As April and National Poetry Month come to an end, we finish our series of poets on their poems. Stan Rubin, Michael Spence, Nicole Persun and Nancy Levinson have each offered us a poem along with their thoughts about writing it. I follow their work with writing prompts based on their contributions.

Stan Sanvel Rubin is a Port Townsend, WA poet who co-founded and directed The Rainier Writing Workshop, a low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University, after serving for years as Director of the Brockport Writers Forum & Videotape Library (SUNY).

Poem in Place of a Fatwa
by Stan Rubin

By all that is holy, I decree
that the murderers stop murdering,
running up their piles of corpses
like an accountant totaling numbers
at a desk     In the name of anyone’s
god, lower or upper case, I insist
that children should not fall anymore like rotten figs,
that the demon of hatred for others
be abolished     That a day of the fulfillment
of dreams is at hand   That soon the darkness,
as we have called it for centuries, will lift like smog
and reveal more than the indifferent wings of angels
trumpeting their stratospheric silence     The face
of humans truly and readily waking
to what was here all the time    That
even my own past selves, who are not
the best of buddies, will collide
like Abbot and Costello rounding too many
corners running away from each other
Will ask for forgiveness and mean it

— from There. Here.

Stan writes of the poem:

I needed to express what we may scream silently to ourselves when we see or read the news of the world. But a poem is not an idea, it’s the shaped expression of an idea. Otherwise, who needs the poem? This poem is built of a series of unpunctuated phrases marked by spaces, each like a small separate “decree” or wish. The caginess, the fun — there has to be fun in art, however serious the subject — was in modulating the voice from mock public declaration to intimate self-confrontation. I guess the idea is, we can never achieve a better world without honestly taking responsibility for ourselves. I liked bringing thoughts and feelings so large — and maybe depressing — coming together in a compact and controlled way. There’s pleasure in that, I hope for the reader as well.

You can learn more about and order the poetry collection There. Here. online as well as an earlier collection by Stan, Hidden Sequel. You can also read more of his poems online.

Writing Idea from Sheila
Inspired by the poem “Poem in Place of a Fatwa” by Stan Rubin

The Arabic word fatwa means “a formal legal opinion.” Stan takes on the whole world, what he hopes will come to pass, and later the selves inside of him. What if you could issue your own opinion with a high level of authority that would be binding? Try your hand at issuing this kind of longing for something better — your writing topic might be serious like Stan’s or it might be humorous — as in a parent issuing a “legal” opinion about clean bedrooms or a shopper issuing an opinion about a store’s merchandizing and customers. Funny or serious, there is pleasure in saying it like you want it to be, using the specifics of both as it is and as you hope it to be.

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Michael Spence is a Seattle, WA area poet who has recently retired after 30 years of driving Metro buses. In fact, he has a fourth book of poems forthcoming entitled The Bus Driver’s Threnody from Truman State University Press.

The Darter and the Dace,
The Way I Wish He’d Told It
by Michael Spence

The Darter refused to sink, my father said
Almost to himself, gluing together
The toy submarine I’d sent away for.
I looked at him; he kept his gaze on the pieces.
We were out on patrol, the two of us,
Up off the northeast coast of Australia.
Guess what we find?
I shook my head, leaning
Closer—he’d never spoken of the war.
The main fleet of the Japanese Navy.

He dabbed at some glue with a cloth.
That shocks
Us and the bad guys; we’ve been searching
For that fleet a long while.
In my mind
An ocean glinted: metal wedges spiked
With guns.
I asked what happened.
We both fire
Our torpedoes, then scramble out of there.
At least we try to.
All those ships coming
After us, and you know what?
The Darter,
Our sister boat, runs aground.

The sound of iron scraping over reefs
Raised goose bumps down my back.
Dad blew
On a seam to make it dry.
Of course my sub,
The Dace, has to turn around and rescue
The stranded crew.
The enemy’s getting nearer
As we get the guys aboard.
But we can’t leave yet.
I asked why not.
Secrets, he said;
A submarine is packed with secrets.
We need
To take a ton of records off that boat.

