About Last Night

I want to give a shout out to Doug and Jalene Berger for the Third Friday Open Mics at Crossroads Coffee House in the Crossroads Arts District in Kansas City.

I read some of my own material last night, and as I like to do when I read out in public, I selected another poet and poem to introduce to the crowd. Last night I read Kelli Russell Agodon's poem Under The Covers We Find Jesus from her book, Letters From The Emily Dickinson Room.

Besides being owners of the coffee house, Doug and Jalene are a supporter of the Arts rotating artwork on their walls and of course supporting spoken word and poetry. I enjoy their coffee and I'm pretty picky about my coffee. They are located at 310 Southwest Blvd, Kansas City, Mo 64108

An Irish Blessing for You...

Sign of the Times

Love this sign... it has gotten a lot of laughs around the courthouse. I realize these are tough times but forcing your car to get a job to make ends meet is taking things to a new level.

This Friday Night - Spoken Word at Crossroads Coffee House

Reading at CROSSROADS COFFEE HOUSE

  OPEN MIC  7PM
    310 Southwest Blvd. K.C., MO 64108

Heard any good metaphors?

"A thousand naked fornicating couples with their moans and contortions are nothing compared to a good metaphor." ~ Charles Simic, The Gettysburg Review, Winter 1995

Confession Tuesday - Sick No More Edition

Dear Reader:

It’s Tuesday evening and I’m supposed to do some soul searching so let’s hurry to the confessional.

It’s been a week now since my last confession. A week in which some sense of normalcy has begun to return to my body. I confess that the concept of feeling good has become an enigma of sorts because I don’t think I’ve really fell well since before Thanksgiving. The most recent health issue was the acquisition of influenza and I believe we’ve knocked that out and I’m getting stronger daily.  A public service announcement at this point… I had a flu shot this fall and evidently there is a sizable failure rate with the most recent vaccine.  Also worth noting if you live in Missouri the CDC indicates the flu is widespread.  A week or so ago it was the only state in the US that was highlighted red – the highest level.

I think when you’ve been sick off and on for about 4 months you kind of lose that feistiness that tends to get you in trouble.  As a result I don’t have any really exciting vices to report.  Though during the work drive this week my wife noted I must be feeling better because I was a bit cranky.  I didn’t know I had to feel good to be cranky but maybe it all fits together in with being feisty.

And this week, another positive sign is I’m starting to feel like my writing mojo is coming back.  I’m convinced that creativity is one of the first casualties of sickness.  I confess that my writing was starting to feel like a self fulfilling prophecy of failure.

I confess that I’ve eaten a sinful amount of Black Walnut ice cream this past week.  But on a positive note, I’ve remained true to my sacrifice of Diet Coke for lent. Coke shares must be plummeting (good time to buy) but they will be back on the rise come Easter.  Actually, I’m thinking I will not be as big a Coke drinker after this. We’ll see.

Mag 108: Bobby Socks and Bare Knees

My memory of the neighbor girl
is burrowed in the back of my mind.
Tucked away all these years
this 7 year olds crush,
this awakening,
this curiosity,
maybe twice my age
definitely older

staked a claim on my thoughts
this afternoon—      why after all these years
do I recall the bobby socks and bare knees
how her flimsy dresses were forever
blowing in my psyche? 

How some cold mornings
her bare arms would grow goose bumps end to end.
I was hopelessly inquisitive about her;
she carried herself affable—  unlike any girls
my own age.  I didn’t even notice.

I knew nothing of pubescent girls at the time.
I only knew there was something different,
this one looked supple but sturdy
and even from a bicycle length
I could smell a difference.

Her father changed jobs
relocating to another area
that May.  I don’t recall
another girl for a long time.


