Basic Programming - Megan Burns (Lavender Ink)

Today's book of poetry:
Basic Programming.  Megan Burns.  Lavender Ink.  New Orleans, Louisiana.  2018.

"there is no fairness in our world/ only lessons

that teach us how to be."

                                                                                                    from "200 Next Endings"

Megan Burns is operating at a level that Today's book of poetry is unfamiliar with.  Somehow Today's book of poetry has arrived in 2019 with nearly no computer skills or knowledge.  Burns knows everything and has decided to try and write new code for us all.

Burns loves Bob Dylan like a Saint, and shouldn't we all.  She lists thirty-four different Dylan tracks at various time throughout Basic Programming.  And then there's the Wuthering Heights influence, Emily Bronte gets her say but Megan Burns does not stop there either.  Burns is attempting to write a new code that will move us forward, help us understand.

Burns lists an entire troop of influences from Eknath Easwaran's translation of The Bhagavad Gita to Kathy Acker & McKenie Wark's I'm Very Into You: Correspondence 1995-1996.  There are a couple of dozen more.  

What does it all mean?  It means Megan Burns knows where she wants to take the reader and her poems and she is writing the code to do it through her poems.  The resulting rocket ship beauties soar.

60 NEXT FETISH

always being first to text (giving), attention whore (everything to do with it), believing

universe brought us together for special purpose (everything to do with it), confusing

healthy, safe partners for boring (everything to do with it), consult Tarot cards for advice

(everything to do with it), days of being ignored (receiving), dissecting text messages for

subtext (giving), empty (everything to do with it), exchanging sexual pictures of videos w/

a stranger (everything to do with it), fantasize future w/ lover (giving), ignoring intuition

about partner choice (giving), imagining perfect sexual scenarios w/ strangers (giving),

insert sexual language or flirt as a wall (everything to do with it), loving people who can't

love back (giving), mistaking anxiety for love (everything to do with it), mistaking coldness,

emotional unavailability or general disinterest for mysterious or deep unrequited need

other can't express (everything to do with it), playing role of perky, eccentric girl who

has no deep intentions (giving), pretending not to care (giving), not caring (everything to

do with it), rehash all details of minor interactions w/ friends for subliminal clues missed

(everything to do with it), relishing in rejection (receiving), scared (everything to do with

it), sex one time w/ a stranger (receiving), texts t/o day w/ strangers who want to meet for

sex (giving), waiting for others to make contact (receiving), unable to quell compulsion to

make contact to see how long until s/he responds (everything to do with it), unprotected

sex (receiving), ways of a devil sleeping in a lion's den (everything to do with it)

💫💫💫

Make no mistake, there were aspects of Basic Programming that confused the hell out of Today's book of poetry.  Our younger staff laughed, laughed, laughed.   They dialed into Megan Burns opus like they were laser sighted.

Of course it didn't matter because Megan Burns' Basic Programming delighted Today's book of poetry right down to our toes.  Electricity, like the kind that must flow in Megan Burns veins, is a rare commodity.

Today's book of poetry was listening to Laura Nyro in the office this morning.  That means everyone was listening to Laura this morning.  And somehow that seemed a good fit.  Nyro was genius personified, so ahead of her time that her work is timely now, fifty years later.  

Today's book of poetry is in a conundrum with Megan Burns name.  You regular readers of Today's book of poetry will recognize that "burns" is the verb of choice when describing poetry we like.  We threw it around the office, "Burns burns!"  But it was unsatisfactory.  We love, love, love Megan Burns last name and won't be deterred.  Burns does exactly that, Megan Burns burns.  

Electric and splendid.

160 GOSUB</SEDUCTION LETTER/>

shaped & unshaped by those who first care take

how did you learn a language of skin

I have irrepressible ideas about what I want

limits to love           we mean time and attention

learning to become what can be trusted

watch our world burn

don't corpse me     I eat dead   she said men    but delirament

ate her whole headed   I came back fiery sorry

for fallout from my fury

tell me what position you want me to take

sometimes I can't be patient or gentle    I need you

in my mouth/ my mouth needs to say things I can't choke back

how to screw an epistolary form into an object

poetry is the perfect lover / hardly anyone wants it

sounds symphony inside me

falling out of mouth / tongues move to produce

delitescent / patter of need / after he cums in my mouth

can't catch breath / taken by surprise / against other people

press your palms into me / do you know / how seductive timing is /

to take slowly what we want to coalesce

life always acting like that riddle

with corn, chicken and a fox

boating across and you can only carry two

I'm never good enough for myself

life breaks heart / daily

fighting for smallest / peace   count me in          whole

fucking haul / slippage, a state I solid against

that is what love promises

let me know what I am

when it all goes dark

💫💫💫

May 1, and we're expecting either snow or an ice-storm.  The rivers that run through Ottawa are over-flowing their banks.  The weather Gods are making an example out of us.  In a city that hasn't seen a tornado in all my 62 years, we had five in one day last year.  This year, for the second time in the last three years we are having "a 100 year event" flood.

