wickedpen's Xanga

Monday, June 06, 2005

Mon, 06 Jun 2005 19:14:13 GMT

I think I shall hence be closing up shop hereabouts and moving completely over to blogger. My layout options look ever so much more snazzier.

kristybowen.blogspot.com

If you need me, you know where to find me....

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Tue, 01 Mar 2005 02:52:59 GMT

The broadside from the Poetry Center is finally here:

Monday, February 28, 2005

Mon, 28 Feb 2005 23:31:04 GMT

This sounds way cool, but sadly I have to work and I didn't know about it enough in advance to swap schedules, but if you're in town, definitely go..since it's so close to work, I may sneak over if I can for an hour or so....

Chicago—POETRY Magazine is proud to announce the 1st Annual
Printers’ Ball in celebration of Chicago print to be held on
Thursday, March 3, 2005. The event will occur from 6:00 p.m – 9:00
p.m. at the HotHouse, 31 E. Balbo Ave., Chicago, IL.

Co-sponsored by Another Chicago Magazine, The Bird Machine, Bridge, Chicago Review, Firebelly Design, FOUND Magazine, The Guild Complex, In These Times, Independent Press Association of Chicago, Lumpen, NewCity, Pistil, The Poetry Center of Chicago, Other Voices, Punk Planet, Quimby’s, The Reader, Stop Smiling, StoryQuarterly, TENbyTEN, THE 2NDHAND, TriQuarterly, and Venus, the event will showcase a diverse selection of Chicago-based print publications including magazines, journals, and weeklies.

Conceived of as an opportunity to celebrate and explore Chicago’s
vibrant print scene, the event offers readers and writers a unique
chance to sample publications and meet with editors and designers.
“The Printers’ Ball is a celebration of Chicago print and the
readers who keep it alive,” says POETRY’s assistant editor Fred
Sasaki. “And how often are the editors of Punk Planet and POETRY in the same room?”

The Printers’ Ball is open to the public and admission is free. For
more information, please call 312.799.8005.

Monday, February 28, 2005

Mon, 28 Feb 2005 17:17:50 GMT

Here's the text from the entire interview I was talking about:

********************************************

DePaul Magazine
Winter, 2005

Prize-winning Poet Wields ‘Wicked Pen’

The words come in snippets, images glimpsed out a window or triggered by a book, jotted down on a notebook for further pondering.

Unlit rooms will ruin us,
a squall of glass slippers,
conjugation, mimesis obscured.
--from “Narrowing”

Sometimes, they come in a torrent, falling fully formed onto the page.

What woman’s body
doesn’t start and hum
with the moon, tiny
wildness beating inside
like a drum.
--from “Witchcraft”

Then the real work begins, says poet Kristy Bowen (LAS ‘99) who recently won first place in the Poetry Center of Chicago’s 10^th Annual Juried Reading.

She pours over the words, tweaking and pushing, seeking the right rhythm and sound. She returns to the poem again and again, even after it’s been published.

“I don’t think I ever know it’s done. I’ll publish something and then put it together for something else, a chapbook or online journal, and it’s a different version,” she says.

By day, Bowen is a mild-mannered library assistant at Columbia College Chicago, helping faculty and students find the information they need.

But at night, she becomes Wicked Pen, weaving feminism, folklore, and erotica into “muscular lyric poems” that are “sculptural, opaque, and suggestive as beach glass,” according to the Poetry Center of Chicago’s website.

Knows that only some return
home safely, the others
lost to kitchens and wind.
--from “Sweet”

Bowen was nearly lost to poetry, enrolling at DePaul to earn a masters degree in English as preparation to teach it in high school or college. Instead, she discovered the poetry of William Butler Yeats and, through it, her own voice.

“I started writing short stories in college and discovered that I could translate the same things into poems, and they were better,” she says.

She now writes daily, submitting her work to online and print journals. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, an award given only to small press authors.

She also founded and edits her own online journal, Wicked Alice, sifting and formatting the submissions of other poets she likes. She’s published two chapbooks, Bloody Mary and The Archaeologist’s Daughter,” as well as a print version of Wicked Alice.

“The more I have things accepted, the more I publish, the more I am inspired to write,” she says, “It strengthens your belief that you can do it.”

To read more of Bowen’s work or for a schedule of her poetry readings, visit:
www.angelfire.com/poetry/wickedpen.

*************************************************

Saturday, February 26, 2005

Sat, 26 Feb 2005 13:41:52 GMT

The description is oddly dead-on, except for the part about Kerouac. And the picture, well nothing like a little eye candy on a Saturday morning....

You're the Tortured Intellectual!
Take What sort of Hipster are you? today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Personality Test Generator.

You're sensitive, you're emotional, and you wonder why everyone else in the world exists on a different plane. You cannot eat, breathe, or sleep without analyzing each action to death. You're usually sombre, depressed, lethargic, but you can be nearly glad from time to time. You wear whatever you can find on your cluttered bedroom floor. You carry books, notepads, reading glasses with you wherever you go. You have friends, but only a few who truly get where you're coming from. You frequent coffee shops, libraries, and the less crowded bars. You're obsessed with past people, past ideas, past lives. You wish you could die and be reborn as Jack Kerouac.

