The impact of one's health on their writing may sound like a strange topic for a post, but feeling like crud for a couple of weeks now has fueled this thought. I'm not offering any profound evidence to support any theories associated with my thoughts, rather I am considering this aloud as I write today's post.
Of course, I imagine that people likely do not work their best at anything when under the weather. Generalizing, that is likely a safe assumption. While none are coming to my mind at this moment, I am sure there are examples of writers who have created some profound work on their death bed. I wonder if they might have done better were they at full strength and feeling quite fit at the time? More particularly, I have considered that a possibility exists that a poet, very sick... even dying could perhaps write from a "place" that he or she might not otherwise outside the realm of such illness, and perhaps provide something more profound as a result of their own "place" in the physical world of health.
Feeling as lousy as I have certainly has not produced anything more profound from me these past few weeks. It has seemed to add to an urgency to write, but that urgency has not resulted in any stronger will or drive to write. The physical body remains limited in energy and that level of efficiency seems to out power any mixture of mental and emotional capacity to stay with a poem or project for too long.
I have tried the denial thing.... where you pretend you are not sick as long as you possibly can. Going to work in spite of how I feel because you figure that if it all stacks up and you come back feeling better, the increased work load just makes you feel lousy all over again.
So right now, I want to feel good if not great. I also want the move ahead on several projects. Things that I believe are best served better by both physical and mental health (attitude) which I do not feel are immediately within my control. As a result, I resort to thinking about how health and writing might be impacted beyond the obvious quantity factor and more to the nature of quality. Hence, you get today's blog. Long on thoughts, short on answers.
Monday, May 09, 2005
Sunday, May 08, 2005
Eileen has such a way with words....
"Yeah, I thought, as I smiled at him before gliding graciously out the door. Like a constipated bowel movement."
Now there's a work of poetry ;)
Now there's a work of poetry ;)
Thursday, May 05, 2005
Check Out This Place
I saw an ad in Poets & Writers magazine for library hotel in New York so I had to check out the internet site. Kind of pricey - but hey, isn't everything in NY?
Check out the Poetry Garden. The Writer's Den. Or the Erotica Literature Room.
There are some specials. Check out this Suite.
An idea of price ranges........
Room Types :
Love Room w/terrace
$ 415
Junior Suite/king bed
$ 415
Deluxe/queen bed
$ 385
Petite/full bed
$ 315
Family Unit/2 rooms
$ 800
Ok, adding this to my list of things I'm NOT doing anytime soon.
Check out the Poetry Garden. The Writer's Den. Or the Erotica Literature Room.
There are some specials. Check out this Suite.
An idea of price ranges........
Room Types :
Love Room w/terrace
$ 415
Junior Suite/king bed
$ 415
Deluxe/queen bed
$ 385
Petite/full bed
$ 315
Family Unit/2 rooms
$ 800
Ok, adding this to my list of things I'm NOT doing anytime soon.
Kansas City Events For May
The following events represent a few of the May Poetry scene happenings in the Kansas City, Missouri Metro area.
May 6th - Riverfront Readings and The Writers Place
Host a reading by Elizabeth Dodd and Susan Rodgers at The Writers Place - 8:00 p.m. Suggested donations at the door at $2 for members, $3 for non-members and $1 for students.
Elizabeth Dodd is Professor of English, and Director of the Creative Writing Program at K-State in Manhattan, KS. She earned an M.F.A. and a Ph.D., both from Indiana University. She is the author of: Like Memory, Caverns and Archetypal Light (poems); The Veiled Mirror and the Woman Poet (criticism); and most recently Prospect: Journeys & Landscapes (nonfiction essays).
Susan Jackson Rodgers is an assistant professor teaching fiction writing at K-State in Manhattan, KS. Her short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in a variety of literary magazines including Nimrod, StoryQuarterly, Beloit Fiction Journal, Prairie Schooner, North American Review and Glimmer Train. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize Special Mention. Her story "Bodies" won the 2002 Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition. Her collection of stories, The Trouble With You Is, won the Mid-List First Series Award in Short Fiction and will be published in the fall of 2003.
