Writing, Poetry, Short Stories, Reviews, Art Contests
Send in poetry, essays, artwork, articles, emotions, inspired creative ideas that came from reading or listening to Leonard Cohen. This is a follow up to Avalanches in Poetry Writings & Art Inspired by Leonard Cohen in 2019. “Before I Turn Into Gold” will include a few pieces from the original anthology, revised work from me from the first anthology, artwork by Geoffrey Wren, submissions from our blog & through our e-mail at feversofthemind@davidlonan1
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with Robin Wright:
Q1: When did you start writing and first influences?
Robin: I started writing in high school: thoughts in a journal, poems, short stories, even song lyrics. One of the most influential writers for me at that time was S.E. Hinton. She had written a couple of novels, “The Outsiders,” and “That Was Then This is Now.” The characters were so richly evolved and the story lines so captivating.
Q2: Who are your biggest influences today?
Robin: I can’t choose just one influence! I think I’m influenced by many contemporary poets: Dorianne Laux, Kim Addonizio, Billy Collins, Ted Kooser, Jim McGarrah, and all of the poets in the RAR online critique group.
Q3: Where did you grow up and how did that influence your writing? Have any travels away from home influence your work?
Robin: I grew up in Southern Indiana in the U.S. in a city on the river. I think the climate, the influence of the water, and the people I’ve encountered have all had their influence on my writing. I have not travelled extensively, so travelling is only a minor influence on my work.
Q4: What do you consider your most meaningful work that you’ve done creatively so far?
Robin: Some of the most meaningful work that I’ve done so far includes the poems I’ve written about family members and friends who have passed away and also an essay about some middle school students who could teach all of us about how to behave as humane and respectful human beings.
Q5: Any pivotal moment when you knew you wanted to be a writer?
Robin: I believe I had the urge to write starting with the writing I did in high school, but other life events happened, and so, I didn’t get back to it until later in life when I went back to college. I took a creative writing class on a whim and knew that I wanted to keep writing.
Q6: Favorite activities to relax?
Robin: Some of my favorite activities when not writing are spending time with my grandchildren, listening to my husband’s band(s) play, reading, walking, visiting a little town not far from where I live, New Harmony, IN.
Q7: Any recent or forthcoming projects that you’d like to promote?
Robin: As for recent and upcoming work, I had my first chapbook published in October 2020 by Finishing Line Press: Ready or Not by Robin Wright – Finishing Line Press, My poem “Winter” will be published in Spank the Carp in August. My essay, “Valentine’s Day 2020: What I Learned from Washington Middle School Students,” will be published in the August issue of Sanctuary Magazine. Links to poems recently published: Poet as President by Robin Wright (sledgehammerlit.com) https://muddyriverpoetryreview.webs.com/Robin%20Wright-1.pdf https://poetryandcovid.com/2020/12/13/grab-and-go-school-lunches-summer-2020/
Q8: What is a favorite line/stanza from a poem of yours or others?
Robin: One of my favorite lines from one of my poems, “Services at a Later Date,” is “. . .I claw/ the soil, bury what’s left/ of the flowers, push/ my palms together, pretend/ I know how to pray.”
Q9: Who has helped you most with writing?
Robin: I’ve had so much help and support over the years. Patty Aakhus encouraged me to take a poetry class, Jim McGarrah was my instructor in a poetry class in college, the members of the Student Writers Union in college, the ladies in my poetry circle, the members of the RAR online critique group, and my granddaughter who is a teenager but a published poet as well. I’m also learning from being a part of the TopTweetTuesday group of poets.
Daily Revelations
Deprived of affection and a sense of belonging
one retires to a sanctuary of isolation.
Arraigned by the acute pain of rejection
the walls become his or her world.
Indicted with selfishness and antisocial behavior
sleep is the best defense and life sentence.
Levied with incessant worries about tomorrow
sense falls to numbness like a baby lulled to sleep.
Yearning for warmth and the need to be heard
one contemplates talking to inanimate objects.
Reprehended for vocalizing one’s outlook
of the world, silence becomes the decorum.
Encapsulated with grief, mobility
is running errands for survival only.
Vilified for one’s depressive state
smiles are just an anti wrinkle cream.
Engrossed with sadness from one’s state
causes palpitation with the slightest change.
Larking with dark thoughts of an early exit
becomes one’s favorite pass-time.
Adjourned from engaging in sweet nothings
estranges one around so many happy faces.
Truncated moments of free expression
becomes the only method of communication.
Incapacitated with anger and denial
one falters to bitterness and dismay.
