Ekphrasis: Poems and Art

Ekphrasis: Poems and Art

Image Credit: Cathleen Cohen

Welcome to a new Mad Poets blog, to be offered quarterly.  

It’s a pleasure to write about the relationship between poetry and other art forms, to examine ways that a various creative arts relate to each other.

The term ekphrasis can be defined narrowly as writing that describes a work of art in another medium-- paintings, music, photography sculpture and the like.  It can also refer more broadly to the alchemy that happens when one medium tries to define and relate to another. This could refer to poems inspired by the visual arts or music -- and also the reverse! To my mind, ekphrasis can also encompass hybrid works, like artists’ books, author/illustrator collaborations and graphic poems.

Many scholars have written about ekphrasis and there are great resources online. Though not scholar of the topic, I have had a practice of writing poetry and painting for many years. Both are essential to my creative life. These art forms interact, challenge each other and open up many questions and tensions.

My aim in this blog is to feature the work of various poets and artists, to let you know of interesting viewing opportunities and to provide some angles that might prompt your own writing.

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Songs of Winter; Songs of Summer: John Sevcik and Lynne Campbell

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Last spring Cerulean Arts Gallery presented Songs of Winter; Songs of Summer, an exquisite series of paintings by Lynne Campbell and John Sevcik. These landscapes offer a sense of intimacy and stillness. Narratives vibrate beneath. This beautiful exhibition was particularly poignant since John died near the time of its opening.

A brilliant writer, painter and teacher, John was a beloved and important presence in the Philadelphia art community. To learn more about his achievements: https://fleisher.org/celebrating-the-life-of-john-sevcik/.

Lynne and John met as students at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA). Mutual devotion nurtured this talented couple through their marriage and creative partnership. Both painter and writers, Lynne composed prose poems and John focused on plays, essays and free verse. Lynne has graciously shared memories with me of being in John’s historic barn studio in Valley Forge, reading to each other from Dickinson, Wordsworth and Frost.

Lynne Campbell, In the Meadow, acrylic on paper

Lynne said, “For John, poetry and painting was about meaning. He was devoted to art and felt it one of the most potent forces we had as human beings. It held us to the humane, to our intrinsic value as human beings. This was something we both felt — it was an important part of our great bond.”

Lynne’s work is exhibited in many public and private collections, including the Woodmere Art Museum. She has been awarded several prizes and travel scholarships, studying archaic and classical sculpture in Greece. Author of four books of poetry, Lynne is an artist with deep ties to myth and to the natural world.

John has exhibited widely in the U.S. and in South Korea. He was a published poet, and his plays were produced by The Philadelphia Theatre Company, and other companies. A popular lecturer, he taught at The Fleisher Art Memorial, the Delaware Art Museum, the Delaware College of Art and Design, the Cheltenham Center for the Arts, and Immaculata University. 

Delving into John’s writings, I found myself highlighting numerous aphorisms: If time stops in a picture, is that moment infinite?... Why does it stun us to see certain paintings? Why have we woken up? Why were we sleeping before?

About Henry Ossawa Tanner’s works in a 2012 PAFA exhibition, John wrote, “Paintings like these make us feel the truth for which sermons are written. There is no difference between a miracle and a painting, and when we were children and felt these things were true about paintings, we knew a truth before we were ever taught why it is true.”

John Sevcik, I-76 and Evening Star, oil on canvas

 In his introduction to John and Lynne’s recent Cerulean Arts show, he shared:

“Both artists experience loneliness in different ways, and that is the song of the seasons, if anything is. This is not a personal loneliness, for they are happily married. They instead share a feeling for nature that puts their feelings in a mutual state of mystery, reverie, and wonder. Though together, they are also on separate itineraries. Work varies from plein air to work from memory, imagination and dream.”

Lynne Campbell, Almost Night, acrylic on paper

How To Become

How to become part of the tracking grey sky? By loving it? Cars below have begun to put on their lights. The sky moves apace, indifferent. It is busy ferrying clouds. There are dark trees. And no birds. 

 Apparently, the mere anticipation of music causes us to produce dopamine. Imagine what the anticipation of a loved voice does.

The sky, dull all day, is losing what little luster it had left. What hopes might you map against it? What diagrams of private constellations, myths? These are sketched out in the heart, and projected easily tonight, for lack of stars. 

- Lynne Campbell

John said, “I have become convinced that the place apart of the poet or painter…is to explore the world at the edge of knowledge and bring something back from there. It is this withdrawal that I have come to understand may constitute the most important part of our consciousness. And it is because artists have left us their meditations on the life they observed that audiences also experience a place apart.”

A PAINTING IS A PAINTING

A painting is a painting
It’s not like you or me
Nobody gets older  
No one ever sleeps. 

It’s a stillness made of life
With meaning in its air
You feel it as you watch it,
Even as you stare:

At those forever praying
Or lying nude aware
Not of us but God
And the artist never there.

We travel time to then
And then to us appears;
Time becomes transparent
And what is far comes near. 

Who gave their life to painting
That we can know life more?
The artist in his garret?
The model in her maze?

We think of things self-evident
When we observe those lives
Frozen in the minerals
Of pigments and the mind

But what of art’s intention?
Does it think or know the way?
The artist isn’t talking;
There’s nothing more to say. 

Who made a painting matter
Then vanished long ago?
Who gave their life to painting
So we enjoy life more?

- John Sevick

John Sevcik, Field of Goldenrod (Orland, Maine), oil on canvas

I often ask: What are my own motivations to paint? What are my underlying subjects?

Certainly they are idiosyncratic. But it is helpful to read Lynne’s and John’s eloquent writings.

John shared, “This is to some extent the challenge of painting to me – how to excite the mind in a still reflection. In painting we consider the world as a long moment, with little movement…”

What an apt description of the work in their most recent exhibit at Cerulean Arts. It’s inspiring to consider the world as a long moment and how it does excite the mind. How lucky to encounter the wisdom and generosity of this talented couple.

This upcoming September, Cheltenham Center for the Arts will display a retrospective of John’s work:

Painter and Poet: The Work of John Sevcik
Opening reception: Saturday, September 14 from 2:00 to 4:00
Show dates: September 14 to October 13

https://www.cheltenhamarts.org/

For more about John and Lynne:

 https://fleisher.org/celebrating-the-life-of-john-sevcik/
https://mandismag.wordpress.com/2013/02/17/featured-artist-john-sevcik-2/
https://www.blogger.com/profile/01771570848659431520
https://ceruleanarts.com/pages/songs-of-winter-songs-of-a-summer
http://Johnsevcikpainting.blogspot.com
http://Instagram.com/john_sevcik
http://Instagram.com/lynnecampbell8
http://viewfromthestudio.blogspot.com
http://poemsforanewcentury.blogspot.com
https://lynnecampbellpainting.blogspot.com/
http://tothestudio.com

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Cathleen Cohen was the 2019 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, PA. A painter and teacher, she founded the We the Poets program at ArtWell, an arts education non-profit in Philadelphia (www.theartwell.org). Her poems appear in journals such as Apiary, Baltimore Review, Cagibi, East Coast Ink, 6ix, North of Oxford, One Art, Passager, Philadelphia Stories, Rockvale Review and Rogue Agent. Camera Obscura (chapbook, Moonstone Press), appeared in 2017 and Etching the Ghost (Atmosphere Press), was published in 2021. She received the Interfaith Relations Award from the Montgomery County PA Human Rights Commission and the Public Service Award from National Association of Poetry Therapy. Her paintings are on view at Cerulean Arts Gallery. To learn more about her work, visit www.cathleencohenart.com.

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Mad Poet of the Year - Lisa DeVuono

The Mad Poet of the Year blog posts share the poetry of a long-time Mad Poet. This year-long appointment provides readers with a deep dive of the writer’s work and thoughts on poetry. We are thrilled to have Lisa DeVuono serve as the Mad Poet of the Year for 2024.

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Lone Tulip

for Phillip

Today those tulips your wife brought from Holland,
that I planted after you died,
burst into early Spring.

Rich red velvet robes, a yellow sun in a cup
and one that has yet to show its face,
to be delivered into this world.

She went away under a dark mantle of grief,
trying to escape the scent of you lingering in your home.
I can only imagine what is the still smell of someone no longer alive?

I watch from my window, a sentinel at the ready:
hurricane season, floods, blizzards,
tree down, mowed grass.  She survived it all without you.

Earth turning over, everything aching
to push through the heavy weight of winter.
I sort debris from last year’s beds: twigs, leaves, plastic bag, a snakeskin.

My gaze returns to the lone tulip.
It has begun to unfurl its tight fist of resistance,
and I imagine it winks and bows to me.

I take a picture, send it to your wife with the caption:
“Your tulips are blooming, look at this one…I think it has his blue eyes.”

But I am looking for a sign that you have returned
to finish our last conversation at the mailbox
to smell the smoke of one of your cigars smoldering on the porch ashtray

or hear you sing through the open window,
Sinatra spinning on the upstairs turntable.

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This August I am commemorating three specific events: my 25th wedding anniversary; the 20th anniversary of my father’s passing; and the one-year death anniversary of my dear neighbor Phillip to which this poem is dedicated.

When my husband, Michael, and I married in our backyard, the day was marked with the ending of a summer drought, then a torrential storm, a beautiful rainbow, and a house full of guests that had hoped to be eating outside under a big tent, and not on our living room floor. Five years later, during our 5th anniversary, when we were vacationing in Canada, my father passed away. It took two days to get home. And last year, I watched my neighbor’s wife frantically perform CPR to try to save her husband.

These anniversaries all come within days of each other and mark the mixed emotions of beginning a new life while honoring the end of another.

This poem is about how we try to live our lives within the loss of our loved ones. I say              “within” and yet everything about the loss is “without.”  I decided to compose this poem as if writing a letter to my friend Philip to let him know what is happening with us since he died. The poem attempts to highlight both ways of being: the fracturing by grief, and the wholeness from living in the present moment and what we notice as we move between them.

What details do we remember, what do we choose to believe about the departure of our loved ones? How do we cope with daily life? How do we celebrate our lives? And how might the presence of a solitary tulip planted in winter become a beacon of hope in early Spring?

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Lisa DeVuono is the 2024 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County. She was one of the founders of It Ain’t Pretty, a women’s writing collective that performed locally. She produced multi-media shows incorporating song, music, poetry, and dance, including Rumi in Song at the Sedgwick Theater; and Whole Heart Home, and Breaking Open Breaking Free, part of the IceHouse Tonight series in Bethlehem.   

She led creativity and poetry workshops and has worked with teens in recovery and cancer patients. She wrote a peer-based curriculum Poetry as a Tool for Recovery: An Easy-to-Use Guide in Eight Sessions for facilitators working with persons living with mental health challenges.

In addition to the full-length manuscript This Time Roots, Next Time Wings, her poetry has appeared in the Mad Poets Review, Paterson Literary Review and the anthology Grit Gravity & Grace: New Poems about Medicine and Healthcare. She is the author of the chapbook Poems from the Playground of Risk published by Pudding House Press and was the recipient of an honorable mention in Passaic County Community College’s annual Allen Ginsberg Contest.

Recently retired, she has worked as an administrator, librarian, and lay chaplain.

Review of I cannot be good until you say it by Sanah Ahsan

I cannot be good until you say so

Bloomsbury Publishing

$16.95

You can purchase a copy here.

Reviewed by Jennifer Schneider

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Sanah Ahsan’s I cannot be good until you say it is as masterful as it is moving, and as inspiring as it is an exercise in reflective thinking. Presented in four parts, the collection is expertly curated. rich in emotion, and ripe of liberation that expands and extends far beyond the collection’s opening and closing pages.

The collection’s fifty poems (and LISTENING ROOM) are heartfelt and full of love– love for self, for community, and for possibility. The pieces weave tenderness and musicality with a tone as warm and as penetrating as echoes of the lives of which the poems speak. The Outspoken Performance Poetry Prize winner is gorgeous in ways that escape simple description and inspire deep admiration. The collection, and its takes on queerness, Islam, Quranic verse, family, nourishment, and more, offers lessons on how to live, question, and write with intention. Whether in community with strangers or at a table with familial and/or familiar faces, the poems breathe, in part, generational traditions, harms, and healing. The result– a buffet replete with “Ancestral recipes” in their many forms, queries of family, and questions as worthy of extended reflection as answers.

