Saturday, August 31, 2019

Brian Beatty On Emily Dickinson

Borrowed Trouble: Micro Tribute to Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

I wouldn’t write at all if it weren’t for myriad writers before me whose works showed me what was possible. The poems of this series are small offerings of respect, of thanks, to those muses. – Brian Beatty

Emily Dickinson

Migrating birds 
found their way 
into my attic too.

– Brian Beatty


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click here for more on this book
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NEW! Read the entire series of Borrowed Trouble by Brian Beatty anywhere you go by buying the collection of all sixty poems today! You've enjoyed these poetic tributes on-line, now enjoy them everywhere!


Brian's recent collections of poetry are Dust and Stars: Miniatures and Brazil, Indiana


Don't miss Brian's columns on great poets: insert your email address in the "Follow By Email" box to the right of this article and you'll be notified every time a new article appears.

Friday, August 30, 2019

Tobi Alfier - Sometimes Blue is Just Blue


There are 342 ways to say drunk, drinking, hammered, hung over, etc. on pages 221 – 224 of “Another Bullshit Night in Suck City” by NickFlynn. There are probably the same number of ways to describe the color blue as well.

Take a quick look at Google. The color of the water around Inishbofin in Ireland, is different than the color of the ocean looking out from Santorini, Greece. Both are different than the color of Louisiana bayous, and the caramelized sludge along the banks of the Mississippi.

Whether it’s water, sky, or anything else, be careful with the color blue. Your writing needs to be authentic and believable. It shouldn’t sound like someone needs to take your thesaurus away. Sometimes blue is just blue.

She was Always in Blue

She was always in blue,
in his dreams, late most every night
and toward morning, as shadows
tucked his room back into nightfall.

She was always in blue, while out on the street,
the slow downshift of an ancient
station wagon, as a mother ran
the paper route before dropping her kids

off at school. She was always in blue,
in his dreams, as the lowering moon
returned the early hours to dark
and he rolled over for one more hour.

They could be anywhere, together or apart,
she’d unlimber a quiet smile as she gestured—
something would break deep within him,
make a place to fill his heart

with her breathing. She was always in blue,
the color of sea there was no name for.
His waking eyes flickered like startled sparrows,
like rain, touching him everywhere at once.

(Previously published in Comstock Review)

When to use a thesaurus:

Of course if you lose a word, try and find it right away. I read an article with Jane Hirshfield in Poets & Writers. She said she loses words a lot. I lose words a lot. I know they’ll come back but it drives me nuts. Usually I yell “I need a word” from my office, but if no one’s home I go right to the thesaurus.

A day or so after you’ve finished a poem, you’ve slept on it and still respect it, and your trusted reader has approved it, look at it again. Now is when you’ll find the same words too close to each other (that both you and your reader missed), or words that seem too “common”. Neither is a bad thing; you might just prefer not to have duplicates one line away. In the poem above, I wanted “She was always in blue” to be duplicated, but if that is not your intention, now is when you want to see if you have other choices.

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I have two at my fingertips at all times. One is a gigantic print thesaurus, and one is thesaurus.com. The print book is more complete but the font is so small, sometimes I don’t want to use it.

Whatever you use, you can look up the duplicate word and just pick another word you like, or you can do a trick I learned from Jack Grapes:

Say you have used the word “angry”, two lines apart, with regard to the sky (angry stormy sky). First of all, the “duplicate police” are not going to come arrest you. I just prefer not to duplicate words unless they’re part of a form, or intentional.

Look up “angry” in the thesaurus. Oooh, “enraged” seems pretty cool…”enraged stormy sky”.

Now look up “enraged”. “Boiling” and “fuming” are both good. You might need to change the sentence a bit, but “a sky boiling with rage” is a great sentence.

Look up “boiling”. Anything you like better? No. Look up “fuming”. Anything you like better?  Not really. Now all you need to decide is where you want to put your original “angry stormy sky”, where you want to put “a sky boiling with rage”, or whether you even want to keep both of them. You may decide to rewrite that whole stanza.

Jack’s point, and one I always follow, is don’t stop at the first word you find in the thesaurus, keep going, and keep going. You will end up with a word you never thought of, that will make your work surprising, and stronger.