Obliterated from the lives of close ones
confines one to being minuscule.
Neap tide for once is just a moment of rebellion
against reality’s gravity pulling one down.
Susceptibility to darkness is a daily revelation
only experienced by ones who face mishaps alone.
Author’s Notes:
Genre: Acrostic Couplet spelling “Daily Revelations”.
This piece is centralized around: depression, loneliness, hurt, and emotional demise.
Empty Words
I’ve been drunk all my life
on disappointment’s wine,
A wine I poured in a glass
of empty words,
I fine with smiles empty of words.
I don’t know what’s worse:
drinking from that glass
or drowning the burning
sensation without words.
All I know is that it hurts.
See disappointment comes
in bottles of all sizes
from empty promises
to fill in the blanks
and even life size pranks.
Many times, I receive these bottles
as parting gifts
in baskets of what ifs-
often laced with fibs;
I undo with no thank you
tearing the note: only for you.
I used to drink to forget
But now I do to remember that:
Empty words can’t
hold promises just as smiles
empty words into spaces
I never thought I had.
So yes I graduated
from being a chronic drunkard
to social drinking as I shifted
from disappointment to sadcasm
filtered with realism.
I have my drink with time’s
lemony twist in a clear glass
of empty words empty of words.
There’s nothing worse
than being lied to for a curse.
Author’s Notes:
There’s quite a difference between empty words and smiles empty of words. It’s like the chasm between what’s been said and what’s been left unsaid. Those who care and are deep can realize how strikingly different are shades of pains from these two aspects of life. People are deviant creatures in their lying mechanisms, their resilience, and endeavors to keep up with their lies. I find their efforts fascinating.
Skylark of the Dark
Words trickle down my mind
playing sentiment’s broken chord
Like a child I slide down
its rails, who says I’m too old
to hope for the best to unfold?
Trouble is my staircase
I live for its thrill, what a race?
I hide my face in the shadows
but expose my back to its lashes.
After all, what are clothes for?
Sometimes dreams tumble
down with a thud and dribble
my memories like a pain so cruel
from a candle that’s lost its kindle.
Never mind, that I can handle!
I turn my tears like a pillow
fluffed for a better tomorrow
but there’s no escape from today.
Like a pendulum I continue to sway.
I am a bell that tolls all the way.
My heart is a harp with a crack
made to cut chords with a knack
My days walk me like a plank
straight into a bad prank!
I’m not perfect so cut me some slack!
Now my spine is arched
like a stairway larked
with sorrow and hatred.
I am the skylark of the dark-
with a quill for a bill and blood for ink!
Aloof
Too angry to believe, too distraught to perceive
I fell into depression’s peeve like a sheave
threaded with disbelief with a broken greave
until I tore my sleeve on sorrows that won’t leave.
I banked on time for solace but all it did was cleave
grief from hope for things I can’t forgive or reprieve.
And as the fires swallowed my cries
I opened my eyes to face life’s lies.
I closed my heart and gave up tries for a prize:
to accept failures without whys and be wise
to break ties and move in smaller gyres
to avoid fires and flat tires caused by familiar mires.
We trust those we love like a hand fits a glove
perceive them like a dove, hold them like a trove
but they break us like a foxglove that cuts with love
and hurts that shove us down until we cough
the very blood of that love as waters that buff
purpose’s rough luff away from joy like a bluff. Too cold to find warmth, too aloof to belong
I stand with indifference to face loss with acceptance.
Too broken to be pieced up, too lost to be found
I sit down with aimlessness and wander in endlessness.
Too drunk on despair, too angry to be kind or fair
I talk bold and look old yet refuse to be told who to hold.
Aloof is proof that love and passion can too go in a poof
even for love that’s over the roof, nothing’s bulletproof!
Author’s Notes:
Fear of anchoring, belonging, trusting, and letting go is the result of broken relationships and betrayal. This is a fear that haunts through all one holds dear and wants to endear. It is a chain that remands a heart into seclusion, a mind into isolation, a soul into desolation, and a life into destruction.
Inspired by: Blood Wedding – Lorca 1932
To be silent and consumed by fire is the worst punishment on earth, of those we inflict on ourselves. What use was pride to me, not seeing you, and you alone, lying there night after night? None at all! It served to stoke the flames higher! Because one thinks time is a cure, and the walls will shut things out, and it’s not true, it’s not true. When flames reach the heart, they can’t be quenched!
