After reading Susan Ollar's poem "Autobiography in Fourteen Lines," I recalled a poem I wrote over a decade ago--a snapshot of a life in brief. As a Zen master told me years ago: "I know everything about you except the details." This observation beautifully introduces my poem, an escapade of free form images. --Eden Maxwell
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Miles | Stones | Epiphany
by Eden Maxwell
New Jersey, 1997

Small boy becomes man, much sooner than later, shoeshine boy buffing drunken
leather outside bars.

Knives, gang punches to the head and gut, shoeshine boy getting robbed once
more, newspaper delivery kid on bicycle treads, street fighter, street
runner, street survivor, lifeguard, cab driver, truck driver, loner by
trade.

Near death out-of-body experience, cosmic sense of humor, college graduate,
law and order, disorder, mayhem, injustice, corporate executive, mixes well
with others, married man, kite expert, hang glider, writer wannabe.
Unmarried man, soul quest, soul man, no looking back, high wire, no safety
net, cross country rite of passage is made.

City of Angels, magazine editor, editor-in-chief, new age roustabout,
pilgrim lost, unconditional love, rich man, tantric, mystic, save the world,
waterbed, leaves it all, becomes apprentice to sorcerer of art.

Sausalito houseboat dweller, poor man again, minimum wage worker, purging
dogma, book author, ghostwriter, life in Brentwood, near UCLA, Prima Donna
drama, Hollywood Hills denizen, facing the music, divine manifestation,
epiphany on the patio, finds self as creator, adult prodigy, conditional
love.

Garage sale. One-way ticket. Millennium happens, no limits, no box, man
becomes boy again.

A long journey, an odyssey. Survived the mean streets, riches and rags, the
dark side and the light, too. In the end, stumbled upon the holy grail.
Years of wanderlust, returned home to Ithaca, an artist. Full circle, of
course, to the adventure that has now only begun.

Amazement, compassion, gratitude. Daily. Not shaken or stirred.

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FROM THE MEAN STREETS TO SELF-REALIZATION: FIND YOUR WALKING SHOES

Context is essential for comprehension. Meaningful art appreciation cannot exist without an investigation into how and under what circumstances the art came into being. Read more about Eden and the context of this poem on his blog Eden's Atelier: the soul of fine art.

Her Riehlife Poem-of-the-Day “Natural Causes” originally appeared in Criminal Class Review (criminalclasspress.com). This is the first poem in her new manuscript I. She recently read with Fast Geek Press at the Holiday Club in Chicago. Here she describes the creative process of writing "Natural Causes." --JGR
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On Writing “Natural Causes”
by Colleen McKee

Janet was kind enough to ask me to write something about the process of writing this poem for Riehlife. Looking it over makes me realize how little I know where a poem is going when I begin writing one, how often I do not know what is truly driving me to write it until I am nearly done with it.

For me, writing a poem begins with an image, a few lines, or a sense of urgency in my chest, something mysterious and very physical, a kind of edginess bordering on irritation that compels me to pick up a pen. When I am finished writing it, I feel something quite literally in my gut that tells me I am finished. Again, it is a physical sensation I cannot explain. I just learn to trust and obey the process, as nonsensical as that may sound. If writing poetry were logical, I would probably be too bored to bother.

I remember beginning this poem at Black Bear Bakery one sunny Sunday morning. This poem began with a bunch of lines I later cut out, something related to fairy tales, a kind of Sleeping Beauty scene, but with a woman who would not wake up when kissed. I kept the image of the lovely corpse and nothing else of those two pages of tiny messy handwriting. On a different day, seeing a billboard on the highway advertising a place called Liquor Heaven, I laughed, hoping that’s where my dead alcoholic friends had gone. Somehow from there I got the image of the open bar at the funeral.

A few real funerals influenced this poem too. One was my young cousin Rosie’s funeral, at which her brother really had gotten into a fistfight with Rosie’s ex-boyfriend. The other funeral was my friend Miko’s. He had killed himself about six months before I wrote this poem. He was one of my closest friends for thirteen years and had once been my fiancée. That summer after his death, I felt unmoored, oscillating between despair and a deadening depression. I wondered if I would ever feel close to anyone again, and if I would care if I didn’t.

