Wet & Cold - Thankfully no snow...

A cold Saturday after a night of rain that was expected to turn to an April snow. Fortunately, no snow.

I share this quote today....

"Art is anything people do with distinction." ~ Louis Dudek

The right state of mind....

I've heard so much from poets about what they write with, where they write or time time of day they prefer for their task. It seems there are any number of ways to approach writing poetry and no single formula is a guarantee success for everyone. But I have discovered a T.S. Eliot quote that suggests how one's mind is best equipped for the enterprise. Eilot says, “When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experiences.”

What I am hearing from Eliot sounds like a process of ordering dissimilar experiences or closing them together in some sort of organized way. Melding them on a page. This of course could account for the difficulty many have with poetry, if such a thought process were to seem particularly foreign.

I recall an evening I was alone at home and set down with a pen and my journal and started to write - equating how still the night was and how it wrapped itself around the quite of the house and I felt almost a third wheel to this union. And soon I was writing how I wished you were home and I was the night...

This bit of writing came together in unusual ease. Looking back I can see the joining of dissimilar experiences and the way this developed into a short poem that I have been told by many that they especially like. Yet, it came together in very short order and without the customary multipal rewrites. Perhaps it worked so well because Eliot is on to something.

Write Now Writer's Conference

The writer’s conference,

Write Now!

In the Kansas City Area

Sponsored by WriterHouse and Park University

features published authors who talk about their writing process, how they got published, and provide other useful information to writers; one or more of these authors will read from his/her latest book or collection.

Participants also attend workshop sessions where they create new work or a live scene for on-going work.

The upcoming conference, Write Now!, will feature speakers, workshops, and resource people emphasizing getting writing on the page, identifying your market, and getting published ...everyone who attends will write!

Mark April 27-28 on your calendar! Write Now! Park University Campus.

Registration

A few searches that must have disappointed...

I noted from my stat service that the following searches brought people to my site:

• super hero sex
• super hero nude pose
• super hero other personality

I suppose these will not likely be repeat visitors.

My quote for today is from Emily Dickinson - "Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes."

Charles Bernstine takes a look at National Poetry Month. (here) Is it too one dimensional? As much as I believe NPM is a significant vehicle for promoting our art, I have to concur that it focuses on mainstream poetry and this reflects poorly on the art of poetry as a whole.

They're Here

My Poetry Month Broadsides have arrived.
100 of them are available while they last. If you would like one, email me with your name and address. Each one is numbered and signed.
The poem is one I wrote some time back titled, Give Me Some Everyday Religion and it has an epigraph from Anne Sexton.

Poetry is...

"Poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible." ~ C.S. Lewis

I fell off the NaPoWriMo Wagon

"Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo." ~ Don Marquis


OK, I will fess up. I fell off the NaPoWriMo wagon this weekend. And now that I've said so, I feel way better. It is not that I haven't written, but rather that what I have written has been all over the map and is not even acceptable as a draft. But things will get better.