November Sky Poetry

my review of Voices Through Skin

2012-01-24T18:15:00.000-05:00

ISBN: 978-0-983-29310-1
$14.95
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I first read Voices Through Skin by Theresa Senato Edwards early last year. I'd previously published some poems from this manuscript in Autumn Sky Poetry, so I knew what to expect when I first opened the pages. Imperfection. Difficulty. I said as much in the blurb I wrote for the back cover. What I didn't explain was the sense of vulnerability that permeates so many of the poems. Life is often frightening and difficult. Body and mind are inexplicably linked while navigating tragedy. The book illustrates this duality in its two sections: mind and body.

"The Smell of Alcohol" is a poem in the second part of the book, the 'body' section. It opens with imagery that places the speaker firmly in the hospital: the message tube used by the nurses is akin to "a clear snake ready to attack" and the reader immediately knows this is no comfortable poem. The speaker is afraid. We know this because the poem tells us that the child the speaker cares for is afraid. This fear bleeds into every description, every image the woman has of her daughter in the throes of illness. The poem ends on a deceptively light note. The girl is nearly grown. The mother is pleased her daughter doesn't remember the hospital. The girl places "her long, strong fingers" on the mother's hand in a strange reversal of care-giving. The mother hides the fear that still lurks in her mind, in the remembrance of alcohol. They say smell is the strongest memory trigger.

I came away from this poem remembering that smell from when my own child was in the NICU. It's a strange thing to fear years after it's all over. The imagery of the poem highlights this fear extremely well with its focus on blood and fever and alcohol. The poem is set within the 'body' of the book, but every time I read it I am forced into memory. The main focus of the poem for me is the very end, when the speaker is lost to the memory of her daughter's illness. Body is tied to the mind. It will always be tied thus.

In the first part of the book, the 'mind' section, the poem "Battered" is terribly visceral. The imagery is extremely physical for a poem set in the 'mind.' The speaker's body is vandalized. The speaker exlains this in great detail, using such words as "rammed" and "forced." Strangely, the poem's opening belies the reality: "No man who shared his sex with me / broke me." One would think this is a mantra, proof of un-brokenness, but I found it not so. The poem is almost unbearably tragic. For really, what rape is a sharing? The poem tricks the reader into hope at the beginning only to take it away. The poem ends with this: "I remember being 26." This is a tragedy. The speaker begins with the mind then shows how the brutalization of the body betrays the mind. Memory is all the speaker has left and it torments her. She remembers being whole. Being young in mind, as she no longer is.

The rest of the poems in the book are similarly heartbreaking. Frightening, at least to me. "Your Attempt" in the 'mind' section begins "I'm sorry I wasn't there to stop you." "Her Rituals" details the difficulty of OCD, a common theme in several poems. "Inventing Dead" ends with "Absence is hard, comes without granting. / I make my voiceless appeal."

In the 'body' section the poem "Walls" ends with this idea: "I promised myself I would learn karate, find a new home in the spring." This poem haunts me. One doesn't need promises or karate unless one is a captive. This is an oddly metaphysical idea for a poem that's set in the body. "After Surgery" details the burden of "the throbbing of flesh gone." Of course, it's the mental difficulty of surgery that seems worse in that poem, providing the reader with yet more evidence of the marriage of mind and body.

Some of the poems are written in third person, clearly with a less personal narrator. Some are so achingly personal I felt the furtive embarrassment that comes from reading someone's diary, yet I could not stop reading because as I said in my blurb on the back cover, each poem illustrates the way suffering makes us human. The scars anchor us to the world. I wouldn't accuse this collection of poems as being easy. They're not. They're not comfortable.

They're worth reading anyway.

The scars one carries in life are proof that one has lived and survived. Both the mind and the body carry these scars. The poems document this in a way that the reader can't ignore. Voices Through Skin is a kind of celebration. An inscription. A testament. This collection pays tribute to what so many quiet, courageous people have discovered through suffering and despite inevitable death: life is worth something. Worth everything.

my review of Dark And Like A Web

2012-01-03T11:45:00.000-05:00

Dark And Like A Web by Nic Sebastian

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Last April, as I wrote a set of poems for NaPoWriMo, I also read a set of poems by Nic Sebastian. She called them "prayers and charms" and I eagerly clicked over to the website she'd set up for them each day. I didn't want to miss any. My life was growing more hectic and difficult as the year progressed; her poems calmed me down. They helped me think about the deep spaces of the mind and heart and soul and how my internal landscape informs my dreams and wishes. Back in April 2011 I had no idea how much more insane my year was going to become.

Nic published this collection of NaPo poems later in the year, calling it "Dark And Like A Web" after a quote by Rainer Maria Rilke. She set up a website that offered online access to the poems as well as recordings of her beautiful voice speaking them with depth and emotion. I couldn't help but wonder if she knew how these poems would help me get through my year. Every time some disaster occurred (death, earthquake, hurricaine, blizzard) I invariably picked up her chapbook and read one of the poems. They aren't all peaceful.

In "there are howling wolves" the narrator explains how "their voices tesselate" the night." How "we vibrate." It isn't a comfortable sensation. As the short poem progresses, the reader stumbles over "shattered constellations" and "pieces / of this night." There is no comfort to this poem, except that very discomfort creates a sort of truth that comforted me. At the very end of the poem, the speaker talks of how "we are not coming" and "never were." People don't always figure it out. After an unexpected death in my family this past summer, I felt comforted by this truth. The poem is completely surreal, but the core of it is emotionally real.

Other poems in the chapbook resonate similarly. In August I went on vacation with my family to Washington, DC. While we stood on the National Mall, an earthquake confused our day. People wandered everywhere while random sirens pierced the streets. Two days later we were in Ocean City, Maryland, trying to finish our vacation on the beach. Hurricaine Irene dismantled those plans and we were evacuated along with thousands of others. Cars packed the roads and I read Nic's poem "containing prayer beads and Bangkok."

This poem is set in Bangkok and Seattle but really the cities don't matter. It's the internal landscape of the poem that accompanied me on my journey. I wanted what the speaker of the poem wanted: peace. Love. But, "he tells me to find / my own mantra." The poem speaks a list of exotic places and fills them with gorgeous imagery: "black hair / kicking in the wind" and "gold-shot pain / of sunset." The beauty is always accompanied with an active rushing away from peace. The end of the poem renders the speaker mute. That is what disaster does to a person. Once again, I was strangely comforted. This chapbook was the friend who lived across the country from me. The friend I couldn't talk to very often. The friend who nevertheless understood exactly what I had been feeling in the midst of destruction.

Last year I promised Nic a review of this chapbook. I could go on about the imagery of the poems, their beautiful lines and surreal verbs. How they spoke to me even when I thought I couldn't go on because the earth was covered with snow and a lack of water. Or how the characters in the poems let me dream about places I wanted to go: mountains and rivers and temples. Ultimately, I can't really review this collection of poems, can't say: "oh, I give it three stars or five or seven." Because this particular chapbook of poems carried me like a boat over the drama of my emotions this past year. I can't help but love them. As the opening poem of the book states: "I think you are / a small flame embedded / in silence." Thank you Nic, for giving voice to that flame and letting it light my way for those difficult months. Thank you for that gift.

12 days of Catmas

2011-12-24T12:46:00.000-05:00

12 days of Catmas

On the first day of Christmas

my two cats gave to me

a dingleberry in a pine tree.

On the second day of Christmas

my two cats gave to me

two hair balls,

and a dingleberry in a pine tree.

On the third day of Christmas

my two cats gave to me

three dead mice,

two hair balls,

and a dingleberry in a pine tree.

On the fourth day of Christmas

my two cats gave to me

four pathetic howls,

three dead mice,

two hair balls,

and a dingleberry in a pine tree.

On the fifth day of Christmas

my two cats gave to me

five piles of poo,

four pathetic howls,

three dead mice,

two hair balls,

and a dingleberry in a pine tree.

On the sixth day of Christmas

my two cats gave to me

six stinging scratches,

five piles of poo,

four pathetic howls,

three dead mice,

two hair balls,

and a dingleberry in a pine tree.

On the seventh day of Christmas

my two cats gave to me

seven shredded sparrows,

six stinging scratches,

five piles of poo,

four pathetic howls,

three dead mice,

two hair balls,

and a dingleberry in a pine tree.

On the eighth day of Christmas

my two cats gave to me

eight hissy fits,

seven shredded sparrows,

six stinging scratches,

five piles of poo,

four pathetic howls,

three dead mice,

two hair balls,

and a dingleberry in a pine tree.

On the ninth day of Christmas

my two cats gave to me

nine fishy farts,

eight hissy fits,

seven shredded sparrows,

six stinging scratches,

five piles of poo,

four pathetic howls,

three dead mice,

two hair balls,

and a dingleberry in a pine tree.

On the tenth day of Christmas

my two cats gave to me

ten tons of fur,

nine fishy farts,

eight hissy fits,

seven shredded sparrows,

six stinging scratches,

five piles of poo,

four pathetic howls,

three dead mice,

two hair balls,

and a dingleberry in a pine tree.

On the eleventh day of Christmas

my two cats gave to me

eleven spitting kittens,

ten tons of fur,

nine fishy farts,

eight hissy fits,

seven shredded sparrows,

six stinging scratches,

five piles of poo,

four pathetic howls,

three dead mice,

two hair balls,

and a dingleberry in a pine tree.

On the twelfth day of Christmas

my two cats gave to me

twelve stolen salmon,

eleven spitting kittens,

ten tons of fur,

nine fishy farts,

eight hissy fits,

seven shredded sparrows,

six stinging scratches,

five piles of poo,

four pathetic howls,

three dead mice,

two hair balls,

and a dingleberry in a pine tree.

Pushcart Nomination for Coventina

2011-12-13T19:47:00.005-05:00

My poem Coventina has been nominated for a Pushcart. I'm delighted. Thrilled. And really, really late posting about it. I received the email from O.P.W. Fredericks, the editor of The Lives You Touch Publications nine days ago. This particular poem is very near and dear to my heart and I'm so happy people are enjoying it.

Why didn't I post about it sooner? I've been a little busy. In the last few weeks, I've battled a leaky roof, dance rehearsals, a recital squeezed into the smallest stage I've ever seen, sick kids, field trips, shopping, xmas lights and tree decorating, huge dead tree removal, moving a kid to a new room, moving furniture to another room, parties, cooking, painting various parts of the house, cleaning, and etc. I could go on ad nauseum about the craziness that is my life this year but it's actually kind of unbelievable. I think it will all calm down by January 17, 2012. That's going to be the awesomest Tuesday EVER.

Knight in Black Leather by Gail Dayton

2011-11-09T16:21:00.000-05:00

Romance novels are awesome. Read the following two sentences and tell me you're not jealous you didn't write them:

"The woman didn't belong. She was as out of place in the dark winter streets of this part of Pittsburgh as a poodle in a jungle."

Those gorgeous sentences are from a new book just out now on Kindle by Gail Dayton: Knight in Black Leather. Notice how the entire novel begins with a negative. "I thought we weren't supposed to do that?" all the writing students will be thinking. Yeah, no. Please ignore that old high school English teacher advice. The second sentence gives us a little more information: the speaker is watching a woman, not with a vaguely disapproving attitude, but with curiosity. Just as the reader begins to think, "Hmm, interesting," Dayton cuts loose with one of the most creative metaphors I've ever read. IN THE SECOND SENTENCE OF THE BOOK. And we've got location, time of day, and the season to boot. At first, I was jealous. I want to write like that. I REALLY want to write like that. Happily, my jealousy didn't last long, mostly because those sentences are so intriguing that I couldn't stop reading long enough to savor my envy. It faded away as quickly as an ice cube taped to a poodle's butt.

When reading a romance novel, one jumps into the thing with a single, solid certainty: the book will always have a happy ending. This book doesn't disappoint with that, of course, but the journey toward that ending is so freaking awesome that I stopped thinking about it halfway through the first chapter. Another staple of the romance genre is the role of hero and heroine. My biggest pet peeve with romances is when these characters are stupid and fight all through the book about dumb things. A great many writers do this to create tension but it's really just lazy writing, in my opinion. This novel does not fall prey to that problem. Eli, the hero, is one of the most likable characters I've read. He always keeps his promises. The heroine, Marilyn, is also incredibly decent. Neither of them fight over stupid things. Instead of fake tension created by fake problems, every single one of the plot points in this book arises out of who these two people are, how they got to be where they are in their lives, and how those experiences (both painful and joyful) cause them to react to each other in the midst of the larger plot. The sheer brilliance of the writing of these two characters makes me utterly grateful that Gail Dayton is alive and can type and apparently plans to continue for the forceable future at those tasks.

Eli and Marilyn felt real to me as I read their story. Neither was perfect yet neither was so completely a caricature of brokenness that I grew exasperated. I adored the way they met and how they grew to know each other. I would've been perfectly content reading about their love story, except the book managed to introduce supporting characters that were just as real as Eli and Marilyn. Marilyn's family, and the characters close to Eli were just as well put together. And then, as I settled into the book, thinking "oh, I know where this is going," the plot intensified. Things happened that I just did NOT expect. And the characters STILL didn't panic and do dumb things that made no sense. I don't want to give anything away, so I've left the particulars rather vague in this review. Suffice to say, I laughed out loud during the first chapter. I sighed in happiness by the seventh and bit my lip in dismay by the twenty-third (I also might have cried a little, but I refuse to get into that).

On Twitter, Ms. Dayton said both her agent and her editors loved the novel, but that it "didn't quite fit anywhere." This astonishes me, especially now that I've finished reading it. Truly, if a well-published author can't get a book this phenomenal published, I don't know what that says about the state of the book industry. Bad things, I suppose. The novel, "Knight in Black Leather," is now at the top of my list of books I adore and will read again over and over. Thank you Ms. Dayton for writing this book. Thank you. I loved it.

