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Do You Want to Win Free Books?
it’s monday! so let’s reward ourselves with another chance to win some free Omnidawn Books! i’m going to give away 10 books–and you can choose any Omnidawn book you want if you win. some Omnidawn authors include keith waldrop, lyn hejinian, myung mi kim, tyrone williams, paul hoover, norma cole, and translations of rimbaud & holderlin, and many more. go below the fold to learn how you can win!
*
CONTEST 1: TRACING THE OUTSKIRTS
From Richard Greenfield’s Tracer:
“Here in the outskirts,
where sea fossils
locked into the ridges,
wrote
“The rain sluiced
the trees bare of the earth—”
this was my history, too,
here in the outskirts”
Your Task : Imagine the act of tracing and trace how you got ‘here,’ to the ‘outskirts.’ Interpret ‘here’ however you like. Leak the autobiography of those who inhabit these outskirts. Submissions must be no more than seven sentences.
listen to richard read from his new collection here.
*
CONTEST 2: HAIKU BLANK, THEN
Michelle Taransky’s Barn Burned, Then, winner of the 2008 Omnidawn Poetry Prize, takes its title from Masahide’s 17th century haiku:
Barn’s burnt down-
now
I can see the moon.
Your Task: write a haiku that fills in the blanks:
_____ burnt down-
now
I can _____ the _____
listen to michelle read from her new collection here.
*
the contest will end on wednesday, when my next blog post is published. I will choose my favorite five submissions from each contest. you can submit more than once and win more than once. be creative, have fun, and good luck!
[videos courtesy of poet oscar bermeo]
*
Posted in Uncategorized on Monday, February 1st, 2010 by Craig Santos Perez.
Comments (54)
we’ve lost our-
selves in some
out-of-town place
there’s a dogwood
it has flowers
that i can’t describe
it’s changed a lot
since this song was written
by the factory wall
by the old canal
dogs are drifting
on their beat
when we meet again
it won’t be bodies
and politics like this time
Poetry burnt down -
now
I can hose the page
Brain burnt down -
now
I can be the loon.
This is so brilliant. We are studying the “sentence” today at “school.” I was thinking, how can I design a writing experiment for my students that won’t bore them to tears. Now it is clear that I will give them your competition. Thank you! I just forwarded it to the Writing and Poetics office to print out 12 copies for me. This is so much better than having or implementing a pedagogy! Could you work on a competition for the paragraph next? (We’re doing that in a couple of weeks.)
hey bhanu, you should tell your students to enter their responses here so they can have a chance to win free books
c
We did it in class! I distributed this page, and just e-mailed them to remind them to submit in the comment stream. You’re like the secret boss of the day. That didn’t make any sense. On another note, via the Greenfield poem, did you see the film, “The Class”?
mwuhaha glad to be secret boss for the day! i did not see the film ‘the class’…tho i suppose i must?
Yeah, now you have to set yourself up with a bowl of salt and vinegar crisps, lukewarm root beer or carbonated beverage of your choice, and put your feet on the coffee table. Socks? Boots? It’s your home. Okay, I should stop there.
Abstraction burnt down -
now
I can reify the concept of reification.
Forests burnt down-
now
I can touch the homeless butterflies.
1. My soul burnt down-
now
I can use the extended warranty.
2. Written intentions burnt down-
now
I can draw the plan.
Peter says:
trailer burnt down
now
i can feel the wind
here’s a spare that was lying around, for fun and contemplation:
haiku: grower’s blues
the cat has made a
Japanese sh*t garden of
my sacred clearing.
note to Craig: i don’t want a book (no room in the trailer, don’t read much these days) – but thanks for the haiku practice!
P
Vision burnt down -
now
I can write the truth.
town’s burnt down-
now
i can find the bees
bridges burnt down-
now
I can feel the gap
clothesline burnt down-
now
I can start the dryer
SEGUE’s burnt down–
now I can laugh at poetry readings.
Candle burnt down–
now
I can see the darkness.
———————–
Yeah, I know. It’s beyond lame. It’s where lame crawls off to die.
Ç’est la vie.
-o-
Christmas Tsunami, 2004
Look! Starfish
on treetops.
Starbucks burnt down-
now
I can see the other Starbucks
yeah i know. the year 2003 called, wants its joke back.
Matt, there are several witty haiku in space allocated — but yours is such witty
commentary on odious proliferation of Starbuck’s (like a barnacle attached to all the space of our lives, I just had to write you. You made me laugh. That counts high with me.