But as I said above, don’t use it too much. You don’t want your writing to sound like the “Synonyms” category in Jeopardy. Believe me, it is very obvious.

Now we have come to the end of our “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue” quartet of blog posts. No, I did not have marriage on my mind. I just thought it would be a fun way to usher out summer. If you have any comments, or any ideas for future blog posts, please write them below. Rich and I both read them.

Good reading. Good writing. Have a safe Labor Day!!!

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Tobi Alfier's most recent collection of poetry is Slices Of Alice. She is also co-editor with Jeff Alfier of the San Pedro River Review. Don't miss Tobi's columns on the craft of poetry: insert your email address in the "Follow By Email" box to the right of this article and you'll be notified every time a new article appears.


Saturday, August 24, 2019

Brian Beatty On Pablo Neruda

Borrowed Trouble: Micro Tribute to Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)

I wouldn’t write at all if it weren’t for myriad writers before me whose works showed me what was possible. The poems of this series are small offerings of respect, of thanks, to those muses. – Brian Beatty

Pablo Neruda

Even the cheeriest 
old-time banjo songs result in
death in the end.

So miners sing odes 
to their love coal as they disappear 
into the mountain.

No one talks about
the insulting politics of diamonds at work
above and below them.

– Brian Beatty


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Learn more about Pablo Neruda:








- - - -


click here for more on this book
click for more on this book
NEW! Read the entire series of Borrowed Trouble by Brian Beatty anywhere you go by buying the collection of all sixty poems today! You've enjoyed these poetic tributes on-line, now enjoy them everywhere!


Brian's recent collections of poetry are Dust and Stars: Miniatures and Brazil, Indiana


Don't miss Brian's columns on great poets: insert your email address in the "Follow By Email" box to the right of this article and you'll be notified every time a new article appears.

Friday, August 23, 2019

Tobi Alfier - Something New, Something Borrowed

Last week was about digging out your oldest writing and giving it a facelift. Now let’s talk about trying new things, and borrowing. Here are some examples.


1.                  Borrow some books to read:

For those of you who live in the Joshua Tree area, do you know that Cholla Needles Publisher, Rich Soos, has a library of over 500 physical books, and close to 1200 ebooks? He just added Thomas Merton’s Collected Poetry purchased from Space Cowboy Books. David Chorlton just donated some books of his own writing and also some books by Galway Kinnell. I know Rich has books of mine too.

Getting into the library is easy. Just email Rich and tell him when you’d like to come. You can then browse to your heart’s content (Heart’s Content was the name of my hot air balloon back in 1980—a good omen!).

If you want to borrow something, you just make a note of it on the “Borrowed Book” list. He’ll cross it off when you return it. To quote Jeff…”done and dusted!”

Borrowing books will do a couple of things besides the obvious saving of money and not needing a library card:

First, it will acquaint you with authors you’ve maybe never read. This may give you ideas about what who you’d like to read next, and

second, don’t laugh. It’s almost September. Pretty soon it’s going to be Halloween, then Thanksgiving, and then whatever holiday you celebrate that includes giving gifts. You may want to start making your list now so you can start saving. Browsing, and borrowing from the library could help give you ideas for your list!

As a writer, how can wandering around among all those books NOT get your juices flowing?

2.                  Try a new form:

In the last six months I’ve read two or three poems that claimed to be Ghazals. I couldn’t write a Ghazal if you bribed me with bacon, but I know for sure those poems weren’t Ghazals. A beautiful one that Jeff and I did see, and publish, was written by Ricki Mandeville, a lovely poet and editor, author of A Thin Strand of Lights:

Rain Ghazal  
   Ricki Mandeville

At the station, I open my umbrella against the rain.
I tossed all night beneath a roof made of rain.

Standing motionless amid motion, I wait.
Your train pulls in on tracks made of rain.

You step down in your hat and city shoes.
Your gray coat matches perfectly a sky made of rain.

You see my lifted hand and turn my way.
Your stride is careless, your eyes made of rain.

I have been asleep between this moment and our last.
Conjure a Sleeping Beauty kiss made of rain.

