Scattered Light

Look at Those Reds!

2008-07-23T08:20:00.000-07:00

"Strapped In"

E Chap

2008-07-19T14:18:00.000-07:00

Cheryl's new poetry E chapbook can be seen at the Gold Wake Press site. It's called "Murmuration" and yes, Virginia, there are birds in it!

Layering the Space

2008-07-19T07:41:00.000-07:00

Green

Summer samples all the greens in the wheel—
forest for grass, lime for new leaves, moss
green slicked over trees. Tea- green rain
slants through a wet sky and clouds huddle
around hills colored fern, pine, shamrock.

A praying mantis, camouflage-green thighs
thrumming against a spear of hunter green.
Green-winged teal paddling in circles
in the pond.

Blue's Cruzio Cafe

2008-07-17T13:53:00.000-07:00

Our friend Cat Townsend has an animated piece here. Click on "Seduction, Almost."
Cool concept!

"A Man Walked Into a Bard One Day..."

2008-07-17T06:25:00.000-07:00

Hear about the suspect in the Shakespeare Folio theft? Stranger than fiction...

Museum poems

2008-07-15T07:21:00.000-07:00

Beltway Poetry Quarterly, an online journal, seeks poems for a special themed issue celebrating museums. Poems should be about specific museums (of any kind, of any size, in any location) or specific items exhibited in museum collections. The issue will be co-edited by Kim Roberts and Maureen Thorson.

Only poets who live or work in DC, VA, MD, WV, or DE are eligible. Poems may be any length. Submit up to 4 poems by email only. Poems that have already appeared in print publications are acceptable if copyright has reverted to the author (and author secures any permissions for reprinting). Poems appearing elsewhere on the web are not eligible.

Submit poems in the body of a single email (no attachments, and please no multiple emails) to beltwaypoetryquarterly@gmail.com. Include your full contact information (snail mail address, phone, email) and a one-paragraph bio. Incomplete entries and those made outside the one-month reading period will not be considered.

The issue will be published in January 2009. All entries must be received during the month of August 2008.

Busy bees

2008-07-14T12:24:00.000-07:00

Cheryl is interviewed here and you can see Janet's cover art on Eight Octaves Review here.

Don't those girls ever take a vacation?

Influence and Inspiration

2008-07-13T15:09:00.000-07:00

Janet says about this painting, 'I wanted to start with thin paint in a free sketchy style, and then put on thicker paint in places. I think Gorky did that, although this doesn't look like a Gorky.'

White

2008-07-10T08:32:00.000-07:00

This oil painting shows two sisters, the well one cradling the ill one, as a friend anxiously waits beyond the dividing line. Is it autobiographical, someone asked. You bet, one of us may have said.

Lying Through His Teeth

2008-07-08T08:52:00.000-07:00

Spin

At dinner, he tells a lie. It flickers like a candle. It drizzles down its dazzle.
He tries to blow it out. It singes all his fingers.He reaches over to pinch its little wick,
but the lie won’t die. It opens to interpretation, gathers force, spreads like rumor,
hides and seeks. It can’t stop. No one will let it. It’s there on Thanksgiving at Uncle Bob’s, Easter at Aunt Sylvia’s. It goes on for a day, a month, a year. A spotlight
hovers over it, search beams crisscross it. It begins to run. It passes over asphalt
and swamp, cell towers and land lines. Calls are dropped. The man wasn’t answering
anyway. The lie has confused him. It’s no longer the same. The ending has changed.
All of the details. Some of the names.

(first appeared in In The Fray)

Forget Sorrow by Belle Yang

2008-07-06T13:09:00.001-07:00

Belle's graphic novel will be published by Norton. She blogs at www.redroom.com

Best of the Net

2008-07-03T17:09:00.000-07:00

Cheryl's story Novocain has been nominated for Sundress's Best of the Net award by the editor of Eight Octaves Review! So there.

Cheryl's favorite portrait by Janet

2008-06-30T11:24:00.000-07:00

Painter and Poet

2008-06-27T10:31:00.000-07:00

"When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of "get acquainted" period that I see what I have been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well." -Jackson Pollock

For an article on Pollock and O'Hara, click this.

Pomes

2008-06-26T09:05:00.000-07:00

Two of Cheryl's new poems are up at The Smoking Poet today. Enjoy!

Autumn Sky Poetry ...

2008-06-23T12:32:00.000-07:00

..has Cheryl's Painted Garden in it! See?

Flytrap

2008-06-23T08:44:00.000-07:00

"Venus Flytrap" --drawing by Janet Snell

Cheryl just found out that copies of Janet's book Flytrap are in nineteen libraries. Worldcat is the source of that info. Congrats, Jannie!

Anselm Kiefer Monumenta Photographs feat. Björk

2008-06-19T11:45:00.001-07:00

Lick...ice cream, your wounds, whatever

2008-06-17T09:26:00.000-07:00

Silent Actor

2008-06-11T14:46:00.000-07:00

Today's guest blog comes to us from J Michael Wahlgren. His first full length collection of poetry, Silent Actor, comes out June 12th, 2008 from Bewrite Books. Order the book and read the reviews here.

