovers, by Lovers and of Lovers .  It’s not a collection of poems on Violet, but a live stream of love and life that travels through time.

 This poet is a mad one as all poets in love are. They cross twenty-eight lives and yet are not satiated. And, why should the poet be when he feels this way –

 I have

No complaints

The world

Has trans-muted  

Transcendences                                  

Likewise.

  Ra Sh (Ravi Shanker)

1st Feb 2018

Ra Sh. Kuzhur Wilson @ Calicut ( Photo by Chandni Santhosh)  

[kudzunewsletter-blog]

Student Spotlight: Gena  

{Genuine Poetry}

Hi Gena, tell us your preferred pronouns and a little bit about yourself!

I don’t really have preferred pronouns; for myself, being genderqueer, I use all three (i.e He/Him, They/Them, She/Her) it changes on a day to day basis. To make it easier for friends to figure out what pronouns to use, I have “pronoun pins” that signify what pronouns I’d like for that day! 

A little about myself: I’m 20 years old and I grew up in Fullerton, CA for the first 18 years of my life before moving on campus at Biola University for college where I studied Psychology before taking a break from my education. I now live in Whittier, CA and travel as a professional poet around Southern California to speak/perform at schools, churches, and events. I am also becoming a public advocate for LGBT+ and mental health issues--things I am incredibly passionate about!

How did you first get into writing poetry, and what do you usually write about? I first got into poetry during my junior year of high school. I had some exposure beforehand with my high school english classes but it wasn’t until a friend showed me a Shane Koyczan poem, “Instructions for a Bad Day”, that I really started to get into the Spoken Word world. From then on I was just writing for myself as a coping mechanism. When I visited Biola University, as a prospective student, I saw a performance by a couple artists in the poetry club and I knew that’s what I wanted to do. Since I started off using writing as a coping mechanism, I usually wrote about what was going on in my mind and my life. It wasn’t until I was a student at Biola that I really began to explore different topics and found that God was leading me to write about mental illness and my own sexuality. 

How do you see your spirituality interact with your identity? My spirituality and identity are intertwined. I wouldn’t be where I am today without having focused on my spirituality to get through life. While I lost family and friends because of my identity, I always have God by my side to keep going!

How do you use poetry as a medium for expressing spirituality and identity? Why are these messages important for your audiences? I use poetry as an expression for my spirituality and identity in a way of communicating what I can’t necessarily put into regular conversations. While I can sit down, one-on-one and express and explain what I’m feeling and what I may be going through at that time, it’s a lot easier for me to put pen to paper to say what I really want or need to say. This makes it important for my audiences as well because poetry makes an interaction much more intimate and personal. While having an actual conversation does the job, sometimes poetry (and other art forms as well) can create that extra step towards understanding a person’s identity and spirituality.

What does spiritual violence mean to you? To me, spiritual violence isn’t just a simple thing to explain. Spiritual violence, in itself, is a very broad topic that applies to many aspects of a person’s life and can affect everyone differently. For myself, I recognize spiritual violence as anything that attacks, manipulates, or control a person’s identity or beliefs. This can come in the form of direct violence or even microaggressions and such that put a person down. Spiritual violence is such a powerful tactic to break someone and more people need to recognize this type of violence to put a stop to it!

What has your experience being a queer (or however you identify) student attending a Christian college been like? My experience attending a Christian college and being queer is a little mixed; while I found so many amazing and accepting friends and people, I also found those who fought back. I’ve dealt with the homophobic comments and actions as I would have anywhere else. While sometimes it may become too much to handle, I relied on the accepting community I had found. While it may be difficult to find an LGBT+ community on a Christian Campus (I didn’t find Biola Underground until my second semester), I can assure you that they are there within the student body. I’ve also found different professors and staff members that are LGBT+ friendly and allies that can help with creating a better community as well. Looking back, I’m still glad that I had my experiences at Biola because it strengthened every aspect of my life including my own identity and faith.

What is the importance of organizing a national movement of youth that resists spiritual violence? This is so incredibly important! Youth are so impressionable by even the littlest of things, and by recognizing and resisting something, such as spiritual violence, will help all generations (both current and future) to become better at dealing with and stopping spiritual violence!

How do your poems and the work that you do with Biola's Slam team fit into that movement? My poems and working for the Biola’s Slam team bring awareness to the fact that a queer community exists in the Christian world. This is important for everyone (including non-christians) to know. While most times, when I’m working on campus, it may be subtle but I’m still there to represent another community. My poems, outside of campus, bring awareness to people that you CAN be queer and Christian and that we are just as important and faithful as others with the same faith. It’s incredibly important because queer Christians are still being shunned or attacked by both communities and by furthering this movement, we may someday find that peace between LGBT+ and Christian people. 