The Today's book of poetry offices are safe and on high ground.  Unless the Rideau River overflows and then we'll have bigger problems.  All our staff are safe and dry.  And today Megan Burns brought down the house with her monster Basic Programming.  Another possible one hundred year event.

Basic Programming is an infectious read, once Burns gets into your system you want more.  Just like Laura Nyro.

And don't even get us started on the sexual firestorm Burns can bring down on the house.

CODA

once I ask Kali to consume us

mouth shaped to nothing

storied as any wuthering height

a traveling rogue runs off with a golden prize

a poet wakes up and pulls a world along beside her

touch this stone/ carved names are remembered

words to soothe/ lullaby hours

look, sit where you are to watch stories unfold

look, deeply enough until love

do you know how to brave

do you know about really cracking your heart open

to receive/ what are you afraid of/ stories will always call us back

you have nothing/ to fear/ nothing/ but fear/ to fear/ you/ nothing/ you/ love/ everything

how we are blind to a reciprocity of love as we narrow on one to one/ and forget that it

vibrates between all of us/ what you put out is your world/ a world

our world a mirror/two sided/flipped one way: good/evil:love/hate/hate:despair/joy: con-

flict/ resolution:blessings/ curse: throw them both away

throw them both away, a toss towards never being chained down again

one line of code is all it takes to run a completely different program/poetry is a constant

reaching / an only truth that matters

in coming generation: you must learn to live without these shackles

if you let go, what fills void: out universe abhors absolutes & is absolute

what fills is beyond a container

beyond worded

💫💫💫

Today's book of poetry gets very excited when poetry this fine scampers through our lives.  Emily Bronte told me to tell you to "buy this book."

Well, have you ever known Emily to be wrong?

Megan Burns is welcome here at Today's book of poetry any time.  This poet burns, burns, burns.

Megan Burns

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Megan Burns is the publisher at Trembling Pillow Press (tremblingpillowpress.com). She also hosts the Blood Jet Poetry Reading Series in New Orleans and is the co-founder of the New Orleans Poetry Festival (nolapoetry.com). She has been most recently published in Jacket Magazine, Callaloo, New Laurel Review, Dream Pop, and Diagram. Her poetry and prose reviews have been published in Tarpaulin Sky, Gently Read Lit, Big Bridge, and Rain Taxi. She has four books, Memorial + Sight Lines (2008), Sound and Basin (2013), Commitment (2015), and Basic Programming (2018), published by Lavender Ink. She has two recent chapbooks: Dollbaby (Horseless Press, 2013) and i always wanted to start over (Nous-Zot Press, 2014). Horse Less Press released her Twin Peaks chap, Sleepwalk With Me, in 2016.

"Velocity" by Megan Burns (Poem Reel 2)

Video: Lisa Pasold

lavenderink.org 

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       DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything.  We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

and that for our readers in Europe there had to be notification of the use of those "cookies.  Please be aware that TBOP may employ the use of some "cookies" (whatever they are) and you should take that into consideration.

Folding the Wilderness Within - Joan Shillington (Frontenac House Poetry)

Today's book of poetry:
Folding the Wilderness Within.  Joan Shillington.  Frontenac House Poetry.  Calgary, Alberta.  2014.

Joan Shillington's second book of poetry, Folding the Wilderness Within, is rock steady from the first page to the last.  These poems are gorgeous constructions ripe with tension, drama and passion. 

Shillington's poems carve us a new notion of what it is to grieve, to lose.  That loss is there like a weight but then these poems redeem and reward the reader with intelligent surprise.

The Neighbour Speaks from Beyond

Let me say, this is not how anyone could imagine it is to drown.

August water creeping over my soles, then ankles. Slow list of

boat and there I was, caught between nightmare and reality. I

tipped the last of the twenty-six past my lips then lashed my

wrists to a rope and eased myself across the overturned hull.

Rum burned in my gut as if I had swallowed glass from the

bottle. Haunted voices hurled themselves from a distant

shoreline. Words, distorted, sank. Confused letters on black

water. I counted the seconds between lightening and thunder.

Paper, scissors, rock. Our Father who Art in Heaven. Cold

cleaved my body. I rocked and swayed with waves. I became

boat. Storm. Water. Rain. Soon, I was not seen but could see. I

saw the dark beyond the cottage. Family. Wife. Children. A girl

on the opposite shore who could not come. And now, she has

forgotten my name.

...

