The Sun has come out to play...

The sun (if I remember correctly) is screaming through my studio blinds. I'm having  eggs and maple flavored sausage for breakfast while I ponder the very busy day ahead....

• mow the yard
• do a newsletter
• the normal Submission Saturday duty
• get mail to post office
• tread mill 
• write
• think about what to do with all my free time  ;-)

A Star!

After a couple days of rain and overcast skies our closest star the Sun has been located. This is of comfort.

The air remains a bit chilled. I can handle this, but I probably won't spend much time in the outdoors anyway. I should (heavy emphasis) get in a walk today. I will try to make time for it. 

As winter is coming I'd like to get our treadmill upstairs and in working order. It's belt has moved cattywampus. I need to be walking at lest three times a week and eliminating anything that creates an obstacle would of course be beneficial. 

I've been writing a lot more. Or at least more focused writing. I've actually been journaling less as a result of concentrating on the more creative.  Speaking of focus, I need to get busy because I've got a number if things I need to accomplish today and there is the Giants playoff that I will have to squeeze in as well. Sunday's always have a sadness about the finality of the weekend. How to I make that go away? 

Crawling out of skin and other acts of strangeness.

Went for an exercise walk and ran across this snake skin left behind. I know there is a poem there somewhere.

Am I lame or what?  I could not get a block before I stumbled and fell. So now I feel invigorated but with sore knees. Geez!

Strangest thing... my great grandfather who died in 1968 has crept into two pieces I've written in less then 24 hours.  Very strange karma or something.

Head Start on Labor Day Weekend

It was take it or lose it time for vacation so I took a vacation day.  This afternoon I did a  double platelet donation at the blood center, came home, did some cleaning and cooked dinner for my sweetheart! Stuffed Peppers.

My amusement for the day come from the following quote:

That's the way it is with poetry: When it is incomprehensible it seems profound, and when you understand it, it is only ridiculous. -Galway Kinnell

Music to my Ear

 

This morning I put on a play list of music that I've made specifically to write by. The first notable impact was that time became irrelevant to me. No clock watching was a good thing. It, along with other distractions were gone. Poof!

 

To say that I wrote the best ever would be a stretch but that isn't what is important. I was at ease and I was more productive in the time that I did allocate - which incidentally I ran past without notice till after the fact.

 

I worked on  completely new material. A project that I've had in mind but had not committed to paper in any way yet.  I started in my journal in long hand. Later in the morning I took it to my laptop and did some early cutting of excess. It's a start but I was very happy with it.

 

Early evening I got out for a photo shoot. Then came home and mowed the back yard.  The weather was nicer today then we've had for a while. It's been really hot here. Much more productive day then yesterday.

Can I have a Saturday do-over?

 

 

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Tonight I was thinking...

Dreams are connected circuits—

 a marriage of fantasy and authenticity;

 of fright and quietude.

Zzzzzzzzzzz.........

It's Sunday night - 11:30ish and that's me on the left. Ok, maybe not but that's how I feel. It's been a long day and a long weekend and I'm waiting on the washer to go off so I can transfer clothes to the dryer.

I have a poem to post but I don't care to wrestle with it at this point. It will have to wait till tomorrow. It's my poem for NaPoWriMo.

I was able to catch the very last part of the Giants game. Their fifth win in six games. Wahoo!!

I read an interesting essay about Plath's poem Sheep in Fog and I'm too tired to go into it here, but perhaps I will in the next few days. Monday is coming way too quickly for my liking and I just heard the washer click off so I'm going to make the transfer to the dryer and maybe read for 15-20 minutes and conk out for the night.

In My E-mail This Morning

• A rejection letter for 3 poems.   :(
• Word of the day - dysgraphia. Bad news nearly always follows when dys- begins a word, and so it does here: dysgraphia is an inability to write coherently, either as a learning disorder or a result of brain damage or disease. The Greek roots mean "difficult writing."
• $30 Amazon.com birthday gift certificate.   :) Yeah!
• Urgent Attention, I am here on off-shore banks inspection exercise. Based on the report on your abandoned transaction file, only $2M have been approved to your family from the will.  [Oh Darn, I was hopeful it would be at least $5M]

Morning drive time...

This morning I was driving I-70 into the city - Cathy is working crosswords and comes upon a clue:  Versifier.  She cracks up when she realizes the answer is poet. She proclaims, "Mike the versifier!"  Sometimes I suppose humor is like a metaphor that not everyone understands.

I did the “S” word!

It’s cool here today. Not unpleasantly so, but it is a sign of things to come.

I made a pot of chili for lunch. It seemed like a good day for it.

I’ve read today, written, and yes, the “S” word.  That would be submitted material least you think it is something more adventuresome.  Over the past year, I’ve taken to considering it a burdensome task. It wasn’t that way always, but it has become my least favorite part of writing poetry.

In looking through my material I realized I need to better organize it. By that I mostly mean review my material and decide it some of it perhaps needs to go back into the work folder. I do have a few things that I’ve been sitting on that perhaps are really ready.  I just don’t like to rush them off.

I brought some work home from the office as well this weekend and I really ought to tackle on of those projects tonight… then I won’t have so much to do tomorrow.