Michael A. Wells

Magpie 108

Romanticizing the Paper

"Though the middle ground may eventually disappear - paperback fiction, for example - the ongoing rise of ebooks should actually encourage the making of beautiful physical books. Readers want the volumes they keep on their shelves to be as striking and as sensory as possible. And so, while most publishers are racing to keep up with the conquest of the screen, the true mavericks may well be people who are doing something very old-fashioned very well."  More

When reading the passage above I feel almost a romantic atmosphere illuminating in the words. It does cause me to wonder more about the future of books than perhaps any prognostication of the future or any pontification from the many already sold on electronics publications that I've read in the past couple of years about the future of books. Could there be a resonance in hard back books around the corner?  

I’ve made it pretty clear in past blog posts that I like my books with real pages.  I do have an e-reader on my phone and I have both a Kindle for PC and Nook for PC on my laptop.  I don’t use them a lot and I suppose one reason is that I don’t like to pay the price of a book for a digital file.  It’s a hang-up, yes.  I will admit it, but it remains a fact. One that I have had since day one of my introduction to e-books and it hasn’t eroded any that I can tell.

There are plenty of people that for one reason or another have trouble accepting e-books, I run across them routinely.  I suspect that at some point many of these hold outs, myself included may soften to e-books, but for many of us e-readers are not the novelty that they are for others.  I know this because while I’ve been easily drawn to many electronic gadgets this hasn’t happened where e-readers are concerned.

If and when I do gravitate more towards acceptance, I can tell you that I am likely to find the real novelty will be in that which still has paper pages to turn.  So will there become a cottage industry for those small presses that turn out books in smaller numbers in hardback?  Will the future choice be to order an e-book or a hardback?  Will most books be published as e-books and then after being out a while the really successful ones go to hardback, a sort of reverse of the traditional publishing paradigm?

Unless we read poetry

"Unless we read poetry, we"ll never have our hearts broken by language, which is an indispensable preliminary to a civilized life." ~Anatole Broyard - The New York Times

Confession Tuesday -

Dear Reader:

It’s that time again.  Time when I look all inward at myself and talk to you about what’s been going on.  So let’s shuffle ourselves into the confessional.

I confess that I’ve given up Diet Coke for lent and so far there have been no casualties.  I’ve actually been doing very well about it. Perhaps being off work sick for a week may have helped. I was certainly distracted where consumption of food and drink was concerned.  Did pretty good with water intake like a good little patient.

I had the flu… and this in spite of the fact that I received a flu shot in the fall. I confess that I was grumpy about that fact. Hey, I did my part!

I’m in the mood for St Patrick’s Day and corned beef and cabbage!  I confess that I am especially fond of corned beef and cabbage. Oh, and potato’s too. I love hose little Yukon Gold ones. I could eat corned beef anytime and honestly I would love to have it more often.  This time of year I usually buy two and throw the second in the freezer. Sometimes we tap into it the next week and other times we will no eat it till much later in the year.  Now I’m totally hungry! I guess that will do it for now. See you all next week when I share all my dirty little secrets that I don’t really have.

Please Do Me Right Now....

Could not resist this  Credit:

Meg: 107: What Phobia?

image by Sarolta Ban

He hides his nervousness behind a Mercurochrome mask

feels the grittiness of a public humiliation just the same

with no particular reason that he can articulate.

It's just the size of everything is so outlandish.

The rivers of mascara that flow like lava.

Mars and Jupiter staring him down.

What phobia should he choose

as he recoils from it all?

He has become the two legged atom

randomized and feeling underfoot

an ant fleeing as the real world trudges on.

Michael A. Wells

Magpie



Magpie 106: Canned Art

photo credit: Bob Adelman, 1965

Through the eye's prism

rows upon rows of Avant-Garde

a canned future 

handy in a missile crisis - 

it's all good- art saves!

Cut into it if you must.

Preserved for generations

to come - taste it - um good!

Michael A. Wells

Mag106



Writer's Anguish

Daniel Kalder writing in the Guardian takes on the matter of writers who self-censor in a fascinating piece that opened my eyes with a bit of history about many authors who have penned work that they subsequently destroyed rather then all publication or in some instances sought and failed to keep the material from seeing the light of day.