I said that that must be when the Dace escaped.
Attaching the conning tower, Dad grimaced:
Nope.
You know what’s a sub’s biggest secret?
He tilted the vessel slightly.
The sub itself.
We can’t let the Darter be captured intact,
So we have to sink it.
We start with this:
He tapped the plastic deck gun with his finger.
But that just raises little puffs of dust
Here and here and here, he poked the hull.

He tapped it some more, a sort of Morse code,
Then turned the toy till the bow pointed at me.
So we shoot torpedoes at it.
I saw
The blurry white of their contrails streak away.
Grinning, I said those “fish” blew up the Darter.
We see some plumes of water and think that, too.
But when the mist clears, damn sub’s still there.
The enemy destroyers are nearly here.
He spun the toy’s propeller.
Time to leave.

So that was when the Darter got captured, I said,
Imagining a boarding party sloshing
Like acid through its metal corridors,
Dissolving the secret stuff that Dad had known.
His square of sandpaper rubbed and smoothed
The back fins.
Not exactly.
The Japs send
A plane in low and drop a bomb on it.
He gave a shrug that left his eyebrows raised.
You could say the enemy does our job for us.

I nodded, said it was too bad the Darter
Got all blown up.
My father blew away
The fine grit his sanding had scoured loose.
Mmm-hmm, except the Zero pilot’s aim
Is a bit shy.
The blast bangs up the sub
Without destroying it.
Lifting the toy
To the kitchen light, Dad shut one green eye
And sighted along its length.
A tough sewer pipe.
He looked at me.
You know what finally happens?

His breath eased in and out.
The war ends,
We go home, the years sail by—but the Darter
Stays stuck on that reef.
With a smile brief
As a splash, he held the sub out to me.
Now kids play on it, jumping into the sea.
I carefully took the boat.
When he placed his hand
On my shoulder, I saw explosions of water:
I saw those children climb the torn hull,
Laughing and calling inside the empty dark.

— from Crush Depth

Michael says of the poem:

My father, like many men of his generation, was very quiet, and he almost never spoke about his experiences aboard the submarine USS Dace during World War II. When I was a kid, I got through the mail a toy submarine — something in those days that companies offered as a gimmick and which you could order by sending in the tops of cereal boxes. Dad put it together without a hitch, the way he assembled anything that came into his hands. I don’t recall him saying much of anything while he built the sub. But decades later, after I’d heard and then read about some of the exploits of his own submarine, they seemed the kinds of stories that could have been elicited from him by the act of putting that toy together. The kinds of stories I wish he’d told me. So I conflated the building of the toy with the telling of the real vessel’s tale. These two elements meshed well, and each step in the poem led easily to the next.

You can order Crush Depth and you can read more about Michael Spence and another of his new books, Adam Chooses, as well as read sample poems here.

Writing Idea from Sheila
Inspired by the poem “The Darter and the Dace, The Way I Wish He’d told It” by Michael Spence

Reading the poem, I feel like I am there with the young Michael and his dad making that model, watching his dad so closely, listening, hoping for more of the story, egging his dad on to say more.

Whether you wished a parent or grandparent, aunt, uncle, teacher or older neighbor had told you a story or whether they did tell a memorable one, you have a poem on your hands if you’d like to write it. Do what Michael did–think of an activity that the two of you did together and write some dialog from both parties. Add in the actions they are involved in. See what happens.

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Nicole Persun is a young Port Townsend, WA poet who has been writing poems since she was 15 as well as novels. A pastry chef by day, she is currently working on a full-length collection of baking related poetry.

Pastry Chef
by Nicole Persun

Four hours in,
the dull ache has made its way
up through her tired elbows
and deep into the crease
between her shoulder blades.

Above the floured bench, she rows
the rolling pin her oar,
her heels the hull, the raw
pastry the fluid sea,
rocking her gently through quiet
mornings and sad afternoons.

Every hunched extension
over the dough is calculated, but
forgiving, since the right pressure
is important. She has done this
before and will again,
because it is what she does.

She rows through life this way—
not hunched or sorrowful,
but calculating. Forgiving.
Identified by the way she
treats the dough, the sea.

The tension in her back is invisible,
the product of her efforts, sweet.

