Confession Tuesday

Dear Reader-

It's been 6 says since my "late" non-confession confession. 

In the past week it has occurred to me that I've done very little for the sake of National Poetry Month this year.  Normally I do a very nicely printed - special edition - numbered broadside. I elected not to do it this year, or my budget sort of made that decision for me.  I decided not to do a-poem-a day either. I confess that I'm not especially disappointed on the latter but I do regret I don't have the broadsides to distribute.

I've never been a big fan of the hiaku.  I've written a few and occasionally I hear one that I like but I'm just not a big fan for the from. A poetry friend recently gave me a book entirely of baseball hiaku.  I confess that I've been enjoying these bits that seem to roll of the page like a seeing eye single that slips through the infield for a hit.  Golden little gems.

I had another rejection letter today and I confess I should be busy sending out more work tonight but I'm tired and maybe tomorrow night.  Definately tomorrow night.

That's it for this week. A little boring perhaps - but hey, I'm on time!

Have a graet week!  

Monday Morning Disclaimer

I did a bit of a makeover on Stickpoet this weekend... I'm contemplating a few other changes but they should be minimal. I hope the background is agreeable to readers. While I liked my old color scheme some had indicated the background art made it difficult to read.

My "Dead Poet Mentor" series which was to have started over the weekend has been delayed in part to get the Terresa Wellborn Interview up and to make the aesthetic changes to the blog site. Look for the Series to start on Wednesday.

Double Excitement

It's always exciting to have one of your pieces of work appear in a venue that you've never apeared in before.  It's double exciting if that Journal is Rose and Thorn! 

The Spring Issue is out and I have a poem titled House Arrest that is appearing in it.  Check out the Spring Issue by clicking here!

Today I'm in two places at once...

A Thanks to Terresa Wellborn at The Chocolate Chip Waffle for featuring me today as her visiting poet.

Terresa will actually be featured here soon as we have been working on an interview. She is an incredible writer and a source of great creative inspiration.  I often go to her site whenever I stymied in front of a page just to recall how potent we can be with words when we open ourselves up and not self censor.

WWAD?

"Don't bite till you know if it's bread or stone." ~ Anne Sexton

What Would Anne Do?  -  Starting this weekend I will begin writing on my encounters with the dead poet Anne Sexton. I'm not having a seance, or toying with an Ouija board. It's nothing quite that dramatic.  But sometime back I was urged to select a dead poet mentor and Anne Sexton was the choice.  This weekend learn why I chose Anne and what I'm doing to figure out how she can help me with my poetry as I star a series of posts on What Would Anne Do?

Confession Tuesday and spending time with my dead poet mentor

I was struck today by the realization that I missed Confession Tuesday.  Not struck by  the realization - like oh yeah... I meant to do that and forgot. No I realized very late today that on man it wasn't even on my my radar! As such, I'm not even going to stumble through a late one because I really haven't thought about the past week that much. In fact if I was going to confess anything it would be that I've been living in the present so much this week that I can't really think back or ahead that much. So I guess I just confessed and I wasn't going to.

I have spent some time the past few days with my dead poet mentor. I'll have more to say about this over the weekend. So stay tuned if you want to know more about my relationship with a dead poet.

Please...

Tell me again why they don't just know to show up?

Laps around the track and Internet - or What you might have missed

With Barry aboard, I set out for the track this morning.  The weather was springlike and forecasts for a high in the 90's today are certainly believable.


We did two miles around the quarter mile loop. For Barry's little legs it must have seemed like ten.  Over night showers left standing puddles amid the grassy areas.  The wooded area seemed alive with fowl. That I could identify - both male and female robins and a male cardinal. There were many others that I was uncertain about but it was soothing to hear the chirping and feel the wind on my face. I of course will likely pay later for sinus allergies.


No breakfast before I left.  Came home and made one lonely waffle and had sugar-free Log Cabin syrup atop it.


Before I settle in for a bit of Saturday writing, I have a few items from around the Internet this week worth mentioning.  It seems to have been an especially good week in terms of blog content for many of the blogs I read routinely.  A few items I'd like to direct readers to in the event you've overlooked or otherwise missed:

• After the Artist's Way - Portrait of a Sometimes Poet - Bird Flight Studied and Simulated  I found this video fascinating!
• Advise to Young Writers - an interview with Susan Rich for The Writers Connection. Like her take on dead poet mentors.
• Jeannine Hall Gailey's Things I'd Wish I'd Known When I Was a Younger Writer.  I would add to her list, I wish I had started writing at a younger age!
• An earlier voice of Kelli Russell Agodon at Mediterranean Poetry
• Red Shoes by Terresea Wellborn.   Love this poem!
• Global Words For Change - Diane Lockward
• Bringing a little research to your poetry - Kelli Russell Agodon

Trump: I have 'real doubts' that Obama was born in the US

Guess What:   I have real doubts that Trump's hair is his birth hair.

