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#MeToo Times Two

A few months ago, when the #MeToo revolution was just underway, I was sitting next to a group of young girls at Starbucks one afternoon. I couldn’t help overhearing their conversation. The resulting poem has just come out in volume 9, number 1 of Pink Panther Magazine, whose mission is “to give women a voice through the promotion of their art and writing.” Fittingly, the issue went live this month, in honor of International Women’s Day, March 8.

The issue, which is full of strong writing and arresting art, can be downloaded free. My poem’s on page 27:

Afternoon Prayer at Starbucks
By Sally Zakariya

I was sharing, she says in a falsetto little-girl voice.
I was sharing. Sharing what, I wonder as I read
the painful ##MeToo stories women share today.
Sharing innocence, I hope, though these days girls
her age know more about the world..

Maybe 13, on the cusp of growing up, she’s old
enough to want, not old enough to understand..
She tosses her long brown hair, pulls out her phone,
pale green like her vest, like her backpack.ackpack.
Her friends cluster around, chattering, cooing,
sweetly smooth and glowing, ready, all of them.

Good Lord, give them luck, not pain. Give them
kind lovers, caring lovers, good soon-to-be men.
Give them, if you will, confidence and grit,
t the strength to say No--plus wit and love to share. 

Thanks, Pink Panther. And thanks also to the Moving Words program, a yearly competition sponsored by Arlington Transit . Winning poems are displayed on placards inside Arlington, VA, buses April through September. This year’s theme was Ripped from the Headlines, and one of the winners was my friend Eric Forsbergh. Here’s his winning poem:

#MeToo--A Father Responds
By Eric Forsbergh

Some hands grab for dirty work, up close.
So my daughter's pit bull runs with her at dawn.
My wind-worn wings can't span the sky.
For her sake, I want to be what's strange and terrible.
Osiris' black jackal would intercede. His job?
To drag the corpse of lust's assumptions underground.
To weigh its shriveled heart.
But could I recognize deceit seeping from the pores?
Maybe not. Pit bulls possess a better sense of smell.  

Lucky daughter, I think.

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Bon Appetit

Don’t forget to “Like” our Joys of the Table Facebook page. And check back often! We’re adding poems and recipes from time to time and would love to hear from you.

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Look to the Stars

Funny how you get something in your head and can’t seem to shake it. Call it a brain worm if you will. For the last year or so, I’ve been seeing stars … and writing about them. Along with eclipses, phases of the moon, and other celestial matters. Many of these poems are being published in Personal Astronomy, a chapbook forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Meanwhile, here’s one that appeared in issue 37 of Existere, a journal of arts and literature from Canada:

Constellations
Identity is an assemblage of constellations.
– Anna Deveare Smith

I know night’s huntsman Orion
with his bright belt and sword
and the Dipper pointing North
but the others are just names
scattered among the stars.

And oh so many stars—
 I never knew how many
until we left the city lights
and drove up the mountain.

We stood amazed like the old Greeks
dwarfed by the enormity of night.

How did they find order in that cloud
of radiance, that vast crowd of stars?

It’s not how but why that matters—
to name what they could not know
to explain the inexplicable
to feel at home in the universe.

Friends showed me Cassiopeia
and the two bears, or tried to
but I was lost in the light
looking to fix my own patterns
to find my own comfort
in constellations.
 

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Look to the Snow

Our friend Mel Goldberg, who contributed to Joys of the Table, is a master of haiku as well as other poetry forms, novels, and short stories. He’s just come out with his third book of haiku: The Weight of Snowflakes, published by Red Moon Press. On a chilly February day, I’m taken with this two-parter from the new book:  

          frosty morning
          where does
          sky begin

my body withers
cherry blossoms
in February 

Congratulations, Mel … and keep on writing!

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Like Food?

