The pleasure of it....

"Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may

be inadvisable to draw it out.... Perfect understanding

will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure."

*

~ A.E. Housman

My Skin Curls

Jilly has a new site address.... here.

I'd like to call your attention to this site: Voices In Wartime

Christine Hamm is just too damn good... and I think I've said that before, or at least something like it-- but damn, she is! Writing a Poem - check it out! When I read her stuff, I swear my skin curls.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

"The poetry of the earth is never dead." -John Keats

Happy St. Patrick's Day

~

And then there is a flash....

You can tear a poem apart to see what makes it tick.... You're back with the mystery of having been moved by words. The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps... so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in. ~Dylan Thomas, Poetic Manifesto, 1961

Come on Eileen, when you have THAT many peeps, you are going to be recognized when you come down out of the mountain!

Some day I may understand life. I don't really think today is going to be it though. Still, I am trying to be open to that possibility.

Slate Backlogged

"He Lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize." ~ Oscar Wilde


I noticed yesterday that Slate is not accepting submissions till December of this year. There must be some prolific writing and submitting going on these days. While I've not sent anything to Slate since maybe middle of last year, as long as I have paid any attention, I don't recall them restricting submissions or even having a reading window as such. This has me curious to know if other venues are experiencing a significant increase in manuscript submissions.

I got a note the other day that Victoria Chang's new book Circle is out. Having enjoyed her insights when she was blogging, I of course would like to read the work.

B. H. Fairchild is in town next week, and I have an opportunity to hear him read and do a workshop.

Catherine Meng has a great read --- If the Laundromat Doesn't Work Out I Will Gladly Offer My Bed. You gotta love the Walt Whitman line.

Any poets in the Kansas City area - are invited to check out the local chapter of the Missouri Poetry Society. Our blog site is here. We meet twice a month.

To quarrel with yourself....

Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry. ~W.B. Yeats

Conceptualization

Feel the grass blades
Between the toes of your mind
And how the shade holds the darkness tight
Within a room that is running out of a concept
We call space. I have little time to explain
Concepts - because I'm not sure when my time
Is up... and when it ends- all those concepts
In my mind are going to vaporize.