FYI, here is the last set of topics, for the Poem a Day. Join and play by commenting on existing threads! If you are not already a friend of this page, please do friend it, and I'm happy to let you join. I'm itching to do some form poetry soon, so perhaps this will come in the upcoming themes.
Latin chimaera, from Greek chimaira she-goat, chimera; akin to Old Norse gymbr yearling ewe, Greek cheimōn winter — more at hibernate
1 acapitalized: a fire-breathing she-monster in Greek mythology having a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tailb: an imaginary monster compounded of incongruous parts2: an illusion or fabrication of the mind; especially: an unrealizable dream chimera in my brain, troubles me in my prayer — John Donne>3: an individual, organ, or part consisting of tissues of diverse genetic constitution
I'm reading a poem from this year's Poem a day Marathon here, during a featured read earlier this week. ;)
Stylistically, this is one of my more agressive, less technical offerings--that will surely undergo some surgery--but I thought the idea of inventorying lovers was curious and fun. Also, forgive the multitude of sins bad lighting exposes. ;).
And Here's the text of the poem:
Short Notes to Past Lovers
You--the one who views his hands as the clamps on a garbage truck,
clutching for cans to lift, I will forget you.
You--who nearly bit off my lip while kissing and said it was my love for you
that made me shy away. Sore lip instead. You were wrong.
You--with the twin brother and fetishes with strange objects, adopted son of
wealthy socialites fond of licking ass. You are gay. Do come to terms.
You--with the raised heartbeat from too much cocaine or meth who
found another red-haired girl equally good, you have no eyes (or heart).
You--blond-haired, sweet friend a daft moment of weakness and pity made me take
into my bed, I'm sorry about your fractured heart. Truly.
You--who I never slept with, though the thought lingered like a constant tourist
destination--please leave my head.
You--who loves me now with the stretch of longing straddling time like an arrogant
whore or cautious angel. Thank God for you. Don't go.
I do a public post here so that if any poets drop in who aren't already a friend of my page, they can easily see what we'll work with from 7/10 to 7/20. As always, feel free to join whatever threads or days you'd like. Feel free to write form poetry or free verse. Feel free to backtrack a day or two if you want to join an earlier thread. :)
If you are not a friend of my page, please do "friend" it. Here are the themes from 7/10 to 7/20. ;)
I'm going to do this like last year and post a list of themes. Then, each day will be writing a poem, or many, on the theme. Sometimes I like to switch it up and do form poetry, so jump in on that boat if you'd like, or just speak to the theme.
A few quick tips:
1. All posts for this game will be in "Friends" mode. If you want to play and aren't yet a friend, friend my page. I do this so that those who play can sub these poems later since they won't be in public blog mode.
2. The way you play is to just click reply to the main post for any given series of days and post your poem as a comment. Comments on other people's poems are always welcome. New players are always welcome. :)
3. You can jump in everyday, every other day, once a week, whatever.
4. You can use an exact theme or a variation on the theme that is a riff from the central idea.
5. That's it. I'm not big on rules.
Just as a teaser, the first ten themes will be:
1. Rain
2. Solstices
3. Echolalia
4. Waking Sun
5. The Unsaid
6. Rarities
7. A Landmine
8. Painting the town blue
9. The Things Left In Hotel Lobbies On Purpose
10. Anachronisms
First post goes up *gasp* tomorrow. ;) Better get all my novel excerpt comments done tonight.
New Pubs: Recent Stories and Poems Available On-line :)
Category: Writing and Poetry
On the Forthcoming and News Note:
I am happy to say the recent poetry feature at Rebecca's was a lot of fun. A YouTube video clip of one poem is now on the public blog and I will soon be adding to the recent publications list as stories and poemss come out over the next few months. Hope everyone is happily writing or submitting. Do come play on the challenges or flash posts! Tell me what's making you smile, what you write, or where you're publishing via message, if you have the time or inclination! On a fun note, a friend of mine, acclaimed novelist Michael Kimball has just posted another of his postcard life stories, which is a fascinating little project he is working on to create a book of people's life stories all short enough to fit on a handwritten postcard. One he recently posted happens to be mine; check it out if you have the inclination. http://postcardlifestories.blogspot.com/2008/07/57-visual-fixations-of-heather-fowler.html
Ask him to write yours. ;) Also, drop in on my new website: www.heatherfowlerwrites.com I'm delighted to announce several new pieces will be released online or print venues in the next few months. Keep watching--I'll post them as they come out. :)
xoxoMuch love to all,
H
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About the Pubs--Recent Short Stories Out and Available:
It's a good August--three stories out this month, so I'll speak to them a little.
