Wanted: Book reviews

Tipton Poetry Journal publishes occasional reviews of poetry books written by previous Tipton Poetry Journal contributors.

If you have been previously published in the Tipton Poetry Journal and have a recent or forthcoming book to be considered for review, please send an email with book details to bookreviews@tiptonpoetryjournal.com.

If you are a book reviewer and would like to review books for the Tipton Poetry Journal please send an email to bookreviews@tiptonpoetryjournal.com and include a sample book review as an attachment or a link.

Tonight's Edwidge Danticat appearance postponed

This event will be rescheduled later this semester.

7:30 p.m. The Vivian S. Delbrook Visiting Writers Series presents Edwidge Danticat in the Reilly Room, Atherton Union Building, Butler University, 4600 Sunset Ave., Indianapolis. http://aalbc.com/authors/edwidge.htm. Edwidge Danticat was born in Haiti and moved to the United States when she was 12. She is the author of several books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist; and The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner. She is also the editor of The Butterfly's Way: Voices From the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States and The Beacon Best of 2000: Great Writing by Men and Women of All Colors and Cultures. Danticat earned a degree in French literature from Barnard College, where she won the 1995 Woman of Achievement Award, and later an MFA from Brown University. She lives in Miami with her husband and daughter.

'Living With(out) You, by Joseph Kerschbaum: Founder Poetry Gathering

Twenty poets submitted 25 poems inspired by Sarah LaBarge's painting The Fields I Flew In (pictured below). On Nov. 6, 2009, several of the poets gathered at Gallery 308 in Muncie to read their works. LaBarge, Gallery 308, and some of the poets have consented to have their works reproduced on this blog. One poem will be featured each day, beginning Jan. 1.

If you're interested in purchasing this painting, contact the artist at sblabarge@bsu.edu or visit her website here.

Gallery 308 provides exhibition space for artists, encourages creative work, and serves as a cultural and education resource. Address: 308 E. Main St., Muncie, IN. For more information, visit http://www.gallery308.org/.

To see other poems for the Founder's Poetry Gathering, click here.









Living With(out) You, by Joseph Kerschbaum

The rooster wakes me unrested, restless in the morning,

at my hands, you recount my dreams all morning.


We live, you always said, under a big empty sky.

Cloudless, birdless -- I see stars, not just black sky.


When blood drips from my thumb

your mouth covers your thumb.


When I am alone in the woods after dark,

you reside in the shadows, afraid of the dark.


Been gone for years but I loved that boy,

You loved him but hated your love for that boy.


Never thought I'd lose you. I don't miss you.

In the graveyard, we step carefully over you.

Tipton Poetry Journal online

From Barry Harris, editor:

The Fall 2009 issue of Tipton Poetry Journal is now (after considerable delay) available online: http://tiptonpoetryjournal.com/tpj15/tpj_issue15.html

Poetry by Christine Orchanian Adler, Tracy Ahrens, Linda Arnold, J.
Matthew Boyleston, Ruthelen Burns, Dan Carpenter, Jessie Carty, Shelly
Chang, Joan Colby, Phoenix Cole, Louie Crew, Holly Day, Hugh Fox, Amy
Genova, Allan Johnston, Jenny Kalahar, Justin Kempf, Kit Kennedy, Steve
Klepetar, Norbert Krapf, Don Kunz, Theodore Lucero, M. Lynne Metz, Simon
Perchik, Timothy Pilgrim, Nancy Pulley, Stephen R. Roberts, Dennis Saleh,
Amy Jo Schoonover, Steve Shilling, J.J. Steinfeld, K.M.A. Sullivan,
Jessica Thompson, Wendy Vardaman, Peter Wyton and Changming Yuan; artwork
by Jody Flynn and Lynne Miller; and a review of Fiona Sze-Lorrain’s Water
the Moon by JL Kato.

Copies of the Fall 2009 issue ($5 per copy), as well as back issues, and
subscriptions can be purchased online at: http://tiptonpoetryjournal.com/.

