This is another
installment of “Poetry? I just don’t get it.”
A series where I post a
poem or group of poems by one author,
followed by anything the
author wants to say about the work.
Today’s poem is "
insert poetry everywhere anywhere here” by Donna Fleischer.
I became aware of Donna’s poetry
back in 2011, when a haibun of hers was posted on Don Wentworth’s blog “Issa’s
Untidy Hut,” along with a brief explanation of the mysterious world of haibun.
You can read it here.
This led me to her
chapbook, indra’s net (which can be
found on scribd here ). What I like about her poems is how they effortlessly
intertwine essay and poetry (and maybe some theory thrown in). And how, like Paul Celan,
she weaves words together to make a new one, or give them a new context.
Watch for interesting theoretical or scientific words. In the poem below she uses the word
“chthulucene.” I love the word (you can find one definition here). And great lines like
this (both funny and insightful):
“…so
throw out metaphor and all the –isms, except/maybe prism, for lights sake…”
Her chapbooks include< Periodic Earth >
(Casa de Cinco Hermanas
Press, CO, 2016)
and Twinkle, Twinkle (Longhouse Publishers, VT, 2013).
And she has a lively blog
called “word pond”
which can be found here.
*******
insert poetry everywhere
anywhere here.
Bar-do teachings
say when the dead person walks into the sun, she sees no shadow;
when she looks
into a mirror she sees no reflection; when she steps out of the stream
she has no
footprints. In this way she learns that she is dead
P l a i n s I n d i a n s
smudge stick
Sage smoke chant
begin in
placewithoutlight to feel
space. Where is head where
is toe? crawl
until upright with your
spineonly support
ignore comfort place your self
into your hands
weep, tear off the shirt
you wear
for kaddish L O S S
of interconnective tissue
feel destitution danger
utterly alone
without coaching experts,
fall off your
shoulder, ego
principality, wagon.
Do Not Act. Only Feel to
feel only
pain comes first when
surface gasp breath from
numbness, shock. It’s ok
to creak a whimper,
stoke heartburn, shiver.
Takes a long time for self-loathing
numb nerve endings to Feel
again. Ditch the exquisited hormone
transparent acquisitive authority
dome aggression.
Let it take 49 days, why
not? Begin to bring into making to see lights of
p o i ë s i s poiësis poiësis poiësis poiësis poiësis p o i ë s i s
A bio-poetics with microbiome
inches along the cell wall where&when osmosis occurs; each cell feels from
its edges, its margins, that the marginal is radical, feels that its life
depends on information passing thru. If a body ignores this, or has the wrong
code, suffering, anguish, dis-ease, pain ensue. To break the fear code is to
die to it, all light gone.
Scared
by your own shadow
guilt
is nothing throw it away your
you
is nothing throw it off
Utter
sound
from
the mockingbird
make
one step at a time
Rhythm
illumination, l-0-v-e begins
In
nothing
In
dis-order, off-guard
In
surprise, bewilderment
dis-informed
with feral Involvement in
cartographic
Mnemonic nodes where too hot or cold;
For
weathervane breath make
chthulucene
poetry friends;
Start
in Some where to make being
Stretch
despite yoga make anti- to make space for
Public
community dis-comfort
We
need so little to grow human people
How
to keep the flame alive
In
a bicycle basket or one
in
the contextual
crook
of your arm
it
is a shit world when the body
politic
kills all we would love
it’s
not an as if this this so throw
out
metaphor and all the –isms, except
maybe
prism, for lights sake let’s ignore
titles,
awards,
commendations experts,
LifesDeaths
the only mapapp
C’mon
man see, there’s so little left
and
you have way too much right?
we
only need a bit, to share most just let go,
even
only a little, let
let
what is
************
Commentary The End of the World
Project’s editors, Richard Lopez, T.C. Marshall, and John Bloomberg-Rissman
called for submissions on the theme of — how
does one write in the face of the unspeakable, of ongoing ecocide? — and I
wrote the poem, insert poetry everywhere
anywhere here.
It
invoked most of what I have sensed, perceived, learned, and experienced,
conveniently summarized here as a lifetime of being with who and what I love —
music and reading, writing, and studying Ecology, Daoism, Radical Feminism, and
Poetry. These have been and remain my emergency backpack and GPS for survive-thrive
frequencies: Aldo Leopold, America’s first ecologist, warns us that to be an
ecologist is to live in a world of wounds; Lao-Tzu’s Daoist teachings dovetail
with the scientific discoveries of ecology; Adrienne Rich’s oracular poetry inheres
in the title, insert poetry everywhere
anywhere here.; Heriberto Yépez’s ethopoetics stretches our beings all the
way back to Lao-Tzu’s view of the world as tzu-jan,
translated as “occurrence appearing of itself ” or in the Pacific Northwest
painter, Morris Graves’s words, “we are the stuff we are walking through”; Donna
Haraway’s “Chthulucene” pushes us away from the “Anthropocene” human into an
end of world now where we live with and learn from the myriad others with whom
we share Earth. Thank You. –
Donna
Fleischer
 |
| Donna Fleischer |
Chapbooks
< Periodic Earth > Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press, CO, 2016.
indra’s net bottle rockets press, CT, 2003, out of print
and available free to read at Scribd.
Collections
Intimate Boundaries
Self-produced from film negatives, offset web and sheetfed presses, and
perfect-bound, Hartford, CT 1991. This collection of the poet’s early poetry
includes the six poems for which she received the University of Hartford 1987
Creative Writing Award for Poetry, Virginia Hale, Ph.D. and George Michael
Evica, Ph.D., judges. It may be purchased from the poet.
A Sampling of Poems
Published Online
MayDay magazine. November
The Daily Art Source. Six
Poems
Otoliths. Again;
World Cross Over
Poets For Living Waters. Mountain
Meadow #71
Otoliths. A
Meditation on the Unexpected; sugar finis
TRUCK. On Barcelona
Contemporary Haibun. Kingdom of the Pansy
Back Room Live!. Photobooth Northampton
Contemporary Haibun. Petersen
Field
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