Young Writers Society

Last year was a great success for me. Not necessarily were the poems a success, but, instead, the habit that it spawned. Over two hundred poems have come of last year's NaPoWriMo. I hope this year will only serve to perpetuate that habit.

"The growing idleness of summer grass
With its frail kites of furious butterflies
Requests the lemonade of simple praise
In scansion gentler than my hammock swings
And rituals no more upsetting than a
Black maid shaking linen as she sings
The plain notes of some Protestant hosanna—
Since I lie idling from the thought in things—"

A Lesson For This Sunday, Derek Walcott

-Kylan

april 1

come what may

plantation of teacups, their mutely painted rims, these adorned
and simple brides, with their hipped handles carving white light
out of the spectrum, as if it were a slice of good summer melon.
the cleft-lipped blossoms mewl on the tabletop, and she slowly puts
on her gardening dress, as the light comes through the window
in straits, which the loose, indoor petals sink through like
rudderless gondolas.

she looks for it among the beefsteak tomatoes today, their complementary leaves soft
and fuzzed as elderly earlobes – she knows she lost it here somewhere.
she remembers the afternoons, the dropped stitches of light embroidering
the underchins of the last of the spring blossoms, the kids
rooting through the strawberry patch for the red, kept ones
hung in their canticles and let clots, and her husband
stacking the firewood that they would never use, but stacked and cut
regardless, for the sake remembrance. she recalls maybe planting it here
and waiting for it to grow, for when she needed it.

the squash blossoms crouch and wait patiently, like mousers,
and the doped morel brains are pitted loiterers. she weeds, shaking the good
earth out of the blitz and squirm of roots. she knows if she has to be stuck
inside that house with only the sunspoiled photographs for company, she will go mad,
and so she watches the fern sunset gnaw over the wheatheads
in the adjacent field.

she looks for it in the turning of an apple, the trunk white-washed,
old patriach, and the most delicate aphids of dew on the appleskins, looking for it
in the augury of returning geese, in the forks and routes and interstates
of her palmistry. she knows she left it somewhere, like a misplaced
pair of glasses, like a short-term memory,

hiding among the rosaried peas, bedding with the
undertoned potatoes.

Kylan, this poem was a mouthful for me. I will have to chew and digest it and come back to it again once it's broken down in my heart, but for now I will point out one thing.

she knows if she has to be stuck
inside that house with only the sunspoiled photographs for company, she will go mad,
and so she watches the fern sunset gnaw over the wheatheads
in the adjacent field.

First of all, the last two lines in this part are beautiful and evoke the most brilliant image in my mind. The first two lines, however, are a bit of something that's been pointed out to me and now I try to avoid. It's exposition and it's not subtle. I feel like we found enough of the desperation in that she's looking for it outside and not in the house that you really don't need to spell it out for us. If you want to make it clearer, make the reference more subtle. Perhaps she sees the frames that hold up the winding peas and nearly ruins it when it reminds her of the poison frames inside, but lets it let them live. I have no idea, but you should! xD

Can't wait to live on this thread this year.

-Hannah-

Yum yum, I can't wait to read through this thread. Great start Kylan.

april 2

lilies of the field

to John

sour nipples of grapes, dusty from the late summer, as grapes should be
and clustered in totems, in their purple-robed vulva, three cents for every pound,
and we pick them as fast as possible, as the sunlight fails around us,
in the stitchery of the vineyard limbs. the children are sick of the grapes
by now, stomachs plumbed, their fingers stained like blotters, and tired
from picking in the vineyard since 5 this morning. grandpa sucks on his
goatsteeth dentures, the laundress clouds gut by, and the wasps pick
around the rotting windfall in their sickly vaticans.
we drop the bunches of grapes into the 5 gallon buckets,
our boots sloshing with grapejuice, as a soldier's would slosh with blood.

a man with a mouth organ,
plays something sad on the way home
in the back of the pickup, and i can feel the coming
autumn in the way the air smells of woodsmoke and
the treeleaves dangling like participles, and the whipporwhils
unwilling, the last poppies an infirmary of blood-headed thermometers,
your hands are rough, and i can't bear to look at them, so
i look at your face and count the new wrinkles,
and the mouth organist plays something new
as his brother sings about salinas, and it is the evening before the sabbath.