Saturday, February 26, 2005

Sat, 26 Feb 2005 04:38:26 GMT

I just got my copy of the DePaul mag with my little interview in it. And I quote:

"By day, Bowen is a mild-mannered library assistant at Columbia College, helping faculty and students find the information they need.

But at night, she becomes Wicked Pen, weaving feminism, folklore, and erotica into "muscular lyric poems" that are "sculptural, opaque and suggestive as beach glass" according the Poetry Center's website."

Makes me sound like a comic book character...mild mannered nearly dropped me....

Friday, February 25, 2005

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 19:42:51 GMT

sleeping sickness

Soon, all your poems have trains.

Lurid, erotic places plagued

by vagueness and mangroves. Still

the sunlight undresses the terrain,

opens its bones, its throat, and

even oranges begin to fever you,

the white slip sweated to silver

and the tea gone tepid

in its pink rimmed cup.

You want something scenic

and disastrous, the dearest thing

stolen from the king and plied with honey

until her irises bloomed like grapes.

How insomnia recalls pennies,

white cakes in pretty boxes.

Even the sheets rinsed in lemon water

and gathered beneath the half moon.

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Thu, 24 Feb 2005 21:54:49 GMT

four answers to one question

arrangements

Note the correlation between the altitude

and the ribs of her silky continent,

the hinge and pivot in the hips

that falls prey to perimeter.

The point at which the tongue

becomes accustomed to corruption.

specifications

Seldom do we see so many fractured

discoveries, the wreck of branches,

or the armful of nettles.A bottle

hangs by a string at the bottom of a well,

translucent and perfected.I was apprenticed

to the frenzied atmosphere, the verandas

that open into dark wind.

axis

A woman frequents the solar flares now,

with her tiny fusebox and a basket of pears.

Collects feathers and dowses the surface

for a vein of river cool and pristine as

the word for snow. Mercurial, she would

say,of imprecise origins.

interference

There’s a danger in railings, mailboxes,

anything with the barest hint of longing.

You want to suffer along grander

dimensions than this, the muscles

that twitch electric each time

you remember cold.

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Thu, 24 Feb 2005 21:49:55 GMT

One week into the semester and I'm already feeling buried. Not including the stuff I need to get done on the next DGP title, plus any of my own writing, I have an inordinate amount of reading to do for the craft class, both print and online, as well as three response entries for the workshop to poems, journal, online media, or performances. Add in the critique of my classmates work, and I'm, about ready for one of those panic-induced list-making frenzies. I want to try doing the poem a day thing, have been pretty good the last week or so about trying to draft something every day, but fear it's gonna fall off very soon.

About halfway through last nights workshop, I had the urge to walk out. We didn't actually get to my poems, one of which was "Spectra", the other one which I'll post shortly. Even as we were doing other people's poems, I kept telling myself how ridiculous it all seems. One person telling another that they shouldn't write about something the way they wrote about it. Or that the poem doesn't convey what the poet intends it to convey. I kept thinking, exactly what are we doing this for? What's to be gained? One poet decided she was going to cut up the poem of another poet, and when she read her version it sounded like a poem SHE would write, not resembling the original person's voice at all.

I understand critique to a certain point. I don't mind giving, or getting, advice on whether or not an image really works, or whether the lines flow, or whether something makes the line clunky, or unweildy, whether the language is fresh and vivid. However, I fully believe criticism should stay true to the poet's voice and the intended world of the poem. So I can say, "you might want to rethink this image" or "this line would be better without this word"--all of which are subject to contention. Never, "I don't like the voice here" or (my fucking favorite) "this is too EASY.." or "too narrative."

And still that doesn't answer the WHY...yes we want to make our work the best it can be....but I'm not sure that's what happens...especially when no one really agrees on anything, we all have different styles and goals, things we think are important in poetry. I think making your work better might be accomplished better in an environment where the point is not to pick the poem apart incessantly, but to share, discuss, and appreciate the work, and in turn, learn from other poets. And mostly just from READING....

And what is the goal? To make something publishable? There are so many different ideas out there about what "publishable" poetry really is, and so many styles and schools. I think the key is finding your audience. You can't workshop Billy Collins into being Jorie Graham, or vice-versa. It's just not going to work.

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Tue, 22 Feb 2005 01:21:33 GMT

This is intended to be a score-like poem, part of errata On the page covers three columns, but I couldn't manage that here. It's designed to be read by three voices, though I haven't yet tried this out, so we'll see...imagine that each section is read simultaneously, or near simultaneously, and you'll get the effect...

after the bleeding hour
a poem for three voices

What lingers is the scent of cinnamon,
an affinity for ellipsis.

Thievery is not uncommon.
The other a fist full of matches.

The rooms are filled with fever.

The doctor, with his love

We have taken everything.

Except for what is fastened

******

strange viral inconsistencies in the

and placed in tight sheeted beds.

Once, the bed beneath the fire eater
surrendered up a tiny blackened mouse.

of sharp things. This love of anesthetic

except for what is absent, what is dear.

The rooms are filled with fever.

********

sternum. This love of anesthetic
One of us takes a blanket.

The rooms are filled with fever.

When she said it felt as if

Dark, arterial splay

we will not speak of it, for when it comes

like a kite to a string.