'Woods Beyond the Pond,' by Mark Neely: Founder's Poetry Gathering

Twenty poets submitted 25 poems inspired by Sarah LaBarge's painting The Fields I Flew In (pictured below). On Nov. 6, 2009, several of the poets gathered at Gallery 308 in Muncie to read their works. LaBarge, Gallery 308, and some of the poets have consented to have their works reproduced on this blog. One poem will be featured each day, beginning Jan. 1.

If you're interested in purchasing this painting, contact the artist at sblabarge@bsu.edu or visit her website here.

Gallery 308 provides exhibition space for artists, encourages creative work, and serves as a cultural and education resource. Address: 308 E. Main St., Muncie, IN. For more information, visit http://www.gallery308.org/.

To see other poems for the Founder's Poetry Gathering, click here.









Woods Beyond the Pond, by Mark Neely

come upon that tree
again those graying

slats we hammered
in the bark

looking for the world
like bone fossils

and their faces
come back

also the orange
birds drifting

like ash through
a purple

sky cloud
edges tinted fire-

bright and our
rooster's crown a bloody

saw in the crook
a curled

fetus almost
born

cut out maybe
or torn from

the murdered mother
by some animal

we never knew
we never told

'Male Ego,' by Joyce Brinkman: Founder's Day Poetry

Twenty poets submitted 25 poems inspired by Sarah LaBarge's painting The Fields I Flew In (pictured below). On Nov. 6, 2009, several of the poets gathered at Gallery 308 in Muncie to read their works. LaBarge, Gallery 308, and some of the poets have consented to have their works reproduced on this blog. One poem will be featured each day, beginning Jan. 1.

If you're interested in purchasing this painting, contact the artist at sblabarge@bsu.edu or visit her website here.

Gallery 308 provides exhibition space for artists, encourages creative work, and serves as a cultural and education resource. Address: 308 E. Main St., Muncie, IN. For more information, visit http://www.gallery308.org/.

To see other poems for the Founder's Poetry Gathering, click here.









Male Ego, by Joyce Brinkman

When the rooster struts
he thinks he'll climb the ladder.

When the rooster crows
he thinks he'll find the hens.

When the rooster dies
he only leaves a feather,

beside a hutch of hens
nesting on new eggs.

Heads up: Lylanne Musselman at An Evening With the Muse

Bumped up to serve as a reminder:

SUNDAY, JAN. 10
57 p.m. An Evening With the Muse presents Lylanne Musselman and an open mic at the Writers' Center of Indiana, 812 E. 67th St., Indianapolis (in the Cultural Complex Center just west of the Indianapolis Arts Center). Every second Sunday of the month. resides in Irvington. She teaches writing at IUPUI, and creative writing at Ivy Tech Community College and the University of Indianapolis' School of Adult Learning. She hosts Writers Speak Volumes! a poet and writers group that meets once a month at Bookmamas in Irvington. In addition, her autobiographical story feature, L Words, airs monthly on BloomingOUT a weekly broadcast on WFHB radio. An award winning poet, Lylanne's poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Tipton Poetry Journal, PANK, Umbrella, Flying Island, New Verse News, Ichabod’s Sketchbook, Wilderness House Literary Review and many Outrider Press anthologies. Her chapbook, A Charm Bracelet for Cruising, was recently published by Winged City Press an imprint of New Sins Press.

If you can't make it to the Writers' Center, you can catch Lylanne at the Poetry on Brick Street reading and open mic at G. Simone, 120 S. Main St., Zionsville, at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 4.

Heads up: Hoosier Dylan

bumped up to seve as a reminder:


Bob Dylan is one of a handful of songwriters whose works contain a considerable amount of poetic language. So why not make an evening of it?


SATURDAY, JAN. 9
7:30 p.m., Hoosier Dylan, Athenaeum Theatre (formerly American Cabaret Theatre), 401 E Michigan St., Indianapolis, with Jennie DeVoe, Gordon Bonham, Tim Grimm, Jason Wilber, Bobbie Lancaster, Indiana Poet Laureate Norbert Krapf, and other surprises. $20 for three hours of Dylan songs.