(Disclaimer: I do not personally know Gail Dayton. I've never met her. And yes, I think all of her books are awesome. My personal favorites are "The Compass Rose," "The Barbed Rose," "The Eternal Rose," "New Blood," and "Heart's Blood.")

Autumn Sky Poetry 23, the Art issue, now live

2011-11-06T20:47:00.000-05:00

Greetings!

The twenty-third issue of Autumn Sky Poetry, the Art issue, is now online.

Read poems and enjoy art by Mary Alexandra Agner & Julia Tenney, Jesse Anger & Adamo Sacchetti, Catherine Chandler, Noelle Leslie dela Cruz, Luke Evans, Jen Karetnick & Jaime Ferreyros, Jean L. Kreiling, Mary Meriam, Richard Meyer, John Savoie & Shannon E. Thomas, Joannie Stangeland, and Laura Elizabeth Woollett.

With this issue, Autumn Sky Poetry is going on an indefinite hiatus. I’m grateful, as always, that so many talented artists and poets have graciously allowed me to publish their work over these past six years. Thank you for making Autumn Sky Poetry one of the more enduring poetic experiences of my writing life.

—It's all about the poetry.

Sincerely,

Christine Klocek-Lim, Editor

NaNoWriMo has begun

2011-11-03T20:34:00.002-04:00

And once again I'm doing the crazy thing: trying to write a 50,000 word novel in one month. *gulp*

Editor's Choice: The Voice of Christine Klocek-Lim

2011-10-07T09:28:00.001-04:00

I'm happy to say that three poems of mine (Coventina, Jeremiel, and Phoenix) have been selected as the Editor's Choice in the September 2011 issue of Touch: The Journal of Healing. I am so very honored and delighted to have been selected, especially because this issue is dedicated to my friend Larina's son. And too, I was incredibly moved by the way in which the editor of the journal, O.P.W. Fredericks, described my work. Here is an excerpt:

"What I appreciate most about Christine's poetry is the eloquence with which she conveys the moments about which she writes. The movement of her poetry from moment to moment seems effortless; her imagery is clear and concise; her adherence to form, technique, and poetic diction is sound; her grounding in place is solid; and there is an immediacy to Christine’s poetry that is often realized in the first line. The subjects in her work are always treated with sensitivity and honesty, and there is a lilting quality to her words even when they describe turmoil and heartache."

Thank you Touch: The Journal of Healing. Thank you O.P.W and Daniel, editors extraordinaire.

It's September

2011-09-05T11:25:00.001-04:00

but the summer of hell continues. A dear friend of mine lost his mother yesterday. That makes three deaths this summer for people close to me. I'm not really feeling the urge to write or blog or whatever. Two more people close to me are ill. And my house is possessed by demons if the way pieces of it (including things inside) keep breaking is any indication.

With that, I leave you with a poem by Coleridge that feels strangely appropriate, via Poets.org:

Work Without Hope

Coleridge is the author of the first poem I ever memorized so I have a special fondness for his work. If only I could be reciting Kubla Khan and reveling in that pleasure dome, but alas, I think that might actually require psychotropic drugs, of which I have none. I have only my tea and the view from my office window. Yesterday a hummingbird dive bombed a monarch butterfly. It was awesome. I also have my kids who continue to amuse me. Today my 14 year old emailed me this video: Yeah, toast (warning: video game violence). So funny!

When all else fails —> dance

2011-08-05T09:53:00.002-04:00

I'm going out dancing tonight and we will be practicing our Viennese waltz.

Viennese Waltz — natural turn

It’s like flying
or falling.
Each step a revolution.
The planet tilted
too much.
Sunlight far off.
Clouds strangely graceful
even as the storm
arrives.
She says, lean back further.
Enough to contain
the rotation.

The ballroom is wide
as a plain. I’m a sapling
and he is the wind.
Sometimes I touch the floor,
toes starved for solid ground.
Sometimes I leap.
Every other step a lock
as though leaves
can be caged.

He is vertigo.
The darkened tornado
peeling my meadow.
The sky falters but I hang on,
fingers lodged in his bones.
I am a white birch.
I am a falling
branch.

I am a spinning
leaf, spiked
with rain.

Written this past April 2011 during NaPoWriMo, this poem is part of a manuscript of ballroom poems, though one could argue they're also love poems. Yes, I'm a sentimentalist.

photo credit: Vladimir Pervuninsky, "The Viennese Waltz."

Edited to remove embarrassing public whining. You see, it all started with—. . . . . you know what? Never mind.
.

Can rage cause a crack in one's floor? Yes. Yes it can.

2011-08-04T15:37:00.001-04:00

Warning: this post has nothing to do with poetry and everything to do with real life.

Yesterday my son and I went to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) (aka: the seventh circle of hell) to get my son a learner's permit (driving). It took two hours to get there because of construction traffic. Then we waited in line for two and a half hours. A person who smelled like smoked salami sat next to me for most of this time. When we finally got to the counter, Jeremy easily passed the test, BUT:

They said his birth certificate isn't valid, even though I used it to get him an official state photo id last year with it. Even though he got a passport with it years ago. Even though I registered him for school with it. Even though it has a raised seal and all the pertinent information and was issued to me by the state of NJ.

Naturally, I argued. Demanded to see a supervisor. Three DMV workers insisted the certificate was wrong. Fine.

NJ (his birth state) requires a valid state photo id (or driver's license) to get a valid birth certificate. Theoretically, my son could get his valid birth certificate with his existing photo id (obtained with the non-valid birth certificate), but he can't get a driver's permit.

*bangs head on wall*

To get a valid birth certificate online, one must upload identity documents. The system won't upload even though I already paid. The system has no phone number so I can call a human. I sent complaint via email. No answer.

To get a valid birth certificate via writing, it will take 10 WEEKS. Yes, weeks.

*bangs head on wall harder*

We have only one option left: drive to Trenton, NJ to get it in person. I know that probably won't go well. We'll hit more construction. When we get there they will insist that I, his mother, present a valid birth certificate as proof of identity. That certificate will be invalid (I'd bet money on this).

We have 30 days before he has to retake the learner's permit test. And before you ask the obvious, I already did: we can't use his passport because it's too old.

*bangs head on marble floor*

*floor cracks*

Autumn Sky Poetry 22 now online!

2011-07-30T13:10:00.000-04:00

Greetings!

The twenty-second issue of Autumn Sky Poetry is now online.

Read poems by Hala N. Alyan, Zeina Hashem Beck, Whitney Egstad, Joseph Harker, David Hubbard, Clyde Kessler, Bob McHeffey, Winnona Elson Pasquini, Kathleen T. Smith, and Kelley White.

—It's all about the poetry.

Sincerely,

Christine Klocek-Lim, Editor

~~~

Call for Submissions: Every October, Autumn Sky Poetry publishes artwork as well as poems: visual, video, etc. I'm looking for poems with corresponding artwork, or ekphrastic poems. Please read the Submission Guidelines for details and feel free to peruse last year's Art issue, Number 19, for examples.

~~~

Museum of Fine Arts—oh the irony

2011-07-26T10:27:00.001-04:00

So far, this summer has been rather difficult. I won't go into details but suffice to say that real life growled and smacked me upside the head. Yeah, I'm not starving, my kids are fine, et cetera, et cetera but still, it's sucked. Anyway, I keep reading Auden's poem, Musée des Beaux Arts, because it seems strangely appropriate given my personal life, the life of most of my friends, and the larger world's recent horrors. Suffering is as transitory as joy. Or perhaps joy is as transitory as suffering. And there will always be someone who is unaffected or who doesn't particularly care what is happening because everything is relative.

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

I won't argue that I find this comforting, because I don't. Rather, I think I like the poem because it's so beautifully constructed. Because it says something truthful. Because that painting is incredibly amusing to me. I mean, no one is paying any attention to Icarus. Stupid kid gives the sun the finger and then crashes into the sea while "the torturer's horse / Scratches its innocent behind on a tree."

Hilarious. The horse is always innocent. Life is a museum of fine things, is it not?

Clearly I have a twisted sense of humor.

Coventina

2011-06-24T18:30:00.003-04:00

My dear friend Larina lost her son this past weekend. I am heartbroken for her. He was only eleven years old and though he had cerebral palsy, his passing was unexpected. Several years ago I wrote a poem for her based on a newspaper article written about her and her son. I'm pasting it below in honor of his memory.

Coventina

— river goddess, known for healing

That morning he dreamed of dolphins. Deep waves. Smooth hide and clicks against his body. The sea moved his feet as if he could walk on water and he woke sweating, afraid of the thunder outside. Afraid of the rain, but the dream remained, too, even as his mother strapped him in his wheelchair. For once, the squeak of its joints didn’t upset him. Because this was his first time at the pool, he tried not to show how much he wanted it but her face told him she knew. She knew he wanted to swim, even if his limbs disobeyed his mind. Even if that black feeling came back. And the water was warm. Buoyant. They’d painted dolphins and fish on the tile so he swallowed the fear down, almost choking. Closed his eyes. He imagined the pool was a river, an ocean. The slap of hands splashing became waves and he almost smiled as the lights flickered, buzzing electricity. When they blinked out and emergency lamps clicked on, he discovered the mural on the ceiling: a woman with butterfly wings, black hair flowing past her cattail dress. Coins strewn around her feet. Shimmering green light everywhere. He wished he had a dime to toss, but then his mother lifted him up and let go and for the first time in his life he moved by himself. He laughed, something inside breaking open like a tsunami, like an impossible dream, and then he saw his mother smile as tears slipped down her face like rain.

— for Larina and her son Zack

.

Things that frighten me

2011-06-10T10:37:00.000-04:00

You would think I'd say zombies or perhaps my house burning down. Fear of being poor. Fear of tornados. Yeah, no. None of those things. I'm not even really that frightened of breaking my ankle again, though it would suck. Honestly, there are only a few things that really make my heart race: death (mine or my family's), illness (fatal and unpleasant, mine or my family's), and breaking one of my fingers or otherwise permanently damaging my hand.

I've lived through death (not my own, obviously) and illness and they are both hideous and unpleasant. I'd like to not do it again but I guess I'll have no choice at some point. Shit happens.

However, I have never injured my hands. I've strained a muscle or two and had my wrist ache from too much mousing (computer mousing, that is), but I've never broken a finger. And I bet that would be unbelievably HORRIBLE. Why? Because I couldn't type. Omigosh I can't even think about it without feeling hysterical. People think of musicians and surgeons and their hands. They say: oh that would be tragic, if something happened to her hands. Why, why don't they ever mention writers?

I've thought about it. Even if I never truly sell a lot of books (or even sell any, which could definitely happen), the act of writing sustains me. I read an essay today about what success means for a poet (at Jeannine Hall Gailey's blog) and her conclusion was that the writing itself was enough. I agree. (I strive to agree with that incredibly heathy attitude while I continue to weep and moan over the rejections that fly into my inbox.) Writing itself is a wonderful act of creation. Of defiance. Of hey, this is what I have to say and if you don't like it, too bad rebellion against our culture and society and art and stagnancy and sometimes myself. Except, how the hell would I do that if something happened to my hands?

I know/have known two writers who lost the use of their hands through illness. One managed by typing with a pencil in her mouth. The other, well I don't actually know how he gets by, but he continues to write amazing poetry. I know it's not impossible. Still. I imagine it must be like that nightmare where your body is frozen and you can't get up the hill. Words would back up inside my head like a truly epic sentence-traffic jam. And how would I read? How to hold a book? Even now my heart rate speeds up at the idea. . .

deep breath

deep breath

deep breath

.

Page two, page two, oh I love you so

2011-05-17T13:24:00.000-04:00

Earlier this month I wrote about trying to get one of my unpublished manuscripts out in the world. One agent gave me a nibble, but I must have jerked on the line too hard: she swam away. I am still hopeful because clearly, I'm still on page one of my novel writing career. Despite years of scribbling, page one is difficult to move past. Page two weighs about ten thousand pounds and I keep losing my grip, my hands are sweaty and weak. . . (and I am mixing my metaphors, whatever, sue me).

I want to move on to page two. I'm nearly desperate to move on to that golden, shining page, but really, what does it matter? I'm not going to stop writing. I could make it to age 99 and still have my sci-fi novels unpublished and I'll be tapping away at my keyboard. Or maybe I'll just be thinking the words directly into my computer, courtesy of the neuro-implant we're all going to have eventually that connects us to the digital world forever, at all times.

Ahem.

Okay, that's one of my ideas for yet another novel. I seem to be overflowing with ideas these days, which is a welcome change from my twenties where I had nothing, NOTHING in my head except a vain hope for a full night's sleep.

And with that, I'll leave you with page two of my unpublished, in dire need of an agent, sci-fi novel, The Quantum Archives. (Psst, Brigita? I posted this for you.)

———

Quantum imager on display through December

By Thomas Miles, Associated Planet Press Writer

September 8, 2099 4:35 PM EDT

NEW YORK (APP) — Scientist Sarah Metis invented the quantum neuro-imager with the help of her sister, Eve Metis, a neuro-linguist. Though the imager only worked for a short time, the experiments and data from the recorded vocal fragments, catalogued by Eve, changed the face of human society, both religious and scientific. Advances in the fields of neuroscience, quantum physics, psychology, and many others were made possible, though the rise of the Post-Charasmatic religious group, Daestar, was also spurred by the invention of the imager. Nonetheless, most people agree that the benefits to humanity outweigh the negatives. Advances made in the medical field were especially welcome as research into the brain and genetics became more accurate. Most people alive today enjoy an extended life expectancy that would not have been possible without the new imaging technology invented by scientists studying Sarah Metis’s quantum imager.

