C. Lee McKenzie

Young Adult and Middle Grade Author

Asimov Was Right

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Death doesn’t enter on slippered feet. 
It wears hobnailed boots and stomps its way across heart of the Dying, 
   across the hearts of the Children
who glimpse their destinies.
At the end, all wear deep imprints.
All endure the sharp, uncaring footfalls of the master.
I resort to poetry under stress. It must have to do with the succinct immediacy that poetry offers writers. A distillation of emotions. So here they are. My distilled thoughts for the day. 

While I take care of my mom’s last business, I won’t be posting for a while, but I will honor my commitments to Crystal Collier on 11/21. So until then The Write Game goes dark. Thanks for understanding.

Insecure Writer Succumbs to Poetry

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Insecure writer me
How on earth came this to be?
In days before this passion came
My writing ne’er appear so lame. 
So tell me please why now mere words 
Jay Hilgert

And now your turn. Some poetry to express yourself? 
I think we should have an Insecure Writer Poetry Contest
 with prizes, of course.
Your thoughts? Gemme some words before they fly away.

 

Flit past my brain like agile birds,

Not lighting on the page the way
I’d planned they’d perch and there to stay.
Instead these feathered shadows fly 
Before the ink I can apply.

Sunday Special

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This has been one full week for me as a blogger. Those of you who stop in know I usually blog on Mondays and Thursdays with an occasional SPECIAL post. This week I think I’ve posted every single day!!!!! Well you know why. I’m in SparkBlogfest and I’ve joined the Platform Building Campaign over at RACH WRITES . Why not? Well, to give you a break and follow though with a promise, I’m posting this super Sunday Special about Paul Siegell, poet. Hope you enjoy.

It’s all about the Wordplay
In poetry most would agree that there are two categories of poet:  1) the green poet fresh as the new day, who’s trying to establish his voice, and 2) the poet that has been canonised from here to the end of Mardi Gras and who has his own section in every Best Poetry collection known to man.  However, every now and again you get a poet that just doesn’t fit in either of those categories, someone who has the experience of a seasoned veteran but all the nuance of an untapped talent.
Thus Paul Siegell.  This is a man who takes words with a grain of salt and sees more potential in their shape and arc than in their actual meaning.  However, he’s managed to create meaning with the little details in words and give them so much more power, more room to breathe.  Speaking with him, you wouldn’t think him more than a jam band fanatic who just so happens to write every once in a while.  But get a pen in his hand and he sees shapes and sounds in a way that’s rare to find in poetry these days.
I described Paul as a poetry superhero.  He swooped in on the wings of the letter “K” and landed down and gave the world something magical with his lyricism.  But his humility is more powerful than the S on Superman’s chest.  His work has redefined the genre, literally giving poetry shape and movement with his collections Poemergency Room and jambandbootleg; however, here we have a man who doesn’t readily acknowledge or actually believe that he’s done more than push himself linguistically and spatially.  When asked how long he knew he wanted to change the world, he simply chuckled and said, “No world changing here.”  
Before his work kicked in poetry’s steel-lined door, Paul was a student studying at the University of Pittsburgh.  His sophomore year he attended a PHiSH concert in Philadelphia and came back with swooning and crooning affection for poetry, birthed in the emotions of the crowd as it listened to its favourite jam band, “[It was] the audience.  I hadn’t even written a single poem, but I knew that reaching that audience through poetry was something I felt I wanted to attempt to accomplish.”  His desire to move the crowd pushed him to make his poetry do something, physically move a crowd or the page.  With that he found himself in a smallish Intro to Poetry class, lecturer Jeff Oaks at the helm.
Never to rest on his laurels, Paul fully immersed himself in poetry, submitting his work to such publications as The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and 5AM Magazine.  However, it was a rejection from Painted Bride Quarterly that saw him get his first sniff of the work behind getting poetry the exposure it deserves:  
Best rejection letter ever!  An old Pitt roommate of mine, Andrew “Goose” Gussman, became friends with a PBQ (Painted Bride Quarterly) editor on the New York staff and Goose told her about me, so she invited me to submit. This was June 2007. A few weeks later I get this email:
‘We loved the ambition/spectacle/extravagance of the way you experiment with form, but ultimately decided to pass on the poems you sent.  (You should know we talked about your work for a long time—It stimulated lots of debate among our New York crew). 
That said, I have an invitation for you.  Any interest in joining the Philly staff and reading poems for us?’
Boo-yah.
From there Paul landed gigs at The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News as a copywriter in the marketing department (a job he’s held for the past four years).  But that hasn’t slowed his creative juices from churning away in his guts.
While in his cubicle, in fact, he found inspiration for his latest release, wild life rifle fire:  
It was the morning after the long Labor Day weekend, with me seeking that wrestle and peace of writing something well, and I looked up on a weirdness: I had “ZOOM IN” typed in Helvetica on my screen, a headline for some ad at my marketing department job.  I increased the point size a bit but I went too far and it was too much for the margins and then Word broke the line to reveal: “ZOO / M IN.”  Cue eureka. (Animals in captivity + zooming in makes something larger, but this says minimize.)  I fell in love immediately and that, as if a meditation, would become the first page of the book.  (Side note: the Disco Biscuits’ “Digital Buddha” was playing when all that happened)
He has a love of jam bands and hip-hop, Legos and Led Zeppelin.  He’s a man of so many contrasting interests and intelligences that his work is nothing short of a marvel and a miracle.  He’s got the intellect of a philosoph with the street smarts of an MC.  But what most impressed me about Paul, beyond his work, was his desire to simply become better at a craft that he may have single-handedly brought to a new level entirely.  
He is also a lover of life and takes every moment that he can to learn something new about himself and about his work.  A poet never stops learning, never stops creating.  Paul Siegell is the epitome of someone who’s always seeking forward motion, a means to move and expand:
One of the pages in wild life rifle fire reads: “poem / could”.  Every time I encounter and engage my poetry I do so with the desire to see what a Poem can do, and what else I can do with words to craft another poem.  Every time I write another poem, I hope to give my poetry another definition.  Something else that guides me is a quote by Octavio Paz: “Crear para ver.”  It means, “Create in order to see.”  Every time I consider that insight everything inside me says, YES!!!  If you ask me if I write for a purpose, I’d say that I’ve really just been concentrating on writing with purpose. 
And with that, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the indefatigable and indescribable Paul Siegell.  You can find him at ReVeLeR @ eYeLeVeL or his FaceBook page or you can peep some of his work at his Goodreads page.
Camiele White’s film appetite is second only to her love of the literary.  As a BA expat from the University of Pittsburgh, she learned that words have a power that far exceeds even the almighty pen.  She has a desire to absorb as much of the literary and cinematic as possible.  As a means to drink up as much as she can, she promotes the hell out of Theatrical Costumes.  If you want to engage in a little conversation (at your own risk) she can be reached by clicking on the link above.

