Free Poem: paper dragons

blue & yellow folded paper dragons
sail away in an indigo Tintenfaß
dragons dangerous yet delicate
for they cannot breathe fire
and live

(c) n. i. annakindt 1990

included in the book 'surly petunia' available from Lulu.com.
Reviews/comments on this poem are welcome here or at Lulu.com's surly petunia page.

------
Tintenfaß is German for 'inkwell'. The funny letter at the end is pronounced like an 's'. For some reason I am really fond of the word Tintenfaß, in spite of the fact it is difficult to type.

Sijo - A poetic form like Haiku or Tanka

I first became aware of the Korean poetic form 'sijo' when watching the KBS Korean drama Hwang Jin-i, about the life of a famous Korean poet and gisaeng (Korean geisha).

This took place in about 2007, when I had for many years banished the composition of poetry from my life as impractical. I did however compose one sijo, which I will not quote here as I hope to submit it for publication.

How does the poet learn the sijo form? By reading many, many sijo, with a certain concentration on the great masters of sijo from Korea. Obtain a fine blank-book and copy your favorite classical sijo into it. When you have filled the book halfway, you might consider adding the best of contemporary sijo.


Some links regarding sijo:
Asian Poetry: The Korean Sijo

Sijo Masters in translation

Sijo by Hwang Chin-i (Hwang Jin-i) (may not be copied without written permission)

Sijo at Aha Poetry

The Attempted Murder of Sijo Poetry (on very traditional Korean sijo)

Sijo - Wikipedia

Free Poem: surly petunia

lauralee lauralee lauralee
down! down! down! she goes
into a vat of melted
lawn furniture

anarchists blowing up
condoms
on their heads//in bars//behind bars//monkey bars

((beware of underwear insurance salesmen
sneered the lamp knowingly))

fuzzy pink housewives in fuzzy pink robes
on strike

deathterrorkillviolencerape/rape/rape
cucumber
cucumber
cucumber

c1988 n. i. annakindt

included in the book 'surly petunia' available from Lulu.com.
Reviews/comments on this poem are welcome here or at Lulu.com's surly petunia page.
_________
It's been a few years since this poem was written but I am still absurdly pleased with the title. The lamp in the poem may well be the first in a series of overly animate inanimate objects strolling through my poetic realm. For the record, I've never known anyone named lauralee with or without melted lawn furniture. And the cucumbers? I regard them as a calming influence.

Free Poem: malison d'etre

jonathan is a bat out
of hell
which explains his crispy singed
wings
and his
expression of perpetual exasperation
and why he sleeps
hanging over the heat register
on cold nights
he's working on a PhD
in social work
but what he really
wants is to
be a rock star
like michael jackson
& madonna
strangely enough he cant stand baseball
or hippopotamuses

c1990
included in the book 'surly petunia' available from Lulu.com.
Reviews/comments on this poem are welcome here or at Lulu.com's surly petunia page.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
malison d'etre is a companion piece to jungle spiders and has been published next to one another for the opener of 'surly petunia'. Perhaps one could call both poems portraits of peculiar people. Somehow I see Jonathan, the subject of malison d'etre, as wearing fingerless gloves. But that's only my opinion.

Free Poem: jungle spiders

she was raised among the cannibals
in borneo or was it new guinea--- no matter
her father was an avid anthropologist
right up to the day he was eaten
the cannibals don't kill you
of course but if you die
you shan't go to waste
he always joked &
he was quite right actually

she was raised among the cannibals
and the chief's chief wife doted on her
taught her all her best recipes
and the secrets of ruling a cannibal husband
she learned her lessons well
all her husbands said so

she was raised among the cannibals
and that could explain
quite a lot

c1990 n. i. annakindt
included in the book 'surly petunia' available from Lulu.com.
Reviews/comments on this poem are welcome here or at Lulu.com's surly petunia page.

Free Poem: nude coinage

the sewage of the city was
collected by the most avid
enthusiasts of ozone archeology
& the turbid waters of the
oiled narcotic river were carried in large
earthen jars and sold as cough
syrup and very few customers
ever noticed the difference
& wooden sidewalk technology had got
quite advanced before someone invented
the match

c1990
published in 'temm poetry magazine' Sept. 1990
included in the book 'surly petunia' available from Lulu.com.
Reviews/comments on this poem are welcome here or at Lulu.com's surly petunia page.

Stupid Starship Names

Have you ever noticed how fictional starships so often have imposing glorious names? Andromeda, Enterprise, Voyager, Millenium Falcon and so on? Why not have a starship with a stupid name?

For example, the SS Hindenburg--- SS standing for starship, of course. I mean, Hindenburg was a great war hero, he was kind of a mediocre President of Germany--- but the guy that followed him was Hitler and Hitler was such a miracle of badness that it makes Hindenburg's presidency look pretty great by contrast. And so someone thinks, oh, cool, name the ship after Hindenburg, only they kind of don't really remember there was a dirigible by that name that crashed and burned (bigtime) until the ship is already registered....

Or, even better, what about the SS Liberty Valance? You know, like the bad guy in the movie with John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart? I mean, once we are far enough into the future that we'd even have starships the average person wouldn't know about old movies from our era--- but a few people would, as a hobby, and one of them could have named it as an inside joke?

Or how about this: somebody names a ship "Abomination" or "Anathema" because that person---- NOT a native English speaker--- has seen a literary use of that word and totally misunderstood what it meant?

I actually have one or two other examples of stupid starship names I'm using that I'm not revealing since I'm using it in my current novel and I don't want to steal the mojo. Do you have any ideas for stupid starship names that you are willing to share on the internet? Drop a comment!

Publishing a Poetry Volume at Lulu.com: Beginnings

In my youthful irresponsible years--- which I admit have not quite ended--- I wrote a good bit of poetry and spend a great deal of time and effort submitting it to various markets, which mostly paid in contributor's copies.

Having returned to poetry somewhat lately, I've searched around for markets but with the increase in postage and the proliferation of the internet have begun to wonder if submitting poetry is even worth doing.

Since poetry has not been much of a well-paying art form--- I was tickled pink to get $5 for a poem once--- self-publishing of poetry does not bear any sort of stigma. So yesterday I looked into Lulu.com, which offers to publish books for free--- the author only pays for whatever copies he wants for himself.

Step one was to select a batch of suitable poems. I like to let my poems age for a while to ensure they are actually of decent quality, so the selection was limited to my older work that had been proper revised (or written properly in the first place).

Three of the poems I selected had appeared in small press magazines many years ago. The others were poems I judged to be of similar or greater quality, but had not been published.

At Lulu.com they have special templates for poetry volumes where you can choose the desired template and then just type in the poems desired. The result, with the template I chose, was surly petunia, a 21 page book with pre-fab interior illustrations, which is now available for sale for $13.49.

The first 10 or so pages of surly petunia are available for preview at: surly petunia at Lulu.com

While the writing of the poems in surly petunia took well over a decade, compiling them into a book and publishing the book with Lulu.com took only a day. Now the only chore left is the self-publisher's burden of finding an audience for the work. I have no irrational expectations: I might find a wider audience printing my poems on the walls of a well-used public restroom (but the restroom's owners tend to object.)

I welcome feedback from any other writers who have tried self-publishing with eyes wide open to the drawbacks.

And of course any kindly feedback on the poems of 'surly petunia', especially reviews of them, will be received as a gentle rain from heaven.....