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Au bade #2

Sarah Peterson was gracious enough to send us her round one poem from the June slam. This is some hot stuff. Send the kids out of the room before you read...
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Au bade #2
by Sarah Peterson

Twilight wrapped itself up in a sheer yellow robe
Our bodies lined up deliciously,
The angles paralleled and softened.

The camber of your waist
Slept cupped in my palm;
Your arms drenched my shoulders
And made me a puddle,
Flattening my breasts against your chest
And rocky bones.

Sweet dusty blue
Waded into the deep of our bed,
Moving in subtle glissades across
Your closed eyes and sinking cheeks.

The alarm breaks
Into our delicate wrappings;
I can hear the porous tearing of our forms
As I get up for class
And you shift back into sleep:

I watch your pale frame
Gathering dust
As I slip out the door,
Wishing that mornings were an
Ancient pastime
That never washed away
The night.

Immaculate Anxiety

Listen to Laura Reid's second round poem, Immaculate Conception, from the June 2005 Running Water Slam. It'll tickle your funny bone in all the right places.

This

Here's a great poem Natalie Singer read at the last slam. It was recently published in American League of Poets!
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This
by Natalie Singer
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The impulse is rising
spilling over my tongue
spilling out
as I take your hand
::take my hand::
and lead you away
away from all of the lifelessness
of cold coffeemugs
and forced conversation
and into
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this
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we are passing a church in the rain
I can feel the questions in your eyes
as I pull you back
::our Father who art in Heaven::
as I pull you back to smell the flowers
one is plucked
from its sacred roots
::forgive me, for I have sinned::
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our feet pound the sidewalk
in celebration of living
and loving
and the spring rain that falls forever in my memories
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Good Evening

Here's a great performance poem that got Sarah Prange into Round Three at last April's poetry slam. If you've ever worked in food service, you gots-ta check this one out. Here's an excerpt:
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I WILL repeat the specials.
I WILL bring the appetizers first.

And no, of course I won’t mind
Repeating my opening spiel twice
because your previous engagement in
banal banter with seemingly superficial friends
kept you from focusing on important decisions
of the culinary kind.

You CAN substitute soup for salad.
You CAN take your leftovers home.

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Happy Poetry Friday, yo.

Style Versus Voice: Death Match

Not too long ago, the slam crew was hanging out in the tree fort having a slightly heated debate over whether we should post poems on this website. We wanted to post the text of local slam poems, but we couldn't agree on what criteria to use and whether or not such a thing was even a good idea given the innate difficulties in spoken word to written word translation. (Don't worry, the argument didn't get too intense because the tree fort as a rope swing and we got distracted.)

Eventually, we said, "To hell with it," and decided to post whatever we feel like posting—so you can expect to see some actual Eau Claire poetry here in the near future. Audio, too. Yee-haw.

In the meantime, we came across an article concerning some of the things we discussed on that faithful day up in the ol' oak tree. It seems that (in part) we were debating the concept of "style versus voice." Sounds pretty heavy, huh? Well, that's because it is. But if you really want to improve your writing, it's something you should be thinking about.

You might not agree with everything the author (Brian Bouldrey) has to say, but he makes some compelling points. From the article:

This word, this "voice." What do people mean when they use it? It's thrown around in such a sloppy way. It's a marketing word, of course, when a publisher wants to present somebody like Chuck Palahniuk as an "edgy new voice in fiction." Some people confuse "voice" with "tone" – the attitude the author takes toward a subject – part of the voice, but not all. Many will say that "voice" is not "style," not diction and word arrangements and such, but has more to do with content. That may be, but so much effort has been thrown at the content side of voice that style has become a lost art. And if that is the case, what is style? Read more.

You should read the whole article. He also makes a case for consuming as much writing as possible (which is a big no-brainer, right? Right?). He says that, in order to develop our own voice/style/whatever, we need to see ourselves as apprentices to other writers, and apprentices spend most of their time copying their masters—something many amateur writers consider evil.

Anyway, it's Friday, so we thought we'd post something fun. Weeeee!

Red Hot Sestina Action

At a recent slam (we can't remember which one because we were totally hopped up on Diet Coke and hummus pitas) we had a slammer bust out old school with a sestina. But instead of starting a craze of slamming with classical forms of poetry, that's pretty much the last we saw of ye olde stanza structure. Nothing. Nada. Not even a stinkin' villanelle.

But fear not, sestina groupies—the art form is very much alive and well, as evidenced by the (remarkable) website McSweeney's. The site is currently posting a butt-load of killer sestinas, and they're even taking submissions (for the website, not McSweeney's quarterly journal). Check out the sestinas... here.

Forty-One Hours Ago

What the hell—today is now officially "Super Fun Poetry Friday." Local slammer Aryn Widule read a hot little number called "Forty-One Hours Ago" in round three of the last slam...

Excerpt:

Two liters of Mountain Dew
Two and a half No-Doze later
I have finished the entire paper
Washed two loads of laundry
I have walked the dog
Gone grocery shopping
Ran three miles
And knit a sweater.
I decide that sleep is for the weak

All aboard the poetry train—Woo-Woo!

Crossword Puzzle Poems Of Sweetness

There's this guy named Peter Valentine who makes poems out of answers and clues from the New York Times Crossword Puzzle. Holy crap, they're awesome! Like so...

5/5/2005
on the highway of gold

across

a rock in a shoe
frostbite nails
hammered solid
no answer
everyone
knows
the
way

down

across the city
the bristle of bubbly gravy
crowds dancing
in the turbulence
of green moonlight
east to west
i paddle on

answers

a thin lame
relentless
sound

Check out more here.

The Poetry Of George W. Bush

This kind of stuff is old hat by now, but it made us laugh, anyway. Created by Washington Post writer Richard Thompson, the following "poem" was assembled from actual quotations made by our current president.
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Make The Pie Higher
by George W. Bush

I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen
And uncertainty
And potential mental losses.

I'm Not Cool Enough To Be Here

Listen to Hannah Vick's Enough from the March 2004 Running Water Slam.