THE YEAR OF YELLOW BUTTERFLIES
The Year of Yellow butterflies (The Blog)
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"Terrible to dress in the clothes
of a period that must end."--Frank Bidart 

"You must remember that certain things die out for a while/ so they can be remembered with affection later on." --John Ashbery

The Year of Hotcakes

6/18/2015

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 It was the year hotcakes cooked on sidewalks and puppies hopscotched between solidifying pock-marked batter. Even better was when sun-warmed blueberries fell from bushes and tasty breakfast was always baking.
 
There were flies that year, until spiders invited them into their traps and spinnerets, their looms, crochet hooks, their subterfuge and spongy fudge.
 
That was the year no one went hungry. That year, children excelled in school. That year the scent of air sent sweet, kind sentiments everywhere.

--Martine Bellen
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The Power of Faith

2/11/2015

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It was the year Catelyn Stark of Game of Thrones died. Though her death had been written in the Book, no one could believe the arm of fate would take her.  Such is the power of faith! Soon after, Lilly Bell of Hell on Wheels was taken from us. That was a very long year. A year in which TV proved to all humanity it could be just as cruel as non-TV. The year Americans came to believe that no realm was safe, that anyone, no matter age or status, could go at any time.

Soon after, a most startling experiment proved successful! Scientists had stopped a young mouse’s heart for a full twenty-four hours before resuming her regularly scheduled programming. Journalists from every ilk gathered to question the rodent. She was silent. A summit of communication specialists created confusing configurations of levers and colorful sensory receptors, Rube Goldberg talking machines, to no avail, in an attempt to push the mouse into sharing her secrets. The mouse said nothing, ran squeakily on a well-oiled wheel. That was the year all health-related research ceased and scientists—from animal-assisted therapists to urologists—put down their stethoscopes and turned from their clinical trials to focus their every brainwave on the brainwaves of the mouse. That was the year we came very close to forming a mouse-loving nation, the year more humans than ever died from dreaded diseases of which there once had been cures. That was the year we had been closest to and farthest from nowhere.

*
It was the year all celebs and superstars fizzled, 
                                                                            The year they lived on Pizzle Stix, 
                                                                       Pixy Stix,
The year they traveled on the River Styx.


---Martine Bellen


Martine Bellen's THIS AMAZING CAGE OF LIGHT: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS is forthcoming in September and also on September 13 at Flushing Town Hall (Flushing, Queens), there will be a performance of MOON IN THE MIRROR: a monodrama opera (text: Zhang Er andMartine Bellen/music Stephen Dembski). For Bellen's other YEAR OF poem, click here



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It was the year of the teacup pup....

11/9/2014

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It was the year of the teacup pup, a particularly hard autumn for dog abhorers who adored tea. That year pups were born in teacups. Tea ladies with tea sets who had tea parties in tea gardens tended to turn around to find umpteen teeny terriers, which were all the rage that year. 

It was the year my sister told me about head shops—black-lit storefronts that sold hippie heads—ones of young women with long honey hair and Afro-ed boys with tender eyes. My plan was to buy a pugnacious head, a head with a sharp brain and a loud mouth, but on my way to purchase this head, instead, I found a poem. The year of teacups, the year of objet trouvé, the year language took a turn.

*****

It was the year before avifauna fully emigrated from urban areas, a couple holdouts still hopping on our city blocks. That year the children of Manhattan Skyped for one last try to keep wing-filled skies. At high noon on an extraordinary day, each kid uncaged his and her singular feathered friend—canaries and cockatiels, parakeets and parrotlets, lovebirds, macaws, and cockatoos too. From Battery City Park to Washington Heights, the swarm of emerald greens and ceruleans, of scarlets and apricots, jellybean gold and rose-breasted pink, a river blanket of birds streamed overhead—a beacon of color, a beaming delight. Even the pigeons on the pavement marveled.


--Martine Bellen


Martine Bellen is the author of eight collections of poetry, including WABAC MACHINE (Furniture Press Books) and TALES OF MURASAKI AND OTHER POEMS (Sun & Moon Press). Forthcoming in 2015 is THIS AMAZING CAGE OF LIGHT: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS (Spuyten Duyvil Press). As a librettist, Bellen wrote the text for AH! OPERA NO-OPERA, which had its world premiere at REDCAT and cowrote the text for the monodroma opera MOON IN THE MIRROR with Zhang Er (composer Stephen Dembski), which will premiere in 2015 at Flushing Town Hall in Queens, NY. For more about Martine Bellen, please visit http://www.martinebellen.com.



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    Author

    Hi. I'm Joanna Fuhrman. This is a prose poetry/flash fiction blog in conversation with my  serial prose poem "The Year of Yellow Butterflies" (The Year Of Yellow Butterflies, Hanging Loose Press 2015). I had fun writing these poems about fads and trends from imaginary pasts. If you would like to add your own section, write me and I can post it (along with a short bio). Start with "It was the year...."  
    "In this extraordinary book, Fuhrman seamlessly oscillates between illusion and reality, childhood and maturity, the animal kingdom (a "babbling...walrus," a "creaky bird," a "bunny rabbit") and technology ("a baby's rebooted brains," "Virgil's internet").  She gives new life to the prose poem.  The Year of Yellow Butterflies is killer--not only Fuhrman's best book to date, but her most poignant.  "--Noelle Kocot
    "With the impish charm of an illusionist and the dazzling patter of a tummler in a Borscht Belt resort, Joanna Fuhrman suspends our expectations in The Year of Yellow Butterflies, sending us head over heels into zones of cosmic and technological bafflement and sudden parabolic grief....in this book full of brilliant predicaments and pleasures."—Rachel Loden
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