Congrats to Lissa Kiernan whose book Two Faint Lines in the Violet (2014, Negative Capability Press) is a 2014 Julie Suk Award finalist for best poetry book by an independent press! Kiernan is one of only 16 writers nominated for this honor.
See a complete list of finalists here.
Learn more about the book here: http://www.twofaintlines.com/
So you learned the Alphabet, yes? But then what? The ABECEDARIAN is an alphabetical excursion: poem, essay, assay, story, aggregation of . . .
An abcedarian poem is one in which verses or words begin with the successive letters of the alphabet. The first line could start with the first letter of the alphabet: A. The following lines, then could start with B, C, D, E ,F, G,H, etc. You can write a double abecedarian – so a,b,c, figuration at the beginning of the line will also be used at the end of each line. For example: Alabama is not Arizona, nor is it Alaska. (See the beginning and end of the line ends with “a.” And you may choose to write a prose poem using the letters of the alphabet.
Psalm 119 is one of the earliest famous abecedarian poems, the song arranged in sections according to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, each of which is featured in its own section.
Carolyn Forché: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/carolyn-forche and
See YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsbMHshf1a8
A model of excellence in writing an abcedarian is Carolyn Forché’s 47 page poem: “On Earth.” It is in her book entitled blue hour. I think this book ought to be on every poet’s book shelf. Here are two stanzas from Forché’s poem:
a barnloft of horse dreams, with basin and bedclothes
a bit of polished quiet from a locked church
a black coat in smoke
a black map of clouds on a lake
……………………………………………..
air filled with ash, notebooks with sorrowing ink
airfield to airfield
algebraic music
all night the boats calling out
all of them, à-dieu
all questioning to myself . . .
What is exciting to me is how one form won’t sit still – how it fidgets itself into another shape—like it’s playing dress-up. Here is a poem by Howard Nemerov that is obviously an Abecedarian – but it’s also a sonnet.
A Primer of the Daily Round
by Howard Nemerov -- http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/222
Here's the first stanza of a poem by Dominique Fitzpatrick-O'Dinn. She has written the alphabet in a prose-poem sequence.
Aaron always arrived at Hammer and Taft early, although occasionally Hammer--and always Taft--arrived somewhat earlier. Aaron immediately unwrapped a ham salad sandwich and ate hald. Aaron always waived a midday break and instead ate sandwiches and drank herbal tea at a regular pace all day. Around late afternoon. Hammer and Taft always bragged about massive appetites and disappeared. At a nearby restaurant, Hammer and Taft ate abundant salad, meat, and pasta (and drank many large cocktails). Aaron ceased answering calls and searched databases. Later, Hammer and Taft came back.
The entire sequence tells of Hammer and Taft -- all the way from A-to Z.
The abecedarian wears many costumes and dresses itself up as a sonnet, a sestina, as novel, as story, and is limited only by the imagination.
Here are some additional “abecedarianists” and some examples from which to model your work.
One of my favorite abecedarians is "A Poem for S," by Jessica Greenbaum
A Poem for S.
Because you used to leaf through the dictionary,
Casually, as someone might in a barber shop, and
Devotedly, as someone might in a sanctuary,
Each letter would still have your attention if not
For the responsibilities life has tightly fit, like
Gears around the cog of you, like so many petals
Hinged on a daisy. That’s why I’ll just use your
Initial. Do you know that in one treasured story, a
Jewish ancestor, horseback in the woods at Yom
Kippur, and stranded without a prayer book,
Looked into the darkness and realized he had
Merely to name the alphabet to ask forgiveness—
No congregation of figures needed, he could speak
One letter at a time because all of creation
Proceeded from those. He fed his horse, and then
Quietly, because it was from his heart, he
Recited them slowly, from aleph to tav. Within those
Sounds, all others were born, all manner of
Trials, actions, emotions, everything needed to
Understand who he was, had been, how flaws
Venerate the human being, how aspirations return
Without spite. Now for you, may your wife’s
-ray return with good news, may we raise our
Zarfs to both your names in the Great Book of Life.
