Tupelo 30/30: We Need to Build Bridges Instead of Walls

Dear Reader, 

I'm here. At the end, which is just another beginning. 

Let me start by thanking you, again, for following the blog, reading the poems, and supporting me in word and with donation. I've learned so much about myself and my poetry in the past month. I've written 39 poems in 39 days. I've written when I was too tired or uninspired or terribly sad. I wrote when I had no words in my head. 

I've learned that I write best if I record an audio draft whatever idea/images/themes I'm considering. I don't self-censor when I'm talking to myself (even when neighbors see me chatting into my iPhone), and when I have a mass of text, I can find the best language/images and draft from there. 

I need that mass of text. I need to trust myself more. I needed this month to remember that I'm a *real* writer. The daily drafting made my art a tangible part of my life. I don't think I could have done this during the semester, at least not while I still have a toddler at home 4/7 days a week. And I am so grateful to Sundress Academy for the Arts and Rivendell Writers' Colony for offering me residencies during part of May and June. 

I have more to say about this experience, but I need time to process it. I think I've spent more than my share of words in the past 30 days. 

That said, I want to acknowledge the amazing poetry community I returned to in South Jersey. I facilitate the World Above reading series at Stockton University's Dante Hall in Atlantic City, NJ. Last night, we an exceptional reading: soulful. A word I rarely use. 

Despite all of the intolerance and violence in the world, our amazing community of wonderfully diverse people shared some of the most heart-felt poems I have ever witnessed. Our featured poet was Sham-e-Ali Nayeem, who shared her beautiful and sublime poems. The theater buzzed with a shared sense of love and loss. I feel so fortunate to call this writing community my poetry community. Thank you, friends. 

My final poem for the Tupelo 30/30 project is written in response to fellow SJ poet Belinda Manning's theme and a title donated by one of my favorite colleagues Francis Nzuki. It's a poem that thinks about how busy we are and how important it is to slow down and to connect, and how once we do this, we might find a greater purpose for our lives. 

Here is an excerpt from "We Need to Build Bridges Instead of Walls" (read the full poem on Tupelo Press' 30/30 blog): 

"Nobody’s innocent.

I, too, been running around like a mad woman,

which is to say I think I’m superhuman, which is say

I’m human. It wasn’t about eating the apple or tossing the core

into the compost pile. The body knows self-preservation best.

Will kick and thrash to rise to surface before it goes weak.

What if the conscious is the ghost of a girl drowned?

If we stay under long enough to listen we might not surface

the same. Sometimes when I sit still the thrushes forget I’m here

and will return to their song, the call and response

of their daily lives, because there are worms and mouths to feed." 

Reader, thank you for everything. I am so grateful for your support. 

I plan to offer a follow-up post and to share excerpts of drafts, publication news, and offer fun poetry news. 

Thank you for supporting me. You don't know how much I needed you.

Yours in poetry,

Emari

Tupelo 29/30: In/Equality

Dear Reader, 

When I used to run cross country in high school, I would judge my personal performance, not on my time, but by how much energy I had left at the end of a course. Some high schools, including my own, concluded their meets with a lap on the track. If I was able to engage in a full sprint across the last stretch of field before the track and continue this burst onto and throughout the track, I had saved too much energy. I hadn't pushed hard enough earlier or throughout. 

In the poetry equivalent, I feel like I am running wounded as I make my way to the final 400 meters. Today is 29/30 for Tupelo and 38/39 for my own personal project. I am going to make it. 

I already know that tomorrow's poem has to be titled "We Need to Build Bridges Instead of Walls" and it must be about "running around like a mad woman." I've already decided that I am going to borrow a page from Donna Vorreyor and draft a Cento of lines from people's work at tonight's World Above Reading (7pm, Dante Hall Theater, 14 N. Mississippi Ave., AC, NJ).

But today, here is my second-to-last poem of this project. Its title was donated by my wonderful friends and colleagues Deb Figart and Ellen Mutari, and the subject, women and economic inequality, was donated by another amazing colleague, friend, and mentor Heather McGovern. 

I've been trying to write a version of this poem for most of the month, and what has been most challenging are all the facets of in/equality in general and those that surround gender economic inequality (as it's not just gender!). So I did what I normally do when I'm trying to write a poem: I read a lot about women and economic inequality. And I thought about doing an erasure poem or a definition poem (both viable options to pursue in the future). In the end, I stuck with an image that kept haunting me and gave the poem a loose sonnet form. 

