Where have you been, my blue-eyed son?

I've been on a Dylan kick for a couple days, compulsively listening to the Rolling Thunder Revue version of "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall."  Found out today's his birthday.  HB, Bobby Z.

Drawing-poem blog

Hey, have you seen the blog of collaborative drawing-poems my brother and I keep?  (It's his drawings and my words.)  We called it Malfeez, a reference to a German board game and an archaic word in German that means "misdeed" or "bad action."  We will be updating it more this summer.

Down by the Riverside

by Joanna Penn Cooper and Todd Colby

It is a vulgar error to assume the things you see there

were put in the mud just for you.  You'll be dead soon
enough, and you can think about it then, how a certain
percentage of the population walks around reading

your mind like it was an ad for laser surgery on the A train.

I won't even mention the ghosts who wait for you outside
the bathrooms of historic homes, but I just did so: there

are ghosts outside bathrooms of historic homes waiting

just for you. Go to them but come to me first: I have the drugs,

the good ones for your alienation. But don't be alarmed, you

have the option of paying a different fee, like joining a cult

to help you with your thinking or playing the hero and feeling

your feelings all the time. But I digress; in fact, I'll be frank

and positive. I'll be so frank and positive it will mildly terrify

the people around me who don't quite see things my way.

That's what the river is for: wrapping my friends

in light gauze and tossing them into the water.

News from here

1.  I wrote a short piece on Will Oldham for the music issue of Poetry Crush.  I'm glad to be included with these contributors writing interesting pieces on some of my favorite musicians and songs.

2.  Love for Donna Summer, who was (strangely?) important to me as a child.

3.  I'm working on more collaborative poems with Todd Colby.  TC is back in Brooklyn, and I am here in Vermont, but through the magic of technology, we can quickly send each other lines.  I am also working on some other writing.  And I'm surrounded by visual artists and starting to get to see their work (and will get to see more in the next few weeks).  I've been thinking a lot about paintings.

4.  I'm at a residency in VT until 6/8.  If you'd like to send me a postcard or good old-fashioned handwritten letter, here is the address:  Joanna Penn Cooper c/o VSC, PO Box 613, Johnson, VT 05656.  

HB

My little brother is a whopping quarter century old today.  I hope  he stays sassy as he moves firmly into adulthood.  Here are some highlights of his visits to New York since I've lived here.

Japanese snacks.

 His notes from a poetry reading I made him go to.

Pretending to be a "Brooklyn hipster."

Hanging around.

Stay gold, Ponyboy.

May!

Well, National Poetry Month is over, and with it poem-a-day April.  As usual, it was challenging and gratifying and a little scary to post a new draft every day.  I will take my April drafts down in a few days, in order to work on revising them.  But thank you to my friends who read them.  And to my friends who wrote them.  Here's Annmarie O'Connell's amazing poem for the last day of the poem-a-day challenge.  It is strange and moving and beautiful, as the best poems are.

And thank you again to Maureen Thorson for featuring my blog on the NaPoWriMo site and to Jennifer L. Knox for featuring two (!) of my poems on the Best American Poetry blog.  Wow.  (By the way, check out Jen's desert island music picks on over at the Poetry Society of America.)

I can't believe it's May already, and that my Vermont writing residency is coming up.  eep.  I'm grateful to everyone who's donated to my fundraising page for the residency.  And sincerely grateful for the wonderful writing community and support system I have in general.  Truly.

Happy second day of May, everyone.  Allons-y!

April 30th Poem

[expired]

April 29th Poem

[bye]

April 28th Poem

[see ya]

April 27th Poem

[expired]

April 26th Poem

[thanksbye]

thank you!

I'd like to say a sincere thank you to everyone who has donated to the fundraising page for my writing residency at the Vermont Studio Center.  I've been touched by the donations and also by the support of friends who've shared my page and those who have cheered me on (many of them for many years).

"So shines a good deed in a weary world . . ."  (Am I Wonka or Charlie?  Both, I guess.)

Thank you.

April 25th poem

[poof!]

April 24th poem

[later!]

April 23rd Poem

[closed for maintenance]

April 22nd Poem

[expired]

April 21st Poem

[poof]

April 20th Poem

[expired]

April 19th poem

[thanks for playing]

Thanks, NaPoWriMo!

The founder of National Poetry Writing Month, poet Maureen Thorson, listed my blog as today's featured NaPoWriMo blog.  Wow-- thank you!

And thanks to Jennifer Knox, guest blogger at the Best American Poetry blog, for listing my April 17th poem over there, as well.  Wow again!

