Michael Allyn Wells

Friday, February 10, 2006

FRIDAY BITS

This interesting piece is making the news today: Libby Testifies "Superiors" Ordered Leak of Classified Information.
A guide to the Winter Olympics which start today (here)
My wife and I were talking during the drive into work this morning... she was highly suspicious of Bush's details on failed LA terrorist plot. I am too. It is not that I don't think that it could have or could become a target. I just find it interesting that he is only now talking about it publicly. It just runs contrary to his normal personality. This man likes to take "bragging rights" so the news of it over three years later seems a bit contrived. Besides, what basis do we have to believe him?
Jack Abramoff on Bush's brush-off of their relationship, "The guy saw me in almost a dozen settings, and joked with me about a bunch of things, including details of my kids. Perhaps he has forgotten everything, who knows." (here)
"I feel somewhat abandoned..." The words of Michael Brown testifying before Congress on the government's response to Katrina. Wow, those are words I bet the people of the Gulf Coast area can identify with. (here)
"Poetry is an act of peace" wrote Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. "Peace goes into the making of a poet as flour goes into the making of bread." (here)
And this on Moon Poetry.
If you haven't already joined this discussion on the $ value of poetry do so [see yesterday's post]

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Here and There

Just to note a few geographical locations represented by Stickpoet visitors lately.....

Sydney, Australia
Montreal, Canada
Kalamazoo, Michigan
Burgas, Bulgaria
Joliet, Illinois
Chula Vista, California
Brighton, United Kingdom
Wadesboro, North Carolina
Silver Springs, Maryland
Bonn, Germany
Vadodara, India
Shawnee Mission, Kansas
Screwsbury, United Kingdom
Mansfield, Missouri
San Francisco, California
Wichita, Kansas

Nice broad mix of people. Stickpoet thanks you all for stopping by and the many other locations I did not name. We truly have an international group of readers dropping in.

February is being less kind to us than January was. It got down into the teens last night. Just a week ago I noticed we had Tulip bulbs coming up already - this can't be good.

I suppose all the warm weather we have been having has only intensified my lust for baseball season. I have actually paid far less attention to off-season deals this year than normal. I'm not sure why, it isn't for any loss of interest in the game.

Baseball and poetry have a lot in common. There is this saying in baseball that the season is too long to let the win get you too high or the loses take you too low. I think the same advise is good for writers, especially poets. You can easily ride the crest of a wave with a success one day and find yourself swallowed by the surf the next. As a result, it's best to try to stay on a more even keel with you emotions as they relate to your work. Besides, what didn't work last week can become the cornerstone for something different this week. That is just the way it seems to work.

Turning colder should put me in the mood for the Winter Olympics. The winter games are far more interesting to me than the summer games. The sking and figure skating are my favorites. I love the alpine jumps. It just looks so utterly awesome when they are mid-air and leaning way forward. I remember many years ago at one of the Winter Games, perhaps Lake Placid, there was a guy who represented England that they dubbed "Eddie the Eagle" that came to the Olympics as a novice. It was such a trip to watch him. I think I and a million other men must have been living vicariously through him on every attempt.

I was thinking this morning about the relationship between poetry and other things in terms of a scale of importance. I'm guessing most put it pretty low. I'm not speaking specifically in terms of education, but let's take that as an example. You are going to budget for your overall curriculum. I'm going to give you $100 to represent that portion that is the total education budget. (I know it is low, but play along with me. Remember Bush is president and we are spending $8 billion a month on Iraq so we don't have much to spend.)

So we have to fund the following with our $100:

Math department
English Department (reading, grammar, language usage)
Social Studies - History / Civics / Contemporary Issues, etc.
Physical Education (non- sports team)
Poetry
Music
Art ( painting, Photography, Sculpture, etc)
High School Sports (team and individual sports program / after school. Football, baseball, basketball, track, tennis, golf, swimming, etc)
Foreign Language
Shop / Home making, etc.

There you have what needs to be funded. I'd like to hear from some of you how you'd divide up your $100 budget and use your best argument to make your case - or none at all if you just want to do the math and let it stand on the merit of your priority itself.

Go to it - this should be interesting.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Poet Lineage

I was thinking the other night of sketching out a "family tree" of sorts of poets influence. Perhaps it would look more like a corporate flow chart. The idea would be to start connecting major poets by influence. I imagine this is not at all an original idea and I am sure somewhere, someone else has undertaken such a project. None the less, embarking on this could be quite educational.

I've read several biographical accounts of Sylvia Plath over the past few years and I am reading yet another one presently. It is interesting to see some of the long and deep lineage of close friendships and influences that even span generations. In the case of Plath, there is even a significant American-Euro connection of poets.

Certainly such connections bring with them at times some influence upon the individual work of a writer. Just as what we read (since for the most part, we read what we like) tends to give us some influence that creeps into our work at times.

Tag: Poetry