Category Archives: Great Poems Online

Karen Winterburn: “Aporia of the Gift”


Karen Winterburn is an emerging poet who’s won several awards from the Utmost Christian Writers site. In addition to the first prize in this year’s Novice Christian Poetry Contest, she took home the award for best rhyming poem for “Aporia of the Gift“, a polished yet natural-sounding piece of formal writing that blends Derrida’s philosophy with echoes of George Herbert’s “Love Bade Me Welcome“. She’s kindly permitted me to reprint it below. You can also read my critique of her poem “Call Out of Exile” at Winning Writers.

Aporia of the Gift

An “aporia” is a paradoxical impasse. The philosopher Jacques Derrida claims that true gift-giving is an aporia, an impossible contradiction in terms because it always implies self-interest and expects a return. A mere exchange of equally valued items is not true gift-giving. But God shows us what true gift-giving is. He is both the Giver and the Gift. It is impossible for us to reciprocate with a gift of equal value. But he doesn’t lavish us with gifts to shame our poverty. As long as we are trying to pay him back and settle the account, we cannot freely receive what he offers us. If we accept our poverty before him, we will see that his Gift to us is union with him: union of Giver and receiver and Gift. This union is the only solution to the aporia of the gift. And only by virtue of our union with God can we freely give to and receive from each other.

What I have owed in love I’ve always paid,
measured out in small change—nickel and dime.
I’m nothing if not just and fair in trade.
I am that woman holding up the line:
I calculate the cost of Bread and Wine,
exhaust my coin while still the Loaf expands;
Wine inundates and shifts the paradigm:
overflows it; elevates, countermands
and understates the debt it takes out of my hands.

I want to pay my bill! I estimate
it’s astronomical; it multiplies
as Love devises to inebriate
and fill me past my means to amortize
my liability. I agonize,
liquidate my estate, consign the lot
to such a Love: who does not itemize
or keep accounts or hold the Gift he’s got
on lay-away till I can pay sans caveate—

—to such a Love as this. No recompense
for such unheard-of Love is on report,
nor have I anything of consequence
to make return. My whole life comes up short:
my yearning is a poverty that thwarts
my moves, my airs, and leaves me impotent,
with bare and baffled heart. No speechless sort,
I stammer at the stop I’ve reached, consent
to yeild, receive the Feast—to eat and be outspent.

Love quiets me. Love sits me on his knee.
“You are yourself,” says he, “all I desire.”
Might Love be satisfied in colloquy?
We wink and whisper till my eyes acquire
his own spark. My darkened heart now afire
with borrowed Light bestows itself and—swift
to cede—receives itself! Might Love conspire
to grant affinity to me, uplift
this heart to make it one with Giver and the Gift?

New Poem by Conway: “See You Around”


In this new poem, my prison pen pal “Conway” speaks for all incarcerated men and women who don’t get to see their children and grandchildren growing up. Mary Oliver’s famous lines “Tell me, what is it you plan to do/with your one wild and precious life?”, often read as a call to personal growth, take on new political meaning for families like Conway’s. He has only one life, one chance to experience a daughter’s wedding, a grandchild’s birth. These children, too, will never get a second chance to grow up without the wounds of father loss. Do we, as a society, recognize that their lives are “wild and precious”, too, or do we throw them away with misguided tough-on-crime policies?

See You Around

Empty words, fanned out across the light
in their plight for communication
on the valley of my tongue.

You listened with a stern expression, drifting
without knowing exactly why your thoughts
would hang
like a kite, in the warm summer breeze.

A simple nod or bite of your knuckle
assured me, that we
were touching each other sufficiently
through the transparent partition.

Maybe, this is how our world was supposed to be
just maybe, that’s all we will ever know again.

I raise my hand-up slowly
like a child in class
eager to please the teacher
yet, unsure of an answer;
Place my aging palm onto the glass
then a smaller palm appeared
matched against mine.

Time was a singular straight line
that separated us, our hunger
unraveling like a plate of spaghetti.

Time was a calm sea
that floated over me,
that I drank thankfully
whenever you came to visit,
though the thought of waiting, another day
through this constant repetition
remains more terrifying than the emptiness.

My mind rewinds you walking away
replete again-n-again incomplete
when all that I’m allowed to do
is watch you leave.

For as long as we’ve been kept apart
is as long as I still have to stay…

****
In his latest letter, Conway also shared some thoughts about the meaning of his poems “Leap Frog” and “Proof of Perfection”, which I posted here last month:

Actually I feel that “Organized Religion” or at least the Hierarchy involved in running such an Oxymoron are very much to blame for the direction our Society is heading, or shall I say the Stance that our Society has adopted concerning “criteria for participation”.