'The Rooster Dream Again,' by Nicholas Moore: Founder's Poetry Gathering

Twenty poets submitted 25 poems inspired by Sarah LaBarge's painting The Fields I Flew In (pictured below). On Nov. 6, 2009, several of the poets gathered at Gallery 308 in Muncie to read their works. LaBarge, Gallery 308, and some of the poets have consented to have their works reproduced on this blog. One poem will be featured each day, beginning Jan. 1.

If you're interested in purchasing this painting, contact the artist at sblabarge@bsu.edu or visit her website here.

Gallery 308 provides exhibition space for artists, encourages creative work, and serves as a cultural and education resource. Address: 308 E. Main St., Muncie, IN. For more information, visit http://www.gallery308.org/.

To see other poems for the Founder's Poetry Gathering, click here.









The Rooster Dream Again, by Nicholas Moore

I had the rooster dream again last night.
The sky was angry dishwater.
And you were wearing your stocking cap again,
and unamused by strangeness.
But that was always you.
Boards were nailed to a tree; my theory is
that this symbolizes progress or childhood
or both.
Your countenance said to me that you had figured
all these symbols out. But I didn’t ask
and you didn’t tell me.
I had the sensation of being a pale-faced person.
And of course, the part of the dream that gets to me:
there was a rooster on a rock.
Now, I really doubt that this is Freudian. I mean,
I don’t think that it’s about your cock.
But come to thing of it, there was a ridiculous pride
in it.
Like your cock.
Did I mention about the blond girl, that I have never met before?
I couldn’t tell, but her face may have been upside down.
It’s a funny thing, when you dream about people,
you don’t remember until you wake up,
whether or not they are dead.

Dan Carpenter on WFYI

Sharon Gamble will interview Dan Carpenter on Art of the Matter during the last segment, about 40 minutes into the program, which begins at 8 tonight on WFYI-FM (90.1) and repeated at 4 p.m. Saturday. Dan is the author of the poetry volume More Than I Could See, published by Restoration Press.

This is the blurb from the radio show's website:

The name Dan Carpenter has been synonymous for many years with this Indianapolis journalist's op-ed columns in the Indianapolis Star. But there's another Dan Carpenter, who uses poetry as a tool to make sense of the world. Sharon Gamble invited that Dan in to our studios to talk about and read from his new book, More Than I Could See, Poems by Dan Carpenter. It's published by the Restoration Press and is available at BookMama's and amazon.com.

'Interrupted Sleep,' by Jayne Marek: Founder's Poetry Gathering

Twenty poets submitted 25 poems inspired by Sarah LaBarge's painting The Fields I Flew In (pictured below). On Nov. 6, 2009, several of the poets gathered at Gallery 308 in Muncie to read their works. LaBarge, Gallery 308, and some of the poets have consented to have their works reproduced on this blog. One poem will be featured each day, beginning Jan. 1.

If you're interested in purchasing this painting, contact the artist at sblabarge@bsu.edu or visit her website here.

Gallery 308 provides exhibition space for artists, encourages creative work, and serves as a cultural and education resource. Address: 308 E. Main St., Muncie, IN. For more information, visit http://www.gallery308.org/.











Interrupted Sleep, by Jayne Marek
-- For Deb

She dreamed a gray whale,
Its long hump curved above the sea surface
Unrolling for hundreds of miles
To the south—a backbone of barnacled skin
Leading to the Oregon coast.

She knew the Pacific already,
Slate depths and cedar-shaped shadows,
Its power tumbling rocks in spray
Familiar as interrupted sleep.
She followed the summons

Knowing she could not be sure of a call
From the world of mind, not even
Animal mind—no matter that she wanted
To hear the gray whale’s harsh exhalation
And shudder with its gripe

And hunch to slide back into the cold haven
below.
After a long drive, the shore split her breath
With spume tossed by the wind
That tears the edge of continents.
Flotsam against the evergreens twisted like a voice

From long ago, drawn thin by distance
And disappointment. Someone had turned
away, had made her lower her eyes.
A whistle spiraled,
A groan lifted from the deep

Waves of chopped obsidian.
No whale to be seen.
Wind blew through her to the bone
As she waited.