The debut collection embodies love, prayer, and spirituality through exquisite use of language and intentional use of space. The pieces are complex and layered in ways that mirror the human condition, the human body, and the politics of life and suffering. The collection takes on, in part, the body’s complexity with words that of piercing precision that also soothe like chamomile alongside wounded wombs and complex cycles of love, life, and (mis)understanding. 

With an epigraph– “for the Divine in you”, the collection exists at the intersection of poetry and prayer and invokes and invites continued contemplation. The collection is a beginning rather than an end. The individual poems stand stronger together, with each simultaneously a breath of blessing and prayer, rumination and education, celebration and caution, grief and joy. Together, I cannot be good until you say it, is a gift of a gorgeous and sublime tapestry of questions fueled by curiosity and questions grounded in rich, descriptive detail.

For example, PASSPORT opens with –

“Veiled by tablecloth, my girlfriend swats
my hand, a fly on her knee. The teaspoons
are touching in public. Her grandmother
offers me a salami stick to start. Sorry I
don’t eat pork….”

and closes –

“...I reach for relief in the rainbow when her
grandmother asks do you have a British
passport? The burgundy-red stamped with

a golden crest moves more than my limp
tongue. I muster up the lion’s courage to ask
are we going somewhere?”

 Reading the collection is a journey– one where time stands still, while always going somewhere, and the water, depth unknown, is welcoming and deeply moving, while also surprising. Beyond expert craft, the collection is much a story of kin, becoming, and conflict as a spiritual guide and reckoning. With themes of god and “good” revealing and repeating throughout the collection, Ahsan writes fearlessly and with a piercing insight that compels as it conspires to create both heightened awareness and a deeper understanding of what it means to love and be loved, to be liberated and to liberate, and to revel in the joy, music, and sadness of the written and spoken word and its many graces as well as offenses.

Stitched of love and yearning, the work is an exquisite and tender example of how poetry can be prayer and prayer can be blessing. The experience of reading this work is spiritual and spirited. Beyond its emotional qualities the work instructs in elements of craft and form. The collection is as varied as it is remarkable.

From powerful erasure —

See                

to inventive lists and couplets (see, for example, FUGITIVE ARRANGEMENTS and PINK MURMURATIONS),

to inventive use of space (see, for example, IN THE MAN OF MIND and GREY IS PROPHETIC COMPLICATION),

and poignant photographs (see, for example, pages 11, 51, and 72), the work is a tapestry as much as a reflection of life and its complexity. The work is also a master class on how and where devotion meets daring inquiry with a result that grips as it reminds one of the extraordinary power of poetic inquiry to transform and to touch in ways simultaneously new and reminiscent of past and ongoing harms.

A delicate waltz, an electric tango, a surprising twist of hip hop – if a collection of poems could dance one’s way into the heart and soul of eternity, this work would. I end the work where I began– eager to read more and to continue to learn. Much like the cycles of ancestors and conflict that have come before, the work itself balances retrospection with introspection. I won’t forget this work, and I hope, dear reader, you enjoy the collection as much as I have.  

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Jen Schneider is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. She loves words, experimental poetry, and the change of seasons. She’s also a fan of late nights, crossword puzzles, and compelling underdogs. She has authored several chapbooks and full-length poetry collections, with stories, poems, and essays published in a variety of literary and scholarly journals. Sample works include Invisible Ink, On Habits & Habitats, On Daily Puzzles: (Un)locking Invisibility, A Collection of Recollections, and Blindfolds, Bruises, and Breakups. She is currently working on her first series, which (not surprisingly) includes a novel in verse. She is the 2022-2023 Montgomery County PA Poet Laureate.

Local Lyrics - Featuring Alfred Encarnacion

At the Tattoo Studio
(Bakunawa, mythical dragon of the Philippines)

by Alfred Encarnacion

The bearded tattooist assures me
there’s no discomfort even though
I haven’t asked. He begins on my calf,
a smooth tracing of form

that slowly assumes shape & color:
slithering blue underbelly purpling
to the back’s black shimmering scales,
festooned body armed with fangs, claws,

folded wings about to spring open
while I sit watching his needle extract
a dragon as if trapped beneath my skin.
Released, the beast emblazons a lost

mythology my dead father
never thought to share:
Cebu in the ancient time when
seven moons, one for each night

 of the week, lit the sky & brought
forth good fortune. But Bakunawa
the serpent dragon, craved
the lovely moons, sweet

as mangoes, and gobbled them
one by one until only a single moon
survived. Islanders prayed to Bathala
to punish the moon-eater that rose

each night from a sea cave to climb
the wind in search of prey. The pagan
god banished the dragon from sky, land
and sea until he learned repentance…

I close my eyes, breathe in the scent
of dragon blood that soothing
incense which fills this room,
slide back on the black recliner

and remember Bakunawa crawling my
father’s leg, emblem of his otherness,
remember the shame I felt when
a schoolmate blurted, “Your dad’s

a gook?” during Parent Teacher Night.
Bowing my head, I slunk away pretending
not to know the man who followed. But now
I wear the dragon, almost believing Bakunawa

vanished into the hearts of men who
betray, repent, and seek forgiveness,
lurks there to this day, rising only
in the tribal tattoo that bears his name.

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How did you come to poetry? What role does it play in your life?
I became interested in poetry through the “folk rock” music of the 1960s, especially the poetic lyrics of songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Buffy Sainte Marie, and Joni Mitchell. However, Leonard Cohen was the first lyricist whose published literary poetry (as well as the extraordinary postmodernist novel Beautiful Losers) I went out and bought. After reading, nay, experiencing his first few volumes of poetry I knew I had to try my hand at it as well. Once I was seduced by the power of the written word, writing became an extension of myself like breathing, eating, talking, walking, sleeping, dreaming…

Your poems are often very located. How does place influence your writing?
Even early on I was attracted to “place” in the work of poets I admired. I traveled to Montreal just to walk down St. Catherine Street because Cohen referred to it so much in Let Us Compare Mythologies, his debut collection. I later became obsessed with James Dickey and Richard Hugo; both of whom utilized “place” as an integral part of their poems. Think of the former’s “Hunting Civil War Relics at Nimblewill Creek,” and “Cherrylog Road, or the latter’s “West Marginal Way” and “"Degrees of Gray in Philipsburgh". Likewise, I found the work of Lisel Mueller strewn with place names that lent an authenticity that would not be available to the poems otherwise. I’m still obsessed with naming places in my past in order to memorialize those moments when I inhabited those places in real time.

 You are the Director of the Stratford Public Library. Have you always known you wanted to be a librarian? In what ways has being a librarian influenced your writing or shaped the way you view the arts?
I never had any intention of becoming a librarian until I read a biography of Philip Larken, the poet librarian of Hull University’s Brynmor Jones Library. Suddenly a light came on: I always delighted in browsing through stacks upon stacks of books in the literature departments of public and academic libraries in Philadelphia where I lived at the time, but I never thought about a career in librarianship until the Larkin bio. I had finished up graduate school and most of my classmates were going on to their doctorate studies in the English Department at Temple or other universities. I had taught at Temple as an adjunct instructor, but I was more interested in writing as a vocation than teaching as a career. Instead of pursuing a Ph.D, I decided on a MLS and applied to Clarion University’s Library Science Department. 

Before being appointed to a director’s position, I also worked both as a reference librarian as well as a children’s librarian. But most of my time was spent as a cataloger, which is becoming something of a lost art. Still, the seven years I spent assigning locations to new material and deleting weeded material sharpened my eye for clarity and consistency, and my cataloging skills I believe carry over to my poetry: I never attempted “a systematic derangement of the senses” as described by Rambaud (a dysfunctional childhood was derangement enough for me); instead; I pursued a consistent clarity in the anecdotal narratives that are at the heart of my poems. There’s such a strong narrative impulse in my work I sometimes think of myself as a recovering novelist (ha, ha).

 I think libraries and poetry get shortchanged in their conceptualization (by larger society) as exclusively quiet, reserved, and introspective spaces. In your chapbook, Library Suite, you  describe libraries as energetic and interactive places steeped in connection. How did this chapbook come together? What do you think the future looks like for libraries?
I’ve always believed that libraries were more than mere depositories for books, and I’ve labored to make Stratford Public Library—as is the case with most other 21st century libraries—an active resource of the community. This strategy allows for a diversity of programming: we offer culinary workshops, literary readings, classes in embroidery, presentations from representatives of State agencies, as well as ongoing programs such as Story Time and Lego for our younger patrons and Book Club, Book Café, and Crafter’s Corner for our adult patrons. We also make it a point to reach out to our senior patron population, often an underserved community, by offering senior-friendly high teas and chair-yoga sessions. 

My chapbook is an attempt to document some of my experiences (some factual, some imagined, some a hybrid of the two) in Library Land these last couple of decades. Some poets don’t care to write about their professions, but I’ve always been drawn to writing about the various hats I’ve worn as waiter, teacher, librarian—once I even sold lightbulbs as a telephonic vendor! I’ve been often able to utilize my diverse working background in my career as a librarian.

Some predicted the end of libraries with the advent of the digital world: why go to a library when all the texts and information you desire is as close as your computer’s keyboard? We can all appreciate the instantaneous gratification that comes from access to the Internet: Ah, you found that new book by your favorite author and you can download it right there in your living room at 3am without having to wait until morning when the bookstores or libraries open. Who can resist such expediency? Still, there are those who prefer browsing the stacks at Barnes & Noble and/or their own local libraries for the undeniable tactile pleasure of holding the physical properties—weight, texture, smell—of a book in one’s own hand. We’ve already moved into a hybrid age for libraries where eBooks can be downloaded from their virtual website but hardcopies of books are still housed in physical buildings for patrons who prefer to choose their reading material by hand rather than keyboard. Rather than offering only bibliographical service, library staffs will also serve as informational brokers for patrons in need of guidance.

In your recently released collected poems, Precincts of the Passion-Dragon, many of the poems celebrate and illuminate the struggles of working class and immigrant families. How does your upbringing influence your poetic perspective?
|My childhood has everything to do with my “poetic perspective,” as you call it. I grew up in a predominately working class Polish and Irish community in the Port Richmond neighborhood of Philadelphia, where there were few Asian or immigrant families to speak of in the mid-1950s. I became painfully aware at an early age that I was not welcome there as a mestizo child (half Filipino, half White) with such a strange surname and such odd looks. I grew up feeling both ugly and alien and apart from the people around me. Many of my poems begin in a place of shame and move to a place of redemption or at least a place where toxic shame isn’t paralyzing the narrator. My mission in poetry has always been to find a strategy by which all that is toxic in memory can be revisited and transformed via art into something positive, maybe even something of service to others.

Where can readers keep up with your writing? Buy your books? 
You will encounter my work in literary journals, such as the Paterson Review or Chautauqua Review, or in the Moonstone Art anthologies, or at readings in Philly or local Jersey readings like the one I’ll be doing in September at the Whitman Stafford House in Laurel Springs (date & time TBA). I’ll also be reading at the Poetry Center in Paterson, NJ on April 5, 2025 as one of the finalists for the Paterson Poetry Prize for Precincts of the Passion-Dragon: Poems 2000-2020. Much more information about my activities can be found on the Stratford Public Library’s website: https:www.stratfordlibrarynj.org 

My books can be found/ordered in local bookshops such as Barnes & Noble, on Amazon.com or kelsaybooks.com. But, remember that for those readers with limited resources, you may read all the poetry, fiction, and nonfiction for free by visiting your neighborhood library and checking out books or requesting interlibrary loans. All you need is a library card and the dazzling Kingdom of Literature is yours!

