Poem Challenges

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Steely Dan, etc.

This challenge comes at my request from Brennan Marks, my brother Sam's friend. Brennan founded "The Steely Dan Conversation Group" while they were in high school, and I've read some of the really funny speeches and poems he's written from the group's annual banquets and for Facebook birthday posts.

So naturally, I wanted a challenge from him. I figured it would have something to do with Steely Dan. I didn't realize it would have to do with so many other things as well.

His challenge:

Write a poem explaining how Steely Dan is the greatest band of all time in a non-ironic, non-sarcastic completely genuine manner, how your dear cousin Adam Witcher Greene agrees that Steely Dan is the greatest band of all time, and that basketball is the greatest sport of all time.
Must be iambic pentameter

ABAB rhyme scheme (can be slant rhyme if necessary)

10 4 line stanzas (or more than 10 if you need them but no less)

Must reference former Alabama Crimson Tide QB AJ McCarron

Must use the phrase "Quoth the GAYven"

Must use the phrase "isometric indifference curve"

Must quote a portion of the following Biblical verses: Leviticus 19:27-30.

Must incorporate this in a line exactly as quoted: "Barack HUSSEIN Obama"

Must use phrase "I'm better than Nabokov"

Must make reference to the Rothschild banking family

Must make reference to Ben Grimes

My poem:

All We Know Is This

When sunlight bangs against the moon, that's jazz.
My cousins think the sun is a basketball.
Cousin Adam says the moon is just a spazz
whose soft white forehead is a moving backboard.

Our president plays basketball, the sport
of passing, our president, the papers say
Barak HUSSEIN Obama is a part
of the ending nation, part of the sad play

full of actors who strut and fret and reel the years
as Donald Fagan says, the mastermind
of the world's greatest band, oh losers don't fear--
there's a name for you when you win, and it's Ben Grimes,

my brother, author of the ballad "Gynn Tarry".
But I digress! My kin and their opinions
could fill eleven stanzas, outstar stars.
"Steely Dan," says Adam Grimes, my cousin,

"is the world's greatest band," and that's the sum
of some law and knowledge, plus do not
tattoo your bodies for the dead, plus some
of my kin would say I'm better than Nabokov.

He's dead, and I'm not. And basketball, yes,
my cousin Brennan Grimes says (I agree)
it is the best sport, almost as powerful as rest.
Old quarterbacks don't die, they just impede

the progress of the team with bloated ghosts.
Remember former quarterback, AJ
McCarron, how he was known to say, "Quoth
the GAYven, 'I believe in second place'."

But cousins, brothers, countrymen, I do
believe in second place, in the gutrot "okay",
the redemption of our ugly, hated, foes,
and sometimes being worse than Nabokov.

It's impossible to say just what I mean!
With all things being equal, an isometric
indifference curve, your spleen is worth my spleen.
My kin believe my attitude's pathetic.

All Grimeses of the world, unite in panic!
Our reign is but a portion of the Rothschilds',
but it lasts as long as we can fit
jazzlight, sport, and words into our lives.

Brennan's masterful review:

Review of All We Know Is This

The stanzas flow like the River Nile

The imagery in the first stanza ain’t chopped liver

Love the first line; will have to keep in my file

Congo, Niger, Orange, and Limpopo are also African rivers

Fame equals length is what the kids say

It’s a nice tie-in that Obama likes basketball

And the poem I’m reviewing reminds me of flowers in May:

Sweet. But with Obama in charge, do the cherries blossom on the National Mall?

Third stanza, we finally get to the Dan

But my one complaint is that FagAn is misspelled.