Today's book of poetry picked out a hoard of poems from this collections that we felt you HAD to see.  Shillington sets the bar rather high at the start of Folding the Wilderness Within and then she sustains that fierce standard like John Coltrane holding a moment of beauty in one note and turning it into a song.  We liked this book.  Shillington calls on the voices of the dead and the dying to help when no other voices will do.

Shillington mentions poet Richard Harrison as a friend and mentor in her notes.  Harrison is an old and respected friend of Today's Book of Poetry.  We don't quite go back to our teens, but close.

It is easy to imagine this manuscript going through Richard's disciplined hands.  If these poems meet his standard then they certainly meet ours.

Ordinary

         After Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what ordinary is, you must visit a funeral home

and view the body of a friend you made plans with just a few

days before. You must watch as the people dearest to you, buried

beneath flowers, sympathy cards and lasagne casseroles, have

their mother's urn pressed into their hands. You must stand in

their home and see the unmade bed and laundry still scattered

on the floor. Then you must hug and kiss good-bye, turn the key

in your car and drive home less than a week after the phone call

and discover that milk and bread still line grocery store shelves,

traffic lights change green, yellow, red. Your dog needs grooming.

You step into the rain, walk through the neighbourhood,

past the church. Yellow parking lines gleam wet, your dog busy

on new grass and then look you look up as an SUV pulls

alongside and see the smiling face of Vivian, who you haven't

seen in six months. She rolls down her window and you pick up

your wet dog, hold him as he shivers beneath your jacket. Your

feet sink into the soft earth as you walk across the boulevard and

then you stand in the rain as the city hums around you, and

become one of the two women talking in the quiet of a road.

...

The poems in Folding the Wilderness Within, romantic lamentations, prayers, praise-songs, made for a very passionate morning read at the Today's book of poetry offices.  Our head tech Milo and our new intern Kathryn both brought in friends for the event - and as you all know - you show up for the morning read then you have to participate in the morning read.

Today's guests were an excellent addition to the poetry reading team.  We here at TBOP believe that the real music in poems is best heard aloud.  Ms. Shillington did not let us down.  These beauties sounded better than spare change.

TBOP's morning reads are open to the public.  

Summoning

         Please come before winter.

         Before north winds crumple veined leaves to the ground

and prairie grass is laid by snow.

         Before river's rage slows to a trickle between ice floes

or low clouds obscure landscape and snow muffles earth.

         Please come before frost snaps limbs or yellow birdsong

is erased by this season.

         Please come before the absence of light weighs on me.

         Please.

...

Joan Shillington's narratives follow a hard clean line and we like that, clean as the burn from the flame of a one-hundred and fifty proof flame.

Joan Shillington

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joan Shillington is a Calgary poet and has been published in The Antigonish Review, Fiddlehead, Grain, Prairie Fire and Freefall Magazine as well as four anthologies. She has won various contests over the years.  She is currently a poetry editor for Freefall Magazine.  Joan’s first book of poetry, Revolutions, was published by Leaf Press (2008).

BLURBS
These poems, at their best, achieve their power through withholding, to create an intimacy – sometimes gentle, sometimes brutal – that involves us even as it reveals the unspoken otherness of lives not our own. Though there is much loss here, the poems’ sustained attention to what endures makes the collection a celebration of the essential force of family. 

     ~ Stephanie Bolster

Joan Shillington’s new collection mines “this threshold of ordinary” to show the gleaming moments in all our small lives. Anchored in the detritus of daily routine, Joan knows “each word and their order”, revealing memories as archetypal as a hand of cards. Her adolescent narrator is unforgettable, “flamed one hundred and fifty proof in metal spoons, / sliced elk membrane from out-of-season carcasses, / fur falling wild …” For Shillington, the dead “are just people who / are very quiet.” But Shillington gives the quiet ones space to roar. Her poems spill over with the full throttle details of lives thoroughly lived. This book illuminates, offering us moments of grace in our flawed world.

     ~ Lisa Pasold

Welcome. You’re in for a treat, a second book from a poet fully committed to the art. I’d say a perfect second book because I can hear, in the Tsar-like footsteps of the poet’s father in all his daring, bare face turned to the wind, the echoes of history’s grasp on Joan’s first poems. And then hear the change in the insights that arise from a story but flash free of it to stand outside of any particular narrative in order to fit with many. Consider, “I dozed beside sleep,” or, of a butterfly on her arm, “Now this little epistle pleats its bright wings slowly,” or, of anywhere: “Here, we are all strangers, separated by death pains and dusty roads, quiet about the wrongs in our lives.” These are poems filled with the double-pleasure of poetic truth: the secrets are disclosed, but the mystery remains.

     ~ Richard Harrison

frontenachousepoetry.ca

436

DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything.  We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

and that for our readers in Europe there had to be notification of the use of those "cookies.  Please be aware that TBOP may employ the use of some "cookies" (whatever they are) and you should take that into consideration.