In Media Res
By Rena Rossner

if I stand in a tribe of goats
with thistles swaying in prayer
and squint to bring the daylight
moon in focus, I know I’ll never
find you in Jerusalem you are
forever leaving something, night,
sleep, darkness, love, a poem

left behind that wandered, found
and stopped its trek, mid-song
amid the doves that nestle in the
stones here, where water costs
more than a plane ticket and a
century can pass on camelback,
where foreign tongues shroud your

face, your fingers burnt by tea, a
siren in the desert sounds, crowds
collect, locusts swarm, tender morsels,
dreams, lucid, interpreted, pour through
you like sandstorms, thirst is an oasis,
the way you stare, the moon your echo,
what the body remembers and how so

much can go unnoticed. Like the sand
between your toes at night, you don’t
know how it got there, and almonds
blossom, unexpectedly, that scent,
zaatar pinched between fingers,
persimmons ripe and rotten, the ruins
of the castle, the reddish clay

you grasp, and then release. Coffee,
bitter, dust-filled, nothing tastes the
same, and something always reminds
you, the door you thought was home,
the river that’s a phone, reflections on
pint glasses, tuborg, red, like caramel,
chocolate, you hear the bells of skype

sounds, every night the same, and
mornings, restful, quiet, lone, you step
into the backyard, ghosts and chickens
to be fed, and cats, always, gendarmes
at the siege, you start to name things,
touchstones, take them from the river,
where you bathe your past, large hands,

steady, stone-like, fused from sand
and shadow, this is what you’ve been
reduced to. The whistle of desire, pain
always with pleasure, the satin of a woman,
the middle, which is always a beginning
and an end, a poem, broken, winged, a goat
bleat of the heart, always wondering if

I really want to say how amazing the NaPoWriMo blog has been – not only in encouraging writers to keep writing poetry every day this month -  but in posting truly fabulous inspiration and challenges that have taken me out of my comfort zone and gotten me to try to ideas and styles that not only have I loved, but feel compelled to return to after this is all over. In the meantime, I keep following and enjoying the challenges – not all of them, but most!

Here is the poem inspired by Day 20 – the challenge was to use 5 random words from a list and make it into a poem – I didn’t use the entire list, but I used most of it – more than 15 words – which was even more of a challenge.

Words

The owl absconds with my pencil
she flies upwind, my afternoon’s
work squandered, so I pour tea
that smells of clove and cinnamon
it’s a miraculous elixir, amber as
it pours out from the thermos, under
the watchful eye of the thief, cyclops
who stole to build a nest in some willowy
tree. The afternoon is mercurial, the air
scented, more seaweed than gutter, it changes
quickly, wind gusts like artillery fire, salt tang
of the sea on my tongue, the curl of my toes
in response to a chill burst, it is ego, elusive
in its quest to commune, twice I have been
confounded by a ghost, an owl once stole
my wedge of cheese, but left the truffle.
It is why I am still svelte.

The second challenge that I took on was quite unusual but a lot of fun – the challenge was in making what I wrote make sense afterwards. This challenge had us take a poem in a foreign tongue that we don’t know at all and “translate” it as best we could. I chose a poem entitled Delphi IV by Jos De Haes from Belgium.

Delphi 4

I suppose that the lake was hidden
blood-red over the silver sheen
flowing salvation, marred beneath
the poor vole sad and missed.

Over the ribbon of the iceberg
the ripples of the slavering deep
this stream runs alcoholic mergers
shot with starlings that won’t waken.

So many shimmers in the stream
blood-wingers plant still birth
- and on the bluff all’s in a tomb
of once haunted mounds of silk.

Blink once in the splintering wood
your glow and prime are coming
die there panning for the goldpost
on which they wrote in blood your name.

O children, my puppies, my wonder
we die cold in the ocean seas
and waken with a blood curse, standing
the dagger is a sword of sound.

This is poetry noir – another genre I have never attempted. Great challenge. I had enough fun with this to even return to it again some time. The poem isn’t perfect but it was fun to write.

The Tryst
By Rena Rossner

Her hand trembles, she stabs at her eye
with a mascara wand. The lover on her bed
watches and takes a drag of cigarette, the ashes

fall. The phone rings. They stare
at it, but don’t pick up. The sound
of breathing fills the room. She pours

a drink. Shoots it down fast. It’s all
been done. She lies back down. He reaches
for his gun. They kiss, the metal cold

and hard against her slip. His car is down
below, for getaways and midnight trysts, for
endless stakeouts. But here its a freefall,

her arms a secret scar. Light edges in
from streetlamps, the rumble of a distant car.
The sound of laughter is like thunder, rising from

the hotel bar. Her ears against his shadowed chest.
There is no time for love. The knock is soft at first,
then harder, like the beating of her heart.

The first is a Cinquain – a structed metered poem that really appealed to me in a way that somehow Haiku’s don’t. It was stuctured enough but unstructured in the sense that it did not require rhyme which is perhaps why I enjoyed the form more – freedom within constriction and all that, as well as the serious challenge of putting the words together in a way that makes sense and follows a pattern – a great jigsaw puzzle, and I so do love a challenge.