Lastly, if you could pick one person you wanted to see in your audience, who would it be? This is always a tough question! While I want to say something super cliché, like my favorite poet (Andrea Gibson) or a certain family member (also an important choice), I would want to see someone who needs to hear what is being said. Someone who needs to find that one thing they can connect and relate to within their lives that they may be struggling with. I want to see someone who takes what I have to say to heart and it changes their lives. Either for better understanding of the communities or even to better understand themselves. Someone to realize that there is someone out there who understands what they’re going through and how hard it may be to keep moving forward. I want to see someone who decides to live or to stop hurting themselves and instead find someone to listen or to help with whatever they may be struggling with in their lives.

Check out some of Gena’s poetry here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuK1Vd0iBRo&t=36s !

[kanaoftheisles]

Mornin’ Sunshine

@rxzberries​

[🐎] — It had been on her mind for a while, but the sunflower and haiku had only given her more of an incentive to do it. By it, she meant… something. Something special for Kana, to show him how much she appreciated and cared for him. He was always doing so much for her, and treating her like a literal princess, but she didn’t feel like she was doing nearly enough in return. And these feelings weren’t just out of her distaste for owing people either, but instead out of a genuine need to express her own affections for him. She was hell bent on pursuing this relationship with him and making it work, and driving him away by making him think she didn’t care enough would be the last way to do that.

So she would set up something special for him, invite him over to her house while her roommates were out, and give her stupidly sweet boyfriend a present that would make her intentions with him fully clear. Fighting against the sudden wave of nerves that attacked her in that moment, she pulls out her phone and shoots him a few texts as she leaves work for the day.

[ To: Kana 💗]: I got your note, sunshine~ I hope you smiled a lot today too 🌻 [ To: Kana 💗]: Cute haiku btw. Who knew you were such a poet deep down~? You’re making my heart go all aflutter, Shakespeare ;)

[ To: Kana 💗]: Hehe since it put me in such a good mood, I’ll do something suuuuper special for ya. [ To: Kana 💗]: So we’re going to my house, after the festival (bc we’re definitely gonna go to that, right? (ง •̀_•́)ง). [ To: Kana 💗]: No roomies, either. the gift’s a surprise, but you’ll love it, don’t worry. ♡

And nothing showed her appreciation for him better than a large, home cooked meal, right? Plus, it would be a much needed break from all the hard work he’s been doing lately– a relaxing time for just the two of them, with no work or animal kids to worry about for once. She may have royally sucked at cooking, but she’d try her damnedest to impress him with what she made, and give him a night he’d definitely remember… in a positive light, of course.

‘You’ll love it’… goddess, she hoped he would. Now she was getting kind of nervous…

When he woke up that morning and actually slept in for once, Kana saw a few text messages in his phone. Even in his half-asleep state, he already knew who it was and he happily rolls to the side of the bed with a big grin on his face as he reads through the messages.

[ to:   🌻Georgia🌻 ] Mornin’, Sunshine~ I just woke up, actually. And I’m already grinning :)

At the mention of the haiku he wrote, he couldn’t help but remember how much scraps of paper he wasted just by perfecting a single poem. He struggled to form the last 5 syllables... and if it wasn’t for his sudden idea to start from bottom to top, he wouldn’t have finished it at all! He was glad she thought nicely of it. He knew he wasn’t the best at words and he was actually proud of the little composition he made.

[ to:   🌻Georgia🌻 ] Babe, you have no idea how long that took me to write [ to:   🌻Georgia🌻 ] Haha! [ to:   🌻Georgia🌻 ] But anything for you, hunny pie~ [ to:   🌻Georgia🌻 ] I’m grinning from ear to ear, don’t ya worry <3 

Reading on through, he couldn’t help but think of something else with what vague hints she gave. Something special... in her house... no roomies. He and Georgia have been incredibly affectionate with each other once they started dating, but they never went beyond kissing and making up-- could Georgia actually have hidden desires that she can’t hold in much longer?!

Damn it, it was too early in the day for impure thoughts...