*A Little Background Music

You're probably wondering what inspired me to write Silent Actor & from where the title came. Well, to keep a long story short, I was cleaning out my grandmother's house as she has been admitted to a nursing home & needed some release from general things such as this going on in my life. So I created, an interlocking group (of poems) which would release not only me but strive to cheer people up. A break away from structured meter, these poems reference the fact that I was unemployed (which I am no longer) as well as a carotid clog which is when my grandmother had a stoke. My grandfather came to the United States to become a movie actor & began working at Keystone building cameras. He never became an actor & there really isn't an "actor" per se in Silent Actor, but it really references the relationship a reader has with a text: the interaction & conversation (as one of my professors referenced) that a reader has. So we are dealing with a free form in the book. There are many sexual references. There is a girl character who now I know as McKenna (in some of my newer poems) but the protagonist is male & the second protagonist (how I like to think of it) is female. You could say they meet numerous times within the book, once at an airport, once in a hallway, etc. But Silent Actor begins focused upon the male character & ends with both of the characters by bedside, one wishing he was more like someone else: one characteristic of method acting & roleplay.

*What do I want to tell the readers of Scattered Light?

If you read the book, I hope at most it is entertaining. If I can entertain, then I am a success in this endeavor. The book consists of many different forms, solid stanzas, two line stanzas, & new forms such as in New Waltz. There is an oscillating relationship between a female & male protagonist.

*Do I reveal anything in Silent Actor?

These are some of my most revealing poems. X & O is about cleaning out my grandmother's house. There is life involved in the book & thanks to my publisher the poems were placed in an order that flows & makes sense. It is very similar to a novel in the sense that it is telling a story & has a rising action (I would say at the poem Move On) where metaphor is thoroughly analyzed as in what a metaphor really is.

*The significance of the title

Silent Actor came to me when I was thinking of website names & it stuck. I didn't think about the history of my grandfather much but thought it was a reference to what a poet really is. As the write-up of the book explains, there is "an ongoing process of both discovery and reflection for the poet." Yes, poet in this case can refer to me but as the title is very broad as in anyone who gains attention (mimes included) are silent actors. So it could be referencing to any poet really.

I hope you enjoy the ride & read & it brings you closer to the understanding of the relationship between poet & reader, writer & actor.

...in which the sisters propagate a meme

2008-06-10T06:32:00.000-07:00

A is for age: 57; 54

B is for beer of choice: what, no champagne?

C is for career right now: novelist and poet with a book coming out in each genre—next month!!! Artist, now and forever

D is for your dog's name? Cybie. She’s robotic. And blue. I had a Lamia once, the best German Shepherd who ever lived. Before that, we had poodles--and one of them gave us a whole litter.

E is for essential item you use everyday: bytes/pigments

F is for favorite TV: we both like that cranky doc. Didn’t he used to have a British accent?

G is for favorite game: mind games, heheh

H is for home town: DC; Akron

I is for instruments you play: piano; violin

J is for favorite juice: pomegranate; OJ

K is for whose butt you'd like to kick: a certain plagiarist, though it’s nice to be appreciated; the guy in the pool who elbowed me out of the way.

L is for last place you ate: bed; in front of the refrigerator, like a civilized human being

M is for marriage: one is; the other ain't.

N is for your full names: Cheryl Louise and Janet Lee Snell

O is for overnight hospital stays: too many. Why do you ask?

P is for people you were with today: family,but it's still early.

Q is for quote: Sundays are for amateurs

R is for biggest regret: don't believe in them; choking on a couple of deadlines

S is for status: white knuckled anticipation for news about the movie of C's novel

T is for time you woke up today: 7 AM; 6AM

U is for underwear you have on now: some rockin’ granny panties; hush!

V is for vegetable you love: alu ghobi, the yellower the better; salad

W is for worst habit: sarcasm; trusting too much

X is for x-rays you've had: all of them

Y is for yummy food you ate today: blueberries

Z is for the zodiac sign: Sagittarius. Taurus.

Without Wheels You're Nowhere

2008-06-07T08:07:00.000-07:00

Absence

2008-06-01T11:22:00.000-07:00

Cheryl's got a poem over here. She has more info at our sister blog Shiva's Arms, but I know a poem about her husband when I see one!

Blues #2

2008-05-31T15:32:00.000-07:00

the woman crosses her legs
against a grid of accidentals

you slide a half step down
pinch the blue note like a bleeder

a muted gliss slips to the floor

triple tongued trumpet
burring and buzzing your lip

soon her wet throat is a flute
of foregone conclusions

brass fish swing behind you

and the drummer soft-strokes the skins
like a cheek.

Laugh and the world laughs with you...

2008-05-28T06:30:00.000-07:00

It's Hump Day again, right? To help you get over that hump, some chuckles from Ernest Slyman,here.