Because of some over-zealot Scripture definitions of How to be “Correct” disciples of God, or the Religious Dogma being organized…

…[The poem] “Proof of Perfection” came first and then upon further reflection, I wrote “Leap Frog” to help continue the piece.

You hit the nail on the head as usual: Justice or Vengeance and which is really morally correct. Who has the Right to make that decision

Like when the Crucifixion was decided

After the warrant was written.

The Cross was burnished, as it is still being examined (carried around in effigy).

The Thorns (nettle) is wrapped around his head to Symbolize Constant pain or incite Thoughts of the Judgment, it is an outrageous reminder that we all have a brain and must use it.

The Bloody spear smeared on the doormat was sealing our fate because not a Soul Stood up to fight this travesty.

They were only “Whispered questions“.

Afraid to question “Authority/Dogma”.

Who will fight to change it, if nobody Speaks up or Takes the same punishment. “Ths twisted blow/We’ll never know.”

Then the “Pagan eclipse” labeled a heretic if you don’t agree fully to the sentence, the punishment. You become a the nonbeliever Pagan — the dark side locked out of the Church. So you “fall through the floor” — straight to Hell.

But, the Hollow reed is there, after its death. The reed is turned into a flute and so, its death has been turned into music which harvested the Sorrow. It remains alive. Metamorphosed into something glorious, except only from our living breathing life has placed holes in its carcass. Our lungs “Broken breath” bring it back to life. It “sings a satisfactory song”.

But this same instrument can be used as a Switch to cause pain — discipline. “Bent willows seeking flesh” verse — more the afterthought of the “Proof of Perfection” that connects to “Leap Frog” because of the explanation (hence the title). So, we can recognize reincarnation or life after death, in nature.

“Imagine, what His hand and throat began” —  Is He proud of his Creation? are we not being observed for our humanity, our free will to do great things, this Glorious Struggle.

The fluttering moths are of course metaphor and indicate our attraction to the source of our existence. The Truth, the turmoil, the strength.

“The Search for the crack in the Curtain’s narrow track.” Wizard of Oz reference to the person behind the Curtain. (is it real) is it faith

“The Tears diminish in the theft of a wilting Heart” “Bent willows” punishment — Rejection and pain from going against the grain. Not blindly following Mans/Authority boundaries/Rules.

Finally “to slit the throat of silent Sacrifice” “Toss the herded cross” — No longer Idolized or burnished but Rejected Ideologically. It becomes outright animosity, because if you are to believe the “Norm” the “Self appointed/anointed” Zealots Ideology then you have no other but “Trail to the bitter end”.

But the Truth is in the Hollow Reed still singing and that is the “Leap Frog” to the “Proof of Perfection”. The faith in forgiveness in the search. The Compliment [sic] that you are you and whichever path you are on is proof that God Loves your Choices and Continues to Bless your life with His Song. Your song’s like a beacon.


Amen, friend.

Online Literary Roundup: Stickman Review, The Post Office Poems


There’s no shortage of great contemporary writing online. Here are two sites I just discovered today:

Stickman Review, a biannual online literary journal edited by Anthony Brown, publishes memorable literary prose, poetry, and artwork. Their latest issue, Vol. 8 No. 2, features a powerful story by Leah Erickson. “Judy Garland” depicts the relationship between a pre-teen boy and his troubled, fragile mother, as they wait amid a crowd of fans at Grand Central Station for the movie star to arrive for the premiere of “The Wizard of Oz”. Erickson captures the psychological darkness and interiority of adolescence, with a sexual subtext that is never made crudely explicit, as the boy, like his fellow Americans on the cusp of World War II, struggles to distinguish hopeful fantasy from dangerous mania.

Other fine entries in this issue include poems by Gale Acuff and Jackie Bartley.

The Post Office Poems blog is an interactive, ongoing poetry project highlighting Fall City, Washington, and the Snoqualmie Valley, written by an anonymous author and posted weekly on the bulletin board at the Fall City Post Office.
The author explains:

The idea for the Post Office Poems began with a simple posting of a poem on the bulletin board at the Fall City Post Office on October 6, 2009 by an anonymous poet. Everyone in town has a post office box, there is no delivery within the city as it is pretty much out in the boonies, “rural”. When you pick up your mail after hours you enter the back door which is always unlocked. To the left on the wall is a large bulletin board with a typical assortment of small notices for rentals, items for sale, upcoming events and business cards. Once you read these, the next time you come in the reading selection becomes pretty boring. There is nothing else on the walls, though I’ve noticed lately as you come in the door the wind has blown a large handful of brilliant orange, red, yellow and brown leaves across the floor.