The device, catalogued archives, and media of the Metis sisters and their work are on display through December 2099 in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Sarah Metis’ death. Because security is heightened for the duration of the exhibit, all visitors must submit to a search before entering. All visitors are accompanied by a guide and no one will be allowed to stay longer than the one-hour limit. No unauthorized representatives of Daestar will be admitted. For further information, please visit the Newton Society Museum’s website.

How to write through extreme physical discomfort

2011-05-13T16:56:00.000-04:00

Namely: a really bad itch.

Yeah, sure, I guess a lack of sleep (two hours total last night, suck on that you wimpy full-night's sleep people, I am awesome) could also qualify as extreme discomfort, but it's really more of a drunken buzzy edge-of-hallucination feeling than discomfort. I suppose the weird muscle spasms at 3 am could qualify, but still, no. Or the hot flashes (it's not menopause, trust me), but also no. It's really the itch that is the hardest thing to ignore.

Why are you so itchy, you ask? TMI ahead: Monday I had a dermatologist cut off a funny-looking mole (not cancer, the biopsy was benign). The mole was on my cleavage. So, yeah, I was a bit sad to see it disappear. No more Marilyn Monroe flash of sexiness to make me feel cool anymore, but really, it wasn't a big deal. Until I realized I was allergic to EVERYTHING the doctor put on the wound.

Allergic to Doctor's bandaid? Check. Allergic to four other types of bandage/surgical tape/adhesive/ointment/water/air/just-looking-at-the-damn-thing? Check. Red marks on my skin where all the various adhesives have raised patterns of itchy hellishness? Check. Why don't I just leave it exposed, you wonder? Well, the skin is missing. It'll take at least ten days, I think, for it to be safe from infection.

So the question remains, how does one write through such extreme physical discomfort? What will help?

---> Vodka.

Or so I thought.

I tried pouring it on the wound, but that SURE DIDN'T HELP AT ALL. No siree. Then I drank a little with my Benadryl. That was a fun couple hours right there but it didn't really help with the writing.

So I bought myself a ginormous, chocolate chip, chocolate frosted, chocolate muffin and perched it on my desk. That will be dinner. I'm not allowed to eat it until I write my word count quota for the day.

The fumes of sweet yummy goodness are extremely discomfiting.

I have named my muffin Incentive.

(Yeah, yeah, I can hear you laughing at the obscene pun all the way in PA. Whatevs)

Rejection, rejection, wherefore art thou?

2011-05-04T10:25:00.001-04:00

Oh yeah. You're in my inbox, therefore my words exist.

I've been sending out queries for one of my novels, a literary sci-fi titled The Quantum Archives. I've revised it four times, but it could probably stand some more attention. Even so, the other day I received a nibble from an agent (she wanted more pages), then she rejected the manuscript.

The weirdest thing about being a writer? You are totally convinced people want to read your words. I mean, sure, there's the niggling doubt, the worry that your writing sucks coupled with a lot of frantic revision, but ultimately, to be a writer you have to be completely certain that what you're writing is something other people will want to read. It's a weird contradiction—all that insecurity mixed up with confidence. And it seems like it would be easy to freak out and give up; I'm a serious pessimist, after all, but when it really comes down to it, I can't give up. I love writing too much. The work itself is a joy and that's enough to keep me writing, convinced that somehow, someday, someone else will read the words I type and enjoy them.

The Quantum Archives made it to the semi-finals in the Black Lawrence Press Black River Chapbook Competition. I've since rewritten it as a novel and am still hopeful it will find its way to readers someday. Here's a peek at the first page:

—

Eulogy

Sarah, my sister, I know everything. You created that silver machine to illuminate the impenetrable, and as usual, you are gone ahead of me. I kept it, your diadem, its stiff wires and electrodes, the strange toggle you claimed was the key to omniscience. I hated it. One flick and the thing hummed, your eyes closing as bliss walked into your face, as you spoke in tongues, fragments of the past skinned open for you like the plums mother used to peel so carefully. And now you are gone to dust.

When the diadem was announced, everyone was delighted, not knowing how it bound you as if you were a slave, not a queen. Not a scientist. We should not have fooled with time. I should not have helped you build it but I never thought it would work. I knew better. You could do anything, stroll inside the brains of the dead, fold space until even Einstein grew confused. You claimed it would tell you how to fix the world, not realizing that the Earth already had become another place entirely and it was too late for repair. By then, I was too late to save you. That damn thing burned into your skull so badly I had to peel your skin away to get it off.

My dear Sarah, I am no longer angry, but I miss you. I grieve your passing. I am altogether bereaved and I wonder if you saw this future. I hope not. I have disabled the diadem, hidden its crystal. No one will know. Never again will a woman peer into her own past. We are safe, though I wish you had explained the euphoria you felt when you recorded. I could have fixed it, perhaps. I could have done more if I knew that was the problem.

I wish you had told me you were so sad.

—from the private diary of Eve Metis, sister of Sarah Metis, entry dated December 12, 2049.

—

Like what you see? If so, let me know and maybe I'll post the second page too. . .

My winner for The Big Poetry Giveaway is . . .

2011-05-01T15:16:00.000-04:00

Gale! I used a random number generator to pick the winner and counted down the comments on my blog. Thanks to everyone who participated in The Big Poetry Giveaway 2011!

E-journal? E-zine? Why do we have to preface everything online with a big E?

2011-04-26T17:26:00.000-04:00

E

I keep seeing people posting online/tweeting/facebooking about great new e-journals. This reminds me that I edit an e-journal, though I've never once called it that. I used to call it an online journal but then I decided it was silly to make that distinction and stopped. Is making sure everyone knows it's an e-journal so very important? And how does this even signify when so many print journals have e-issues? Or e-samples? Or e-mail? Oh wait, you don't have to say e DASH mail anymore. The AP Stylebook finally lost the hyphen. Does that make e-journal an ejournal now?

The distinction between an e-journal and a plain old paper journal is, I believe, one of status. Everything online is terribly gauche and new, despite the decades-long existence of the internet. Print journals (I'm looking at you Poetry and The New Yorker) have a sort of embedded upper-class sheen that e-journals do not. This sheen of awesomeness carries over to everything print in the literary world, so that even a baby paper journal, fresh off its maker's homemade press and with a distribution of oh, say ten, has a sense of literary hauteur attached to it that makes it better than an e-journal.

To this I say ptew! I spit on you, paper journal fanatics! Pjournals (hmm, that's kinda interesting, onomatopoeiacally-speaking) are no more or less well-constructed than e-journals in this era of web-literacy. Attaching ridiculous distinctions to web-only journals is one of the things that continues to divide poets. We've got online poets and academic poets. Old poets and young poets. New formalists and lang-po practitioners. It's like an episode of celebrity death match! Watch the dude who only uses his 1953 typewriter go at it against the smart phone guru! Bah.

All of these conflicts are a result of ego. Poets practice an obscure art which makes little to no money. The only way to keep score is to win contests and get published. Generally speaking, getting published in print leads to tenure. Getting published online leads to more readers. The decision between which venue to pursue is agonizing for all of us. Don't you hate trying to decide where to send your poems? I know I do. The cure? Let's all drop our Ps and Es and focus on quality publications rather than paper or pixels. Submit to both, then tell everyone about that great new journal you love without adding extraneous letters to a poor, defenseless word. After all, poetry is all about paring down the excess verbiage, right?

First poem tossed in the shark pool

2011-04-25T18:35:00.004-04:00

(aka first poem posted on an online workshop)

I know exactly why I posted my poem to the No Holds Barred workshop on CompuServe on Friday, April 18, 1997: ego. I'd written a sestina and thought it was the best thing ever. I wanted someone to tell me how amazing it was. Isn't that why all beginners post to online workshops? You bet. The very first line of the very first critique I ever received is this:

"When I read your poem, my first response was to laugh."

I know you're thinking: hey, it's a comedic poem! Um, no. Hate to break it to you, but this poem was/is a melodramatic pile of adolescent angst. Sadly, I wasn't anywhere near adolescence when I posted it, though I admit I was 22 when I wrote it (which is near enough to puberty to merit a bit of mercy, right?). It contains metaphor and personification. It follows the sestina form nicely. It uses concrete imagery and active verbs: "Cars like intermittent wipers. . ." and "I punch the glass. . ." Unfortunately, all these poetic devices are at the mercy of a poem which says nothing except: I exist and it kinda sucks. It's just like all those other badly written poems floating around in the universe, pining for an eraser.

My response to that first sentence of critique? Devastation. Possibly a bit of anger. But what about the rest of the critique? you ask. Here is the second sentence of it: "I expect that you didn't intend it to elicit this response, but the piece comes across to me as almost a parody of over-imaged poetic angst." Oh snap! I think I might have cried, but I can't remember now. The reader continued with some excellent details about why he found the poem impossible: "You start with the sound being a wild animal and by the third stanza, the animal is you and it is in agony for some completely unexplained reason."

I didn't see his point at the time. I was using creative license to make comparisons, all of which failed (hindsight! my old friend!). However, the point is that I had NO IDEA what the hell just happened. I posted my darling and it came back to me eviscerated. I'd never participated online before. I read the rules of the workshop just enough to know where to post without completely falling all over my virtual self in stupidity. Little did I know that here, online, people were going to read the poem and actually tell me the truth. See, I'd gone to college for creative writing. Some of the workshops there were brutal, but it was my fellow students who were red-lining everything, not my professors. Since what they'd written was also barely comprehensible drivel, I was confident in my contempt for their opinions. In this online workshop, however, I had no idea who this person was or what he'd written. How could I believe what he had to say was valid?

By noon I'd formulated a response. It contained a great many exclamations points, question marks, and I'm sure it would've had a ton of smilies if they'd existed back then in animated form (I have the universe to thank for sparing me that humiliation). To my credit, I was polite and answered some of his points with the barest inkling of reason since even then I knew that a reader, any reader, had to be able to at least comprehend my work once I released it into the pool. I revised a bit. I found it hilarious that this person didn't even realize he was critiquing a sestina. My favorite part, the one which makes me writhe in embarrassment for my youthful self, is where I explain thus: "I actually wanted the reader to guess at this to provide an emotional atmosphere."

His response?

"If, in the main character's point of view, anything and everything is an animal, then I would regard the main character as psychotic and I usually find psychotic statements confusing. The poem is, to me, so highy [sic] internalized that it fails to communicate either a mood or a point of understanding to the reader."

Did I find this helpful at the time? NO. Of course not. I was so traumatized by his use of the word "psychotic" in reference to my poem that I ignored everything else he said. Unfortunately, every word of his second sentence about the poem being highly internalized was an extremely useful and valid critique. There is a bit more, but the result is that he basically wiped his hands of me and my poem due to my complete and utter incomprehension of the situation. After that, three moderators posted apologies for him. Another person posted an excellent critique of my poem, all of which I ignored.

Fourteen years later I find myself in charge of an online workshop: Poets.org's discussion forums. I've been at the job off and on since 2005 (several years hiatus in-between). I am the shark. I eat poems for breakfast. Now, you may be wondering: what is the point of this long, self-absorbed post already? And why the hell did she save her very first critique online? That's kind of weird. My answer: I deserve to feel that sense of horrible dismay now and then because it's good for me. It reminds me of what it felt like before I knew how to write a poem. Before I'd mutated into one of the evil sharks who munch on passive verbs. Because now people are tossing their poems into the pool and I would like to remember that while I can provide good, solid critique, there's no need to eviscerate the poem while I do it.

I'll be the first to admit, sometimes I fail at this. Just the other day I posted a somewhat sharp critique of a poem because after years of reading the same cliches over and over again, we who critique poetry grow bored and find ourselves fiddling with language just to keep ourselves awake. Snark is a great, freaking blast to write. So much fun can be had at the mercy of some poor, unsuspecting novice. When this happens and when I recognize it in myself, I pull out that first critique of mine and force myself to read it. I remember the sting. And instead of writing snarky criticism that delights in itself (oh, ego again!) I try to be merely truthful instead. And then I go write a poem. Maybe sometime soon I'll post it and see what happens.

Autumn Sky Poetry 21 now live!

2011-04-22T10:47:00.000-04:00

Greetings!

The twenty-first issue of Autumn Sky Poetry is now online.

Read poems by Amy Billone, Mary Campbell, Alexandra Cannon, Carolyn Martin, Wyk McGowan, JB Mulligan, David Oestreich, James Owens, Simon Perchik, and Gail White.

—It's all about the poetry.

Sincerely,
Christine Klocek-Lim, Editor

My NaPoWriMo love affair

2011-04-14T15:47:00.000-04:00

NaPoWriMo, forgive me. I love you deeply, madly, but I wish you were yesterday. I dream of sci-fi novels while you twist your literary lines around my fingers, jealous and cold. Your spare imagery no longer makes me shiver with anticipation. Instead, I have been sneaking sentences of prose: outlines, plots, characters trapped on alien planets. I know you suspect. I've been making excuses: oh, just another minute on Twitter. Five more on Facebook. Its just—your reckless alliteration has grown wearisome. Your line-breaks are sharp as thorns.

One spring, when I was young, for a whole month I snuck a teaspoonful of sugar after school while my mom was at work. The first two or three days: oh, such sweetness! My fifth grade fingers tingled with anticipation each time I snuck into the kitchen, certain I would be caught but so desperate for that sugary goodness I couldn't stop. I loved biting at the stuff. Once I even put some in water and drank it like candy, but strangely, by day fourteen, the granules stuck in my throat. I tried sprinkling it on toast. On grapefruit. It just wasn't the same. NaPoWriMo, you are sugar stuck in my mouth, bittersweet. Addictive. Can I handle sixteen more days of you?

I want to break your heart.

