Hungry Baby

The hungry baby pictured to the right is a baby robin nesting upon the light fixture between our two garage doors. I've been watching the mother for over a week now but this us the first time I've seen the baby. Mom has been especially tolerant of our coming and going in the car and other movement out front - though she draws the line with the garage doors themselves.

It seems we've had a bumper crop of birds this spring. Wrens, sparrows, robins, blackbirds.  Over the winter months there were both cardinals and blue jays. I'm fascinated with birds.  While I've used them on occasion in poems I've written, I don't recall going overboard with them in my writing or particularly writing specifically about them other the the geese that frequent our neighborhood during two periods each year.

It's a warn sunny day today, I have the day off work due to the birthday of Harry S Truman. I've been tackling a number of things today which fits right along with Kelli Agodon's post today. I loved it when Kelli fields questions from her readers. This post is titled: How DO You Get So Much Done?
Check it out!

Anyway, I've got more stuff to do, just checking in for now. Likely will post again much later.

Another First Friday Opportunity - Synesthesia - Poetry and Painting Exhibit Tomorrow Night

In case you missed it last month - or just want to take it in again, tomorrow is First Friday in the crossroads art district and Jennifer Rivera's Exhibition titled Synesthesia is open at Apex Art Space -  1819 Wyandotte - Kansas City, Missouri  from 6 - 9 PM. Synesthesia combines the art of poetry and painting. Jennifer has 37 paintings on display along with the poetry which inspired her creation. Two of my poems and her paintings are among them.  Music - Painting - Poetry all make for a fun night.  Hope to see you there!

A Rilke Moment

He reproduced himself with so much humble objectivity, with the unquestioning, matter of fact interest of a dog who sees himself in a mirror and thinks: there's another dog.  ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Confession Tuesday - My Cheese edition

It’s been one office move (my wife’s), lots of road construction and an end to National Poetry Month since my last confession.

Dear Reader:

Someone has moved my cheese. There was a book (author’s name escapes me) that came out in the 90’s or maybe it was even the 80’s titled Who Moved My Cheese and it dealt with how people handle change or disruption.

During this past week my wife’s office relocated. The new location is actually closer to my own office and my initial thoughts were this is a good thing. But even changes that are good can sometimes be stressful or disrupt the normal order of things. Some people do better than others with such changes. I confess that I am not one of them. There may be a lot of disorder in my life but it’s my disorder and I am accustomed to it.

The biggest issue with the move really has more to do with orange barrels then anything else. I don’t know about other states but in Missouri orange barrels and road construction are synonymous. Rather then driving in towards town, exiting before we hit downtown and dropping my wife and the proceeding through city streets I’ve driven for years it means we take the highway all the way into downtown. This involves portions of highway that are down to two lanes. It’s slower and sometime akin to a highway parking lot. I confess that right now I see a long summer of Interstate-70 delays.

This last week has also seen a disruption in my writing. Actually two weeks now, I really need to discipline myself better. I feel right now I’m teetering on the verge of being unbalanced and falling. I confess this and my cheese being moved has gotten to me.

Magpie Tales - 64 Poem: Mother

Mountains I remember.
The rocky earth
not that distant
from our splintered cabin
but there is a dearth
of mother in my memories.

I'm told as a baby
I was held a fixture
in her arms, took from her
breast and was lavished
with attention.


A hushed woman
but one to hold
her place
in the rustic life
she was given
until she vanished
from all but the faint
recall of people.

2011 @ Michael A. Wells

Magpie Tales 64

**sigh**

It has occurred to me that I have a growing number of early drafts in journal and saved in various places that I need to get organized better so that I can actually go to them to work on them.

For a while I was really good about organizing these but it's gotten out of hand.

Anne Sexton from Beyond - Part Two in my Dead Poet Mentor Series

This week I've continued to be in communication with my dead poet mentor. Our communication has taken on several forms. The most common has been to speak to me through her poems. Let me explain what this has looked like. As I've read through various of Sexton's works this week some have been worthwhile reads but have not  elicited any remarkable internal reactions. On other occasions however, I've been prompted to consider fresh ideas on which to draw from in writing. I'm not talking about writing on the same subject as the poem in question, but rather drawing upon an image I'm finding within her words or seeing something that has taken me back to some experience of my own from the past that I'm seeing - unfold in some freshly developing language that I believe will carry over at some point into my writing.

Another way that Anne has been communicating with me is through her letters. Anne Sexton, like many poets of this same period was a prolific letter writer.  It's pretty easy to get inside Anne's head in these writings. I say this because these letters leave her quite vulnerable to anyone who would read them.  I've spent a good deal of time and energy studying Sylvia Plath and there is a stark difference between Sexton's letters and those in Plath's published, "Letters Home."

If one compares Sylvia's "Letters Home" and her Journals side-by-side, it becomes clear that what Sylvia was saying to her mother and what she was journaling  were often quite different. If one did not know any better you might even conclude these were not written by the same person.  Plath were out of her way to paint a picture for her mother's benefit that was about controlling the message. Her journals seem on the contrary to be a much more honest assessment of the authentic Plath.  This too is how Anne appears in her letters, authentic to a fault.  I'll have more to say about Anne's letters at a later time, but the point I am making now is they are quite revealing.

The last aspect of Anne's communication is through biographical material.  While Biographers may sometimes extrapolate on certain facts to reach differing conclusions, we can come to learns some things about a person that seem to be indisputable. When we learn some important truths about a person's life - it can help us to understand how these thing come to inform that person's writing.

So you have a bit of the "how" part of of my mentoring under a dead poet. Later in this series I'll talk more in depth about what Anne has actually been conveying to me.

 Part One - My Selection