And a prose poem abecedarian by Sue Walker:
ABCing
Sue Walker
Abouten Adam’s aggravoked and ailish housecat allus a-fleetin’ an’ a-flying and aspersed, abouten Annie, ass-backward, back-assward, busy boiling bacon, bakin’ beans, barefoot bred, beatin’ biscuits, being on ‘bout bald face whiskey, barnburning, barnlots, barnyard preachers, bed babies, bankers, bards, blanket stretchers, big-butts, Big Mama bedscrow and bescrewing, bookooing betwixt a balk and a breakdown, buckin’ a bull off a bridge, cuttin’ up, carryin’ on, cat-fevered, cattin’ around, calcilatin’, chargin’ it to the dust, chunk-chonk, commencing cuttin’ the tail off the dog, damn doddly, draggy, disremembering ‘dis down-in-the-mouth, dog-stud debt-daddy, dead mule in the yard, dadgummit, eegit, ever enurf to choke a horse, embrangled fuddle-britches, feak-fat fool, fruit jar sucker, fo’ gawd, gap-toothed, gimber-jawed grammoner ginniin’ around gizzard-shads grinning like a mule eating briars, he-kickin’, hell-bent, haggly-headed hush-mouth intent on, indeed invested in irrepressible Ima Hogg in Houston, imagining jouissance, joy-riding, juicing the cow, jumpin’ the broom, James Dickeying, kickin’ up a row, kowtowing lackadaisical larker, low-down, low-life, laid-off lout meaner than a junk yard dog with 14 sucking pups, meaner than a skunk, muley mouth milk and water mill clapper misspelling Missouri, Mississippi, Michigan, moon-eyed, moralizing mulligrub, nickering, nattering, narring, neighing, naying, no count, no good, nittering niddle-noodlenuncupating “not, not, not” off scouring, obsecratating ovation, plus pretty poems promise popular publication, promise precious prizes, publicity, possum fat and hominy, pure-n-tee pleasure, quill-wheeling past Prichard, past Panola, Pansey, Point Clear, quaggling quintessent quawking quiddity, rambunctious, rampageous, redneck, shilly-shallying, scattering sibilants, scat-singing shaconian scribe, taddling, tiddling, tautegorical tale-teller, thaumaturgist, touchous type-tapper, unusual ubermensch, various, vigorous, versified vittupso, wag, windy-spinner, writer, witing-out, X-ing out, XXXX, Zounds!
We Mean To Be the People We Mean to Be
(A New Year, 2015)
Not resolutions – not exactly – but more importantly, a striving to be better than we are – a new beginning – not just at the beginning of a new year – but every day.
In honoring and in recognition of the death of poet-writer-editor, Miller Williams’ death on Jan 1, 2015 or Alzheimer’s, I cannot help but think of the loss of this great talent, this great mind that wrote – among many things, the poem “Of History and Hope” that he delivered at President John F. Kennedy’s 2nd Inauguration – especially the lines:
“But where are we going to be, and why, and who?
The disenfranchised dead want to know.
We mean to be the people we meant to be,
To keep on going where we meant to go.”
What if we spent money on Alzheimer’s research and cancer research instead of on weapons and war?
Miller Williams’ home was said to be a Salon – where he entertained Charles Bukowski and Jimmy Carter. Negative Capability is the home of a local salon – dubbed Octavia’s Salon – named after Madam Octavia LeVert who lived in Mobile, Alabama (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octavia_Walton_Le_Vert) following her marriage to Dr. Henry LeVert in 1811 until the time of her death in 1877. Edgar Allen Poe once wrote a love poem for her.
But – a personal recollection re Miller Williams is when, in an exchange about publishing Negative Capability, he asked if I would like to publish some poems by Jimmy Carter. The answer was “Of Course!” In the 1994, Vols 1-2, issue of Negative Capability, we published 5 of President Carter’s poems: “A Reflection of Beauty in Washington,” “Hollow Eyes, Bellies, Hearts, “Contemplation Of What Has Been Created, and Why,” and “A Winter Morning.”
Here is Carter’s poem, “A Reflection Of Beauty In Washington”
I recall one winter night
going to the White House roof
to study the Orion nebulae.
But we could barely
see the stars,
their images so paled by city lights.
Suddenly we heard an eerie sound
Primeval in its tone and rhythm
Coming from the north.
We turned to watch in silence
Long wavering V’s
Breasts transformed to brilliance
By the lights we would have dimmed.
The geese passed overhead,
and then without a word
we descended to a peaceful sleep,
marveling at what we’d seen and heard.
