Day 7 (my NaPoWriMo blog still held hostage)

In Your Head

Allowed into your imagination
I wandered, surveying foreign landscape
It was one of your shadow boxed thought
That informed my view of how you saw me.

There was a frightening simplicity to your organization.
Everyone you had ever met or hopped to catalogued
Into the Dewey Decimal System.
There I found your own self image scantily riveting.

Poetry News

Few news items:

• Book Slut interviews Galway Kinnell
• Poets Jayne Jaudon Ferrer and Terri McCord talk about the value and image of poetry today
• Raymond Danowski donated his poetry collection (what many scholars believe to be the most important collection of English-language poetry in the world) to Emory University

And this interesting quote from Wallace Stevens:

Most people read poetry listening for echoes because the echoes are familiar to them. They wade through it the way a boy wades through water, feeling with his toes for the bottom: The echoes are the bottom.

Primitive Instincts

Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts. ~Robinson Jeffers

Day 6 - Split

Split

Blue eyeliner
Lowered in sadness
Told just enough
To know he left
Again
The details
Were insignificant

Day 5 - My Death

My Death

My death was timeless.
It also was not anticipated
In the way one expects high humidity
On a hot summer afternoon
After a thunderstorm passed through.

Oh, I am sure some predicted it
Would come sooner later.
There are after all, those who believe
The Cubs will win the World Series this year.
Such people may be discounted
Either for their connection with the occult
Or because they have suffered concussions at some point.
Betting people would do well to stay clear of them.

The newspaper back in my little pea pod home town
Called my demise unfortunate
Due to the loss suffered by my insurance company.

Folks mostly went about their routine the day of my funeral
And the general store ran a special
On cigarettes and beer.
There are those who called me a good man
When they checked out.

Poetry Month Broadside

My second annual limited poetry broadside has arrived today and is available (as mentioned earlier) as long as they last. To request one, email me with name and address.

Happy Poetry Month!

Day 4 (my NaPoWriMo blog still held hostage)

The Act

A sacrificial smile
A few seconds worth
Of monitored misconception

I can be convincingly contrived
To the point of melodrama
Candy red and sugar dripping

My baseline convalescing
Beneath ornamentation
Awaiting the moment you leave

This two-faced act steps out on a tight rope
Several times a day it will balance and defy gravity
For your benefit alone
Without applause

Day 3 / Untitled

Sleep was a causality of morning
A most unholy beam of light through the window
Spotlight to my face—
Caught in the cross hairs

Of another morning of demands
Tethered to someone’s aspirations
That are at best a no deposit bottle to me



(note - blogger is being a major pain and has my site specifically for NaPoWriMo under review and I am therefor locked out of it. sigh...)

Day Two of NaPoWriMo

Rage

Opened, a red blossom of anger
Long held in a tight fisted bud;
Too long—

Maybe it was annoyance once.
Irritation came and settled it its belly
And churned with the callous lies

Than ate at me like fire ants.
Irritation became causality
Of the spectacle of “awe” over Baghdad.

Like remnants of lives
Severed, charred and strewn about
Irritation could not survive.

The fury with which our own
Came home in boxes
Became the rage in full bloom today.

You talked about political capital,
Suspended habeas corpus,
Mortgaged future generations.

The audacity of
Mission Accomplished

Some cool links

Day two of National Poetry Month / NaPoWriMo ~ thought I'd share a couple of good resources I've seen from blogs I read.

First off, there are some excellent poetry writing prompts furnished by Kelli at First Draft.

Then Ivy has some cool things and Poetry.org has 30 ideas to celebrate Poetry Month.

And a poetry thought offered in this quote: It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around things. ~Stephen Mallarme

Happy reading and writing!

2008 Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere

Almost forgot.... Nominations begin today for the 2008 Poet Laureate Of The Blogosphere. This will be the fourth year for the elections. There are some minimal qualifications - such as having been a poetry blogger for no less than one year as of March 1, 2008. Anyway, the nominations can be made at this site.

National Poetry Month

It's here! Now you have a legitimate reason to torture your friends and family with poetry for a whole month.

A couple of housekeeping notes to start the month off with....

• As previously acknowledged - I will be participating in NaPoWriMo (writing a poem a day all month long) and you will be able to see these here with each one added as the month progresses. Do understand these are one day wonders or perhaps blunders as the case may be and are not polished works.
• I will not be doing the annual poetry quotation email that I have offered for several years now.
• I will however for the second year be offering a Poetry Month broadside of one of my previously published poems that is on nice card stock and suitable for framing. These are available in a limited quantity for to those who request them, until they are all gone. There are only 100 printed. If you would like one, email me.

That's all for now. May everyone's month be touched in some positive way by poetry.

Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement. ~Christopher Fry

For Poetry Month - Why not take A Daily Dose of Poetry

Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie. ~Jean Cocteau

Baseball's Back

Today.... the World is All About Baseball!

Opening day for most teams.... My team of choice, The San Francisco Giants open on the road in LA against their nemeses the Dodgers. Some see baseball as a seven month diversion from life. I see it the same way I do poetry, a great reflection of life. Play Ball!!! Go Giants!!!

Good day for writing....

