Alarie Tennille's Blog: Alarie's Poetry and Point of View - Posts Tagged "alarie-tennille"

Welcome to my new blog!

I've been celebrating Poetry Month the way I celebrate poetry all year, by reading and writing it. I won't be posting a lot on this blog until I get a larger following.
However, I want to invite you to visit and like my Facebook page for Alarie Tennille - Poet, where I've been posting at least one poem a day this month. Since this is my first post, I'll leave you with my most recently published poem, "Layoff":

http://kentuckyreview.org/poetry/2014...

Layoff


It feels like divorce.
While you popped open
anniversary champagne,
your spouse changed
the locks, siphoned off
the accounts, left you
for a younger model.

You’ve slipped off the axle
of expectation, skidded
into an alternate universe,
wrecked in a pileup that took
out half your friends.

You wake from that familiar
dream of going to work naked
to find yourself stripped
of skin and ego. What to do?

You imitate your smile, pump
up your résumé, and tell the mirror
it’s only a job.

© Alarie Tennille 2014

Please tell me what you'd like to see in my blog.

Thanks for visiting.

Alarie

alt="The Teachers & Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms" border="0" src="https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net..." />The Teachers & Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms by Ron Padgett

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I own at least one book of poetic forms and have used several. I've also looked up individual forms online. This handbook edited by Ron Padgett is the best I've seen. I understand there can be problems getting permissions to reprint poems. This publisher worked that out. There is nothing more frustrating than reading a dry description of a form and list of rhyme schemes (abba cddc...) with no example to make it come alive.
Padgett's book is better for other reasons, too, not the least of which is that he's an entertaining writer and gifted poet. He earned that fifth star by sharing insights on how to get started writing in a particular form, what sorts of topics or tones the form lends itself to, and lists of writers from ancient times to present who have excelled in each form. If you're a teacher or writer thinking you should buy a form handbook, this is the one.



View all my reviews

"Keeping Cool" is one of many poems I've written about my father, a Carolina farm boy who became a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne (WWII). I suppose after dropping from the sky into the Battle of the Bulge, sitting in a burning car seemed like nothing. This poem is in my book, Running Counterclockwise:

Keeping Cool


The used car was a steal
Daddy said. Air conditioning.
So we piled in and headed
for Richmond. Broad Street,
downtown—scalding pavement.
What did we care that traffic
crawled? We enjoyed
the novelty of not sweating.

The woman in the next car
seemed cool, too, as she
asked Mama, “Did you know
you’re on fire?”

Flames shot up from the chassis.
My brother saved himself,
watched from the corner as Mama
turned into Wonder Woman,
yanking me up and over
the front seat.

Now the three of us stood
on the curb yelling at Daddy.
The fireman with a bull horn
yelled, too, “Sir, get out of the car
NOW!” But Daddy just stayed
cool.

Alarie Tennille

© Tennille, first published in Wild Goose Poetry Review

I've reviewed SHE HAS A NAME both on Amazon and in Goodreads, but I wanted to call it out in my blog, too. Poetry rarely finds many readers, and this is a book that needs to be read. It will especially benefit families dealing with autism or other special needs.

Kamilah Aisha Moon writes poignant, accessible, engaging poems no matter what the topic, but SHE HAS A NAME goes way beyond being another collection of good poems. Moon opens the door to her family home and introduces her sister with autism, “1 in 150 now.” She shows how the condition also affects the other sisters, father, mother, teachers, bosses, bullies and, in the end, changes our world.

In our society, it’s taboo to speak of personal heartbreaks. Moon writes, “…I’m from the South, a suburb/where Grief pulls the shades first, stays home if indecent.” Fortunately, she is also a poet and loving sibling who recognizes she must give voice to a sister “with a native tongue of one.” Moon is equally frank in telling of childhood fights (“Her honor saved,/gauze and hydrogen peroxide fizzing/in broken skin.”) and in exposing her adult guilt (“Each visit home frays me,/the price I pay for being able to drive away.”)

