I Want to Hear – A collaborative poem conceived and arranged by Erin Murphy

July 30, 2022July 30, 2022 ~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

I Want to Hear

Hearing may indeed by one of the last senses to lose function as humans die.

—Scientific Reports, 2020

I want to hear the scarlet-headed woodpecker
on a distant oak tapping out agrub, agrub, agrub,

twigs crackling underfoot on a forest path
as sunlight filters onto my face,

creekwater running past and over rocks
on its way to the falls
like conversation between lovers.

I want to hear the gasping hiss of a hot iron
lifted from pressed fabric, a flood of steam
rising from each smoothed crease,

the cracking open of a Coke can,
the sizzling of soda bubbling up,

toast crunching on linoleum
as we stomp anger into crumbs,

the swish of Rob Halford’s tight-fitting leather vest.

I want to hear anything but the crow-cry pulsing
of my continuous glucose monitor.

I want to hear Bill Withers’ grandma’s hands indwell
the liturgy where my grandmother brought us,
the tall cross out front in bloom,

bagpipe notes wailing in a canyon,
sliding like trombones down cliffs,

cars passing swiftly, faint as peace.

I want to hear boots tapping on wooden floors
as my father leaves and returns from work,

the bustle of garbage collectors on the porch.

I want to hear a newborn baby crying,

the wise creak of a rocking chair,
heavy with the weight of a mother
and her cocooned child.

I want to hear the rhythmic buzz
of a spouse’s snoring,

the cackle, howl, and wheeze
of my family’s laughter,

grandkids’ shrieks weaving together
in the backseat.

The landline message calling my name
three days before Mom’s death.

A nurse leaning down and whispering
We are transferring you to the love ward.

The distant train whistle
of the words I and mine.

Voices running together like rain,
letting me know they’ll be okay.

And my mother’s voice again:
Everything will be fine.

A collaborative poem conceived and arranged by Erin Murphy during the 2022 West Virginia Writers’ Workshop, featuring lines by Mark Brazaitis, Joel Chineson, Gary Ciocco, Lori D’Angelo, Karen DePinto, Sarah Beth Ealy, Rebecca Ernest, Stanley Galloway, Katy Giebenhain, David Hayhurst, Georgianna Heiko, Irene Klosko, George M. Lies, Martin Malone, Erin Murphy, Renée K. Nicholson, Karen Peacock, Stan Pisle, Guy Terrell, Deborah Westin, Maryann Wolfe, and Nicole Yurcaba.

Erin Murphy, who conceptualized and arranged this collaborative poem, is the author of nine poetry collections, including Human Resources (forthcoming from Salmon Poetry). She is professor of English at Penn State Altoona where she organized a college-wide collaborative poetry project entitled “In My America.”
Website: http://www.erin-murphy.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/erinmurphypoet
Twitter: @poet_notes

“I Want to Hear” Collaborative Poem Prompt

It has long been believed that hearing is the last sense to go. A recent University of British Columbia study determined that unresponsive actively dying patients continue to hear in the final hours before death. The study – “Electrophysiological evidence of preserved hearing at the end of life” – was published in the journal Scientific Reports in 2020. With this in mind, you are invited to participate in a collaborative poetry project.

• Write a list of the final sounds you’d want to hear. These could be sounds you love, sounds you find calming, a sound you miss, or words you need or want to hear. Just jot them down – don’t worry about being descriptive.
• Now go back and choose one sound to describe in detail. Make notes about all of the associations you have with this sound.
• Write one sentence that fills in this blank: “I want to hear __________________.” Be as specific and concrete as possible.

An Incomplete List of Things that Burst: a cento by Erin Murphy

May 5, 2022May 5, 2022 ~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

An Incomplete List of Things that Burst

a cento

A magenta strip of Mylar balloon that glints when turned to the sun—

or burst pipes and water flooding rooms.

Lilies, sweet peas, and snapdragons

and the apple trees covered with blossoms and the fruit

of an orange whose cross-section resembles my lungs.

I would be still—I would be silent and quake—

my body like a living coal—

the air it rises through—

the break in the heart—

the weapon—the bomb we make.

