Happy Holidays... all of them

We regret to inform you...

... of a gap in the NM poetry firmament. No more wonderful Wayne's List winging its way here from Las Cruces. Wayne Crawford writes...

During the last decade, Wayne's listserv for writers has helped promote well over one thousand literary events. Alas, there will be no more of Wayne's Literary lists. For health reasons, it must be discontinued.  I want to thank all of you who attended and supported lit events and those who sent information to be included in the lists.  I hope you will continue to seek out these events and continue to support our writers and poets, their publications, and the readings and open mics where they share their work and develop our community.  Wayne

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What better farewell than in his own write... more about Wayne and more poetry links

Heroes
Superman .... of course. I've written a series of poems about him. Here's one that listeners always seem to enjoy.

Clark Kent Takes Off....
Sunday night is the time he colors his hair.
He's tried for years to undo the callick
that twists his hair into one big curl
on his forehead, but thinning, trimming,
graying and spraying haven't loosened its grip.

Last year, the x-rays began blurring a little.
He could still see the big picture
but the little things weren't so keenly
recognizable--pocket knives, for example,
or a stolen key in a breast pocket. He needed
to wear prescription glasses
to read fine print. And the glare of lights
during night flying had never been worse.

He was fine in the air but lift-offs and landings
--painful! Doctor attributed arthritis
to his arches. Of course, the doctor
didn't know about Mr. Kent's secret life,
the burden he placed on his feet, bounding
into space, lifting the weight of the world,
constantly landing on surfaces meant
for rubber tires.

You're strong as an ox, his doctor said.
Fundamentally, there's nothing wrong
with your body, nothing except your nerves.
Your nerves are like steel. You mustn't give
all of your energy to The Daily Planet. Keep it
up, even your strength will dissipate.
You must listen, Mr. Kent. You must relax.

This evening's news headlines
reported a crime spree in Metropolis.
I probably shouldn't reveal this
but Superman woke up today, massaged
his feet, and went back to bed.

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.. also no longer accepting submissions but still online for you to read and enjoy: 

LUNAROSITY Vol. 9. No. 7.

 (not sure about SIN FRONTERAS: Writers Without Borders but will let you know)

TOEFL Poetics

Ryan Daley on Buffalo Poetics writes about Tests of English as a Foreign Language...

Back in May, and back when I was teaching a TOEFL test instruction class, I would spend so much time preparing and teaching per week that my writing was suffering. Then I came up with an idea. 

On the TOEFL test there is a 30-minute essay segment. Test takers have 30 minutes to write a 300 word essay in answer to an assigned question. These questions are usually somewhat mundane, i.e., one custom from your country you would share, etc. My goal was to write at least 75 essays and to repurpose them. While doing this, I also like I was sticking it to the powers observing us (Cameras were placed in each room, for "quality control").

To cut it short: I have roughly 60 TOEFL (poetic) essays up  at my blog, http://charitablegiving.blogspot.com. Check 'em out! And thanks for reading!

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Sample essay

Q. If you could change one aspect of the public school/schools you attended, what would you change, how would you change it, and why? Use reasons and examples to support your response. 

A. Education is a tricky subject. As with figuring out anything, many variables involved in the deep process. Students emerge from schools at the end of the day and it's easy to forget that they belong to a community housed within several fortifications, cafes and playgrounds. I would change a few things about my school's construction and the administrative hierarchy. 

Schools are built much like prisons. We are interested in keeping children and their noises, their dramas as well as their affinities, inside and locked away. A brighter school with less restraints would improve matters for children. They would not feel the cold gray sky behind the gratings on the windows, would not lunch in the same linoleum room like those dentists use to calmly wash out patients' mouths, would not sing on a stage so lofty that the smallest squeak cannot be heard. We silence the children, and we assume they behave better this way. However, when children are unleashed they destroy property. This is because they hold their emotions so pent up. Generous little beings are not captivated by the dull school surroundings. Gym balls will bounce with resounding joy if only we update the facilities which school our children. 

School administrations refuge in lonely temperance behind desks which expose children early to alienation of processes. How many times will they see desk housing a person? Fresh new faces entice all guests to share the most important information with the desk's occupant, and in the quickest manner. Imagine what fresh faces enliven the office environs, while increasing productivity. To this end, all school admins and educators who are entrenched should be alternated every 5 years. A bargaining period is born of this, during which time admins would prove their worth. However, teachers are accustomed to unstable living situations already. Administrators and office dregs should share in this renewal.

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The Poetics List is moderated & does not accept all posts. Guidelines: http://epc.buffalo.edu/poetics/welcome.html

What Can You Do in Twenty-Five Words?

