Highku: for lovers of God

[Note: The following comes from the Introduction to the new book, Highku: for lovers of God.]

Several years ago, poems began coming to me in the traditional 5/7/5 form of haiku or senryu, but they weren’t consistent with the traditional content of fleeting seasonal scenes or sudden insights. Instead, these three-line poems focused exclusively on God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – most often in 17-syllable Psalms, Proverbs, prayers, or praise.

Such poems seemed to need their own name, and, initially, “aahcoo” came to mind with “aah” as that “ah ha!” moment of insight set to the coo of a dove. However, the name sounded too much like a sneeze, which just didn’t have the dignity required to honor our Most High God.

And that was it! “High” for the Highest and “ku” as a nod to the traditional haiku form with occasional exception in the modern style of fewer syllables.

This month, it occurred to me that I might have enough Highku for a new book, and, yes, I did! So, this week, Amazon informed me that Highku: for lovers of God is now available in all three formats: hardback, paperback, and ebook!

I pray each poem blesses you so much, you’ll want to share the book with others and read the poems as part of your prayers, meditations, or daily devotions.

May the peace of God be with you always in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.  

Joy: 100 poems

If you’re looking for sweet little verses or helium-filled poems, this may not be the book for you. But, if you’d like a collection of literary poems expressing an important life-lifting theme, you’ll be delighted to discover the works of some of the most highly acclaimed poets of the last hundred years or so, including many, many of my favorites.

Edited by award-winning poet Christian Wiman and published by Yale University Press, who kindly sent me a copy to review, Joy: 100 poems is a slender anthology of poetry written, as Emily Dickinson might say, “slant.” Instead of trying to capture the ever-elusive joy straight on, the book presents a collage of joy, eclectically illustrated by snow, sex, nature, children, bodily functions, music, religion, and ways of writing poetry. 

As the poetic introduction “Still Wilderness” declares, “…this entire book is aimed against whatever glitch in us or whim of God has made our most transcendent moments resistant to description.” That particular page also uses these lines by Lisel Mueller to describe joy that’s indescribable:

“It has nothing to do with the passing of time.

It’s not about loss. It’s about

two seemingly parallel lines

suddenly coming together

inside us, in some place

that is still wilderness”

With that last apt phrase as the introduction’s title, Editor Wiman goes on to say:

“Joy is what keeps reality real, since in this world of multiverses and quantum weirdness, where ninety-five percent of matter and energy we know only to name as ‘dark,’ it is obvious that reality extends far beyond what our senses can perceive. So what in the world, or what beyond the world, is calling to us when we are called to joy?”

This is not, as Wiman points out, to be confused with happiness, which is “a disposition or evaluation: we are happy when we experience pleasure, when things go our way, and so on. Joy, by contrast, is an emotion: there is always an element of having been seized,” often in, “some loss of self.”

In one poetic example, Hebrew poet Yehuda Amichai contrasts the descriptions of pain with the imprecision of joy as these lines, translated by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfield, show:

“The blurriness of joy and the precision of pain –

I want to describe, with a sharp pain’s precision, happiness

and blurry joy. I learn to speak among the pains.”

At other times, poets speak of unexpected moments of delight, such as happened when Elizabeth Bishop memorialized “The Moose,” who wandered into the middle of the road:

“Taking her time,

she looks the bus over,

grand, otherworldly.

Why, why do we feel

(we all feel) this sweet

sensation of joy?”

Or, as Derek Walcott explained in “The Elegist”:

“Happiness is for the Declaration of Independence, a political

condition, and also for the ending of movies. Joy, by contrast,

is an illumination, as in Blake and Wordsworth and Rilke,

a benediction, a visitation. In the twentieth century, it required

nothing less than a belief in angels.”

Spanish poet Pablo Medina translated his “A Poem For The Epiphany” into English in these closing lines:

“It snows because light and dark

are making love in a field where old age

has no meaning, where colors blur,

silence covers sound, sleep covers sorrow,

everything is death, everything is joy.”