A poem showcases itself

A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else.  A poem points to nothing but itself. - E. M. Forster

Confession Tuesday

Dear Reader: It’s been one 90 degree day, one fabulous First Friday Art exhibit, one front lawn mowed (already) and gas over three and a half bucks since my last confession.

The weather has been typical Missouri. Cold one day and hot the next and you guessed it, cold again. Mark Twain used to say if you don’t like the weather in Missouri then stick around, it will change. I confess I like the concept of changing of seasons but I really like weather that is between upper sixties to mid-seventies. This schizophrenic a/c one day and heat the next is not my favorite thing.

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I confess that I was surprised how many of my friends came out to see the Jennifer Rivera Synesthesia Exhibition at the Apex Art Space on Friday. I confess that I was completely overwhelmed that my son purchased one of the two paintings that Jennifer did in response to poetry I had written. I really enjoyed seeing the art work and could easily become a First Friday Addict.

-0-

My Giants have dropped three games of a four game series to the Dodgers – winning only one game – 10 to 0 and I confess that I am disappointed but not freaking out. The beauty of baseball is that it’s a long season and you can’t let successes get you too high or losses too low. A new series starts tonight! 

-0-

My fantasy baseball team is at that stage that I am obsessing about it. I readily confess that I am aware of this – and it usually starts out that way until things shake out a bit and then I can just let it ride and do my best to manage it well.

-0-

It seems like I had something else on my mind earlier for I confess it has escaped me for the time being so I guess this confession has sputtered to its conclusion. Till next week, be safe – be happy!

Picture Perfect Night

When I left work on Friday I was greeted by a picture perfect spring afternoon. The clouds were large and surreal in the blight blue sky - against the backdrop of the the downtown skyline they looked as though they were from a Norman Rockwell painting.


I met up with other family members and headed to the Crossroads Arts District for First Friday. For those outside the metropolitan area, in Kansas City on First Friday people sort of caravan through the various different gallery showings throughout the area.


While I would love to have spent the night checking out other places as well, I was glued to the Apex Art Space where abstract artist Jennifer Rivera had 37 pieces of art that were created in response to various poems chosen by her to work with.  Two poems I had written were among those that were used to prompt her work.


The crowd was especially pulled into to Jennifer's work.  At almost any moment and any direction you could find multiple groupings of onlookers engaged in conversation over the canvasses and poems before them.  Jennifer reports that over 1200 people came through the Gallery and I have no doubt. The stream of traffic was constant.


I'm very indebted to the many of my own friends and family who came to see the work and spending time chatting with each was important to me. I do plan to make a more leisurely look at the exhibit  soon as I want to give each the same kind of attention I would normally afford a new poem I am reading.

The two that were connected to my own poems both indulged my mind in ways that was particularly drawn to.  The smaller of the two was titled titled Anchored and the texture and tone created a very earthy atmosphere that was easy to get lost in.  A central portion of the picture almost had a hologram feel to it.  In the larger painting  I was drawn to the feeling of dissonance that seemed to emulate from it. I like this because in spite of a very peaceful aspect of the poem, there really is an unresolved aspect of it and I feel this captured within this painting.

There were many pictures I really loved from their visual appeal but like I said, I really want to walk through and take in each one with the poems as well.

To the left - Dangling  which was painted in response to my poem Dangling Thoughts.














Below -  Anchored  - in response to my poem titled Dream - Part Two.                     Jennifer and I below right.
                                                                                       

I hope to get some better shots to post, but these are what I have for now.

Oh, and least I forget - great music by Karim Memi & Beau Bledsoe!

Synesthesia - Poetry and Painting Exhibit Tonight

Abstract artist JENNIFER RIVERA will be showing work starting at tonight's opening at the Apex Art Space 1819 Wyandotte - Kansas City, Missouri.   The exhibition will feature poetry inspired painting  - some 30 works will be on display along with the poetry.

An artist reception from 6-9 pm and you are welcome to view the works and enjoy the music of Karim Memi & Beau Bledsoe from 6:30-8:30.

Two of my own poetry works will be among the selected works that Jennifer used to inspire her paintings.

