Grant Writer or Rock Star?

I'm sure there are an infinite amount of camps that you could put poets in.

But from my limited observations....I've only found two.

The first would be the academic poet.

These people write grants, receive funding, and then go into the world and preach whatever gospel it is that they want to preach.

However....the one thing I've found interesting about grant writing poets is that many of them recycle their same set...over-and over.

Last February I saw a woman who fit into this camp.

She is a brilliant mind,she works at a University, but over the course of 5 or 6 weeks, I saw her read at 3 different venues, and at each one of these events.....she read the same material.

OK, I know many of you will say it is important for a poet tour their new work, but c'mon......

Poet's are still poets, and even when U2 tours a new album, they comprise a new set list most nights.

Finley on the other hand would be a good example of a rock star poet.

By Klecko definition, a "R.S.P." is a poet that doesn't write grants, their work isn't beholding to somebodies money. They just enter into the most interesting hallways life has to offer.

I mean lets face it, as a poet.....where will you find more inspiration, where will you witness the things worthy of your attention... at school, in an office......or in the ditch? LOL

Typically the R.S.P. is flawed, rough around the edges, but when they hit the stage and step up to the podium, you just don't know what you are going to get.

In all the years I've watched Finley read, I don't know if I've ever heard him read the same poem twice.

How confident is that?

How liberating and cool is that?

Academic poets are OK.....and I not trying to convince anyone to hate on them, truth be told....if somebody dangled a pay check in front of Finley or myself, we'd quit are jobs tomorrow.

But the message I am trying to share today is, there is a difference in writing poems and being a poet.

A rock star poet would simply dread having to reread the same topics.

 

Hemingway says of Ezra Pound

He gets his friends in magazines, and out of jail.

What a great quote.

If Finley Died Today......................

Leave it to Finley.

First he vanishes, not just from our city......but to where....Canada?

Then after a couple of weeks doing whatever he is doing there, he headed straight to Wyoming or Idaho, someplace like that to do more vacation stuff with his family.

I don't begrudge a guy or cutting loose and stretching his legs.

In fact I recently read a list issued by the Dali lama where he said one good way to experience personal growth was to visit a region you have never been to, one time every year.

Like I said...I get that, but Saint Paul w/o Finley is like going over to your Grandmothers house.

The Grandma that lives in an apartment filled with old people so there's nobody to play with.

Then knowing that you're bored out of your mind, she scrounges up a coloring book for you to play with, but then she apologizes cuz she can't remember where she put those blasted color crayons.

So now she hands you a blue Bic ballpoint pen and tells you........

"Knock yourself out kid."

Thats what Saint Paul w/o Finley is like, a coloring book and a pen.

I know it's only been like 3 weeks, but 3 weeks is a long time in my world.

Then one morning, a Thursday, the day I see Finley drinking coffee with Brian Horrigan,  He wasn't there, and then I thought.....

OMG - If Finley dies one day, years before me......who will I discuss poetry with.

I could discuss it with you peeps, but no offense... it wouldn't even be 1/2 as  much fun.

Well Mike, if you stay alive, and come back to Minnesota, I can show you the poems I've written in your absence.

Here's one that I finished earlier today, and I really like it, not a little, but a lot.

That's another reason it sucks to have Finley out of the Capitol City.....who will tell us all what we need to do to improve our poems? LOL

I miss you friendo - enjoy

 

Skulls & Airports
  

I took the wrong turn off

I cut through the airport

I got to the place where you drop travelers off

I almost drove by, but then I saw an old man

Embracing a woman that may have been his wife

Their moment of separation was touching

Touching enough to turn off the ignition

And watch people separate from one another

On a sidewalk that offered

Departure to each corner of the globe

If you stand in one place

Engulfed in this mob

You’ll witness people exercising emotions

Ranging from despair to elation

I only stayed 7 minutes

People are flawed

People are stupid

They disappoint

And seldom deserve trust

But if you stand outside an airport

Where people send those that they love away

It might be just enough to give you hope

It did for me

The 12 Winners (KPV State Fair Poems)

One day I was sitting with Finley in his kitchen, and somehow we had an idea that we should sponser a poetry contest for the State Fair.

We decided that since the venue I would be working from would be a Demo Kitchen, that perhaps the poems should focus around food.

Finley usually isn't big on rules, but he did suggest that we limit each contestant to 3 submissions, none of which should have more than 100 words.

Oh yeah....the entire contest took place on Facebook.

Here you go, submitted in no particular order are the winning 12.

#1 -

JoyandDubblex Leftow

 Apples in Seatlle

I smell like an apple
Today just for you
Only you're not here so I

Smell my apple scent
Myself and imagine you
Smell it instead of I

#2 -

Jana Anima

To know the melon's soul, choose
The large knife, the heavy blade
With swift stroke, a rupture of the dull globe

Two suns that wobble
And slosh, their slippery afterbirths ready to spill
From the hollows of their bellies

You will think you see it, pulsing in that blaze
Of fruited orange. But its all show
And dazzle. You cannot see the melon's soul.

You will not know it until the moment it
Explodes upon your tongue.