Nicole says of the poem:

“Pastry Chef” is a newer poem that is part of my most recent poetry project. Every writer has a day job, and my current day job is baking. The collection which “Pastry Chef” comes from is about a single fictional character–who happens to own a bakery. Being able to use experience from work in my writing is always a happy reminder that everything we writers do is relevant and viable fodder for our work. I chose “Pastry Chef” in particular because I like the way it relates work to life. What I wanted to say with this poem was, “No matter the struggle we encounter while doing work we love, and no matter how unrecognized that struggle is, the work is still worthwhile.”

Writing Idea from Sheila
Inspired by the poem “Pastry Chef” by Nicole Persun

I enjoy Nicole’s metaphor of the dough being the sea, the rolling pin an oar. I enjoy the way the baker’s physical being and mood enter the poem after we know she thinks of an ocean and rowing, and how her nature, what she gets out of her work — to be calculating in the way she treats the sea — becomes what she ponders.

This poem is appealing in its evocation of a private moment.

Might you think of a repetitive task or action you do regularly and write from the moment of doing it? Perhaps this moment is almost a trance as you are watching snow fall or hiking a trail or running. It may be how you feel raking leaves. Have these questions in mind as you choose phrases for the poem: What does doing the task feel physically like? To what can you compare that feeling so others can understand? How might you use certain phrases to show the repetition in the task, in the work of the body? What thought or insight do you have as you surrender to total involvement in the task? How does that insight or thought sit with you?

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Nancy Smiler Levinson is a Los Angeles, California writer and poet. Her career spans journalism, fiction and nonfiction for young readers as well as a poetry collection, inspired by years of caring for her husband with Alzheimer’s.

For My Husband Who Has Alzheimer’s Disease
 by Nancy Smiler Levinson

Unable now to engage in conversation,
you sit with me on a sofa, your arm tucked into mine
at informal Friday afternoon Shabbat services,
in the lounge of your residential home.

A young woman cantor distributes tiny battery-lit plastic candles
(fire regarded risky) and siddurs that you can no longer follow.
We share one, its prayers span our laps as our lives.

You usually doze on and off as those gathered sing and chant.
Yet one Friday I hear your voice, see your shy lips
barely moving, reciting the pillar of Judaism:
Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonoi Echad. . .
Hear O Israel the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

With those few sacred words remembered and spoken,
you, my husband and soul mate, gave me us again,
a pause for me to listen and hear that after a storm
a voice can always be heard—whether from a mountaintop,
a valley, an edge of the universe—
an all encompassing love and goodness,
the only map we can follow on our continued journey.

May we embrace all of our blessings
and carry them forward for our families to live
vibrantly, purposefully on life’s enduring path.

— from Moments of Dawn: A Poetic Memoir of Love & Family, Affliction & Affirmation

Nancy says of the poem:

The poem included here appeared in Poetica Magazine: Contemporary
Jewish Writing, and is a slightly different version of the last page of my book. It is special to me as the culmination of years of writing about my husband’s decline with Alzheimer’s disease and my seeking a beam of light to follow towards focusing on embracing the love and blessings we shared throughout our marriage and even during the sad and difficult times at the end of his life. The rabbi of our synagogue read this –the last page of my book in his eulogy at my husband’s funeral service.

You can order Moments of Dawn: A Poetic Memoir of Love & Family, Affliction & Affirmation here. You can read about Nancy’s writing for young children here.

Writing Idea from Sheila
Inspired by the poem “For My Husband Who Has Alzheimer’s Disease” by Nancy Smiler Levinson

I have tears in my eyes when I read Nancy’s words:

… after a storm
a voice can always be heard—whether from a mountaintop,
a valley, an edge of the universe—
an all encompassing love and goodness,
the only map we can follow on our continued journey.

And the tears are there because of the description of the specific moment when the poet’s husband suddenly remembers important words.

When in your life have you experienced the surprise of someone saying or remembering something that strikes you as proof of something deeper, a way to live, to believe, to honor life? Or perhaps you have wanted a sign about something and received it. Can you write a stanza that describes the situation you are in? Can you offer information about the circumstances? Can you then write a stanza showing what was said, heard, or seen? And then another one about what this meant to you? I believe it is the job of the poet to preserve these moments that go by so quickly but hold deep and moving meaning.

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A big thank you to this week’s contributors Stan Sanvel Rubin, Michael Spence, Nicole Persun and Nancy Smiler Levinson. May their words inspire yours.