I am delighted to have an experimental piece out with SubLit this month called "Three Photos" that uses a narrative device of faux photographs to tell the tale of the familial downfall of an unreliable narrator.
And also lucky to have a dystopic story out in print in the UK called "This Time, While We're Awake." I will announce the venue after the venue's launch party for the issue, but all my English friends--yay!--a story has hit your soil.
Not to mention a lovely little flash fiction called "Catholic Girl Smile" just went live at KeyHole Magazine. :)
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Earlier, this June, Alessia Brio's recent erotic anthology Coming Together: With Pride (all proceeds go to charity) came out and I'm delighted to say I have a piece in it. Here's a blurb about the project from her blog.
"With Pride is the 8th multi-author anthology of erotic fiction in the philanthropic Coming Together series. It is about giving and about sex and about celebrating the diversity of desire. It is simultaneously naughty and wholesome, tender and taboo, raw and refined. In these pages, you can fulfill your wildest fantasies, indulge your primal nature, and embrace a variety of lifestyles. The most delicious part is that you can do it all while helping to heal the devastation of HIV and AIDS. Coming Together is erotic altruism at its finest.
In May, an edgy little piece came out in Word Riot (May 2008) entitled "You Are One Click Away From Pictures of Nude Girls"--(NOTE: I had this story linked in, but Myspace made the link come out spam due to the naughty nature of the title. Ach! Click the venue above and you can get to it. :)
Also, in May, I placed a crime-noir story in Steven J. McDermott's Storyglossia--May 2008 issue 28, guest edited by Anthony Neil Smith entitled "The Humming"
A story published at the Mississippi Review.com in the October 2007 hyper-extended family issue, edited by Darlin' Neal."A Cat For Greta"
An Essay and a Poem:
Though I rarely venture into writing essays, at the request of my talented, artist and photographer friend Rhys Jones, I have written an essay about how to get past writer's block, with a small poem from my fairy tales book attached. Both are posted on his 20/20 Vision page here on myspace. 20/20 is a site intended to foster international collaborations between artists. Check it out if you're interested. The title of the essay is "Why Art Is Necessary - On Finding the Motivation to Create".
2007 Faringdon Online Poetry Competition, a sestina about my son that won a joint first place in this contest in October of 2007. "Pregnancy: Boy Child, A Sestina"
In Support of Patry Francis--The Liar’s Diary--Please read--Post for 1/29
Hello Friends and Fellow Artists,
Today's blog is special and has one purpose--to help Patry Francis. On 1/29, myself and several hundred writers will be doing what we can to aid in selling and promoting her book The Liar's Diary.
We have agreed to help because as we do this (and beyond 1/29), Patry will be battling cancer.
Normally when an author has done the long hard work of getting an agent, getting a publisher, waiting for that lovely moment when the edits are done and when a book comes out in a big, splashy way, he or she would be ecstatic about going on book tour and enjoying the presence of fans and book-buyers at readings.
This is that moment for Patry, the trade paperback release of her novel The Liar's Diary , but she cannot do such a tour--so when Susan Henderson, general goddess of LitPark, came up with this idea about how we writers could help Patry, I thought this was a wonderful idea.
I also enjoyed what Patry's blog had to say about finding community with other artists and the relevance we have in each other's life:
"...But in spite of my isolation, through the internet, I now have what writers had to move to Paris to find in the twenties, or enter a costly MFA program in the nineties to encounter--friends! Real ones! In fact, I'd be willing to bet this solitary writer now has more friends than Hemingway did! A whole community of writers and bloggers who believe that stories can change the world, a community who believe that the fate of fictional characters, or the meticulous or messy arrangement of words and motion, and feeling into a poem or an essay is worth whatever sacrifice it takes."