Finally

She took to the paths of the woods
Bronze with sodden needles
And walked the hours down as long as
The shade cast by old growth,
Tree-green beards dripping with wren song,

A meal rich as broth and mussels.
She looked again and again across
The water and cloudbanks slurred with rain,
Endless as mountain ranges. Sanderlings
And turnstones scattered

Their thin arguments amid clam-
Shells and pebbles. Why
Would the whale call her but not be there?

The road of return
Whispered past rain-tattered weeds,

Followed its dark old course, the wet
Giant trees and shadows always
Rising then diving from her approach
As if she could swim in the night, almost,
Blind, but turned to her compass.








To see other poems for the Founder's Poetry Gathering, click here.

Poetry on Brick Street change

Shari Wagner, who was scheduled to be reading right now at Poetry on Brick Street, couldn't make the event because of the snow, so she's re-scheduled to read in September. An open reading for anyone who braved the elements is now going on at G. SImone's, 120 S. Main St., Zionsville.

Kafe Kuumba canceled tonight

This just in: The weekly Kafe Kuumba series in Indianapolis has been canceled tonight because of the snow.

'In the Field Where You Were Found,' by Mary Sexson: Founder's Poetry Gathering

Twenty poets submitted 25 poems inspired by Sarah LaBarge's painting The Fields I Flew In (pictured below). On Nov. 6, 2009, several of the poets gathered at Gallery 308 in Muncie to read their works. LaBarge, Gallery 308, and some of the poets have consented to have their works reproduced on this blog. One poem will be featured each day, beginning Jan. 1.

If you're interested in purchasing this painting, contact the artist at sblabarge@bsu.edu or visit her website here.

Gallery 308 provides exhibition space for artists, encourages creative work, and serves as a cultural and education resource. Address: 308 E. Main St., Muncie, IN. For more information, visit http://www.gallery308.org/.











In the Field Where You Were Found, by Mary Sexson

As the crow flies,
you were mere miles from us
that morning when they found you.
I can read the details in front of me,
glibly describing the caliber of the gun,
the side of your temple where your life
leaked out, what time of day it was,
your ridiculously young age,
and on and on, ad nauseum,
until I cannot look anymore.

No cock crowed your demise,
I only had the banging of our father's head
against the frame of the door as
your death found us, and the wail
of a mother, foundering already in her duty
to protect and love and nurture those of us
who would be lucky enough to survive this blow.

I sought refuge in the big maple
in the back yard. No one knew where I had gone,
desperate to make sense of it, snatching myself out
of the fray of monstrous grief
that had already taken its place in our house.
I sought the sky above, the open branch that jutted
just a whisper from the heavens. And I
folded my little body into a wedge
between the cool black bark
and the unpeakable green
of newly unfurled leaves.


To see other poems for the Founder's Poetry Gathering, click here.

'Invictus': Worst famous poem ever?

Indianapolis Star arts writer Jay Harvey disses the William Ernest Kenley poem "Invictus," and takes Mary Oliver to task for "The Summer Day." In these poems, Harvey argues, "Poet collars the reader, thumps him on the head with a thin but irritating message, and departs in a cloud of smugness." Click here for his explanation why he considers such poems more insipid than inspirational.

Heads up: Shari Wagner at Poetry on Brick Street

THURSDAY, FEB. 7
6:30 p.m. Poetry on Brick Street presents Shari Wagner, followed by an open mic at G. Simone's Cafe, 120 S. Main St., Zionsville. Free. For information, call Barry Harris at 317-733-1811 or Susan Miller at 317-587-1438, or send an e-mail to poetryonbrickstreet@cyberroad.com. Every first Thursday of the month. Shari Wagner’s poems and creative nonfiction have appeared in magazinesthat include The North American Review, Shenandoah, Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History, The Southern Poetry Review, The Christian Century and Black Warrior Review. She is the author of Evening Chore (Cascadia, 2005) and co-author of A Hundred Camels: A Doctor’s Sojourn & Murder Trial in Somalia (Cascadia, 2010). This year she received her second Arts Councilof Indianapolis Creative Renewal Fellowship. Shari lives with her husband and two daughters in Westfield and teaches for The Writers’ Center of Indiana and VSA of Indiana.