April 18th poem

[goodbye]

April 17th poem

[closed for processing]

April 16th poem

[byethanks]

April 15th poem

[expired]

April 14th poem

[we value your patronage]

April 13th poem

[y'all come back now]

April 12th poem

[expired]

I Am Pleased to Introduce My Brand

Hello, friends.  So, my good news is that a small Brooklyn press has expressed interest in publishing my first full-length book, tentatively titled How We Were Strangers.   I am currently working with an editor to revise and expand a manuscript of short lyrical prose pieces that exist somewhere at the intersection of prose poems, short short stories, and lyrical essays.  We're calling them lyrical shorts.  This is indeed a happy thing.  My other good news is that my four-week residency is coming up at the Vermont Studio Center, at which I hope to make headway on those revisions, as well as do some writing toward a second book. 


If you are able to help out, here is my indiegogo fundraising page to help raise money for my residency.  If you are not able to contribute money, I am also accepting contributions of friendship and support and good vibes my way, which some of you have long given me, unasked.  Thank you.  For real.   


Here is the first piece in what I hope will be my first full-length book:


I Am Pleased to Introduce My Brand

Sometimes you can help someone else through by plucking at the air around them until they feel revived.  The final step, though, is yours alone.  You may discover that no one appreciates the grace of a skateboarder quite like you do.  That your secret desire is to appear in a poster in the subway wearing green sequined underwear and own it.  We all need time alone before returning to the marketplace with words and gestures that others mirror back to us.  Some need more time than others, which is both blessing and curse.  Think Spiderman.  Think Witch of Blackbird Pond.  Most things happen at dusk.    Sometimes the trees will call you up a hill, particles slowing then turning counter-clockwise.  One.  Two.  Three.  When you let the drawing happen, that’s your brand right there.  A voice in your head like from a creepy ‘70s movie about kids who might be possessed or maybe were born that way.  Literal woods.  Literal dusk.  

April 11th poem

[draft under reconstruction]

April 10th poem

[goodbye, goodbye]

April 9th poem

[expired]

April 8th poem

[poof]

April 7th poem

[adios]

April 6th poem

[thank you thank you]

April 5th poem

[goodbye]

April 4th poem

[I will leave this one up.  My gift to you, with thanks.]




Transformation Is Never Easy 

I come from a people who are fond of saying things

like, "Your face is always changing throughout your lifetime.

Indeed, your looks can change from one day to the next."

So, that partly explains that.  This morning it was knocking

that woke me, and the options were (1) ghosts, (2) baby,

(3) boyfriend.  But I was alone by then and it was just an open

window in the next room sucking the door shut and shut

and partly open again.  Even if you hate the word "gift" as a verb,

I gift you this tree of tiny white blossoms out my window.  It's

making my eyes itch.  I gift you the idling truck sound,

how traffic is like the ocean until it isn't.  I gift you this portrait

of my face and its bird-eyed, good humored scowl, the way

it's always changing, having never learned to settle down.

Napowrimo-ing Friends

Here are links to amazing poems by two friends who are also writing a poem a day in April, the lovely and wondrous Annmarie O'Connell and Karen Dietrich.

Also, many thanks to Best American Poetry's guest blogger Jennifer L. Knox for including my April 3rd poem on the BAP blog!

April 3rd poem

[thank you for playing]

April 2nd poem

[see you next year!]

April 1st poem

[poof!]

Napowrimo!

It's National Poetry Month, and also National Poetry Writing Month.  Founded in 2003 by Maureen Thorson, Napowrimo challenges us (invites us?) to join a community of poets in writing a poem a day in April.  This is my third year doing it.

Thorson is providing optional prompts on the Napowrimo website.  The first prompt was to write a carpe diem poem, which I sort of (maybe?) did for my April 1st poem.

Here goes . . .  Happy April!

OutKast cover

What I'm Thinking About

1.  It's a good thing I am in love with this blue & white & green & blue atmosphere-- my area of my planet has a lot of that.
2.  Lizard on a screen.
3.  A book of autobiographical micro-fictions.
4.  People back in Brooklyn.
5.  The difference between beauty and kitsch, between happiness and obliviousness.
6.  The cost of it all.  The literal cost.  In shekels.
7.  Litany as a means of avoidance.
8.  Weirdness & movement.
9.  "A genius is the one most like himself." --Thelonious Monk
10.  Trayvon.  The little boy at the restaurant the other day.  The little boys sitting on the neighborhood sign who waved at us, and the security car that slowed down to look at them.  Boys and men I've known.  My country, my country, my country.
11.  Who are my teachers?  Who have I taught?  Who's in my cohort?
12.  All of us.