I got eaten up on the deck this afternoon, sitting with the dogs. I fear tonight will be a Benadryl night.

Off to make espresso!   My earlier one got pitched while it was cooling down.

40 %

So I've just finished posting today's poem on Poetry Asides written from the prompt for the day: So We Decided To (blank).  This is the earliest that I've finished one in a number of days. With today's poem, we are now 40% through the month of poems challenge. Even doing a basic draft a day is no piece of cake. It takes a lot out of you.

With my poem finished, and the Giants baseball game is already over for the day, I will retire to some reading in a few minutes.

Hope all of you had a joyous weekend. If you celebrate Easter, then a Happy Easter to you, if not, I bid you best wishes the same.

Technorati Tags: Poem-A-Day Challenge

I crashed and burned

After an uneventful flight last night (the best kind) I arrived in Phoenix and was met by my daughter Meghan, with dog in tow. Said dog has grown into a Moose since I last saw him.

We stopped at Jack-In-The-Box on the way in and had tacos. A treat since I love their tacos and only am able to get them when out here or St. Louis or in the Bay area.

This morning I was on ASU campus in the library working for a while. we came home for lunch and it was like I hit a brick wall. The only things I can attribute it to are the fact that I worked my ass off the past week to 10 days in the office, and just crashed from that this morning, and or, lack of diet coke. Probably both.

On campus there were two things amusing to me, (remember it takes little to amuse me) the home made chalk sign on the sidewalk with arrow point the way to the Vagina Monologues  and the other was where my daughter took to this place encircled by some administrative offices were there was this "secret garden". Back tracing our steps to the entrance, someone had painted on the sidewalk, Secret Garden but then had painted arrows pointing away from it. Hum, maybe the directions for the Vagina Monologues were wrong also.

Anyway, I scrapped plans to go back to the library to work this afternoon and crashed on the oh so comfortable bed. I'm up and feeling better now, but I still need that diet coke!

Technorati Tags: Vacation,ASU

 

Food for the Imagination

 At the left is a maple flavored coffee drink that I indulged in while back  at a poetry reading/book signing event. I think maple has to be my favorite flavor.  I should have been born in New Hampshire or some other northeastern state.  I'd have my own maple tree tapped and would lie under it and let it drip into my mouth. Okay, it wouldn't do anything foe my diabetes, but it would sure improve my disposition.

I broke down yesterday and ordered a copy of Letters of Ted Hughes (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, edited by Christopher Reid.  Since I have an extensive collection of books on Hughes and Plath, it would only be fitting that I add this to my collection. There is however a larger reason to the purchase. I find the journals and correspondence of poets to be fascinating. I've managed to read all or most of several such works. Sexton, Lowell, Ginsberg Letters, and Plath's Letters Home as well as Journals. The Poets Notebook which has excerpts of the journals musings of some 26 poets. I always think know more about a poet and what goes on in there mind should enhance our appreciation for their work. Of course I'm not sure that I can prove anything in particular by reading and studying such writings, but it is interesting to allow one to draw broader conclusions at times based on the expanded knowledge of a poet that comes with reading their letters or journals. These conclusions may or may not have much validity, but the speculation feeds the creative imagination of one's own brain.  And oh how I love to feed the imagination.

Technorati Tags: Ted Hughes Letters,journals,correspondence,poets,imagination

The leaves & cold of fall

Yesterday afternoon I stopped by Boarders Books in northland to see local poet Rebecca Stallard read from her new book of poetry and and sign copies.  The book, And the Birds are Singing is available here.          

This morning I mowed the front lawn. The air was crisp and fallen leaves laced the lawn. Just a preview of more to come.

This time of year is a mixture of things I like and things I dislike. Usually about October I start feeling the effects of the shorter days and it manifests itself in the form of feeling melancholy, especially in the early hours after rising in the morning. I use a special lamp which has lessened to some degree the impact but the period October through say March can be rough. This is not to say I don't find enjoyment in fall and winter. I prefer the cooler temperatures to hot summer days. I love the multicolored landscapes that we have available to us in Missouri. 

After the end of the World Series I miss that baseball goes away. Football just doesn't have the same magic that baseball has.

It seems that fall is ripe for writing. I don't know if it is the stark changes that occur but there is something that seems transformative and this seems to feed the creative process. I seem to often get a boost in my writing output. I don't mean quantity so much as I do that I seem to be happy with more of what I write.

I've actually given thought to signing up for nawrinomo but I don't know if I can break myself away from poetry for a month to write [insert shudder here] fiction.

Technorati Tags: it's a poet's life,writing seasonal affective disorder,fall

Like they say, if you don't play you can't win.

Patting myself on the back for submitting work to a venue I've never tried before. More because I submitted than anything else. Last year I submitted a lot of work early in the year and had great success. Then there was a brick wall. as a result, this year I have been lax in sending material out. Not lax in writing, so I'm not feeling like I've been lazy or anything, just not so focused on the administrative side of things and more on the art itself. That is a good thing isn't it? I think so. Still a balance between the two would perhaps be more desirable.

Technorati Tags: It's a poet's life