An echo of rose petals . . .

Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.   (Don Marquis)

If any of my poetry friends are interested in writing and publishing a review of Lines of Flight, I invite you to contact me at: catherine.chandler.poetry@gmail.com

So far, reviews have appeared or are scheduled to appear in: The Raintown Review, New Walk, Shit Creek Review, First Things, and Alabama Literary Review - venues originating in the US, the UK and Australia. Still waiting for a Canadian reaction . . .

The book is also reviewed in the Foreword by Rhina P. Espaillat here.

 

. . . and these are all for you . . .

 

Apple Picking (Winslow Homer, 1878)

The purpose of this website/blog is to share my "ungemmed, unhidden" poetry with you. 

The sonnet below was written by one of my favorite poets, Edna St. Vincent Millay.  "Apple Picking" is by Winslow Homer, one of my favorite artists.

Fatal Interview Sonnet XI - "Not In A Silver Casket"

Not in a silver casket cool with pearls
Or rich with red corundum or with blue
Locked, and the key withheld, as other girls
Have given their loves, I give my love to you.
Not in a lovers'-knot, not in a ring
Worked in such fashion and the legend plain-
Semper fidelis, where a secret spring
Kennels a drop of mischief for the brain:
Love in the open hand, no thing but that,
Ungemmed, unhidden, wishing not to hurt,
As one should bring you cowslips in a hat
Swung from the hand, or apples in her skirt,
I bring you, calling out as children do:
"Look what I have! - And these are all for you."

There were two . . .

sub rosa

There were two: shy “Emilie”, quiet “Ellis”.

One assumed a masculine name to mask it;

one dropped sweets and messages in a basket

                        over the trellis.

Boy or bee, the Belle would take rules and bend them

with her slant on rhythm and rhyme and nectar.

As for Ellis, no one would dare respect her

                        should she offend them

with a tale of blustering heights of passion

written by a maidenly preacher’s daughter.

One despaired of finding an imprimatur,

                                    wearing an ashen

wardrobe,  watching,  stitching her words together.

Dreams of Gondal! Dreams of a secret lover!

Still the skittish poet(ess) runs for cover:

                        birds of a feather

may in mortal fear of the prejudicial,

even now, when tempted to seek admission,

approbation, countenance, recognition,

use the initial.

(by Catherine Chandler. Originally published in Mezzo Cammin, Volume 1, Issue 2, Winter 2006)

Paying for desire

 

Hunger

by Catherine Chandler

By January he begins to spot
the whitetail, lying still along the shoulder
of Pennsylvania’s roads. As days grow colder,
winter gives the trucker food for thought.
He rolls by, shakes his head as if to say,
Dumb animals, continues on his run
to Scranton, barrels down Route 81,
where loaded semis claim the right-of-way.
He wonders at the annual mistake,
this wandering from woods and hills, and whether,
despairing of alder, tamarack and heather,
a starveling doe, this snowy night, will break
into the clearing, freeze in the headlights’ glare,
pay for desire with blood and bones and hair.

(first published in The Flea, July 2009)

From the Ends of the Earth

The Dogs of Ushuaia

In search of the exotic I had flown

as far as Ushuaia. I would see

the penguin and the lenga, for I’d grown

accustomed to the birch, the chickadee.

I crossed the Beagle Channel, met the prince

who sails upon the air, immersed my mind

in images I trusted would convince

myself I’d left the commonplace behind:

the Southern Cross at midnight, and the way

the cordillera bears from west to east,

how wind and weather shift throughout the day –

a poet’s fodder, at the very least.

And yet, in retrospect, what I recall

most often when I need the proper noun

is not Olivia or Martial,

but intimations of a downhill town:

a bleak, forsaken prison, silent bogs,

a landscape ravaged by the beaver, frail

impromptu housing, countless scrawny dogs,

a monument to the Malvinas, stale

abandoned factories that bear the brunt

of empty promises, a roadside shrine

to plaster saints, a tourist’s waterfront,

complete with tourists from the steamship line.

Though many miles from home, this land would show

that there is really nothing new, indeed,

under the sun, beyond the point of no

return, beyond the calafate seed,

beyond all hemispheres, beyond each pole,

beyond the boundaries nations call their own.

The dogs of Ushuaia hound my soul

and gnaw upon it, as they would a bone.

(Ushuaia, Argentina, January 2004)
Poem by Catherine Chandler, originally published in Umbrella, Summer 2007

Working Girls

There'll always be working people in my poems because I grew up with them, and I am a poet of memory.  (Philip Levine)

 

Lines

For Manon, wherever I may find her

The shop floor foreman hasn’t got a clue

to where the new employee’s coming from –

the incense and the ice of Xanadu,

the flame and fury of Byzantium.

He knows for sure she doesn’t give a shit

about the piecework in her packing crate –

she checks the clock; at five, she’s first to split.

It’s no damn wonder that she can’t make rate.

He’s noticed, too, the woman can be seen

each morning, scribbling in a steno pad,

an island in the boisterous canteen.

Whatever’s eating her, she’s got it bad.

He’s right. Her day job’s pretty hard to take
with grace and grit; and she won’t last too long,
demanding honey-dew on coffee break;
for no good reason, bursting into song.

 

(by Catherine Chandler -- originally published in Umbrella, Fall 2007)

Renoir's Declaration

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks. (Plutarch)

 

 

Irène: A Portrait

Mademoiselle Irène Cahen d’Anvers, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1880

She looks complaisant, with her dainty hands

demurely on her lap. Red hair cascades

below her waist. Her countenance demands

one disregard the backdrop’s somber shades

to focus on the eyes, the vacant gaze,

the incandescent skin, the perfect nose,

the brow she has a tendency to raise,

perhaps in mild impatience with the pose.

And then, there is the mouth – the winsome curve,

a smile almost incongruously sly.

But now let’s take a closer look. Observe:

Irène will bear two offspring who will die,

one in the downing of his fighter plane,

one of Zyklon B at Auschwitz.

Not yet sophisticated, cool, urbane,

in blissful ignorance the young girl sits.

Renoir declared that art must aim to trace

the pleasant, pretty side of life; and with

a stroke of genius, turned a poker face

into an icon in the realm of myth.

by Catherine Chandler (first published in FutureCycle Poetry, June 2008)