The second is a goodbye poem – this one has a lot of meaning for me personally, but I like the concept of it’s ambiguity – a writer saying goodbye to his/her story – or is it something more? The intimacy of the relationship between the creator and the created…

Echo
By Rena Rossner

It’s now,
when day is done
that I can hear my voice
In silence thick as night I play
with words.

Story
By Rena Rossner

I make a study of your letters
the words you formed
that ran across the page
away from me
sometimes they form
a concrete poem
your face in the morning
over coffee
you were always
far away.

Remember me like a window
open or shut, translucent,
full of glass and sunshine
I never meant to be a cage
I am but another demon
from your past
a face you pass
you turn your head as you go -
Was that just? No. Move on.
Keep moving. But you recognize
the echo.

Do you feel it still?
As I do? A low grumbling
like thunder, hungry,
an itch that you can’t scratch
a lonely angel, trailing you
ghost-like, calm, you turn
again, you hear a song,
a tear comes out of nowhere
unbidden, it falls and wets
the page. There is no pain,
it’s compensation, a mark
of cain, a passage back
into the intimacy
of silence.

Perhaps you are as glad
to be rid of me
as one who finally snuffs
the buzzing of a fly.
I am danger, keeper,
watcher, lover
of all your stories
you loved me best.

Instead I was rather taken with the challenge to write poems based on the names of Iain Banks’ spaceships. I find it rather ironic that I immediately wrote two poems and might have written more in tribute to this great writer and great man who recently announced that he was dying of cancer, but, after I wrote the poems, I was made aware of a recent article he wrote in The Guardian explaining his advocacy of a cultural boycott of Israel. How sad that I should write two poems in his honor that he will likely never read, not just because I am no famous poet and the likelihood of him ever seeing these poems anyway is rather slim, but also because, it seems, he would refuse to read them. And without making this political and judging him or anyone else for that matter, it just makes me sad. And that is all I have to say about that.

Without further ado…two poems, in honor of Iain Banks who will likely never read them and would probably refuse to:

A Series of Unlikely Explanations
(except for one)
By Rena Rossner

The dog ate it
My stomach hurt
I didn’t know
That was your shirt?

I saw a spaceship
The phone didn’t ring
My car wouldn’t start
It was a fragile thing

I was too tired
You moved away
They came to get me
That was today?

There was traffic
There was snow
I lost my way
You didn’t show

Next time I’ll be there
I had to cook
My cousin died
(I was reading a book)

Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill
By Rena Rossner

The BBQ is on, I hear the hiss
of gas and flame, the clatter of tools
wooden-handled, spatula, tongs, fork,
skewer, brush, and his hands, caressing
wings, breasts, thighs, juicy, marinating.
See how he prods the beef? Patties that
melt at his touch, fatty, succulent, and
vegetables, round, perfect, skewered
kebab-style, glistening, brushed  with oil,
extra-virgin, seasoned, sprinkled with salt,
pepper, rubbed gently with cloves of crushed
garlic. The beer bottle next to him sweats
and leaves her mark – rings of condensation
on the wooden sideboard, the clink
of his gold band against the glass, his lips
puckered over the rim as he takes a sip.
I watch from inside how his adam’s apple bobs.
I toss: vodka shots, coleslaw, massage
butter into ears of corn, line chip baskets
with napkins: paper, red-checked, grease-
stained, and slice pickles, long and thin.
Then I squeeze lemons into lemonade, stir
in sugar, spike with rum, and add
ice cubes, one by one. I watch them
float.

The prompt was to write a poem that’s a lie, or a poem about a lie, or a poem that tells a lie, and this was a very big challenge for me because I don’t do “cute” poems, my poems are usually muses or images or ideas, flitting things that come to me and then cross lines and somehow can only be expressed in poetry. I write about visions, dreams, odd juxtapositions of things, small objects, feelings, I don’t usually write “clever” or story poems. But that’s what I like about this challenge – it’s taking me out of my comfort zone.

So here is my attempt at a lie.

A Lie
By Rena Rossner

I rose to greet the dawn, some things stay true
the sun that rises, faithfully, the house
that never sleeps, though contents do.
I made a cup of coffee, silently, some
habits never die, and turned on the computer.
I didn’t intend to lie. The bounty of places,
names and dates, the possibilities, an open face,
a door, a chance to travel across lines. Caught
in the net, suspended there, I thought to spin
my tale, become un-trapped. It was a little lie,
my age, a different face, a new name for this thing
I call myself. It grew. Until I did not know who
lived inside my skin, and who had dared
to claim that she was me behind the screen.
I tried to take her down, to lose her cool,
but she had taken on an alias, her presence
known. She took my time, she wanted more,
she had the friends I never had, the views,
a platform on which to stand, and she was
young and she was free, and she was everything
that wasn’t me. I spent more time attempting
to be her, less time professing to be me, and then
one day I didn’t recognize myself, a husk
of flesh and bone, a fly, caught in a tangled web.
A lie.

The first challenge (via the NaPoWriMo blog) is to take the first line of a well-known poem and make it your own.