Favorite Poetry Books

2011-04-11T11:57:00.001-04:00

I've been reading the lovely poetry book reviews posted this National Poetry Month by Dave Bonta and Nic Sebastian. It's a great idea, and one I'd love to do myself, but if I add another thing to my plate I think my head will explode. However, I can at least compile a list of my favorite poetry books of all time, right? Here they are:

The Heath Guide to Poetry. This was the book used by my high school English teacher and the one that first seduced me into learning more about writing poetry rather than just dabbling with my emo teenage journal. This is where I discovered Williams, Roethke, Bishop, Thomas, Cummings, Stafford, Sexton, etc.

The Poetry Home Repair Manual by Ted Kooser. This is the book that taught me about poetry's emotional footprint. It's much more an explanation of how poems can move the reader than anything technical, but I think it's one of the most influential books I've read when it comes to my own theory of poetics. I'm always trying to move the reader emotionally in some way thanks to this book.

In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet's Portable Workshop by Steve Kowit. This book is a natural extension of Kooser's. I read it right after and it was perfect because of the way it talks about all forms of poetry (free verse, formal, etc.). Sure, I knew a lot about poetry and forms before, but this book is so well-organized that I still refer to it when I have a quick question. The poems used as examples are a special bonus for any reader of this book. Most of them are brilliant.

A Poet's Guide to Poetry by Mary Kinzie. Where the previous two books are easy and enjoyable reads, this book is a complicated challenge. Nevertheless, I learned more about the nitty gritty theory of poetry from this book than I ever intended. It took me two years, but I read the entire thing and I'm glad I did. Some of it is arcane and impossible to parse, but the encyclopedic detail is incredibly useful.

Refusing Heaven by Jack Gilbert. The poems in this book are deceptively simple: great imagery, brief narratives. When I found myself reading the poems several times, I discovered a world of emotion and philosophical richness. Gorgeous work.

talking in the dark by Billy Merrell. I didn't think you could write a memoir with poetry, but this book proved me wrong. The poems are sometimes gritty, sometimes beautiful (sometimes both), but all of them are surprisingly truthful. I don't know if I could write about my life so honestly.

The Country Between Us by Carolyn Forche. This is the book that convinced me poetry could be gorgeous and horrifying at the same time. I'm still in awe of this work.

Becoming Light by Erica Jong. This book was my first experience reading poetry that made me happy to be female. It's a celebration of womanhood. My particular favorite is "For My Sister, Against Narrowness."

What are your favorites? I could use a good summer wish list.

Guest Poet at Poets.org's discussion forums: Oliver de la Paz

2011-04-05T09:23:00.000-04:00

As most of you know by know, I've returned to Poets.org's discussion forums as Site Admin after a long hiatus. I'm very excited to be back and pleased to report that the NaPoWriMo section is hopping with fresh poems and new members.

For your poetic pleasure, we also have Oliver de la Paz as the Guest Poet this month. You can ask him questions! He's a really nice guy! Seriously, head on over and see for yourself. There are some poems of his there (including my favorite "Wolf Boy") and he's written a few words about poetics as well as some advice for beginners.

——> Oliver de la Paz - Guest Poet for April 2011

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It's been ten years or so

2011-04-04T10:39:00.003-04:00

since I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia (fms). What have I learned?

1. You aren't dying. You just wish you were, drat it.

2. It's possible to go five days without sleep before you start hallucinating. The hallucinations are usually of the hideous variety (melting walls, etc.) not fun ones (everything is candy). If you want fun hallucinations, take a few benadryl. With vodka.

3. You are allergic to everything, including, sometimes, yourself. However, if your throat closes up, don't panic. You don't actually need air for at least a minute and the spasms usually pass before that happens. However, if you have one of these attacks in front of your husband, get up and run from the room or he will call 911. The EMTs are never as cute in real life as they are on tv.

4. No one remembers you have fms. Probably because the whole scar tissue, oozing lesions, crippled look is so 1008.

5. You will never be on time because just when you thought you were ready, you have to run to the bathroom. Because your hair hurts and you need to try a different barrette. Be prepared to explain over and over that you can't get there by 7 am. You will NEVER get there at 7 am. Since the person you are meeting will never remember that fact, be prepared to lie after you remind them the third or fourth time or they will think you are a whining loser. You have to come up with some whoppers: a tree fell on your house, you were struck by lightning, an alien stole your shoes, etc. The crazier the lies, the more amusement potential for you which will give you a reason to get out of bed.

6. Never talk about fms. Strangely, people think your illness is all in your head. Oh wait, it is!!! Central Nervous System disorder! W00t!

7. Everyone else is just as sick/miserable as you are. Or more so. Yeah, that means if you wake up and suddenly realize that Oh, today I can't put on any rings because of water retention, don't mention it. Because your neighbor couldn't even squeeze on a pair of pants and you really didn't need to see that just so you could bitch about your puffy fingers. If your feet hurt, theirs hurt worse, probably because of a dog bite. Or cancer. If your skin feels like it's on fire they will tell you all about how their last sunburn was insane. Insane! Those two weeks in Daytona Beach were torture! Seriously, just Keep Your Mouth Shut. No one needs to know that you fell down when you got out of bed today.

8. Keep going. There is really no point to staying in bed because you will be neither sleeping nor having sex there anytime soon. Because of the nausea. It's always better to drag one's doughy ass out of bed and start the day. If you stay in bed you will feel worse in two hours than you thought possible. It's like having the flu and morning sickness! At the same time! Thankfully, fms does not result in infants (but sex might so it's just as well the fms prevents that).

9. Exercise. Every rational human being grows up with a healthy aversion to exercise (nerdy bookworms FTW!). However, doctor's say that exercise is the single most important part of managing fms. Why? Because if you force yourself to suffer through just one excruciating hour of exercise, the pain is sometimes less than it would be otherwise (see point 8 above about lazing around). Or maybe just concentrating the pain all at once into a single session makes the rest of the day's pain feel less awful? *scratches head* Okay, not sure about this one.

10. You may only blog about fibromyalgia once every ten years. Why? Because if you start writing about it, you will NEVER STOP. Language diarrhea. And do you really need yet another bizarre disorder with an unpronounceable name?

(Yeah, this is what I did for the last hour while I was supposed to be writing today's NaPoWriMo poem. I am such a whining loser.)

NaPoWriMo 2011

2011-03-31T16:07:00.000-04:00

A month ago I said I wasn't going to do this again. I'm supposed to be writing a new novel and creating the next issue of Autumn Sky Poetry and revising two other novels so I can send them out and make piles of money (ok, just kidding about the $, unfortunately) and. . . well. You get the idea. But then I hit on this great idea: why don't I write poems that are completely self-indulgent? I mean, for years now I've been writing to figure something out (meter, sonnets, alliteration, etc.), or to prove a point (prose poems? hell yeah!), or to learn the discipline of writing every day. I did it. I learned a lot. But I'd never really written just because. What would happen if I did that? Hmm. You're not supposed to be self-indulgent when you write, everyone says. I can hear a little voice chiding me for it even now — uh excuse me for a moment. . .

[Shut UP stupid little voice, I spit on you! Ptew! *sounds of a scuffle* Take that!]

So! starting tomorrow I will attempt to write a collection of poems tentatively titled: Ballroom - a memoir. It's about dance (in case that wasn't obvious). I began taking ballroom dance lessons about two and a half years ago, and I love it in a way I never expected. It's not like I didn't already have an art that I loved, so I didn't really approach dance as anything other than a fun hobby, and then it reared up and bit me on the a**.

Anyway. We'll see what happens, yes?

I'll be posting at Poets.org's Discussion Forums. Click here to see the poems, one per day all month long.
Egad.

The Big Poetry Giveaway! 2011

2011-03-24T09:46:00.011-04:00

Kelli Russell Agodon started this nifty project where a bunch of poetry bloggers get together and give away poetry books for National Poetry Month! The idea was so cool I decided to participate.

How this works:

1. I'm giving away two books. If you want to win these books, please leave a comment on this post with a link back to your blog/website OR leave your email address (if you don't have a blog/website). The giveaway runs from now until April 30. On May 1, 2, or 3, I will be randomly drawing one name from the list of people who commented and that person will be the winner! I will mail two poetry books to you for free!

Here are the two books I'm giving away:

Uncommon Refrains by Gregory W. Randall, published by The Lives You Touch Publications. Why this book? Because it's fantastic. I wrote a review of this book a little while ago—to read it click here.

Cloud Studies - a sonnet sequence by Christine Klocek-Lim (yeah, that's me), published by Whale Sound Audio Chapbooks. Why this book? Because Kelli says to give away one favorite book of poems, and then give away one of your own. This book is available free on the internet, but Whale Sound also published a print version and I'd like to give someone the opportunity to hold that in their hands. It's a book of sonnets. If you'd like to read Nic's process notes about my chapbook (she's the editor/publisher), click here.

2. A little note about myself: I'm a poet. I'm really terrible when it comes to writing about myself, so no clever bio here. I'd love to say that I've worked in the circus, been a professional surfer, or lived on the Appalachian trail for a year with no shelter, but alas, I've done none of those things because I'm afraid of heights, hate to swim, and there is no way I'm going to live in the woods with no access to a porcelain tub for longer than one night. However, I have been a technical writer, an editor, a proofreader, and a novelist. I've won a few awards and had some stuff published a few places. If you're really curious, click here for my bio and here for my list of publications.

Good luck!

BIG POETRY GIVEAWAY! The list is at Kelli's blog:

Link to the List of Blogs Participating...

****

Here are the rules, via Kelli's site ~ Book of Kells:

"The goal is to share our favorite poets with others as well as to visit different blogs and see who others are reading. There is also a benefit for those who participate as it will bring people to your blog and share your work and/or the work of a favorite poet with them."

Poets.org's discussion forum is back!

2011-03-23T10:03:00.001-04:00

I'm serving as the site admin again. Why not stop by? Post a poem or two for critique. Open a conversation. I've already set up the NaPoWriMo section for April's poem-a-day marathon and we're planning a great guest poet for April. Check us out! ——>

Poets.org Discussion Forum

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Audio Chapbooks? Why yes. At Best American Poetry.

2011-03-21T10:26:00.001-04:00

Nic Sebastian recently did a guest-blogger stint at the Best American Poetry blog. All of her posts are fantastic, but of particular interest to me is the one she wrote about audio chapbooks. Obviously, this idea is near and dear to my heart since Nic, editor of Whale Sound, recently published my sonnet sequence (Cloud Studies) as an audio chapbook, but in this blog post, she also discusses why it's a good idea to try something new with poetry chaps. How do you like your poetry served? is the question she has been asking herself and many others. The answers are varied, but one of them, audio, keeps popping up again and again at the top of the list. To read more, go check out her essay:

poetry out loud: audio chapbooks and other methods of poetry delivery [by Nic Sebastian] at Best American Poetry.

Lest you think all that Nic does is publish other people's poetry at Whale Sound, please to be clicking through to see her brand new poetry collection: Forever Will End On Thursday. Fantastic work Nic!

First Crocus 2011

2011-03-17T14:33:00.001-04:00

First Crocus

This morning, flowers cracked open
the earth’s brown shell. Spring
leaves spilled everywhere
though winter’s stern hand
could come down again at any moment
to break the delicate yolk
of a new bloom.

The crocus don’t see this as they chatter
beneath a cheerful petal of spring sky.
They ignore the air’s brisk arm
as they peer at their fresh stems, step
on the leftover fragments
of old leaves.

When the night wind twists them to pieces,
they will die like this: laughing,
tossing their brilliant heads
in the bitter air.

I wrote this poem in February 2006 and since then, it seems to have propagated across the web like wild. :-) It was first published by About.com and remains on their site as part of their Spring Poems collection. The photos I took today, just a few minutes ago. Happy Spring!

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Astropoetica!

2011-02-18T09:57:00.000-05:00

I am so happy to have a poem in the latest issue of Astropoetica along with some other fantastic writers:

Invocation, by Aratus, translated by Aaron Poochigian
What Newton Knew, by Katie Fesuk
The Physics Major Agrees to Take the English Major Star Gazing, by Andrew Rihn
Bringing to Light, by Andrew Rihn
Saturn at First Sight, by O.J. Cade
Alexander von Humboldt Visits the Moon, by Sharon Mock
Circadian, by Katie Fesuk
The Diary of the Sun, by Trevor Price
Rebel Angels, by Pat Tompkins
A Hail of Pebbles and Dust, by Bogi Takács
Search, by Geoffrey A. Landis
Relativity Theory, by Kim Goldberg
Water on the Moon, by Ray Sharp
Bailly, by Robert Borski
The Reverend’s Fantasy, by Mark Blaeuer
Different Stars, Different Sky, by Aalix Roake
Earthrise, Viewed from Meridiani, Sol 687, by Geoffrey A. Landis
Starstruck, by John Philip Johnson
Saturn’s moon may have hidden seas, by Christine Klocek-Lim
Spirit at Troy, by Mary A. Turzillo
Phobos, Deimos, by Robert Borski
The Lives of The Stars, by Meg Smith
The Anonymous Stars, by Aratus, translated by Aaron Poochigian
Virgo, by Aratus, translated by Aaron Poochigian
Strategic Place, by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe
Progress, by Rae Spencer

Cloud Studies - a sonnet sequence

2011-02-01T11:28:00.000-05:00

I'm thrilled to announce that Whale Sound has published my collection of sonnets, Cloud Studies, as its third audio chapbook.

Working with Nic Sebastian was incredibly rewarding. She is an excellent editor and a sublime reader.

read Nic's Process Notes here
read Christine's Process Notes here

You can enjoy Cloud Studies in a number of different ways, thanks to Nic's dedication to providing poetry in as many forms as there are readers. Here's what she had to say about it:

Audio Chapbooks Evolution

And there’s so much new with the audio chapbook format!