Should be FagEn, Adam Greene is his #1 fan

But of course, you could easily fix the typo after thereview and send me to Hell

And here, the overall theme of the poem comes out

Truly this is about the importance of family and

Achieving immortality through family and art, a Grimes would know no doubt

That family is immortal and of all time, Steely Dan is the greatest band

But back to the previous stanza real quick

“Outstar stars” is a genius phrase in my opinion

Some lines from Leviticus really make me tick

And Nabokov couldn’t do this or my name isn’t Brennan

This stanza, I really like the last line, and how it transitions

I also like the analogy to rest

Rest, I agree, is important and deserves to be mentioned

Right before the QB who will always be second best

To Adam, in his heart, and to Steely Dan musically speaking

AJ McCarron really adds depth to this poem

The perfection of Steely Dan and basketball compared to this weakling

Shows that most of the world is flawed but we must keep on rowin’

And as you said in this stanza, it’s okay to finish in second

And that’s quite an all right sentiment

Which is what the poet in all of us might beckon

But the poets among all people perhaps are first at being sentient

For instance, until this poem and all poems by Ivy, myfavorite poem of all time

Was the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. How did you know, unless you could tell

From my prompt, that I would love this stanza’s first line

Much more than sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells?

But the theme hits hard in this final verse.

Family and imperfection and immortality perhaps even love, which is mighty

So I appreciate you not making my difficult prompt terse

I enjoyed what you did with it, well-done, thank you Ivy!

No, thank you, Brennan! Hopefully we will work together on poems and poem-reviews-in-poem-form in the future.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Corn Love

I asked one of my former writing professors, Michael Martone, for a challenge. He's always reminded me a little of David Lynch in that he's Midwestern, he's often cryptic, and he's obsessed with corn. And he's someone I've learned a lot from! He was an encouraging teacher who championed my zaniness in class, and I'll always appreciate that.

And he has his own Wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_A._Martone

At any rate, his challenge for me was "the sex life of corn." It was a puzzler, and props to Alana Baldwin (featured in a previous post) who helped me edit this poem by cutting it in half, putting the beginning at the end, and cutting out a stanza that featured the phrase "inert within its husk."

So here we go:

Corn Love

As its husk loosens, Corn enjoys
glossy magazine pics of barbecues...

...sauce delirious, pepper shimmering.

And on the side of the grill, Corn himself.

Aluminum tuxedo. Butter that smooths pocked skin.

How fine it is to look at other versions of ourselves.

To get ideas.

Corn wants Corn, but Corn

wants to be dressed.

It takes a lover, Midwestern at heart,
a farmer, a fieldfly,
a strong rabbit to undress it.

Midwesterners think blood, like taco soup,
is full of red-coated Corn.

Corn thinks Midwesterners are sweet,

but too sweet.

Michael's review:

HUZZAH!

Friday, September 12, 2014

Working Moms

My friend and coworker Caroline's challenge to me was to write about working moms. She has three young kids (all girls, and including a pair of twins) and she's a great mom who still works like crazy. She says that people see her kids and ask how she could still work, and she replies, "How could I not work?" So in this poem, I'm thinking about how working to take care of your kids and working to take care of the world often go together...how they dovetail and support each other.

Unfortunately, the challenge was extra challenging, because the subject of working women/working moms always makes me think of this song from my youth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hDvXk2X-1M

It's not very conducive to poem-writing.

This is another poem where I go really macro, talk about "the world." I think that along with the next challenge I receive for this blog, I'll issue my own challenge to myself...go micro. Write about the trees and don't mention the forest.

At any rate, here's my poem:

Working Mother

A girl and her long hair are grass--
need care, but grow regardless

of your tugging.

Art is swirling her hair into a bun,
and work is entering the wilderness,
the world of ungroomed beauty.

A girl is part of the world,

though sometimes driven underground
to muffle the sound of her tears.

A girl's work is to stop hiding.

A mother's work is to unearth her,
show her that the world
is strong and wild enough to hold her,

and make this true by being strong
and wild enough to hold the world.

God is pleased with the man who cleans the floor
when the floor is caressed into a diamond.

God sees our work and sees our work to love,

make things glisten

for children, and for everyone.