[ to:   🌻Georgia🌻 ] Of course we’re going!  [ to:   🌻Georgia🌻 ] I was gonna ask you as soon as I got to work tomorrow, ya know~ [ to:   🌻Georgia🌻 ] And oh? Something for little ol me~? [ to:   🌻Georgia🌻 ] I CAN’T WAIT! [ to:   🌻Georgia🌻 ] (≧∇≦o) [ to:   🌻Georgia🌻 ] But you know, I’m not sure if you can top life’s gift for me, babe... [ to:   🌻Georgia🌻 ] You’re still the best gift I got this year ;) 

[homeplanetreviews]

Paterson (2016) Movie Review by: Tristan Bunn

In Paterson, Jim Jarmusch directs a film that explores a week in the life of a normal man (played by Adam Driver) who goes to work as a bus driver, enjoys his marriage, and writes beautiful poems because that is his true passion. There has been a tremendous amount of buzz surrounding this film, but it never opened in my state last year. I drove two hours to finally see it today and I’m delighted that I did because this is a sensational piece of cinema.

Paterson is a beautiful and remarkable film that celebrates everyday life. This is a movie for cinema lovers because the average audience member might hate it. There are no explosions, no twists, and no chase scenes. This is a well written and superbly directed character piece examining the beauty that is found all around us when you look just a little harder. I’m not too familiar with Jim Jarmusch’s previous work, but I think he directs and writes this film perfectly. I am perpetually impressed with what Jarmusch has accomplished here because I can’t even fathom how difficult it must be to get this movie made in 2016. Paterson is not something that gets made easily in this era of sequels and superhero movies, so I truly feel like this movie is a gift for film lovers. I applaud everyone who took a chance on this film and it certainly pays off.

Jarmusch’s script is truly delightful and is what builds up the entire film so brilliantly. Jarmusch has such a pragmatic approach to the storytelling and the film is all the better for it. His script is incredibly grounded and marvels in normal life, yet provides you with what I found to be an eye opening and almost profound experience. He also directs the picture in such an earnest way, that I had a smile on my face the whole time, goggling at the wonderful talent on display. I love how subtle the direction is, with heartfelt framing and an often tremendous color palette. I honestly think this is a flawless movie. I’m not joking...Jarmusch knows what he’s doing. He wrote a brilliant script with so many marvelous gems under the surface, and I will allow you to wade through the beauty on your own because I think it is a more rewarding experience that way. His direction also stays out of the way. That can sound like I’m saying it’s unimpressive, but the contrary is true. I find that it’s often easy for directors to get singularly flashy in moments when they don’t need to. It’s actually more difficult for directors to be subtle in their style and let the script and the performances move the film along. Jarmusch has moments where the directing shows itself to the audience in a more conspicuous way (and all of these moments are superb) but the real talent is the progression of the film, the framing, and the overall accomplishment of the theme and narrative. Jarmusch directs this film to perfection.

Now I can talk about the performance of Adam Driver. This is one of the most tremendous acting performances of 2016. Driver vanishes into this bus driving poet named Paterson because he is endlessly likable, funny, and hyper realistic as an everyday man. He’s already well on his way, but I believe Driver will be one of the greats in regards to acting. He’s a man on a mission, delivering superb performance after superb performance, but this is the best he’s ever been. His acting is also enhanced because of the excellent chemistry he has with Golshifteh Farahani, who plays his wife and does a remarkable job in her supporting role. She also gives the best performance of her career.

The other aspect of Driver’s performance that sends him into masterful level territory were his mannerisms. All of his mannerisms are so carefully constructed and give nuance to the overall character. He disappears into this character, crafting a wonderful human being with a striking talent that he holds close to him. Paterson’s poetry is so important to him, but he keeps it very close to him, which makes his character all the more interesting. It’s so beautiful to see this realistic human being have a talent that he is so passionate about. I really related to this character because of the realism and his passion for the arts. Driver’s portrayal hit me in the heart and left me with a truly special feeling in a role that transcends greatness. I think he deserves an Oscar nomination, and he might even deserve the trophy, but I'm aware he will probably be overlooked. I saw this a couple days ago and I have been debating in my head whose performance was better: Casey Affleck in Manchester by the Sea or Adam Driver in Paterson. Both actors give some of the best performances of the decade, but I personally think Adam Driver deserves to take home an Academy Award for this picture. This might be because of how deeply it resonated with me, but every single second of his portrayal is crafted with amazing precision and I was blown away scene by scene.

You might expect a film like Paterson to get “boring” or drag at some point, but it never does and that is a feat accomplished by Jarmusch. The film just rides this perfect wave for two hours and I can’t express how impressed I was with it because it’s always going somewhere, despite its simple nature. There is one scene involving Adam Driver and a Japanese man on a bench that is still in my head two days after seeing the movie. That’s how good Paterson is.