Whale Sound Audio Chapbooks is offering some new options to the poetry consumer with the publication of Cloud Studies. The central question for the poetry consumer we have been asking as a publisher remains unchanged: How do you like your poetry served?

With this edition we’ve expanded the menu of options. As with previous audio chapbooks, you can:

1. Read each poem online as an individual post
2. Listen to each poem online as an individual unit
3. Download a free PDF of the whole chapbook
4. Download a free MP3 audio file of the whole chapbook

What’s new this time around? You can also:

5. Purchase a print edition of Cloud Studies from Lulu ($4.90 + shipping – this is cost-price, no author/publisher mark-up)
6. Purchase an audio CD of Cloud Studies from Lulu ($5.50 + shipping – again, at cost-price, no author/publisher mark-up)
7. Purchase an e-book edition of Cloud Studies from Lulu ($0.99 – cost-price)

New interview up at All Things Girl

2011-01-24T17:01:00.000-05:00

Go check it out! I answer questions about poetry, inspiration, and how difficult it is for me to read a badly-written novel:

Interview with Christine Klocek-Lim with Brigita Pavshich

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Autumn Sky Poetry 20 is now live!

2011-01-23T17:44:00.000-05:00

Greetings!

The twentieth issue of Autumn Sky Poetry is now online.

Read poems by Karina van Berkum, Deborah H. Doolittle, RJ Ingram, Tyrell Johnson, Andy Macera, Marc Massari, David McAleavey, Lucia Stacey, Lucie M. Winborne, and Christine Yurick.

—It's all about the poetry.

Sincerely,
Christine Klocek-Lim, Editor

Poetry chapbooks ordered

2011-01-17T14:20:00.000-05:00

I have had a list of poetry chapbooks I wanted to order for several months now. Some I could've ordered last year if I wasn't such a procrastinator, but one was just released. However, I managed to order all of them today.

Larina Warnock's Guitar Without Strings (The Lives You Touch Publications)
M.E. Hope's The past is clean (Uttered Chaos)
Martin Willitts Jr.'s Van Gogh's Sunflowers for Cezanne (Finishing Line Press)
Tania Runyan's Simple Weight (FutureCycle Press)

Checking my mailbox for the next few weeks is going to be delightful as I wait for all this poetry to arrive!

Review of Gregory W. Randall's Uncommon Refrains

2011-01-11T15:39:00.000-05:00

We are conditioned, those of us who love books, to expect in the narratives we read either happiness or tragedy. Every novel, memoir, poetry collection must contain in its pages a thread that drives us from one point to another, from the beginning to the end. Therefore, I needed to read Gregory W. Randall's poetry chapbook, Uncommon Refrains (from The Lives You Touch Publications), twice before I could even come close to understanding that it isn't really about the narrative thread. It begins in a hospital and of course I expected to read about either recovery or death, but instead, Randall's poems describe the experience, not the journey. It's true the book is divided into sections that suggest a narrative (The Hospital Stay, Grace Notes, and finally Homecomings) but even so, the philosophy of the poems doesn't travel in one direction.

The book opens with a single poem that is outside of the sections titled, "A Sort of Nocturne." This poem begins with a description of driving on the highway which is in actuality an opposition to travel: the narrator instructs his wife to pretend that they haven't driven for hours on the way to the hospital. Pretend all the difficulty of a severe illness didn't happen, the phone calls, the "dilemma over / whether I stay behind to keep our life afloat," the lack of sleep. At the end, the reader realizes what the narrator already knows. This terrible moment in their lives is "almost seasonal-a cycle without end." This tragedy happens all the time, to many people, as well as to the larger universe so that we're all truly just living in the midst of "an exhaustible dark." A reader might think the poem is a tragedy in the truest sense, except that Randall also insists what we have is "luminous," like stars. The poem sets up the rest of the collection perfectly: though we live with difficulty, joy has hold of us as well. Life is both a "luminous spark" as well as "an inexhaustible dark."

The other poems illustrate this ying-yang philosophy. Some are tragic, like the title poem of the book, "Uncommon Refrains." It ends with the idea that "we'll never swim so deep again." Nothing lasts. The next poem, "Unusual Patterns," insists upon educating the reader about how what we choose to do forms a weave in which our understanding is altered. People may misinterpret this strange pattern, but that doesn't render it any less valid. The rest of this section continues this idea while illustrating the narrator's interaction with his wife's sick daughter. She has had a stroke and is in the hospital enduring brain surgeries. The narrator speaks of the hospital and their relationships with love and compassion.

The second part of the collection, "Grace Notes," illuminates the narrator's relationship with the sick woman's daughter. He sees the girl's youth, her incredible resilience as she deals with her mother's illness and is amazed. In "Girl Reading," the narrator states, "you amaze me with your / burgeoning language." as if her growth is in direct opposition with her mother's decline. The other poems of this section, cleverly titled as a reflection on the girl's name, Grace, continue this fascination with health and change, but ultimately, the last one ends with this, "we're left to wonder / how much longer / any of us will really know you." Uncertainty creeps back into the poems and once again I'm reminded that this collection encompasses more than narrative. This isn't a story with a beginning, middle, and end, despite the suggestion of it that threads through the pages.

The last section focuses on the narrator's wife, the sick woman's mother, the girl's grandmother. These poems are fraught with waiting, with the silences that populate a house when one of its occupants is missing. The house isn't just a building, but a metaphor for their relationship. When tragedy strikes, we often think of going back to the moment right before, when everything seems well. We expect to return when the disaster is over. Of course, this is impossible. "Legitimate Desires" ruminates on this when the narrator states, "isn't this legitimate desire / to go back / and reclaim the irretrievable hours / why we linger in the pool" as if to cling to that need, but life is dangerous. Relationships are fragile. In "Re-entry" Randall writes, "I'm so aware of your absent heaviness / that I grab your sleeve, hold onto you / tenuous as a kite."

Taken separately, some of Randall's poems might seem tragic, some hopeful. When read altogether, the poems give birth to a different idea: that reality is constructed of those moments that we live right now, this very moment. The past and the future are both creations we make up to give us a framework on which to hang the chaotic present. So, too, is this book of poems constructed around the three females most important to the narrator, decorated by the tragedy of the stroke his wife's daughter suffers and subsequent brain surgeries. Ultimately, we humans live in the inexhaustible dark. The trick, this book seems to say, is to accept this and live in the present's luminous spark.

11 January 2011, Christine Klocek-Lim

Diode/Blackbird reading Feb. 3, 2011

2011-01-07T18:32:00.000-05:00

I'm doing a reading with a slew of fantastic poets: Dilruba Ahmed, Rae Armantrout, Victoria Chang, Erica Dawson, Oliver de la Paz, RHW Dillard, Matt Donovan, Claudia Emerson, Beckian Fritz-Goldberg, Bob Hicok, TR Hummer, Brian Teare, GC Waldrep.

It's being held at The Avalon Theatre in Washington, DC on Thursday, February 3rd at 8 pm.

One Tree Bridge by Dennis Greene

2010-12-29T19:10:00.000-05:00

I had the honor of reviewing One Tree Bridge by Dennis Greene, and it is now in print! Here is an excerpt from my review:

"Greene manages to give [hard truths] to us with a beauty of form and sound so delicately balanced that they go down easy. The reader feels the burn of the poems but can’t help consuming more because we desperately need the knowledge. One Tree Bridge is the simplest possible metaphor for existence on our world, yet the message inside the poems is larger than that. The birth and death of an individual, of our species, are simply two stops on the road within an infinite universe. [It] explains that so much of what we think we know about the universe depends on our perspective."

If you'd like to read the whole review, or buy a copy of the chapbook, please visit The Lives You Touch Publications.

Mrs. Kringle's Lament

2010-12-24T14:00:00.001-05:00

They said we’d only get an inch of snow

but when I wake it’s covered up the road

and slush has pulled some branches down so low

my favorite tree looks like it might explode.

I trudge outside with gloves and scarf and salt

to promptly slip and fall upon my rear

before I even reach the curb. “Assault!”

I bitch, then freeze as something licks my ear.

I scoot away, my heart up in my throat
and think: a zombie! when the icy slop

slumps to the side like puke on glass. A coat

so cheery green it makes me want to pop

out both my eyes emerges next to me.

I groan and pinch my nose. I know that face.

Those bells. That burp. He’s grown a sparse goatee

which doesn’t quite enhance the scraggly lace

sewn on his cap. “Oh, you again!” he sneezes,
grabs my sleeve as though I’ll help him up.

Yeah, right. I dodge his drunken grasp and seize

his pointed, chilly ears. He drops his cup.

I just don’t care. He thrashes, tries to kick

but cannot get away. “Where’s the deer?”

I snarl. I wish that Santa’d get here quick

before his merry crew drinks all the beer.

“You think I’d rat out my best friends? Oh please!”

he cries, then vomits just as someone’s head

ducks out of sight behind the frosty trees

like Samurai Jack, but drunk. And wearing red.

“I know you’re there, you might as well come out,”

I call, my spirits sinking to despair

as I catch sight of antlers and a snout

crouched low behind my car. I swear.

This happens every year. No joyful bells

for me, oh no. Instead, delinquent elves,

escapees from St. Nick’s gift wrap cartels,

crash in my yard to sleep. “Show yourselves!”

I yell again, not hoping for too much.

Surprise, surprise, who waddles out? The Man.

Kris Kringle. Santa Claus. I blink and clutch

my head (I drop the elf). “What’s the plan?”

I ask. I hope he knows what’s happening.

He “ho-ho-ho’s” and sways a bit, then slips

and suddenly I feel the bitter sting

of cognizance: he’s drunk from feet to lips.

I sigh and drag his jolly ass to bed,

park the sleigh, coax Rudolph to the shed.

The elf I tuck into an extra room.

The beer, I’m sure, is gone, and none too soon.

Happy Holidays!!

Pushcart Prize nom!

2010-11-24T12:31:00.001-05:00

So far, 2010 has been a great year for me, writerly speaking. I just found out that one of my poems has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize!

My poem, The unnamed, was nominated by Touch: The Journal of Healing.

I also received a number of other nominations and kudos this year:

Star streams of the Splinter Galaxy - nominated for Best of the Net anthology 2009 by Diode.

Silence speaks - nominated for Best of the Net anthology 2009 by Holly Rose Review.

Dark matter manuscript - semi-finalist in the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry.

Finalist for 3 Quarks Daily’s Prize in Arts & Literature for poem: How to photograph the heart

My chapbook, "The book of small treasures," was published in March by Seven Kitchens Press.

I am so very grateful for all the generous editors who published my poetry and prose. Thank you for your incredible sacrifice of time and energy.

Thanksgiving is truly my favorite holiday of the year.

NaNoWriMo

2010-11-04T10:17:00.000-04:00

So far, I'm ahead of schedule for NaNoWriMo this year, which means that I'm on schedule. I try to write more each weekday so I can take off the weekends. This is my second year of NaNoWriMo, but I'm writing my fourth novel. It feels comfortable now. I know how to write dialogue and description and I'm moving into the stage where I can work on the artistry of the prose in a way that makes me feel like I'm doing something original. I've been writing poetry for years but prose is relatively new to me (Creative prose. I've written technical manuals, essays, etc.).

I've been pretty lucky with it, too. I've had one novel published (it's a romance and under a pen name) and another slated for publication next year (another romance). These are not literary novels by any stretch of the imagination, but I like them. I've been a romance junkie since I was 13. Sci-fi and fantasy are my other favorites so I've been focusing on learning more everyday about how to write in different genres for different markets. I wrote the romances very carefully after doing some market research on what sells and what doesn't.

Marketable prose is strangely more relaxed and more strict than literary prose. I have to be careful how often I use sentence fragments and POV is key. For the romance market, absolutely no fragments and POV has to be third person. That's just what sells. For sci-fi/fantasy the standards are a little more relaxed, but not so much that it's terribly difficult to read. The theme can be adventurous, but the writing style needs to not call too much attention to itself. Literary prose? All bets are off! My novel, The Quantum Archives, is a mix of poetry and experimental prose snippets along with straight prose and I'm fairly certain it'll be a tough sell. I haven't managed to get that one published yet and I've slated it for some more revision in a month or so.

With this nanowrimo I'm trying to write my second sci-fi (The Quantum Archives was my first). I'm hoping this one will be more mainstream because I'd like to sell it. At the same time I'm trying to put more of my literary voice into the work. Then, after it's done, I'll need to find an agent. Haven't done that yet and I'm a bit apprehensive, though I shouldn't be. After dealing with the poetry world for over ten years and getting rejection after rejection, my skin is pretty tough.

Anyway, if you'd like to follow my progress, my page at www.nanowrimo.org is here: chrissiemkl

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Autumn Sky Poetry's nominations for Best of the Web

2010-10-28T19:42:00.000-04:00

Here are Autumn Sky Poetry's three nominations for the Best of the Web 2011, sponsored by Dzanc Books:

Monet to His Wife, While Winding the Sheets by Kristin Roedell from #19

Sharing Christina's World by Don Thackrey from #19

Surgeon Finds Tree Growing in Man's Lung by Laura Sobbott Ross from #18

Congratulations!!

Autumn Sky Poetry, the Art Issue, now live

2010-10-26T19:50:00.000-04:00

Greetings!

The nineteenth issue of Autumn Sky Poetry is now online.

Read poems and enjoy art by Lia Brooks, Stephen Bunch & Dianne Wilson, Theresa Senato Edwards & Lori Schreiner, Heather Kamins, Jean L. Kreiling, Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda, David W. Landrum, Rick Mullin, Sandra Riley, Julia Klatt Singer, Kristin Roedell, Diane Sahms-Guarnieri, Janice D. Soderling, Paul Stevens, and Don Thackrey.

—It's all about the poetry.