Like poems about food? Then maybe you’d like the new Facebook page for Joys of the Table, our popular anthology of culinary verse. In fact, we invite you to visit the page and “Like” it. Please add your comments and ideas – we’d love to hear from you. And tell your favorite cook, who might find inspiration in the poems and recipes that make up the anthology. One of our favorites: pavlovas with berry topping, a lush dessert whose recipe accompanies “Berries,” by Virginia poet Eric Forsbergh. “Red raspberries lie velvet in the mouth / but smaller than your kiss …” Can’t you just taste them?

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The Great Outdoors

Some of my favorite poems come to me when I’m outside, walking in the woods, lazing in the backyard, or just watching the birds swoop and swirl outside my window. And I’m obviously not alone. A stunning new book, In Plein Air, celebrates, as its subtitle puts it, “poems and drawings of the natural world.” Edited by Arlyn Miller and Susan Gundlach and published by Poetic License Press, the book is beautifully produced in a limited edition and features 22 graphite illustrations hand drawn expressly for the anthology. Each of the book’s 52 poems was written not just about the outdoors but in the outdoors.

My contribution came from a fall afternoon in Memphis. I’d flown down to fetch and carry for my sister, who’d just had a hip replacement. I’d run a few errands for her and was sitting outside on the patio while she napped in her bedroom. The air was bright, the leaves were just thinking about turning, and the world seemed perfect. Here’s what I wrote:

To My Sister, Recovering
By Sally Zakariya

I want to bring the outside in for you
but earth and sky would crowd your narrow
room, so I can only promise

the tall oak that shades your window
the red maple with its burnished leaves
the pine that stands behind the garden.

I promise rainbow birches
and paper birch, bark
curling off in broadside rolls.

I promise aspen, ash and elm – an autumn’s worth
of roots, trunks, and boughs to shelter you until you leave
your room to join me once again here outside.

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Like Food?

Like poems about food? Then maybe you’d like the new Facebook page for Joys of the Table, our popular anthology of culinary verse. In fact, we invite you to visit the page and “Like” it. Please add your comments and ideas – we’d love to hear from you. And tell your favorite cook, who might find inspiration in the poems and recipes that make up the anthology. One of our favorites: pavlovas with berry topping, a lush dessert whose recipe accompanies “Berries,” by Virginia poet Eric Forsbergh. “Red raspberries lie velvet in the mouth / but smaller than your kiss …” Can’t you just taste them?

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Honorables, Boobies, and Other Prizes

It’s been a while since one of my poems won first prize in a contest. In fact, I’ve been pretty much striking out lately. Second honorable mention? That’s a booby prize by any other name, right? Third prize? What if only three poems were entered in the contest? Now, as prize season heats up, I’m wondering what’s the use. Poets & Writers magazine maintains an online database of contests, grants, and awards, and I even shelled out a few bucks for their PDF publication “Guide to Writing Contests” in hopes of learning the secret handshakes that will put me ahead of the crowd

No such luck. One problem, and this is my own fault, is that I put so much effort into submitting for publication that when the time comes to enter a contest, most of my best pieces are already spoken for. But the real problem might well be that my poetry just isn’t good enough. My fault entirely, of course, and the only remedy I can think of is to just keep trying.

Good luck with your own contest entries (unless, of course, they push mine down into the booby prize category).

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A Poetic Cop

Richard Eric Johnson, one of the members of my monthly poetry group, is a retired street cop and Army veteran who served in Viet Nam and West Berlin. And wrote and wrote about it. Eric’s Memoir Poetic of a Naked Cop resonates with passion and reflection, with caustic observation and take-no-prisoners narration of the horrors of war and the tragedies of the street. Here’s one of his poems that stood out for me:

Missing in Action
By Richard Eric Johnson

Their politicians
Our politicians
Got us there

Many the ceremonies
With taps and folded flags and rifle salutes
Many the ashes flung into the winds
Or tossed upon the seas

The politicians
Talked and talked
Mostly lied

Too many soldiers just disappeared
Not a single piece      of remaining flesh

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Another Poem about Age

It turns out that when you’re 75, you’re not so young anymore. Who knew? I expect it hits most of us as a shock. Inside, 40 or 45. In the mirror, well .… In short, I’ve been writing poems lately that might be considered somewhat elegiac. Here’s one of them, which appeared recently in the idiosyncratically named Spank the Carp online journal.

