balanced on the edge

Anybody’s Child from christine swint on Vimeo.

This is a video of a poem I wrote called “Anybody’s Child.” The inspiration to write it came after watching the CNN documentary, “Atlanta Child Murders.”

I lived in the Atlanta area around the time of the murders, in the late 70s and early 80s, but the poem comes more from my experiences as a mother, and how I can identify with the grief the mothers of these murdered children continue to feel.

Many thanks to  poet Michelle McGrane, author of peony moon, for compiling an exhaustive list of poetry picks for 2009. Michelle posted nine days of readers’ top-three poetry collections of 2009. You can find my picks here.

Although the three books listed were top on my list the day I sent Michelle my selections, I could easily have added others. Each time I went to peony moon to see what the latest collections were, I thought of other books I could have listed, such as Robin Kemp’s fabulous This Pagan Heaven.

Kemp’s collection has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and well deserves to win.

I’d also like to thank Barry Harris, editor of the Tipton Poetry Journal, and Katie Kowalski, assistant editor, for including my poem “Everything is a Sign” among their nominations for the Pushcart Prize for 2009. I also need to give Read Write Poem their props, since my idea to write the poem came from one of their writing prompts.

Here’s a complete list of the poems the Tipton Poetry Journal nominated this year:

via angelfire.com

Poet and editor Sam Rasnake has published Karen Head’s poetry project at his online poetry and art journal, Blue Fifth Review. Read the exquisite corpse poem, “Monumental,” which she directed from her perch atop the Fourth Plinth on Trafalgar Square in London. She also includes process notes about how she views art and collaboration.

I played a very small role in the project by writing one of the lines in the exquisite corpse poem. Even still, it was exciting to share in this digital experience. Although we each could hear Karen talking and see her in real time via the web cam, we communicated to her through twitter, sending her our lines after she wrote to tell us who was next. By the end of the hour, my T-shirt was damp with sweat, and I only had one line to write!

Posted via web from christineswint’s posterous

Many thanks to Helen Losse and Phoebe Kate Foster, editors of The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, for including two of my poems in their fall line-up of poetry. It’s gratifying to see the poems begin a life outside the confines of my computer’s files. If you have a chance, read the Southern Legitimacy Statements–they’re very entertaining.

My poems are titled “Outside the City’s Perimeter,”dedicated to Atlanta poet Rupert Fike, and “If Ophelia were from Georgia.”

via flickr.com

Today is day six (for me) of the Poetry Postcard Project. I wrote in response to a poem by Lucia Perillo titled ‘The Crows Start Demanding Royalties,’ from her collection Luck is Luck. The poem was sent to me by my Poetry Swap partner, a pen-pal activity Dustin Brookshire has created. Thanks to my new friend from the great state of Washington for sharing such an amazing poem! Lucia Perillo is the recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant, and it shows. Her poems are witty, insightful, and way beyond my meager capabilities. But I keep trying, because writing poems is fun. Especially poems about crows.

Why the evening gown? My postcard shows a fashion model wearing a long gown, running across a city street. It’s sort of about crows, sort of about women and what they wear.

This Crow is not a Fashion Model
in response to Lucia Perillo

This crow doesn’t traipse across Manhattan streets wearing a strapless taffeta gown designed by Vera Wang, nor does she wear Manolo Blahnik stilettos. This crow sports wooden shoes painted blood red, black jeans and a sooty vest. This crow stains her feathers the color of shoe-polish and cakes it with bee’s wax to spike it in a Mohawk. This crow dances the Merengue in a circle with the others from her murder. They flap their wings in a herky-jerky manner and step on each others’ toes when they hop step to the left or the right. Such lack of grace prompts piercing screeches from the murder. This crow does not eat salads.

Posted via web from christineswint’s posterous

via en.fundacionmedinaceli.org

I based a poem on a detail from this painting by El Greco, titled ‘La Sagrada Familia.’ The postcard shows only Mary’s face.

Detail of La Sagrada Familia
after El Greco

What you see is my face
below a psychedelic nimbus,
hair held in place under a lace mantilla,
eyes downcast, skin like cream,
lips and robes stained
the color of ripe berries.

What you don’t see is the infant
held to my breast, his fingers
entwined with mine.
I wish I could show him to you,
but he’s been cropped from my story;
he’s soil, cosmic dust, words on a page.

***
I hope no one takes this poem as sacrilegious, although I suppose there’s no way around that it is. I’m thinking of how Mary would feel, having her son taken from her. If I were Mary, and very bitter, I might feel this way.

Posted via web from christineswint’s posterous

Below is a flier announcing riverbabble 15. I have a short fiction piece included. It’s a few days after the solstice, but the evening light is still with us, a nice time to read. Here’s a direct link to my piece, ‘Dusk.’

Celebrate the summer solstice

and start your summer reading with

riverbabble15

Bloomsday issue

is now online at

http://iceflow.com/riverbabble/Welcome.html

Featuring

FICTION

Margot Comstock, Sara McAulay, Bev Vines-Haines, Patsy Covington, Kyle Hemmings, Rick Spuler, Thomas Kearnes, Andrew M. Lopas, Ward Jones, Marjorie Carlson Davis

POETRY

Rafael Jesús González, Francine Witte, Anthony Adrian Pino, Julene Tripp Weaver, Charles Clifford Brooks III, Luigi Monteferrante, Jason Price Everett, Paul Lobo Portugés, J. Bradley

PROSE POEMS / FLASH FICTION

Doug Mathewson, Christine Swint, Andrew M. Lopas

COVER PHOTOGRAPHY

Christopher Novak

Visit us here:

http://iceflow.com/riverbabble/Welcome.html

As part of the MFA program I’m starting, I need to read and ‘explicate’ many poems. Although I have three years to complete the readings, I’m beginning now because I’m a nerdy book worm, un ratón de biblioteca, as they say in Spanish.

