Askew In The Valley

PB Rippey — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 03:45:37 +0000

As you can see, many fine poets in this issue.

My poem is out in Askew Poetry Journal’s Issue #12 Spring/Summer 2012 (here’s the link to Askew in case you’re interested in submitting or subscribing). They also have a Facebook page with samples of poetry from this issue. Dorothea Grossman’s poems are a delight and a reminder that less can definitely be worlds. Holly Prado’s ‘sonnet’ is fun and jolting. No, fun is not the right word. I’d tell you the right word and give a little review of this issue, but I haven’t slept much lately…Far easier to bite a marshmallow and watch an episode of Doc Martin, Season 5. And convey that once Louisa’s brain clears from the sleeplessness of new-motherhood, she’ll move out of the surgery and move on. The Dr. is not evolving, he is regressing. Damn those writers…2 poems in this issue of Askew contain the word askew. And the journal’s motto: Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—by, of course, Emily Dickinson, is used in a contributor’s poem…After the 4th cup of coffee I usually realize caffeine is not going to help—still, sometimes I ingest a pick-me-upper cupper around 3pm—and can be counted on to discover, too late (very late), that it was not a good idea…How Prado uses both my bougainvillea-arm and coyote air to end her sonnet made me want to read the poem again. Then again. And Prado’s reason for why sonnets can’t stand Los Angeles I quite agree with. Although I don’t believe the answer is meant to be agreed or disagreed with…True story: I once knew someone who renamed herself Ellipsis, because she thought the word sounded beautiful…There are many quotable lines from Holly Prado’s sonnet. I recommend subscribing to the journal just so you will receive that poem in the mail—oh, yes! Askew is a poetry journal you hold in your hands, your morning coffee standing by, steaming promisingly as your fingers turn pages smooth as cornsilk. They’re not cornsilk pages. But they are very smooth..Nora Ephron died today. I’m quite sad about it. She forged, she smote, she conquered. One of Dorothea Grossman’s poems is titled, For The Newly Bereaved: It doesn’t matter/whether you open the door/turn on the music/or stand up./All you really have to do/is feed the cat…I didn’t know Dorothea Grossman died last May…My poem is not a sonnet, does not contain the word askew (although the speaker is definitely off-kilter), has nothing to do with terminal illnesses or heartbreak and it does not contain an ellipsis. Since rights revert back to me upon publication, here it is. Goodnight and may your dreams be quiet little canters, not even the tiniest image of Legoland tainting their gauzy borders.

Run

Sun the fog’s ball snagged by a suburban barrier
of giraffe-necked palms. My lawn in recess: churched
(this formal stillness, fog-tuned).
My lawn is Winter’s readied bride, her chill-
wrap tight over tips, her delicate sweat.
Here, the deciduous
mutter off leaves by the evening’s folding light
as I watch 2 boys chasing impulse

in cold separating the fog, setting the moon
risen so early in her hypocrisy of flaws
(O pocked resilience).
Run, run.
Their rocket gasps, blood-worked,
tidal energy
pushed the length of my yard’s
walls of safe. I search for comfort

in time-traveling domesticity and grippable
martyrs: books I resented others
owning until I arrived
in this swatch of breathy Eden, clueless.
Cold frills the air. I watch
the Cyclops bent on counter-
clockwise logic, its eye’s glass-cuts
old trickery I won’t translate. Won’t.

Run. Run.
Sun shatters into anemone sky.
My speck-titans so suddenly famous:
they in their pink hides, I in my cloak-bane,
howling
with half-sight, knocked (I get: you),
ever on the chase.

—PB Rippey

Short Story Writing Drama

PB Rippey — Wed, 30 May 2012 16:47:08 +0000

No wonder it’s taking me so long to revise…

Because I’ve been a Glimmer Train Finalist several times and, once, long ago, when GT published poetry, a Top 25 Finalist, and because, of course, GT is one of the best fiction journals in the country, I subscribe and receive emails warning of the next submission deadline for whatever category is in the loop. Lately, after receiving such an email, it occurred to me that although I manage to get out the occasional poetry submission (hello poem coming out in Askew Poetry Journal any minute now), it’s been ages since I’ve submitted a short story. And about two weeks ago all those ages and GT emails messed with my psyche. Remember the movie Jacob’s Ladder, when Tim Robbin’s face goes all kooky in the mirror? My brain did that and the next thing I knew I was toiling and tooling a chapter of my adult novel into a short story. Perhaps reading, A Visit From The Goon Squad, had something to do with the brain-spin, too–if you’ve read it, you’ll know what I mean. What the toiling and tooling did, in addition to excite me about my own work—and exhaust me—was slam me with another brain freakout:

I should be giving each of my chapters close line readings every time I read them—I don’t mean turning each chapter into a short story, but providing each sentence and often each word scrutiny deserved.

Well, PB, you say—er, of course?

It’s like this (for me): I skim over certain bits in a chapter without realizing I’m skimming, because way back in some other writing/revising time my creative mind insisted, That part is fine, move on, when actually that part is not fine at all, not after revision/evolution, not when everything else around that part has been closely read, pummeled, invariably tweaked, and/or tossed a lifeline.

Still—elementary, right?

I don’t know about you, but when I’m living that huge chunk of my life that is outside of my nightly writing life (housewiving, mothering, cleaning up cat gak, pedaling the exercise bike while catching up on Sherlock via the—atrociously sweat streaked—Kindle Fire), it’s too easy to forget that close attention must be paid at all times.

All times, all bits, PB.

Vigilance.

I am thankful to be reminded.

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Askew In The Valley

Short Story Writing Drama