Salud, sandra stone
POETRY’s burnt down -
now
I can see rejection slips still smoldering.
[Most of them are e-mails now. Such is progress.]
No need to remind me – I received one today.
@Colin: It wasn’t THAT bad, was it? Worked well enough for me. Not all cutlery is stainless bamboo, gra**hopper.
@Matt: I’m old, I laughed.
@Christina: There’s an extended warranty package? I KNEW I should have registered this thing at the moment of awareness. I was busy, though, and the deadline passes so fast…
@Colin: I liked your tsunami thing. Were there really?
P
@J. Stotts: You’re the only one so far who tried the tougher question. A shoo-in if that holds up.
P
workplace burnt down-
now
I can breath the self
Neighbour’s burnt down-
now
I can let the trees spread.
Out here on the hallucinative periphery, it’s Monday, so i thopught : wow! lets reward you all with an opportunity to win lyn hejinian, hoover – Paul, myung mi kim, keith waldrop, tyrone williams and norma cole translations of you, Amatuer rimbaud & greenfield Richard I, holding on to those links!
.. don’t let the tourists down now, you’re getting a free lesson in how to choose what it is you wanna be, if you want to win some, ppl, included below the fold of learning why you can win …
… rain running into locked ridges
sea fossils act of tracing and the trace
out you go here, glissandi over you
… interpret your eye here little
listen to richard read from this new collection … corn-cob dolly, however he likes it, leaked
autobiography inhabit these outskirts. Submission
… must be no less than seven sentences locked
in you Hawk the eye at Assaroe
… glimmers on his back, the silver ridges
mysterious rain-tree sluiced your outskirt
… Ormskirk …
earth-
this was my history, this too, too bare earth
… on the outskirts of Ormskirk, where History
our Task : imagine to be : Imagine being you
… the : damage bettering day and us all-guy
in less than twenty times, tries, the revolution …
Fresh skies burnt down-
now
I can inhale the night.
Chair burnt down-
now
I can moon the floor.
7 sentences
The shamanatrix at ceremony asked if I wanted more, but my body,
(wheezing, twitchy, apneac (stoned beautiful) without a CPAP machine), said “no, it will just wear me out.”
At least I could touch my fingers to the ground; ten years folding forward over a morbid gut, stretching my hamstrings a breath at a time.
The instructional text on getting out was always mid-stack, or stuffed into a duffel bag, hitch hiking to Chicago.
Being There Then.
I read about Swamis in my flannel pajamies, remembering that as a lad I sat zazen in Lincoln Park for free with the Roshi who could catch a fly with his bare mind.
I never wanted to go to college.
Going back, who wouldn’t rather watch cartoons,
see pornography for the very first time again?
Here its boring, but with hats. I got here to put out a wildfire, but my entire bedroom burned to the ground. We used to play pin the tail on donkey, with real donkeys. I’ve been here so long I can’t feel my legs. Tomorrow I’m going over there to tap dance in my underwear with a balloon animal tied to my neck. It’s to cover the hickey. With my new journal I’ll be able to remember all the exciting things that happen.
Harriet burnt down
now
i can return to facebook
Are you competing in your own competition? Imagine if you won your own books.
i think i have a good chance to win because the judge is male
Year’s burnt down-
now
I can scatter the ashes.
Little Shoppe of Haiku Horrors – sandra stone
Hubby burnt down
now
I can marry the mirror
Lab burnt down
now
I can examine the petri-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee …. (these shld be e’s in descending font size)
Nursery burnt down
now
I can bury the nipper
Gown burnt down
now
I can gaga the navel
Arcade burnt down
now
I can shoot the kewpie
Morgue burnt down
now
I can vamp the mortician
Vegas burnt down
now
I can one-up the bandits
Carny burnt down
now
I can swallow T*H*E F*I*R*E*A*T*E*R
Cardhouse burnt down
now
I can revivify the Joker
Pavilion burnt down
now
I can seduce the corpse
Marquee burnt down
now
I can google the trailer
Tannenbaum burnt down
now
I can deep-six the tinsel
Washer burnt down
now
I can rotate the arsonist
Olympia burnt down
now
I can ogle the gods
Poems burnt down
now
I can howl. The ephemera!
Igloo burnt down
now
I can explain the contradiction
Moth burnt down
now
I can snuff the incandescence
Candle burnt down
now
I can mesmerize the char
sandra stone 2.2.10 3:27 A.M.