Tuesday dance

(This guy's dance.  In the second half of this Astrud Gilberto video.  I am learning it.)

Friday

I'm reading in the Stain of Poetry series with some stunners on Friday.  Photos and bios can be found here.

Lindsey Boldt /Joanna Penn Cooper / Tyler Flynn Dorholt / Dorothea Lasky / Steve Orth / J Hope Stein

7 PM on March 30th @

Goodbye Blue Monday

Bushwick, Brooklyn

Poetrycrush

The website Poetrycrush has included me in their Hey, what are you reading? feature.   My thanks to the editor, J. Hope Stein!

Some of my early work

Earth axioms

1.  If something is mysterious, it's probably a ghost or good news.

2.  You may discover a picture of yourself dressed in white on your mother's lap, discovering your fingers in the sunlight, revealing that you are part mystical being, part lemur.  Yes, it's all true.

3.  If you just smile and act pleasant, that's 80% of your job.  The other 15% is remembering that your job is more than just smiling and acting pleasant.  It could be called something like "to unfold" or "to kick ass."  The missing 5% is a secret.

4.  You are moving into the unknown at the speed of time.

5.  There's all sorts of wildlife around.

More quotes

Do I look too much like a crone? 
--Mom at lunch


What the fuck are people doing in their homes?
--Brother looking at the internet


These leprechauns won't let me by.
How do I get 200 happinesses?
Guess I'll have to buy 'em doves. 
Sometimes you just have to try stuff. 
--Mom playing computer game

Far Away Eyes

Family and other mysteries

Que Sera Sera

Some out-of-contexts quotes from my mom

It's like a friggin' Jenga puzzle. 


Who wants to be haunted by a decision you made 25 years ago?


You guys were both experiments.  [about me and my brother]


I prefer to eat like a snake.

News

1.  I'm reading in the Stain of Poetry series in Brooklyn on Friday March 30th, with some lovely people.  It will likely be my last reading in NYC for a while (at least a few months?) because I'm going underground to work on a couple projects.  So come on out.  It would be nice to see you.

2.  Don't forget to look at the hawk cam.

3.  I'm heading to Florida for a visit with fam.  I may post dispatches from there.  Stay tuned.

Ten for Friday

1.  According to the show "Life after People," ten thousand years after people, wild horses will wander the shoreline of New York City.  They will be shorter in stature, though, than their equine forebears.

2.   Today I listened to Marc Maron's interview of Maria Bamford from a couple years ago on the WTF podcast.  Maria!  Bamford!


3.  I read Diane Keaton's memoir, and now I want to watch Reds, but you can't stream it, so I might have to watch Baby Boom.

4.  This is a look that is now called "ombre."

 
5.  At around the same time Diane Keaton looked like that, I looked like this:

6.  Then later in college, I too had ombre hair.  But not on purpose.  That was just my normal hair.

7.  I have updated my cv.  Also, I'm also thinking of calling my next book either Vita or News about My Plasma.  (A friend's suggestion after hearing this poem.)  Or maybe that's two books.    

8.  There are also one or two projects in the works for this summer.  Stay tuned.

9.  Meanwhile, I've been taking a lot of pictures of the sky.

10.   I am working behind the scenes, weaving together the narrative threads.  Spring ahead.

March 6th Occasional Poem

I'm back from my travels and they're just beginning,
so I'll leave my suitcase on the floor like that.  I'm feeling
ripple effects,  finally becoming most like myself, this
totally different person.  My own sunshine.  My own
Clementine.  A good witch, with activated
charcoal, memory cells all seeping into my gut
and all around me people are magic for real, making
humans out of their own cells or making me tea
or waking me up all wrapped and baroque in the middle
of a dream to shake my hand goodbye and tell me the weather
outside.  Goodbye. Meanwhile the sky is faraway light blue,
a distant smoking father.  Meanwhile March pauses, holding
still and making eyes at us.  Pretending to be an Olympic
sprinter, waiting on the block.  Pretending to be a ballet person
showing up early to put on eyelashes and sew the toe shoes.
A Broadway person, bouncing at the knees like that,
about to do a tune, with all the appropriate gestures.

Word cloud

Here's a wordle of what's currently on my blog.  Word cloud.  I got the idea from poetrycrush.

Chicago highlights

Well, I went to the AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) conference, after having avoided it for several years.  Here are some of my highlights (many of which were "off-site").

