Poetic License

...I love every movement/ there's nothing I would change/ she doesn't need improvement/ she's much too nice to rearrange....


I'd like to think you've missed me, but I try to not lie to myself. Lying is for work hours.

The pile of frozen bodies in the back of my mind, at the forefront of my consciousness, has made writing rather more difficult. Some writing, that is to say. The poetry has been going nuts. I am pretty certain I've enough material to have a decent submission to MSAC this year, and my most recent Featured Poet event (on the same day I forgot to show up for Jury Duty; whoops) garnered me this embarrassingly positive review.

Cybele Pomeroy’s live performance defines tour-de-force. Her genuine and engaging style runs the gamut from poignant to comedic, erudite to earthy, sexy to philosophical, animated to controlled and with plenty of wry wit. Pomeroy is a member of that select group of poets who can effortlessly entertain an audience without sacrificing poetic integrity. If anything, her delivery only amplifies the quality of her work; tones that would ring true whether broadcast in an amphitheatre, read silently from the page or whispered in a lover’s ear. In any literary medium, Pomeroy proves she is the real McCoy. ~ M. S. Sanders
June 2 at 11:24pm

I post it here, not out of vanity, as some of you might (incorrectly!) imagine, but so that next time I'm asked to write about myself in the third person ("...and we'll need a bio by Thursday...") I can simply yank a sentence or two from it, instead of scrabbling around cobbling together a monstrosoty like this:

Cybele Pomeroy is described as overly arty (Judy Rousuck, Baltimore Sun), campy and eclectic (Hawk), a little black convertible with dangerous fenders (Fluffy), diaphanous circling Saturn (Mary Bargteil) and a fire-flavored popsicle (Cliff Lynn). She's been writing poetry since she could hold a crayon, and never properly learned to censor herself. She's equally proud of her seventeen minute limerick operetta, DON JUAN THE IGUANA, and her endurance-length WATERGATE! THE MUSICAL, both produced for audiences that were clearly baffled, but often bafflingly delighted. She's been a proficient dabbler for many years; despite this, various publications including Poet's Ink, Scribble Magazine and Baltimore City Paper have seen fit to publish some of her poetry.

And so my next point. Insofar as live readings, I can rock the house. I can tell which poems are getting good response, and which ones not so much. But that's live.

How can I imagine which poems transcend and breathe into my reader's heart from the flatness of a page?

(Poetry In Motion; Johnny Tillotson)