As promised, I’m sharing the link to my newest poem publication: https://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2015/06/29/becoming-joanne-by-joanne-corey-all-about-my-name-poetry-series/. It is part of their “All About My Name” poetry series. Please visit – comment and like, if you are so inclined – and consider following the Silver Birch Press blog. They run several new poems a day related to a particular theme, which changes every two months or so. Enjoy!
JC
Tonight is the public reading and anthology distribution for the spring 2015 workshops of the Binghamton Poetry Project (BPP). This is the fourth time that I have participated in this community endeavor which brings together child, teen, and adult poets for five weekly sessions learning about and writing poetry, facilitated by graduate students from Binghamton University.
The three poems below are my contribution to the anthology. (I read the first two.)
From a prompt about writing about interactions with a parent, I wrote this poem which became a gift to my dad for his 90th birthday:
Hydro Superintendent
– by Joanne Corey
Each weekday, Dad went to his office
on the top floor of the hydroelectric station,
wearing a clip-on tie –
a precaution due to machinery –
with a Reddy Kilowatt pin.
When he was on weekend call,
my sisters and I sat on the wheel wells
in the back of the company jeep –
wearing our hard hats –
jouncing along unpaved roads
to inspect dams, pipelines, reservoirs,
unmanned Deerfield hydro stations.
His work became ours,
generating power.
*****
From a prompt about a place that we had visited, I wrote this poem about singing in Siracusa, Sicily with the Smith College Alumnae Chorus:
Divinity Listens in Siracusa
– by Joanne Corey
Clad in black,
I stand with the sopranos
behind the orchestra,
Requiem score in hand.
As Mozart echoes,
I know this sacred space –
erected as temple to Athena,
over centuries becoming
temple to Roman Minerva,
Christian church,
mosque,
returning to its current identity
as a Catholic cathedral –
is the most ancient place
in which I will ever sing.
*****
The last is my first ever attempt at prose poetry, heavily edited and expanded with advice from our instructor Cammy and my poetry critique group:
First poems
– by Joanne Corey
I wrote my first poems in a black-and-white marble-covered composition notebook in the fifth through eighth grade room in my elementary school. I wrote about the brook which flowed through the four seasons – the autumn hillside through our upstairs classroom windows as a pirate hat spilling gold doubloons – Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito skating to the Stanley Cup for the Bruins – a song to forgotten children who lacked family and home – the death of my grandfather and playing the organ for his Month’s Mind Mass at Saint Joachim’s – my first free verse poems, after Miss Andersen taught us that poems didn’t have to rhyme like Mother Goose and “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” (which we knew by heart for Patriots’ Day recitation) – and on the very first page, in Palmer Method cursive, my hometown tribute to Monroe Bridge, with the closing lines, “There’s only one in the whole USA. That place knows me.”
I wish I still had that notebook to bridge the poemless decades that followed, to rediscover the girl who sluiced inky torrents between faint blue lines on crisp white pages, to remember when a town was a world, to again feel fully known, to recover the voice that went silent when severed from that place.
******
Reading at the Binghamton Poetry Project
My poems that have appeared in the two prior anthologies can be found here and here. Our summer sessions are more low-key and don’t publish, so while this is my fourth set of session with BPP, it is only the third anthology. Another fun BPP-related post is my first and so far only attempt at slam poetry. I leave it to the readers to decide if my poetic skills are improving with time, experience, BPP, and the example and generous assistance of my fellow poets.
In this post , I wrote about participating in The Binghamton Poetry Project and my first ever slam(ish) poem. This evening, we will have our poetry reading for all the different workshops, children, teens, and two adult groups, and the distribution of our anthology. Yay, publishing credit!
I have three poems in the anthology, but we will only read two poems apiece. I will first read “Moonlight,” because it is the poem that bought me to the Project in the first place. Last April for National Poetry Month, our local public radio station WSKG had an edition of Bill Jaker’s book-themed show “Off the Page” devoted to local poets, one of whom was Nicole Santalucia, founder of The Binghamton Poetry Project. Nicole is a native of this area and had returned here to pursue a PhD at Binghamton University. She read some of her own poems and talked about starting The Binghamton Poetry Project to give a space for people in the community to learn about and create poetry. Bill Jaker had previously invited listeners to send in their own poems and I had submitted “Moonlight,” which he chose to read on air. I was so excited to hear my poem on the radio, although it was a bit surreal to hear another voice, and a male one at that, read a poem I had written. I decided to look up more info on The Binghamton Poetry Project and join in when I could, which turned out to be this semester’s session in March/April.
I will also read “Constancy,” which I wrote during the workshop, when we were writing from prompts about family relationships, including “Married” by Jack Gilbert. I usually work poems out in my head over the course of hours/days/weeks before writing them down, so writing a poem in twenty minutes from given prompts was a challenge for me. You have to decide on an idea very quickly. I wrote the first draft of “constancy” in the workshop but was too choked up to even consider reading it that evening. I did a bit of work on it over the next week and decided that I should share it with the workshop at the time reserved for that at the beginning of the next meeting. I practiced reading it aloud to myself and then to my other daughter who is at home to make sure I could get through it without breaking down. It was the first poem I read to the group and is the “prior week’s poem” that I refer to in the linked post.
“fingernail” was written in April 2012 and previously appeared in the fall 2012 newsletter of the Samaritan Counseling Center. Given that all three are now considered previously published because of the anthology, I can post them on my blog without having to worry about breaking any publishing precedence rules. So, here are my three poems from the Spring 2014 edition of the journal of The Binghamton Poetry Project.
Moonlight
by Joanne Corey
In the narrow valley of youth,
the moon was distant,
as though at perpetual apogee.
Cocooned in darkness,
I slept soundly.
In the broad valley of adulthood,
the moon is close,
casting sharp shadows.
Bathed in eerie light,
I lie awake.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
fingernail
by Joanne Corey
the nail splits
not breaking entirely
but calling attention to itself
every time a sock needs to be pulled up
or a shirt pulled on
or hands need to be dried
after some chore or other
scissors
files
emery boards
only smooth the rough edge
bandages only protect
from tearing further into the quick
the split is still there
a dead nail can’t heal
only growth
makes it possible
to get beyond the split
and restore wholeness
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Constancy
by Joanne Corey
You were eleven,
the child that’s born
on the Sabbath Day,
“Bonny and blithe
And bright and gay.”
Blond and blue-eyed,
Smart and vivacious,
Quick-witted and talented,
With a beautiful soprano voice.
Who knew then that you were always in pain?
No one, not even you,
Who thought this was what
Growing up felt like.
There were the unexplained illnesses,
Mysterious fevers,
The eight month migraine,
But you were twenty-one
Before we finally knew its name.
Fibromyalgia/
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
Always in pain.
Always exhausted.
Even when you were singing
Or smiling
Or reading
Or talking around the dinner table.
But I am your mother.
How could I not have known?
It’s the only pain I have
That is a constant.
Joanne Corey 