This week I wrote about my experience meeting my poet idol: Diane Wakowski:
That Time I Met Diane Wakowski
Last Chance to Submit!
Would you like to join a group of writers and artists to have your collection published, and help run a literary magazine, and mentor other writers and artists?
We’re looking for two new members, and just one week remains to express interest and get invited to the meet and greet Zoom meeting.
So, find out all about it, and consider joining us!
New Post Up At Authors Electric: Old Scratch Press Is Open for Members
New Post Up At Authors Electric: Wes Anderson the Writer’s Director
ASTEROID CITY: WES ANDERSON’S FIRST POEM
The first thing I felt myself noticing about the film Asteroid City was how orange everything was.
The orange was gorgeous, and a device of course, and part of what makes it a poem.
The movie is a poem.
The movie is a poem because it is not a full and complete story as much as it is a full and complete poem about grief.
The mother who has died in the color part of the movie is just an actress, and the story of her surviving family is just part of the script of the play, and in the black and white part of the movie, she is still alive and well, and it is actually the playwright who has died. Which, in the narrative, makes sense as the color part of the movie, the play, remains unfinished.
Some people. might mildly enjoy the film’s “story” and leave feeling unsatisfied, because they do not understand poetry, and they do not understand that it is a poem.
If there is a central theme to the black and white section of the film, it is creative people doubting their creativity, and struggling to manage their “art” while they live, or not, their lives.
If there is a central theme to the color part of the movie I would say it is people trying to manage the relationships in their lives, and struggling to be open about their struggles and emotions, because they are too concerned about the affect they will have on those around them, who they love.
But the overall theme of the film is just the feeling, the feeling of wanting something special to happen, the feeling of wanting lives that end to go on indefinitely, the feelings of wanting to be accepted in the full splendor of our own weirdness, the feelings of how hot and uncomfortable and trapped life can feel, and then, in a whiff, all the circumstances and all the people you were worrying about are gone when you wake up. And maybe you weren’t ready. And the world is so orange, and the world is so grey, and can we connect more than superficially, and do we know what to do when everyone has gotten up and gone, and we’re still working things out?
If you need a thread… if you need a frame around your story… if you need a linear: “…and then this happened and then this happened and then this happened…,” sort of story that you can successfully sum-up for another human, this might not be your movie. But that is no reason to slam it. It is a lush, and sparse, and warm, and disconnected, and full-of-feeling poem. And like life, the end moves into the current space and time, and you probably were not ready for it. But that doesn’t mean we slam it based on our own short-comings, and our own reluctance to let go of the handrail, and float in a poem masquerading as a film. One very interesting thing about my daughter, which may be, in part, a reflection of her coming up as a consumer of reels, she is not so bound to the linear in story-telling, and she went with it. She liked it; she got it enough to be entertained, and she didn’t ask too much more of it.
And it seems like many people didn’t get it, and were none too pleased that it looked and felt like
Moonrise Kingdom, but didn’t wrap up in a nice bow.
The family in Moonrise Kingdom has four children, one female teen in crisis, and three small hellions for sons. Asteroid City has the same: one male teen in crisis, and three small hellions for daughters. But no neat ending. Grief is not neat.
Asteroid City is a poem. If you like poetry, you might like seeing a movie that is only masquerading as a film, and is, in truth, a poem. I loved it.
POEM WITH ME: EASTER ADDITION ’23
T’was the night before Easter
and time to dye eggs
a holiday activity
for which my daughter always begs.
Because we’re just three
a dozen’s all I bought.
Not enough to share
both my daughter and I thought.
So I said she could do them,
each one and all,
and I would watch her,
and we’d have a ball.
She makes them precisely.
It takes her all night,
and so I’m not bored,
I decided to write.
I got out the words
to make me a poem,
and we both took our time
it was really slow goin’.
Now she has her eggs,
and I have some words.
They say Easter’s for bunnies;
I think it’s for the birds.
And now, without further ado, I present… my poem!
Of course, with magnetic poetry you’re limited to the words they give you, but, sometimes, just having a physical word there, in your hand, moves your brain.
This is my (final version of my ) poem, as I would type it out, and adding, in a few bits that I could not find magnetized:
The Persistence of My Memory
Hello remembered rain, flowering my vision
with your pattering
against a delicate purple
window of poetry called the past-
each yesterday
going easily slow,
always abundant,
full
filled
delicious, fluid with music.
But the photos-
the photos contrast,
look rough,
ugly,
taste weird.
No poetry of purple flowering,
just tarnished silver halide-
No rain pattering-
no sound on muck
mucky
gelatin emulsion.
And Kodak never lies.
Screw memory,
that drunk companion
not at all companionable,
& a week’s worth of wages
for an empty seat
lugged around forever, and forever again
tangling up the turnstiles,
a heavy, broken, ghost.
POEM WITH ME
Wanna submit to the Horror Writers Association (HWA) for their horror book of poetry? If you are published in HALLOWEEN PARTY, you can. Gravelight PressDevil’s Party Press family, and we pay every author in HALLOWEEN PARTY $25 (and give each author a free copy of the anthology), and that $25 check is enough to qualify for membership in the HWA.
The HWA is currently soliciting for a volume of poetry. Why not submit?
Here’s a little horror ditty (I’m not saying it’s very pretty…).
Little Bo Weep (by D.Pearce)
Now I lay me down to sleep
and thinking ’bout dismembering sheep.
No hooves to leap
no baaaaahs to bleep
just nightmares in the meadow’s deep.
Like a tea with too much steep
the blood into the wool will seep.
I chopping chopping as she weeps
that simpering whimpering
dopey BoPeep.
Then I round the herd will creep
for bones and fuzz and tails to sweep
And when the sheep are in a heap
what will be the reap I reap?
At lastly long and blissful sleep.
Horror poetry. See? It’s easy. 😉
And fun!
C’mon, write a horror poem and submit!
Dianne Pearce Writes 