Monday Miscellany and Goodbye Poetry for Novelists

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Whew! I’m going to make Monday Miscellany on Monday this week and all thanks to a blue jay.  I was gone yesterday doing that Easter egg hunt thing.  When I got home, my front door was open. It’s a little cranky these days and I guess I didn’t pull it shut tight when I left. Very, very early this morning this loud, squawky bird swooped down from a beam in my bedroom to let me know he wanted out and right then. So I’ve been up since dawn, chasing a bird around the house until it found the open door again and flapped its way to freedom. Great start to the week: early rising, early exercise!

As to the poetry, I still think that poets have so much to show us writers of prose about putting words together, so they sound beautiful and create fresh and exciting images as well as convey meaning to the reader. 

Poetry and Prose/Apples and Apple Pie

Who wrote this–a poet, a novelist, someone who is both? Do you recognize these words? 

Where to start is the problem, because nothing begins when it begins and nothing’s over when it’s over, and everything needs a preface, a postscript, a chart of simultaneous events. History is a construct, she tells her students. Any point of entry is possible and all choices are arbitrary. Still, there are definite moments, moments we use as references, because they break our sense of continuity, they change the direction of time. We can look at these events and we can say that after them things were never the same again. They provide beginnings for us, and endings too. Births and deaths, for instance and marriages. And wars.


Let’s see we should have a prize or something for the one who first identifies this writer. I’ve got an ARC of The Chaos that I can offer. It’s a gritty futuristic novel by Rachel Ward.  

I’m working on reaching my ROW80 goal, so here’s my poetry-prose connected piece that I promised myself I’d write. Draft #1

Iguanas
At dusk, lacy prints in the sand are all I see of the Iguanas who have fled before my footstep. But look up. There the clusters of bananas sway not from wind, but from a feast interrupted. 
At first light they skitter over slick tin roofs in pursuit of insects the heat has not yet driven into cool tile crevices. If an iguana becomes careless, it will most likely slide the length of the roof and land at your feet with the sound only a lizard can make.  
They regard people as dangerous and so I believe they’re wise.  Inside those gilled heads, our scent triggers an ancient and healthy fear of humans and they flee, tails high, back to their tin sanctuary.  Perhaps they will survive.
Hope you’ll share some poetry-prose here on my last Poetry for Novelists post for 2011. See you around the blogOsphere and be sure to visit some other ROW80 bloggers. Click on the ROW80 image at the top of this page to see if they’re reaching their goals. Now I’m off to print out my WIP and get busy with that word count.

