A New Incarnation for "Orchids"

If you're not familiar with Nic Sebastian's The Poetry Storehouse, you must get familiar. It's a wonderful resource of poems, audios, and videos. Poets are invited to submit poems. If selected, the poems are posted at the site. The poets may then send in an audio for each poem. Nic and her team of readers may also choose to make an audio of a poem. The poem and audio are then made available for a "remix." Someone who has skill in making videos may select one of the poems and transform it into a video. The videos sometimes incorporate video clips from other sources and sometimes are made from still images. A music track is added. The result is a new version of the poem. I've viewed a number of these remixes and they are of incredible beauty.

Nic, who is a wonderful reader of poetry—she has a great voice and really captures the pulse of a poem—made an audio of my poem, "Orchids," from my book, What Feeds Us. I was delighted with that and then some days later completely thrilled with the video she made of the poem. Here's the poem:

Orchids

    They are hot and moist in operation, under the
    dominion of Venus, and provoke lust exceedingly.
        —The British Herbal Guide, 1653

Such flowers must be used with discretion.
Love of them becomes obsession.

A man pursues an orchid as he once
pursued a green-eyed woman. He hunts

in Florida swamps, Thailand, and Brazil,
delirious with lust, blissed on the smell

of dust and mulch, steamy veil of moisture,
breathing pores on leaves, tessellated lure

of waxy sepals, pouched lips, and tubers,
stamen and pistil twisted together,

inflorescence of Phalaenopsis,
Vanda Sanderiana, Cryptanthus.

Dream-haunted nights—ghost, slipper, and spider,
the deep plunge to the nectar inside her.

Now take a look at what Nic did with the poem:

As if that weren't enough bountiful gift for me, another filmmaker, Paul Broderick, also chose the same poem and audio for a new video and produced a very different version, also fantastic. I'm glad I don't have to choose only one. I love them both.

Check out Paul's version:

If I were still teaching, I think it would be fun to do a lesson with the poem and videos. Ask students to read and respond to the poem. Show the two videos and ask students to compare and contrast. Then perhaps ask them to find a poem they like and make a video.

All of the videos produced by The Poetry Storehouse are available at their Vimeo page.

Eating Poetry

I love literary food blogs. So I am very pleased that food blogger and writer Nicole Gulotta recently featured my poem, Blueberry, at her site, Eat This Poem. The site is fairly new but already includes an impressive list of poets, such as Jane Hirshfield, Li-Young Lee, Louise Gluck, and Jane Kenyon. You will find a delicious variety of poets and poems at the site.

But wait! There's more. Nicole includes a thoughtful discussion of each featured poem, stunning photos, and an appropriate recipe with a mouth-watering photo of the prepared dish. My poem is accompanied by a recipe for Blueberry Buckwheat Pancakes, a recipe inspired by Nicole's memory of her grandmother.

Please pay a visit to the feature. Then also, if you're on Facebook (and who isn't?), go there and Like the Eat This Poem page. You can also subscribe to Nicole's email newsletter at the website.


Here are a few other literary food blogs to check out:

Jama Rattigan's Alphabet Soup.

Jonelle Galloway's The Rambling Epicure.
While at The Rambling Epicure, be sure to check out the ongoing feature, Food Poetry.

Not a blog but the online journal, Alimentum, is another good place to visit. Considers previously unpublished food poetry.

Invective Against the Bumblebee: The Movie

Click Cover for Amazon

A few weeks ago poet and blogger Adele Kenny contacted me and asked permission to use my poem, "Invective Against the Bumblebee," as the model poem for her upcoming poetry prompt. Adele keeps a wonderful blog, The Music In It, where each Saturday she posts a prompt. Each prompt is preceded by a paragraph or two of instruction with some history and craft discussion. Then there is usually a list of links to sample poems. Then the prompt. Of course, I was happy to have my poem included in prompt #107, Invective Poems.

The timing of Adele's request was interesting as I was just putting the finishing touches on my July Poetry Newsletter. The prompt for July was a curse poem. I hope this doesn't indicate that the poets are turning cranky! I was also about to complete a movie I'd been making of the poem, using the soundtrack I'd recorded when the poem was reprinted at Soundzine a few months ago. So this seemed like a good time to at last post the movie version of "Invective Against the Bumblebee."

Check it out:

Now go visit The Music In It, bookmark the site, sign on as a follower, and return each Saturday.