Up burnt down
now
I can move the moon
@Bhanu: Winning my own book will be a victory of a different colour, when it comes. (Glances at the novel, judders from stem to stern, sounds deep blueback into poetry without taking a breath)
P
radio burnt down
now
i can hear the music
love’s burnt down –
now
i can count the whys.
*and*
someone was leading
and we were following.
a dance we did
backwards.
we had learned already
about looking where you’re going.
looking over
your shoulder.
where we’d been was growing
distant.
where we’d been was growing
legs.
dancing along behind us,
skirts flying out.
Hic : On the grey sand beside the shallow stream
Under your old wind-beaten tower, where still
A lamp burns on beside the open book
That Michael Robartes left, you walk in the moon,
And, though you have passed the best of life, still trace,
Enthralled by the unconquerable delusion,
Magical shapes.
-Yeats Ego Dominus Tuus (continues)
“By the help of an image
I call to my own opposite, summon all
That I have handled least, least looked upon.
Hic : And I would find myself and not an image..”
.. ‘see pornography for the very first time ..
touch my fingers to the ground; ten years folding forward over a morbid gut, stretching my hamstrings a breath at a time.’
” .. coarse-bred son of a livery-stable keeper –
Luxuriant song
… should you leave the lamp
Burning alone beside an open book,
And trace these characters upon the sands,
A style … found by sedentary toil
And by the imitation of great masters …
Bill Dozer
.. I’ve seen your God – Allen roared ..
Very lyrical Bill Blake
Ego Dominus Tuus
Dozer Yeats
In the name of this poem, translated out of the Latin and into American ‘I am your Lord’ .. from The Wild Swans at Coole (1919) ‘perhaps the most heteroegeneous volume of Yeats’s career’ – wrote Daniel Albright in the Everyman Collected footnotes, for this well executed attempt at conjuring a ‘faery’ source of An Sidhe, pronounced shee, A fairy Source of the supernatural within each and every one of us.
There’s no single American word-equivalent for ‘sidhe’, the word’s original meaning existed in a land much different from the 24/7 there is today, occuring in a different Tongue from the language-family, spoken by a majority with little to none of it, English.
Though the ‘medium’ of communication has changed to English, it’s not so difficult to imagine our Faery source of yore, the same as we have now in your English-language Culture, friends in the waning Face Age passing the sell by date, fwends, commoners, bloggers, speaking as we in English on 2/2.10 .. Gŵyl y Canhwyllau .. Mary’s Festival of the Candles’ .. Wales .. the day after Imbolc and St Brigid’s Day, the first of Spring
Groundhog Day
Happy New Year
(i wanted another one):
banks burnt down
now
i can pay the bills
& one more:
tea-plantation’s burnt down
now
I can drink the rain.
Non-profit burnt down
now
everyone can see the elephant in the room
American poetry burned down
now
everyone can see the elephant in the room
I burnt down
now.
I can burn then, too.
The elephant in the room burnt down
now
i can see the
(goes blind)
P
ah, now i can see it too.
Now burnt down
now
I can burn the here.
5-7-5 burnt down
now
I can cinch the axis.
Youth burnt down
now
I can mourn the knees.
Symmetry burnt down
now
I can adjust the frame.
Sisters burnt down
now
I can comb the tangles.
Father burnt down
now
I can ask the question.
Mother burnt down
now
I can eat the cord.
Just After the Battle, Mother
Fifer:
Wilderness burnt down—
now
I can harvest the dead
Ghoul:
Wilderness burnt down—
now
I can’t rifle their soles
Photographer:
Wilderness burnt down—
now
I can document the skulls
(wilderness burnt down—
now
can start the new growth)
~
Reenactor:
Tate burnt down—
Lowell burnt down—
now
I can patronize Wal-Mart—
the battlefield got sold
The mention of wilderness in the other thread coupled with the haiku invitation here triggered this poem. I guess there is still a chance the Wal-Mart won’t go up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Wilderness
And, yes, I realize it’s not a wise idea to mention Tate and Lowell in the context of such a little poem, but there they are.
bridge burnt down-
now
i can walk the river
The wind blew until it broke the branch, my arm of the family tree. The sea wept as I walked away, her whispers far too deep. The mountain fell before me, I was far too high to refuse. As I stand before you, I’m only who I am; unconcerned of where, for I’m already there. Your eyes fill in my lines, your lies shade the guile your learning to despise. You see me walk away, yet I’m still exactly where I am. The heart of motion only dies once.
I’ve burnt down
Now
I can cash the pipe.