Sincerely,
Christine Klocek-Lim, Editor

It's the Daily Dish's birthday

2010-10-11T14:33:00.000-04:00

The Daily Dish is one of two blogs I read every day, even those days when I'm too sick or tired to turn on the computer (I read it on my phone). Andrew Sullivan's blog provides me with an understanding of the world I could never find on my own. I lack the political background (or maybe fortitude, I'm not sure) to really figure out how and why people do the things they do in society. The nifty thing about his blog is that in addition to politics, he posts poetry. Where else does that happen? A political blog posting poetry? How strange. Nevertheless, it's true. In fact, that's how I discovered his blog: Andrew posted one of my poems on his site and traffic to my website exploded for a day or so. It was kind of awesome. I could've just left it at that, except I found myself going back again and again to read the blog. He and his staff also post photos from around the world, mental health breaks, and links to some of the funniest memes I've ever seen. Thank you Daily Dish. And happy birthday!

the story I never submitted

2010-09-29T12:54:00.001-04:00

I was going to submit this, but then I didn't because the due date was an insane day for me and also because I just can't seem to gather up the energy to submit to yet another contest. I covered that in detail in my previous post so I won't rehash it here. Anyway, here's a free story. I wrote it for the NPR Three Minute Fiction Round Five. In a way, I used it as a prompt because even as I was writing it I had a feeling I wouldn't bother to send it in. The story had to be 600 words or less. It had to start with the sentence: “Some people swore that the house was haunted.” and end with the sentence: "Nothing was ever the same again after that."

I had a blast writing it. Here it is:

*snip*

Maybe I'll just stop submitting.

2010-09-16T20:26:00.001-04:00

Today I seriously considered giving up writing for good. For about three seconds. Maybe a minute. I'm tired of submitting my book-length poetry manuscript (Dark matter) and having it not make the grade. I love that manuscript. I'm proud of it. I'm tired of submitting my chapbook of sonnets (Cloud studies) and my chapbook of prose poems (Glimpse). I'm tired of trying to find a home for my sci-fi lit novel (The Quantum Archives). Even when a poetry manuscript gets accepted, it doesn't really sell. Maybe twenty people read it. And then I checked up on the stats for my romance novel (it's under a pen name and hell no I'm not telling you what it is) and it's not selling anymore. I haven't even made enough on it to buy groceries for a month (I have two teenage boys that eat a ton but still). So I seriously thought: why am I doing this?

I thought about all the time I would have if I stopped writing: I could actually finish painting my bedroom or weed my rose garden. I could ride my bicycle every day. Go to the movies. And then I thought about how much I hated ladders and weeding and the future stretched ahead of me empty and rattling. What the hell would I do with myself if I stopped writing? So. I'm almost done writing a new romance novel and I have an idea for another sci-fi book that is so cool I've been dreaming about it. And there are those notes for the funny memoir and the next romance novel (mostly plotted out in my head) .

I guess I won't quit. I like writing better than painting or weeding. Better than pretty much everything else I could do. I've worked in offices: I won't even get into my passive aggressive clothing choices (let's just say the incident with the tie-dyed tights was not a one-time thing). And I love words. Metaphors get me all jazzed up.

Maybe I'll just stop submitting.

Gabriel Gadfly's Web Poetry Wednesday

2010-09-15T18:00:00.000-04:00

. . . is a really cool thing. Okay, yes, he picked one of my poems today, so of course I like this new series of his, except he also picked nine other poems to feature. And he's good at it. I hope he keeps at it, because I love when someone else weeds through the dreck to find interesting poetry and then shares it with the rest of us. Thank you Gabriel!

Go here and see what I'm talking about:

Gabriel Gadfly, Web Poetry Wednesday #3

Whale Sound has two of my poems. . .

2010-09-10T11:18:00.000-04:00

. . . and Nic Sebastian's voice is sublime as she reads them. Go, go, go listen:

Raguel

Boulder Caves

I love this new project, Whale Sound. It's introduced me to some fantastic work by poets I'd not read before, and listening to someone read them has illuminated the poems in a way that I didn't expect. When I write a poem, I hear what it sounds like in my head, in my voice, and when I read it aloud, I try to preserve that emotion and sense of pacing. Listening to someone else read my poems is the ultimate test: did I succeed in conveying what I intended in that poem? Did I put enough space in between the imagery so that a reader can feel what I wanted as they read the poem?

My favorite poem at Whale Sound is He Calls Her Etsy by Karen Shubert. I love this poem. I love Nic's voice as she reads this poem, the fragile wonder of love and sunlight that she manages to infuse within the lines. I can imagine the scene so clearly and then the last line devastates me. Listen and be amazed.

Thank you Nic, for your incredible contribution to the world of poetry. I am so very honored.

Why writers like booze (and chocolate)

2010-09-01T18:47:00.003-04:00

I am a writer. I have written software manuals, insurance presentations, tests, letters, resumes, memos, poems, stories, novels, articles, interviews, and more. I have edited and proofread countless textbooks, journals, and other things. At no point in my life have I ever made more than $30,000 a year. The competition to get published is akin to jumping into a pool infested with sharks. Once you're published, reviewers and critics can punch a hole in your work and watch you sink to the bottom, all the while congratulating themselves on how cleverly they did so. At the end of the day, any non-writer you tell about your job thinks he or she can do it better with no arts education and a complete disinterest in reading. Everyone I tell about my poetry is also a poet; even that woman down the street who "jots a bit in her journal now and again" has been published by Poetry.com.

There are only two reasons writers keep writing. One is because we love creating something with words. The other is the hope that someday we will be in that top .05% of writers that makes the bestseller list (think J.K. Rowling or Dan Brown) and rakes in a ton of cash. Most of us will die before that happens.

This is why we like booze (and chocolate) so much.

(edited to add: I stopped working full-time when I had my two kids, just fyi)

(edited again to add: I should probably mention how cool it is to play with words. Seriously. Writing a perfect poem is one of the most sublime experiences I've ever had. So, while all that up there is still true, I should have explained more about the "we love creating something with words" part. Just sayin'.)

Taking a long break. . . but not really

2010-08-29T14:10:00.000-04:00

So, I haven't been taking many photos lately, mostly because I'm concentrating on writing. Except where's the writing, you ask? I also haven't been writing poetry lately. This is because I'm concentrating on writing novels and of course just when I thought I knew what I was doing as far as creative writing was concerned, I learn that I don't know everything. I've written two and a half novels so far, and I'm hard at work on making that half a novel a whole. I spent the last several months rewriting one of them because I didn't know a damn thing about dialogue tags. This process has been both rewarding and humbling, like most things when it comes to writing.

So my long break isn't really a break, it's a trek onto another trail. I'm enjoying the view but I wish the trail markers weren't so tricky to follow.

Almost there for the MS Charity Ride!!!

2010-08-20T08:51:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone,

I made my goal thanks to you! If you still want to help, please donate to my son Jeremy and my husband Terry. While it might be fun to snicker at them as they stand in line to get their number, I know that I will probably be standing with them at the beginning of the Multiple Sclerosis City to Shore Charity Ride.

The $300 goal is due today (Friday, August 20). If you would like to help, please donate! Only a few dollars will help. Here is my page and my son and husband's pages where you can donate directly online:

Jeremy's MS page

Terry's MS page

Thank you!

MS City to Shore Charity Bicycle Ride

2010-08-10T16:28:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone,

Once again I'm participating in the City to Shore bike ride to raise money for Multiple Sclerosis. This is a tough ride for me: I have fibromyalgia, so riding 75 miles to the shore and then 75 miles back again is always a challenge, but it's one that I take willingly to raise money and awareness of the devastating disease so many must deal with every day of their lives. My mother-in-law has MS. I know what it looks like, but I don't know how it feels. That's why I do this ride and it's why my son Jeremy and my husband also ride.

I need to raise $170 more dollars to reach my goal. My son Jeremy needs to raise $250. I will be giving away one of my chapbooks to anyone who donates at least $20 to me until I hit my $300 goal. Then, I will give a chapbook to whoever helps my son Jeremy reach his $300 goal. This is a first come, first serve offer. I have twenty chapbooks to give away. For more info on my chaps, go here: http://www.novembersky.com/NovemberSky/Chapbooks.html

I have nine "How to photograph the heart" chaps available. I have eleven "The book of small treasures" chaps available.

To donate, go to my MS page: Christine's MS City to Shore Page. Please note the amount on the page and if I've reached my $300 goal, please donate to my son Jeremy.

To donate to my son Jeremy, go to his MS page: Jeremy's MS City to Shore Page.

Once you've donated, I will receive an email letting me know. I'll contact you and ask for your address so I can send you the chapbook. Unfortunately, this offer is limited to those living in the US since I can't afford the international shipping.

Please, even a small amount will help.

(PS-if I don't have your email address, I'll try to contact you via Facebook.)

Poetry Book Blog Tour: Interview with Joanne Merriam

2010-07-30T10:18:00.001-04:00

Yes, it's part 5 of the Poetry Book Blog Tour! Today I interview Joanne Merriam:

Joanne Merriam is a supremely talented writer with books, prizes, and numerous publication credits to her name. She was nominated for the 2009 Dwarf Stars Award, winner of Asimov’s Science Fiction‘s Readers’ Awards for Best Poem of 2008, for “Deaths on Other Planets,” and First and Third place winner (respectively) of the Strange Horizons 2005 and 2004 Reader’s Choice Awards for Fiction.

Belinda Cooke explains Joanne’s poetry book, “The Glaze from Breaking,” thus: “She reminded me a lot of the early work of Boris Pasternak where the poet does not so much observe the natural world as fuse with it breaking down the boundaries between speaker and landscape… She also does clever things with sound… [and] has the odd image that manages to be both unusual and just right.”

On to the interview:

(CKL): Nearly twenty years ago, I visited the Morgan Library in Manhattan and saw Sylvia Plath’s crayon printed first attempts at poetry. Since then, I’ve always enjoyed reading the very early poems of poets. Have you saved any of your first attempts?

(JM): I no longer have any of my very early work - I started writing when I

was eight and the earliest poems I have are from my very late teens.

Here's one of them, written when I was 19 (also my earliest published

poem--after some stuff that appeared in a tiny local magazine which I

lost in one of my many moves--it was in the Spring 1996 issue of Feux

chalins):

Enough

To be with you in the early hours of the evening is enough.

To watch your back and shoulders move under your shirt, to smilingly

feel your eyes on me is enough.

Yes, I want to feel your hands tangled in my hair, yes, I want to run

my fingers along the smooth soft skin of your wrists and arms, and

yes, I want to rake my calves over your calves.

But more than that I need only to observe you move across the room I'm in.

You don't have to do anything.

It is enough to hear your low voice talk or laugh, or say my name,

and, not touching, while talking and laughing, to feel near me your

long lean warmth.

Here's a very recent poem (published here

http://stridemagazine.co.uk/Stride%20mag2010/april%202010/merriam.htm

and written in April 2010):

Ah Inflorescence

(after Walt Whitman's 'Ah Poverties, Wincings and Sulky Retreats')

You're an umbel--

your shoots; your loosenesses; your legs like pedicels;

eyes dark flat seeds screwed nearly shut against the light;

woodbine nerves; you seacoast angelica

(for what are your heteroflexible hands on my skin

but a flower moving, seeds drifting on a breeze?)--

when you finally touch me (my hands the dumbest of any)

(fingernails red petals on white sheets) I pluck you

(a cluster of flowers comes undone;

grinds into the ground)

(CKL): What changed in your work from the beginning to where you are now?

(JM): Well, obviously in the interim I lost my virginity.

I learned a lot about the craft of writing in my twenties, and am much

more comfortable now using metaphor and internal rhymes. I also

figured out somewhere along the way that line breaks are useful. I'm

more comfortable with interrupting my syntax and generally less

prosey.

But more than that, my whole approach has changed. As much as my life

inescapably informs my work, I'm not drawing from autobiography in

quite the same way (and sometimes hardly at all, especially in my

science fiction poetry). "Enough" was a deeply personal poem for me

when I was 19, but while "Ah Inflorescence" is about a real person, I

didn't write it to express emotions I couldn't figure out how to

express outside my writing, or for therapy. When I was a teenager,

writing a poem was almost always a stand-in for having a real

conversation with a real person--it was safer and less messy, because

I didn't have to deal with the other person at all. Now, although I

frequently write about my life, it's not a replacement for

communicating with my loved ones.

(CKL): Why did you start writing?

(JM): Despite what I've just said, not for therapy. I started writing when I

was eight because I was (and am) a people-pleaser, and my grade three

teacher praised a poem I had written for class. It was a rhyming poem

called "Dryad Lake" and was very derivative of the Anne of Green

Gables books. I wish I still had a copy. My parents liked it too. I

liked pleasing all these adults, so I wrote some more. At some point I

fell in love with the actual process of writing and now I can't stop.

I get really crotchedy if I go awhile without writing anything.

(CKL): Do you still like to write or is it a chore?

(JM): Both. It's a chore which I enjoy. I like the mental stimulation, the

necessary extended focus, and the sense of accomplishment when I

complete something. I like being part of a conversation that's bigger

than me.

(CKL): Do you write anything other than poetry?

(JM): Yes, I also write fiction, both literary and speculative (science

fiction, fantasy, horror). I've finished the first draft of a novel,

which needs catastrophic edits before it'll be any good, and have

written a bunch of short stories, which have been published in places

like The Fiddlehead, Stirring and Strange Horizons. I'm also working

on a web comic with my roommate, who is an artist, but we haven't

gotten to the point where anything is ready to post online.

(CKL): Was getting a book published what you expected?

(JM): Ha. Not even remotely. I had some kind of an idea that having a book

published would open doors for me, involve some small sort of

celebrity, make me into a real writer. It's nice to be able to say I

had a book out when I tell people I'm a writer, but it really hasn't

changed anything at all.