1.  Pasta at Francesco's and conversation about movies, art, and Italian pop music.
2.  Hearing of Maria's adventures in Malaysia and hearing her poetry.  And she had the best t-shirt.
3.  Lunch with Tayve and Dorinda.  Talk of Staten Island, haunted places in Florida, and their new press-- Trio House!
4.  Seeing Joe Pan at the Brooklyn Arts Press table.  Their books look great.
5.  Resting for a moment at the Ping Pong table (not a literal ping pong table-- the book fair table for the journal Ping Pong), talking to Christine, and admiring their posters.
6.  The two older ladies at the reading who were like the judges from the Muppets.  They approved of my reading, apparently.
7.  Seeing long-lost friends from St. Paul (John!) and Kansas (Kate!).
8.  jubilat tote bag.
9.  (Free) dinner with friends.  Scallops and wine.
10.  Seeing Malena's beautiful face.
11.  Kind words from J. and M. in the Hilton lobby.
12.  Codeine cough syrup, homeopathic cough syrup, decongestants, lozenges, tea.
13.  Falling asleep to Marc Maron interviews.
14.  Ditching the conference for some off-site quality time on the South Side with poet mama friends, Lauren and Annmarie.
15.  Seeing Kari, who I've known since age 15 (or 16?), and how some friends are deeply familiar, despite years apart.
16.  Stopping by Dancing Girl Press open house and buying a laurel leaf tiara-headband, instead of more books.
17.  How entering the Fine Arts building is like stepping back in time.  (That elevator!)  That building must be haunted, right?
18.  Meeting Facebook friends and being greeted with, "Hey!  Facebook friend!"
19.  Reading Jen's chapbook on the plane and loving it.
20.  My good deed of the conference: Talking nonsense to a fellow AWPer as we descended back into NYC to distract her from a bumpy landing.
21.  Oh, my friends.  What would I do without you?  Really.

Chicago reading

I will take part in the New England College Tenth Anniversary reading at the Poetry Center of Chicago on Thursday March 1st, along with Ilya Kaminsky, Katie Farris, Malena Mörling, James Harms, J. Hope Stein, Maria Garcia Teutsch, Steve Halle, and Francesco Levato.  


Here are the event details: 
AWP Conference Off-Site Event: Poetry from New England College Thursday, March 1, 2012 - 5:00pm

Poetry Center of Chicago Office, 78 E Washington St., Pedway East, Chicago, IL

Evening Reading - Take the Cultural Center elevator to the Pedway level, and turn left. Poetry Center office is on the left.


Reader bios are here.    

Early collaboration

The Age of Wonders

(by Todd Colby and Joanna Penn Cooper)

Well, I guess I'm abject or whatever, waking up at night to study my leg
in the mirror. Telling myself there are no great storm flags, only cloth
and dye. Only impersonal wind and small electric feelings in the spine
and skull, where a body can get some work done and then sleep.
One of us would go, "Do you know how many years I've been hearing
you say that?" Like almost as mysterious as not saying it anymore
which is when you curled into a ball and bloomed. In our spare time when we're done terrifying ourselves we cultivate our breath in separate rib cages, triangulating birdsong from our locations across town. But what is such math and theory in the face of extinction? I'll have the food from a tube a bath with salt and some rapid release narcotic wipe for my brain. I'm trying my best with this figurative gardenia in my hair, these earplugs nesting like shrimp in my canals and all the likely moods that pertain to my enigmas. No one will ever figure me out.

[published in Lungfull in 2009]

Recently and soon

Here are some recent goings-on:

Last week, I read in the Earshot reading series, along with my friend J. Hope Stein, whose poems are truly mesmerizing.  (Here is a lovely and intriguing interview with JHS herself.)

Also last week, Clif and I hosted a small potluck/informal salon.  One highlight was a mini-concert in my house by the band Whispering Tree (or most of the band), who Clif is now playing with.  We cleared out the bedroom and people presented their work in there.  How delightful.  How strange.

I have a few ongoing projects that I've been working on, including a collaborative artist's book with my friend John Fleischer, a Minneapolis-based visual artist.  There is also some poeming and prosing going on.  And some development/procurement, one hopes, of more freelance opportunities.  It's a time of many changes and (more and less) subtle shifts over here.  But then, I guess it always is?

And today-- today was oddly warm, and I left the house and went into "the city."  (Sometimes I don't leave Brooklyn for a while, and then I do and have this realization: "Oh, yeah.  The rest of New York . . .")  In the city, I got my bangs trimmed at Mudhoney by my cool stylist Ray-- with whom I've had some great conversations-- while listening to a rather intense haircutting soundtrack.  I believe Rob Zombie was involved.