Thus an idea was born to enliven the lobby experience for townsfolk. Once a week a poem is posted on the board. The first was called “Four Feathers from Fall City”, it was posted on a Tuesday night about 9:30 pm with three white tacks, on a sheet of white typing paper. When I had just pushed in the last tack I heard a car pull up. I looked out the door and there was a cop car just outside. Was I breaking some unknown Postal Service rule or federal bulletin board law? As I walked out the door, an officer in full uniform walked in and said, “Hello there, how are you?”

I said, “Hello, fine thank you.” and nervously left. I wanted the poems to be anonymous. When people of Fall City read them, I want the poem and it’s images to be exerienced and enjoyed. This project is interactive. A piece of plain white paper, a poem, the quiet lobby, and then whatever happens next in the reading, the feelings of the reader, etc. will be a discovery. Something new. A gift.

I was particularly moved by the entry “Seven Pigeons and the White Angel”, a tribute to a young man who drowned in the river. The author handles a potentially sentimental subject with subtle yet deep emotion and a gift for describing the sublime landscape of the Northwest. 

William “Wild Bill” Taylor: “Bored in Sunday School”


Taylor, a Winning Writers subscriber, often emails me his poems about the spiritual disillusionment of the Vietnam generation. This latest entry is one of my favorites. Read my critique of his poem “Corpus Christi” on our website.

Bored in Sunday School

In better times,
we would have been best friends,

growing up with pals down the street,
with our Davy Crockett hats, and our Johnny
    Unitas helmets,

after school was our first attempts at understanding
the head and shoulder movements of the opposite sex,

such mysterious lamentations of nature,
we also were becoming bored in Sunday school,
figuring all this talk of morals was bad for our
    young souls,
we had worlds and mountains to conquer,
our chapter in history had yet to be written,
all of us could do it better than
it had been done before!

the afternoon matinee became the Saturday night
    chick
flick,
where we suddenly were consumed with our looks,
    and if our
hair and nose were the correct lengths for our species,

we did not care, in the beginning, that our lovers were
    the fruitful results
of aloofness, we held them secure in the dreamland
    epitaph of insecure country boys
who prayed, not to the Sunday god, but that deity who
    ran naked from

the Garden of Eden,

when these starlets whispered “I love you”, we were
    certain
our aging would stop,

those blue eyes held us dear,
their ample breastplate provided cover,
their legs, wrapped round us,

until the next sunlight
awakened the merging of passion,

and the future,
was a bitter cough drop,
yet, swallowed,

funny, the old drunk told me,
nothing stays wonderful, forever…

Poemeleon “Gender Issue” Now Online


Mystery boxes! Ironic diagrams! And at least one plastic vagina… It’s the latest issue of the online journal Poemeleon, the Gender Issue, with poems from award-winning authors including Rane Arroyo, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Jennifer Sweeney, and yours truly.

Other highlights include a review of Letters to the World: Poems from the Women’s Poetry Listserv. This lively and erudite online discussion group, better known as Wom-Po, was crucial in helping me transition from the 9-to-5 cubicle world to the more solitary and unstructured life of the writer-entrepreneur, back in 2003. Wom-Po demonstrates the potential of the Internet to create a community for women writers who may not have opportunities for face-to-face mentoring. (Be warned, though – the discussion is so active that reading and responding to the messages may consume your entire day.)

Gjertrud Schnackenberg: “Supernatural Love”


A good Christian poem and a good formal poem: rare accomplishments that the wonderfully named Gjertrud Schnackenberg combines in this piece, reprinted by permission from the blog of The Best American Poetry anthology series edited by David Lehman.

Supernatural Love

My father at the dictionary stand
Touches the page to fully understand
The lamplit answer, tilting in his hand

His slowly scanning magnifying lens,
A blurry, glistening circle he suspends
Above the word ‘Carnation’. Then he bends

So near his eyes are magnified and blurred,
One finger on the miniature word,
As if he touched a single key and heard

A distant, plucked, infinitesimal string,
“The obligation due to every thing
That’ s smaller than the universe.” I bring

My sewing needle close enough that I
Can watch my father through the needle’s eye,
As through a lens ground for a butterfly

Who peers down flower-hallways toward a room
Shadowed and fathomed as this study’s gloom
Where, as a scholar bends above a tomb

To read what’s buried there, he bends to pore
Over the Latin blossom. I am four,
I spill my pins and needles on the floor

Trying to stitch “Beloved” X by X.
My dangerous, bright needle’s point connects
Myself illiterate to this perfect text

I cannot read. My father puzzles why
It is my habit to identify
Carnations as “Christ’s flowers,” knowing I

