Raw E-Book

Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec

• Herausgeber: Le Lys Bleu Éditions
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 116

Beschreibung

These free verse, experimental poems show us that Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec has been influenced by Ezra Pound, the Beats and/or Whitman, but also Language poets. She uses anaphora, aeration, epigraphs, different stanza lengths, creates shape poems and ars poeticas. She freely associates, allowing the words and thoughts to take her wherever they do. It’s a joy to read her work whether in English or in French…'' Biljana D. Obradović, author of Little Disruptions and Incognito


À PROPOS DE L’AUTRICE

Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec teaches English at Université Caen Normandie and is a researcher with LARCA, umr 8225 at University of Paris. She was born before John F. Kennedy was assassinated and to date has published few poems.

Leseprobe

Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec

Raw

© Lys Bleu Éditions – Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec

ISBN : 979-10-422-0096-1

Le code de la propriété intellectuelle n’autorisant aux termes des paragraphes 2 et 3 de l’article L.122-5, d’une part, que les copies ou reproductions strictement réservées à l’usage privé du copiste et non destinées à une utilisation collective et, d’autre part, sous réserve du nom de l’auteur et de la source, que les analyses et les courtes citations justifiées par le caractère critique, polémique, pédagogique, scientifique ou d’information, toute représentation ou reproduction intégrale ou partielle, faite sans le consentement de l’auteur ou de ses ayants droit ou ayants cause, est illicite (article L.122-4). Cette représentation ou reproduction, par quelque procédé que ce soit, constituerait donc une contrefaçon sanctionnée par les articles L.335-2 et suivants du Code de la propriété intellectuelle.

For Christy

and for Zelda

all ways

always

The illustrations of this volume were created and/or photographed by the author.

“Pep Talking the Alphabet” was first published in homage to Dr. Denis Mukwege Lisa e-journal (2020). “Aunt Eileen” was first published as “Eileen’s Polluted Waterways Tours” in the online journal Academic Exchange (2005). “The Cattle Are Lowin’: A Postcard from Michigan” was first published in Cahiers de la MRSH 36 (2004).

Thanks for suggestions concerning aspects of the manuscript to Ron Smith, Angelika Schober, and Chantal Fouquet.

How to

La vie n'est supportable que si l'on y introduit non pas de l'utopie mais de la poésie, c'est-à-dire de l'intensité, de la fête, de la joie, de la communion, du bonheur et de l’amour.

Edgar Morin, Vers l’abîme (2007)

To sacrifice something is to make it holy by giving it away for love.

Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words (2004)

Il y a des êtres qui justifient le monde, qui aident à vivre par leur seule présence.

Albert Camus, Le Premier Homme (1994)

I

(Market Day, Stand 2)

Get your shortest

poems here —

2 for the price of one:

Get Pound’s “In

a Station of the Metro”

with or without

its original

punctuation

(Mind the gap/s

and gas/p

at the phallic

symbol? yeah!

you too, Nancy?).

II

Like an envelope that opens

closes

opens

Emily D’s obsession

with Sue

Or how to make

love

with

words

III

Jane and Joan

were quite well known

Jane (aka Geneviève) saved Paris

from Attila, getting wheat to eat

and Joan, well everybody knows her story —

eat barbecue, she would not do

IV

Amanda Gorman, yes

their Rapture-Rupture at the Capitol, no

but yes, we will always remember

Officers Jones and Goodman

fighting hand-to-hand combat

and senators crouching under seats

trying to find gas-masks —

without them, no USA in 2026

for the 250th

V

Target practice, why?

Try learning to compost and grow vegetables

People were dropping like flies with virus

while he lied, while he lied, while he lied

VI

Early positive / bonds help kids cope with trauma: / regulation skills.

Some schools offer a / support system in classrooms. / Kids may

need treatment.

Strategy to use: / reassurance, and routine. / Add regulation.

Don’t expect to be / perfect: who is? Parents should / be kind to

themselves.

Figs stuffed with goat-cheese: / the appetizer you need / to get through this now.

Cut each fig in half / lengthwise. Press with spoon. Mash cheese / in. Drop almonds on.

Or in camper-van / get blue cheese, cream cheese, and mix, / form into a ball,

chill for an hour, / cover with hazelnuts, and / serve with bread and wine.