Yes, peace. And thank you President Carter and Miller Williams for your lasting gifts. And a Happy New Year from Negative Capability Press. (Sue Walker)
The Carribean Writer a literary journal published annually by the University of the Virgin Islands recently reviewed our title Prophets of the Morning LIght by Patricia Harkins-Pierre.
Observations on Morning Light
Patricia Harkins-Pierre, Prophets of Morning Light. Mobile, Alabama: Negative Capability Press, 2014. Trade Paperback: 73 pages.
The title of Patricia Harkins Pierre’s new poetry collection, Prophets of Morning Light, presents balanced observations of life and death, love and loss, as well as family, friends, well known personalities, society in general, and the natural environment.
The opening poem, “Church in Brittany,” presents impressions of two idealistic newly weds who walk “the cliffs/on their honeymoon,” under the church wall covered with a “faded fresco”(3), that seems to foreshadow failure. The theme of frustrated romantic relationships is further explored in the poem, “Honeymoon,” where a lover’s letter arrives from Saigon bearing unwelcomed news. Accordingly, the nervous narrator complains that the unopened letter sent by her lover feels “cold …and thin”(9).
Some poems share witty perceptions of controversial political personalities. In the poem, “Sisters in Spirit,” an association is made between two former Prime Ministers, Indira Ghandi of India, and Margaret Thatcher of Britain. These two highly visible leaders run the risk of assassination because of their radical social and economic policies. Another media celebrity, Imelda Marcos, having grown widely unpopular, harbors fantasies of disappearing from public life, in the poem, “Imelda Becomes Invisible “(32).
From reading these poems, the reader will conclude that the author is a nature lover. The lush, tropical scenery of Caribbean life seems to inspire many of the poems in the collection. The title poem, “Prophets of Morning Light”(66), celebrates the wide-winged pelicans that populate the St. Thomas harbor at dawn. Other interesting poems that celebrate tropical animals, fauna and flora include: “Wanda Under the Angel Tree” (67), “Tigers in Paradise” (37), “Christmas in Paradise “(72), “Zebralight “(36), and “Love Feast: An Island Ode” (64).
The poet also pays tribute to the former noted Caribbean-American poet and colleague, Audre Lorde, in the poems, “Telling the Truth About Audre“(40), and “Sweet Flesh, Sharp Bones” (41). In another poem, “Requiem for Gene” (53), homage is paid to former University of the Virgin Islands colleague, the late Gene Emanuel.
The poems, “Grand Mother’s Saints” (17-18), “Death by Fire” (19-20), “Driving Lesson” (21), and “Grandmother’s Stockbridge” celebrate the lives to beloved family relations.
The poems are carefully crafted; the language is lively and energetic. I had fun reading these poems.
Vincent O. Cooper
University of the Virgin Islands
DECEMBER 1: NEGATIVE CAPABILITY celebrates the first day of December, 2014. It is John Crowley’s birthday. He was born this day in 1942. He is a writer of science fiction and fantasy as well as mainstream fiction. Perhaps his best-known novel is Little Big. Crowley is also a Documentary film-maker.
“The Universe is Time’s being,” he says. Negative Capability thinks about time and it’s passing as we begin a new month and into the celebrations of the season. We have gathered some of Crowley’s quotes as we ponder our “walkings-up” and greet the months unexpected surprising.
“There was after all no mystery in the end of love, no mystery but the mystery of love itself, which was large certainly but as real as grass, as natural and unaccountable as bloom and branch and their growth.”
― John Crowley, Little, Big
“Time, I think, is like walking backward away from something: say, from a kiss. First there is the kiss; then you step back, and the eyes fill up your vision, then the eyes are framed in the face as you step further away; the face then is part of a body, and then the body is framed in a doorway, then the doorway framed in the trees beside it. The path grows longer and the door smaller, the trees fill up your sight and the door is lost, then the path is lost in the woods and the woods lost in the hills. Yet somewhere in the center still is the kiss. That's what time is like.”
― John Crowley, Engine Summer
“But life is wakings-up, all unexpected, all surprising.”
― John Crowley, Little, Big
Negative Capability Press was founded in Mobile, AL and has been publishing award winning books since 1981. Negative Capability Press is a Member of Span: Small Publishers Association of North America.
Negative Capability Press is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization. Every dollar we earn is put directly back into our press. Thank you for your support!
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