May 10th - KC Metro Verse -chapter meeting 6:00pm
May 6th - Riverfront Readings and The Writers Place
Host a reading by Elizabeth Dodd and Susan Rodgers at The Writers Place - 8:00 p.m. Suggested donations at the door at $2 for members, $3 for non-members and $1 for students.
Elizabeth Dodd is Professor of English, and Director of the Creative Writing Program at K-State in Manhattan, KS. She earned an M.F.A. and a Ph.D., both from Indiana University. She is the author of: Like Memory, Caverns and Archetypal Light (poems); The Veiled Mirror and the Woman Poet (criticism); and most recently Prospect: Journeys & Landscapes (nonfiction essays).
Susan Jackson Rodgers is an assistant professor teaching fiction writing at K-State in Manhattan, KS. Her short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in a variety of literary magazines including Nimrod, StoryQuarterly, Beloit Fiction Journal, Prairie Schooner, North American Review and Glimmer Train. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize Special Mention. Her story "Bodies" won the 2002 Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition. Her collection of stories, The Trouble With You Is, won the Mid-List First Series Award in Short Fiction and will be published in the fall of 2003.
May 10th - KC Metro Verse -chapter meeting 6:00pm
May 19th - U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser will speak at Rockhurst College at 8:00pm
MAY 20 - The Writers Place, Michelle Boisseau and Katrina Vandenberg will read as part of TWP Reading Series starting at 7:30pm.
Michelle Boisseau was educated at Ohio University (BA, MA) and the University of Houston (PhD). Her books of poetry include, Trembling Air, University of Arkansas Press, 2003; Understory, winner of the Morse Prize, Northeastern University Press, 1996; and No Private Life, Vanderbilt, 1990. She is also the author of the popular textbook, Writing Poems (Longman), in its 6th printing. Her work has appeared in The Yale Review, Threepenny Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Poetry, and elsewhere. She's has received a National Endowment for the Arts poetry fellowship and two Poetry Society of America awards. She is Professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City where she is also associate editor of BkMk Press and coordinator of the Creative Writing program.
Katrina Vandenberg was raised in the Downriver area of Detroit, and her poems have appeared in American Scholar, The Iowa Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Poetry Northwest, and other magazines. She was a 1999-2000 Fulbright fellow to the Netherlands and a hemophilia-AIDS activist and is currently the visiting writer at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
May 22nd - Jonathan Holden - Kansas State Poet Laureate will be at the Writers Place at 2pm
May 23 - Writers Place Open Mic 8PM
May 24th KC Metro Verse - chapter Meeting 6:00pm
The Port Townsend Leader OnLine
Saturday, May 7 -Port Townsend, Washington there is a rally of marchers at Indian Island Park, where poets Sam Hamill, Gary Lemons, Zeke Green, Barbara Bowen, Sarah Zale and Rebecca Rafuse read their anti-war poetry.
Click heading for complete story.
Click heading for complete story.
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Alone With The Night
The wind touched my face,
With brisk fingertips it stroked the integument.
I shook with the chill of a starry night
Stuck in-between, the way seasons often do.
Spring tugging and summer pulling to no avail.
I felt it- half-frozen ice cube water
Within my veins, fluid enough to circulate
The chill evenly throughout my limbs,
To fight off any sensation of fraternity
That might come with the memory
Of another in human form or even a dog
That might have communicated by presence
A care or inclination to mutual necessity.
I am alone within the still of a night so big
That I shiver and telepathically give notice
Only to the stars beyond, and not another soul
Intercepts, knows of the journey or cares. No one.
There is an inexplicable beauty here, but wasted.
The rising spiral of a Hail Mary
Without a soul downfield.
With brisk fingertips it stroked the integument.
I shook with the chill of a starry night
Stuck in-between, the way seasons often do.
Spring tugging and summer pulling to no avail.
I felt it- half-frozen ice cube water
Within my veins, fluid enough to circulate
The chill evenly throughout my limbs,
To fight off any sensation of fraternity
That might come with the memory
Of another in human form or even a dog
That might have communicated by presence
A care or inclination to mutual necessity.
I am alone within the still of a night so big
That I shiver and telepathically give notice
Only to the stars beyond, and not another soul
Intercepts, knows of the journey or cares. No one.
There is an inexplicable beauty here, but wasted.
The rising spiral of a Hail Mary
Without a soul downfield.
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