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Alfred Encarnacion has taught writing at Temple University, published in Florida Review, Indiana Review, North American Review, and the Paterson Literary Review. His books are The Outskirts of Karma, Ambassadors of the Silenced, Library Suite, and Precincts of the Passion-Dragon. He’s received five nominations for a Pushcart Prize; Library Suite was published via the Annual Moonstone Chapbook Contest, and Precincts of the Passion-Dragon has been chosen as a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize 2025. He’s the director of the Stratford Public Library in South Jersey, and he coordinates the Annual Poetry Reading at the Whitman Stafford House in celebration of National Poetry Month each April.

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John Wojtowicz grew up working on his family’s azalea and rhododendron nursery in the backwoods of what Ginsberg dubbed “nowhere Zen New Jersey.” Currently, he works as a licensed clinical social worker and adjunct professor. He has been featured on Rowan University’s Writer’s Roundtable on 89.7 WGLS-FM and several of his poems were chosen to be exhibited in Princeton University's 2021 Unique Minds: Creative Voices art show at the Lewis Center for the Arts. He has been nominated 3x for a Pushcart Prize and serves as the Local Lyrics contributor for The Mad Poets Society Blog. His debut chapbook Roadside Oddities: A Poetic Guide to American Oddities was released in early 2022 and can be purchased at www.johnwojtowicz.com. John lives with his wife and two children in Upper Deerfield, NJ.

Mad Poet of the Year - Lisa DeVuono

The Mad Poet of the Year blog posts share the poetry of a long-time Mad Poet. This year-long appointment provides readers with a deep dive of the writer’s work and thoughts on poetry. We are thrilled to have Lisa DeVuono serve as the Mad Poet of the Year for 2024.

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Cento: Refugees

from The Tiny Journalist by Naomi Shihab Nye

The moon sees us.

We are outdated shrines,
many orphans
from the pavement of neglect.

Forgotten perimeter
Around the edge of winter
in its camouflage of grief

Our voices pour out
through a hole in the floor.
Where is the door to our story? 

How will we sing our names?

From the solitude of bruises
to the tight throat of alert.
Where is our lucky number?

A word is brave --
we never know how far
a voice can travel.

Life has loveliness to sell,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,

Who will be left to enter the calligraphy of joy?

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Nothing to give you
that you would want.

Nothing big enough
but freedom.

-- “Tiny Journalist Blues” by Naomi Shihab Nye

When I think of the month of July, I think of summer memories in Northeast Philly: BBQs, badminton, and block parties; vacation reading club at Bushrod library; tennis at Tarken playground, swimming at Max Myers; penny candy at Woolworths; weekends at my uncle’s bungalow near Tullytown; the annual shore trip to Rosalinda’s in North Wildwood. 

The 4th of July was always about family and neighbors coming together and celebrating our country’s ideals, our hopes to be better, do better. The day culminated in fireworks where we watched them at the elementary school where you could see them over the treetops by the Jewish Cemetery.

These were yearly adventures and daily freedoms we innocent children could count on and often took for granted. As adults, in today’s world, we can no longer rest comfortably in our nostalgia, waxing romantic about the good old days.

This month, I am posting my print and poem “Refugees.”  It’s a cento form in which lines are borrowed from other poems to construct something new.  These lines were collected from “The Tiny Journalist” (2019) by Naomi Shihab Nye whose poems draw on her experiences as a Palestinian-American living in the Middle East, her father, and from the Facebook postings of teenager Janna Jihad Ayyad who shared her personal journey of living under conflict. 

Shihab Nye is my favorite poet and I was so moved by this collection of truth telling.  While   I often flinched, these poems also softened my heart and helped me choose and arrange words that told the story of the impact on refugees; that created something from this witnessing -- a sense of urgency and expression for those whose voices are silenced or made to feel invisible. I chose lines with questions so that the reader might ponder their own lives in contrast with so many people who are still living in poverty and war, struggling to survive, let alone build childhood memories.

With the 250th anniversary of 1776 just two years away, I (like so many others) find myself worried and anxious about our freedom: who fought for it, for what reasons, who has it, who doesn’t.  Last month, my poem “Coming to America” highlighted my own family immigration story and the challenges of leaving one’s country to find a better life. America represented freedom and opportunity for many immigrants and refugees.                              

How many personal and collective sacrifices were made over the years, and what must happen to ensure the preservation of our rights, over and over again? This poem seeks to highlight the crisis of individuals, families, nations still fighting for their freedoms, still looking for a free and safe haven.

I can’t help but ask the same of us this July.    Is America still that place?

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Lisa DeVuono is the 2024 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County. She was one of the founders of It Ain’t Pretty, a women’s writing collective that performed locally. She produced multi-media shows incorporating song, music, poetry, and dance, including Rumi in Song at the Sedgwick Theater; and Whole Heart Home, and Breaking Open Breaking Free, part of the IceHouse Tonight series in Bethlehem.   

She led creativity and poetry workshops and has worked with teens in recovery and cancer patients. She wrote a peer-based curriculum Poetry as a Tool for Recovery: An Easy-to-Use Guide in Eight Sessions for facilitators working with persons living with mental health challenges.

In addition to the full-length manuscript This Time Roots, Next Time Wings, her poetry has appeared in the Mad Poets Review, Paterson Literary Review and the anthology Grit Gravity & Grace: New Poems about Medicine and Healthcare. She is the author of the chapbook Poems from the Playground of Risk published by Pudding House Press and was the recipient of an honorable mention in Passaic County Community College’s annual Allen Ginsberg Contest.

Recently retired, she has worked as an administrator, librarian, and lay chaplain.

Mad Poet of the Year - Lisa DeVuono

The Mad Poet of the Year blog posts share the poetry of a long-time Mad Poet. This year-long appointment provides readers with a deep dive of the writer’s work and thoughts on poetry. We are thrilled to have Lisa DeVuono serve as the Mad Poet of the Year for 2024.

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Coming to America

I

My grandfather left
half of himself home,
those other parts
still planting
one in a garden
two in a grave
three in grandmother’s womb.

He brought
a mound of dirt with him,
and every place he traveled
he scattered seeds.

II

From the railroad tracks of Utah,
sprang olive trees, twisted testimony
to broken bones. In the textile mills
in Frankford, spewed blood oranges,
hands dyed from lack of air and water.

And in the womb of la Nonna
birthed the legacy of poets:
Ariosto, Alfieri and Dante.

III

I found his wedding ring,
the golden calf
worshipped and melted down.
I wore it secretly
turning it over and over
like my grandmother must have done
to wish him back.

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This poem pays homage to the immigrants who came to America to find a better life.  Many endured the Depression Era, and then, as in the case of my father, returned to their homeland as American soldiers fighting on their native soil.

The photo shows my paternal grandmother, and my father reflected in the mirror in the corner as a shadow.  When he was fighting the war in Italy, he took as chance to visit his mother whom he had not seen since he was fifteen years old.  It would be the last time as she passed away not long after the visit. 

Having never met my paternal grandfather, I relied on stories, and images to construct a narrative around men leaving their families behind, often never seeing them again.  For the “lucky” few, they returned to find mothers deceased, sisters married and with children of their own, and a country in ruins, hoping to rebuild and forge something better than the poverty they were born into.

Since I grew up in the 1960s and had the safety of our nuclear and extended Italian-American family,it was hard to imagine leaving behind all that to forge a new life.  And what of the women who were left behind?  And what is a marriage when couples are separated for years on end? And what legacy did our ancestors leave behind?  What contributions did they make?  This poem attempts to capture a snapshot of all that, as well as the longing that everyone feels to return to a home that they only remember but that has changed so much. 

This is the story I inherited. 

Today there are so many immigrant stories to be written, cultures from all over the world still affected by war and poverty, and environmental changes. I am trying to imagine something different for all our descendants, something where they are settling into some new configurations of home and no one is wishing their loved ones back.

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Lisa DeVuono is the 2024 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County. She was one of the founders of It Ain’t Pretty, a women’s writing collective that performed locally. She produced multi-media shows incorporating song, music, poetry, and dance, including Rumi in Song at the Sedgwick Theater; and Whole Heart Home, and Breaking Open Breaking Free, part of the IceHouse Tonight series in Bethlehem.   

She led creativity and poetry workshops and has worked with teens in recovery and cancer patients. She wrote a peer-based curriculum Poetry as a Tool for Recovery: An Easy-to-Use Guide in Eight Sessions for facilitators working with persons living with mental health challenges.

In addition to the full-length manuscript This Time Roots, Next Time Wings, her poetry has appeared in the Mad Poets Review, Paterson Literary Review and the anthology Grit Gravity & Grace: New Poems about Medicine and Healthcare. She is the author of the chapbook Poems from the Playground of Risk published by Pudding House Press and was the recipient of an honorable mention in Passaic County Community College’s annual Allen Ginsberg Contest.

Recently retired, she has worked as an administrator, librarian, and lay chaplain.

Review of How to Do the Greased Wombat Slide by Pamela Miller

How to Do the Greased Wombat Slide

Unsolicited Press

$16.95

You can purchase a copy here.

Reviewed by Jennifer Schneider

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It’s rare to find a work that inspires not only how to live (and write) more courageously, but also how to write (and live) more fully. It’s just as rare to stumble across a work that provokes spontaneous laughter in addition to serious and lengthy reflection. How to Do the Greased Wombat Slide is such a work. It accomplishes all of the above, as it inspires, intrigues, and delights.

The collection is a treasure chest of how-tos and answers to questions readers likely never knew they had. The work celebrates the wisdom often revealed through unexpected wordplay and the perennial power of penned imagination. It invites readers to engage with a collection of curious topics while inspiring engagement beyond the collection’s contents. Even clip art takes on several pages of creative forms.

The work’s language, vivid imagery, and revealed imagination are simultaneously unexpected and endearing. A how-to that extends and expands far beyond any single topic of instruction, the work’s three sections, How to Dance, How to Love, and How to Endure, include lessons on living and reminders of the fragility of life.

The work plucks inspiration from the mundane.

 Examples include:

I was bored with my click-clack factory job
stamping sunbursts on the heads of pins (“Ruthanne Replants Herself”)

A bird in the hand is worth a can of spray-on pants (from “Words to the Unwise “)

How to tie a tie
How to make it in America
How to get a girl to like you (from “How to Waste Time Looking Things Up on the Internet”)

 In its travels through common occupations and ways to occupy time, the collection makes magic through strands of whimsy and wonderment woven out of ordinary terminology.

Consider, for example, The Spaghetti Squash Comes to Visit --

We hadn’t had time to study up on spaghetti squash behavior.
We assumed a vegetable visitor would be fairly sedimentary, but it
kept hopping around like an electric flea.

The collection is equal parts surprising and contemplative, full of plays on words that leave readers to admire the eccentricity of the pen and embrace firm reminders of mortality.

Examples include –

When I die, I’ll carve Remember Me
on a tombstone made of vanishing breath. (from Autobiography Written in Disappearing Ink”)

Don’t you trust me?
Well, it’s no use. I don’t have to make bargains with you. (from “Love Letter to My Favorite Ghost”)

My grandfather’s ghost mows the lawn in tan pants.
A corpse reads the classified ads (from “Snapshots from My Nightmares”)

As Miller plays with phrases and pairs strangers on suddenly synchronous stages, Miller not only dazzles with the unexpected, she encourages readers to reimagine. The work is as much a source of humor as it is a solid contemplation on mortality, morality, and the many ways of making meaning in a world that often defies sensemaking.

The work is also a celebration of poetry, with pieces like What Poetry Is, What I Mean When I Talk About Poetry, and How Love Poems Get Written , and a reminder that, eventually (perhaps ultimately), poetry and mortality intersect :

Once upon a time, you consumed this book;
oblivion spat it back out. When you died,

someone rummaged through your ashes
and found a piece of me, sparking like an ember (from On Learning That One of My Books Was Found Among a Dead Poet’s Possessions)

With themes that span the spectrum of life and loss, the collection conspires as it inspires, and ultimately unites. The work straddles serious topics with playful perusal. It’s as celebratory as it is cerebral. It creates and curates a carnival-like atmosphere of wordplay amidst the seriousness of thought and topic.

No matter one’s mood, the work will surely meet if not exceed expectations. Whether consumed in isolation, sequence, or a series of random formations, as a collection, the pieces provoke reflection as much as they inspire delight in the ordinary. Enjoy!

