Saturday, January 11, 2020

Check out this review of PMotS from the lovely Attic Voices!

atticvoices.com/2019/poems-mostly-of-the-sea-review

"...I think I’ve figured out the connection between it all. We live in a time of extreme climate crisis. Everyone knows it, though an unfortunate amount of people still insist on denying it. It is in a time such as the one we live in, that a book such as Kaivo’s becomes particularly relevant. Her poems denote a state of disaster that the world currently lives in, and yet, they urge us towards rebirth and renewal. Everything feels fresher by the sea because it’s such a pure, raw sense of nature, untouched by man. It’s just our duty to keep it that way."

Featured Performance at Edgy Open Mic

Wednesday, October 9, 2019

Sonnet

It is true that I know not what I do:
I have no money, and no publicist.
I hope to have some ratings, good and true
and likes on instagram if I persist.

However, when it comes to social things
and of all social things, media most
I act as bound by certain unseen strings
I act as though I am, in fact, a ghost.

I go back to it, every now and then
to build my online presence and my brand.
Ignore it and ignore again, again.
At least I cannot say that I have been banned.

Cruel market's unseen hand, harken to me:
Send me sense, without pressing scrutiny.

Saturday, September 21, 2019



Goodreads Book Giveaway


Poems Mostly of the Sea by Jenne Kaivo

Poems Mostly of the Sea

by Jenne Kaivo


Giveaway ends October 06, 2019.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.



Enter Giveaway




I've started a Kindle giveaway for 100 free copies of PMotS! The hardcopy giveaway ended yesterday, with 10 winners, but I forgot to post it here. 1,209 people signed up anyway, so that went pretty well.

Thursday, September 12, 2019




Anglerfish

From its very beginning life has been tenacious
even where the sun that sustains is away.
Death creates life and life is voracious.
We should all take a note from the patience of anglerfish,
with their teeth and their twinkling lights.

There are soggy rock places without any lights
where long pillars grow because the tenacious
water drips down as unstopping as anglerfish.
You can erode but you can't take away.
A cave may be hidden but never forgotten:
it will be revealed, because life is voracious

and the river that eats through the rock is voracious
like the empty-gut cores of the heavenly lights.
Two atoms merge, burst in pain, are forgotten
but not without purpose, because their tenacious
deathsongs light worlds that are deathsongs away.
In the distance, they look just like anglerfish.

When I am asleep I have jaws like an anglerfish
lined with spike fangs, and I'm dull and voracious,
like my slimy-fish past which will not go away.
The cave of my home is lit all up with lights
because humans have conquered the earth, we're tenacious
and build mighty things, we must not be forgotten.

In the muck of the sea lies a ship that's forgotten
by all but the crabs and the anglerfish.
It's a half-buried whale because silt is tenacious
as it drips from the surface and through the voracious
fish in the realm of the lights.
Anchors aweigh,

my boys, let's sail away,
cry the sailors, but they have forgotten
their names and the comfort of cities and lights.
They only remember the names of the anglerfish
and the sight of their bones being stripped by voracious
things that insist, because they're tenacious

they'll live in the vast empty plains of the sea. They're tenacious and won't go away.
(But they will, because death is voracious: they'll be forgotten
replaced by new anglerfish, burnt by new lights).





This poem is included in my collection, Poems Mostly of the Sea.

Tuesday, September 10, 2019

Eyes Unastounding

This was published in Arsenic Lobster, and is included in Poems Mostly of the Sea:


Eyes Unastounding

Who cried in the hall as I walked
On the rug that looped tight as a noose?
Who was it, and why
Could not I have stopped?

Long over, I’ve bypassed the door.
Long gone, though the brakes on the hill
Caterwaul and deprive me of sleep.

I demand that I sleep.
I demand as I still live, I do as I please.
I demand if you kill me,
You take me outside of the town.
Do it far as can be from the center of town.

Eyes overwhelming
Stare down through the cracks in the
Ceiling I’m under.
I hope most of all I may sleep.

Eyes unastounding
Are fastened on me in the
Street, I am freakish.
That now matters little to me.

Eyes in the mirror,
The worst of them all, remind
Me of eyes in the
Ceiling I’m under.
And these eyes deprive me of sleep.