And, in The Luminous Web, Barbara Brown Taylor, writes:

“There is a living hum that might be coming from my neurons

but might just as well be coming from the furnace of the stars.

When I look up at them there is a small commotion in my bones,

as the ashes of dead stars that house my marrow rise up like metal

filings toward the magnet of their living kin.”

Throughout this collection of poems by poets, whose individual works also happen to fill five bookshelves in my home, the surprises of life and death merge into a single theme, which, after reading this highly recommended anthology, I, too, cannot help but address:

Joy

On the road

from Arimathea

to Jerusalem,

Jesus and I

turned cartwheels,

not minding the muck

on our hands or

the pebbles pressing

into our palms.

We felt unfettered,

knowing

no one could ever

kill Us again.

by Mary Harwell Sayler, ©2019, all rights reserved.

Joy: 100 poems, hardback, edited by Christian Wiman and published by Yale University Press

…

How to submit your poetry book or chapbook to a traditional publisher

Recently The Poetry Editor blog talked about the poet’s task of finding a theme for a book of poems or chapbook, selecting poems relevant to that theme, then looking for connections between each poem to establish a sequence or flow.

Once you’re satisfied with the results, consider sending your manuscript to the editor of a traditional publishing company, but just any editor won’t do! Some will be open to your work, and some will not. To find out, research companies who produce the types of poetry you like to read.

As mentioned in a previous article, “Getting poems together for a poetry book,” I submitted my manuscript for Living in the Nature Poem to Hiraeth Press because I liked the editors and their focus on the natural environment and other nature themes my poems often contain.

When you, too, have found publishers whose poetry books or chapbooks you like and who seem likely to like yours, study and follow their writers’ guidelines, keeping in mind that those guidelines are not suggestions but necessities.

In the initial contact, most editors want to see only a few poems attached to your cover letter and sent to the email or mailing address provided with the writers’ guidelines. For either print mail or a Word attachment, select a favored font such as 12-point Times Roman or Arial and type each poem on a separate page, not centered, but flush left beneath your letterhead, which includes your full name, mailing address, and email. If you have a blog or website, add that too.

For the cover letter that covers sample poems from your book also include:


Your contact information set as a letterhead across the top of the page

Date (flush right or left with the remainder of the letter flush left)

Editor’s Name

Name of Publishing Company

Address

Re: (aka Regarding: Title of manuscript)

Greeting of the Letter: (Dear Editor Last Name:)

Body of the Letter (within one page)

Closing (such as “Sincerely,” or “Best Regards”)

Your Name

Enclosures: (i.e., SASE aka self-addressed stamped envelope for manuscript's return; number of poems if sent by postal mail)


The body of the letter will briefly say why you’re contacting this particular publisher, what your poetry book is about (theme and purpose), how many pages the book has, how many poems are enclosed, and whether any of the poems have been published in poetry journals, e-zines, or anthologies.

Waiting to hear can be hard, but give the editor at least 6 weeks to respond before following up by mail or email with a quick note asking about the status of your manuscript (title) sent on (date.)

If, however, your manuscript comes back or keeps coming back without a contract, you may need feedback or professional advice in a Poetry Critique for a minimal fee. This does not mean criticism of your work but practical suggestions and helpful corrections to show you how to improve your manuscript and make it more marketable.

If, after all of the above, the book or chapbook still does not place with a traditional publishing company, THEN you might want to self-publish – the exception being if you know going in that you have a specialized market and/or readers eager to buy and read your book. However, even with a built-in eager market (such as TV personalities have) do not self-publish without first getting a final edit from an experienced editor.

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© 2012, Mary Sayler, all rights reserved.

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How one poem leads to another and another in a poetry book or chapbook

In a novel or short story, one thing leads to another, giving the writer a means of plot development through cause-and-effect events or the actions-and-reactions of the characters. Similarly, in a poetry book or chapbook, one topic, phrase, idea, or image can connect one poem to the next, helping you to enhance or develop a basic theme, purpose, or subject.

