I've completed my poem for day four - the prompt was to write about an animal. For some reason I was not enamored with this prompt, but I charged ahead. It is not a poem that will appear here, but I did post it on the Poetic Asides blog as required as part of the daily challenge. I'm hopeful the Sunday prompt is more agreeable with me.
This morning I attended an Undergraduate English Symposium that was held at the Diastole in Kansas City. A poet friend Amy Davis was one of the presenters and I attended both to support her work and to learn what I could from the presentation. The Diastole is a magnificent facility both inside and out. It has a tremendous collection of artwork in various media and the tranquility that exudes from this place is beyond belief.
The name itself is quite interesting. Diastole, pronounced (dy-AS-tuh-lee), is a medical term for the interim between heartbeats, when the heart muscle relaxes. Systole is when the heart beats and delivers life's blood downstream. The heart rests following each systole, and fills with the blood of the next pulse. This period, the heart at rest, is Diastole.
Amy's work is consistently fresh and very tight. She is somewhat of a master of reduction to the lowest necessary denominator when it comes to words. I especially enjoyed hearing the changed directions that some of these poems took in rewrites. It was well worth the time, besides being enjoyable.