sunday comes to the shantytowns, and there is a sunday school class held
for the children, and they recite scriptures, and the old men sitting on the hillside,
their lungs rattling like dried brethren gourds, the women in cheap
endoskeletons of lace, the baptisms, the smell of rotting fruit and the men
wondering if stillson's cotton field was ready for picking yet, with its
hampers of dreamy, congested boles that could be seen from the street,
and they reckon in the untilled dirt, squatting as the night emerges from behind
the tusked cornstalks, and the moon was houseboated across the rippleless sky
and i look to the stars, the jingling loose dimes
of the universe, as they spin and toil,

april 3

sabbath

the flames on each of the wig-wept candles, lined up and
schmoozing, like penelope's suitors, the wax droplets pearling
like log-split grubs, and the saint's face solar in its paneled glass,
fingers crossed, the merest hint of a smirk around his paling,
illuminated mouth. in the living room, the christus is prone
like a taxidermied insect, terrible eyes upturned toward the throne
of thorns. the candles scorch the walls, you knead your neural
system of rosary beads, saying a prayer for each, emerging from
the dead, molted skin of your daily sins damp and clasping,
like blistered monarch from her pupae.

we walk to church on the hottest day of the year – the pharisee
crows knotting the barbed wire of their cries and shrieks, your
tulips capped like archbishops and gumming the communion of bees.
you have me recite scripture along the way, slippery spoken castor oil,
your heels clicking, clicking on the sidewalk, flak of cicadas, the sun
a dipping gourd into the hill-cupped well of oncoming night. inside
the church, pendulum of incense, swinging, whisking blushing
shushing smoke behind it, the altar boys polished-cheeked like apples.

and if i listen close enough i can hear the galaxy rotating, copernicus's
sun burning, the softshoe of jupiter's moons – god's creaky, music box
mechanisms. plankton stars, among which there is no oxygen for faith
to burn to. the hugeness swallows, the night pushes out its fireflies
and the churchbells nod their compliance, their tolls gestating,
and i can see as we exit that you have been crying.
you hold my hand, and i wish that I had what you have.

the nightly mushrooms are tucked in,
the gaslights twiddle like thumbs, now i lay me
down to sleep and Doubt breathes warmly
into my ear.

Hi, Kylan!

April Second:

we drop the bunches of grapes into the 5 gallon buckets,
our boots sloshing with grapejuice, as a soldier's would slosh with blood.

I feel like this comparison is awkward, but that the idea of the soldier fits well. Perhaps something else like 'we are soldiers trampling over the fallen foe' or something. I want to keep it, but not with this wording.

i can feel the coming
autumn in the way the air smells of woodsmoke and
the treeleaves dangling like participles, and the whipporwhils
unwilling, the last poppies an infirmary of blood-headed thermometers,
your hands are rough, and i can't bear to look at them, so
i look at your face and count the new wrinkles,
and the mouth organist plays something new
as his brother sings about salinas, and it is the evening before the sabbath.

AHHHHHHHHHH SALINAAAAS.
Okay, sorry, you're amazing. xD Hey, I LOVE the first line in this. That's absolutely how you tell that autumn is coming. That's perfect, Kylan, but the English reference is out of place and perhaps instead of blood, you might say that the thermometers were headed with mercury. Otherwise it gives a more gruesome tone. Or, if you meant to have that tone, then whatever. xD I love the people you've brought in, other than just the children.

sunday comes to the shantytowns,

But I don't think you should have gone past to Sunday. The first two stanzas seemed as if they were the same day, any day, and though we knew time was passing, I didn't want to /see/ it pass in the poem. Maybe you can tell us it was already Sunday and keep it mostly intact? I just don't like that passage, though I like the stars at the end.

ready for picking

I felt like this phrase stuck out and made that whole section seem gross. It ruined the flow, and it might be better if you said something like just 'ready yet' or 'going to be picked soon' (no, that's not good either). Uh, just not that phrase, I suppose. It's odd that something not so technical still seems too metallic for this pastoral poem.

of the universe, as they spin and toil,

So at first I was hesitant about the punctuation in this poem, because I didn't know if it was on purpose or not, but that cleared it up and let me stop worry about the commas and enjoy the way that life flows past us, the way you've taken scraps of it and brought it in for me.

April Third:

saint's face solar in its paneled glass,
fingers crossed, the merest hint of a smirk on his paling,
illuminated face.

You go from his face to his face here, though both descriptions are equally beautiful. If there are two different faces here, it's not clear, though the possibility is.

emerging from
the dead, molted skin of your daily sins damp and clasping,
like blistered monarch from her pupae.

This is gorgeous.

the pharisee
crows knotting the barbed wire of their cries and shrieks

As is this.

plankton stars, among which there is no oxygen for faith
to burn to. the hugeness swallows, the night pushes out its fireflies
and the churchbells nod their compliance, their tolls gestating,
and i can see as we exit that you have been crying.
you hold my hand, and i wish that I had what you have.

the nightly mushrooms are tucked in,
the gaslights twiddle like thumbs, now i lay me
down to sleep and Doubt breathes warmly
into my ear.

All of this last part just made me say 'oh god, how beautiful'. I want to eat it. It made my stomach flip and I want to do something with it, though I can't name what, because it is yours. It's gorgeous, Kylan. Now I think you might want to just take the first stanza out altogether. It's good, but it doesn't fit this delicious poem.

Thanks.

-Hannah-

Thanks, Hannah!

--

april 4

gaugin

little fugues, the equatored chrysanthemums reappear, pink
and revived like fainted women by smelling salts, outside on the balcony,
the sun cracking the skin of the tropical earth, the plates of dried mud
cupping up like tithing plates. the ladies white and cow-
belled, their gloved hands delicate and easily disturbed. there is smalltalk
at tea-time behind mosquito nets, and the phonetic bumblebees slumber
in their cravated blossoms, like churchgoers taking sabbath naps. the island
colonel tells a joke, and laughter flutters.

coconuts brained open on the beach, and the driftwood builds a sarcophagus as the seagulls
spin dervishes above the kelped rot, which pervades as quietly as a voice
in confessional. the fishermen show their ribs in their afternoon light,
speaking a little french, and a pantry of unknown syllables, their skin hard and salted,
and stretched across their drum of bones. dogs nose the shoreline,
painted, various. they cast out their nets, the fish come back and are
shaved of their corsets of scales, dropped of their guts.

he paints by the villages, the mudhuts daubed like waspnests, the broad-toed
indigènes pounding flour on the pitted pumice slabs, and large,
chapped blossoms hanging above them in an asthma of uncollected pollen.
his brushstrokes are gentle and sun-nudged
and the fruit trees are washed clean of their spring petals,
like naaman bathed of his leprosy seven times in the river jordan.
he paints their faces thoughtful, knowing something
but unasked, and therefore silent.

sloopsails on the horizon, skinny and breathless, like girls in their first
communion dresses. the colonials come to walk the beach at sunset, their
scarves and silks caught in the wind, warm and rising, like the smell of freshbaked
bread. he paints them, too, but they are impermanent in all their wisdom
and whiteness, their expressions changing too easily, bodies softened and easily bruised
as fruit felt for firmness.

at night, he watches the boys hunt for turtle eggs, soft and membranous
and knowing something, too, in their clasped, unhatched state. the moon is bored,
his canvases dry, the sea lifts and beats its chest natively.

wow Kylan. You have a very distinct voice, you show a mastery of the expressive nature of language. I think your most effective tool while revising will definitely be condensation, but you've got a lot to work with. If you want me to pick one or two of these and really pick at them, I would be happy to do so.

I think Perdido said it well, your mastery of language is impressive as well as expressive. It's lovely to have words flow out of your mouth and form an image, but as usual you get too attached to your poem and draw it out for so long with out letting it go. Don't grit out every last drop of it, leave some for the reader to simmer in.

Again, lovely.

I could see them standing and looking to the ocean with their scarves and silks whipping in the wind and I wonder if they missed their homeland or if they were content to be somewhere new. It's an image that is sticking with me because it was sticky from being warm. UGH YOU WRITE SUCH BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE, Kylan.

pink
and revived like fainted women by smelling salts,

But this is clunky because you'd normally say 'revived by smelling salts', but you can't because that's not what the flowers are revived by. So I don't know how to fix that, but know that it's difficult.

Also, I don't like these lines at all:

dogs nose the shoreline,
painted, various.

like naaman bathed of his leprosy seven times in the river jordan.

But I love the presence of fruit. Thanks, Kylan.

-Hannah-

I, too, am amazed at your poetry - such striking imagery! One major issue for me in reading your poems was that they are an eyeful - block text is even harder to read on a screen.

Firstly, I think that most of the imagery can stay, and CAN look beautiful and easy to read, by you simply breaking up each line into two or maybe three separate lines - think about indenting it in different ways to give each line a different meaning. This way, you will make each phrase count, rather than being a coagulating throng of phrases clamouring to be heard.

Secondly, some phrases, however charming, have got to go. I know it's like cutting off one's own limb - but, think about it, you have this amazingly huge number of phrases - what's hard about letting go of one, or two, or ten? I think your poems will have bigger impact if they are slightly less densely packed with similar kinds of imagery - for me, the biggest thing was being told again and again and again and again what to think and feel, so it kind of lost the impact that it would have had you simply had a few lines to the same effect. Thank you, for teaching ME something about my own poetry - I love how I learn from other people when I read their work!

Keep up the brilliance - and I think i know what you mean - I used to be a person who wrote poetry in a sudden burst of inspiration every one or two months - never regularly. I think NaPo will change that!

thank you for your advice!

--

april 5

o pioneer

the clouds sudsing and ample, like washerwomen, bolts of
paddled wool against the tin-blue sky and beneath them the covered
wagons are a cortège west, skirted and waist-deep in tallgrass
like river-waders, exposed knee-caps, hiked bloomers. it is a cool day
and the route through the plainland has been wheelpressed,
red, beansplit ruts filled with last night's rain. the children run beside
the wagons – they are barefoot, the boys with long prolegs of alfalfa
hanging from their mouths, the girls bonneted, picking wildflowers along
the way, tiny and sore as toothaches, the great fieldpoppies rising
like blood pressure.

blue-backed oxen, striving, noses wet and pink and their eyes startled,
the whites showing as their shoulderblades scrape against the harnesses
and yokes, thin-skinned, ribs showing through like those of the abandoned,
corseted conestoga wagons along the way, axel-less and spilling heirlooms –
fractured mirrors, foot-peddled looms, handcarved mahogany
bedposts. the oxen groan and call to each other, passing rotted
methuselah trees that stand alone on the prairie, snippet-fingered,
their leaves dry and shuffling drones. thunderheads prune
on the horizon, the men look forward and reckon gray-faced,
the spoked locusts rattle like stuck typewriter keys along the path.

and evening falls and the wagons circle like canvas-skinned elephants
protecting their calves of light and song as the coyotes call their bonehusked,
painted laments, and the stars whittle out of the darkness, social insectry.
the women sigh, blisters tighten like screws, and the moon-filigreed
clouds loosen like cravats on the horizon. the rain does not come.
the fiddles and harmonicas are brought out and they saw and
strain into the night. the children sleep, sparks rill from the shifting
fires, forming temporary planetariums.

the dust bowls overland,
and the tallgrass shivers broadly in the night wind,
like horses scattering flies from their hides.

Kylan, you have such a way with words. I have a request though. I'm a fan of short little poems, and I would like to see you do one. I'm just curious, because I think it's even harder to write tiny poems, and I want to see what you can do.

Hi, Kylan.

along
the way

I felt like this phrase was too mundane, perhaps something put there because you couldn't think of any better way to describe 'the way'? I can't think of anything better, but it sticks out, so maybe you can take a look at it and see if it rings true for you.

ribs showing through like those of the abandoned,
corseted conestoga wagons along the way, axel-less and spilling heirlooms –

Also, for some reason I felt like this simile was too close to the subject of the poem. You were talking about the wagons, and now you're comparing the oxen to the wagons, but it just seems like the oxen are part of the wagons, which would mean you're comparing the wagons to the wagons, and perhaps you should broaded the scope of the poem just a bit here and compare those ribs to something else.

their calves of light and song

Also, I know that you have fire later in the stanza, but 'light' doesn't seem right, because it gives kind of divine feeling to the calves, which is so far removed from this personal poem. I do like your descriptions of the camp, though, and the last stanza is beautiful and spot-on, except I don't understand the first line. Hehe.

OREGON TRAIL OREGON TRAIL OREGON TRAIL

(sorry, that's all I can think of, and now I want to play it)

-Hannah-