Caroline's review:

I sometimes wonder if all of the tasks and reminders I expect of myself each day really affect my life and my daughters' lives in a positive way - or really in any sort of way. I don't believe any woman sets out to achieve a title of "superwoman". I believe women have an inherent nature to multitask, and occasionally that quality/flaw will tip the scale and seems a bit overboard. I have a constant internal struggle over whether or not I am making the right moves as a woman and a mother. I want my children to see my choices as strong ones and persevering ones, but I don't want these choices to be at the sacrifice of my responsibility of being a mother. So, the question is... Are the late nights and laptop-weekends teaching my young and impressionable tots something positive? Or am I doing them a disservice by confusing them on where my priorities stand?

So my answer to the dreaded question I get day in and day out - I do what I do because it is my human nature kicking into survival mode. I don't stop to think about how I haven't showered that day or how I thought I've had my much-needed third dose of caffeine, when really I look down to stare at my full and cold cup of coffee from 5:15 that morning. I do, however, remember seeing the three sets of big-beautiful-sleepy-brown eyes that brightened as they met mine that morning when I dragged them out of bed way too early to go to daycare so Mom and Dad could go to work to help provide for our family of five.

I think the man who I shared the elevator with this morning before work summed up my response to this: "I don't know how you do it?!" As I am clearly breaking a sweat at 7:30am with my middle child strapped to me in an ergo carrier and her four-day-fever penetrating my skin, he says, "a mother does what a mother has to do." Very true old man - thank you for those wise words of clarity.

And Ivy... the Sammy Kershaw song... really? Haha... But, no, seriously - I agree 100% that mothering can very much be broadened into the larger concept of caring for the world. We all do what we feel we are called to do. It is not something we have any control over - it is just there as part of our makeup.

Friday, August 29, 2014

Gibberish

For this challenge, I asked Jamie Sharp, a writer and editor who once published a couple of my poems in his journal, The Associative Press, and whose work I love. He has an amazing book of poems that stretch your logic-skin the way a jawbreaker stretches out your cheek. And it's hilarious. It's called Animal Husbandry Today:

http://www.ecwpress.com/books/animal-husbandry-today

So his challenge for me is, in his words:

Given that not all gibberish is equal, why do we form preferences for one kind of nonsense over another? Can nothing be conveyed; is every word/note/brushstroke a mirror?

He directed me to this music video by an Italian entertainer, Adriano Celentano, who wrote a song meant to mimic the sound of English, but where the words (as you can hear) are meaningless:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcUi6UEQh00

So this is a question I'll be thinking about for a long time. With or without the help of Wittgenstein, I can't say.

But I can say for the present that poetry is most interesting to me when it does function as mirror, at least in some ways...when it gives me space to imagine...when it acts as a spark for meaning-making.

I thought about Jabberwocky here, too, the most famous nonsense poem. One technique there is the portmanteau. Similarly, I decided to try a poem that looks like it's written in a different language, but which is a series of combined English words that can (usually) be pulled apart and translated. This is especially apparent by the last stanza. But once you translate the words out of their combinations...there's still some meaning-making left for the reader to do.

Goldoor

O moodim offall orich fishearer

rubyells areating gleamstill

o goldoor.

Dontake damnos

dontell theater goldoor

isntoffee.

Heartear comesoft overwhelmy bellights.

Tastevening, teaseven,

believe o droppedeal.

tone saidove, tother nominalion.

Ono.

Illeave beforeverest

fallseawards

toverwhelm tovercome

toffer mysteryous

foreaching goldoor.

Here's Jamie's review, which parodies certain approaches to the interpretation of poetry and raises some deep questions in the process:

Another Ivy Grimes poem, printed long ago in The Associative Press, asked “How could they wrap their minds around it,/ like foil around a piece of red candy?”

Take a single golden idea and wrap it around: the Italian music video; Ivy’s poem; the world. Everything contained in the wrapper is now digestible: is sense. Everything outside the wrapper is nonsense.

What is the golden idea that can envelop Ivy’s poem, “Goldoor”? Psychoanalysis!

Notice the toffee in this piece and the red candy in her previous poem. The world—its sweetness—is primarily to be explored with the mouth. An oral fixation is strongly at play. The poet was probably switched to bottle feeding, at around six months, and now feels disconnected from: the real, the mother, the world.