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Jen Schneider is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. She loves words, experimental poetry, and the change of seasons. She’s also a fan of late nights, crossword puzzles, and compelling underdogs. She has authored several chapbooks and full-length poetry collections, with stories, poems, and essays published in a variety of literary and scholarly journals. Sample works include Invisible Ink, On Habits & Habitats, On Daily Puzzles: (Un)locking Invisibility, A Collection of Recollections, and Blindfolds, Bruises, and Breakups. She is currently working on her first series, which (not surprisingly) includes a novel in verse. She is the 2022-2023 Montgomery County PA Poet Laureate.

Local Lyrics - Featuring Jawn Van Jacobs

young, dumb & addicted

by Jawn Van Jacobs

i’m young, dumb & addicted
don’t even try to fix me –
i don’t want an intervention
just give me the next best thing

a coke to meth downgrade
smoking, now injecting –
tomorrow i could fly high
or be listed in the local obituaries

cause each hit is like a rapture
turnin allies to crystal stairs –
i got angels in my vision,
turpentine in my veins

if i live to see morning
by miracle, i’ll fall to my knees –
still young, still dumb, but praying
to one day not know my own face

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What draws you to poetry? What are your poetic muses?
Poetry, for me, is a natural extension of my love for music. During my teenage years, I found myself drawn to writing lyrics, although singing wasn't my forte. Nevertheless, I was captivated by the power of words and their ability to touch people’s lives. This fascination eventually led me to explore poetry. It's a quiet passion, yet it has the remarkable ability to speak volumes. Life often presents challenges that can tear us apart, but I believe that poetry possesses the unique ability to put people back together.

Many of your poems include working class or counterculture type characters. What draws you to this archetype?
The inclusion of working-class or counterculture characters in many of my poems stems from my own upbringing and life experiences. My childhood was marked by adversity, with both of my parents facing challenges related to disability, addiction, and mental illness. Growing up in such an environment, I realized early on that my experiences were radically different from those of many others. Despite the hardships we faced, I found our life to be intriguing and rich with lessons.

Through my poetry, I aim to shed light on the resilience and complexity of individuals who often go unnoticed or are marginalized by society. I believe that everyone, regardless of their circumstances, possesses inherent worth and is capable of both good and bad. My poems serve as a reminder that a person's socioeconomic status or life struggles do not define their character or diminish their capacity for kindness.

Additionally, I utilize these characters and their narratives as cautionary tales, offering insights into the consequences of certain choices and behaviors. By sharing these perspectives, I hope to provide guidance and inspire reflection on the paths one chooses in life, ultimately striving to encourage others to pursue happiness and fulfillment through positive means.

You mentioned at a recent reading that Bruce Springsteen is one of your influences. Can you tell us a little bit more about how The Boss inspires you?

Bruce Springsteen's influence on my work stems from the raw, unfiltered honesty present in his lyrics. Much like Springsteen, I adopt a "No BS" approach to my poetry, believing that genuine connections can only be forged through authenticity and truthfulness. His ability to capture the essence of everyday struggles and triumphs resonates deeply with me, and I aspire to infuse my own writing with a similar sense of realism and sincerity.

As a fellow Catholic-raised Jersey boy, I feel a strong sense of kinship with The Boss. His portrayal of working-class life and the human experience strikes a chord with me, reflecting aspects of my own background and upbringing. Springsteen's music serves as a source of inspiration and validation, reminding me of the power of storytelling and the importance of staying true to one's roots.

Do you have any particular writing habits? What moves you from all-possible blank page to finished piece?
Consistency is key to my writing process, as I endeavor to write every day, even if it's just a few lines scribbled in a journal. I find that keeping a journal close at hand ensures that I'm ready to capture fleeting moments of inspiration whenever they arise. Additionally, the notes app on my phone serves as a convenient tool for jotting down ideas on the go.

When I encounter writer's block or feel stuck in the creative process, I often seek solace in nature. As Emily Dickinson eloquently put it, "Nature is what we know – yet have not the art to say." Nature has a way of inspiring reflection and introspection, providing the perfect backdrop for observation and contemplation. Whether it's the serene beauty of a forest or the rhythmic crashing of waves by the sea, immersing myself in nature allows me to reconnect with my innermost thoughts and find clarity in my writing. As a poet, I consider myself a professional observer, and nature offers me the tranquil space to observe both the world around me and the depths of my own soul.

Tell us a little bit about your current project!
As an MA in Writing student at Rowan, we must produce a book-length project by the time that we graduate. My project is a poetry collection titled Edge of the Ave, a gritty, lyrical poetic explosion about trying to achieve freedom within the heteronormative, white-picket confines of lower-middle-class small-town suburbia. This collection follows the life and death of the poetic persona Jawn Van Jacobs, an outlaw on the outskirts of suburbia who lives by the mantra of James Dean: live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse. Jawn, more assertive than his creator, says what others are afraid to say about the hard truths of growing up as a boy who likes other boys. While not for the faint of heart, this collection not only celebrates youthful and queer rebellion but also depicts the consequences of when it goes too far, thrusting readers unapologetically into the dark street corners of the Edge of the Ave.

Where can readers find more of your work? Keep up with your writing?
Readers can discover more of my work on my Instagram page, where I share my poetry under the handle @jawnvanjacobs. Additionally, one of my poems titled "the remembering tree" was recently published in Issue 3 of Cool Beans Lit. Keep an eye on my Instagram for updates and new releases!

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Jawn Van Jacobs is a spitfire South Jersey poet who lets loose on the page with unapologetic passion. His poetry has appeared in Cool Beans Lit and Beyond Queer Words, where he fearlessly explores the gritty, untamed stories of outlaws and outsiders. Through his work, Jawn sheds light on the lives and viewpoints of those often marginalized by society, painting portraits of the human experience beyond the mainstream.

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John Wojtowicz grew up working on his family’s azalea and rhododendron nursery in the backwoods of what Ginsberg dubbed “nowhere Zen New Jersey.” Currently, he works as a licensed clinical social worker and adjunct professor. He has been featured on Rowan University’s Writer’s Roundtable on 89.7 WGLS-FM and several of his poems were chosen to be exhibited in Princeton University's 2021 Unique Minds: Creative Voices art show at the Lewis Center for the Arts. He has been nominated 3x for a Pushcart Prize and serves as the Local Lyrics contributor for The Mad Poets Society Blog. His debut chapbook Roadside Oddities: A Poetic Guide to American Oddities was released in early 2022 and can be purchased at www.johnwojtowicz.com. John lives with his wife and two children in Upper Deerfield, NJ.

Review of Show Tunes by Joe Roarty

Show Tunes

Iniquity Press/Vendetta Books

$10.00

You can purchase your copy here.

Reviewed by Sean Hanrahan

Anyone who has seen local legend, Joe Roarty, perform at Fergie’s Pub or other venues around Philadelphia knows to expect poetry that is original, explosive, humorous, and, literally, percussive. For the uninitiated, Roarty performs his poems accompanied by a hand drum, which accentuates the incantatory, effect of his at turns celebratory, satiric, lyric, and rant-fueled poems. Roarty is like no other poet on the local scene, and I, for one, was excited to dive into his latest collection, Showtunes.

One poem that stood out to me is titled “aftr my father dies i go 2 applebees.” It may because, personal disclosure, I hate Applebees and have a negative dining experience of eating there after my grandmother’s funeral. Back to this funny and heartbreaking poem. He sums up the tastes of his deceased father with the propulsive lines:

applebees is n th suburbs
& my fathr was a man of th suburbs
mainly
he liked 2 drink thr
he liked wine
& he wasn’t particular
so applebees was perfct

Even while writing this suburban ode to his father, Roarty introduces (in true bohemian deadpan style) a sociopolitical comment: “i red where applebees treats thr mployees badly/so its not a place I normally go 2.” As he mourns his father, he comes to the realization that Applebees are around

where nothing has 2 add up
& u can sit n a booth
& drink & cry if u want 2
nobody minds if you pay yr bill
tip th waitress
& only hav a short drive home

The political resurfaces throughout Roarty’s work, and it does so poignantly in “america u drive a hard bargn.” He begins this assessment of modern America life with the breathlessly perfect lines:

america u drive a hard bargn
u drive a fast car
everyone pays 2 b who they r
2 gt wher they want 2 go
th only law is don’t go slow

This poem continues to discuss capitalism: “america u drive a hard bargn/th sales pitch/the bait & switch.” It even echoes Thelma and Louise, or at least to this cineaste’s mind, “i was driving a fast car but i wasn’t getting anywhere…i was yelling nto th grand canyon/my voice came bak like i was trying 2 sell myself something.” He ends this travelogue diatribe aptly comparing america (lowercase deliberate) to a “usd car lot.” Now, imagine this poem with percussion!

One of the poems in which I believe Roarty’s rhythmic and sonic effects mirror the intensity of his live performances most clearly is “watt yr gtting nto.”

hit by a wave
drivn down
sand rasping
salt stinging
ears crashing 
th tip
of an uncontrollabl force
carelessly nokking u down

In the end the poem is about love and loss with the aching force of the stanza:

u don’t wanna
nd up
lft on th shore
watching yr lovr sail away

We learn how Roarty first learned to love the drum that features so singularly during his readings in the poem, “wagon train:”

sometimes i wd go ovr 2 ricky’s hous
we wd go down 2 th basement
that’s where his fathr’s drum kit was
& if u touchd it it let out
this sound
like a pistl shot or a door cracking opn

Unfortunately for Roarty’s childhood friend, Ricky, drum practice conflicted with the airing of Wagon Train. Ricky’s father was a drummer before he became a salesman, and there is the intimation Ricky may face the same fate when he grows up. As the adventures of Wagon Train fade in Ricky’s earnest attempts to become a drummer, he, like a fairy tale dragon or baddie in a Western, hoards the musical magic for himself:

he wanted 2 play th drums
but he cd only touch
those gleaming drums…
so wn i
ntranced by thr harsh geometry
touched th snare
& its acidic xplosiv tone
a pistl shot
filld th basement
ricky told me
no

And thus, an iconoclast was born!

Showtunes is a marvelous collection encasing Roarty’s unique style. He channels the Beats without parodying them. When I read or hear his work, I am transported to the fifties/sixties as well as today. He is humorous, sly, political. He muses on the difficult, the strange, the overlooked. He brings to mind the Beat poets or the poète Maudite like Rimbaud or Villon. Buy Showtunes and surrender to its percussive insight and beauty!

Sean Hanrahan is a Philadelphian poet originally hailing from Dale City, Virginia. He is the author of the full-length collection Safer Behind Popcorn (2019 Cajun Mutt Press) and the chapbooks Hardened Eyes on the Scan (2018 Moonstone Press) and Gay Cake (2020 Toho). His work has also been included in several anthologies, including Moonstone Featured Poets, Queer Around the World, and Stonewall’s Legacy, and several journals, including Impossible Archetype, Mobius, Peculiar, Poetica Review, and Voicemail Poems. He has taught classes titled A Chapbook in 49 Days and Ekphrastic Poetry and hosted poetry events throughout Philadelphia.

Ekphrasis: Poems and Art

Ekphrasis: Poems and Art

Image Credit: Cathleen Cohen

Welcome to a new Mad Poets blog, to be offered quarterly.  

It’s a pleasure to write about the relationship between poetry and other art forms, to examine ways that a various creative arts relate to each other.

The term ekphrasis can be defined narrowly as writing that describes a work of art in another medium-- paintings, music, photography sculpture and the like.  It can also refer more broadly to the alchemy that happens when one medium tries to define and relate to another. This could refer to poems inspired by the visual arts or music -- and also the reverse! To my mind, ekphrasis can also encompass hybrid works, like artists’ books, author/illustrator collaborations and graphic poems.

Many scholars have written about ekphrasis and there are great resources online. Though not scholar of the topic, I have had a practice of writing poetry and painting for many years. Both are essential to my creative life. These art forms interact, challenge each other and open up many questions and tensions.

