poetry – Page 37 – Joanne Corey

Welcome, 2016!

Happy New Year, everyone! We began our celebration toasting at midnight GMT, also known as 7:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, as I write about in my new poem on Silver Birch Press. We drank the very bottle of sparkling apple cranberry juice that I used in the photo, along with the wine glasses pictured. I did use some poetic license in the poem, as we do still have daughter T here celebrating with us this year.

I woke up early this morning with part of the middle of a poem for the collection I am working on this year swirling about in my head, so I got up to type it into google docs before I lost it. I’m hoping it is a good omen for my poetic work this year to start January first by drafting new work for my first ever collection.

Later this morning, we will head up to GSV, the senior community where our elder generation live, to pick up Nana for 10 AM Mass. January 1st is a holy day in the Catholic Church, dedicated to Mary, the Mother of God. After church, we will have brunch at GSV with Nana, Paco, Grandma, and Grandma’s neighbor Ann.

There aren’t plans for the rest of the day, although I expect it will be low-key. As you can see, we are not the wild and crazy types!

I wish everyone the gifts of peace, joy, and contentment in 2016!
*****
This post is part of Linda’s Just Jot It January. Join us! Visit this link for more info: http://lindaghill.com/2016/01/01/just-jot-it-january-1st-persnickety/

Eastern Standard, poem by Joanne Corey (ME, DURING THE HOLIDAYS Poetry and Prose Series)

I am pleased to announce that my New Year’s Eve poem “Eastern Standard” is part of the “Me, During the Holidays” series on Silver Birch Press.

Not wanting to miss an opportunity to promote the Boiler House Poets’ video, there is a link to it in my bio, as well as a link to the SBP publication of “Lessons from Mahler.”

Best wishes to everyone for a wonderful 2016!

Peace,
Joanne

Silver Birch Press

Corey Eastern Standard
by Joanne Corey

As the third millennium turned,
our family toasted with sparkling cider
at midnight Greenwich Mean Time,
seven in the evening for us,
in deference to daughters’ bedtimes.

With our children grown, the two
of us honor that tradition,
clink glasses, savor the past,
sip, hope for the future,
in evening dark as midnight.

PHOTO: Bubbly (fruit juice) and glasses ready for 2016.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: As the year 2000 began, midnight celebrations across the world were broadcast live on television. Realizing that the top of the hour was always midnight somewhere, we decided that we would celebrate at midnight GMT, so that we could all observe our usual bedtimes. We still love this quiet way to celebrate the new year.

corey1 ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joanne Corey lives and writes in Vestal, New York, where she is active with the Binghamton Poetry Project, Sappho’s Circle, and the…

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Tara Betts is the Poet of the Day!

Tara Betts is featured today in the Poem-a-Day series of the Academy of American Poets!

You can read Tara’s poem “Gentle Collisions” as well as her note on the poem and her bio, see her photo, and click on the audio link to hear her read her poem.

We were blessed to have Tara here for a few years while she earned her PhD from Binghamton University. I met her through Binghamton Poetry Project and Bunn Hill Poets. With her bright, shiny doctorate completed, she headed back to Chicago to teach. We all wish her well but miss her!

SoCS: Reunion!

There is an exciting event in store! Well, next year.

We got news yesterday that we Boiler House Poets have a date for a reunion residency at Mass MoCA (the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art).

We met at the inaugural collaboration between the Museum’s new Studios at Mass MoCA program and Tupelo Press, both located in North Adams, MA. You can read my incessant posts about it, which start on Nov. 13.

Our group bonded so well that we wanted to get back together – and now we know we will!

There will be more writing, more art, more workshopping, more food, more conversations, and lots and lots more poems in store! And, I hope, another video. Our first video is here and explains our name.
******
This short and sweet post is part of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturdays. This week’s prompt is “store.” Join us! Find out how here: http://lindaghill.com/2015/12/18/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-dec-1915/

Radio segment on Alice Parker

In September of 2014, The Smith College Alumnae Chorus (SCAC) had a choral homecoming event with composer/conductor/choral arranger/champion of choral singing Alice Parker ’47.

I was pleased to take part and to blog about it here and here, with related posts here and here.

Yesterday, the SCAC posted this link: http://nepr.net/news/2015/12/15/at-90-its-still-all-about-the-melody-for-hawleys-famed-alice-parker/ on Facebook from the local NPR affiliate, featuring interviews with Parker and other musicians and clips of her work, all in under five minutes.

Alice will soon turn 90 and the celebration is on!

New Year’s Eve on Silver Birch Press

I am happy to announce that my poem “Eastern Standard” has been accepted as part of Silver Birch Press’s current series, “Me, during the Holidays.”