'Dream Fragments,' by JL Kato: Founder's Poetry Gathering

Twenty poets submitted 25 poems inspired by Sarah LaBarge's painting The Fields I Flew In (pictured below). On Nov. 6, 2009, several of the poets gathered at Gallery 308 in Muncie to read their works. LaBarge, Gallery 308, and some of the poets have consented to have their works reproduced on this blog. One poem will be featured each day, beginning Jan. 1.

If you're interested in purchasing this painting, contact the artist at sblabarge@bsu.edu or visit her website here.

Gallery 308 provides exhibition space for artists, encourages creative work, and serves as a cultural and education resource. Address: 308 E. Main St., Muncie, IN. For more information, visit http://www.gallery308.org/.











Dream Fragments, by JL Kato

The mulch man
                layers his bed
                                   with metaphors
                                                       from dreams.

Within grubby gloves,
                his nails are dirty.
                                   Beneath the knitted cap,
                                                       his thoughts are unclean.

Electric Madonna
                with stretched almond neck
                                   tempts him to stroke it
                                                       from her head to her heart.

Silent rooster,
                libido repressed,
                                   the cock
                                                       that never crowed.



To see other poems for the Founder's Poetry Gathering, click here.

'The Rooster,' by Ian Uriel Girdley: Founder's Poetry Gathering

Twenty poets submitted 25 poems inspired by Sarah LaBarge's painting The Fields I Flew In (pictured below). On Nov. 6, 2009, several of the poets gathered at Gallery 308 in Muncie to read their works. LaBarge, Gallery 308, and some of the poets have consented to have their works reproduced on this blog. One poem will be featured each day, beginning Jan. 1.

If you're interested in purchasing this painting, contact the artist at sblabarge@bsu.edu or visit her website here.

Gallery 308 provides exhibition space for artists, encourages creative work, and serves as a cultural and education resource. Address: 308 E. Main St., Muncie, IN. For more information, visit http://www.gallery308.org/.












The Rooster, by Ian Uriel Girdley

Life progresses straight as the lines
of hen feathers mistaken for a rooster,
a matriarchal family tree missing branches.

We miss the lines of hair, of wheat,
of wrinkles. We miss the leaves
blowing about in the naïve air.

Miss the field where we frolicked
young, we grew up—mature, serene,
even on the verge of a peaceful death—
we miss the stairs nailed into the tree

leading us to a sort of heaven; indistinct
spirit of who we used to be.
The tree only climbs so far
against twilight sky, top rots off,

blocks the memory of child-
like play, imagination, blocks the field,
but the blue of the sky rises above

the hen we mistook as a rooster,
affronts our vision of aging, of death,
no longer a woman but memories.



The poet's website is http://www.ianurielgirdley.com/

To see other poems for the Founder's Poetry Gathering, click here.

'III,' by Michael Brockley: Founder's Poetry Gathering

Twenty poets submitted 25 poems inspired by Sarah LaBarge's painting The Fields I Flew In (pictured below). On Nov. 6, 2009, several of the poets gathered at Gallery 308 in Muncie to read their works. LaBarge, Gallery 308, and some of the poets have consented to have their works reproduced on this blog. One poem will be featured each day, beginning Jan. 1.




If you're interested in purchasing this painting, contact the artist at sblabarge@bsu.edu or visit her website here.

Gallery 308 provides exhibition space for artists, encourages creative work, and serves as a cultural and education resource. Address: 308 E. Main St., Muncie, IN. For more information, visit http://www.gallery308.org/.