Credits: William Brewer, Robin Becker, Yusef Komunyakaa, Walt Whitman, Major Jackson, Anne Waldman, James Weldon Johnson, Maggie Smith, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Katie Ford

“An Incomplete List of Things that Burst” is from Erin Murphy’s new chapbook, Fields of Ache, a collection of centos forthcoming from Ghost City Press as part of its 2022 Summer Series.

About Fields of Ache: Forthcoming in summer 2022, this collection of centos focuses on identity and the natural world. A cento (from the Latin for “patchwork”) is a collage poem made up of lines by other poets. Murphy says, “I’m interested in the way the meaning of the lines shifts as the context shifts,” adding that despite the seemingly random nature of the form, the process is anything but arbitrary. “You need to have something to say before you find the lines to help you say it.”

Erin Murphy is the author or editor of thirteen books, most recently Taxonomies. “An Incomplete List of Things that Burst” is from her new chapbook, Fields of Ache, a collection of centos forthcoming from Ghost City Press as part of its 2022 Summer Series. Another collection, Human Resources, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Her work has appeared in such journals as Poet Lore, Waxwing, Diode, Southern Poetry Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Georgia Review, North American Review, and Women’s Studies Quarterly. Her awards include the Rattle Poetry Prize Readers’ Choice Award, The Normal School Poetry Prize, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, and a Best of the Net award. She is Professor of English at Penn State Altoona and serves as Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review and Poet Laureate of Blair County (Pa.). Website: http://www.erin-murphy.com

Five Poems by Erin Murphy

December 22, 2021December 22, 2021 ~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Taxonomy of Dancing

The stand and sway. The full-on
stomping and sweating, every limb
flailing as if it’s on fire. The train of hands
on hips, stuttering to a stop when a girl
loses a shoe. My college date who said
You’re dancing with the drummer, not me.
The burn in my cheeks because it was true.

Taxonomy of Emptiness

Answer bubbles on a standardized test.
A clean sheet parachuting over
a king-sized bed. Stomachs churning
with hunger or dread. A child’s
birthday balloon filled with breath.
How we stitch together the stories
of ourselves with invisible thread.

Taxonomy of Highways

The ticket I got for driving my 1970
Karmann Ghia too slowly. How my mother
recorded her first trip on the Jersey Turnpike
in her college diary. The motorcyclist
we saw in Sugarloaf, his body smeared
across I-80. How highways pulse with people
who aren’t where they want to be.

Taxonomy of City People

How even at 7 a.m. they look polished
in their slim-cut suits and glossy shoes.
How every flick of the wrist seems
pre-ordained: snapping open an umbrella,
scanning a subway pass. Even their hair
knows what to do. Their eyes, too, are
on a mission: not noticing not noticing you.

Taxonomy of Things Smaller Than a Fingertip

The Cheerio I tweezed from my son’s ear.
The seed of a pumpkin or an idea.
The end of the pen I clickclickclicked
waiting to hear—
Battery from my elegant watch that loses
a minute a day. All those minutes stacked
like miniature bricks. All those missed years.

About Taxonomies: Forthcoming in April 2022, the collection explores issues of gender, aging, relationships, and race through the lens of the natural world, everyday objects and experiences, technology, and current events. Through a series of fragments, each poem plays on the conventional idea of scientific taxonomy by categorizing items that would not typically be classified.

Erin Murphy is the author or editor of twelve books, including three collections of demi-sonnets, a 7-line form she devised. These poems are from her latest collection of demi-sonnets, Taxonomies (forthcoming from Word Poetry). Another collection, Human Resources, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Her work has appeared in such journals as Rattle, Diode, Southern Poetry Review, American Journal of Poetry, The Georgia Review, North American Review, and Women’s Studies Quarterly. Her awards include The Normal School Poetry Prize, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, and a Best of the Net award. She is Professor of English at Penn State Altoona and serves as Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review. Website: http://www.erin-murphy.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/erinmurphypoet
Twitter: @poet_notes

ONE ART’s 2021 Pushcart Prize Nominations

November 17, 2021November 17, 2021 ~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

Congratulations to Chad Frame, Heather Swan, Erin Murphy, Kristin Garth, CL Bledsoe, and Eric Nelson!!