Remember that Paterson isn’t for everyone. There are no bombs or twists because this is just a beautiful and realistic look into the life of a normal man with a passion, a wife, and an often hilarious dog. However, I think true lovers of cinema will have a collective breath of fresh air after leaving the theater because this was a beautiful experience that celebrates the beauty in the seemingly mundane. I think Paterson is a genuinely flawless masterpiece.

Grade: A+

[carriejonesbooks]

When I was a kid at Bates College, I spent a lot of my time feeling like less. My family had been kind of poor after my step-father died. My nana would stand in line to get us big orange blocks of commodity cheese for the week to supplement our $30 grocery budget Every  week my mom would yell at her that we didn’t need that. She always took it.

My mom didn’t answer the phone because she was so afraid of credit card companies calling.  She’d make me do it and lie that she wasn’t there.

I still hate answering the phone, even the cell phone, even when it has caller ID.

Anyway, when I went to college I wanted to forget all that. I wanted to be an intellectual like everyone else. I wanted to have gone to private school in Manhattan or Conneticut, have a summer home in the Hamptons and clothes that weren’t from K-Mart, which was sort of the WalMart equivalent back then, but worse.

I got over all that because I knew it was pretty shallow. What I had a harder time getting over was class issues that had less to do with materialism and more to do with hatred and intellectual history.

In one of my directing classes, one of the sexier straight guys actually announced about Beckett, “People who are not wealthy don’t care about this. A truck driver doesn’t watch public television or listen to NPR. They don’t care, they’re too busy humping and eating and drinking.”

My dad was a truck driver. He watched public television. He listened to NPR. I didn’t want to think about him humping. He ate food. He didn’t drink. His parents had been prohibitionists.

In one of my playwrighting classes the professor announced, “The working people of this country don’t give a shit about nuclear power. They don’t give a shit about a man of color.”

When I was in elementary school my dad would bring him with him to protest the same nuclear power plant that my step dad was helping to build. He helped me try to get New Hampshire to recognize Martin Luther King Day and do a hundred other civil rights things. He cared.

And one of my college friends would love to say, “Carrie is too poor to be pro intellectual.”

He’s a minister now. That still doesn’t make what he said right.

And one of my female poetry teachers told me over and over again, her voice trilling up with her patrician accent, “Carrie, you have the potential to be a poet, but your voice is too raw, not refined, not artistic enough.”

My voice was poor. My cadence was public school. I was not from rich. Every sentence I spoke showed that.

They still do.

Those are just four of the incidents that made me both angry and intimidated and focused, but in the back of my head it just inflamed my self doubt. I could never be a poet because I wasn’t wealthy, private-school educated, my parents weren’t intellectuals. I could never move people with words because my words were too stark and my sentences too short. I would never fit in because I didn’t have the background that most of the other students had.

And then two things happened. I read Sherman Alexie, a not-wealthy Spokane and Coeur d’Alene who despite his issues with women, impacted me positively. Maybe because I never met him.

And I met Seamus Heaney in real life.

Seamus Heaney came to our college at the invitation of Robert Farnsworth, who was an awesome poet and professor. He met with students, he gave a reading and we all got to hang out with him at a reception.

“I can’t go,” I told my boyfriend at the time.

He bit into his pizza. He was always eating pizza. “Why not?”

“Because it’s Seamus Heaney,” I answered staring at the little bits of sausage on the pizza before I plucked them off.

“So?”

“Seamus Heaney!”

“So?”

I didn’t know how to explain. Seamus Heaney was THE poet, the Nobel Prize winner. He was Irish for God’s sake. Those people were gifted with words. They had so many amazing poets… Heaney, Yeats, Wilde, Clarke, Moore. I was from New Hampshire. We had Robert Frost but pretty much every New England state tried to claim him.

Heaney wrote things like:

“A hunger-striker’s father

stands in the graveyard dumb.

The police widow in veils

faints at the funeral home.

History says, Don’t hope

on this side of the grave.

But then, once in a lifetime

the longed for tidal wave

of justice can rise up,

and hope and history rhyme.”

You will regret it if you don’t go,” my boyfriend said. “I’m going to just be playing Leisure Suit Larry anyway.”

So, I went, as anxious as if I was going on stage myself. Heaney transfixed me with his amazing baritone and bear-like presence. And his words… Of course his words… And when I met him afterwards, I was terrified until he grabbed my hand in his and said, “So you are a poet?”