To make the project more interesting, I thought I’d share some of my observations of the poems I read. Let me make one disclaimer: I’ve never been a scholarly sort of person, and even though I’ve been a teacher and a student all my life, I’m more apt to share my gut reactions rather than a true literary analysis. Unless a professor requires it, I doubt I’ll read what real literary critics have to say about the poems. Hope that’s OK with everyone.

Popular British Ballads begin my list. Reading these ballads is like getting a glimpse into long ago daily life in the British Isles. The first one I read is titled Lord Randal. It’s Scottish, from the 1500s, passed down to us by Francis James Childs, who compiled and edited The English and Scottish Ballads, 1892-1898. You can read every single one of them right here.

The end words of each stanza are the same: son, man, soon, down, and in fact each line ends with the same phrase or question, because it’s a song.

A young man named Lord Randal is asking his mother to make his bed because he is sick at heart and he soon will die, both from heartache and from poisoning.

The mother goes on to ask him what he’s going to leave behind to all his loved ones. At first those stanzas made the mother appear to me like a mercenary sort of mom, the kind who ‘knows the price of everything and the value of nothing’ (Oscar Wilde’s definition of a cynic). I thought, is she kidding? The kid is dying and she’s already divvying up the loot?

But more than likely death was more a part of everyday life then, and practical matters like wills were discussed openly. The talk of leaving behind worldly possessions also adds to the pathos of the story, that such a handsome young man, and wealthy too, is dying.

Of course he says the girl who has double crossed him will only get ‘hell and fire.’

In addition to this version I found on Youtube, there are also Appalachian singers who’ve recorded many of these ballads, as the songs were passed down to them by their ancestors.

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Here’s a version I found on Youtube by poet and painter Michael Foster:

And here’s the ballad:

Lord Randal

“O where ha you been, Lord Randal, my son?
And where ha you been, my handsome young man?”
“I ha been at the greenwood; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I’m wearied wi hunting, and fain wad lie down.”

“An wha met ye there, Lord Randal, my son?
And wha met ye there, my handsome young man?”
“O I met wi my true-love; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I’m wearied wi huntin, and fain wad lie down.”

“And what did she give you, Lord Randal, My son?
And wha did she give you, my handsome young man?”
“Eels fried in a pan; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I’m wearied wi huntin, and fein wad lie down.”

“And what gat your leavins, Lord Randal my son?
And wha gat your leavins, my handsome young man?”
“My hawks and my hounds; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I’m wearied wi huntin, and fein wad lie down.”

“And what becam of them, Lord Randal, my son?
And what becam of them, my handsome young man?
“They stretched their legs out and died; mother mak my bed soon,
For I’m wearied wi huntin, and fain wad lie down.”

“O I fear you are poisoned, Lord Randal, my son!
I fear you are poisoned, my handsome young man!”
“O yes, I am poisoned; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I’m sick at the heart, and fain wad lie down.”

“What d’ye leave to your mother, Lord Randal, my son?
What d’ye leave to your mother, my handsome young man?”
“Four and twenty milk kye; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I’m sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie down.”

“What d’ye leave to your sister, Lord Randal, my son?
What d’ye leave to your sister, my handsome young man?”
“My gold and my silver; mother mak my bed soon,
For I’m sick at the heart, an I fain wad lie down.”

“What d’ye leave to your brother, Lord Randal, my son?
What d’ye leave to your brother, my handsome young man?”
“My houses and my lands; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I’m sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie down.”

“What d’ye leave to your true-love, Lord Randal, my son?
What d’ye leave to your true-love, my handsome young man?”
“I leave her hell and fire; mother mak my bed soon,
For I’m sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie down.”

Fiona Robyn has posted a short poem I wrote for her blog, A Handful of Stones. Each day Fiona posts a different ‘small stone,’ an observation of the world or a fleeting thought or feeling. As Fiona says, “a small stone is a polished moment of paying proper attention.” The one from me she included is called Coiffure. Thanks, Fiona!

Fiona is a poet and a novelist. Her debut novel, The Letters, is now available through Amazon. Her next novel, The Blue Handbag, will be released in August of this year. Both books are with Snowbooks.

Karen Head just sent word that her new book, Sassing, has just been released by Wordtech Press. This is Karen Head’s second collection this year, coming after My Paris Year (All Nations Press, 2009). She very generously shared three poems from My Paris Year in the first issue of ouroboros review.

One aspect of Karen Head’s work I admire is her ability to combine autobiographical elements with scientific or cultural topics. One of my favorite poems from My Paris Year (which I had the pleasure of hearing read by the poet), is Le Gran K, about how the official French kilo is losing mass each year. Of course, like all great poems, it’s not about what it seems at face value, but rather it’s about the importance of even the most negligible amounts of something.

I’m looking forward to hearing Karen Head read from her new collection, but readers in the UK will have the first chance, as she is traveling to England this summer. You can find her reading schedule on her blog, Karen Head: Poetic Acts in a Digital World.