Read these meritorious poems here:

Chad Frame – Shepard

Heather Swan – On the Day After You Left This World

Eric Murphy – Revision Lesson

Kristin Garth – Sometimes a Cigar is Not Just

CL Bledsoe – I Wish You Were Fun

Eric Nelson – My Brothers

Revision Lesson by Erin Murphy

September 10, 2021 ~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

Revision Lesson

The faces of my former students
blur together like the crowd
in Pound’s metro station:

petals on a wet, black bough.
But you are the only student
I’ve had who suffered

such a public loss. And so,
nearly two decades later,
I can still see you

sitting on the right side
of the classroom, your long legs
tilted to fit under the small desk.

It was my first semester teaching
creative writing. I felt I had
something to prove, though

now I’m not sure what.
That I knew what I was doing?
That I wasn’t a pushover?

That despite the reputation of poets,
I wasn’t flaky or sentimental?
All of the above, I suppose.

I must have been afraid
any display of emotion would
crack my professorial armor.

Our introductory class covered
poetry and fiction writing.
You and your classmates read

and wrote poems and stories
that we critiqued in workshops.
You preferred the concrete cause

and effect of narrative, the mechanics
of getting characters from Point A
to Point B. Poems were squirming

fish that slipped between
your fingers; it was as if you
didn’t trust them. You set your

story one year into the future.
I had decided in advance
that I would treat your work

the way I would treat that
of any other student: objectively.
I would not assume

the character’s experience
was your own, even though I knew
from faculty lounge murmurings

that it was. I would not offer
sympathy. Sensitive topics
are par for the course

in creative writing. In the years
since you took my class,
I’ve had students write about

childhood abuse, sexual assaults,
gambling, and drug use. Self-harm
is a common theme, especially

among young women, though
I once had a male student write
a creative nonfiction essay

about his former addiction
to cutting his gums. In graphic detail,
he described repeatedly puncturing

the pink flesh above his molars
until he drew blood. Some students
need to learn the difference between

writing personal journal entries
and writing for an audience.
Others may benefit from a referral

to health services. But you didn’t
fit into either of these groups.
When it was time to discuss your story,

I jumped right into critique mode.
Give us a flashback or two
to develop your character,

I suggested. Try incorporating
a specific memory. Add some dialogue.
At the end, you—

I mean your character—
reflected on the one-year
anniversary and said

Everything will be alright.
Your resolution seems a bit forced,
I said. Maybe find a way to suggest

to the reader that she’s
trying to convince herself.
A month later, I would see you

dancing at the winter formal
in a blue polka dot dress, flinging
your arms into the air as if

launching missiles. But that day
in class, you folded yourself
over your notebook, scribbling

furiously. Your classmates painted
the tile floor with the soles
of their shoes. I suggested that you

build tension by withholding
information. Don’t tell us
right away that it was

September 11, I said. Wait to tell us
that the protagonist’s father
was one of the airline pilots.

What I did not say:
I’m sorry.
What I did not show:

I’m human.
I am. I am. I am
still telling.

Erin Murphy’s eighth book of poems, Human Resources, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Diode, Southern Poetry Review, American Journal of Poetry, The Georgia Review, North American Review, and Women’s Studies Quarterly. Her awards include The Normal School Poetry Prize, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, and a Best of the Net award. She is editor of three anthologies from the University of Nebraska Press and SUNY Press and serves as Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review. She is Professor of English at Penn State Altoona. Website: http://www.erin-murphy.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/erinmurphypoet
Twitter: @poet_notes

Hide-and-Seek by Erin Murphy

August 23, 2021August 23, 2021 ~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

Hide-and-Seek

Northern Virginia, 2002

The week I teach poetry to fourth graders,
my students scramble up slides at recess

and blister their fingers on monkey bars.
They swipe the shoulders of each other’s

striped t-shirts and erupt in a chorus
of Not it! Not it! They are not squirming

in desks, locked down because a sniper
is targeting strangers. A teen in search

of a father is not crouching in the trunk
of a blue Chevy Caprice, taking aim

at bus passengers and landscapers
and drivers pumping gas. On this day,

a 25-year-old woman vacuums Cheerios
from the back seat of her mini-van

at a Shell station and returns home
to her toddler daughter whose favorite

word is why. Why dogs bark? Why
thunder go boom? Why babies cry? Why?