It will run on New Year’s Eve, so watch this space for the link!

Hearing my name

One of the things that struck my somewhat sleep-deprived and overwhelmed mind during the Mass MoCA/Tupelo Press residency/workshop was that I had not heard people call me by name in such concentrated fashion for a very long time.

I am most often in settings where the group is so small and familiar that it is obvious that someone is speaking to me without their having to use my name. I also spent a lot of years answering to Mom, a title that I love, but it does cut down on the use of my given name, as people often referred to me as “Mom” rather than Joanne when my children were present.

During the conference, when people addressed me as Joanne, it reminded me of who I am as an individual, aside from my societal/family role. When I looked down at my nametag, which I kept joking I had to wear to remind myself who I was, or when I showed it to our visiting poets when they were signing book dedications for me so that they could have the correct spelling of my name, I was thinking even more about my name.

I thought I’d share again a poem that I wrote for the Silver Birch Press “All About My Name” series prompt. It appeared there on June 29, 2015.

Becoming Joanne
– by Joanne Corey

If my grandfather Giovanni
had not fled the Old Country
before the Great War,
I might have been Giovanna
or piccola Giovanina.
Born in 1960s New England,
I was Joanne —
one word —
small a —
with an e —
to avoid confusion with four classmates
who answered to that common name.

When I was eighteen,
my Latin teacher derived and gave
meaning to my name:
Joanne —
feminine of John —
from Hebrew –
variously translated as
God is gracious- —
Gift of God —
God’s gracious gift.
A daunting aspiration
as I began adulthood.

After decades of striving
to fulfill the promise,
to be worthy of my name,
in my sixth decade,
wisdom dawns.
God freely gifts grace.
I AM,
have always been,
will always be
Joanne —
God’s gracious gift —
living out a universal call.

How to Be a Woman in a Man’s Idea

A powerful poem from Heather Dorn, current director of the Binghamton Poetry Project and the creator of Sappho’s Circle, a women’s poetry group. She has been invaluable to me as an emerging poet. Congratulations, Heather!

Slink Chunk Press

by Heather Dorn

I fall down the stairs like a rag doll

again and again when I’m four.

The hat rack breaks my body’s tumble

and I thump to a stop. Nobody ever

moves that hat rack, maybe worried

I’d crack headfirst into the wall instead.

Better to be impaled. There is something

slippery about being four and next to the steps

in my house. There is something

that still pushes me over the edge

of that first step now. I have seen how

this is inherited. I watched my brother

bang his three year old head into

concrete over and over again. He is too

sturdy to fall down the stairs and has to

break himself another way instead. I see

my mother’s face, like blue ink spilled

on her eyes. She did not fall, whatever

she says. I watch my father’s fist raise

above her, gripped, as if…

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SoCS: too much stuff

I have too much stuff to do.

There is a lot to do between now and the end of the year with lots of family visiting and holiday preparations and decorating and baking and card writing.

There is my University Chorus concert next weekend, so we have extra rehearsals scheduled this week with the orchestra.

I have three poetry meetings in the next two weeks, two with Sappho’s Circle and one with Bunn Hill Poets.

There are also the usual chores and appointments and shopping and meal prep and what-not.

Meanwhile, what I really want to be concentrating on is solidifying the experiences from the poetry conference last week.

Theoretically, I could do everything at once, but too much of it involves an amount of brain power that I can only muster a few hours a day. I need to trust that my brain can keep working on poetry while I am accomplishing other things, that I can continue to glean lessons from the conference somewhere in the back of my mind that I will be able to bring to the top of my mind later when I have settled the holiday stuff and can return to some semblance of normal life.

Wish me luck…
*****
The prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “stuff”. Come join us ! Find out how here: http://lindaghill.com/2015/11/27/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-nov-2815/

The Boiler House Reading, Tupelo Press/MASSMoCA Residency, November 2015 on Vimeo

Another chance to share the awesome video the Boiler House Poets made at Mass MoCA during our residency there with Tupelo Press in North Adams MA. Re-blogging this from fellow Boiler House Poet Donna Fleischer’s blog. Hop on over there and enjoy!

word pond

The Boiler House at MASS MoCA poetry reading on November 18, 2015 was given by Tupelo Press Writing Conference poets in the order of their readings: Kyle Laws, Donna Fleischer, Gail Dimaggio, James Sneed, Kay Morgan, Victoria G. Smith, Marilyn McCabe, Ann Dernier, and Joanne Corey, with James Schley, Managing Editor, Tupelo Press books.

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