That Goal Setting Thing OR How I’m Doing on ROW80

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My goals for this week (my strategy is small steps until the end of this challenge round) is to put up one more poetry post to wind up my tribute to Poetry Month and how novelists can use poetry to create beautiful prose.

Then I will print out my WIP and edit it. I’m at 35,000 words and stuck, so I need to go back and unstick myself to finish. For me that means I have to find where I

a. took the story in the wrong direction
b. didn’t let the character lead the way
c. forgot to carry a plot thread along

I’ll add 2,000 more words by Friday. Whew! Guess I’d better get cracking because I’ve already scheduled three other things for the same week. My family will be eating pizza a lot. Good thing they love pizza.

Check back on Monday for goal 1–Poetry.

Vacation Poetry

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My goal for this week was to post at least one more poem . . . Ahem, and back pat. I did. Then I said I had to write 3,000 more words on my WIP. Uh, Err, Well . . . I’m a bit behind there, but I have today and tomorrow. Be sure to check in with the other bloggers (to the right of this post) and see how they’re meeting their goals.
Lazy mornings
Breakfast served 
and 
   Delicious.
Walks down, then up stone-faced canyons
with
   Water a trickle sound below the trail, unseen, 
but 
   Promising a lake or bridge. 
Then Yoga
   Slow 
with 
  Breathing that empties minds and fills lungs.
  Cunning in demands.
     Stretches, long held, reaching toward perfect.
     Asanas 
      Balance 
      Control 
          Beauty in flow
           Inversions
           for strength
             new perspectives 
         Breath at the center.
        That moment at the center. 
           Life at the center. 

And the Poetry Continues

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April poetry is a luxurious feast of perfectly ripened and juicy words.  I haven’t taken the time to write or read poems for a long while, but after opening my dusty volumes and setting the poets’ music free again, I can’t imagine why I waited. 

Here’s one that I read aloud and then memorized because it is exactly right for those nights when I’m fortunate enough to look up and find the moon shimmery in the night. It’s the pacing of the piece– punctuation’s job, but also the colorful imagery and the tangible nature of that dot perfectly placed. That’s what I want to capture in my prose–the pacing and the fresh imagery. 

There was, in the dusky night, 

On the yellowed steeple

The moon,

Like the dot of an i

      Alfred de Musset

This is one of my favorite  William Butler Yeats’ poems, He and She. Just part of it, the part I like best.
I love to read this one, especially the second line. It has a special cadence that is perfect to my ear.

She sings as the moon sings:
         ‘I am I, am I;
The greater grows my light
        The further I fly.’
      All creation shivers
      With that sweet cry.

So after reading all of this masterful poetry, I had to read some of my compressed thoughts that I’d fitted into this demanding, tight form. I found this in one of my journals. Now how crazy is it for me to post my poems along with Yeats and Musset? A lot crazy, but it’s my blog, so I guess I can do what I want. Is there a blog reviewer out there that will complain? Let’s see.

I wrote this a few years ago when I was in England. You know you can’t walk the countryside of England without coming to an ancient cemetery. So there I was with my pad and paper sitting by a gravestone something like this, marking the beginning and the end of someone’s life. This is what I wrote. I was younger then, so cut me some slack when you critique this.

Ask the Stone 
Lichen pocked and cooled with the April air,
Lonely you are and lonelier with the blossom dust
Settling like impatient moths that fan you for the moment, then take leave
When the Wind calls in the siren’s voice. 
Lichen pocked and warmed with the August sun,
Deep you are and deeper with each season’s leaves and grass
Mulching at your roots and like a thick sea secreting your inscribed face
When the Earth calls in the emperor’s voice. 
Lichen pocked and brittled by December cold,
Old you are and top-heavy with your rakish tilt that pulls you south
And staggering, it might seem, in a drunkard’s dream
When Gravity calls in the winner’s voice. 
Your name was long and full of sounds
Not easily said aloud, but calling to the mind like chimes in high branches,
It sang of journeys and spice and times now locked inside leather-bound books.
A blank face turned to the sky 
Its sculpted pate still proud with chiseled curls
Basking above the propertied one who sleeps below.
Who do you belong to? 
Ask the Stone.
         C. Lee McKenzie

Monday Miscellany

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Well, it’s close to Monday. Seems like Monday came a little too soon for me to make my usual deadline, so I guess this is technically Tuesday Miscellany. 