Looking at the poem now, I’m not sure if anybody else would see that in it, which is okay, but that was part of the impetus for writing it. Miko’s funeral, or rather, his wake, also, unfortunately, inspired the image of the young, beautiful corpse. He was thirty-three when he died but looked nineteen. At the funeral home, I did not want to see him in the open casket but did, by accident. Even across the room, I caught a glimpse of him and saw that he really did look like he was sleeping, just like all those mornings I’d woken up next to him sleeping, except that here he was sleeping on a high platform, fully dressed, surrounded by flowers, in a room full of people who didn’t want to be there.

After writing all the lines of “Natural Causes” and editing them first for word choice and later for line breaks, punctuation, and other nitpicky details, I struggled with the form the stanzas would take. I finally decided to split the first four in a way that would feel natural, sort of the way paragraphs are typically split up in prose. One breaks for a new paragraph at a new topic or when someone is speaking. Similarly, I break when I switch from the dress, to the cookies, to the men, to the dialogue. I think that makes it feel conversational, as the beginning has a kind of dry, dark humor, an almost breezy tone despite the morbid scene. Toward the end, I switched to couplets to dramatically slow down the pace. I like couplets because they call attention to the space around the words. The final line hangs there alone. The stanzas diminish as the admirers surrounding the narrator disperse, leading to what, in the poem, is true death, the absence of lovers and friends as the burial approaches, the place where one is physically and finally alone.

“Natural Causes” originally appeared in Criminal Class Review (criminalclasspress.com). This is the first poem in her new manuscript I. She recently read with Fast Geek Press at the Holiday Club in Chicago. See her essay on the creative process of writing "Natural Causes" in her guest post under the Artists and Writers category. --JGR

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NATURAL CAUSES
by
Colleen McKee

I had to live long enough to perfect my own funeral.
I’d saved my pennies for an open bar
at the chapel, only rail liquors,
no cheap shit. You only die once.
I’d saved my sequins
for the just-so
little black dress.
I’d spent every Sunday
of the last year of my life
rolling out rugelach dough,
that, and sewing on sequins.
It turns out rugelach
thaws very nicely.
I’d spent every Saturday night
accumulating suitors
so I would have plenty of mourners, men
to cry and shuffle their feet,
clutch the pale stems of flowers
in clammy palms,
clench and unclench their handsome jaws,
clean-shaven for once; they wish
they had treated me better.
Tattooed and virgin-skinned,
beer-bellied and svelte in their suits,
blonde and red-headed and bald,
they look sideways at each other
over my plain pine box.
They drink and hope my family
doesn’t still hate them.
My friends whisper: She really could
pick em. Some guests
get in fist fights, of course,
a few ties loosened and rugelach-stained…
But after a few tears, a little blood,
some loose petals, people sigh.
They say things like,
I’m sorry. They say,
I wouldn’t go…They say,
I have work
in the morning.
So they go.
One final man sticks around
to turn off the lights.
We are alone in the dark, fragrant
with living white jonquils,
each bunch in its world
of sugary water.
He pats my hand, the naked ring finger.
Each vase will be spilled
with the sun.

If You Could Write One Great Poem
What Would You Want It To Be About
by Robert Pinsky

(Asked of four student poets at the Illinois
Schools for the Deaf and Visually Impaired)

Fire: because it is quick, and can destroy.
Music: place where anger has its place.
Romantic Love—the cold or stupid ask why.
Sign: that it is a language, full of grace,

That it is visible, invisible, dark and clear.
That it is loud and noiseless and is contained
Inside a body and explodes in air
Out of a body to conquer from the mind.

Gaye previous appeared on Riehlife in February in an Artist & Writers post on how to meld visual art & poetry.

She's also been interviewed on Catherine Rankovic's blog The Confident Writer.

I regret that my blogging platform won't hold the visual line breaks in the original poem. --JGR
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tonight it seems Moon will never
by g a y e g a m b e l l - p e t e r s o n

humid twilight horizon haze

me on this hilltop facing east

want and need rising

impatient for Her largeness

Her altitude Her attitude

tonight it seems She will never

break free of gravity—me neither

from this uncertain ether

time with earthly weight

hovers between cruel and fine

want and need ache

my blueness turns me to quit

just then a pale peachy smudge

catches my eye lets

me do this— wait

for float and free and quick

there full enough

to good my mood

a rising copper penny

to put in my pocket a talisman

to grasp on any morrow

that might again provoke too rudely

Susan recalled a conversation of ours. I'd said that in Ghana, West Africa, "Women of a certain age are considered wise, and given respect. These older women become everyone's mother."