My aim in this blog is to feature the work of various poets and artists, to let you know of interesting viewing opportunities and to provide some angles that might prompt your own writing.

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Enoch the Poet – Shaping the Visual

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From Immortal Dark, Black Minds Publishing, 2020

Enoch the Poet (James Church) is a talented poet, publisher, and trauma-informed educator whose approach to using visual art and poetry is only one of his many accomplishments. Speaking with him has expanded my understanding of what ekphrasis can accomplish. Not only does Enoch use multiple art forms himself, he collaborates with other creatives. Perhaps most significantly, he is providing a platform to inspire and share the work of other poets, artists and musicians.

As Founder and Executive Director of Black Mind Publishing, Enoch is a force for social change, giving “visibility to raw artistic works, both literary and visual, that center on the healing process of the Black mind, body and spirit.” (https://www.blackmindspublishing.com/)  Several of their publications incorporate images and text through mangas, including Enoch’s own manga series, Immortal Dark. He has also authored two collections of poems, The Guide to Drowning (2017) and Burned At the Roots (2020).

Enoch’s early focus was not poetry, but animation. As a young student he was a “comic book lover and nerd”, a visual artist who considered digital arts college. His middle school in Wilmington was violent, where students experienced much bullying and fighting. But Enoch’s poetry chapbook project in 8th grade honors English class provided a way for other students to open up to him. He shifted his trajectory into poetry, rapping and music, since these provided connectivity and community. After much experience performing spoken word, Enoch won the title of Philadelphia Fuze Grand Slam Champion in 2017 and he placed well in the Individual World Poetry Slam in Spokane, Washington.

 A Seizure Is What Happens When God Enters A Human Body

by Enoch the Poet

after Osimiri Sprowal

My mother catches the spirit for
the second time this week. The first
time was in the upstairs hallway. This
time, God finds her in the bathroom,
stretched out on a crucifix of pearl
linoleum, hands and feet shaking to
tear herself away from the cross.
Grandma used to say God spoke
through thunder and I think I can
hear him in the clapping of momma
skull against the bathroom tile and oh
how God-like that is, to speak to my family
in a language we can never understand
but always feel the pain of. Possession is
not only a demonic practice ‘cuz God has
made a new home in my momma. She
catches the spirit for the third time this week, this time, God finds her on the living room floor stretched out on a carpet the color of his sons blood, a red sea, hands and feet shaking to wade through the waters, to stroke herself to freedom. Grandma used to say God exist outside of space and time and I think he been tryna’ take my momma there. They say Jesus rose on the third day and I think on this third day of seizures I can see his resurrection in the space between momma bouncing limbs and the ground. Her mouth opens and angel wings burst from her throat. We anchor her body down and they fly away with her voice. On this third day, my mother rose with only part of herself. She goes to speak and vacancy spills over her lips. God plays abusive father in my household, bringer of blessings who is still able to shake the voice out of my momma at will and everyone around me will tell me
not to curse him because he means
well and everyone around me will
tell me this is her doing and everyone
around me will tell me to thank him
that she’s still alive when he brought
this sacred illness to her in the first
place. Grandma say you got to learn
to see the blessings in everything. My
mother regained consciousness without
a voice and I spent the next 2 hours of
the night teaching her how to speak again.
When I think back on this night I picture my
mother flying full speed after her angels.
I imagine them playful and her desperate.
I imagine a dogfight of spirits where my
momma pries the rest of herself out
of their grip and reclaims herself and
she returns to herself and when I point
to me and sound emerges from her mouth
I imagine she created her own blessing.
I imagine she is God now.

https://www.rigorous-mag.com/v3i1/enoch-the-poet.html

Currently, Enoch devotes much time to creative projects that support social growth and change. I have seen him thrive as a teaching artist who advanced into the role of Program Director at Philadelphia’s Artwell, which supports youth and their communities through creative expression, poetry and other art forms (https://www.theartwell.org/). His experience and innovations bring much to our community.

https://www.instagram.com/immortaldarkmanga/              Artwork by Susana Vieira

Going forward, Enoch’s creative ideas expand the possibilities of ekphrastic projects. He is working on a new poetry manuscript, which involves “shaping of the visual”. This will include access to videos with visuals and instrumentation. He will continue to collaborate with international manga artists, (as he’s doing now through Black Minds Publishing). He speaks of further engagement with themes of generational trauma, family dynamics, and how to facilitate the healing process in oneself. He shares that he will continue to explore “how many different forms poetry can exist in. Learning poetry teaches great skills and is a great foundation to learning how to create in general.”

Here are some links to learn more about Enoch’s talent and leadership:

https://www.facebook.com/EnochThePoet/

https://www.instagram.com/enochthepoet/

https://www.blackmindspublishing.com/

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM9A6B--8yQ

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIjguP4MxfY

 https://www.theartwell.org/enochthepoet

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Cathleen Cohen was the 2019 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, PA. A painter and teacher, she founded the We the Poets program at ArtWell, an arts education non-profit in Philadelphia (www.theartwell.org). Her poems appear in journals such as Apiary, Baltimore Review, Cagibi, East Coast Ink, 6ix, North of Oxford, One Art, Passager, Philadelphia Stories, Rockvale Review and Rogue Agent. Camera Obscura (chapbook, Moonstone Press), appeared in 2017 and Etching the Ghost (Atmosphere Press), was published in 2021. She received the Interfaith Relations Award from the Montgomery County PA Human Rights Commission and the Public Service Award from National Association of Poetry Therapy. Her paintings are on view at Cerulean Arts Gallery. To learn more about her work, visit www.cathleencohenart.com.

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Mad Poet of the Year - Lisa DeVuono

The Mad Poet of the Year blog posts share the poetry of a long-time Mad Poet. This year-long appointment provides readers with a deep dive of the writer’s work and thoughts on poetry. We are thrilled to have Lisa DeVuono serve as the Mad Poet of the Year for 2024.

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Mothers of Frontenac Street

wake before anyone else stops dreaming
the web that forms is their sleep in your eyes

they worry the day into being
their love is the dust settling on every sill

they hang laundry on Mondays in the shared alleys
ripped up by the sons and daughters

who drink beer, shoot caps, make out,
disappear into war, and drown in boats that die at sea

the mothers of Frontenac Street have buried their lives
in the basement of sorrow cemented with joy

their faces forever fixed in stone
years from now, those who live in these houses

will hear a ghost of voices
calling their children home

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As Mother’s Day approaches, I am listening to David Darling’s music in particular his composition, “Remembering Our Mothers.”  It’s a haunting piece and the two prints above were created as an intuitive response to his work. For this posting, I am coupling them with my poem “Mothers of Frontenac Street.”

I grew up in Oxford Circle in Northeast Philadelphia. There were lots of children to play with on Frontenac Street and the better part of our years was spent in each other’s homes under the watchful eyes of our mothers. 

In this poem I was attempting to capture how mothers were part of the everyday fabric of our lives.  They wore many hats: disciplinarians, breadwinners, caregivers. At day’s end with all they had to juggle, I wonder if they ever had a good night’s sleep.

They helped us to celebrate the joys and to weather the tragedies of those times.

The poem has a dreamlike quality, as I wanted to convey how they imbued everything from the daily tasks of doing laundry to the cracks in the walls to the sounds of their voices to the heartbreak of what it means to bear children and to let them go.

Even though most of the original neighbors have long passed on, I believe that their spirits linger in those row homes and saying their names here echo like a childhood lullaby: Katella, O’Riordan, Epstein, McCarty, Flynn, Friel, Higgins, Pickens, Cummings, DeVuono.

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Lisa DeVuono is the 2024 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County. She was one of the founders of It Ain’t Pretty, a women’s writing collective that performed locally. She produced multi-media shows incorporating song, music, poetry, and dance, including Rumi in Song at the Sedgwick Theater; and Whole Heart Home, and Breaking Open Breaking Free, part of the IceHouse Tonight series in Bethlehem.   

She led creativity and poetry workshops and has worked with teens in recovery and cancer patients. She wrote a peer-based curriculum Poetry as a Tool for Recovery: An Easy-to-Use Guide in Eight Sessions for facilitators working with persons living with mental health challenges.

In addition to the full-length manuscript This Time Roots, Next Time Wings, her poetry has appeared in the Mad Poets Review, Paterson Literary Review and the anthology Grit Gravity & Grace: New Poems about Medicine and Healthcare. She is the author of the chapbook Poems from the Playground of Risk published by Pudding House Press and was the recipient of an honorable mention in Passaic County Community College’s annual Allen Ginsberg Contest.

Recently retired, she has worked as an administrator, librarian, and lay chaplain.

Guest Post - Ray Greenblatt on John Steinbeck

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PALIMPSESTS: CANNERY ROW

I use the word “palimpsest” figuratively. Its dictionary definition is: “A surface in which later writing has been superimposed on effaced earlier writing.”  What I see are examples of writings that had influenced John Steinbeck; and what authors Steinbeck, in turn, has influenced. The novel Cannery Row (1945) offers many different genres, which makes this work very rich in literary possibilities.

BEFORE STEINBECK

Let us make up a little story which is typical in ancient Chinese literature: In  Ninth Century China lived a poet Wang Chi. His poems were known throughout China, but he was difficult to locate. Between the limestone islets in the Li River of the south and the Great Wall of Beijing in the north he journeyed on his own time in any season. Thus, the people considered him a semi-mystical prophet and healer in addition to a writer of exquisite verse.

Being a broad reader, Steinbeck employs that motif: “The old man stopped and turned. Andy stopped. The deep-brown eyes looked at Andy and the thin corded lips moved. What happened then Andy was never able either to explain or to forget. For the eyes spread out until there was no Chinaman. And then it was one eye—one huge brown eye as big as a church door. Andy looked through the shiny transparent brown door and through it he saw a lonely countryside.” (23)

Being raised in the West, Steinbeck must have been influenced by Western authors. Josh Billings was not as famous as Mark Twain but an entire chapter was given to him: “More recently in Carmel there have been a great number of literary men about, but there is not the old flavor, the old dignity of the true belles-lettres. Once the town was greatly outraged over what the citizens considered a slight to an author. It had to do with the death of Josh Billings, the great humorist.” (71) 

We cannot overlook the atmosphere of Twain’s famous “Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” when Steinbeck describes frog-hunting: “Every frog leaped, plopped into the pool, and swam frantically to the bottom. Then into the pool plunged the line of men, stamping, churning, moving in a crazy line up the pool, flinging their feet about. Hysterically the frogs displaced from their placid spots swam ahead of the crazy thrashing feet and the feet came on.” (93)

In addition, Steinbeck must have been influenced by the radio shows of the 1920s and 1930s, especially soap operas like ”Our Gal Sunday” or “Stella Dallas.” In Chapter 8 the Malloys are living in stressed circumstances:

“Mrs. Malloy cried and cried and Sam held her in his arms and comforted her.

‘Men just don’t understand how a woman feels,’ she sobbed. ’Men just never try to put themselves in a woman’s place.’

 “ And Sam lay beside her and rubbed her back for a long time before she went to sleep.” (49)

The Talbots (Chapter 24) were also in difficult straits, but the wife Mary has a very different attitude from Mrs. Malloy: “It was a kind of play she enjoyed very much—a kind of satiric game and it covered and concealed from Mary the fact that she didn’t have very nice clothes and the Talbots didn’t have any money. They were pretty near absolute bottom most of the time, and when they really scraped, Mary managed to give some kind of a party.” (152)

An element of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett also haunts some of Steinbeck’s writing. In the 1920’s detectives were on the move tracing evidence and picking up clues: “ Doc didn’t stop in Salinas for a hamburger. But he stopped in Gonzales, in King City and in Paso Robles. He had a hamburger and beer at Santa Maria—two in Santa Maria because it was a long pull from there to Santa Barbara.” (104)

Ed Ricketts (1897-1948) was a marine biologist whom Steinbeck met in 1931. The author admired Ed very much for his scientific knowledge as well as his fascinating personality and dedicated Cannery Row to him: “For Ed Ricketts, who knows why or should.” The two collaborated on a book, The Sea of Cortez, in 1941. Steinbeck patterned Doc, the major character of Cannery Row, after Ed. His lab had all sorts of sea creatures:

“The lovely animals of the sea, the sponges, tunicates, anemones, the stars and buttle-stars, and sun stars, the bivalves, barnacles, the worms and shells, the fabulous and multiform little brothers, the loving moving flowers of the sea, nudi-branchs and tectibranchs, the spiked and nobbed and needly urchins, the crabs and demi-crabs, the little dragons, the snapping shrimps.” (25)

John and Ed shared the love of these many living things. When Ed died prematurely in a car accident, Steinbeck was devastated.