What else?  Oh, I dearly needed clothes, so I went shopping.  Ugh.  I am sorry to report that shopping pains me.  But I found a few things, including this half-off coat, which I am calling (in my head) my Downton Abbey coat.  Do I need another coat for this winter that only sort of happened?  I'm not sure.

Next week, I'll go to Chicago for the AWP conference.  I'll participate in this reading, and I will also catch up with some dear friends.

Wow, February is almost over.  Strange, warm February.

Dorothea Tanning, 1910-2012

Wislawa Szymborska, 1923-2012

I have written a short appreciation of Szymborska for the site poetrycrush.

Here is her poem "A Few Words on the Soul."  

This Poem Is Written in Code

by Todd Colby and Joanna Penn Cooper


I'll sit at my desk eating tangerines until you remember 

the true meaning. Meaning: I've had it with low blows

& pop wagons. I need a county I can call "My Own."  But I'll

write things down from there to tell you later, a selection

of my private behaviors.  Me studying cheerleaders on tv—

their hair, their leaps, the shutters on their eyes.  Me

smoothing my hair down like a Mormon and giving myself 

a secret handshake. My ocean is a crushed bird. Let me sterilize

a bit and handcraft these wing clips with all the razzle dazzle of

a person who has made friends with death.  Death is a man

with the loveliest face, a face as open as a child's.  He smells 

of lavender.  He wears a fez. Damn, burnt from bitter orange tweed 

jacket set aflame with alcohol and matches. He taught me this:  

Whatever you need, whenever you need it, come into my establishment 

and take it. I would like nothing more than to sail straight for that grip. 

Pumping my fist at the skin on the oar. Your head is bleeding.  

I value your patronage. 

Weekend

My weekend was pretty relaxing.  Maybe a bit too relaxing.  (Note to self: leave the neighborhood next weekend.  Maybe.)

Among the non-activity: some making of lentil soup and apple crisp, some watching of Dr. Who.  There was also the forcing of the boyfriend to pose for Instagram pictures, which I made up for by making hot chocolate out of half a bar of dark chocolate with peppermint.

I also did some thinking about genre.  The idea of literary genres and what that means to me . . . tumbling about in my head.  I'll get back to you.

Meanwhile, here are some photos.

Somebody

1.  Somebody found my blog by googling "poetry about elves."  Huzzah!

2.  I have somehow already lined up five readings for the new year, and I've already done two of them-- at the New Year's Day Marathon at St. Mark's Church (appearing with Secret Orchestra and J. Hope Stein, as one of 140-ish readers raising money for the Poetry Project) and at Upstairs at Erika's, my friend's poetry salon, along with some brilliant and soulful people.  There are some photos here. 

3.  My next reading is for the Earshot reading series on Thursday February 16th at Lolita Bar on Broome Street, appearing again with J. Hope Stein.  I read a couple of newish pieces at Erika's, but I'll try to have even a couple more new ones by February.  Poems.  Or prose poems.  Or these things I'm thinking of as "vignettes."  Huzzah, again! 

4.  I thought about putting my blog on a hiatus after my last post-- my 500th!  So, if I blog less, it is because I am working on other writing.  Or if I blog the same amount, then never mind.

5.  I am leaving tomorrow for a visit to my dear friend W. in the city of Boston.  HOPEfully I will not miss my bus this time due to a strange confluence of protests, Comic Con, and Q train flakiness.  (But here's a thing about the lovely view from the Q train.  It is lovely.  It makes me happy.)  

6.  What else?  I recently watched the Spalding Gray documentary above, which I was reminded of by this person's cool blog.  Oh, Spalding Gray.  I miss you, too.  [Also: Liz's blog is one of those blogs that gives you a sense (however constructed) of a life narrative, a life's setting and characters.  Should I blog more like that?  More-- I don't know?-- coherently?  Consistently?  Maybe I will.  Maybe one day.]

7.   Dear people.  Dear all of us.  It's almost mid-January.  Take a breath.  Sail on through in your way.  Be somebody.

First Poem

Oh, my descendants: life is strange when

you are still alive.    --Todd Colby, “Last Poem”

Oh, my descendants:

I write to you from the cusp

of a year when everything turned

like a movie in a primitive cave

with a German narrator

like a marketing genius

turned wandering mystic

[ . . . . ]

Oh, my sister:

You’re ok.  You’re human—

a transforming creature

sharpening your gaze

drawing out swords

[ . . . . ]

This year

let your eyes focus

then let them go wild

Eat the air

Three for the New Year