And the whole process was quite a bit of a struggle, as I had to do a

lot more marketing than I'd expected. Not that I didn't expect to have

to market my work, because by 2005 when the book came out I knew

enough to know that publishers, especially poetry publishers, have

very little money. But I made the mistake of choosing a UK publisher

who had no North American distribution. Stride Books was otherwise

absolutely fantastic in every possible way; I just lived on the wrong

continent.

It also came out just after I immigrated to the US from Canada, and I

was in that dead period many immigrants face when you're not allowed

to work in the country (lest you be deported), and you're not allowed

to leave the country (or you'll have to start the whole process over

again). So I had no money. My husband was working at a used car

dealership (you can read about his experience here:

http://consumerist.com/2010/03/beat-the-four-square-dealership-ripoff.html)

and making just barely enough to keep us afloat. I didn't have the

money for gas to drive to readings, let alone organize any sort of

promotional tour. What I had was time, and an internet connection, so

I did most of my marketing online, which was a great learning

experience.

See the rest of the week:
27 July: Jeannine hosts Christine (that's me!)
28 July: Wendy hosts Mary
29 July: Mary hosts Jeannine
30 July: Christine hosts Joanne

The Poetry Book Blog Tour Part 2!

2010-07-27T14:40:00.002-04:00

Today, Jeannine Hall Gailey interviews me! Check out the full interview at Jeannine's blog.

See the rest of the week:
27 July: Jeannine hosts Christine (that's me!)
28 July: Wendy hosts Mary
29 July: Mary hosts Jeannine
30 July: Christine hosts Joanne

Oh yes, it's the poetry book blog tour!

2010-07-26T11:37:00.000-04:00

Today, Joanne Merriam interviews Wendy Babiak! Check out the full interview at Conspiracy of Leaves.

See the rest of the week:
27 July: Jeannine hosts Christine (that's me!)
28 July: Wendy hosts Mary
29 July: Mary hosts Jeannine
30 July: Christine hosts Joanne

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I've updated my website: November Sky

2010-07-22T18:39:00.000-04:00

I've updated my website, November Sky! I've updated my bio page and my published work page. I also added poems written in 2010 and audio for a number of poems: Anael, Crescent moon with earthshine, Twenty-year love poem, First Crocus, How to photograph the heart, Zachary learns to swim,Cicadas, and Peace.

Check it out!

Autumn Sky Poetry 18 now live!

2010-07-16T15:17:00.001-04:00

Greetings!

The eighteenth issue of Autumn Sky Poetry is now online.

Read poems by Peter Branson, Nielle Buswell , Melissa Butler, Luke Evans, Jennifer Givhan, Laura Levesque, Brigita Orel, Laura Sobbott Ross, Matthew Sholler, and Lew Watts.

—It's all about the poetry.

Sincerely,
Christine Klocek-Lim, Editor

~~~
Call for Submissions: Every October, Autumn Sky Poetry publishes artwork as well as poems: visual, video, etc. I'm looking for poems with corresponding artwork, or ekphrastic poems. Please read the Submission Guidelines for details and feel free to peruse last year's Art issue, Number 15, for examples.
~~~

Poetry Reading at Earth Bread & Brewery: Where written art meets liquid art.

2010-07-08T16:23:00.000-04:00

I'm doing a reading! And there will be beer, which will probably help my reading a great deal, either by making me somewhat entertaining, or by blunting perception so that everyone believes I am somewhat entertaining. Here are the details:

Where: 7136 Germantown Ave, Philadelphia (Mt. Airy)

Wednesday, July 28^th 2010

Time: 9-11pm

Featuring Philadelphia poets: Ernest Hilbert, Teresa Leo and Christine Klocek-Lim, with an open mic session starting at 10pm.

Ernest Hilbert is the editor of the Contemporary Poetry Review. He was educated at Oxford University, where he edited the Oxford Quarterly. He later became the poetry editor for Random House’s magazine Bold Type in New York City. He hosts the popular blog and video show www.everseradio.com. His debut collection is Sixty Sonnets. LATR Editions, Brooklyn, issued Aim Your Arrows at the Sun, a hand-sewn chapbook in an edition of 250 with a foreword by Adam Kirsch. Hilbert’s poems have appeared in Fence, The New Republic, Yale Review, American Poetry Review, Parnassus, Boston Review, Verse, Meridian, American Scholar, and the London Review. He works as an antiquarian book dealer in Philadelphia, where he lives with his wife, a classical archaeologist.

Here is Ernest's write-up at E-Verse Radio: "Written art meets liquid art"

Teresa Leo is the author of a book of poems, The Halo Rule (Elixir Press, 2008), winner of the Elixir Press Editors' Prize and a broadside, "After Twelve Months, Someone Tells Me It’s Time to Join the Living" (The Center for Book Arts, 2009). Her poetry and essays have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, La Petite Zine, the anthology Whatever It Takes: Women on Women’s Sport (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999), and elsewhere. She also co-wrote and co-directed (with David Deifer) "Virtually, Paris," a short educational film on literary magazine publishing in the electronic age, which was presented at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs annual conference in 1999, 2001, and 2002. She works at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a former columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Commentary Page, past Editor-in-Chief of Painted Bride Quarterly, and has served as Acting Director of the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania.

Christine Klocek-Lim received the 2009 Ellen La Forge Memorial Prize in poetry. In 2010, her manuscript “Dark matter” was a semi-finalist for the Sawtooth Poetry Prize and the Philip Levine Prize in Poetry and her manuscript “The Quantum Archives” was a semi-finalist at Black Lawrence Press' Black River Chapbook Competition. She has two chapbooks: How to photograph the heart (The Lives You Touch Publications, November 2009) and The book of small treasures (Seven Kitchens Press, March 2010). Her poems have appeared in Nimrod, OCHO, Poets and Artists (O&S), The Pedestal Magazine, Diode, the anthology Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory and elsewhere. She is editor of Autumn Sky Poetry and her website is www.novembersky.com.

About Earth Bread & Brewery:

“Earth Bread + Brewery is an earth-friendly place that puts respect for the environment and the comfort of our guests above all else. From the green-minded details of our build out, to our choice of vendors and the way we treat our colleagues, you will find Earth an enticing place to visit. We support local agriculture, local breweries and small producers from around the world.

“Our tenet is founded upon honesty, sustainability, environmental stewardship and a sense of place in our community. We embrace the connection between people and the foods we eat, emphasizing local and organic ingredients and products, and the producers and farmers with whom we work. The restaurant will offer a menu of wholesome hearth-baked flatbreads. The bar will present unique house-made craft beer and feature a selection of world-class beer and wine.”

Some poems published

2010-07-05T13:43:00.000-04:00

Two of my sonnets are in the new Think Journal: Iridescence and Tail clouds. Please consider buying an issue to peruse. It's a lovely little literary magazine.

Three of my astronomical poems are in MiPOesias' summer 2010 issue: Moondust, Enceladus creates Saturn's E ring, and The star trails of Kilimanjaro. These poems are on pages, 8, 9, and 10.

I'm rather happy about the Kilimanjaro poem being published. It's one of my favorites and has been rejected numerous times. Does that make the poem bad? Why do I continue to like it so much when so many editors didn't? It's a mystery, this submitting and publication thing. As an editor, I know that sometimes poems just don't fit in with the others I've chosen, so I know how it goes. Still, I find myself confused by the difficulty of knowing which of my own work is publishable. Some poems, more than others, seem to find their way into print.

As for the sonnets, I'd despaired of ever finding an editor who wanted them. So far, I've managed to get three published. With those, I'm more inclined to think it's because so many people just don't like formal poems and that's why the others haven't been picked up. It's what I'm telling myself, anyway.

Coming soon! July poetry book blog tour!

2010-07-02T10:57:00.001-04:00

Later this month, I will be participating in an awesome book blog tour with some pretty fabulous authors: Jeannine Hall Gailey, Joanne Merriam, Wendy Babiak, and Mary Alexandra Agner. Stay tuned!

New poems published!

2010-06-09T13:43:00.000-04:00

To my delight and surprise, six of my newer poems have just been published. These are part of my supernatural series: angels, goddesses, saints, etc. All of them are prose poems. They've been both terrifying and exhilarating to write.

The first three were published in PoetSpeak, an online journal that specializes in audio poems. I had to record myself reading and send the audio files to the editor. I was pleased that they also chose to publish the written versions. To hear and read the poems, go check it out:

PoetSpeak: Three prose poems by Christine Klocek-Lim

The next three poems are from the same collection and I was completely thrilled to have them accepted for OCHO #30. I love OCHO and all the other things Didi Menendez publishes. The mix of poems in this particular issue is fantastic. Here are the other contributors: Bob Hicok, Nick Carbo, David Krump, Sam Rasnake, Favia Tamayo, Letitia Trent, Grace Cavalieri, Cheryl Townsend, Andrei Guruianu, and Peggy Eldrige-Love.

OCHO is available online here: OCHO #30 and in print here OCHO #30 print.

Guest blogging and a new poem

2010-05-23T18:02:00.000-04:00

If you're curious about how I managed to get two chapbooks published within a few months of each other, I've written a short blog/essay about the total random luck of it, over at Larina Warnock's Significance & Inspiration blog:

Guest Blogger Christine Klocek-Lim: Words on the Edge of a Recycle Bin

And I'm delighted that one of my recently written poems from this year's NaPoWriMo was picked up by ProtestPoems.org:

Gadreel

I also bought a gorgeous pair of pink sandals. It's been an awesome weekend.

Compassion: what is the point?

2010-05-18T09:51:00.000-04:00

About nine years ago I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. I was so happy to finally get a diagnosis that I didn’t think much about what it would mean to deal with this disorder for the rest of my life. That changed. I spent seven years trying to figure out how to live with it and ultimately only one very simple idea worked: being kind to myself. I repeated this over and over because it gave me a reason for not doing things that made me miserable. The thing with fibromyalgia (FMS) is this: if you push yourself, you tend to get flare-ups and you don’t want that because they suck. They suck MASSIVELY. And this idea worked. I stopped volunteering at my kid’s school library. It’s a worthy thing to do, the kids loved it, but standing around in a room filled with dust and shrieking children and a serious lack of sunlight made the FMS flare so bad I would go home feeling like a zombie with a hangover. I stopped cleaning my house every week (pushing a vacuum = flareup). I stopped gardening. I stopped bowling. But even more than those physical things, the mental anguish had to stop. I needed to stop berating myself for not doing stuff because FMS is intricately tied to one’s mental state. If you’re happy, the FMS is easier to handle. So I began writing a lot more seriously, because it made me happy. I stopped worrying about what other people had accomplished that I couldn’t (ok, I’m still trying to do this). I spent seven years working on this idea.

Once I mostly figured out what worked and what didn’t, surprisingly, the lack of self-flagellation opened up an entire world of things I didn’t know I could do. I didn’t realize I could dance, or travel with my kids. I didn’t know I could complete an MS 150 (bicycle charity ride). I didn’t know my family would be happier because I said no more often; there are so many things a woman in this society is supposed to do (most of which I hated). I never would have guessed, but I suppose happiness is contagious. Then one day I woke up and realized that I wanted to try something different. What if I applied this idea to others, not just myself?

I knew that would be tricky. If I spent too much time and energy being kind to others, I would get sucked right back into volunteering and spending time doing things that caused massive flare-ups. And I couldn’t figure out why I wanted to extend the sentiment. What is the point of compassion, really? It’s not reciprocal. I don’t care what anyone says, I know from experience: it doesn’t matter how many times you open doors for other people, it does not guarantee that more doors will be opened for you. People often suck and there’s really no way around that. But why? Why do people suck? Why is life so often violent? I asked myself this question over and over again, and since I’m a writer, the answer became vitally important. I mean, how do I write about people if I don’t understand what makes them tick? How do I appeal to readers if I don’t know what they feel?

I asked around. Seems I’m not the only person with an annoying health problem. I asked around some more, and it seems that I’m not the only person who has kids with health problems. I’m not even the worst off, not by a long shot. This was interesting. Maybe everyone is cranky at the grocery store because they have a migraine. Or a mother in a nursing home they can’t afford. Or whatever. So, okay, that sucks, I said to myself. What happens if I hold open a door? I tried it. The relief on some faces was its own reward. If I opened a door and paired it with a smile, it was even more fun. Simple. And it made me happy. Which made me feel better. Sure, sometimes I still wake up and can’t tell if I’m a zombie or a living person, but usually by noon I’m okay. If I listen to my friend telling me about her hideous day and then smile and joke around with her, it makes her happy. This makes me happy. But even more importantly, it makes me a better writer. I know why people do the things they do sometimes and this will help me write awesome novels with complex characters and who suddenly wake up with super-powers and save the universe.

It’s weird, but so far I’ve found being compassionate to others is much more difficult than being nice to myself. The effects are not immediate. The results are often not what I expect. I get cut off a lot in traffic and people sometimes give me dirty looks when I smile at them. Sometimes I forget that not everyone thinks the same way I do. Not everyone wants to think the way I do, and I forget that some things which are very important to me are anathema to others. Oddly, this pursuit of compassion is making me more open-minded not less.

Ultimately, I suppose compassion, empathy, sympathy, whatever you want to call it is a selfish endeavor. If you expect others to treat you well, you might grow resentful when they don’t. That’s self-defeating. But if you are compassionate to others because you think it will make you a better person, it will. If by being compassionate you learn patience, that is a wonderful thing and your kids will thank you when they spill grape juice on the carpet. If compassion teaches you how to forgive yourself, awesome. I’m not proselytizing here. I’m just saying: this works for me. It makes me happy.