AFTER STEINBECK

Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) admired Steinbeck from afar, stating the older man’s influence on the younger’s fantasy writing. Among the loosely joined chapters, Steinbeck used many different genres; here is an example of the dark influence on Bradbury:

“From his upper left vest pocket he took an old-fashioned straight-edged razor. He opened it and indicated the child with a gesture of his head. He put a hand among the curls and the baby laughed gleefully and then the man tilted the chin and cut the baby’s throat and the baby went right on laughing.” (137)

Another surreal scene is when Doc finds something while climbing over rocks along the shore:

”A girl’s face looked up at him, a pretty, pale girl with dark hair. Her eyes were open and clear and the face was firm and the hair washed gently about her head. The body was out of sight, caught in the crevice. The lips were slightly parted and the teeth showed and on the face was only comfort and rest.” (109)

John Steinbeck prefigured the Beat poets of the 1950’s too, although he never published a poetry collection. Here from the Introduction is a free verse description of Cannery Row in Monterey in California (I take the liberty of putting this sequence in poetic scansion):

A poem
stink
a grating sound
a quality of light
a tone
a habit
a nostalgia
a dream.

Steinbeck was often self-referential. In Steinbeck’s later novel East of Eden (1952) the wayward mother becomes a prostitute.  A major character in Cannery Row is also a prostitute but a very different type:

“Dora who, madam and girl for fifty years, has through the exercise of special gifts of tact and honesty, charity and a certain realism, made herself respected by the intelligent, the learned, and the kind. And by the same token she is hated by the twisted and lascivious sisterhood of married spinsters whose husbands respect the home but don’t like it very much.” (16)

The author wrote a sequel to Cannery Row titled Sweet Thursday (1954), which featured many of the same characters. If that were not enough, he worked with Rodgers and Hammerstein on a musical comedy based on the latter book called Pipe Dreams (1955). This scene could easily be the backdrop for that stage play: 

“Early morning is a time of magic in Cannery Row. In the gray time after the light has come and before the sun has risen, the Row seems to hang suspended out of time in a silvery light. The street lights go out, and the weeds are a brilliant green. The corrugated iron of the canneries glows with the pearly lucence of platinum or old pewter.” (85)

John Steinbeck’s final novel was The Winter of Our Discontent (1961) in which the major character runs a hardware store. It seems fitting to conclude this article with a Chinese reference since we began with one. Whereas the shopkeeper just mentioned is a Yankee in Boston, in Cannery Row Lee Chong is in sharp contrast: 

“It was small and crowded but within its single room a man could find everything he needed or wanted to live and to be happy—clothes, food, both fresh and canned, liquor, tobacco, fishing equipment, machinery, boats, cordage, caps, pork chops. You could buy at Lee Chong’s a pair of slippers, a silk kimono, a quarter pint of whiskey and a cigar. You could work out combinations to fit almost any mood.” (5)

The dice are loaded before I even finish reading this book. I like it; any negatives are so minor that I do not mention them. My special interest is in style. I am a poet; I am looking for poetic passages in the prose. It is a relative rarity that prose authors can carry it off without resorting to “purple prose.” That is why I praise in print the ones who can and do.

Ray Greenblatt has been a poet for forty years and an English teacher longer than that. He was an editor of General Eclectic, a board member of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, and is presently on the staff of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. He has won the Full Moon Poetry Contest, the Mad Poets Annual Contest, and twice won the Anthony Byrne Annual Contest for Irish Poetry sponsored by The Irish Edition. His poetry has been translated into Gaelic, Polish, Greek and Japanese.

Mad Poet of the Year - Lisa DeVuono

The Mad Poet of the Year blog posts share the poetry of a long-time Mad Poet. This year-long appointment provides readers with a deep dive of the writer’s work and thoughts on poetry. We are thrilled to have Lisa DeVuono serve as the Mad Poet of the Year for 2024.

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Poetry Magnets

There’s a feast waiting to happen
on the outside
of my refrigerator.

For months
words cling like mouths from famine
waiting for me to transform
bread into body, water into wine
to mix nouns and verbs,
a dash of adjective, pinch of comma,
create a whole new recipe
of witticisms.

The miracle occurs without me.

Words fall off demagnetized
and slip into every crack
under floors and walls
into closets and bedclothes
among clutter and noisemaking.

I wash my face and they fall from faucets.
I drive my car and they sing on radios.
I go to work and they tumble from wallets.
I hand over whole sentences
for the paying of lunch.

It’s my body, it’s my soul.
We feed with poems
and the feast we put on
is not the Last Supper, but the First

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April’s poem “Poetry Magnets” celebrates National Poetry Month and initiates my yearlong blog postings of poems and commentary as the new Mad Poet of the Year.  Thrilled to be sharing with all of you.

The origin of this poem goes back twenty years. My office was the standard issue cubicle so to personalize it, I installed magnetic words on the outside metal walls. Within a few days, colleagues would stop by to ask a question and then pause quizzically, eventually staying long enough to shuffle words around and to form a clever sentence or haiku.  Soon there were enough poems to submit to the company newsletter, and now employees from outside of my department stopped to introduce themselves and craft a poem. A real poetry rave.

Later when I moved on to another job and packed up my office, I noticed that many magnetic words had slipped onto the carpet, behind my bookcase, and I even found some in my desk drawers! Me thinks, I smell a poem.  Thus the birth of the line “Words fall off demagnetized and slip into every crack under floors and walls,” and from there, the poem practically wrote itself.

These days, I see poems everywhere. In her poem “Valentine for Ernest Mann,” Naomi Shihab Nye invites us to do the same with her words, She advises, “Check your garage, the odd sock in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite. And let me know.”

Where do your poems live?

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Lisa DeVuono is the 2024 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County. She was one of the founders of It Ain’t Pretty, a women’s writing collective that performed locally. She produced multi-media shows incorporating song, music, poetry, and dance, including Rumi in Song at the Sedgwick Theater; and Whole Heart Home, and Breaking Open Breaking Free, part of the IceHouse Tonight series in Bethlehem.   

She led creativity and poetry workshops and has worked with teens in recovery and cancer patients. She wrote a peer-based curriculum Poetry as a Tool for Recovery: An Easy-to-Use Guide in Eight Sessions for facilitators working with persons living with mental health challenges.

In addition to the full-length manuscript This Time Roots, Next Time Wings, her poetry has appeared in the Mad Poets Review, Paterson Literary Review and the anthology Grit Gravity & Grace: New Poems about Medicine and Healthcare. She is the author of the chapbook Poems from the Playground of Risk published by Pudding House Press and was the recipient of an honorable mention in Passaic County Community College’s annual Allen Ginsberg Contest.

Recently retired, she has worked as an administrator, librarian and lay chaplain.

Review of West: A Translation by Paisley Redkal

West: A Translation

Copper Canyon Press

$26.00

You can purchase a copy here.

Reviewed by Jennifer Schneider

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In West: A Translation, Paisley Rekdal shares an unforgettable collection of work, in poetic, visual, and essay forms. The hybrid text is the culmination of a project that first began in 2018 when Rekdal was commissioned to author a poem to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Transcontinental Railroad and one that will serve as a powerful teacher, and anchor of truth and history, long into the future.

West: A Translation revisits and reveals historical realities through personal stories, visual illustrations, photographs, and collections of documents that weave together, in complex and layered ways, the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, the political and cultural realities of the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882 - 1943), and the harshness of American history. Pieces spotlight the voices, lived experiences, and violations of transcontinental railroad workers, Chinese immigrants, detainees, and other impacted parties in ways that reveal, perhaps as no other work has before, the tensions, hidden truths, and challenges that time can never heal and that are deeply embedded in the realities of a collective past.

The work translates, via a single Chinese character at a time, “Notes Toward an Untranslated Country”, an anonymous Chinese poem that had been carved into a wall of the Angel Island Immigration Station. The station served as the California detention center for Chinese immigrants to the United States. It was a site of deep heartbreak and harm, including extended detentions as well as suicides. For each character of the poem, Rekdal’s translation opens windows, accessible in ways never before, to a range of emotions, complex and layered, and experiences that extend far beyond any one voice or reality. The pieces humanize experiences in ways only poetry can and simultaneously span and expand upon a spectrum of human suffering as captured, conveyed, and retold throughout the collection.

The pieces are as detailed and expertly researched as they are sweeping commentaries that lift curtains, heavy in weight and time waiting, on long-concealed truths. Each poem works in, and of, multiple layers to spotlight, raise awareness, and crystallize collective experiences and loss as the voices featured in individual pieces travel alongside the railroad’s history. Individual poems, which vary in form and style, are accompanied by poignant and powerful images and detailed explanatory notes that inform and inspire, while also serving simultaneously as a critical reminder of, and educational tool for, histories that are often underexplored.

噩耗 Sorrowful News

Sorrowful news sings the telegram
and Lincoln’s body slides from DC
to Springfield, his third son, Willie,
boxed beside him….

裹 Wrap

Dear Margaret: It is called Scarletteena the disorder
is all in the throat. The boy I said
is a son of Henry’s that lives with us
he has another James lives with his mother
this boy is about 8 years the other between 6 and 7
Dear Margaret I cannot find words to express
at all times in sickness in death Dear Margaret
We are sorry about your house being burned
we hope you have got another

思鄉 Miss Home

Ways to die: blasting accident, derailment,
border crack. Crushed between trains crossing
in the night. Electrocution,
bad food, heart attack. You can work
yourself to death…

when we hit Rock Springs? Don’t you miss
your home?
Miss home? I told him.
I’m hoping to miss it entirely.

The work’s epigraph – “It is impossible to grieve in the first-person singular” (Cristina Rivera Garza) orients and situates the work as a testament to the human spirit and the collective nature of loss, labor, struggle, and suffering. Essays and extended notes detail the often hidden and haunting history and development of the railroad. Violations are described throughout, in connection with both translation (see, for example, p. 125) and humanity (see all), as well as the work itself (125).

In spaces where oppression meets resistance, suffering meets innate curiosity, and humanity confronts the harsh realities of history, West: A Translation transports as it informs and creates a visceral experience alongside an exquisitely painted landscape of poetic prowess. Sorrow is exquisitely captured in sweeping brush strokes that pair varied voices, blend literary styles, languages, and documents, and paint a masterpiece in hybrid form. The expertly researched and documented poems and essays are paired with an associated website where video poems extend the experience in immersive and multi-sensory ways. See: https://westtrain.org/

The collection highlights the extraordinary power of poetry to not only promote more intentional grounding in the present but also as a powerful teacher of the past. West: A Translation elevates and expands the hybrid form and takes readers on a journey across time and physical space, while also creating an anchor to which readers can regularly return for extended learning. Future readers, enjoy the journey that is West: A Translation and this remarkable collection of history.

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Jen Schneider is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. She loves words, experimental poetry, and the change of seasons. She’s also a fan of late nights, crossword puzzles, and compelling underdogs. She has authored several chapbooks and full-length poetry collections, with stories, poems, and essays published in a variety of literary and scholarly journals. Sample works include Invisible Ink, On Habits & Habitats, On Daily Puzzles: (Un)locking Invisibility, A Collection of Recollections, and Blindfolds, Bruises, and Breakups. She is currently working on her first series, which (not surprisingly) includes a novel in verse. She is the 2022-2023 Montgomery County PA Poet Laureate.

Mad Poet of the Year - Tonita Austin (aka Toni Love)

The Mad Poet of the Year blog posts share the poetry of a long-time Mad Poet. This year-long appointment provides readers with a deep dive of the writer’s work and thoughts on poetry. We are thrilled to have Tonita Austin (aka Toni Love) serve as the Mad Poet of the Year for 2023.