The most important news is that I’ll probably be doing more workshops in the near future. The people liked what happened in the last one and they are asking for more. I may even be doing one for foster care kids and that’s one I’m really thrilled about. 

I visit Daisy Day Writer’s blog SunnyRoomStudio a lot because it’s so lovely and thought provoking. On one visit I posted about the synergy of art and the written word, and that made me remember E.E. Cummings who made some of his poetry into pictures. Here’s one of my favorites where the childlike attitude toward spring is capture not only in the words, but also in the way he lets those words skip onto the page.

in Just-
spring               when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame baloonman

whistles          far                     and wee

and eddieanbill com
running from marbles and 
piracies and it’s
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old baloonman whistles
far      and         wee

and abettyandisbelcom dancing
from hop-scotch and jum-rope and
it’s spring
and
      the
           goat-footed
BaloonMan
far 
and 
wee

Feel like playing a bit? Try creating some poetry-pictures. 

Here’s an old one, more charm than poetry, but still with the rhythm of a poem and the written words in a magical form. 

A
AB
ABR
ABRA
ABRAC
ABRACA
ABRACAD
ABRACADA
ABRACADAB
ABRACADABR
ABRACADABRA

The word gradually expands and becomes complete, the sound of the word unfolding like a bit of magic. 

Have fun and I hope you’ll share something with me that you’ve painted in words. 

Poetry and Prose

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 Georgia O’Keeffe New York with Moon

Since this is POETRY MONTH I thought I’d post something about how we novelists can benefit from the poet’s labor of love. As I see it, POETRY is all about the pure pleasure of language, the way it can wash through you, bringing fresh images, giving sound and shape to thought. 

When I read a poem I let the language have its way with me, but I often return to those I’m particularly captivated by to understand why they reached more deeply inside me than others. Here are a few things that I admire in good poems and that I keep in mind while writing my prose.

Poets are an economical bunch. They use few, but powerful, multi-tasking words to create their stories. I think prose writers can learn so much about the fine art of word selection by reading poets, old and modern. 

Here’s one of my favorite classics A Shady Friend for Torrid Days by Emily Dickinson.  In three stanzas she covers the ups and downs of human relationships and she does it with such tactile images.

A SHADY friend for torrid days   
Is easier to find   
Than one of higher temperature   
For frigid hour of mind.   
 
The vane a little to the east            5
Scares muslin souls away;   
If broadcloth breasts are firmer   
Than those of organdy,   
 
Who is to blame? The weaver?   
Ah! the bewildering thread!            10
The tapestries of paradise   
So notelessly are made!

 
Poets weave the sounds of their language in such a way that they create special rhythms and harmonies.

I can’t read Vachel Lindsay without hearing the beat of the drums or feeling the heat of The Congo. It’s not among my favorites, but it’s one I hear long after reading

Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.

Sandberg brings the city of Chicago to life as no tourist guide book could ever do. Read these lines and you are there as the poet was those many years ago.

HOG Butcher for the World,
     Tool Maker, 
Stacker of Wheat,
     Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
     Stormy, husky, brawling,
     City of the Big Shoulders:

 
Poets create levels of meaning and establish tone through sound. Here prose writers can have one of those “field days” and harvest all kinds of ideas from poets to enhance their prose.

Alliteration: The repetition of the inital consonant sounds.

 Haunted with shadows of hunger hands, The Harbor, Sandberg

Assonance: The repetition of vowel sounds.

Silver bark of beech and hollow
Stem of elder, tall and yellow
                                      Twig of willow. Counting-Out Rhyme, Millay
Connance: The repetition of the final consonant sounds.
Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.
The possibilities of combining these poetic devices are limitless and so necessary for the novelist to be aware of. Nothing is more off putting than a super plot and plodding prose. I think I should do some editing about now, keeping all that I’ve said in mind.
Do you have a favorite poet or a piece of prose that thrills you when you read it? Want to share it and why it appeals to you so much? I’d love to read what you enjoy reading.

 

Kids Write Too

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I’ve been collecting poetry from kids that either I know or, after reading what they write, would love to know. Today I thought I’d share one of those with you. This is from my nephew and appeared in the local Yuba-Sutter Living.

I am from . . .

I am from candles
From Fabreeze and Windex
I am from the tan giant
That protects me from the rain
I am from the flower
the daisys
whose long gone limbs I remember as if they were my own.

I’m Christmas and Thanksgiving
from Pa and Grams
I’m from jokes and laughs
and from fun and gags.

I’m from Santa and the Boogie man
and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
I’m from Easter
I’m from Yuba City and Ireland
turkey and chicken
From my uncle skydiving
and breaking his leg
beach campfire
in my heart
and on the wall

Bearson Smith, age 11