Can give no explanation but “Because.”
Word-roots blossom in speechless messages
The way the thread behind my sampler does

Where following each X, I awkward move
My needle through the word whose root is love.
He reads, “A pink variety of Clove,

Carnatio, the Latin, meaning flesh.”
As if the bud’s essential oils brush
Christ’s fragrance through the room, the iron-fresh

Odor carnations have floats up to me,
A drifted, secret, bitter ecstasy,
The stems squeak in my scissors, Child, it’s me,

He turns the page to “Clove” and reads aloud:
“The clove, a spice, dried from a flower-bud.”
Then twice, as if he hasn’t understood,

He reads, “From French, for clou, meaning a nail.”
He gazes, motionless,”Meaning a nail.”
The incarnation blossoms, flesh and nail,

I twist my threads like stems into a knot
And smooth “Beloved”, but my needle caught
Within the threads, Thy blood so dearly bought,

The needle strikes my finger to the bone.
I lift my hand, it is myself I’ve sewn,
The flesh laid bare, the threads of blood my own,

I lift my hand in startled agony
And call upon his name, “Daddy Daddy” –
My father’s hand touches the injury

As lightly as he touched the page before,
Where incarnation bloomed from roots that bore
The flowers I called Christ’s when I was four.

New Poems by Conway: “Leap Frog” and “Proof of Perfection”


My prison pen pal “Conway” has been experimenting with the prose-poem format while continuing to develop his gift for lyric poetry. I’ve been writing to him about my struggles with religious concepts of sacrifice and submission as I see them being misused in the church. I see those discussions reflected in his latest offerings, below.

Leap Frog

Imagine, what His hand and throat began
through all of the silences we chopped out
in front of our father’s shining eyes.

I’ve no need to sing it anymore
or finish the melted words melody.
We can all see & smell around the burning nights nettle,

as fluttering moths fill this scene’s backdoor screens
tendering an irresistible invitation to attack
in search of a crack in the curtains’ narrow track.

While chance packs another perishable skull
tight enough to subsist, in the spiritual
shimmering lushness, of dawn’s faithful light.
 
The tears diminish in the theft of a wilting heart
bent willows seeking flesh, have wrought
every salt-sprinkled drop on our pillows;

To slit the silent throat of sacrifice,
tossed the herded cross, lost in prayers petition.
But it was broken breath,

following the trail to the bitter end
of this deep ravine, winding its way
south of Heaven…

****

Proof of Perfection

Do you ever stare at your finger
wonder,
if it could pull the trigger
or write the warrant
for the Judge’s execution

Imagine
when a melting word
had burnished the herded cross

His head, was wrapped in nettle
from ear to ear
But,
who really smeared the bloody spear
all over the doormat of our existence?

whispered questions
what is this shimmering silence,
this twisted blow, we’ll never know

the pagan eclipse, locked us all
out of an over-exercised church door
falling through the floor
unsure of our homeland,
of a hollow reed
still singing a satisfactory song

long after its death
dancing among the barbed smiles
that stole our breath…

Wednesday Random Song: “Brighten the Corner Where You Are”


Ina Duley Ogdon was a Midwestern wife and mother and Sunday School teacher during the early 20th century. Ogdon had ambitions of becoming a preacher but family responsibilities intervened. Her poem “Brighten the Corner Where You Are” was written in 1912 while she was caring for her sick father. Set to music by Charles H. Gabriel, the tune became a nationwide hit after evangelist Billy Sunday made it a staple of his revival meetings.

I first heard it this week on Enlighten 34, the Southern gospel station on XM Radio, in a lively rendition by The Statesmen which I wasn’t able to find on YouTube. (It’s featured on this album.) Instead, enjoy this old-school version by the Criterion Quartet:

This interesting 10-minute video tells the story of Ina’s life and the inspiration for the song, as well as its subsequent cultural reception.

1. Do not wait until some deed of greatness you may do,
Do not wait to shed your light afar;
To the many duties ever near you now be true,
Brighten the corner where you are.

* Refrain:
Brighten the corner where you are!
Brighten the corner where you are!
Someone far from harbor you may guide across the bar;
Brighten the corner where you are!

2. Just above are clouded skies that you may help to clear,
Let not narrow self your way debar;
Though into one heart alone may fall your song of cheer,
Brighten the corner where you are.

3. Here for all your talent you may surely find a need,
Here reflect the bright and Morning Star;
Even from your humble hand the Bread of Life may feed,
Brighten the corner where you are.

Lyrics courtesy of the Timeless Truths free online library. (Click the “midi” music note icon on their website to hear the tune.)