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Remember Me

i want my life to be more than memories splattered/
pain and sorrow screaming too loud for my heart to heal
strong women build legacies
remember me when faith and courage and joy is spoken
my pain transformed to beauty
sacrifices and sorrow drowned in grace
i want my life to speak love

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It has truly been an honor to be chosen as the Mad Poet of 2023-2024 and I appreciate the opportunity to revisit and share some of my favorite poems.

I came across this poem recently that I wrote in the summer of 2019, just a few weeks before my book Toni's Room ; a poetic journey to restoration would be released on Amazon. I must have been thinking about how far I had come on this journey called life and how important it is to make sure you don't leave the story, the poem, or whatever your heart desires within you. Poets wear their heart outside for all of the world to see and it's both scary and gratifying. I didn't add a title to this poem in my journal, but I think I'll title it “Remember Me.”

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Tonita Austin also known as “Toni Love” is a gifted poet, singer, activist, and writer born in West Philadelphia. While attending Columbia University, Tonita was a student of Amiri Baraka and performed in Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls” as the Lady in Orange. Her writing is influenced by both experiences. She is a contributor to the anthology The Black Body and featured poet in the 2018 and 2020 Winter/Fall edition of the Philadelphia Arts and Urban Literary magazine. The Restoration EP is her first published recording; Toni’s Room is her first published book. Toni currently resides in Media, PA. For more info, visit www.tonitalove.com and https://tonilove.hearnow.com/.

Local Lyrics - Featuring Deborah Bayer

In the Temple of Healing
by Deborah Bayer

When I leave the sea-filled chamber,
the guide gives me a gift, a clean

white handkerchief with two stonestied in the corner. I untie the knot,

take one of the prisms in my hand. It fits
my left hand true when my fingers close

over the polished surface. I feel a deep
hum. The other rock takes getting used to.

It’s the one I keep with me. I bring it
to the clinic in the pocket of my backpack,

 nowhere near my cell phone. I fear sharp
edges will mar the screen, or the phone

signal will interfere with the energy|.
The surface of the quartz is scratched

and sticky, as if it once bore a price tag.
Soap and water won’t smooth it; neither

will alcohol. It doesn’t come clean, but
it holds my warmth as it transmits the light,

broken into seven colors. I have two
crystals, an unblemished one at my bedside

and a rough one in my pocket. Do I love both the same? No, I love one more.

Let the pristine one stay home, protected.|The scarred and clouded one is me.

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What draws you to poetry as an artistic medium over other art forms?
I first became serious about writing poems when I worked long, unpredictable hours as a full-time physician. The writing was a way of processing complicated emotions. I didn’t copy William Carlos Williams’ capturing thoughts on a prescription pad, but I appreciated the short form of poetry because of time constraints. As I improved my craft through workshops and classes, I continued writing. Poems work the way my brain works, through compression of language and associative leaps that trust the reader to follow.

Your debut chapbook, Rope Made of Bandages, entered the world last year through Finishing Line Press. Tell us about it!
This book includes poems that I wrote over ten years. The collection braids the themes of being a physician, being a patient, and bringing myself to retire from seeing patients, many of whom I had known for over twenty years. I wouldn’t have been able to get this book into the world without the help of my poetry critique group, the Leap Street poets, and the book is dedicated to them. They will be joining me in a reading to celebrate the one-year anniversary of my chapbook on March 27, 2024. https://noyesmuseum.org/all-noyes-events/2021/9/15/world-above-poetry-open-mic-9fmpd-39hcw-hle5n-wmfjk-kymsp-46n7c-wszl9-29k2y-5n8sc-nmykn-8p7e3-3cr7g-xtwe6-gdzdp-exwtm-835ml-ec7yw-wap5n-et44f-2lkt3-4r2c5-hc8np-9lchx

How do you get from an all-possible blank page to a near finished work? How would you describe your process?
When I have unlimited time, my poems often begin as prose freewrites that I shape into poems. When I’m under time pressure to compose a poem, I prefer writing in poetic forms. I like having a container for the poem. And the form distracts my thinking brain. If there’s any genius in any of my poems, I attribute it all to my unconscious mind. I once wrote a sonnet about the rigors of being a physician that collided with a memory of a childhood ballet class.

You retired from the practice of Infectious Disease and Palliative Care. Do you find there are crossovers between the practice of medicine and the practice of poetry?
Yes, the crossovers between medicine and poetry are many. They both hinge on communication and relationships. I’m most struck by these crossovers when I’m at a poetry reading. There is a kind of open receptivity needed to listen to poems, just as there is a need to be receptive when listening to a patient. And when I’m reading, I am open to how listeners respond. Poetry and medicine are both two-way communications: doctor-patient and writer-reader/listener. I witnessed the crossover most sharply when I ran hospice weekly meetings. I began each meeting by reading a poem, a way of showing that our work there was not merely clinical.

You facilitate writing groups via Zoom utilizing the Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA) methodology and the Narrative Medicine workshop format. Can you tell us a little bit about these methodologies and formats as well as the writing groups themselves?
I draw on my experiences as both a writer and physician when I facilitate writing groups. The AWA method is designed to create a safe and supportive environment. Participants generate writing to a prompt and then read it aloud to the group. The two methods dovetail nicely. Narrative Medicine puts more emphasis on group discussion of a piece of art before a short write, while the AWA method puts more emphasis on the writing. I find that combining the methods helps writers surprise themselves when they put words down on a page. Because the meetings are held on Zoom, writers from across the country and overseas meet in the same virtual room.

Where can readers read more of your work/buy your book?
I post weekly on my Substack, Healers Write, Writers Heal: https://deborahbayer.substack.com

Rope Made of Bandages is available on the publisher’s website: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/rope-made-of-bandages-by-deborah-bayer/

Or, signed copies are available on my website: https://www.harmonycommllc.com/shop/

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Deborah Bayer is mostly retired after nearly thirty years of caring for HIV patients in the Atlantic City area. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Bellevue Literary Review, U.S. 1 Worksheets, Peregrine (AWA Press), Trampoline, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and elsewhere. She is working on a memoir about finding her way through a sometimes toxic medical culture. She spent her early years in Brazil and now lives in Galloway Township with her husband.

Ways to find me: https://bit.ly/m/DebPoet

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John Wojtowicz grew up working on his family’s azalea and rhododendron nursery in the backwoods of what Ginsberg dubbed “nowhere Zen New Jersey.” Currently, he works as a licensed clinical social worker and adjunct professor. He has been featured on Rowan University’s Writer’s Roundtable on 89.7 WGLS-FM and several of his poems were chosen to be exhibited in Princeton University's 2021 Unique Minds: Creative Voices art show at the Lewis Center for the Arts. He has been nominated 3x for a Pushcart Prize and serves as the Local Lyrics contributor for The Mad Poets Society Blog. His debut chapbook Roadside Oddities: A Poetic Guide to American Oddities was released in early 2022 and can be purchased at www.johnwojtowicz.com. John lives with his wife and two children in Upper Deerfield, NJ.

Mad Poet of the Year - Tonita Austin (aka Toni Love)

The Mad Poet of the Year blog posts share the poetry of a long-time Mad Poet. This year-long appointment provides readers with a deep dive of the writer’s work and thoughts on poetry. We are thrilled to have Tonita Austin (aka Toni Love) serve as the Mad Poet of the Year for 2023.

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Complete

 by Tonita Austin aka Toni Love (8/19/16 , Sandridge VA Beach)

I don’t need you to complete me
I, my beloved am complete

I just need for you to seek me out
When you’re ready to be the King to my Queen
Come from the ocean the farms or the hood
From the boardroom the courts or the mechanic’s floor
Doesn’t matter how you come to me
I just need you to come forth

King you are the perfect man for me
I just need you to get the healing you need
So that the I can become we
I, my beloved, am complete

Years of therapy tears and poetry
Wrap up around me
I’m walking stronger and taller now
I can see much further now
Beyond the red flags I no longer seek
I, my beloved, am complete

 I just need you to seek me
See me
As your partner

I offer a soft shoulder to lean on, a wipe for your brow
Pillow for your weary seat
Rub your back and fix your lunch
More deep conversations about the injustice we will together defeat

I just need a man though
Not a boy still crawling at his momma’s feet
Stand up and take my hand
I need you to look in my eyes my King and understand

I my beloved I don’t need you to make me complete
I just need you to be present and be my peace
I don’t need you to complete me
I just need for you to seek me when you become whole

I
My beloved
Am
Complete

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I chose this poem for the month of February because I feel it shows the love that I have for my culture, Black men and myself.

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Tonita Austin also known as “Toni Love” is a gifted poet, singer, activist, and writer born in West Philadelphia. While attending Columbia University, Tonita was a student of Amiri Baraka and performed in Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls” as the Lady in Orange. Her writing is influenced by both experiences. She is a contributor to the anthology The Black Body and featured poet in the 2018 and 2020 Winter/Fall edition of the Philadelphia Arts and Urban Literary magazine. The Restoration EP is her first published recording; Toni’s Room is her first published book. Toni currently resides in Media, PA. For more info, visit www.tonitalove.com and https://tonilove.hearnow.com/.

Review of Yours, Creature by Jessica Cuello

Yours, Creature

Jackleg Press

$11.65

You can purchase a copy here.

Reviewed by Jennifer Schneider

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Dear Readers,
For those of you who decide to spend time with Jessica Cuello’s Yours, Creature, you will not be disappointed. The collection is a remarkable demonstration of the power of the epistolary form as well as an equally remarkable tribute to the life and work of Mary Shelley.

The collection’s 97 pages present 48 poems in six sections, each in letter form, and span a lifetime. While many pieces share salutations (“Dear Mother” and “Dear Creature” regular openings), each poem is utterly unique and uniquely Cuello.

The collection masterfully demonstrates the timeless poetic power of letter writing as both a tool for documentation and for a deeper understanding of the complex and layered worlds in which the letter writer experienced life.

Yours, Creature – It’s surprising. It’s educational. It’s haunting. 

 Together, the pieces present Mary Shelley’s deeply layered complexity.

 From “Dear Mother, [I wanted to crawl]”:

A line from the red radius of your womb
went dark. That night the whole of London
raised its eyes to watch the comet pass –

except for us.’

(a letter from Mary Shelley speaking to the night of her birth)

to “Dear Mother, [You wrote that]”

A person has a right to tell
And I could tell a tale by bight.

I wrote beside the tossed grey water
and where the dark red rags were soaked

I told by yeast and flour,
made a man, made a monster,
put it on the Chamonix

The work not only describes a life, it pulses with life. 

It’s poignant. It’s impassioned. It’s charged.

 It also charges readers to desire more - more storytelling, more poetry, and more expertly researched history.

Cuello’s attention to detail is unmatched. Relying on primary historical sources (including Charlotte Gordon’s dual biography, Romantic Outlaws, and letters written by Mary Shelley, as detailed in the collection’s Notes), the poems paint a life as complex as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Tonally, the work is as haunting as it is educational. With each reading comes a deeper appreciation for Cuello’s exquisite writing and a deeper understanding of a life full of hardship, heartbreak, and horror. Mary Shelley would, undoubtedly, approve.

Not only is the work tonally reminiscent of Shelley’s Frankenstein, it also fully embraces the gothic genre in poetic form, with villains and heroines, darkness and death, horror and harrowing losses. Written in the voice and persona of Mary Shelley, the work speaks to the mother Shelley lost ten days after childbirth (due to an infection that developed during Shelley’s birth).

From birth – In “Dear Mother, [Father noted each event]”:

Your afterbirth would not come out
the doctor pulled it away in pieces –

,,,

and to expel the placenta
puppies suckled the milk
your body meant for me —

To girlhood – In “Dear Scottish time”:

Father sent me away – or was it stepmother/?
To be sent is different from being left.

To be left is to remain in the walls
that repel you. Memory rooms

have no equilibrium. They never match
and Mine so full of him. His turn, his back.