But what if the golden wrapper is actually Efficient Market Theory? Clearly the poem’s “nominal lion” is…

This is too hard. But existing without the wrapper is hard too. I am overwhelmed! I can’t embrace “toffer mysteryous.” And one thought frightens me most: if the gold door doesn’t exist, is the reaching for it real?

Great poem, Ivy. Now I’ll go cry myself to sleep.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

Skyrim: Elder Scrolls

My next challenge is from a colleague who chooses to remain anonymous. Why anonymous? Because he doesn't want anyone in his professional life (the guys who belong to the nice country clubs in town) to know he is into a game called Skyrim: Elder Scrolls.

http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Skyrim

As always, the Elder Scrolls Wiki was quite useful in my poem composition.

The Game of Quests

A dragon's always poised
to wreck everything,
and as I speak into your hagiography,
I choose to describe you
finagling a spear into the monster's wing
like a fork into dry meat.

When you begin your quest, you choose
what kind of creature to be,
for the sake of redeeming those
like and unlike you.

But you don't choose your soul.
You are finite, a seabird
who can't eat all the fish in the ocean.

Whatever language you learn,
the devil learned it first.
Every game has an author.

Don't bruise your tongue
with spells.
The dragon will terrorize itself.
The world it haunts can only rob you
of your hero's hat.
Let the snow eat your enemies.
Give the snow your meat.

Anon's review:

Interestingly, there is some gameplay truth in this poem. Sometimes you don't have to fight the dragons but wait for them to be killed by others. Also, the dragon shouts you learn is really just rediscovering an old dragon language. There does always seem to be a dragon about to wreck everything--in life and otherwise.

Though, of course, there aren't any spears in Skyrim.

Rent-Seeking

This challenge involves an unwieldy economic theory! It's a challenge from my friend Harry David, who is not to be confused with Harry & David, a gourmet fruit basket company.

Harry has studied economics extensively and written much on the subject (he blogs at lombardstreet.tumblr.com), and he also does an excellent job of making writing publish-able, as you can see here: http://www.harrydavid.net/.

He also recently accepted a challenge from me to write from an economic perspective about the 613 mitzvoth in Jewish law, and the result was informative and deep: http://lombardstreet.tumblr.com/post/92808015488/613-ways-to-break-the-law His challenge to me was to write about rent-seeking. As he explained to me briefly and quickly:
"Rent-seeking is the pursuit of income in excess of that which is necessary to induce a factor of production to put itself on the market (a "rent" in the technical meaning), where the means by which this income is created destroys social value. It erodes the rule of law, it wastes resources as producers compete to gain the rents, it contributes to the ossification of the political economy." I Wikipediaed it of course, but even Wikipedia failed to explain the concept simply to me, and in short, the poem was in fact a good challenge for me. I thought about a variety of potential (surreal) situations involving using resources to eliminate barriers to profit (such as spending money to lobby for tariffs or restrictions on your competitors). But of course, I brought it around to the mythic and didn't deal with the concept as it exists in the world of fact and logic it was invented in. Is this cheating? I don't know! Probably! Let's find out.

Honey Baron

Let's conspire, buy armies to depose the king,

and impose a leader who is friendly to monopolies

so I can be a honey baron.

I’ll sell zebra-flavored honey to lions,

seed-flavored honey to birds.

For women, amber and orange,

for men, sour and smoke,

for the heartbroken, honey with hints

of persimmon, meringue, tulip.

I’d sell everything

to have one kingdom.

To succeed, I only need tariffs

on sweets, and on invisible forests

that house wild bees

whose honey in this world is fire.

When all the bees know my heartbeat

and their bodies move like waves to my words,

they’ll make honey from anything—

past and future, the tree of knowledge

and the tree of life.

Protection for my business

will mean profit for everyone.

When I’m queen of my own kingdom,

the honey will be free.