Now that Mountainair and environs has a growing writers group, The Manzano Mountain Scribes (meeting 10am today at Alpine Alley), I may eventually have to decide where to blog them: Poets and Writers Picnic or Mountainair Arts. Until then I am cross-posting to both blogs and upping writing related posts on Arts (as in Arts and Letters). Before there was a plog, poetry and writing related posts were regular features on Mountainair Arts. Decamping 100% to plog may not have been such a good idea and misleading to boot, implying a dearth of local interest in matters lettered.

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What Can You Do in Twenty-Five Words? via 3quarksdaily by Abbas Raza on 11/7/10

Ian Crouch in The New Yorker:

A hinting story, Swartwood explains, should do in twenty-five words what it could do in twenty-five hundred, that is, it "should be complete by standing by itself as its own little world." And, like all good fiction, it should tell a story while gesturing toward all the unknowable spaces outside the text.

The book is divided into three sections: "life & death," "love & hate," and "this & that." Several stories too fully embrace the gimmick, becoming tiny O. Henry tales complete with tidy setups and kickers. Something about the space constraints make the stories go for too much, rejecting intimacy for some trumped up idea of scale. The best, however, share an off-beat and generally macabre sensibility. Here are two good examples:

"Blind Date," by Max Barry.

She walks in and heads turn. I'm stunned. This is my setup? She looks sixteen. Course, it's hard to tell, through the scope.

"Houston, We Have a Problem," by J. Matthew Zoss.

I'm sorry, but there's not enough air in here for everyone. I'll tell them you were a hero.

Violence is a lingering theme, often conveyed with a power that lasts long after the short time it takes to read these tales. Take "Cull," By L. R. Bonehill, a compressed post-apocalyptic snapshot:

There had been rumors from the North for months. None of us believed it, until one night we started to kill our children too.

More here.

Mad Love to the Youth Poets at Highland. Respect.

More good stuff from Hakim Be: Link and the cover of the Metro Section of yesterday's Journal: Students' Writing on Motel Sign.  Note from Hakim, "Respect to Hailey Heinz too, she is good peoples." Wouldn't it be cool to have one here (or wherever you are)? Maybe a sign trailer and moved to different locations about town ~ handy for underground / samizdat poetry.

By Hailey Heinz
Journal Staff Writer

          Most people probably don't know where the poetry is coming from. 

        On a sign at the southeast corner of Central and San Mateo that once advertised the Tradewinds motel, poems have been appearing periodically over the past year, staying up for a few weeks before they are traded for new verse. At first, the word "closed" was in the center of the board, so the poetry was built around it: "The bus is never closed to crazy," it read at one time. Another time it said, "Forget closed dreams wanted," with one word on each line. And another time it said, "The eyes are never closed just the mind that refuses to see." 

Click to enlarge

    

      The poems are contributed by the slam poetry club at Highland High School, a group of teenagers who get together weekly to write and share poetry, critique one another and prepare for spoken poetry competitions. The teens also write poetry for the sign, in collaboration with Friends of the Orphan Signs, a group started by University of New Mexico professor Ellen Babcock. As part of the project, Babcock has a two-year lease for the Tradewinds sign. 

        Lilly Lawrence-Metzler, 17, is the president of the poetry club, and she said putting poems on the sign is a good motivator for the club. She said it was especially exciting when her own words were on display. "I'm driving down the street and I'm like, 'I wrote that. It's up there,' " she said. "It's definitely cool."

        But she also said the format can be scary for younger students. "I think it's kind of a double-edged sword," she said. "Some of the less-experienced writers are intimidated by the fact that it's so public."

        Heather McGuire, the teacher who sponsors the poetry club, said the students' work is seen by a lot of their peers, especially since the sign is near a bus stop many Highland students use. The unsigned nature of the poetry lets the students be heard but not individually identified. "I don't think they all know where it comes from," McGuire said. "That's part of the reason our students are able to feel so free."

        She said Babcock has urged the students to be more artistic than preachy, but in their poems for the sign they gravitate toward verses with a message, like "Where you are from does not determine who you are."

        "It gives them a chance to interact with their community in a kind of low-pressure way," McGuire said. 

        Babcock said she reached out to the students because she wanted the words on the sign to represent the nearby community, not the perspective of an outside artist. "It was this idea that it's a new model of public art," she said. "Rather than putting up my own text, I wanted to come to a community and have it be from them." 

        The Orphan Sign Project will collaborate with student artists at Highland later this year to design a two-sided, lit sign to refurbish the skeletal former sign for the El Sarape restaurant on East Central. This sign will eventually be professionally produced and purchased by the city as a permanent public artwork, Babcock said. 

Read more: ABQJOURNAL NEWS/METRO: Students' Writing on Motel Sign

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