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Its' nearly summer vacation, which mean more time to read and write poems.

Here are some books of poetry which should definitely be on your summer reading list.

Across the blue Chasm by Howard L. Craft

Moon Mirror Whiskey Wind By Debra Kaufman

Poem for the Day One (which is a collection of old and new poems) edited by Nicholas Albery, and Peter Ratcliffe.

HOUSE OF CARDS

Then the master in anger said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets

and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and maimed and blind and lame.’ And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges, and compel the people to come in, that my house may be filled. For I tell you none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.’ Luke 14: 21-24

Once there was a man who gave

a party. He invited the top of the deck.

The Kings and Queens,

Jacks and Tens, and, of course,

the Aces, those powers behind

even the Kings themselves, though

we all know it’s the Queens who run

the show. The point is none of them

came. That’s right, none of them

The Kings were busy in the walled

city, in the compound, deconstructing

their missiles, and the Queens,

the Queens were always moaning

about how overcommitted they were.

The Queens were sad, but busy or sad, it was

still a no, and the Jacks, the Jacks were cooking

up stuff, making plans, hatching the eggs

of desire and circumlocution. They were,

you might say, moving.

And the tens were so insecure, they just

sat there polishing their little hearts or

spades. They wanted to look good for

the Queens. They wanted to move up,

get a face, one of those cool one-eyed

Jack poses. So who was this guy anyway?

A nine at best.

But the guy, as I understand the story, was—

well, I know this comes as some surprise—

God. He just looked like a nine. And he was

really mad, and he told his servants, the eights,

to go out in the town, where all the new

subdivisions were, and find some sevens

and sixes, and then go down to Affordable Housing

and the bus station and the Wal-Mart

for some threes and fours, and most of all,

God said, invite the twos. By God, God laughed,

those twos are the best. And don’t forget the fives.

The fives might need a little extra persuading,

those skeptical fives.

And there it was, all those

beautiful low numbers crowding around the pool out back

drinking beer and eating chips and salsa, some of the threes

and sixes mixing it up, the sevens and fours

playing drums and guitars, the fives singing chorus.

And the twos, God bless the twos, they were

if you haven’t guessed it, the lovers. The twos

always came in sets. God liked the hearts

and diamonds best, but he loved them all.

And then, at the witching hour, or whatever

hour you like, God told some stories, and started

crying and wiping his eyes because he was so

happy to have them all there,

and as for the royalty, and as for the royalty,

and those slick behind the scenes Aces, well

there would be some wailing and gnashing

of teeth, just like the good book says. That’s

what I heard from those who were there..

Two two’s told me so.

From the face of the earth
is how they put it
when someone disappears
so all day your father paces
among bulldozers and cranes
as your mother sits in the car
muttering to the visor.

I hang in my own mother's womb,
little turtle, zeppelin of skin and marrow.
The chipped ice she craves
grinds in her teeth
like pneumatic saws.

And because television that summer
will be the closest thing to miracle,
she gives in to the sloppy recliner,
to the window fan's rattle and clack
to watch as hour by hour
hope fails in black and white.

Down there you must have heard something queer.
A scraping at earth, some ancient burrowing.

And what word can name the descent of midgets
armed with buckets and spades?

You lived two days, your voice
tamping at the surface, that one song
rising now and then into the suspended mike.

Then—air, light. The blood
hammering at the soft closure
of my skull, they lifted
me out, all slag and sediment,
sludge of another life,
and gave me your name.

©Cathy Smith Bowers, 1992, 1997.

We are well into 2010, and a new year means new poetry!! And what better way to inspire your inner poet and write great poems than to read some amazing poetry?  so here are some of my favorite books of poetry, I highly  recommend you read them:

Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith

Anthony Abbott's New and Selected Poems

Shadow box by fred Chappell

and Carl Sandburg's Chicago Poems

Happy Readings,

Zach

The adult student poet does not need to submit an instructor recommendation, otherwise the application requirements are essentially the same.

There is no cost for applying.  The Regional Committees where the student may apply and guidelines may be located at:

http://www.gilbertchappelldistinguishedpoetseries.com/

See next page for an application for that could be cut and pasted onto a word document and printed out.

Please supply the following in one packet and mail the application to the appropriate Regional Committee:

Applicant’s full name

Applicant's Address

Applicant's Email

Applicant's Phone number.

School name (public, private or home school) if enrolled

School's address

School's Email address

School's Phone number

Recommendation by a instructor (unless in the adult student category). The instructor must acknowledge that they have read and understand the guidelines. (attach on a separate page please)

An acknowledgement by each applicant that they have read, understand and will comply with the GCDP Series guidelines listed on the website. (attach on a separate page)

Send three pages of representative poetry along with the application.

The deadline is November 1^st of each year.

http://www.sleepycreek.org/poetry/

Eggs were our livelihood. Two or three thousand

leghorns, layers, loose in skinny backhouses

long like my mother’s body, like mine was becoming.

Behind them, a patch of wild blackberries,

pendants plump and glossy as the black-bodied

flies swarming warm piles of chicken litter.

My mother scrubbed every egg with detergent,

standing for hours on cracked linoleum,

her face a perfect oval. Though she’d scorned

plain serviceable women who preferred

unembossed china to her Wedgwood Patrician

because egg got stuck in its ridges,

even she would become serviceable, though never plain.

Once every summer she reveled in daylong jellying,

cheesecloth stretched tight over the kettle –

balm and blackness. We picked in long britches

to ward off the chiggers, chiggers,

a word so like the word we were not to utter.

The farther we went in the less we minded

the heat, the less we counted, as if July never

stopped ripening in our buckets. We watched

the tender blackness swell to royal purple, jewelling

in clear hot jars on the kitchen table.

Would we ever want to be anywhere but here

in the dusk with our mother,

telling her our hearts were hers, though never in words.

John Hoppenthaler

John Hoppenthaler’s books of poetry are Anticipate the Coming Reservoir (2008) and Lives of Water (2003), both titles from Carnegie Mellon University Press. His poems have appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, The Southern Review, The Florida Review, Ploughshares, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Barrow Street, The Laurel Review, Tar River Poetry, 5 AM, and Waccamaw, the anthologies Chance of a Ghost (Helicon Nine Editions), Blooming through the Ashes (Rutgers UP), September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond (Etruscan), and Poetry Calendar (Alhambra Publishing), Making Poems: Forty Poems with Commentary by the Poets (State University of New York Press) and elsewhere. With Kazim Ali, he has co-edited a volume of essays and interviews on the work of Jean Valentine. He served as Poetry Editor for Kestrel: A Journal of Literature and Art for eleven years, and he now curates Guestbook: A Poetry Congeries, a monthly feature of Connotation Press: An Online Artifact. For nine years, he served as Personal Assistant to Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, Toni Morrison. He has taught and lectured on creative writing at West Virginia University, Manhattanville College, the West Virginia Writers’ Workshop, the Chautauqua Institution, the Writers at the Beach Conference, and elsewhere, and he is currently an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at East Carolina University.

Here is one of his Poems,

Tree House

Take a walk down your block at three

in the morning. Listen to things

obscured by white noise in daytime:

gargle of a gutter at the end

of Limestone Lane; mild groans

from your neighbor’s tree house;

two maples daring just a little

closer to heaven. Vast orchards

of planets spin away into kilter.

Climb the rope ladder hanging there.

Sit in that far corner where high

moons filter through leaves

& over grass clippings, weekend roses

rot on the compost pile. Flickering

bats can barely be glimpsed dipping

darkness. It will be hard to leave

if you do it right. It will be awful

to stand down again on earth.

from Anticipate the Coming Reservoir, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2008