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Author Archives: Jessica Smith
mnemotechnics
A selection of poems from my manuscript mnemotechnics is available as a chapbook from above/ground press. Cover illustration by Alixandra Bamford. mnemotechnics is about birds and memory– specifically, it’s an homage to the life-list, the list that a birdwatcher keeps of all … Continue reading
Curation, not Competition: Pinterest and Poetry
For those of you who haven’t ever used it, Pinterest is a link storage site (similar to delicious) that organizes bookmarks with pictures; it’s also similar to Tumblr in that you can like and share links.* Users make “boards” and … Continue reading
Posted in Contemporary Poetry
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NaPoWriMo Day 27: Shorts
We’re packing and cleaning this weekend to get ready to move for May 1. As you can probably tell, I ran out of NaPoWriMo steam mid-month when we finalized the house purchase. This poem is for the spiders we’ve uprooted: … Continue reading
Posted in NaPoWriMo
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NaPoWriMo Day 26: Child-Poem
My 2.5 year old son dictated this poem to me, including the placement and sizes of the words. I like his use of space. One thing that’s really interesting to me about his perception of the world is the way … Continue reading
Posted in NaPoWriMo
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Recent novels
A few contemporary novels I’ve read recently that I liked, with rough descriptions. 1. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes This short book is so well-written, it’s all but perfect. The plot is a little weird, and it’s … Continue reading
Posted in Literature
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NaPoWriMo Day 24: Pure Narrative
Yeah, so I missed a few days. We bought a house. People buy houses all the time, and it seems like it must be an easy process because people do it all the time, but it’s not easy. It wasn’t … Continue reading
Posted in NaPoWriMo, personal
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Top 10 Novels
1. Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov) The Great American Novel was written by a Russian aristocratic expat, and one of its two main characters is a similar European expat– but then, most of us came here from elsewhere, and until recently, English wasn’t … Continue reading
Posted in personal
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NaPoWriMo Days 10, 13-15: Layers
This weekend, we went to Atlanta for Nick’s 30th birthday; his gift was tickets to both They Might Be Giants shows at Variety Playhouse. Before we left, we went to the Birmingham Museum of Art to see the hippos. In … Continue reading
Posted in architecture, art, My Poetry, NaPoWriMo
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Pigeon interlude
Ash Smith, Sarah Campbell, Pattie McCarthy and I have been responding on Facebook to a post from Ash about pigeons. I wanted to share two recent (non-NaPoWriMo) poems on the subject.
NaPoWriMo Day 12: Politics
This poems follows the “x is a y” extended metaphor model that I grew up with in k-12 creative writing lessons. Here I want to think about violence and choice. I took a phrase from this Salon article about North … Continue reading
NaPoWriMo Day 11: Magic
This poem isn’t what I expected it to be when I started a pleasant little pastoral poem about hens. Turns out, chickens are both magical and anarchical. Breeder beware. I’m a day behind– didn’t write anything yesterday. I’ll catch up.
NaPoWriMo Day 9: Nature
Been reading Christina Rossetti, feeling “listy” (in contrast to “listless”?) Read NaPoWriMO poems by other poets here.