Suit
By Sally Zakariya

Age is a heavy suit.
Its threads and buttons
snare you, weigh you down,
until at last you say Enough
and lie down where the suitt
has led you.

You may think you can
cast off the suit, but no—
it cannot be removed, piece
by piece or all at once.

A Romanian singer sang
of the suit. A Swedish poet
wrote of the tailor who takes
your measurements.

What can I add that has not
been said and said better
except perhaps that the suit
is deceptively light
when you first put it on.

Thanks to my husband the Romania-phile for the song, which he played for me on a scratchy record. (Remember those?) As for the Swedish poet, that, of course, is the wonderful Tomas Transtromer, whose poem “Black Postcards” concludes with this stanza:

In the middle of life it happens that death comes
and takes your measurements. This visit
is forgotten and life goes on. But the suit is
                                 sewn in the silence.

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Poem Prompts from John Ashbery

In September we lost another leading poet when John Ashbery died, just a few months after his 90th birthday. For that occasion, Literary Hub had invited 90 of the poet’s friends, collaborators, and admirers to pick a favorite line from his works and write about it in no more than 90 words. The result was 90 Lines for John Ashbery's 90th Birthday, reposted after his death.

I borrowed one of the lines as the epigraph of a poem of my own, “Much to Tell,” which is currently going the submission rounds. Here are a few other lines, plus the names of the poems they’re taken from. Any one of these lines (or the other 82, for that matter) might prompt a new poem:

• That there is so much to tell now, really now. (“As We Know”)
• And the face / Resembles yours, the one reflected in the water. (“Summer”)
• No matter how you / twist it, / life stays frozen in the headlights. (“Wakefulness”)
• Ask a hog what is happening. Go on. Ask him. (“Grand Galop”) • Something shimmers; something is hushed up. (“This Room”)
• Tomorrow is easy, but today is uncharted. (“Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror”)
• But you are too preoccupied / By the secret smudge in the back of your soul. (“Just Walking Around”)
• It was always November there. (“The Chateau Hardware”)

As for me, I’m pondering what might be happening to that hog.

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What You SawSpeak, Memory

One of the rewards of putting together a poetry anthology is the rich network of writers the collection creates. As I was gathering poems, quotations, and cover photos for Joys of the Table, I sometimes imagined all the contributors exchanging verses over supper in a huge dining hall. It never happened, of course. But next best is hearing from them, especially with good news. Judith Waller Carroll, whose poem “Lemon Bread” appeared (along with a yummy recipe) in Joys, recently shared some really exciting news: her first full-length collection, What You Saw and Still Remember, will be released in January by the Main Street Rag Publishing Company. As reviewer Andrea Hollander says of Carroll’s poems, “Her precise images take hold and settle until the poem’s close, when they stab and sizzle. … Carroll’s finely wrought poems seize our own hearts and do not let go.” I couldn’t agree more. Here’s a moving piece from the book, which is available for pre-order:

My Father’s Blue Sweater
By Judith Waller Carroll

He hasn’t been alive for over twenty years
but suddenly, here he is in this room,
smelling of Marlboros and mints,
wearing that blue cardigan,
faded and soft, slightly frayed at the cuffs,
the one I brought home after his funeral
and wore for weeks without washing,
not wanting to lose the scent.
He is reeled back on his heels
reciting Emerson by heart,
dark eyes wide, unruly eyebrows raised,
long fingers outstretched, smoothing the air.