VII

« Avec toi je veux partir toute la vie

sur les routes du monde entier »            

[…]

« marcher dans l’inquiétude et l’incompréhension

au lieu des certitudes de bonne réputation »

— Jeanine Deckers

VIII

Bye 2020! / Blursdays are gone, we hope, in / 2021.

In Hawaii, the / word for salt is pa-akal, / solidify sea.

Solidify me / to cope with damned covid time / and keep nurses safe.

IX

How to survive

“A city built upon mud;

A culture built upon profit”

MacNeice understood.

Stand and Sing

Your Own Songs.

Own Your Songs.

X

It’s the planet —

We’re all

immigrants

vortexing

here —

in this

climate

in this

anthropocene

weather

XI

Pour tes beaux yeux qui me font revivre,

(si rare ces goûts qui coïncident)

Cœur de Rose,

garde un petit pétale pour moi

XII

A M O R

M O

O M

R O M A

To Michigan

When you are stalked you never know what is at stake:

though the governor of the Great Lakes State

did not lose her life in the middle of a lake.

It’s Thanksgiving in Michigan of the blue and watery hues.

During and after the journey, covid’s reality looms—

Some gather, some are alone, some sing the blues.

But do newspapers print a few poems? once thought Guest:

“We’ve come for a time to be just what we are.

Here we can talk of ourselves and be frank.”

It’s true, some people still sing Rodriguez songs.

And, Michiganders deserve a poet laureate too—

Be it a day for Will Carleton or not.

Some of his lines still ring rather true:

“For her eyes my eyes enlisted more than books on any shelf,

And no lesson e’er existed so instructive as herself.”

But by 1916 he was already a has-been

receiving only a passing scoff on

page 327 of September’s Poetry

that printed poems by Ezra P and a certain

“Mr. T. R. Eliot, an American poet resident abroad”

[sic], who probably never once visited Michigan

or heard of Carleton day, October 21.

But they must have known of the first

Poet Laureate of Michigan in the 1950s

After which, nothing, no-one in their prime…

unless it be Philip Levine, Robert Hayden,

Theodore Roethke, Carolyn Forché or Tyehimba Jess…

(Some were published by Harriet Monroe)

Or the ones that taught a while at U of M or K or MSU,

like Donald Hall, Conrad Hilberry, Janine Certo, or Diane Seuss?

Who is a Michigan poet? Would Carl Sandburg

fit, for writing so well about Lake Michigan water? Or Ishmael

Reed, for winning an award in the state?

Only one of five states to have no poet laureate

for over sixty years! A whole lifetime…. Still,

my mother loved Gwen Frostic and taught me to, too.

Flint (and its water) landed its first poet

laureate in 2019 — and Semaj Brown got

50,000 dollars to get children to poetry.

At last, in 2023, Michigan was like Sleeping Beauty:

Nandi Comer take a bow — but be careful

in which ring (just joking)! You are

in the fight for poetry, where all languages

and communities, even Detroit, fit.

Langston Hughes would have loved it!

Bingo 2020

January was a good month, a fresh start,

a new calendar, new pen and paper

February was routine with a rumor

pregnant with hidden truths of far-off menace

March marched in military-propaganda-style

with war discourse, control and curfew in China and Europe

April saw the dead pile up in New York

How many more everyone wondered

May was beautiful but the joy of spring was

missing after George Floyd’s murder

June was not a new tune when the virus hatred

blues intensified in Michigan, Mississippi, and Minnesota

July we tried to imagine we could have

vacation as usual, but it wasn’t

August of Bielorussia elections, explosion in Beirut, Putin poison,

refugees of California fires, flooding in Louisiana and the Caribbean

September we needed some rest finally, not back-to-school

as planned, with masked(?) students or on ventilators

October was the month everyone fell ill

and schools were prone to go remote

November all at home we could watch the elections

and the denial of their real results

that carried on into December and right up to

January 6, 2021, Humpty-Dumpty

My Momma I asked

Her birthday was a flag waver

to the moon and back

Momma always cried singing

the national anthem

said it made her think of the war

born in ’39, a rough time

her childhood seemed

and busy, busy with moving

school to school, rule to rule,

two fathers, two mothers,

a couple of aunts filling in

evenings and weekends

and grandparents on that farm

(that’s why the arboretum)