III, by Michael Brockley
(In response to The Fields I Flew In by Sarah LaBarge)

A rooster with hummingbird aspirations crows beneath a cabbage rose on a painting of landscape and epic. I daydream before my Gateway about Diane Lane lying across my chest while the overhead fan stirs its voyeur kicks. Linda Ronstadt wails Poor, Poor Pitiful Me on the Bose. Onscreen, a spaniel-nosed soldier, a hog-snout woman and a zombie with a hex-pocked mug pose for a totem pole. I scrabble for the myth in a ramshackle ladder of discarded planks nailed to a mulberry trunk until Ms. Lane steps, like a birthday gift, from my shower. A blue towel draped around her as if the terry cloth were sheer. Children rouse dust devils from the chicken-pecked earth around the mulberry. The rooster fancies itself a peacock-feathered condor. In my writing den, Diane French-kisses Love Has No Pride into my ear, shrugging the towel onto the floor beside my chair. A bead of water diamonds within her navel. A small girl begins to climb the teetering ladder to a nest baited with magpies. A mote in the corner of my eye. But Diane has sprinkled Tabu on her tan nipples. A rose tattoo blushes around my name on the slope of her left breast. From the totem pole, hog-snout woman wrings her hands in supplication. Oinks about a witch’s curse. A geis. But Diane is waiting in my bed. She’s humming Heat Wave because she can’t reach the chain for the overhead fan. Because she knows me for a man of action when chivalry beckons. Later, basking in our Viagra bliss, she tells me why I should title her rooster poem with a Roman numeral.

To see other poems for the Founder's Poetry Gathering, click here.

'3,' by Michael Brockley: Founder's Poetry Gathering

Twenty poets submitted 25 poems inspired by Sarah LaBarge's painting The Fields I Flew In (pictured below). On Nov. 6, 2009, several of the poets gathered at Gallery 308 in Muncie to read their works. LaBarge, Gallery 308, and some of the poets have consented to have their works reproduced on this blog. One poem will be featured each day, beginning Jan. 1.




If you're interested in purchasing this painting, contact the artist at sblabarge@bsu.edu or visit her website here.

Gallery 308 provides exhibition space for artists, encourages creative work, and serves as a cultural and education resource. Address: 308 E. Main St., Muncie, IN. For more information, visit http://www.gallery308.org/.







3, by Michael Brockley
(In response to The Fields I Flew In by Sarah LaBarge)

a superstitious quota for
celebrity demises that tercet
of stooges that trinity of musketeers

vowing one for all & all for one
a troika of piglets fleeing before the technicolor wolf
with its huff of bluster & chinny chin

chin the just-right bed of goldilock’s repose
the rake’s ménage à trois a priest a parson & a rabbi
trapped in a one-winged plane with two parachutes

& a punch line the good the bad & the ugly
send lawyers guns & money
c/o triskaphobics cubed

the a.m.
hour when the curtain between worlds
thins & veils

the spectacle of triceratops erupting
through tinted lenses from its tethering screen
the third strike third out & rubber game

jidge the bambino the babe this very essence of crowd
this trifecta of sightless mice
of monkeys renouncing vision voice & hearsay

within the toes of woodpeckers & sloths
the goat-like gruffs
of tricycle & triptych

by oak ash & thorn
this first odd prime this shot beyond the arc
those cock crows at the messiah’s denial



To see other poems for the Founder's Poetry Gathering, click here.

'Three,' by Michael Brockley: Founder's Poetry Gathering

Twenty poets submitted 25 poems inspired by Sarah LaBarge's painting The Fields I Flew In (pictured below). On Nov. 6, 2009, several of the poets gathered at Gallery 308 in Muncie to read their works. LaBarge, Gallery 308, and some of the poets have consented to have their works reproduced on this blog. One poem will be featured each day, beginning Jan. 1.




If you're interested in purchasing this painting, contact the artist at sblabarge@bsu.edu or visit her website here.

Gallery 308 provides exhibition space for artists, encourages creative work, and serves as a cultural and education resource. Address: 308 E. Main St., Muncie, IN. For more information, visit http://www.gallery308.org/.