#3 -

Ethna McKiernan

Untitled

She loved that stove, high backed,
Black, old, the one she's written poems
On forever, gas, not electric. her neighbors
Worried she would burn the kitchen down

So many papers, so many words
No casserole to speak of
The boys were young, but even after
She could afford a desk

She persisted in the kitchen
Writing, dreaming, At ease
With spices to her left, the notebook
To her right, the harmony of writing at the stove

#4 -

Kim Ode

At The Great Get-Together

The concession stands in Heaven
Have nothing on the Fair
While ascended souls from Nevada
Or Kentucky, or New Hampshire
Marvel at bags of warm tollhouse

Ears of butter-drenched corn
And pikes of deep fried candy bars
Minnesotans who have passed on
Silently give thanks
For pockets no longer lined with sticky change

#5 -

Jeannie Piekos

Sunday Dinner

After mom left him
My dad began to cook
It was 1969

Man had walked on the moon
America survivied three days of peace and music
Richard Nixon was President

And my father made Chicken Cacciatore
He cleaved the breast from back, thigh from leg

He stirred and stewed then took me to church
Where I contemplated
The transformation of father

With shrimp cocktail to begin
We sat down to dinner
I peeled back the hard pink shell

Finally understanding the sacrament
For here in my father's kitchen
Was resurrection

Redemption and, best of all
Communion

#6 -

Susan Koefod

Free Samples

Vivian pitches the pleated sample cups
in the Pardeeville Piggly Wiggly,
Her hair net jaunty over her perky perm

This week it's salmon with slivered almonds
And harissa-smothered sirloin
Though Viv's quick to say that the the sirloin's a dollar off
And salmon's half price
She never pushes the hard sell

So there's no need to scurry off after slurping your sample
Because Vivian lives for that guilty look you give
When you help yourself to seconds

#7 -

Tim Nolan

Roasted Chicken

I'm writing on the cutting board after
One hour of the Amish chicken roasting in the oven

How can I say this other than directly
He is beautiful, brown and still cooking here

On the cutting board, he's so beautiful, all fat
In the breast, his legs sticking out, I salted him

All over, upside and down, in the dark cavity of him
The salt draws in the moisture of him

Praise be to his absent little brain, his beak
His pecking intentions for the bit of grain, I'm sorry

But hungry, writing here in red ink
The splotched grease of him, smeared here with my words

#8 -

MaryAnn Franta Moenick

Egg

This dream has no wings
Keep it warm

#9 -

Loren Niemi

Soup

The circumference of the world is no bigger
Than this bowl, nor the stars any further
Than the length of this spoon

The sun embracing summer is no warmer
Than love, even that of wife, mother, father
Or children any less filling than this soup

#10 -

Erin Boylan

Yin Bread Yang

This morning I burnt the bottom
Of something I was cooking up

While the top stayed golden
And the rest laid charred

Neither crumbled in the flip

#11 -

N.M. Kelby

Dinner in Havana

The orange blossem air is little consolation; the kitchen does not want you.
The stove turns the other cheek.
Oysters here are salty pearls. Mangoes bleed pink sugar.
The word "hot dish" cannot be translated - no one is sorry for that.
After rum, and more rum, small spiny lobsters marinate in sour orange and garlic.
Black beans and amethyst. Annatto bleeds saffron into the rice.
Outside, peacocks shed their iridescent plumage without poetry.
Nothing here needs you for its beauty, and there is mercy in that.
The ravenous crchids thrive in the salt air alone.

#12 -

Julie Wheeler

Good Gravy

Some were impressed
When water turned into wine
Not me

Water and wine into gravy
That's the miracle, performed yearly

Three days and three nights
From roasting to ressurrection
Lesser cooks lose faith
Or never had any
Or resort to a flavor packet

I draw a faithful crowd
Giving thanks and praise
Renouncing their low-fat ways for the good-good gravy
Only the bird is sad to be invited
But his sacrifice serves us all

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Marilyn Monroe VS Jim Morrison

I don't know if I've ever met anybody who didn't think Jim Morrison was cool.

I sure do.

As a teenager, I had his American Poet poster hanging in my bedroom.

It was my thought that this would raise my street cred, and chicks would dig me.

But how good was Morrison's poetry.

To be honest.....I find it to be droll.

I am going to speak for Finley, w/o speaking to Finley, but I'm pretty sure he would say something like...........

"Jim wasn't a bad guy. some of his music was fun, however....his poetry seemed a little shallow. Too much of it was a spotlight shing on himself......"

I don't know, maybe you like Lizard Kings and fire.....but as I get older.

I don't want to hear your bullsh** neurosis, I just want to cut to the quick and spy in on the things that really jump start your mind and heart.

Just recently a book of Marilyn Monroe's poems in progress was released.

I really enjoyed her honesty.

This coveted sex goddess wasn't trying to get your attention, in fact just the opposite.

I think she was trying to run from herself.

Here is just one of several portions i read that I kind of enjoyed................

Oh damn I wish that I were
dead — absolutely nonexistent –
gone away from here — from
everywhere but how would I do it
There is always bridges — the Brooklyn
bridge – no not the Brooklyn Bridge
because But I love that bridge (everything is beautiful from there and the air is so clean) walking it seems
peaceful there even with all those
cars going crazy underneath. So
it would have to be some other bridge
an ugly one and with no view — except
I particularly like in particular all bridges — there’s some-
thing about them and besides these I’ve
never seen an ugly bridge

Anyways, I almost always pick girls over boys, but if you would like to voice your opinion.....I'm listening.

EIGHT

Finley Says...............

A fortunate writer will have 8 people who review their work on a somewhat constant basis.

6 of these people should know nothing about writing. They should simply reveal whether or not they enjoyed what you wrote.

2 of the people should be writers. These people will focus on the technical aspect of what you are doing.

So after hearing this Klecko asks Finley.....

"Why wouldn't a guy just ask 8 writers to review his work?"

Finley was silent.

Then he laughed.

"Because writers are mean people by nature. They don't have it in them to be encouraging. Most writers will tear your confidence to shreds, if you give them the chance."