Well, I believe that, too, Patry. I believe in literature. I believe in supporting other writers.
I believe you will enjoy your next book tour far more--because I believe you will survive this cancer-- and tomorrow at 0-dark-thirty, when I get up, I will go and buy your book.
Anyone else who would like to help Patry in their blogs, please feel free to copy and past any of this text. And hey, all you readers out there--this book looks delicious.
Answering the question of what is more powerful—family or friendship? this debut novel unforgettably shows how far one woman would go to protect either.
They couldn't be more different, but they form a friendship that will alter both their fates. When Ali Mather blows into town, breaking all the rules and breaking hearts (despite the fact that she is pushing forty), she also makes a mark on an unlikely family. Almost against her will, Jeanne Cross feels drawn to this strangely vibrant woman, a fascination that begins to infect Jeanne's "perfect" husband as well as their teenaged son.
At the heart of the friendship between Ali and Jeanne are deep-seated emotional needs, vulnerabilities they have each been recording in their diaries. Ali also senses another kind of vulnerability; she believes someone has been entering her house when she is not at home—and not with the usual intentions. What this burglar wants is nothing less than a piece of Ali's soul.
When a murderer strikes and Jeanne's son is arrested, we learn that the key to the crime lies in the diaries of two very different women . . . but only one of them is telling the truth. A chilling tour of troubled minds, The Liar's Diary signals the launch of an immensely talented new novelist who knows just how to keep her readers guessing.
And now, here are Patry's words, which I lifted off her blog: "Though my novel deals with murder, betrayal, and the even more lethal crimes of the heart, the real subjects of THE LIAR'S DIARY are music, love, friendship, self-sacrifice and courage. The darkness is only there for contrast; it's only there to make us realize how bright the light can be. I'm sure that most writers whose work does not flinch from the exploration of evil feel the same."
Ready to buy the book? Why not buy one for yourself and one for a friend? And if you like it, tell people!
Here are links to THE LIAR'S DIARY at Amazon, Barnes & Noble.., and Powell's. You can also buy directly from Penguin to save 15%.. (after you add the book to your cart, just enter the word PATRY in the coupon code field and click 'update cart' to activate the discount)."
2. Flannery O'Connor, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"
3. Franz Kafka, "The Metamorphosis"
4. June Spence, "Missing Women" (It was in the Best of American Short Stories--1997--my all-time fav of those books, and I buy them each year. Who would have thought E. Annie Proulx would have topped Lorrie Moore, in my view, for selecting fine stories? Not me. But she did. *grins*)
5. Updike, "A & P"
6. Jim Ruland, "A Terrible Thing In a Place Like This"
At a swapmeet, from a man with silver hair selling items from the bed of his truck, I bought a framed copy of a calligraphy version of this.
(He deliberated, he said, on whether to bring it that day. I have read this, he said, hundreds and hundreds of times. It was like an inanimate friend he gave me as I handed him the paltry sum--like the money was not really even part of the equation when he requested it. He was giving away a song, a lullaby of sorts, a belief system he had read and reread until mastery. He might as well have cast it on the ocean in a bottle.
I liked this man. He had a kind face.
I read it. I reread it. I found it achingly beautiful in the way of white orchids blooming in morning sun... In the way of a memory that, for an instant, returns the past to the present where the dead have returned to the living--if only in the mental space of the thinker. I found it timeless and appropriate. Touching.
I could hear my grandmother spirit (passed in 1985) reverberate through it--like, if her life or being could state its mission, this might have been its words.)
Perhaps my lack of patience and the impossibilty of so many things makes me need things like this--primers for living, or moreso, for living well. Anyhow, in case anyone else would like to read it:
Desiderata
Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.Speak your truth quietly & clearly, and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant they too have their story.Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations of the spirit.If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.Keep interested in your own career, however humble, it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery.But let this not blind you to what virtue there is, many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.Be yourself.Especially do not feign affection.Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity & disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here.And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.Be careful.Strive to be happy.
(Found in Old Saint Paul's Church, Baltimore, Date 1692)
's words: