the INLAID EAR

Rockin' the dot matrix!

I am pitching Mortified , a live show where, if I am accepted and choose to go forward with this, I will be reading pages from my late high school diary that clearly illustrate my sexual confusion and why I was such a late bloomer. It was interesting to have this reflected back to me by Kevin, one of the event organizers, based on my first submission: "I'm especially intrigued by the idea of fancy poetry about adolescent sexual frustration, though I have to say the samples you've attached seem almost too sophisticated to be mortifying." I had been embarrassed by my old writings, but now I see there is some sophistication there. Take this sample sonnet where I am rigid in my iambic pentameter. I think this one isn't bad: Sonnet From what you’ve seen of me, I am a fool Today back to the time you saw me first. Before your eyes, I’ve stumbled from the rule. Yet I do swear you’ve only seen my worst The words I speak to you ...

Going back into the oldish files for some poems that were lost in the pile. Here at least they'll breathe once more.  This poem came from a time when I'd nearly given up on poetry for the first time in 20+ years. With my daughter at 3 years old, and my career as a copywriter picking up speed, I was losing track of why I pursued the ephemeral art at all. But thanks to meeting Poetic Asides , I found a respark and have continued with the practice unabated ever since. 30 years now! This poem is about us humans. "Mired Divine" Such mucky bubbles we all are with monkey grace and dirt and arm, tied into our tangled blankets needful as massage — and thankless — under the airships of our dreams bursting through Moissanite ceilings, dropping our soiled gabardine we spoiled in rain and gasoline … We’re puddles rainbowed with feeling waking as angels, but screaming, inventing stores of penny pranks, rumbling ohms and ums and flatu...

Queron is a new poetic form I developed during the November 2009 Poem-A-Day Challenge hosted by Robert Lee Brewer at Writersdigest.com. Influenced by Rilke’s advice to “live the questions now,” I developed queron to support the way my mind engages questions—which is what it does when I write poems. Counting syllables slows me down into a state of attentive curiosity. Interweaving rhymes mirror the way the mind flashes back and forth as it grapples with questions. The stanza breaks offer opportunities to shift the perspective of the poem and consider the central question from different angles. The ending couplet can offer a sense of closure—whether an answer or a surrender to not having an answer. Writing queron requires attention to meter, rhyme and content. Here’s the recipe: Seventeen lines are grouped into three quintets and a final couplet. Each line has an equal number of syllables. Rhymes interweave in this scheme: ababa bcbca cdcdb dd. The poem includes a question....