Hope to see you there!

A Tolstoy Moment

One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature

shall not be broken. ~ Leo Tolstoy

True Confession

I confess that I missed Confession Tuesday as I was doing Taxes.

On Spring

Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night. ~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke

Journal Bits 2-13-11 to 3-26-11

• Sunday 2-13-11:  Reasing in Ariel's Gift there were a couple of things [that] caught my attention. One is the difference between the ordering of the poems in the origional Plath manuscript and they way they first appeared in print. The Plath order of the poems begins with Morning Song and ends with Wintering. This makes the first and the last words of the manuscript love and spring.  For all the edginess of Plath's more notorious poetry, this ordering of the manuscript  has a positive upward movement that is not generally associated with these poems the way they were ordered in its first publication.
• Saturday 2-20-11: Yesterday I has a rejection letter Rattle.
• Wednesday 2-23-11: The envelope is closed / to outside influences / sealed like the tamper proofing / of nuclear material / in an unreliable foreign nation
• Monday 2-28-11: There across my lap covering / my left hand is an RPT25 / I've come to view it as and extension / of my soul.  Feeling its leather / smelling the earthy sent / swell in my nostrils / invites memories of games played / of my son throwing heat...  my daughter who was more apt to toss lazy flys for me / to camp under like falling starts.
• Monday 3-7-11: consider - metaphor is for things you can't say... are your images ornamental or do they have broader vision?  "Poems are not read, they are reread." Terrance Hayes  [source for all this was Terrance Hayes Master Class]
• Friday 3-11-11:  His God had volume / his God embodied totality / fundamentally his God / was the word in all its plurality / all that is named and all / that remains to name / his God was living, growing / his God was language
• Sunday 3-20-11: "Each time of life has its own kind of love." ~ Leo Tolstoy
• Friday 3-25-11:  "The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?" Pablo Picasso
• Saturday 3-26-11: It's cold - I mean Burr Cold outside... I paid $3.44 for gas today - my God this is insane.
• Saturday 3-26-11: Darkness follows / the headlights eat / white hash marks.... 

* unless otherwise attributed to someone else in quotes - these are from my own writing.   2011 ©  Michael  A. Wells – all rights reserved

A Tolstoy Moment

Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Why?

There were several things that I had running through my mind today that I thought when I finally got to this page I might write about but along the way a read a blog post that I on occasion gravitate to.  Upon doing so, I was reminded that this was the anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero 31 years ago. Thirty-one years? It seems like in many respects it was only yesterday.  This takes us back to what many like to think of as Morning in America a phrase coined by Ronald Reagan.  If you are one who thinks this was a simpler time, remember the turbulence in Central America. Remember Reagan Administration selling arms to Iran and the proceeds from covert arms sales to fund the Contras in Nicaragua in blatant violation of an act of Congress. Yes, and all you hear today is praise for Ronald Reagan, and Republicans push and shove each other out of the way in their quest to be the quintessential Reagan Republican. But I digress.

In her blog post Kristin Berkey-Abbott said she could think of "few other people who lived during the second half of the 20the century who more deserve sainthood" then Archbishop Romero. She argues that Romero, like Jesus must have known what wrath he was bringing down upon himself, but he did not back down. Until the end of his life, he called upon us to reform our earthly systems, systems that enrich a few on the backs of the many. Romero and Christ both show us that the forces of empire do not take kindly to being criticized.  The the death squads that roamed the country, the social-economic inequity, the human rights abuses by the government and the murder of a personal friend who dared to intercede on behalf of these issues for the people were too big a burden to shrug off and Archbishop Romero would not be the quiet complacent caretaker of the Church that the Vatican wanted him to be.  The result was essentially the same as his murdered friend. The Archbishop was gunned down as he celebrated Mass.

I think of President Obama's trip to South America and how many divides remain between the America's to this day. I think of the uprisings throughout the Middle East and the clamoring for democracy by those who know so little of it, yet do know the pain of repressive rule.  I think of people in this country who pray to God and find fault in everyone else. With all the problems in many countries, we who have so much seem to have a way of looking past the plank stuck in our own eyes and are so certain everyone else must see things as we do. 

If our theology is not a liberation theology, then why was Christ so given to the blind, the poor, the sick, the weary?  Why was he so angered by the money interests in the temple? Why did he love those who are often the least loved among us?  Why?  And why do we not?

Just wanted to point out...

I have a poem published in the new edition of RIGHT HAND POINTING Issue 40 "Harsh Mathmatics"


The Accountant