All my recollections awaken, wear your face.
They run together as though made of rain.

I remember summers, falls and winter winds.
I remember long green springs made of rain.

With a thumb, stroke the salt from my cheek.
Remind me that your promises are made of rain.

(Previously published in San Pedro River Review)


You’ll notice the repetition at the end of the second line in each couplet. And the traditional form includes some rhyming. That’s all I know about Ghazals. If this sounds like a neat thing to try, google the form and you’ll learn more from that. Do the same with any other form that interests you. Even Haiku aren’t just 5-7-5 anymore!

3.                  Re-read some writers in your old contributor copies:

Not everyone has a library like Rich, but if you’re a submitting writer, hopefully you’ve kept your old contributor copies. Go back through them and read some of the other writers. You may read some flash fiction or prose poetry and decide to try one of those forms. If there’s an author whose work you really like, check out their bio. It may give you ideas for new places to submit.

4.                  While looking through your bookcase:

I don’t know if you have any books on writing, but it’s not the worst thing to revisit them from time to time. I have two go-to books, TheTriggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing Reissue Edition by Richard Hugo, and Ron Carlson Writes a Story by Ron Carlson. Those are the two that work for me (both available from the Cholla Needles Library). I have other books on writing and they’re very good. If you have some, and you like them, re-visit them. You will be reminded of something you’ve forgotten; your writing will be better for it.

5.                  What am I going to do?

I’ve been thinking a lot about Mexican opals. That’s my clue that I have either a Southwest poem in my head, or any decasyllabic poem. That’s a form I borrowed /learned from Jeff. I love the pacing of ten-syllable lines. Whether I’m writing about the bruised desert sky, or an almswoman in Poland, I’m not going to be satisfied until I write it.

Flight to Paso Robles

Wind arbitrates which runway is active.
The pilot reports the field is in sight
and banks his Cessna to final approach.
Condors corkscrew down and flank his descent –
those dour, airborne mongrels that have brought down
fighter jets, flak-riddled or bomb-laden,
in some faraway thick and weary air.
To condors, crossed asphalt runways are dark
brothers of their own lumbering wingspans.
They hover for snakes or rabbits they hope
have run shit-out of luck, crushed to fine meals
worthy of any carrion-monger
whose blunt claws, and blunter mind, go heedless
of men who trust in gauges, or blind luck
to grant them a flawless three-point landing,
a soft glide, that easy shudder of wings.

(previously published in San Pedro River Review, special Walt McDonald issue)


What are you going to do?



- - - -


Tobi Alfier's most recent collection of poetry is Slices Of Alice. She is also co-editor with Jeff Alfier of the San Pedro River Review. Don't miss Tobi's columns on the craft of poetry: insert your email address in the "Follow By Email" box to the right of this article and you'll be notified every time a new article appears.


Saturday, August 17, 2019

Poetry Reading! August 18, 2019 5-7 PM


We are heating the desert with the release of the 32nd issue of Cholla Needles!



On August 18, from 5-7 PM at Space Cowboy Books, YOU will be our featured reader! Come help us celebrate the arrival of issue 32!!! Any member of the community who wishes to be part of this celebration is encouraged to bring a poem or two to share! We all look forward to hearing your work! See you at Space Cowboy Books.

Brian Beatty On Vasko Popa

Borrowed Trouble: Micro Tribute to Vasko Popa (1922-1991)

I wouldn’t write at all if it weren’t for myriad writers before me whose works showed me what was possible. The poems of this series are small offerings of respect, of thanks, to those muses. – Brian Beatty



Animal shadows 
stalked me across 
a bustling downtown 

and in return 

the bright, shining noise 
of that same city haunted 
my animal dreams.

– Brian Beatty

Check it out!



Learn more about Vasko Popa:





- - - -


click here for more on this book
click for more on this book
NEW! Read the entire series of Borrowed Trouble by Brian Beatty anywhere you go by buying the collection of all sixty poems today! You've enjoyed these poetic tributes on-line, now enjoy them everywhere!


Brian's recent collections of poetry are Dust and Stars: Miniatures and Brazil, Indiana


Don't miss Brian's columns on great poets: insert your email address in the "Follow By Email" box to the right of this article and you'll be notified every time a new article appears.