If you're not already a subscriber to my monthly Poetry Newsletter and would like to be, move over to the right sidebar and fill out the brief form there. It's free and includes a book recommendation, poem and prompt, links to poetry-related sites, a video, and a Craft Tip from a well-established poet.

Good News Department

Temptation by Water has received not one but two new reviews. I'm delighted with and grateful for both of them. The first, by Emma Bolden, appears in the Alabama Register. Bolden begins, "In her fourth collection of poetry, Temptation by Water, Diane Lockward offers a series of meditations on the nature of human desire and how nature itself goes against the fulfillment of our desires. Lockward’s poems are at turns wry and wicked, sensual and satisfied, mournful and obsessed with making meaning out of 'the wreckage of absence' which so often makes up our lives." Read the rest of the review HERE.

The second review, by Michael Meyerhofer, appears in Midwest Book Review. Meyerhofer begins, "'Save your water and green vegetation,' Lockward writes in 'The Temptation of Mirage': 'What I want is the desert.' But how can we argue with her when she presents the reader with the 'eternity of sand' like 'an open-air coffin,' not to mention the cereus with 'its creamy petals like white silk,' the fruit 'red as a splash of blood'? And that's the beauty of Temptation by Water. Beyond the subtly brilliant way in which these poems are ordered, the poems themselves shine with a crisp lyricism eclipsed only by their humanity and honest lack of pretension." Read the rest of the review HERE.

How lovely to be wicked and brilliant. Suddenly, I'm in love with adjectives.

Chef and author, John Ross, has begun two of his recent columns in the Long Island Wine Press by quoting from my poems, both found in my second book, What Feeds Us. The first article, "Your own pasta is well worth the effort," begins with a quotation from "Linguini." The second, "Tropical taste in the shape of a pear," quotes from my poem, "Organic Fruit." That's a concrete poem in the shape of an avocado, a feature of the poem that's lost in the article but can be seen if you follow the link to the poem.

Both articles contain recipes that sound incredibly delicious. Check them out.

Given all this food talk, I've decided to share with you a recipe I recently made that was fantastic—if I do say so myself. Oddly, I wasn't at all sure I wanted to make this dish as the ingredients struck me as odd—sour cream, catsup, peaches? But it was one of the best dishes I've ever made. And it was pretty, too. I don't think "casserole" is the best name for this dish but can't come up with a better one. Perhaps you can?

CHICKEN-ALMOND CASSEROLE WITH PEACHES

6 chicken breasts split and boned
3/4 cup flour
2 teaspoons salt
1½ teaspoons paprika
½  cup butter
½  cup slivered almonds
1 ¼ cups water
1 can condensed beef consomme
2 T catsup
1 C sour cream
6 small individual cans of diced peaches, drained
1 C parmesan cheese

Preheat  oven  to 350   
Dredge chicken breasts with mixture of salt, pepper, paprika and flour. Reserve remaining flour mixture.  
Brown chicken on all sides in hot butter. Remove to a 3-quart casserole.   
Lightly brown almonds in drippings left in skillet.
Stir in remaining flour. Gradually stir in water and consomme. Add catsup, cook and stir until  thickened.   
Remove from heat  and  stir in sour cream. Pour over chicken and bake,  uncovered, for about 1 hour.   
Arrange  peaches on chicken.
Sprinkle with cheese and return to oven for 10 minutes.

Linguini: The Movie

A few months ago poet, teacher, and blogger Martha Silano let me know that three of her students were doing their class poetry project on my poem "Linguini." This would take place at Bellevue College in Washington, obviously much too far away for me to be there. But several weeks later Martha sent me the Power Point project they'd created. I knew immediately that I wanted to transform their work into a video. I wanted to use Garrison Keillor's reading of the poem as the soundtrack, but when I added the project to iMovie, it went so fast that the reading could not keep pace. Even though Keillor reads the poem fast (I suppose to keep to his time limit), the power point went much faster. I had to somehow slow it down. So I figured out how to save it as slides. I then turned those into jpegs and added them into a movie project. Then I dragged in the sound track and spent a ridiculous amount of time coordinating the reading with the slides. But I finally got it. So with a huge shout-out of gratitude to Martha and her fabulous students, here's the result.

