Saturday, September 15, 2012

Made for TV


It's a beautiful, almost-fall day. Cool fall temperatures blew in suddenly the other day as my husband attempted to finish mowing the back yard, after a lawnmower mishap + repair (spark plug popped out). He had to put on a jacket, take off a cable, duct tape it to an older mower, etc., but the newly lush lawn got mowed, and today, as I say in the poem, "Made for TV," newly up in storySouth, "Blue / sky asserts itself."

I am tickled to be in the issue, you bet, and look forward to reading everything in it. I am very impressed with this online journal, so elegant and so well organized and easy to navigate! There's even a fabulous author index for reading the archives.

"Made for TV" is a sort of free-verse pantoum, using flexible repetition and enjambment to do what Hollywood does, and, furthermore, television movies:

Hollywood moves things around
to tell its own story
its own way.  All we can do is forgive.

And so on. The poem brings together the changing leaves, my hunting/target-practice neighbors, and a friend's breast cancer diagnosis. (But it's not a made-for-tv movie.)

In the same issue is "Beason," a persona poem I've been working on for years. It was written, but then a horrible murder happened in Beason, so I set it aside, not to add trouble to that portion of the universe, even in my mind, and I've adjusted it since to become something else, but still something oddly redemptive, I hope.

Meanwhile, the harvest--even if it must be meager, after the drought--has begun.

Corn, Peach, Melon, Ceramic Jar by Jonathan Koch, and thanks to him, again, for permission to share it.

15 comments:

Grace Curtis said...

Lovely post, Kathleen and intriguing/haunting poem!

Kathleen said...

Thank you, Grace!

Kim said...

Love both of these poems. I remember the original version of the Beason poem and the subsequent tragedy. I'm glad you were able to adapt and publish it now.

Maureen said...

Love the poems, Kathleen. Congratulations on their publication!

Kathleen said...

Thank you, Maureen!

Collagemama said...

I like the lawn mower teaming crossed with the "general teaming" on Kim's blog in your coincidae world.

Natalie DeYoung said...

I love the use of color and imagery in "Made for TV." Beautifully descriptive.

ron hardy said...

I love both these poems too Kathy. I like the omission and the shift in Beason and the jumpiness in Made for TV

Kathleen said...

Thanks, Nancy, Natalie, and Ron!

seana graham said...

I'm going to be thinking about how Hollywood moves things around to tell its own story a lot now. Forgiveness will come harder.

As for the whole Beason thing, I've had this kind of thing come up with stories too, where you feel connected accidentally to a, well, in my case gruesome event, and don't want to further the energy around it. But one of my friends told me that it isn't that you're a catalyst, you're more like a witness. And I think that's right. The energy around the event is moving on its own and you pick up on it.

Kathleen said...

Thanks, Seana. That will help me a lot, to consider myself a "witness" sometimes to the world's events or psychic pain. Not an exploiter.

Hannah Stephenson said...

Sheesh. That is a really beautiful poem.

I know another beautiful poem with a tulip poplar in it:
http://poemsoutloud.net/audio/archive/david_baker_reads_too_many/

Kathleen said...

Thanks, Hannah.

Molly said...

Wonderful work you have there at storySouth. Congratulations!

Kathleen said...

Thank you, Molly!