Mary Ruefle: “A Minor Personal Matter”


Halfway between prose-poems and essays, the offbeat musings in Mary Ruefle’s The Most of It (Wave Books, 2008) take some mundane incident–picking out a garden bench, for instance, or drinking a glass of water–as the starting point for an increasingly strange chain of associations. The original question becomes lost in the narrator’s argument with herself about action versus inaction. As in a Platonic dialogue, the only enlightenment we take away is an awareness of how muddled our concepts are. Or, to use a more modern example, Ruefle is like the toddler in the “Buttons and Mindy” cartoons who perpetually reduces adults to sputtering frustration by responding “Why?” to everything they say. Just when this aimless demolition seems to have gone on too long, Ruefle ends the book with the astonishing piece “A Half-Sketched Head”, in which we see that the preceding diversions served the same purpose as Zen koans, to humble the chattering mind and make room for spiritual clarity.

Rather than spoil the journey by giving away the ending, I’ve chosen to reprint a different selection from The Most of It. (Thanks to Wave Books for permission to quote this here.) Last year I was going through a serious “Why write?” crisis when I happened to read Ruefle’s book. “A Minor Personal Matter” oddly comforted me like nothing else. Perhaps there is no good reason to write, i.e. to exist: okay then, how do you face that and keep going?

A Minor Personal Matter

For a long time I was a poet. That is, I used to be a poet, for quite a long time in fact, and made my life making poems and teaching persons younger than myself just what this entailed, although I myself had no idea what it entailed, beyond a certain amount of courage and a certain amount of fear, but these amounts were variable and it was not always possible to say in which order they appeared and at any rate it was hard to convey. It was harder and harder to convey, but conveying it became easier and easier and that, too, lent an air of confusion to my days. For instance, many days I did not care about saying any of this, I only cared to say certain things that might cause someone to like me, but of course I never said that. I said only that I cared to say certain things that might cause someone to like the language. This seemed foolish because whether or not someone liked the language they had no choice but to use it. Whether or not the language was beautiful or gruff or strange they had no choice but to use it. So I said I only cared to say certain things that might cause someone to like the world, and being alive in it. Whether the world was beautiful or gruff or strange they had no choice but to live. Yes, I said, you may kill yourself, but that would not be living, you would not be living then. A great many poets killed themselves. This was a problem too insurmountable to even understand, although at times I felt I understood it very closely and this also was part of the problem. The only thing that seemed certain to me was that people who had no choice but to use the language while they were alive had a choice in whether or not they liked me. This was a real choice, one I might be able to persuade them in. And so it seemed to me this reason, the one which sounded most foolish of all (and therefore I never spoke it) was actually the most reasonable of all. Still, occasionally I met people who did not seem to like me no matter what I said or did. And it was not easy to turn away from them because they were the challenge. They were the challenge because they challenged me to like myself even if they did not. That was the challenge–to like myself in spite of all that happened or did not happen to me. It was to face this challenge that I ceased to write poems. Could I like myself if I no longer engaged in an activity I openly declared was the reason I was put on the planet in the first place? Would I find another reason to be on the planet, or could I remain on the planet, with nothing to do and no one to like me, liking myself? I decided to try. I was on the planet with nothing to do and no one to like me. And as soon as I found myself there, I realized I had created the circumstances in which I had begun to write poems in the first place, to the extent I now wander the earth, a ghost, with no intent to write, but carrying a spark in my fingertips, which keeps me in a state of constant fibrillation, a will-o’-the-wisp of stress, art, and the hours.
 

Constantine P. Cavafy: “In Despair”


Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy (1863-1933) is acclaimed for his poems of love and longing. The website Billie Dee’s Electronic Poetry Anthology includes several of his poems translated by Rae Dalven. I particularly appreciated this one, depicting the familiar tragedy of religious guilt coming between two lovers. Which of them is pursuing an illusion? Perhaps both; or perhaps the idealized lover of our imagination, whether human or divine, is a more rewarding prize than the love of an ordinary mortal.

In Despair

He has lost him completely.   And now he is
    seeking
on the lips of    every new lover
the lips of his beloved   in the embrace
of every new lover    he seeks to be deluded
that he is the same lad,   that it it to him he is
    yielding.

He has lost him completely,    as if he had never
    been at all.
For he wanted — so he said —    he wanted to be
    saved
from the stigmatized,   the sick sensual delight;
from the stigmatized,   sensual delight of shame.
There was still time —    as he said — to be saved.

He has lost him completely,   as if he had never
    been at all.
In his imagination,    in his delusions,
on the lips of others   it is his lips he is seeking;
he is longing to feel again   the love he has
    known.