 To love affairs – “Dear Mother, [I did not write]”:

The backward-looking need no enemies
and every world is provincial once you’re in it.

Your pregnant daughter,
Mary Shelley

To births – In “Dear Rejection 1815”:

In threes they came: the mother, the father,
the holy lover. One by one they cut me loose:
the first went underground without me.

 amidst cycles of life, the work explores ongoing loss all while Shelley’s work on Frankenstein was born. For example, in ‘Dear Mother, [His wife was Harriet]’:

There is nothing in my arms
another nothing
added to the nothing first
the nothing second

How do you think of punishment?
Girls make their own

Did you guess your name
would get me love
and blame?

Themes revolve around love, loss, pregnancy, childbirth, and again, loss. It’s a harrowing collection that is as gripping as it is educational and as moving as it is memorable. The collection masterfully blends history and gorgeous text in a way that is both accessible and memorable. Its fabulous in ways that extend far beyond form, genre, and any single poem.

Through its haunting exploration of desire, loss, exile, and rejection, and the monstrous creations that can follow, the work simultaneously celebrates the marvelous power of the desire to create and the creative process.

 Dear Readers, I hope you enjoy the collection as much as I did.

 Yours in poetry, a Fan and Reader (of both Mary Shelley and Jessica Cuello)

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Jen Schneider is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. She loves words, experimental poetry, and the change of seasons. She’s also a fan of late nights, crossword puzzles, and compelling underdogs. She has authored several chapbooks and full-length poetry collections, with stories, poems, and essays published in a variety of literary and scholarly journals. Sample works include Invisible Ink, On Habits & Habitats, On Daily Puzzles: (Un)locking Invisibility, A Collection of Recollections, and Blindfolds, Bruises, and Breakups. She is currently working on her first series, which (not surprisingly) includes a novel in verse. She is the 2022-2023 Montgomery County PA Poet Laureate.

Ekphrasis: Poems and Art

Ekphrasis: Poems and Art

Image Credit: Cathleen Cohen

Welcome to a new Mad Poets blog, to be offered quarterly.  

It’s a pleasure to write about the relationship between poetry and other art forms, to examine ways that a various creative arts relate to each other.

The term ekphrasis can be defined narrowly as writing that describes a work of art in another medium-- paintings, music, photography sculpture and the like.  It can also refer more broadly to the alchemy that happens when one medium tries to define and relate to another. This could refer to poems inspired by the visual arts or music -- and also the reverse! To my mind, ekphrasis can also encompass hybrid works, like artists’ books, author/illustrator collaborations and graphic poems.

Many scholars have written about ekphrasis and there are great resources online. Though not scholar of the topic, I have had a practice of writing poetry and painting for many years. Both are essential to my creative life. These art forms interact, challenge each other and open up many questions and tensions.

My aim in this blog is to feature the work of various poets and artists, to let you know of interesting viewing opportunities and to provide some angles that might prompt your own writing.

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Ekphrastic Adventures

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This month I share my own adventures with ekphrasis. The time seems opportune since I’ll be teaching two courses in February that link visual art with poetry writing (details below). But first, some background on my obsession…

While attending PAFA (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts) as an adult in the 1990s and enthralled with visual art, a long-dormant love of poetry returned. It happened in animal drawing class. A friend and I were sketching, observing a lion and tiger sunning themselves on rocks in separate enclosures. They raised their heads and eyed each other for long, tense moments.  Gulping, I dropped my charcoal, grabbed a pencil, and started scribbling words in a notebook. Fragments of this experience emerged in a later poem.

PORTRAIT

Sketching at the zoo,
we’d rough in the forms of giant turtles
like tilting boulders.

Beside the lion cage
we’d glide sticks of charcoal
to imitate their prowl.

Once the pride male leapt to a ledge
across from the tiger on his ledge.
Neither flinched.
What passed between them?

Or between us
that last day teaching
before you got so sick?

Our students sat rapt
while you demonstrated
how to sketch portraits
with a loose grip.

You wavered, nearly fell
but gestured away
my help
and eyed me, as if
from a long distance.

                                    From Etching the Ghost (Atmosphere Press)

 I began to write poetry in earnest, something I had done in earlier years. Now imagery expressed in poetry and in painting seemed to intermingle, leading to experiments with one-of-a-kind artists’ books. Initially I kept text and paintings discrete, as in the first two examples, which are pages from different books. However, the third example shows mark- making superimposed over text in a practice known as “asemic” writing. Asemic art is quite intriguing and I recommend the work of Karla Van Vliet as one practitioner of this approach. (eg, Fluency, Shanti Arts Publishing, 2021). It often has a calligraphic quality and seems related to pictograph languages, like Chinese, Arabic and Hebrew.

Painting, Cathleen Cohen

Light and Shadow

Our eyes turn toward light,
but shadows are vital in painting.
Their muted tones reflect
more outgoing, brassy colors
of candlesticks and copper pots.

Shadows conduct a subtle life
below surface, as dreams do.
They hold things together,
underpinning what shouts
and seeks attention

like glints on glass
or highlights on a rose.
I’m so easily distracted
by bright objects, headlines,
sharp words, the rush of daily life.

Let me notice what’s nuanced,
like your sustaining love.
Let me sense where to place
a shadow, a soft brushstroke, silence,
a kind word.

 https://ritualwell.org/ritual/light-and-shadow/

Murmuration, Cathleen Cohen

Murmuration

Have you ever witnessed starlings
swirl above landscape,

scattering souls over
pale, winter grasses

in cramped, suburban yards
like mine? The shock

might wobble your heart.
I stare as a thousand tiny birds

slant toward sunlight,
mimic roofs and branches,

bloom into clouds
and blessings.

They spread like open fingers
spelling out questions

then contract
into a line, a siphon into

breath. Pause.
I pray they’ll soon reappear

above another landscape.
Although I’m not a scribe,

I stay up all night to paint
what I recall – traces.

https://ritualwell.org/ritual/murmuration/

In Murmuration, language (Hebrew in various fonts ) is integral to the composition of the watercolor and lately I’ve been creating works that reference Psalms and other ritual texts.

Upcoming Course Opportunities

This leads me to sharing about two upcoming course I’ll be teaching that offer ekphrasis experiments as inspiration for writing poems. The first, Jump Into Poetry, will meet weekly in person in February through Main Line School Night at the Creutzberg Center in Radnor, PA.

Information on how to register should be up online soon. No prior experience even lifting a painting brush is needed!!!

https://mainlineschoolnight.org/   or email me at cpoems@gmail.com

My second course on Ekphrasis in February is Mussar as a Generative Practice for Art and Poetry.  It will be conducted online through Ritualwell.org.  Poets and artists from any and background are most welcome. Mussar is a study of ethics that originated with European Hasidic practitioners in the 19th century. It emphasizes daily practices that can help people connect with kindness and compassion, to transform our behaviors and strengthen our relationships. In this poetry course, we will use visual art and poetry experiments to consider issues like: seeking order in the overwhelm of our experiences, boundaries and connection, and values that guide us.

 https://ritualwell.org/event/mussar-as-a-generative-practice-for-art-and-poetry/2024-02-14/

For more information about my own creative work, including exhibitions and books:

 www.cathleencohenart.com

 https://ceruleanarts.com/pages/cathleen-cohen

 https://cathleencohenart.com/poetry/new--sparks-and-disperses

 https://cathleencohenart.com/poetry/etching-the-ghost

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Cathleen Cohen was the 2019 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, PA. A painter and teacher, she founded the We the Poets program at ArtWell, an arts education non-profit in Philadelphia (www.theartwell.org). Her poems appear in journals such as Apiary, Baltimore Review, Cagibi, East Coast Ink, 6ix, North of Oxford, One Art, Passager, Philadelphia Stories, Rockvale Review and Rogue Agent. Camera Obscura (chapbook, Moonstone Press), appeared in 2017 and Etching the Ghost (Atmosphere Press), was published in 2021. She received the Interfaith Relations Award from the Montgomery County PA Human Rights Commission and the Public Service Award from National Association of Poetry Therapy. Her paintings are on view at Cerulean Arts Gallery. To learn more about her work, visit www.cathleencohenart.com.

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Local Lyrics - Featuring Alexa Gutter

When we were 4 and 8
by Alexa Gutter

You took our hands and told us about loss,
your sister in her crib gone still one night.
In black and white a photo showed us how
the small coffin was placed in frozen ground.
You were not there. No, you were only two.
Who kept you then? Who sat you in a chair
in some warm kitchen with a slice of bread?
One summer we took pansies to her grave
and Mummi walked ahead, she knew the way.
Years after that you told me of your dream
that Eija had grown up with yellow hair.
She reached for you; you held her in your arms.
I guess we never balanced what you’d lost,
the girls you made, your sister made of dust. 

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Tell us a little about your writing process. How do you get from all possible blank page to finished work?
Often the poem lives inside of me for a while before it lands on the page. Sometimes, if I have the seed of the poem but it feels too nebulous, I'll turn to poetic form as a method of containment. In my chapbook, for example, I have a blank verse sonnet about a particularly weighty topic. I have a range of interactions with my initial drafts--sometimes a poem feels mostly done right away, and I'll do some minor tinkering over time. Some drafts are awful but worth saving, and those I'll rework quite a bit. It helps to have feedback from a workshop or trusted advisor, of course. 

Your work dives into themes of motherhood, grief, and family history just to name a few. What draws your to certain subject matter? What are your muses?
I was extremely close to my mother, so losing her at age 23 was a transformative experience for me. In the decade after her death, arranging the emotional chaos of loss into lines and stanzas was cathartic and also a way of remembering her, telling our story. I also write about my Jewish ancestry and my grandparents' escape from Warsaw to Shanghai during WWII. I am drawn to the past because of how it shows up in the present. 

Why is poetry (or in general writing) the artistic medium for you?
I have tried my hand at other things--I loved the stage for years, for example. But poetry has been a constant in my life. W.S. Merwin once said: “Poetry addresses individuals in their most intimate, private, frightened and elated moments … because it comes closer than any other art form to addressing what cannot be said.” Poetry, through sound, through image, has a unique magic. It gives shape to the disorder of human experience.

In addition to being a poet, you are a middle-school teacher. Does your work with students influence or find its way into your work?
I occasionally write about the classroom! For example, in this poem about a 9th grade classroom in April. As an English teacher, I am in the business of words. Watching students interact with new texts or tap out the lines of iambic pentameter on their desks is a great joy. Since I teach middle school, I am also faced with students who are figuring out how to be people. Sometimes my experience as a poet is more helpful with that struggle than any other training I've received. 

Tell us a little bit about your forthcoming collection Aiti from Finishing Line Press.
Äiti is a chapbook about motherhood, childhood, loss, and renewal.  I wrote these poems in the decade or so after losing my mother, and they take place in the present, in memory, and in the imagined past, in both Finland and Pennsylvania. 

Where can we read more of your work, buy your book?
Äiti is available in January 2024, and can be purchased through Finishing Line Press, as well as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other booksellers. For more information about me, please visit alexagutter.com.

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Alexa Gutter is a middle school teacher, poet, and mother. She was named poet laureate of Bucks County, Pennsylvania in 2013. The daughter of a Finnish mother and a father born as a Jewish refugee in China, she often explores her heritage and ties to the past in her poetry. She currently lives in West Chester, Pennsylvania with her family. Her website is AlexaGutter.com.

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John Wojtowicz grew up working on his family’s azalea and rhododendron nursery in the backwoods of what Ginsberg dubbed “nowhere Zen New Jersey.” Currently, he works as a licensed clinical social worker and adjunct professor. He has been featured on Rowan University’s Writer’s Roundtable on 89.7 WGLS-FM and several of his poems were chosen to be exhibited in Princeton University's 2021 Unique Minds: Creative Voices art show at the Lewis Center for the Arts. He has been nominated 3x for a Pushcart Prize and serves as the Local Lyrics contributor for The Mad Poets Society Blog. His debut chapbook Roadside Oddities: A Poetic Guide to American Oddities was released in early 2022 and can be purchased at www.johnwojtowicz.com. John lives with his wife and two children in Upper Deerfield, NJ.