Friday, August 16, 2019

Tobi Alfier - Back-to-School Challenge


No matter how long you’ve been writing, how many classes you’ve taken, workshops you’ve attended, books you’ve read… every day you learn something new. It may be big. It may be small, but it all goes toward making you a stronger writer. Even hearing a new phrase in line at the grocery store that would be perfect for what you’re working on—it all goes toward making your writing a better version of you.

This is my back-to-school challenge for you:

  1. Assuming you have kept most everything you’ve ever written, go back and get the earliest four pieces of writing you have. If it was in the typewriter days, like mine was, grab it out of the filing cabinet.  Ohhhh, those pages smell so good! But I digress.

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  1. Read it. Don’t cringe. It doesn’t matter if it’s part of a novel, short fiction, memoir, poem, or journal entry. I bet you a Cholla Needles lined blank notebook that what you’ve learned can make it better.

  1. Pick one and put it on your computer. Even if you like to write and edit by hand, should you decide to submit this somewhere, it has to be on the computer anyway. So reminisce about your old Commodore 64 for a minute and start typing.

  1. Now, look at it. You know you can make it better. All the things I’ve been saying over the last year and a half...check the line breaks, check your tenses, check your punctuation, fix your em dashes. Even check that the spacing after your periods is consistent. Your voice has probably stayed close to the same, so you have a great place to start.  Edit away!

  1. Include it as part of your next submission. It may be a little different, but just as good as what you’re submitting now. I recently had a 35-year-old poem published. It was revised, it was written before there were cell phones or computers, and it was accepted by a good print journal.

So whether you’re a parent, grandparent, professor, student, crossing guard or school bus driver, we’re coming up on a busy week. You probably have to clean out your cabinets anyway, look for your old writing.

And if you just want to enjoy the end of summer, that’s fair too.

I’m writing a short post this week to give you the gift of time, but don’t forget the challenge! xo

- - - -


Tobi Alfier's most recent collection of poetry is Slices Of Alice. She is also co-editor with Jeff Alfier of the San Pedro River Review. Don't miss Tobi's columns on the craft of poetry: insert your email address in the "Follow By Email" box to the right of this article and you'll be notified every time a new article appears.


Friday, August 9, 2019

Brian Beatty On Jim Carroll

Borrowed Trouble: Micro Tribute to Jim Carroll (1949-2009)

I wouldn’t write at all if it weren’t for myriad writers before me whose works showed me what was possible. The poems of this series are small offerings of respect, of thanks, to those muses. – Brian Beatty

Jim Carroll

Flattened basketballs 
always reminded me
of Halloween pumpkins
smashed in the street.

Gangs of so-called toughs 
hide in the neighborhood shadows,
collective breath held in prayer.

Mothers at home have no idea
where their little boys have gone.

Vultures and priests claim the dead.  

– Brian Beatty


Click to see more


Learn more about Jim Carroll:








- - - -


click here for more on this book
click for more on this book
NEW! Read the entire series of Borrowed Trouble by Brian Beatty anywhere you go by buying the collection of all sixty poems today! You've enjoyed these poetic tributes on-line, now enjoy them everywhere!


Brian's recent collections of poetry are Dust and Stars: Miniatures and Brazil, Indiana


Don't miss Brian's columns on great poets: insert your email address in the "Follow By Email" box to the right of this article and you'll be notified every time a new article appears.

Tobi Alfier - Writing with a Goal in Mind


Most of the time I will be the first person to say you should not write for an audience, you should write for yourself. I really believe that. But two things happened this week to remind me that sometimes I don’t do that, and sometimes you won’t want to do that either.