And I said, “No.”

And all he did was nod and say, “Oh, yes you are.”

But in his eyes was this knowing, this connection, and maybe it wasn’t really there. Maybe I just saw it because I wanted him to understand me, because I wanted someone to get who I was and who I wanted to be. Or maybe not?

I don’t know, but one second later my professor said, “Oh, yes she is. I told you about her. She is like you.”

And then one of them said something about growing up not wealthy and I can’t remember the exact words, but what I do remember is that I finally felt understood. Later, I looked up Seamus Heaney’s past, about how his dad was a farmer and neither of his parents were big on words really, not in the intellectual way that everyone in college seemed to be. I found out that he was like me a little bit not because he was a poet and I was trying so desperately hard to write just one decent poem, but because we were both human, that we both came from humble places, that we both looked in people’s eyes when we said hello.

And that was enough for me. That was enough for me to believe in myself.

Seamus Heaney performed a miracle when I met him. He made me believe that I could be whatever the hell I wanted to be and that it didn’t matter how hard I had to fight or work or not fit in. What mattered was that I wanted the miracle of being a writer, of metamorphosis from Carrie the poor neurotic kid from Bedford, New Hampshire into Carrie Jones, the neurotic best-selling author who lives on the coast of Maine.

He gave hope and miracles in his poems and in his person and I am so thankful for his existence and so sorry for the world’s loss.

“The main thing is to write

for the joy of it. Cultivate a work-lust

that imagines its haven like your hands at night

dreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast.

You are fasted now, light-headed, dangerous.

Take off from here. And don’t be so earnest.”

  I wrote this post back in 2013 when Seamus Heaney died, but in one of my student packet’s this week, I referenced Heaney and then yesterday I saw this Liam Neeson video (randomly) where he was talking about Heaney, so… there you go. I’ve reposted it.

Here’s Seamus Heaney reading his own poem, “Blackberry Picking.”

  Do Good Wednesday

Scary, right?

People are fixing it.

You can help with poetry and kids. These images are from Get Lit’s website and Get Lit is making a difference.

“Get Lit was founded in 2006 after Diane Luby Lane created a one-woman show about the power of words and toured colleges with iconic Chicano poet Jimmy Santiago Baca. After the show closed, she couldn’t bear the thought of cutting off the work completely. She started teaching classic and spoken word poetry in two high schools, Fairfax and Walt Whitman. When the semester ended… the students wouldn’t leave. They insisted on meeting after school. The rest is history. Today, the curriculum has expanded to almost 100 schools, and the Get Lit Players are the most watched poets on the internet. Curriculum requests flow in from Mexico to New Zealand.”

Get Lit “uses poetry to increase literacy, empower youth, and inspire communities.”

Get Lit works – 98% of Get Lit Players go to college, and 70% get scholarships!

Here are Get Lit’s specific needs and how you can get involved.

  Writing News

Carrie’s  super excited about the upcoming TIME STOPPERS book coming out this August.

This middle grade fantasy series happens in Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor, Maine and it’s all about friendship and magic and kids saving their magical town.

An imaginative blend of fantasy, whimsy, and suspense, with a charming cast of underdog characters . . . This new fantasy series will entice younger fans of Harry Potter and Percy Jackson.” –  School Library Journal

  “Sticks the landing . . . The world building is engaging . . . between the decidedly wonderful residents and the terrifying monsters who plague them.” –  BCCB

  “Amid the magic, spells, adventure, and weirdness of this fantasy are embedded not-so-subtle life lessons about kindness, friendship, and cooperation.” –  Booklist

  ���A wild and fresh take on fantasy with an intriguing cast of characters. Dangerous and scary and fun all rolled into one. In the words of Eva the dwarf, I freaking loved it!” –  Lisa McMann, New York Times bestselling author of The Unwanteds series

  “Effervescent, funny, and genuine.” –  Kirkus Reviews

It’s quirky. It’s awesome. It’s full of heart. You should go by the first two books now. 🙂

  Time Stoppers

Time Stopper Series

Time Stoppers Front and Back Covers – US versions

CARRIE’S BOOKS

For a complete round-up of Carrie’s 16-or-so books, check out her website. And if you like us, or our podcast, or just want to support a writer, please buy one of those books, or leave a review on a site like Amazon. Those reviews help. It’s all some weird marketing algorhthym from hell, basically.

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Love

The Poet Who Saw Me – Wednesday Writing Wisdom When I was a kid at Bates College, I spent a lot of my time feeling like less.