Aleda Shirley

Highlights of Poetry. Index of poetry. How to Write Poetry. New Books read.

How to write specific forms:
Haibun. Haiku. Hay(na)ku. Rengay. Tanka.
Concrete. Ghazal. Lai. Pantoum. Prose poem. Rondeau. Rubáiyát.
Sestina. Skaldic verse. Sonnet. Terza rima. Triolet. Tritina. Villanelle.

Poets: Adam Zagajewski. Aleda Shirley. Anne Carson.
Bashō. The Beowulf Poet. Billy Collins. Billy Collins exercise.
Snorri's Edda. Carl Dennis. Charles Atkinson. Chase Twichell. Corey Marks.
François Villon Franz Wright. Galway Kinnell. Gary Young. The Gawain Poet.
J. D. McClatchy. J. Zimmerman. J. Zimmerman (haiku). J. Zimmerman (tanka).
Jack Gilbert. Jane Hirshfield. Jean Vengua.
Jorie Graham. Joseph (Joe) Stroud. Karen Braucher. Karl Shapiro. Kay Ryan.
Laureate Poets: Britain; USA.
Len Anderson. Les Murray. Li-Young Lee (and Li-Young Lee reading 2003).
Linda Pastan. Louise Glück. Marianna Monaco (haiku).
Mary Oliver. Nordic Skalds. Pulitzer Poetry Prize (U.S.A). Rainer Maria Rilke Richard Hugo. Robert Bly.
Sappho. Sara Teasdale. Shiki (haiku). Snorri's Edda. Stephen Dunn.
Ted Kooser. W.S. Merwin.

Books: Dark Familiar.
Poetry. Editing. Time line. Links and Books.

Poetry of Aleda Shirley.

Dark Familiar (2006)

Dark Familiar (2006)

Her third collection of verse.
Presented in three untitled sections.
Emphasizes include time, loss, color, and the mixture of darkness with light. The poems have flashes of the semi-surreal, in keeping with the 'Light from Above' painting by Charles Carraway on the cover.
My favorite features of her poems include their leaps between the physical and the non-physical, the sensory images, the appropriate use of rarely used words.
Favorite poems include:
- "April Fifteenth" (section 1).
- "The Customary Mysteries" (section 1), my favorite of all her poems, which ends:
  "And the world fulgent & resolute, clicks on, its vision the same as a casino's: to keep the wheels turning." © Aleda Shirley
- "In the Cathedral" (section 3).
- "The Disintegration of Afternoons" (section 3).
Acknowledges first publications in:
- The Georgia Review
- Hunger Mountains
- In the Arms of Words: Poems for Disaster Relief
- The Louisville Review
- North American Review
- New Letters
- River Styx
- West Branch
Sample statistics:
- Lots of sensual words. The first 10 poems have:
  - taste: averages over 2 words per poem; includes pepper, pears, cigarette.
  - touch: averages almost 2 words per poem that reference touch; includes flannel shirt, rough, hot shower.
  - color: averages 1.1/poem; includes ivory, blue, pink.
  - sound: averages 0.7/poem; includes hum, whistle, chirp.
  - smell: averages 0.2/poem; includes jasmine.
  Contrast this with the less sensory writing of Louise Glück in Averno.
- 28 poems, 61 pages, average of 2.2 pages per poem.
- For pages per poem, the mode is 2 pages (23 poems); 5 poems are 3 pages.
- For lines per poem, there is a bimodal peak at 36 and 39 lines. I wonder if she writes the poem to whatever length it wants to be, counts the resulting number of lines, finds whether it divides by 3, 4, or 5; and lets that decide the number of lines per stanza.
- Lines per stanza (rough count) shows a mode of 3 (with 4 lines and 5 lines tied as a close second), while 2 poems are each a single block that spans two pages:
  1. 0
  2. 1 poem has 2 lines per stanza.
  3. 9 poems have 3 lines per stanza.
  4. 7
  5. 7
  6. 2
- Stanzas per poem (rough count) shows a bimodal peak at 7 and 13 stanzas, and a preference for an odd number of stanzas:
  1. 2 poems have a single stanza each.
  2. 0
  3. 0
  4. 0
  5. 2 poems have 5 stanzas.
  6. 0
  7. 5
  8. 3
  9. 4
  10. 3
  11. 1
  12. 2
  13. 5
  14. 1

Editing by Aleda Shirley.

The Beach Book: A Literary Companion (1999).

Buy The Beach Book: A Literary Companion
Selected and Introduced by Aleda Shirley.

In her introduction, Aleda Shirley wrote:

"no other landscape evokes so much emotion as does the sea: grief and triumph, romance and loss, innocence and destruction. ... [but] people, more often than not, look happy when they are at the beach. ... This is the anthology I would like to have at the beach, ... the book I'd suggest to people looking for something fun and different and thought-provoking to read while stretched out on a sandy beach towel or relaxing on a screened porch -- poems, stories, and essays that offer a new way of looking at the familiar, eternal place where the sea meets land."

Includes poems by Jane Hirshfield ("Just Below the Surface" reprinted from The October Palace), Li-Young Lee ("Water" reprinted from Rose), James Harmes ("Decadence: Newport Beach, California" and ("Elegy as Evening, as Exodus") and ("The Hole in the Moon"), and Chase Twichell ("Just Below the Surface" reprinted from ("Why All Good Music Is Sad").
Includes prose nonfiction by Jennifer Ackerman ("Osprey").
Includes prose fiction, including Mark Richard's hilarious and ("Happiness of the Garden Variety").

Time Line.


1999: Editing: The Beach Book: A Literary Companion.
2005: Prize: second place in the 2005 River Styx International Poetry Contest.
2006: Poems: Dark Familiar.

Links and Books.

Links and Books.

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