The Marine Sonnets by Paul Brookes
1. The Seawatch I watch the sea as the sea watches me. The changing colour of my surfaces, Waves blown by gust, what my tides, what my sea leaves on the shoreline of my many faces. The lagan and flotsam and derelict and jetsam. Two buoys of my eyes bobbing anchored in a silt of images mixed. Always memories waxing and waning. My inside sea watched by the sea outside. Speaks to sea beasts moving in my blood. I rise to where the waves move to imbibe breath before I dive below livelihood. The sea is me, I am the sea, watching. I am a dying sea, a dried up thing. 2. The Rockpool Before the tide turns I wend my own way. Starfish tube-feet caress my mussel beds Beadlet, snakelocks anemones snare prey, sting it with their tentacles, and shore crabs scrupulously pick over carcasses. From under my fringing seaweed shannies and prawns dart to shelter in crevices, overhangs, safe and secure nooks and crannies. One minute I am scorched by sharp sunlight, next I'm cold enough to ripple shivers. Soon it'll wash over and we unite. Soon I'll have new creatures to discover. In the wane I'll have my own way, again. Every to and fro never the same. 3. Herring Gull The Sideways walker in my beak I drop from Up to crack it open. My flockmates and me enjoy the meat. I ask you to stop, know me by my actions,my voice, translate my language to yours, must note position of my head, wings and tail, to my perch. They're stronger, bigger, spread wings expression saying this is mine, I won't share, go search for your own. Wet Leaf fall we feed on soft squirm appear out of soil, we trample - ground to make them rise. Her submissive begs stop me attacking, upright I mew a sound. Synchronise head tossings, I sick up rest undigested meal for her. We choose nest. www.thewombwellrainbow.com The Insect Sonnets by Paul Brookes The Unresolveables (An Heroic Crown Sonnet Sequence) by Paul Brookes at (sonnets 1-15) 3 Poems by Paul Brookes in Fevers of the Mind: Her Fiftieth, Her Fur Elise, A Black Bead
Q1: When did you start writing and first influences?
Ann: I started writing for publication in the summer of 2019. I had retired from teaching and now had time to write . I always liked to read. It started with the Little House on the Prairie books. I
read Dante’s Inferno on my own, Thoreau, always an independent reader from my school studies. I wrote a lot of poetry in high school and took as many writing/lit classes as I could.
Q2: Who are your biggest influences today?
Ann: I look at the over 50 writers and see their accomplishments. It gives me inspiration to go on and not let age interfere stand in the way of my writing. Robert Frost is my favorite poet probably because he was my mom’s.
Q3: Where did you grow up and how did that influence your writing? Have any travels away from home influence your work?
Ann: I grew up in northwest Pennsylvania. We live a simple life, our town embedded in nature. My stories reflect this bucolic setting. Living part-time in the South has made me appreciate what
we have in this small town.
Q4: What do you consider your most meaningful work that you’ve done creatively so far?
Ann: My most meaningful work is writing about my family, especially how my dad escaped from a communist controlled country, and as the daughter of an immigrant, how it has affected my life.
Q5: Any pivotal moment when you knew you wanted to be a writer?
Ann: I knew that I wanted to be a writer in grade school. I remember having a story chosen as best in the class. I entered writing contents in elementary school. Though I ended up in education, I have returned to my dream of writing and publishing.
Q6: Favorite activities to relax?
Ann: Favorite things to do when I am not writing: tending to my flower gardens, reading, walking the beach, going to sunsets, attending theater productions.
Q7: Do you have any recent or forthcoming projects that you’d like to promote?
Ann: I have over 40 published pieces. I am thinking of putting these stories in book form.
Q8: What is a favorite line/stanza from a poem of yours or others?
Ann: Favorite line-from “The Weighted Blanket”
“I wake up under four layers of sadness, like a weighted blanket so popular these days, blankets made to comfort, to calm a restless body, reduce feelings of anxiety. but mine does anything but.
I kick off the somber layers: alloy gray, carbon navy, dark much, and smoky mauve, each mournful color representing a generation gone.”
Q9: Who has helped you most with writing?
Ann: What/Who has helped my writing: attending writing webinars hosted by writers such as Dinty Moore, belonging to several writing communities, asking my published friend for advice, reading books on writing, and reading memoirs , such as David Sedaris.
Poem by Ann Hultberg : “I Prefer the Clouds Over the Sun” from Fevers of the Mind Anthology http://www.drunkmonkeys.us/2017-posts/2020/3/9/essay-something-to-hold-on-to-ann-hultberg https://medium.com/without-borders/a-forced-exodus-from-hungary-to-america-50f4086dec64 https://www.poemythology.com/books.html