Gender Issue: The Movie

I've been back in the movie-making business. Several months ago, precisely on October 8, 2010, Nic Sebastian recorded a poem of mine for Whale Sound. This is an audio journal or library of Nic recording poems by a wide variety of poets. The common denominator is that they are all what Nic has named "web active poets," meaning that they have a substantial presence on the internet via blogs, websites, and social networks. That limitation is intended to increase the audience for Whale Sound.

Due to the success of the venture, Nic has now added an audio chapbook component and a blog, Voice Alpha. Voice Alpha is a companion to Whale Sound. There Nic and others discuss the art of reading poetry aloud. Guest bloggers are invited to contribute. Those wishing a critique of their reading skills may contribute a recording. It's all very positive. Nobody gets annihilated. It's also very instructive.

Whale Sound includes an index of all poets recorded, bios, links to the poems, and, of course, the recordings. My poem is Gender Issue, which first appeared in Margie and then in my second book, What Feeds Us, and then online in Poemeleon. I loved Nic's reading and began mulling over how I might get more mileage out of it. I decided I'd use it as the soundtrack in a movie. Nic kindly sent me the mp3 and I went about gathering appropriate images. Here's the result.

Surprise Review of What Feeds Us

I didn't expect to get any more reviews of my second book, What Feeds Us, so it was just delightful to learn that Sheila Bender had reviewed the book in her magazine, Writing It Real. This is a subscription only online publication, but occasionally there's an issue that includes non-subscribers. The review appears in one of those issues.

Sheila gives a generous overview of the collection, then zeroes in on three poems: "Love Test: A Ghazal," "Blueberry," and "Idiosyncrasies of the Body." Since Writing It Real is a newsletter that goes to writers, the review is followed by three prompts, one based on each of the three poems. There's also a blog where people can leave comments. 

Here's a bit from the Introduction:
"A 2006 Quentin R. Howard Poetry Prize winner, the volume is as witty as it is heartbreaking. Diane's poems draw her readers in as they transform visits to the hair dresser, eating pickles as a child, wanting more out of a marriage as a husband brings in cold pizza on a snowy night, being stung by a bee and tended to lovingly, looking at blueberries in her kitchen, noticing an announcement about a coming test, or having an MRI and dreading the results into moments of revelation and introspection. Diane's gift for melding observations of food she prepares, activities in her life, and notions of her own and others with her deepest longings and fears reaches fully into the heart." 

You can read the entire review here. I love this review! 

You might be interested in subscribing to Writing It Real. It costs $30 per year. Sheila is an experienced poet, prose writer, editor, and teacher.
Here are some of the Subscriber Benefits:

• Links to each new article emailed every Thursday
• Access over five years of weekly articles in our archives
• Read any article online or download the print version
• Receive updated publishing and writing resource information each week 
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• $20 discount on all Writing It Real online workshops

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Interview at The Bees' Knees

Poet Nicelle Davis has posted an interview with me at her blog, "The Bees' Knees." She asks me several questions about my book, What Feeds Us, particularly about the book's construction and the significance I attach to bees. She also asks about my involvement in the poetry community, my future projects, and my advice for beginning poets. To give you a sample, here's the first question and my response:

ND: Your book What Feeds Us made me incredibly hungry for lush and savory food. Is there a dish or a recipe you would suggest that would ease my cravings after having been teased line after delectable line with your descriptions of flavor?

DL: In the poem “Anniversary” the speaker talks about Bocconi Dolci, an absolutely delectable dessert that’s guaranteed to satisfy every one of your cravings. Three layers of meringue, each covered with melted chocolate, whipped cream, and strawberries. The sweetness of the dessert is at odds with the sadness of the poem, but that’s why I chose it for that poem.

The rest of the interview can be read here.

Here's what this delectable dessert looks like. I can make this! It's my favorite dessert.


And here's the poem referred to in my first response.

Anniversary

Tonight, on this darkest night of the year,
after a satisfying meal,
we will eat bocconi dolci.
We will not speak of sadness.
We will not remember.
The antique clock will stop tolling.
For once the chimes will be still.
For this one night only,
earth will defy gravity,
and turn the other way.
I will slice bocconi dolci,
place it on pale bone china.
We will be ravenous
for meringue, the three shells
piled on top of each other,
for the cream I whipped,
the ripe strawberries picked
from our garden. The buds
on our tongues will blossom
under delicate layers of chocolate.
And if the doorbell rings, we will not answer.
We will dance until we are dizzy.
We will dance as if we were young,
but quietly, quietly,
as if somewhere in the house
a small child slept,
a child who might be wakened by laughter.

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