Harry's review:

This is beautiful, Ivy. Magical.

First, the criticism: I don't see why a self-interested honey baron would want to provide honey for free. After all, the point of the tariff was to increase her profits.

And I don't see how in her new kingdom there would be profit for everyone -- not, again, why she might want that. In a sense, though, it makes sense. Tariffs are usually dressed up as being in the public interest, even as they in fact only benefit the lobbying special interest. So that line may reflect a statement for public consumption.

The rest of the poem captures the concept nicely. You are right about the effect of a tariff, for instance. And your point about hiring an army to depose the king is quite astute. Spending resources to supplant the king is indeed a form of rent-seeking, and one that is not often written about.

Beautiful, imaginative, astute. You beat the challenge. Good job!

Continuity

I met Alana Baldwin ten years ago in college at Auburn. We were on Auburn's student literary magazine together, and we bonded when we realized the same guy had invited each of us over (on different occasions, of course) to hang out at his place, where he spontaneously broke out his guitar to stare into our eyes and play us a song. He played her a Pixies song, and he played me "Kiss Me" by Sixpence None the Richer, solidifying which of us he thought was cooler. (And yes, I ran the heck out of there as soon as the song was over.)

Her challenge for me to was to write about continuity. She was inspired by the documentary Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?, a series of interviews with Noam Chomsky by Michel Gondry. I came very close here to explaining Chomsky's idea of psychic continuity as he relates it in the film, but I was beginning to bore and confuse myself. Suffice it to say -- he's interested in how we put together our observations (that to him often have no inherent meaning) and see them as whole. One example he uses is that the Charles River could have many additions (pollution, tributaries), but remain the Charles River to us. Gondry uses the example that when he meets with an old friend he hasn't seen in a while, at first the man is like a stranger, but after he speaks with him for about 20 minutes, the man transforms into his friend again.

I put all this together and related it to something else Chomsky said about how many people have the need to believe that existence continues after this life ends, and that he doesn't need that, but he is sympathetic to people who do.

A decade of friendship with someone necessarily means reconciling the new self with the old self I remember from ten years ago. This also reminded me of friendship with God, and how this friendship causes you to change in ways that are difficult to reconcile with who you once were.

At any rate, Alana is an incredibly creative person, an excellent graphic designer, and a good friend. You can find some of her work here - http://alanabaldwin.com/, and you can also peruse some accidentally obscene logos she is in the process of collecting here - http://logohno.tumblr.com/.

The Beginning and The End

We were taught scripture, though
we misrememebered it--
in the beguilement, mouths corrupted the holy

and the born, and the born were without fortunes,
and dogwoods shadowed the nightmares of the sea.
And the sputter of ghosts marred the first weather.

And both of us said - let this be left.

When I met you, you collected odd shirts,
and as I follow the progression of human history
from Adam naming the animals to the moment
we became friends, I note
the shirt you wore the day we met was covered in animals
wearing braces, holding up mirrors for each other,
each one enraptured by his own caged smile.

You still have the shirt, ten years later,
but don't wear it anymore when making friends.

"I know Christians by looking

in their eyes at that unearthly kindness,"
you said, and you weren't sure
if you saw it in mine then.

When you graft an odd branch to a tree,
when does it begin to belong?
A man to the faith of men,
a friend to a friend.
It belongs in stages, and even
when it rises, seamless,
its fruit could be a different shape
than the fruit of the other branches.

We could choose
to see this world as whole.

As an act of friendship, you entertained
my worries, which you said were contagious,
that I'd bring with us like smallpox
into eternity.

I learned slowly that when we worry,
we lose hope, and when we lose hope,
we lose our friends.

After Christ ascended,
his friends thought they were living in the end.
I think we're living, and I know it ends.

This is all very touching. I appreciate your thoughtful words + wish I could reciprocate on the same level. Flexing my visual muscles all these years, instead of the verbal ones, has made my thoughts very muddled and strangely pictorial. So, I'll draw you something.

A shallow drawing for a deep + meaningful poem. Tradesies?