Examples of writers and their anguish over what might be published and in the instance of Nikolai Gogol one has to wonder if his decision to burn his work was not more anguish then he could take as he stopped eating and died.

I generally have though of self-censorship more in terms of having ideas or simply general topics I am too uncomfortable to write about. I know these can be sources of great anguish and maybe at times hamper a writer from perhaps moving their work from say one level to something more profound. Maybe it isn't so much a specific idea or topic that would make that extraordinary piece but just having something, anything holding back is like putting a stopper in a bottle.

Interesting article - read it here.

On Being a Poet

"Being a poet is like having an invisible partner. It isn't easy. But you can't live without it either. Talent is only 10 percent. The rest is obsession." ~ Selma Hill, Contemporary Women's Poetry, 2000

Foreign Friday

It's a sad thing when you are writing a post for your blog and you feel like a visitor to it. I've been away from here a week and I also feel like I've been away from the life in general for a week.  I've been sick and off work all week but should return on Monday after a followup doctor's appointment.

Things that somehow feel foreign to me....

• Eating.  I should lose a ton of weight but I know I probably won't.  I've had days where all I ate was a bowl of Cheerios. One day it was a bottle of Glucerna. Another it was simply two eggs. Last night I had a small stake portion and some corn [the corn was the best part] and my wife must have thought I was pathetic.  Part of it has been at time no appetite, but even when not my blood sugar numbers have been elevated substantially during this illness and that has caused me to be cautious about intake.
• Writing. I've done none other then attempting to make a journal entry which if I recall I left hanging in mid sentence.
• Poetry.  I'm separating Poetry from Writing here only to demonstrate the magnitude of impact. The couple of times I would think about writing poetry it seemed I became nauseous feeling. I'm not saying I've suddenly fallen out of love with poetry just that my whole cycle-of-life thing has been tremendously impacted.
• TV. I seem to be able to tolerate it only in smaller doses.
• Shaving. This is not unusual for me when I'm sick as I generally will not shave when I'm under the weather.
• Driving. It's been a few days now.

As I wrap this post up, I look outside and snow if falling crazyassed hard. Our grass was already greening and now this.

Friends

I did a poetry reading tonight at a Quaker House Church on a theme of war & peace.  Not a big crowd but a friendly bunch... no pun intended.

Besides reading some of my own work I introduced them to a poem by Carolyn Forche and talked a little about the subtlety in her work and how effective she is with witness poetry without sounding preachy.

After a reading dry spell, this makes my second reading in two weeks.

Mixed Bag - Wednesday

Ouch!  I realized today that I plum missed Confession Tuesday.  On the upside, I took time out of work during my lunchour to make Ash Wednesday Mass so maybe I can have special dispensation.... Please!

Received a rejection letter from Rattle today but I won a poetry book, Dreaming in Darkness Jessica Kristie. Anxious to to read this book. Always love to be exposed to new poetry. I get a real rush from it.

Magpie 105: Collision

image: epic mahoney

The future and history crash

in a flat lined hub of fiber optic nowhere.

The long gone party-lines,

core black telephones decried

 iconic -pink princes phones

that came to link transient families,

translucent friends, truncated business

associates and cordial customers

in a national dialogue.

Colorful language went silent—

we pause to reflect

we pause to listen to what has become

a chorus of tapping finger tips

chipping finger nails

but void of human voice

of human color.

Our mind is left to add warmth

and pictures to text

and try to find the humanity

in the middle of everywhere.

Michael A. Wells

Magpie 105

A few gems from Tom Leonard ‘100 Differences Between Poetry and Prose’

among my favorite:

·       poetry is the subliminal history of linguistic shape

·       poetry has four wheels, two wings and a pair of false teeth

·       whoever heard of war & peace having the line as a unit of semantic yield

·       the square root of poetry is an ever-evolving quark

·       poetry is all the juicy bits in the juiciest order

·       you can talk about prose without mentioning school