skirt up one week, down the next

mother’s length, grandmother’s length

negotiating not easy, but for

a child hardly noticeable

and that day they walked together

home from school, just talking

no way can you date a young

black man, my dear, that just

cannot happen here—unanimous they said:

that will be over right now

and some years later

they all moved to the suburbs

white flight, you know, 1967

was a rough year for shopkeepers

that man tied to a chair in the basement

when the building caught fire

or that doctor whose office nobody

touched, cause he always took them in

they could be polite, those others,

the pronoun Oates found out all about

and that Brooks took it on herself

for commemorative purposes

Momma was torn by it, I tell you

she may have even seen it coming

BLACK LIVES MATTER

to be seen from the moon

and back on the anniversary of her death

D-Day, sure was eh? anyone

notice there were no Americans

in Normandy this year?

They had the cemetery covered

though, the Normans wanted to fill

in for the memorial detail, and

some tricolor jets flew over

and back to the beginning

when I asked my Momma

why she jumped when that man

was standing at the screen door

Oh honey, I just hadn’t noticed him

and was afraid. I understand

Momma, since then I’ve been afraid many times

to figure out how that fear was built into us.

Pep Talking the Alphabet

Apples are a fruit

a way of ending a meal

a snack you can grow at home

a gift on a tree

a home to a worm

a taste burst of variety and color—

cultivating taste and flavor

(think wine, think tea, think liqueur, think chocolate—

and especially: think with all five senses)

a portable lifter of spirits

A gift from Eve to Adam

A howl of adorable and after

and all eternal nows

Better you can always be

better than bullies bullying bull

or a best be campaign that is not even grammatical

but before you think it’s all about

bug-out bags ready

buster beaches maybe it’s not about politics

but about recreation breaks at school or

brute internet trollers

Batter batter batter SWING—

B has always been a better letter than that.

Gatsby — Read J. Gatz BE.

B—I—N—G—O—! Saul Bellow told you so.

Ben Franklin took his penny to Auray.

Is your Armorican Dream better than mine?

C is homonym of command, see—

(Cult-Culture-Cultivation with Creativity)

that, like B, can be a verb in shorthand,

on your cell phone, mobile device, portable computer

C has come of age with AI. The great C of shining seas

catapulting computing to highways of—tune in, Renée—

CapitalismCapitalismCapitalismCapitalism

Charge on now! only to discover that

Change is a way of life

cliché clichéd Covid cliché

collapse and/or die chaos

but champions do not need much

compensation (crashed with the economy)

come chivalry season

Crane(d) both Stephen and Hart.

C vitamins. Smart people C

And now for some collapsology.

Clap—Clap—Clap

Damn it! I’ll be damned!

Damnèd! in French — an expression to get you around that

damn corner of words in C like Covid Crash

Die after you’ve survived Danse Macabre?

Doctors and Nurses, and all hospital personnel, we thank you.

Did your last public outing commemorating

Pastor Michel Leplay who

did never before distance socially

around dozens of people, with music.

Then went into LockDown / Confinement / The Damned Time

(this letter D is not approved for children)

Life is Beautiful! with devastation in D-Minor

Did all those cashier ladies at the supermarket just disappear?

Damnèd—pardon my French.

The Beautiful and the Damned

Democracy shut-down and Hertz hurts

(Diderot, where’d his University go?)

Doers and riskers, cleaners and garbage-collectors we thank you.

Undertakers we thank you. Refrigerator truck-operators

we thank you.

People who cut animals for us to eat, we thank you.

Don’t they bury the dead any more? Funerals for Five?

Damn waiting in line to go inside supermarkets.

Damn not finding what you want when inside.

Grocery delivery truck drivers we thank you.

Drink quarantinis? Darn your socks?

Damn first world problems. Listen to Dizzy Gillespie?

Dive into the trash for food?

Drive yourself crazy? or DIY and some Distractions?

Do get your exercise.

Damn them! think the leaders: too much free time

They’d rise up and we’d be toppled. Let’s damn that right there.

Do all of you go back to work right now. Die if you must.

Earth Day — just in time,

easy-going Ruth’