Susan wrote a poem that burst from her heart, written in an incredibly short time. She says, "It speaks to me about my journeys and gives me reasons to laugh, sigh, cry, rest, celebrate." I feel that it's a bit of heart advice from a dedicated practitioner of Buddhist teachings given by her precious teacher, Sogyal Rinpoche.

Susan's poem takes my mind to Autobiography in five short chapters by Portia Nelson which Sogyal Rinpoche quotes in "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying."

--JGR
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Autobiography in Fourteen Lines
by Susan Ollar

I went searching everywhere, trying to make sense of things
I went searching high and low trying to make sense of things
I tripped on acid, smoked dope, rode the mescaline high, trying to make sense of things
I became a vegetarian, wore white, chanted mantras and thought I’d made sense of things
It didn’t last

I went to empowerments, sat on a cushion in the mountains for a month, trying to make sense of things
I got bored, watched the stories of my mind, tried to create more stories to destroy the boredom and it seemed to work. It all made sense.
It didn’t last

I dropped the search, left it on a shelf, went off to the world, searching for success
I found success, it was a hard trip and when I got to the summit, I fell down a hole and nothing made sense
I started the search again, tired, feeling feeble, this time knowing I needed a guide, someone who had made sense of things
I found him, oh my, hard to believe, I’ve gotta believe, he’s been my everything, year after year after year
Nothing makes sense, I sit on my cushion, it’s all right!

I look within, the stories go on, who cares?

Here are two glimpses of Mary Oliver's view of what poetry is:

"The thoughtful machinery of the poem..." Mary Oliver's introduction to Poetry, 1994

"If poetry lifts the latch, and gives a glimpse into a greater paradise...[then it awakens within the poet] a fever and desire beyond the margins of self."--Mary Oliver's A poetry handbook
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Read Lucille Clifton's obituary written by Margalit Fox on February 17, 2010: "Poet Who Explored Intricacies of Black Lives, Dies at 73."

Also read Ernie Wormwood's fine piece "Driving Lucille Clifton."

Here's Ruth-Miriam Garnett's homage to Lucille Clifton. --JGR
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FOR LUCILLE CLIFTON & PROGENY
by Ruth-Miriam Garnett

To my poet friends,
and to those who inspire our words

We have lost our mother,
but then, not prior to
gaining life strands
she handed over to us.

And as we breathe,
copiously breed our words,
recall divine capacity
to raise up from stones

children, and with this,
know to drench ourselves
in what flows through
ancestral wombs, seeing to

the signing of our names.

Janet believes that “Pursuit of the truth, not facts, is the business of fiction.” — Oakley Hall

Of her creative process in writing poetry Janet says that "Sometimes I wake with rhymes running through my head. They usually take the form of lighthearted or satirical ditties that make me happy. Something I see or a name I hear often gives birth to a frolicsome limerick. Exploring nature has inspired both rhyming and free verse poetry. I find that rhyming verse comes easily providing spontaneous way to express irritation, frustration, and resentments.

"I've written many sad and poignant poems including Without You during periods of confusion, betrayal, and deep sorrow. Most of them are free verse. My process is one of stream-of-consciousness writing as I let emotion boil over onto the page."
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Without You

A cloud without sky,
A hearth without flame,
A fire without warmth,
A tunnel without end,
Emptiness,
Loneliness,
Pain,
Borne in solitude.
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You can learn more and Janet Muirhead Hill and her work on her website.

Her blog that discusses kids true fiction.

Her profile on Smash Words.

Her books and others on Raven Publishing.

She told me a lovely story of a party where every woman received a limerick celebrating them. This reminds me of the Praise Poems I wrote for a group of women in New Mexico known as The Eskimo Cookie Sisters.

Nancy says, "At the Story Circle Network Conference I met some of the most interesting women who shared some of their knowledge and experiences. It proved to be a delightful weekend spent making some friends on this crazy planet we call Earth. As we were driving home that little bothersome muse began to run around in my head and out popped a few limericks about a few of the people I so thoroughly enjoyed meeting....this one is for Janet."

I'm honored to share it with you. --JGR

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Janet

There once was a woman named Janet
The Circle she did help to plan it
She came here to tell
Her stories so well
A smile, a new friend on this planet!