The previous article “Getting poems together for a poetry book” talked about the importance of a specific theme to hold a book of poems together, which is also true – and, perhaps, even more of a necessity – for a chapbook of only 18 or so poems. In other words, a strong theme or dominant subject can connect the poems like a lively conversation that moves along but stays on topic.

The overriding theme, purpose, or subject will also let you know whether or not a poem belongs here. If the poetic lines do not tie into the theme, they most likely do not fit well in this particular manuscript. For a poetry book, however, you have the option of using two or more sections to separate your poems into Part I, Part II, etc., thus severing the need to stay with a single thread.

If I had divided the 100 or so poems in Living in the Nature Poem into sections, that might have made them easier to organize or arrange! But each poem had some tie-in to nature – ranging from human nature to an eagle’s talons to indigenous peoples who live close to the earth in a natural, non-industrialized lifestyle. I also liked the way those many aspects of nature intertwine into the natural life presented in the poems, thereby strengthening the idea of becoming at-one with ourselves, one another, the natural world, and the whole universe.

As one poem leads to another, the overall context broadens, too, so a weaker poem gains strength, meaning, or momentum from the surrounding poems. Or, as some (including me) have said, I like it when “one poem informs another.”

Sometimes following a time sequence will organize poems for you. And, sometimes poets or poetry editors easily stay well-focused on the big picture as they arrange poems – a trait I find admirable but not within my natural ability. For me stream-of-consciousness fits the way I talk (and write poetry), so I wanted to try something similar as I arranged the poems. Whether I succeeded will be for poetry critics or reviewers to decide, but I’ll give you a few examples in case you want to try some kind of poem-to-poem flow in your poetry book or chapbook:

“Tribulations of a Playful Poet” begins:

The alligator owns all rights
to the lily pads,
gliding by, right when I'm writing
about beauty,
about serenity.

So the next poem “Fashioned” follows the alligator image into a prose poem that starts:

In the dark of night, a flash of light in an alligator’s eye raves in a pair
of shoes, purse, belt, or baby gator flushed into the sewers of New York,
and then moves on.

The poem “Hunger” ends with these lines:

The silence becomes you –
fair as the light on a golden-
winged hawk, wheeling away
from the squirrel's worried cry.

So the next poem “Do Not Use the Word Bury in This Poem” begins:

Squirrels shop
the earth. Moles
have malls.

“Real Estate” says:

And the hills that climbed us
puffing for breath
exchanged their wildflowers
for houses

The next few poems pick up on changes that occur in the natural world and, ultimately, in ourselves. So dying just naturally enters that picture, too, with “Expiration” lamenting:

I can't seem to get over your dying like that.
Things I thought I knew about you
did not include this option –
not so soon.

Death is part of life, of course, but I wanted to keep the book focused on living. So, even in death, “The Escape” hopefully re-establishes the idea of Living in the Nature Poem.

The Escape
by Mary Harwell Sayler

Day after day I think of death
descending on us
like that fish hawk on the pond,
the dark wings
towering through each window
of our house and settling
on the sofa
where we like to rest.

Some call death
an osprey, kindly and benign
with its sweet brown and white
seersucker breast and tail,
but they forget
the downward hook of the beak,
the prickly spicules on the feet,
the claws that claw through the
thickest cushions, letting nothing,
nothing
get away but
love and spirit.


(The poem originally appeared in the Journey’s End anthology published 2010 by Two Friends Publishing.)


Other poems follow "The Escape" – some with humor, some not – but I hope you’ll find out for yourself by ordering Living in the Nature Poem to be published in June by Hiraeth Press - a traditional publisher of poetry and prose from an environmental perspective. Happy reading! And have fun looking for the life themes and connections in your poems.


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© 2012, Mary Sayler, all rights reserved.

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