NaPoWriMo Day 8: Myth
This is not the poem I want to write about this. It’s too fragmentary– I’m not sure it’s ultimately clear enough what it’s about (when writing fragmentary, multi-linear poetry, there must be a perfect balance between ambiguity and clarity– just … Continue reading
NaPoWriMo Day 7: Collaboration
Yesterday a magical thing happened: I learned that my old friends K. Lorraine Graham and Mark Wallace were reading poetry at the Fusebox series in Chattanooga, about 2 hours northeast of my home in Birmingham. I went into my son’s … Continue reading
NaPoWriMo Day 6: Storytelling
Sometimes you just want to tell a story, y’know? Here are two: one is a brief retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s story “The Wild Swans” (as a child I was enchanted by this magical, dream-like fairy tale) and one is … Continue reading
Posted in My Poetry, NaPoWriMo
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NaPoWriMo Day 5: Collage
This poem is “about” mourning/doves and comprises personal memories; descriptions of mourning doves both created and stolen; some Deleuze and some other stuff. Since I was a teenager, I’ve enjoyed hanging out in art museums. I think Frank Stella‘s 3-D collages … Continue reading
NaPoWriMo Day 4: Chance
I didn’t “write any poems” yesterday, so I used chance to generate one. Some people write entire poems with chance operations, but I use them to generate material for collage/sculptural poems. So I was trying to remember a quote that … Continue reading
Posted in Contemporary Poetry, NaPoWriMo
What the Heck is NaPoWriMo
NaPoWriMo Day 3: Ekphrasis
I wrote four partial poems today. Here’s one. It’s from a new “project” (I think of poems in terms of groups of them, usually chapbook-sized groups, rather than individual poems) of ekphrastic poems. When I was first thinking about Plasticity … Continue reading
NaPoWriMo Day 2: Collages
Here’s an example of a poem that still needs to be built. So far we have some birds, some Wordsworth, and a Mayan myth about where hummingbirds got their color. I should probably add more information about migration, because I … Continue reading
NaPoWriMo Day 1: Drafting
I’m still revising/adding to a manuscript that, long story short, I wrote half of in 2001, and half in the past year. It was a finalist for the Nightboat Book Prize a few months ago; before that, back in 2001-03 … Continue reading
Editors and Poets
A few years ago, I tried to be an Editor. Mostly, I was bad at it. I accepted more manuscripts than I had the time or financing to publish. I made a really awesome magazine called Foursquare, but publishing it … Continue reading
Posted in Contemporary Poetry, small press publishing
2003-2013: Ten years of nostalgia
I’m in Boston for AWP– I’m moderating a panel tomorrow at 1:30 on Poetry and Librarianship. In the Spring of 2003, another early March if I remember correctly, I was in Cambridge for the NEMLA conference, giving a paper on … Continue reading
Posted in Organic Furniture Cellar, Travel
Transient Views of Western New York
Screen shots from Terry Cuddy’s film Transient Views of Western New York (2002) treating my chapbook bird-book (2001), now in this Flickr photo set.
Terry Cuddy’s Transient Views of Western New York (2002)
Terry Cuddy made this amazing video featuring Buffalo “transient” poets (mostly Poetics Program graduate students) writing about their favorite local WNY places. Featuring poetry by Mona Niculescu, Sandra Guerreiro, Kyle Schlesinger, Linda Russo, Christopher Alexander, Alejandro Rutty, Amela Kazazovic, Kristen … Continue reading
Traumatic romantic
I have a poem in the new Word For/ Word. Thanks Adam and Jon!
Posted in My Poetry
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The Next Big Thing
Thanks to my colleague Douglas Ray for tagging me to do the following interview; Douglas co-curates the Indian Springs School Visiting Writers Series with me. I am answering the following questions for what I hope will be my second book; … Continue reading
Posted in personal
Feb. 13, 2013
There are only two ways: create the situation (and this is love) or avoid it. This also can be Love. – Charles Olson (With thanks to Alex Porco.)