It's been cold, damp and overcast to the point of boredom with the outside so it's a good day to write. So far so good. Reserving judgement on what I've produced thus far but I'm happy to report that I have not had trouble starting or to keep going.

Yesterday, wife and I ran around doing some shopping and ate BBQ. Last night I watched the first Indy race of the season and worked on a word list in preparation for today. I'm going to take a bit of a break from the writing though to catch up on some chores, then come back to it.

Poetry Month Is Nearly Here!

Yes, I realize most of us who are poetry aficionados have a circle of friends and family who simply do not share the same sensual pleasures we derive from the act of writing and or reading of poetry. To those poor souls, poetry month seems like an eternity in hell. But isn't that the point of it all? Was poetry month not created with their discomfort in mind?

If poetry month is all about us... the ones for whom a line from Dickinson will bring a twinkle to their eyes, who do not cringe at metaphor or run from personification, and actually get an uplifted feeling reading Plath; then what pray tell is the point? Is that not preaching to the choir?

No, Poetry Month is for the unenlightened. Therefore, it is our responsibility to make the most of the 30 days of April to bring poetry to the masses. Look at it like you have some communicable decease you are just dying to share with the world. You must expose everyone!

Ideas for poetry month!

1. Insert short poems in note cards and stick them in your child's lunch box/bag before sending them off to school.
2. Change your voicemail greeting to a short poem.
3. Write a love poem to your spouse on the bathroom mirror with lipstick.... of if you are not that bold, tape it there on a sheet of paper.
4. Keep a number of short poems on cards in your pocket and hand them to friends you run into throughout the day.
5. Leave a poetry book in some public place to be read.
6. Get drunk and call old friends at 3:00 a.m. and read them poems. ( Just kidding, I couldn't resist adding this)
7. Insert poems on note cards with your bills before mailing them off.
8. In the memo on your check suggest a good poem to read. ( example: Read "If You Forget Me" by Pablo Neruda.
9. Add a short poem to your tag line or signature on your e-mail so everyone you communicate with gets that poem all month long.
10. Write a poem on your sidewalk with chalk.
11. Leave poems on note cards in books you return to the library.
12. Read a poem aloud at dinner time.
13. Post a favorite poem on the office bulletin board.
14. Send a poem on a postcard to someone you owe a letter to. (remember snail mail?)

Once poetry month is over, it is just possible that you may have started a pandemic. Probably not, but at least you tried.

Poet Laureate of the Blogisphere and other things...

Thanks to Jilly, I caught this note on the 2008 Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere. Click on the link to see details about nominations, etc. Last year I didn't catch it until nominations were over, but I did make it in time to vote. Previous winners:

Amy King, Ron Silliman, and Jilly Dybka.




On another note..... China Resists Human Rights Link to Olympics

By Sam Beattie Beijing - 27 March 2008

China hosts its first-ever Olympic Games, in just five months. In Beijing, people are working hard to clean up the city and to get ready to host the world's most prestigious sporting event. The city has undergone enormous changes in the seven-year build-up to the event, but human rights activists say the government has failed to live up to some Olympic promises. Sam Beattie reports. Full Story

Good, Bad and Ugly

Is it that time again? NaPoWriMo or National Poetry Writing Month is but days away. A time when those who participate in this ritual will pen a poem every day. When engaged in such practice, I can assure you that there will be some really bad material written. But just as practice makes perfect, the odds are that if you write thirty poems, there will be some keepers. At at the very least, some bits and pieces of verse that can be recycled into something more meaningful.

It's been my experience in the past tho find this practice a bit intimidating because you write for three or four days and look at what you have and it can be pretty unsettling if you are one who pushes yourself for perfection or as I tend to do, become that ugly critic of my own work. In spit of knowing at the onset that in most instances, for me to achieve a single poem I am happy with, I will besides the first draft, rewrite the thing many times over the course of weeks or months when I say I am writing a poem every day, I still want to feel that I've in fact written a poem that has some value.

I think for this purpose, I will establish another blog specifically for the NaPoWriMo poems. That way I can feel comfortable with the disclaimer that what is there, is both the good and the bad . Recognizing this is different from my normal writing process is important to me even if no one sees what I write. I will link the new site here for those who are brave enough to venture into these perhaps murky waters.

Poets Against The War Anthology

Last night was our bi-weekly meeting of K.C. Metro Verse - a local chapter of the Missouri State Poetry Society. I did not take much of my own to read, but chose to read three selections from Poets Against The War.

My selections were:

1. Of a Forgetful Sea by Kelli Russell Agodon
2. Freedom From Speech by Terry Tempest Williams
3. On A Photograph of a Severed Hand by Jim Shugrue

I was taken by the number of poets my own age who were anthologized in this book. I recall seeing a seventeen year old, s few 20's and 30 somethings, but it is amazing the number that are my age. Men and women who were part of the Vietnam generation. There are a lot of profoundly committed voices that experienced the tragedy of our misadventure in southeast Asia and continue to be guided by the wisdom they acquired through that experience. Unfortunately we were lead into Iraq by those who failed to learn from the mistakes made in the 1960's.

Nature

Nature

Light rains on stones
Moss hides in the northern shadows
A trickle of assembled wetness tears up
Rolling down the rocks of solitude
The air in our midst circulated
By Sunday morning church fans
We pause to applaud
And continue on