Drumsticks: A Valediction Don’t worry; it’s only temporary. But because I’ve been drumming almost non-stop all weekend, I must now say farewell to you, my sticks, until next Friday, when I will take you up again and continue the drumming. Know, you must, that the drumming lately has been exceptional, in the way that fishingContinue reading “#6: Drumsticks–A Valediction”
Category Archives: Poetry
#5: Friday Irony
I know I said I wanted to take a break from writing about teaching, but today was kind of a frustrating day and I couldn’t help myself. This is a poem called a cinquain, apparently, because the stanza or stanzas are all 5 lines long. The form also has to follow a specific syllabic countContinue reading “#5: Friday Irony”
#4: The American Teenager Reads the Ancient Chinese Masters
The American Teenager Reads the Ancient Chinese Masters Untitled (Wang Wei, translated by David Hinton) You just came from my old village so you know all about village affairs. When you left, outside my window, was it in bloom—that winter plum? What the hell? What village affairs? Who left? Why did he leave? Where’d heContinue reading “#4: The American Teenager Reads the Ancient Chinese Masters”
#3: Self Censorship and the Creative Writer (You Can’t Say That)
I hate it. I wish it were not true, but whenever I have penned something delicious or exciting or in some way daring or brave, a series of questions begin nagging my monkey mind: What will my students think of that? How will my mother react? Will my brother disown me? Will my wife want me reading thisContinue reading “#3: Self Censorship and the Creative Writer (You Can’t Say That)”
#2: Lies My Presidents Told Me
In keeping with the April Fools theme, and in a sideways response to today’s prompt on the National Poetry Writing Month website, I offer poem number two for your consideration: Lies My Presidents Told Me I did not sleep with that woman, while, technically a lie, can also be seen as the truth, as itContinue reading “#2: Lies My Presidents Told Me”
#1: April Fools
What follows is the first poem of thirty I plan to write to celebrate National Poetry Month, a poem for every day in April. Let’s begin, appropriately enough, with a poem about the significance of April the first, a strange little holiday if there ever was one. The composition part went pretty smoothly, but here’sContinue reading “#1: April Fools”
It’s April: National Poetry Writing Month!
Wasn’t it T.S. Eliot who wrote that April is the cruelest month? Of course it was; it’s the first line, and perhaps the most famous line* from The Wasteland. What’s so cruel about April, T.S. Eliot? He must have known something about National Poetry Writing Month. But there is something considerably less cruel in my estimationContinue reading “It’s April: National Poetry Writing Month!”
Of Prepositions: A Prose Poem
Aboard a ship, about one or two years ago, above the rough sea, across the widest possible expanse, after a drink of the finest bourbon, against all of my best intentions, along the lines forming in your skin, amid the mist, among the surging anti-trees, WTF, around nothing worth mentioning, as far as I could throw, at last, before dawn, behind me, below me, beneath me, beside myself with something orContinue reading “Of Prepositions: A Prose Poem”
michael jarmer 