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Up from the TropicsBacopa Literary Review

I was delighted when my poem “Theory of Omission” was accepted for publication in the 2017 Bacopa Literary Review, an annual international print journal published by the Writers Alliance of Gainesville, Florida. I was even more delighted when my copy arrived. The journal overflows with thoughtful writing and is handsomely produced. (By the way, it turns out bacopa is a genus of aquatic plants that grow in tropical and subtropical areas like Florida.)

Theory of Omission
By Sally Zakariya

A sparrow rests on the rusted
fencepost, its red-brown feathers
echoing the rust

Omit the sparrow and the thought
of bird remains, mental excavation
discovering what is no longer there

So it is with loss

That which is removed, remains
that which never was, hovers
on the edge of existence

You who are now gone
you who never were
my archaeology creates you –
sparrows that do not rest
on any fencepost

Copies are available on Amazon

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Acquainted with Grief

“Sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can make with what you have left.” That’s what Itzhak Perlman is said to have told a Lincoln Center audience when one of the strings on his violin suddenly broke. Perlman continued his concert, minus a string. In her new chapbook, Itzhak Perlman's Broken String, poet Jacqueline Jules explores the aftermath of loss, finding music, as one reviewer says, in “our crippled instruments.” The 2016 winner of the Evening Street Press Helen Kay Award, the chapbook contains poems that are stunning, moving, powerful. Here’s one example:

Avocado Secret
By Jacqueline Jules

When the widow wrote
how her husband
once said she was like
a perfectly ripe avocado,
I wanted to rush right out
and buy one. Examine
its tough exterior,
creamy innards,
solid core.

Learn its secret.

At your bedside, I was
best described as a banana.
A fruit turning brown
and mushy too quickly.

Just like an avocado
when sliced too late.

Except I had no pit
deep inside, stopping
the knife.

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Lilacs and Orchids

Sometimes a remembered scene from my childhood will spark a poem, and that’s the case with a piece that was recently included in Women's Voices Anthology, a publication of These Fragile Lilacs Press:

Hoarder, with Orchids
By Sally Zakariya

He collected newspapers and magazines
     years of them
bright spines of National Geographics
stacked high like a yellow brick road
     to the sky
piles and piles of publications carefully
curated wall by paper wall
narrow pathways between the walls
a tantalizing maze to me at six

He was my parents’ friend
and later they said he’d gotten worse
but he seemed fine to me
a builder, an excavator creating
his own topography there in his
     living room
an archaeologist who could find
history at the bottom of each mound
even if he couldn’t find a clear space
     for mother to sit

But he made room for his orchids
lavish flourishes of blossom
pink to lavender to blue arrayed
     in graceful sprays
lovingly tended in a big bay window
row by row, a sort of orchard
with a generosity of empty space
     between the plants

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A Fond Farewell

It’s hard to say good-bye to someone who enlivened his surroundings with insight and wit. Jules Spector, who died recently, was such a person. I knew Jules through a series of poetry classes we shared. His poems were unfailingly strong, spare, and shrewd yet loving. “I entered into his world every time he read one of his pieces to us,” said one classmate. Another added, “Jules' poems always took us into a life rich with family characters, acting in wildly too-human ways.” We will miss his voice in our classes, but thankfully he left us a splendid collection of poems, We Live in Hopes published by Opus, an arm of Washington’s Politics and Prose Bookstore. Thank you, Jules, for your wry and sensitive poetry.

Starstruck
By Jules Spector

In the darkened theater, the tall
actor with his Yiddish tongue
beguiled my mother. During my
stark childhood days, her fantasy
of him, this star of stars
brought before me a glimmer of
what might exist beyond my loneliness.

On Sunday afternoons she took me
with her to the playhouse on Walnut Street
to see an unlikely miracle, Yiddish
drama presented by actors, rags
upon their bodies, passion in their
eyes, swords in their scabbards.

Above all, my mother loved this
prince of actors, Maurice Schwartz.
His dark good looks, his widow’s
peak, his stride across the stage.
He commanded it all, surmounted
obstacles, averted disaster.
I saw him in her eyes when she looked
at me, when she smiled.