Why? A liquor store clerk rings up
the last sale of the night and heads back

to his garden apartment where he falls
asleep to Law & Order re-runs.

Their families will not have to ask why. I write
personification on the board. What word

is hiding inside? I ask. I’m looking, of course,
for person. In this version, there is only one boy

in the world hungry for attention, and he shoots
his arm in the air and answers cat.

Erin Murphy’s eighth book of poems, Human Resources, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Diode, Southern Poetry Review, American Journal of Poetry, The Georgia Review, North American Review, and Women’s Studies Quarterly. Her awards include The Normal School Poetry Prize, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, and a Best of the Net award. She is editor of three anthologies from the University of Nebraska Press and SUNY Press and serves as Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review. She is Professor of English at Penn State Altoona. Website: http://www.erin-murphy.com

“Hide-and-Seek” will appear in the craft book The Strategic Poet edited by Diane Lockward (forthcoming from Terrapin Books in fall 2021). The Strategic Poet features model poems, prompts, sample poems based on prompts, and craft discussions. Additional contributors include Ellen Bass, Camille Dungy, Todd Kaneko, Diane Seuss, Ada Limón, Jan Beatty, Allison Joseph, and dozens of other poets.

Three Poems by Erin Murphy

July 7, 2021 ~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

Ilha dos Gatos

The day my gynecologist
says postmenopausal the way

you’d mention rain, I learn
about Ilha dos Gatos

off the coast of Brazil,
an Alcatraz for abandoned cats—

feral, ravenous, spawning.
This is not a place for birds.

Desire is a noun and a verb
but never a command.

Look at me wanting
and wanting.

To the Man Who Stole Our Pregnant Dog

I hope she bit you, shredding the flesh
of the hand that wooed her from my childhood

yard. You probably sold her pups off the back
of a rusty truck at a flea market, a handwritten

sign missing an s or a t in Bassett Hound.
What I remember: her banana peel ears

swept the ground like unhemmed drapes.
We called her Blarney, and I’d already

named the babies after other Irish castles
from the set of pleather-bound Britannicas

we bought by the month. Every evening
for weeks, I sat in the bath after the water turned

cold, thinking my discomfort would bring her
home. The walls shuddered with the last

rumblings of my parents’ marriage. I slid
under to see how long I could go without air,

the soapy surface a scrim over a body
that was there, then not there.

I Knew a Pyromaniac

A neighborhood boy,
barely old enough to sit

at the kitchen table
without a booster seat.

He couldn’t tie his shoes
but lit a match with one

flick of a slim wrist.
He sniffed sulfur on his

fingers the way most kids
inhale the smell of warm

chocolate chip cookies.
His father was gone—

not dead, just gone. This
we shared. His mother

was the shadow of a shadow.
First a swing set burned.

Then a garden shed. And
then they moved. Once

when I was babysitting him,
he sat on my lap and drew

a picture of a girl. Who’s that?
I asked. He pointed.

You. I was on fire. He didn’t
know how to hold a crayon.

But he knew the hottest
part of the flame was blue.

Erin Murphy’s eighth book of poems, Human Resources, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Diode, Guesthouse, Southern Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, North American Review, and Women’s Studies Quarterly. Her awards include The Normal School Poetry Prize judged by Nick Flynn, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, and a Best of the Net award judged by Patricia Smith. She is editor of three anthologies from the University of Nebraska Press and SUNY Press and serves as Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review. She is Professor of English at Penn State Altoona. Website: http://www.erin-murphy.com

Tag: Erin Murphy

I Want to Hear – A collaborative poem conceived and arranged by Erin Murphy

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a cento

Credits: William Brewer, Robin Becker, Yusef Komunyakaa, Walt Whitman, Major Jackson, Anne Waldman, James Weldon Johnson, Maggie Smith, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Katie Ford

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