Posted in personal
Aug. 6, 2010
He could not think another thing that evening simply a life had stepped in in place of theory (LZ, A-15)
Posted in family, gender, health
2 Comments
Ugly Duckling’s Digital Library
If you’re left without anything “good” to read now that Ron’s sophisticated and brilliant comment box conversation has been shut down, I’d suggest these four books from Leslie Scalapino. I came to Leslie’s work as an undergraduate at Buffalo, and … Continue reading
Posted in Contemporary Poetry, gender
4 Comments
The Silenced Generation
I want to comment briefly on a special phenomenon I’ve seen and experienced with regard to Ron Silliman‘s blog. It seems that to some degree, poetry’s youth is being trampled, discouraged and undermined with a potential long-term detrimental effect on … Continue reading
Posted in Contemporary Poetry
100 Comments
Why I Use Twitter
I have multiple Twitter accounts and I use them for different purposes. When people whine that they don’t know why people use Twitter, I’m shocked at how little creativity goes into that statement. Why wouldn’t you use Twitter? There are … Continue reading
Posted in personal
13 Comments
Planned Obsolescence
An ongoing problem with getting Foursquare out for the past few months (besides it not being as high a priority for me as school, job, family, etc.) is that I’ve been waiting until I had enough disposable income ( = … Continue reading
Posted in personal
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Elisa’s Atelier: Hermes Ambre Narguile
After trying the Accord Parfait Fourgère this morning, I found it so overwhelmingly smelly and unsubtle that I gave up and washed it off. (If anyone’s itching to try it, let me know. I think it’s a good guy scent.) … Continue reading
How To Seduce a Scorpio Woman
I was looking over some of the search terms that lead people to my post “How to Win (and Lose) a Scorpio Woman,” and I wanted to do a little Q&A session based on the search strings. I think the … Continue reading
Posted in love, zodiac
8 Comments
Elisa’s Atelier: A Straightforward Amber-Lavender
With the last, palest whiffs of the Hermes on my wrists, I decided to stay in a similar group and try Ambre & Lavande (Fougere) by Accord Parfait today. A very straightforward and “smelly” scent, it immediately smells like what … Continue reading
Posted in perfume
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Statistics
14,600,000 Unemployed * 3,200,000 Jobs Available 11,400,000 Unemployed if all available jobs were filled * 11,200,000 Combined urban populations of NYC and Chicago 14,500,000 Population of Mali 11,300,000 Population of Greece 8,600,000 People working PT who would prefer to work … Continue reading
Posted in job, money
2 Comments
Elisa’s Atelier: Lavender’s Dirty Little Secret
Because the Caldey Island Lavender wore off so quickly, I was able to get up this morning and try a new perfume right away without showering (yes, it’s summer, but I have an AC and am unemployed so I don’t … Continue reading
Posted in perfume
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Elisa’s Atelier: Caldey Island Lavender
I received the Hermessence and Caldey samples today and decided to try out the Caldey Island Lavender, since my initial intention was to find a good blue lavender scent. I’m open to finding a replacement for Obsession, or at least … Continue reading
Elisa’s Atelier: MPG’s Ambre Précieux
I knew nothing about it, but I put a drop on my skin, breathed it in, and said, “Oh, my god” aloud, though I was alone in the room. I was intoxicated by it, possessed, consumed.* I received the first … Continue reading
Posted in perfume
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12 or 20 Questions
In which I participate in rob mclennan’s long-running interview series. Although rob has been prodding me to do this for awhile, I didn’t feel inspired to until Dottie did it. What can I say, peer pressure works.
Elisa’s Atelier: : Lavender’s Blue
Checking into the Twitter hive this morning, I listened to Gillian talking to Elisa about cherry scents and mentioned that I have a fetish for lavender. All of my cleaning products are lavender: Seventh Generation‘s lavender and mint dish soap … Continue reading
Posted in perfume
12 Comments
Protected: The readiness is all
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Protected: Goodbye, Coach Laughlin
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
An evaluation of the last 10 months
I’ve finished my coursework for my Library Science degree (the MLS).
Posted in Academia, job, moving
2 Comments
Corresponding Juvenilia: 1993-1995
Poems from 8th and 9th grade– because I think it’s interesting to see how what one reads affects what one writes. During these Junior High years I liked Emily Dickinson, and I numbered my poems, feeling that if the title … Continue reading
My favorite poem in 9th grade
She Had Some Horses by Joy Harjo She had some horses. She had horses who were bodies of sand. She had horses who were maps drawn of blood. She had horses who were skins of ocean water. She had horses … Continue reading
Posted in personal
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My favorite poem in 8th grade
This Alice Notley poem, available in Grave of Light, was in our Scholastic reader in 8th grade and I identified strongly with it.
Posted in Childhood, Contemporary Poetry
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My favorite poem in 7th Grade
My rebellion poem, from Carl Sandburg’s Chicago Poems. Via Bartleby. The Red Son I love your faces I saw the many years I drank your milk and filled my mouth With your home talk, slept in your house And was … Continue reading
Posted in Childhood, Modernism
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Jessica Smith