Moon never wallows in self-pity. Instead, she invites us to the world family reunion where we each wear a name tag, have a story to tell, and claim each other.

My poem, "Volunteer Vertigo," from my book, RUNNING COUNTERCLOCKWISE, was featured as Your Daily Poem for May 18, 2014. I hope you enjoy it.

http://yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp...

Here's a link to my book review by Denis Low, former Poet Laureate of Kansas

http://www.kansascity.com/entertainme...

I'm pleased to be a featured poet on Houseboat. This is my largest collection of poems online. Check out the beautiful art and photography on this site – lots of inspiration to be found.

http://houseboathouse.blogspot.com/20...

If you're unfamiliar with Bobby McFerrin or simply want the enhanced poetry experience, search "Bobby McFerrin Blackbird" on YouTube.

Bobby McFerrin


swallows
a flute
saxophone
bass
set of drums
didgeridoo
washboard
one flying blackbird
two sopranos
three cloggers
a Volkswagon full of clowns
wind chimes
castanets
Elvis
the lost chord
and tonight’s audience.

© Alarie Tennille 2015

Networking pays off in the poetry world. Like most introverts, I had a hard time accepting this. I'm uncomfortable mingling. However, those other poets aren't true strangers. We have a deep connection through our love of literature. Go ahead and say hello. They won't bite.

Red Eft Review is a brand-new poetry blog/on-line journal. I was honored to be its inaugural poet thanks to networking. Editor Corey Cook used to edit Orange Room Review and published several of my poems. The last time I got ready to submit work there, I learned it was closing down. I wrote a note to share both my appreciation and dismay. Corey told me he planned to start another journal in the future, so I've been watching and waiting.

He wants the same sort of writing he published before. Corey calls it accessible poetry of substance. If that's what you write, visit the site, follow the guidelines, and send him 1-3 previously unpublished poems.

Here are links to the two poems by me

FIRST ISSUE OF RED EFT

http://redeftreview.blogspot.com/2015...

MY SECOND POEM THERE

http://redeftreview.blogspot.com/2015...

Thanks to The Last Brahmin for posing two challenging questions.

(A) What does poetry mean to you?
and
(B) Why do you write poetry?

I found I couldn't really separate the answers. What poetry means to me ties so closely into why I write it. Getting from A to B was a long journey for me, so my answer will wander a bit, too.

My parents were readers. My mother read to me before I could talk, so I was reading on my own as soon as I possibly could. I was also grateful that she continued to read to me after I could read – always something a bit more advanced that she wanted to share like Louisa May Alcott's novels. My mother grew up in the Great Depression generation, when children were required to memorize a lot of poetry (cheap entertainment). She used to recite long humorous poems from memory and taught me scansion of meter long before we touched on that in school, which we barely did.

In other words, literature was in my blood. Poetry is a subset of that. For most of my life, it was a small subset. At 17 I decided I wanted to be a writer, but didn't envision myself as a poet. After about a dozen poetry workshops, I got the wake up call. I've only been publishing poems for the last 10 years and simultaneously reading it by the truckload. You can't write what you don't read.

Mama's scansion lessons paid off. Being able to write rhymed, metered verse paid my living for many years as a greeting card writer. My employer paid for those poetry workshops as a way to reward and improve my writing. It worked, and I certainly feel rewarded! (I learned from Jane Hirshfield, Ed Hirsch, Ted Kooser, and Bob Hicok, just to name a few).

For me, writing poetry is my creative expression, my pleasure, and my vocation. It suits me because my thoughts and interests flutter about. I can write about my childhood in one poem, Monet in the next, followed by vampires. I couldn't face months of writing a long manuscript that required more cohesion. I love the brevity and concision of poetry, both as a writer and reader.

I was interested in art before writing and see poetry as painting with words.

As you can see, there's no stopping me when I launch into chatty writing like this, but I write short poems and put a lot of attention into weeding them.

I might even say that novels and plays are my outer world and sense of adventure. Poetry is my inner sanctum, where I discover and share more about who I am and what it means to be human.