Three, by Michael Brockley
(In response to The Fields I Flew In by Sarah LaBarge)

Once, people foraged for grasshoppers in arroyos and rattlesnake dens, dreaming of rafts. They feared their rooster shaman who inveighed against the blasphemy of beauty. So that the people evolved the shyness of lizards and took up the disguises of monsters–specter, swine or selkie. Yet each year, in the season of yellowing leaves, the tribe traveled to cliff tops overlooking a bay that washed starfish and driftwood ashore. There the people witnessed the migration of dolphins to a lagoon along the horizon. Each night, sun and sea merged into a borealis beyond the island. The salt air laved the people’s dreams with odysseys. In time, as kinsfolk gathered for evening meals of cricket husks, men and women began to feel orcas breaching in their loins. Until three dared to steal away from the rooster’s rages. Scouts found their spoor among the sedge leading to the white sand and blue tides. Read in the fugitive tracks their wary approach like that of penitent curs. And their resolve. The rooster warned of how the three wandered to the edge of the earth. Of how they were kraken-strangled or withered in the conflagration of dragon char. Still, each sunrise, the elders found three scorched masks curling like severed hands among the campfire ashes. On the beach, three more sets of footprints vanished into the surge.


To see other poems for the Founder's Poetry Gathering, click here.

'A Painting I Have Not Seen,' by Ian Uriel Girdley: Founder's Poetry Gathering

Twenty poets submitted 25 poems inspired by Sarah LaBarge's painting The Fields I Flew In (pictured below). On Nov. 6, 2009, several of the poets gathered at Gallery 308 in Muncie to read their works. LaBarge, Gallery 308, and some of the poets have consented to have their works reproduced on this blog. One poem will be featured each day, beginning Jan. 1.





If you're interested in purchasing this painting, contact the artist at sblabarge@bsu.edu or visit her website here.

Gallery 308 provides exhibition space for artists, encourages creative work, and serves as a cultural and education resource. The gallery is located at 308 E. Main St., Muncie, Ind. For more information, visit http://www.gallery308.org/.






A Painting I Have Not Seen, by Ian Uriel Girdley

The painting is a self portrait I assume The artist overlooks
a younger self clutches her bust trying to keep the memory
of youth Aging artist lingers behind the two a ghost
of things to come They look past the tree house steps
into the vision the youngest is losing A rooster another
tree block but a glimpse of the field where she spread
her wings So the sky must be the field where the child dreamed
of dancing with the clouds (But I have still not seen this painting)

The photograph of the painting Shows a shy red face
The whitened expression of the past with the future looming
Black clothing mimicking the roosters body under proud
red head The green of the field pretends to be black
and the sky strikes me again Dark blue carousels through
white highlighted on the horizon with face-red of the child
at twilight Like this crisp fall evening wishing I had a sweatshirt
I understand why the child is wearing a toboggan But the texture
of the memory remains flat (I see the picture only as computer pixels)

My fingers held against the monitor of my laptop
frame the present artist’s face She reminds me
of a High School friend We lost touch after graduation
We were both shy Didn’t even speak much
back then But now we have reunited on Facebook
of all places She shares an artist’s face Her profile picture
and this piece of digital photograph of a painting
of the self portrait of the artist I have strayed too far

from the artwork The texture The nuance
of the brushstroke Subconscious memory revealing
itself in the imperfections Perhaps the rooster’s head
is convex Perhaps the white of the artist’s head
mirrors the clouds she flew to as a child Perhaps the elder
is the field clay with red lips speaking of the child’s face
I fluster Need to see the painting Wrap my poem
into a crumpled virtual ball recycling bin bound
But my laptop chimes a new message A comment

on the blog where I scanned pictures a nurse
printed of my wife’s ultrasound Family telling
how beautiful our sexless baby White blobs
make fingers A tiny explosion against the black
is its heartbeat Legs caught mid-kick and the head
seems to smile Here in the backyard we will toss a ball
wrestle it from the dogs when it drops Roast
hotdogs and pretend that we can fly Soar over
the fence in sweeping figure eights through clouds The image
is real The baby kicks now giving the digital computer screen image
life (I understand as I hear the rooster crow in a painting I have not seen).

The poet's website is http://www.ianurielgirdley.com/

To see other poems for the Founder's Poetry Gathering, click here.