A friend of mine who you have met in a prior blog post, had a poem accepted by The Rye Whiskey Review. This is a woman who now lives in Indiana. She had given up all hope that she would ever be published in North Carolina, and did not know that Rye Whiskey was based there. When I told her, her response was “No. Wait! Are you telling me I've just been published by a North Carolina literary journal????? OMG. Holy cow! Woot! Happy dance all over the place. Accepted for the first time by my home state!!!! OMG.”
Another friend of mine who you have also met in a prior blog post told me yesterday “For some reason, I really want to get published in Vermont” (because she went there one time and really loved it). She went on to say that she’d really like to get published in a state university literary review, and “I think it would be so funny to get in to North Dakota”.
Think of these end results as goals, more than audiences.
I know there are some journals who will never publish me. I don’t write in a way that matches their aesthetics. I try every couple of years, and am pleased to report they remain consistent, and so do I.
While my two friends think about where they’d like to be published, I think about it a different way. I want to be published with Jeff. I love when we are published together. It may sound silly, but it makes me happy to see both our names on a back cover or Table of Contents.
Jeff and I don’t write the same, and we don’t have the same poem triggers, so the first thing I have to do, and the first thing we all should do, is READ THE GUIDELINES!
Let’s talk about Sport Literate. I wrote about them in my post of March 19th but from a different angle. Jeff has been published by them multiple times. I couldn’t write a sports poem if you gave me a thousand dollars! Okay, I could write a gymnastics poem, but I don’t think “beam and bars” is very poetic, nor do I think falling asleep at a World Series game has much to say for it.
Thank goodness I looked at “about us” on the Sport Literate website. It says “Sprung from the 12th floor of Columbia College Chicago in 1995, Sport Literate, is a literary journal focusing on “honest reflections on life’s leisurely diversions.” Praying for a broad definition of “life’s leisurely diversions”, I jumped in.


Katie Caldwell Meets a Plumber at the Muscle Car Dance

Squat-bodied Chevys plant themselves
like a garden of boiling colors –
the red not seen in 50 years
and a green so old it makes nostalgia
feel young.

She follows the hood ornaments to the dance floor,
a blues band tuning up, that particular
beat that says I’ll sing about anything and you’ll
crave it.  All the longing you’ll ever need.

You can awkwardly dance to it,
or look around.  And look around she does.
He’s got 10 years on her if a day,
graceful in that dirty torn t-shirt kind of way
that says he’s a working man,
taking a break from the present to drift back
to his past,

when Saturday nights meant shine her up,
race her reckless, then get the girl.
And she wants to be that girl.  Cherry-red
lips and a yellow dress match anywhere
she ends up.

Life was more unhardened then, the danger
more in their minds, adrenaline
churning and a pack of smokes hiding
in the glove box for later.

She can still do that high-school sidle,
she is by his side in a heartbeat.
The blues makes him talkative; the ex
and his girls live three states away, he’s
been here all his life, has a good business
left from his father, and a dog.

She takes his hand, dances gracefully among
the clowning tourists, visitors to this world
in plaid shorts and wrist bands. And in that dance
she becomes everything to him.  Don’t matter
nothin’ ‘bout tomorrow.  He knows she’ll be there,
sure as the dice hanging from the rear-view.
  
(previously published in Sport Literate)

Holy cow, it’s not just about baseball! Muscle cars are a leisurely diversion. Would I like to be in Sport Lit again? Heck yes, but I have to write those poems first, and I haven’t.

When you take a look at some of the odd themes out there, I’d be scared if you had poems on theme without tweaking something you already have, or writing something new. Usually that’s called “editing”. In my opinion, poems are fluid until they’re published. If you have to bend something a tiny bit to get that square peg into a round hole while keeping your voice and your heart, and that allows you to be published in your home state, or published with your husband, how cool is that?

BUT… There are some journals I love, that Jeff doesn’t submit to, and vice versa. There are some that accept me and not him, and more that accept him and not me. It doesn’t matter, it’s not a contest.

Continue to write your own beautiful way, and don’t lower your standards for anything.  Read the guidelines. Submit where appropriate for you. And if you have a goal, whatever that may be, don’t be blind to other opportunities, and the very best of luck to you.

And please send a comment below so we can all do the happy dance with you!!!



- - - -


Tobi Alfier's most recent collection of poetry is Slices Of Alice. She is also co-editor with Jeff Alfier of the San Pedro River Review. Don't miss Tobi's columns on the craft of poetry: insert your email address in the "Follow By Email" box to the right of this article and you'll be notified every time a new article appears.