What did she think that day, arriving
early, finding him there in the small
box office. Where were the dark eyelashes?
The eyebrows, the high-colored cheeks?
The man before her, dull gray
not a shining beam of light in God’s universe.
He glance up, saw our sadness, turned away.

We sat through the play. Suffered
with the sufferers on stage. Surely
my mother felt disillusioned, but I
could not agree. In that dark space
light and life remained.
Illusion and imagination.
A dream of dreamers.
An opening in my mind.

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‘Words That Shine Forth’

What is it about a lot of today’s poetry that turns me off? Oh right, it’s the tendency of some young poets to be abstract, obscure, esoteric, over-academic, whatever. And I guess I’m not alone. Writing recently in The New York Times Book Review section, Matthew Zapruder makes a strong argument for accessible poetry. “Good poets do not deliberately complicate something just to make it harder for a reader to understand,” writes Zapruder, an award-winning poet and author of the forthcoming Why Poetry.

Trouble is, we’re often taught to approach a poem by analyzing metaphor, understanding allusion, and probing for deeper meaning. Instead, Zapruder advises, start with the words themselves. “One of the greatest pleasures of reading poetry is to feel words mean what they usually do in everyday life, and also start to move into a more charged, activated realm,” he writes.

“Somewhere, in every poem, there are words that shine forth, light up, almost as if plugged in,” says r. “This is what poetry can do for language, and for us.”

Read Zapruder’s “Critic’s Take” here.

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Root, Trunk, Bark, Bough

I used to climb them, but that was long ago. Now I write about them, and sometimes I’m lucky enough to have my tree poems published. One of them, “Paperbark Maple,” is in a beautiful new book called These Trees. Photographer Ruthie Rosauer has gathered more than 130 of her photographs and paired them with poems. The collection, handsomely designed and printed, would make a great gift for anyone who loves trees.

Paperbark Maple

Wind animates the three-lobed leaves
curled to cup the summer air

A folio of bark peels off in shaggy sheets
scribbled with imagined verses

These paperbarks are artist trees
self-portraits en plein air

They tell their stories leaf
by silent leaf for us to read their changes

Fall brings a fiery palette, then winter
twigs write letters on the sky

In spring winged double seeds hang-
glide on wind in artful acrobatics

Where they take hold another year
will bring its own new poetry 

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Getting Published

It should go without saying, but it doesn’t hurt to be reminded: When you’re trying to get your stories and poems and creative nonfiction published, be professional.

“Take the time to visit the individual sites of lit mags that you are interested in,” says Becky Tuch, founding editor of The Review Review, a useful newsletter of views on publishing. “Read their guidelines,” she continues. “For some reason, people often consider themselves exempt from rules. You're not. You must play by the rules like everyone else. It doesn't make you boring. It makes your writing accessible.”

This is just one of Tuch’s tips for getting published in literary journals. Read seven more in From Pen to Print. My favorite? “Approach your writing with fierce determination.

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What Are You Writing?

Why should we get all the bylines? Submit your latest poem—just one for now—and we’ll publish the poems we like best in an upcoming blog post. Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please let us know if the poem is accepted or published elsewhere. Send your poem, plus a few lines about yourself, in the body of an e-mail message to:
poetryeditor@RicherResourcesPublications.com

 

You Are Here

Welcome to But Does it Rhyme?
We're a small, but hopefully growing, band of poets who like to talk about our craft and share what we've written. We'll highlight favorite poets, review new books, and explore the process of writing poetry from inspiration to conclusion. (We might venture into essays and short fiction, too.) We hope you'll like our blog — and contribute your own thought and poems.

Sally Zakariya, Poetry Editor
Richer Resources Publications

Charan Sue Wollard (LivermoreLit)
Kevin Taylor (Poet-ch'i)
Sherry Weaver Smith (SherrysKnowledgeQuest)

books
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