turtle | Philosofishal by Carrie Tangenberg

For those who missed the poetry, comedy, music, stories, word battles and beautiful weather surrounding the Grand Showcase live performances last weekend in Canton, I hope you’ll enjoy these sticky slices from my reading.

I read for a little over ten minutes a total of nine poems. Most of them I have previously posted in some form on this blog and then revised this month for the program, sharing a discussion of my process:

“Hawk Side”

“Inspirator”

“Otter Sea”

“Green Turtle”

“City Lizard”

“Of all the signs of spring”

After changing my selections multiple times, altering presentation order, and almost completely recreating poems that made the cut and ones that didn’t, somehow I ended up focusing on wild animals. Go figure. The exceptions are “Inspirator,” which describes a landscape, and “Of all the signs of spring,” which is about the sun. Both of those are really about my melancholic reactions to certain things, such as missing the preferred excitement of seeing wild animals.

Image courtesy Normal Public Library

I thought it might be fun this time to select parts of each poem and splice them together to create a new poem. You may be familiar with magnetic poetry kits, in which each magnet has a word on it. In this post, I use chunks of words in the form of excerpts from my poems. Each chunk piggybacks off the one before it, either through image, theme, or topic. In case it’s not quite obvious, as not all minds think alike, I note the nature of their connections in italics. Enjoy!

From “Of all the signs of spring,” the last lines:

the more I sit and stare out the window that is a door
I could open but for my blanched sight and just this–
one globe’s eyeless glare

From “Green Turtle” somewhere in the middle: the fixed gaze

I want to look away, bury head into body as it can,
retract the mind down into the heart and let the two mingle,
and educate each other; give purpose to small humps
below napes. But I can’t.

From “City Lizard” toward the end: from powerlessness to vulnerability, with a gaze

It is a dangerous decree, the buzzing bikes and trucks.
The city lizard thinks he likes his sky’s debris.

This common lizard watches me and with each glance
I wonder at his circumstance, how he’s not free.

From “Hawk Side” toward the end: truck to truck to bird

Blip of a truck, fleck of a bird.
Leaving carcasses for cars and crows,
the huntress crowns the rot of wooden fence posts
low on a highway hill.

From “Inspirator” (pron. IN spuh RA tuhr), a stanza in the middle: bird to flock

Behind their flock, a splash of ember glow, a mess of logs,
extremities in dried blood spatter . . . artful twists of sinew.
Over here! on ground beyond, a grander stage presents
an ostentatious spectacle of orange-tipped yellow dancers,
live, inspirited, and heedless of the fueling wind.

From “Otter Sea,” two middle stanzas: wind’s different effects on fire and water, whether literal water or figurative fire

The sea’s face quilts copper-
coated tents, gilt roofs on
a vast circus, reluctant
aquarium holding fathoms
unsolved. A wet coat plunges,
black-coffee chestnut sheen
poured from carafe to cup,
porpoising question marks.

Do I mistake otter scuttle
for uplifted sun shadow,
obsidian lip curl tossing
salt, krill, and faint light?
No mistake (or encore)
offers sight of thickest fur—
pale-headed, black-eyed,
quick, five-fingered things.

Bonus: one of three Haiku I read, another of which I’ve also shared before: from waves in the sea off shore to waves crashing on the shore

Scolded surf curls on
itself, ashamed its crashing
Disintegrates pearls.

Next for me in poetry are new kinds of subjects, new forms, or both. Stay tuned.

For more of my original poetry, see:

Wild Verses, Bits of Nature Poetry (1 of 10), which ends with a list of most of the poems and excerpts I’ve written on the blog, both in and out of the series.

For samples and analysis of famous nature poetry, start here:

Nature Poetry by Famous Poets

Under water, a green turtle looks at the camera. The inanimate, animal expression accuses. The cold stare— framed by cold, clear-blue water, and clustered blue-green coral, locked within the same space as its cold-blooded frown and terrible, wrinkled neck, its hunched, armored back an echo of my subluxation and chronic dorsal inflammation—that look, rising above the shadows on its flippers, belly, tail, imposes, penetrates, disturbs. I want to look away, bury head into body like it can, retract the mind down into the heart and let the two mingle, and educate each other. Give purpose to small humps below necks. But I can’t. I am out in the picture of reality, exposed to the danger of capture, of shocking spotlight ogling a creature as it faces the unfamiliar.