Here is an excerpt from "In/Equality" (read the full poem on Tupelo Press' 30/30 blog): 

"...This is not to say

they’ve never scuffed a boot on a workroom

floor, but these men don’t need to walk on dirt

anymore. The other side of this coin is worth

less where dollars incense (with dolor, with sense)."

Reader, thank you for reading this blog and following the poems on the Tupelo site. I am so grateful for all of your support.

If you would like to donate to support my project, please make your way to the Tupelo Press donation page. Be sure to select my name from the scroll down tab titled "Is this donation in honor of a 30/30 poet?" 

Also, if you're enjoyed reading poetry this month, you might consider a subscription to Tupelo. You'll receive 9 books for $99, which is a steal! You can also *gift* this subscription to someone else (including me!)...I have friends and students who would be delighted to be the recipient. 

Yours in poetry,

Emari

Tupelo 28/30: Unsung Hero

Dear Reader, 

Two days remain. Two poems, four prompts. 

Friends, I woke at 4:30am to restart today's poem. And I spent hours thinking about it yesterday. My friend and fellow poet Shelley Cohen requested a poem with the title "Unsung Hero" that would be for her father, and my mother Annette DiGiorgio also requested a poem that would reflect the ways in which a parent might move to the periphery to help a chid thrive. The two themes seemed intimately connected in my own experience as mother and child. 

But good grief, after writing 37 poems (remember I had started early), no image/idea seems fresh. I've restarted this one poem a dozen times in the past 36 hours. During Syra's nap, I committed to finishing a draft.

Ideally, I think I'd like to push this poem further. See where it might go if I focus on the parent/child relationship and then return to the clematis again. I look forward to returning to many of these drafts to see where they might want to go. 

Here is an excerpt from "Unsung Hero" (read the full poem on Tupelo Press' 30/30 blog): 

"Even in the wild, the queen of vines needs full sun,
rich, loamy soil–the kind of dirt that’s soft as flour
but full of rot: dead leaves, lichens, earthworms.
Abundant underside feeding the bloom,
an unhailed wellspring of beauty–the parent
in the shadows while the child works the room."

Reader, thank you for reading my blog and following the poems on the Tupelo site. I am so grateful for your likes on Facebooks and your encouraging words there and via email.

There are two days left to donate. As I said before, if you have your heart set on sending me something, please do. And if I have already finished the last two poems, I will write you something separate. It just won't appear on the Tupelo blog. 

If you would like to donate to support my project, please see my first posting for incentive amounts and make your way to the Tupelo Press donation page. Be sure to select my name from the scroll down tab titled "Is this donation in honor of a 30/30 poet?" After you've donated, be sure to email (edigiorgio@gmail.com) or Facebook message me your requests. I don't want to miss your request!

Also, if you're enjoyed reading poetry this month, you might consider a subscription to Tupelo. You'll receive 9 books for $99, which is a steal! You can also *gift* this subscription to someone else (including me!)...I have friends and students who would be delighted to be the recipient. 

Yours in poetry,

Emari

Tupelo 27/30: Woman With the High-Heeled Shoes

Dear Reader, 

I cannot believe that today is the 27th. I'm on my way back to New Jersey after two super productive weeks at Rivendell where I wrote all of the new poems you've seen, read four full books and countless online journals, revised a dozen poems, and assembled a first draft of my second full-length poetry collection. 

I retook an online Myers-Briggs personality test as I was writing this post to see where I fell on the introvert/extrovert scale, and surprise, the test put me squarely in the middle: "Your score was right on the borderline for the Extraversion vs. Introversion dimension. We can't say for sure what your style is for this dimension of personality."

I believe this to be true. Though I often thrive on other people's energy, I am equally at home in my own head and enjoy solitude. I have had a lot of alone time here at Rivendell, and I know that when I touch down in Philadelphia, where my mom will pick me up at the airport, I will have a version of "re-entry shock," more so when I return to my bustling home with a sixteen-year-old who's started his first job and will want to learn to drive and a three-year-old who has been counting down the days since her Momma would return.

There's poetry in all of that racket, and I feel so fortunate to return to this unpredictable and terribly busy life. I think I'm able to reside in and cherish such stillness because of the other end of the spectrum.Today's poem responds to a title provided by my wonderful friend, colleague, and former Team PayDay Party organizer Dawn Konrady. It also includes words donated by my Aunt Maria Giannascoli. 

