Noelle Kocot, Poet with “No Drafts!” Policy

What inspires poet, Noelle Kocot? I asked and Noelle responded:

I guess just the most random things inspire me, a symphony, a box of Tide, the cats, blades of grass.  I mean it — I’m never just focused on any one thing.  So really, anything can be an inspiration for me.  Thank you for asking!  

Randomness — the stuff of life and randomness inspires Noelle! Thank you!

NO DRAFTS: Noelle told me when she’s writing a poem, she is writing it — there are no drafts. She writes straight though and if it’s not a poem she tosses it out and starts another. Whew! That’s writing courage!

Please connect with Noelle Kocot in the COMMENTS section for this post.

Here is a wonderful poem from her first book “4”, the winner of the Levis Poetry Prize, judged by Michael Ryan and published in 2001 by Four Way Books:

A Losing War by Noelle Kocot

This blue medal dangling from my chest
Betokens something shifting deep inside me:
The lone geometry of hangers whispering
In a closet, the string swaying

Like viscous spittle from its naked bulb.
I feel the onset of a lifelong habit,
Heresy perhaps, along with the sad arrogance
Of some self-incarceration.

A hasty decision is at hand, in any case.
But the torn aroma of the fog
Is what I’m after; the flight of phantom wind
From underneath a serenade of arrows

Emblazoned with the broken sneer
Of syllables smeared across the ages.
And if the shadows buried
In the air began to rasp,

The scarred viscera of rescue
Would hurl themselves across the carpet,
And surely they would find me in my barracks
A million miles away from polite society.

. . .

Noelle has written a total of seven books of poetry as well as a translation from French: Tristan Corbiere, Poet by Default. Her most recent work, Phantom Pains of Madness, was published in May 2016 by Wave Books.

Here is my favorite poem from Phantom Pains of Madness:

The Future by Noelle Kocot

I
Don’t
Know
The
Future
But
Exile
And
Mitosis
Are
The
Commas
That
Lurch
Us
Into
A
Galaxy
Of
Forever
And
The
Fluency
Of
Rhetoric
And
Anachronistic
Blood
Wear
The
Face
Of
Adrenaline
Fists
Which
Punch
Out
Into
Frustration
And
The
Worth
Of
The
Plan
And
The
Fruit
That
It
Bears

. . .

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Noelle Kocot, Poet with “No Drafts!” Policy StudioSeeds Inspire By Suze Bienaimee