A Bird Ate the Last Hate in Your Heart
Plus, Who "Secretly" Influenced Your Writing This Year?
Who “Secretly” Influenced Your Writing This Year?
Dear Poets, Writers and Friends,
Last week I had two poems published in One Art (Thank you Mark Danowsky).
I realized after they were published that both poems were inspired by other poets. The influence wasn’t so obvious that I needed to give a formal attribution for either, but in retrospect it feels a little wrong not to make a nod to them, so that’s what I’m doing now.
Before I share my poems and their “secret” influencers, I want to say thank you to all of our featured poets from 2024. You can listen to the Podcast Interviews with all of them here. Each one of them has influenced, informed and in some ways stretched my writing and thinking this year. I haven’t had all the poems I wrote under their influence published yet, but I know what impact each of them has had. I hope listening to our podcast interviews with them will impact you too.
On that note, I’m curious to know- Who influenced your poetry this year?
Please put any links to poems you wrote “under the influence” in the comments, along with a brief note about who/what influenced them.
Poems from Tresha Faye Haefner, Appearing in “One Art” This Year
One Day A Bird
Ate the last hate in your heart.
Plucked it out like an oily black sunflower seed
and flew away.
You went for a walk in your neighborhood, past the church
That wasn’t yours, past the signs for political candidates
You didn’t much care for. You didn’t mind.
There was really no time anymore to be angry at your last lover
Or the one before that. Or to send bad feelings to the mayor of your city,
Or the governor of your state.
You liked this feeling of being cloudlike and unencumbered.
You learned to like your neighbors,
Even the ones who flicked cigarette butts on their lawn.
And the woman at the grocery store who never smiles at you.
Even the fences didn’t bother you anymore. They were ugly, yes,
But they belonged to someone hungry, someone who liked being warm
on cold nights and drinking hard-cider
and the feel of clothes out of the laundry machine.
Everyone, you realize, is the same when they are watching
YouTube videos of a cat, or sitting in a doctor’s office, waiting for news.
You had been angry before, at all the people who wouldn’t worship
your thoughts, or pray to your private wishes. But that was before.
Before that bird came and plucked the last hatred out of your heart.
And where was it now, you wondered?
As you stared at the sky, waiting for it to circle back
and land on the ugly, ugly house
that once had been a collection of trees
and now was somebody’s home.
Why I Write About Flowers in a Time of War
Because so many can’t write
about the jasmine blooming
in the flowerpot this morning.
Because they can’t see
the sun rise over a window box of mint
or go looking in the pantry for coffee and dried figs.
The blood is still wet on bowling shoes,
on camouflage book bags,
and patches of dried earth under the olive trees.
There are people who will never know
the peace of a red-bud breaking open
or the helplessness of roses drying in a neighbor’s yard.
But if a flower fights for anything
It’s only for the right to live, in a forest or field
Where it will feed dragonflies and pollinate more of itself.
Tigerlily spreading its yellow self, swallowtail landing
On a patch of purple lantana.
Because nature is not a distraction, but an instruction.
Rivers feed oceans. Dying logs feed
grubs who recreate the soil.
The soft liver of any dying animal
responds to its collapse by giving back
whatever it had. The only response to violence
is to throw your body as deep as you can
into the darkness, until something takes hold
of you, and uses your dying sorrow
to bloom.
Unofficial or “Secret” Influences
“A Bird Ate the Last Hate in Your Heart”
I’ve always had some trouble with surrealism and surreal poems. When I interviewed Jose Hernandez Diaz and took his workshop, something clicked for me. It was like that scene in The Matrix where Neo says “Woah, I know Kung-Fu.” After that I wrote a number of poems under the influence of Diaz’s style. This is one of the first that got published, and I owe him my gratitude for showing me, if not THE way, at least a new way into a previously undiscovered aspect of my own voice.
“Why I Write Poems in a Time of War”
A few months ago somebody shared this poem on the social medias and it really gripped me. Please read.
Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying
By Noor Hindi
Colonizers write about flowers.
I tell you about children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks
seconds before becoming daisies.
I want to be like those poets who care about the moon.
Palestinians don’t see the moon from jail cells and prisons.
It’s so beautiful, the moon.
They’re so beautiful, the flowers.
I pick flowers for my dead father when I’m sad.
He watches Al Jazeera all day.
I wish Jessica would stop texting me Happy Ramadan.
I know I’m American because when I walk into a room something dies.
Metaphors about death are for poets who think ghosts care about sound.
When I die, I promise to haunt you forever.
One day, I’ll write about the flowers like we own them.Failed to render LaTeX expression — no expression found
I really loved this poem, and in many ways I agreed with it at the time, by which I mean I could feel it, feel where it was coming from and could say “yes, I feel that way too right now.” At the same time, I’m a poet who frequently writes about flowers and the moon, and a lot of things that seem cliche or banal when held up against the ongoing suffering that people perpetrate all over the world. I wrote the poem not as a way to argue with the Hindi poem, but more to ask myself, “why do I write poems about flowers when everyone is at war?” I went back and forth about whether or not I should include a nod to Noor Hindi’s poem in my piece. I decided against it because I didn’t want anyone to read my poem as an attempt to negate or disagree with Hindi’s poem, which I deeply admire. I do, however, want people to read Hindi’s poem, which is why I am sharing it now.
Once again, I invite you to share poems that you wrote “under the influence” in the comments
And please check out our upcoming events below.
Submitting Poetry Can be Fun!
Believe it or not, you can get work published and have fun doing it. The trick is to do it with a group of friends. Together we will offer practical and moral support, suggestions for where to submit, and tips for how to get your work out there.
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In this event, Jeannine Hall Gailey, author at BOA, will offer insights and useful tips on how to promote your book even if you are an introvert, have no experience with marketing, or are short on time.
We will follow up with a Q&A session where Jeannine will answer individual questions, and help you discover the marketing strategies that are right for you.
Don’t just make fans, make real friends.
Learn to promote your poetry online and offline. Find your ideal readers, get reviews of your work, learn how to organize a book tour, get support from those who have been there before. Have fun doing it!