Addendum: I wrote this several days ago, before a massive flare-up that made all these words seem like a foray into the idealistic world of self-righteousness. Except, well, they’re all still true. Compassion is lovely, but it’s not a perfect solution. Compassion, for oneself, for others, is not the holy grail of happiness. It’s a brick. It’s useful and durable and it has a lot of staying power, and sometimes it’s fun to throw it through a window, but by itself it isn’t the answer. I don’t know exactly what makes happiness so elusive, but I know compassion is something that can help alleviate misery from time to time. That makes it worth the effort, at least for me.

Short interview at Everyday Intensity

2010-05-04T14:43:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Tania Pryputniewicz of The Fertile Source, I had the opportunity to answer a couple of questions about a subject near and dear to me: being a poetry editor. She has a guest spot on the lovely blog Everyday Intensity where she talks about being an editor. Then she asked me and Marjorie Tesser, editor of The Mom Egg, some questions about editing. Go check it out!

Guest Post by Tania Pryputniewicz: “So You Say You’re a Poetry Editor…”

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Autumn Sky Poetry 17 - now online!

2010-04-26T15:00:00.000-04:00

Greetings!

The seventeenth issue of Autumn Sky Poetry is now online.

Read poems by Michelle Barker, Anna Evans, Juleigh Howard Hobson, Rich Ives, David W. Landrum, Lyn Lifshin, Mangesh Naik, Anna Serio, Kristen Stone, and Larina Warnock.

—It's all about the poetry.

Sincerely,
Christine Klocek-Lim, Editor

While you're waiting, check out LEVELER

2010-04-21T19:56:00.000-04:00

Since I can't link to my NaPoWriMo poem, why don't you check out one of my sonnets? It's up at LEVELER this week, a fine journal. While you're there, click on their levelheaded button to see what the editors had to say about my poem, "Orphan anvils."

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NaPoWriMo FAIL

2010-04-21T19:38:00.000-04:00

Or rather, stymied. Poets.org was hacked, so I cannot post today's poem. Hopefully the earnest and dedicated programmers will get the site back up and working soon! And no, I won't post the poem here on my blog because then it is on the internets forever. I want the search engines to work a little bit harder to find these poems so I don't foil my chances at getting them published. And yes, I have been deleting them from Poets.org. These poems come with an expiration date, known only to me (and entirely at the whim of my laziness meter for the day).

NaPoWriMo 20 april 2010

2010-04-20T17:32:00.001-04:00

Mary

NaPoWriMo 17, 18, and 19 april 2010

2010-04-19T19:48:00.001-04:00

Gabriel

Jeremiel

Azrael

NaPoWriMo 15 & 16 april 2010

2010-04-16T21:07:00.002-04:00

Roehel

Freyja

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NaPoWriMo 7 april 2010

2010-04-07T11:42:00.003-04:00

Ode to my iPad

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National Poetry Month starts tomorrow

2010-03-31T12:48:00.006-04:00

I'm going to try the NaPoWriMo thing again: write a poem a day for the entire month of April. I'll be posting links to the poems here, but the poems will be on the Poets.org forum (which has been my poetic home for many years). Of course, if I decide to send any out, I'll be deleting them there, but you should be able to read them during April (they'll be first drafts, in need of revision).

This will be my fourth year of NaPoWriMo. I've had wonderful luck with the poems I wrote in past Aprils: my chapbook, The book of small treasures, was written during NaPoWriMo 2007. In 2008 I began my book-length manuscript of poems, Dark matter. A selection of those poems won the 2009 Ellen La Forge Memorial Prize in Poetry, and the manuscript made it to the semi-finals on another contest. An unpublished manuscript of sonnets (Cloud studies) was written in 2009 (I have high hopes for those), as were the poems that form the backbone of my novel, The Quantum Archives (the poems made it to the semi-finals at The Black Lawrence Press' Black River chapbook competition).

So, I really have no excuse. Even if it feels like I'm skinning myself again, I'll be trying to write a poem a day. I've got a theme and a few written already, so I even have something with which to work. Good luck to all of you who are going to be writing this year, too!

How to photograph the heart

2010-03-09T13:12:00.005-05:00

You remember how the lens squeezed

unimportant details into stillness:

the essential trail of rain down glass,

the plummet of autumn-dead leaves,

your grandfather's last blink when

the breath moved on.

Your startled hands compressed

the shutter when you realized: this is it,

this is the last movement he will take

away from the silent fall of morphine,

beyond the soft gasp of the nurse,

past the sick, slow thud of your heart

moving in the luminous silence.

I wrote this in 2005 after I spoke with my mother about my grandmother's death. It is not autobiographical, yet it is in the way that poems draw truth from real experiences. I've always found that odd about writing. It's the title poem from my first chapbook, "How to photograph the heart," (The Lives You Touch Publications).

-Christine Klocek-Lim

First Crocus

2010-03-08T08:39:00.006-05:00

Since the first crocus of the season popped up last week, even with all the snow still on the ground, posting an old poem of mine seemed appropriate:

First Crocus

This morning, flowers cracked open
the earth’s brown shell. Spring
leaves spilled everywhere
though winter’s stern hand
could come down again at any moment
to break the delicate yolk
of a new bloom.

The crocus don’t see this as they chatter
beneath a cheerful petal of spring sky.
They ignore the air’s brisk arm
as they peer at their fresh stems, step
on the leftover fragments
of old leaves.

When the night wind twists them to pieces,
they will die like this: laughing,
tossing their brilliant heads
in the bitter air.

3QD ARTS & LITERATURE PRIZE 2010 VOTING ROUND NOW OPEN

2010-03-01T16:31:00.003-05:00

Hello,

The period for nominating entrees for the 3QD Arts & Literature Prize is over.

To see a full list of the nominees and then vote, go here.

To see details of the prize, go here.

Good luck to all! The voting round closes on Sunday, March 7, 2010, at 11:59 pm NYC time.

FYI: two of my poems are nominated. Go vote!! If not for me, than for your favorite. My poems are at the top of the list (gotta love alphabetical order):

How to photograph the heart

and

How to search for aliens

"The book of small treasures" available to order!

2010-02-26T10:51:00.007-05:00

My new chapbook is almost ready! You can order it at Seven Kitchens Press. The wonderful editor of this small press, Ron Mohring, posted a sample poem along with the chapbook announcement: Preteen, 7 a.m. Just scroll down to read it.

This chapbook was written over a few months' time in 2007, beginning with NaPoWriMo in April of that year. The few that were written earlier were the ones that inspired me to continue with a collection that explored parenthood with its myriad difficulties and joys.

Thanks go to Ron and his assistant Matthew Koppenhaver for all the hard work they put into making this chapbook possible. Thanks also to the wonderful people who provided blurbs for the book: Jim Daniels and Karen J. Weyant, both fine writers I greatly admire.

I'm told that Seven Kitchens Press is working on a new website for this year, and I may have more blurbs about the chapbook that appear there this summer. Stay tuned!

PS: yup, that's a photo I took of my son holding a red box. The box was a gift from my brother, the notebook a gift from my husband.

After the blizzard 10 february 2010

2010-02-10T23:46:00.005-05:00

November Sky Photos now available!

2010-02-05T16:17:00.002-05:00

My new app, November Sky Photos is now available for the iPhone and iPad! And it's only 99 cents! You get 32 photos to look through and use for wallpaper. Go check it out:

November Sky Photos

New poems in Diode

2010-01-19T15:34:00.003-05:00

Two of my poems appear in the latest Diode, one of my favorite journals. The look and feel of it is elegant and creative and positive, somehow all at once. Go check it out and read the excellent work found within:

Diode

Winter 2010

Shurooq Amin

Rae Armantrout

Cynthia Arrieu-King

Andrea Cohen

Adam Fieled

Arpine Konyalian Grenier

Mihail Gălăţanu, trans. Adam J. Sorkin

and Petru Iamandi

Lesley Jenike

Christine Klocek-Lim

Rustin Larson

Jeffrey Ethan Lee

Bobbi Lurie

Rob MacDonald

Erika Meitner

Simon Perchik

Catherine Pierce

Nate Pritts

Doug Ramspeck

Susan Rich

Steven D. Schroeder

Ravi Shankar

Franz Wright

New poems published online

2010-01-08T14:26:00.000-05:00

Lucid Rhythms, two poems

Touch: The Journal of Healing: two poems

and Concelebratory Shoehorn Review: five poems

Ten years of internet poetry (is poetry dead?)

2009-12-31T10:24:00.006-05:00

I like to tell people that I've been writing poetry since I was ten or eleven years old, and it's true. I went to school to write, after college I went to work as a technical writer, and I wrote poems throughout my twenties, but I never seriously worked at it until 1999. I posted my first poem in an online workshop in 1997 and received scathing comments which sent me into hibernation for two more years. Then I decided I couldn't wait any longer. I couldn't wait for my kids to get older or easier, I couldn't wait to have a better computer, I couldn't wait for more time or sleep or space or any of those things you tell yourself you need in order to write.

By 2001 I was posting regularly at Poets.org and I learned how to let the nasty comments slide. I learned how take the helpful ones and use them to make my writing better. I didn't submit often, but when I did I was mostly rejected. The few acceptances I received gave me the impetus to keep going. I learned that most of my writing was dreck because the stuff I read online was amazing. The people with whom I discussed poetry were intelligent and insightful, and their advice and commentary made me rethink everything I thought I knew about poetry. Ironically, these people were not widely published. They weren't famous. The internet poets I knew were somewhat stigmatized, somewhat separated from the print poetry scene. Online publishing was somehow lesser and we all knew it.

I had to reevaluate the reasons I wanted to write: Did I want to be widely published? Well, yeah. Was that more important than the love of language, the thrill of writing something unique? Well, no, thankfully, because I'd finally accepted that being published wasn't the point. It was the extra bonus, the frosting, the: oh yeah, by the way this is awesome when it happens. I wanted to continue online because it was easy to post poems. It was easy to meet other poets. I didn't have to spend all my time writing snail-mail letters and waiting and waiting for a response. I didn't have to spend a lot of money for an MFA I didn't want and couldn't afford with small children in the house. I was convinced that the web would change the face of the writing world; I just had to be patient.

I went back to the beginning and spent the next several years relearning the basics: metaphor and rhyme, meter and imagery, intent and audience. I still submitted, thought not a lot and the rejections continued, both online and snail mail. I kept writing because I loved that sensation of joy, the moment of creation that I felt when I really had a good line or image. I kept writing because I discovered that the more I wrote, the easier it was to find that joy. By 2009, I'd written four chapbooks, one full-length poetry manuscript, and two novels. I started submitting more, both online and via snail mail. All along this journey, I've posted poems online to Poets.org and other poetry workshops like Desert Moon Review, the Atlantic (now defunct), The Gazebo, and lurked at others just to learn: Eratosphere, Slate's The Fray, etc. I've dealt with trolls, flame wars, and discrimination. I've been encouraged and helped and published in small poetry magazines, more often online than in print. I found that I love the flexibility of online publishing and started my own poetry journal, Autumn Sky Poetry, which now gets hundreds of submissions every few months, poems from writers who are beginners and from poets who have published widely.

Today is December 31, 2009. In the last year, I've won the 2009 Ellen La Forge Poetry prize. My manuscript, "Dark matter," made semi-finalist in the Brittingham and Pollak Poetry Prizes (University of Wisconsin Press) and is a semi-finalist at the Philip Levine Prize in Poetry (waiting to hear about the winner). Today I found out that my freaky sci-fi poetry chapbook manuscript, "The Quantum Archives," that I never, ever thought anyone would read let alone like made it to semi-finalist status at the Black Lawrence Press' Black River Chapbook Competition. I've had two chapbooks published: "How to photograph the heart" by The Lives You Touch Publications and "The book of small treasures" by Seven Kitchens Press. It's been a good ten years of waiting for the two worlds of poetry, online and print, to collide. And everything I've learned about writing is possible only because the internet has revitalized the poetry world. Right now, all of us who write poems are benefitting from the diversity and richness of the web. This online world made it possible for me to get to today: I don't have an advanced degree and don't teach. I do, however, love to write and because the internet made it possible for me to learn and meet other writers and put my work out into the virtual world, I've become part of a community of poets that didn't exist fifteen years ago.

Is poetry dead? Not even a little.

Happy Holidays!

2009-12-23T15:49:00.008-05:00

poet interviews

2009-12-16T13:04:00.002-05:00

I'm very lucky to be included in another series of poet interviews, by the wonderful Didi Menendez. Go check out the entire series and my interview: Christine Klocek-Lim.

List poem: This day on Twitter

2009-12-15T11:37:00.007-05:00

Cute kitty is cute. #kitty!

Evil Twitter is evil and so is Facebook. #addicted

Lonesome tree has no leaves and is lonesome 

above brown grass that is dead brown. #haiku

Early, you left so early today. #sad

Hot tea is so hot I burned my tongue. #damnit

Junk mail came late full of junk

 and too much paper and dead trees. #sad

Quiet lunch is a sandwich and soup quietly  

steaming until it’s gone. #haiku

Pithy texts sent to my husband are pithy. #random

Sad news is sad-->no more NPR. #sad

Loud kids after school are really loud! #parenting

Hateful homework is still hateful even  though

I'm a grownup. #homeworksuks #parenting

Evil Twitter is still evil-->so many  links

to congenital heart defect stories. #chd #sad #addicted

Sarcastic teens are sarcastic and this is awesome. #not

Early, you came home so early. #love

Yummy dinner is yummy though kitty 

stole morsel right from the pan. #badkitty!

Don’t tell my mom, but we can tell yours. #stillafraidofmom

Funny tv is funny, especially with sarcastic teens. #parenting

You say I am sleepy but so are you. #random #love

Cute kitty is so cute she must be dreaming. #kitty!

From the December poem spark prompt at Poets.org.