This is the line I chose: Slowly, silently, now the moon

There is something ethereal about it. And sitting here in my comfy chair, large sliding glass doors to my left that lead out onto the balcony, I can feel the moon’s presence over my shoulder as it slowly, silently takes a peek at what I’m writing.

The original poem is called “Silver” by Walter de la Mare

Silver

By Walter de la Mare

Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in silver feathered sleep
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws, and silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.

And this is my feeble attempt:

Different Flame

By Rena Rossner

Slowly, silently, now the moon
a spot of bother in the night
half past shoulder, quarter-
sized, appears. The balcony
is fraught with hassled light,
worried moths, long-legged things,
attracted by the glow, the hum, the other-
worldly radiance, my hands,
illuminated, insectile, tap
dance across the keys, my lap-
top, shaded in blue, in black on white,
in words fleshed out, fragile as wings,
dead things, insect markings
on the screen, flattened,
here be bug things. Moths
to a different flame.

I will also be participating in the following: THE BIG POETRY GIVEAWAY 2013

I will be giving away two books of poetry.

One by my favorite poet of all time: Pablo Neruda and another by a new, lesser-known poet: Traci Birnhall.

I haven’t decided which Pablo Neruda book yet. I’m still debating…Check back here to find out!

This is the Traci Birnhall book:

Very excited to be doing this (and a little nervous!) I’m not sure if I’ll post the poem that I write each day, because I would like to be able to submit them afterwards, maybe snippets of the poems and something about the process, the ideas I touch upon and where my inspiration comes from.

Please comment below in order to enter the giveway!

What do I mean by “deep content”? Well. There already exists something called “deep content” as it relates to search engines – basically it means, how rich is the content of the text you write on the internet. Quality of content. (Which usually for SEO purposes just means how often and in what variety you use certain keywords on a page.) But I want to take this one step further – as it applies to bloggers in general, and book bloggers in particular.

When I first started this blog I said that it wouldn’t be “just another book blog” that I would blog about books that moved me and that I wanted to talk about – the impressions they had on me rather than critiques. I also said that I always wanted to blog about books that led me to other books. And I also never want to blog about a book if it meant I was just repeating things that others already said. I feel like I need to actually have something NEW to say, something to add, something that makes the post my own, because otherwise, why the heck am I doing this?

And it came to me from lots of surfing around other book blogs (and seeing what I don’t want to do – and frankly, refuse to do, which is just copy and paste and post and repost stuff that’s already been said and said more eloquently and said again – no offense to any book bloggers out there, you’re doing a great job) but that I can only blog about a book if I REALLY REALLY care about it, or if I at least have something original to say.

I think that if blogs are going to survive in today’s day and age of information overload, they need to rise above themselves and provide what I call “deep content.” In Walter’s Beautiful Ruins, deep content is a multi-layered narrative that includes memoir and novel excerpts, play fragments, and intersecting lives. In a blog post, it might be – books that lead you to other books, music and/or movie clips, relevant clickable links, a Q&A with an author, a musing that the book led you to which made you possibly think different about humanity, and something which you, the blogger, can impart to the world. Something that you have to say, above and beyond the book you just read.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot since The Jerusalem International Bookfair, when I heard Naomi Alderman, Maud Newton, Mark Sarvas and Boaz Cohen all speak about their blogging experiences. One thing which both Maud and Mark spoke about was the fact that they won’t blog about a book anymore unless they are really in love with it. And I sort of feel the same way, I’m not going to blog about a book unless I can give it “deep content” – unless it has given me something to say to the world that perhaps nobody else has thought of yet, unless it leads me (and others) to more books. Unless I really have something to say that matters.

Beautiful Ruins didn’t lead me to other books, but it reminded me, deeply, of ones I have already read and loved. Beautiful Ruins led me to:

a. feel completely inadequate as a writer because it was so incredibly written

b. to think about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, and The Donner Party in completely different ways (just to even be able to put them in a sentence together is an accomplishment!)

c. to want to watch a bunch of old movies with starlets who are certainly “Beautiful Ruins” now

But the layering of memoir excerpts and novel excerpts and play fragments – that’s deep content. The layering of time periods and intersecting lives and countries and generations – of pop culture and reality tv with old movies and glamorous movie stars – that’s deep content. The juxtapositions of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, The Lacuna and A Visit From the Goon Squad – that’s deep content.

And so too, I hope, this blog post is too.

What have I accomplished?

1. introduced the concept of “deep content” and what it could mean for you and your blog and the types of blogs you like to read (I think all the best blogs do this, naturally, btw)

2. Led you to other books: Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, The Lacuna and A Visit From the Goon Squad

3. Led you to other bloggers and authors: Maud Newton, Mark Sarvas, Naomi Alderman, Boaz Cohen

4. Explained to you the kind of books and blog posts I love and why I think that blogs are not dead, but the ones that provide deep content are the ones that will endure.

5. Hopefully caused you to think about how you might add deeper content to your own blogging.

6. Made you think about how much you really really NEED to read Beautiful Ruins NOW, with all its content – both beautiful and deep.

The damage: