Join the Traveling Bonfires tonight — Monday, May 17th — at Malaprop’s from 7 to 8pm for a poetry reading featuring poets Pam Israel, Dave Rowe and special guest. Emcee: Pasckie Pascua.
Category: poetry
Poem: Appalachian omens
“Appalachian omens” by Matthew Mulder
Anticipation
of rain and Sunday dinner,
we see a groundhog
resting on a rock near the
restaurant entrance.
And on the way home,
above the road we see a
hawk gripping a snake
while evading two large crows.
If I were the priest
Kalchas, I might proclaim that
I see the war-like
sons of Atreus, or some
other such omens.
No more Free Lunch
This weekend I received a letter in the post informing me that Free Lunch is closing shop. The news really disappointed me for two reasons. One, I was hoping to have some poems published. Two, I reviewed an issue of Free Lunch for Small Press Review and really enjoyed the publication. Some literary/poetry publications are dense with inaccessible poetry and my work doesn’t seem to fit. But Free Lunch felt like a good fit. Here’s an abridged version of the review I submitted to Small Press Review:
Free Lunch presents an engaging 20th Anniversary issue. Unlike many poetry magazines that contain a smattering of good poems and a couple great poems, the Spring 2009 issue of Free Lunch collects stellar work by Billy Collins, Stephen Dunn and many others. It is my habit as a reader to dog-ear pages in books or magazines that elicit some sort of physical response; like smacking a book on my knee and saying “yeah” to the amusement of fellow bus riders. Lyn Lifshin writes, “I love the sense/ of her contentment/ feel it moving/ inside me the/ way when a/ poem works…” in her poem “Writing a poem is like why and when a cat purs.” In “Advice from a Pro,” X. J. Kennedy writes, “I vowed to make my work intensley sober.” There are many great poems by poets Roger Aplon, Denise Duhamel, and others. And, in short, my copy of the 20th Anniversary of Free Lunch has almost every page dog-eared with praise.
Poem: Saturday Night, Coffee House
“Saturday Night, Coffee House” by Matthew Mulder
The awkwardness is complete—
strangers sitting side by side
with nothing to offer but body heat
on this cold winter night;
and the only thing that
connects us is my brother’s wife
and the wooden bench we sit upon.
Conversation is embarrassingly
fumbled with references to
the chai we sip;
and at long silences we sip
more chai and look
around the coffee house
for more material to
discuss,
or some distraction
to fascinate our senses.
(Originally published in Rapid River Magazine, April 2004.)
Coffeehouse Junkie Podcast – Episode 014
This episode features an essay titled “The Hunger.” Listen to episode 14 here.
Coffeehouse Junkie Podcast – Episode 013
This episode was recorded the week after the River Arts District studio stroll weekend. It features an essay about writing titled “The Field.” Also, I read two poems, “Dead Italians” by Jennifer L. Knox and “asunder” by Craig Arnold. Listen to episode 13 here: http://www.coffeehousejunkie.com/podcast.html
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Coffeehouse Junkie Podcast: An excerpt from Gregory Orr’s essay “Four Temperaments and the Forms of Poetry” will be read on today’s podcast plus an short poem.
// ‘How One Writes in the Haiku Moment:
Mythos vs. Logos’ (http://www.roadrunnerjournal.net/pages92/essay92.htm)
// i woke up from a dream in which coleman barks & i read sufi poetry in translation together…
// & now, a hafiz moment… ‘ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you.’
A poem is not poetry. A designed artifact is not design.
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the sixth Coffeehouse Junkie Podcast… a poem from the book Calenture and a poem from patricia smith will be read on this podcast episode…
// love the pejorative tone many bourgeois have toward the idea of poetry readings…
“[Khalil] Gibran’s ‘masterpiece’… turns not so much upon poetry as upon the genre of wisdom literature and its subgenre, the aphorism, which holds a particularly valued place in Arab culture. Like all good aphorists, he uses language that is both plain and metaphorical; it invites understanding yet in a way that brushes against the mysteries of being alive. There’s no doubt that the style occasionally ascends into comical elevations, and that its high tone seems lost in the ironies and specificities of American life. But that sort of spiritual homelessness pretty much describes a large swath of immigrant life.” (via poetry & popular culture)
// oh, insomnia, thanks for putting the recent issue of the american poetry review in my mailbox today-gives me something to read at 1am…
// i’d rather be reading hafiz; ‘we should make all spiritual talk simple today’ (http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780143037811-0)
// just returned from the BMCM+AC poetry reading wordfest event… two hours until the next reading at jubilee…
// drunk on sufi poetry from the reading/performance by Thomas Rain Crowe & Coleman Barks… the hangover should be delicious…
// so when the asheville police showed up at the bobo gallery, i told j- d- ‘now this is what i call a poetry reading’ …
// weird. fell asleep reading an ezra pound bio and woke up thinking i’m late for class.
// i didn’t know ezra pound had wisconsin connections… chippewa falls connections at that.
// poetry vrs. the american poetry review. this month the the american poetry review wins (due to the publication of wendell berry poems).
Two things poets should consider
With the market plunging, here’s two encouraging items to consider as a poet:
1) “The state’s jobless rate began the year at 4.9 percent and has steadily increased since then. It stood at 6.6 percent in July.” Link The unemployment rate in N.C. is presently 7 percent.
DO NOT try to make a living writing poetry. Keep your day job (and your night job, too).
2) In the Asheville area, almost $400,000 was donated to political campaigns.
NONE of that money was spent on your livelihood as a poet, buying your poetry books, or purchasing coffee and other goodies at your public poetry readings.
Coffeehouse Junkie 