Dawn's post-doctorate shoes!

It's a sassy little poem about desire, and it riffs off Jamaal May's "Ruin" in his new book The Big Book of Exit Strategies, which I recommend, if you're looking for book teeming with lush images of how we endure suffering: physical, emotional, historical. 

Here is an excerpt from "Woman With the High-Heeded Shoes" (read the full poem on Tupelo Press' 30/30 blog): 

"Beauty is a 5” Louboutin stiletto

crowned in gold leaf, slipping

under the envelope of your skin

like a pen knife

or a rainforest pressing

its thick heat across your chest,

a breath without this weight

unthinkable...."

Reader, I continue to thank you for reading here and following the Tupelo site. I have three poems remaining, and I will do my best to see that the six remaining donation incentives find their way into them. 

However, as I said in my last post, if you have your heart set on sending me something, please do. It may be the exact image/words I need! 

If you would like to donate to support my project, please see my first posting for incentive amounts and make your way to the Tupelo Press donation page. Be sure to select my name from the scroll down tab titled "Is this donation in honor of a 30/30 poet?" After you've donated, be sure to email (edigiorgio@gmail.com) or Facebook message me your requests. I don't want to miss your request!

Also, if you're enjoyed reading poetry this month, you might consider a subscription to Tupelo. You'll receive 9 books for $99, which is a steal! You can also *gift* this subscription to someone else (including me!)...I have friends and students who would be delighted to be the recipient. 

Oh, and if you needed to know, the rest of my Meyers-Briggs test was IFJ. 

Yours in poetry,

Emari

Tupelo 26/30: In Her Lap, To the World

Dear Reader, 

Today's poem responds to three donated prompts, and more!

My friend Lia Conte asked for a poem that might speak to the urge we have as parents to prepare our children for the bitterness of the world, that wish that our young will grow into resilient adults who can make their own happiness and share it with others. 

At the same time, this poem also responds to a title donated by my friend and former student Manar Hussein, who is a poet, educator and activist. When I asked her about the origins of the title, she explained, "We wake up with a pile of things we need to do vs want to do, and we go to sleep with the pile either smaller or bigger, changed somehow...we only really have two choices to do/or not to, to be/not to be & that determines what we give to the world...the every day decisions...seem small but end up determining everything else." Here, I've taken her discussion of these choices and how they impact our children. 

In addition, the poem includes five words donated by Maria Gimbor: "commit, surrender, listen to music." 

As if all of this were not enough, it's also a response to Forgiveness Day (June 26th), as the speaker is seeking forgiveness, from the larger world and from the self. 

But wait, I'm not done yet. I'm offering this poem to Garden State Academy, the amazing, progressive preschool my daughter attends, as the staff have donated to Tupelo, too.

And finally, I have to thank my long-time friend and forever teacher Pam Cross for her unending love and assurance that true love will not spoil a child. 

Here is an excerpt from "In Her Lap, To the World" (read the full poem on Tupelo Press' 30/30 blog): 

"Once you could send an infant, under eleven pounds, by post,

trust the carrier to deliver your son–postage pinned

to his little corduroy vest–to your sister, eighty miles away.

It wasn’t legal long. I don’t know if I’d prefer my child

to carry a house on her back, to bite when a hand’s too near,

or make a new nest each season. There’s no best version.

I’m always asking her to be me and not me,

which is what a child is anyway...."

Reader, I continue to thank you for reading here and following the Tupelo site. I have four poems remaining, and I will do my best to see that the eight remaining donation incentives find their into them. 

However, as I said in my last post, if you have your heart set on sending me something, please do. It may be the exact image/words I need! 

If you would like to donate to support my project, please see my first posting for incentive amounts and make your way to the Tupelo Press donation page. Be sure to select my name from the scroll down tab titled "Is this donation in honor of a 30/30 poet?" After you've donated, be sure to email (edigiorgio@gmail.com) or Facebook message me your requests. I don't want to miss your request!

Also, if you're enjoyed reading poetry this month, you might consider a subscription to Tupelo. You'll receive 9 books for $99, which is a steal! You can also *gift* this subscription to someone else (including me!)...I have friends and students who would be delighted to be the recipient. 

Yours in poetry,

Emari