Good day for writing....

It's been cold, damp and overcast to the point of boredom with the outside so it's a good day to write. So far so good. Reserving judgement on what I've produced thus far but I'm happy to report that I have not had trouble starting or to keep going.

Yesterday, wife and I ran around doing some shopping and ate BBQ. Last night I watched the first Indy race of the season and worked on a word list in preparation for today. I'm going to take a bit of a break from the writing though to catch up on some chores, then come back to it.

Poetry Month Is Nearly Here!

Yes, I realize most of us who are poetry aficionados have a circle of friends and family who simply do not share the same sensual pleasures we derive from the act of writing and or reading of poetry. To those poor souls, poetry month seems like an eternity in hell. But isn't that the point of it all? Was poetry month not created with their discomfort in mind?

If poetry month is all about us... the ones for whom a line from Dickinson will bring a twinkle to their eyes, who do not cringe at metaphor or run from personification, and actually get an uplifted feeling reading Plath; then what pray tell is the point? Is that not preaching to the choir?

No, Poetry Month is for the unenlightened. Therefore, it is our responsibility to make the most of the 30 days of April to bring poetry to the masses. Look at it like you have some communicable decease you are just dying to share with the world. You must expose everyone!

Ideas for poetry month!

1. Insert short poems in note cards and stick them in your child's lunch box/bag before sending them off to school.
2. Change your voicemail greeting to a short poem.
3. Write a love poem to your spouse on the bathroom mirror with lipstick.... of if you are not that bold, tape it there on a sheet of paper.
4. Keep a number of short poems on cards in your pocket and hand them to friends you run into throughout the day.
5. Leave a poetry book in some public place to be read.
6. Get drunk and call old friends at 3:00 a.m. and read them poems. ( Just kidding, I couldn't resist adding this)
7. Insert poems on note cards with your bills before mailing them off.
8. In the memo on your check suggest a good poem to read. ( example: Read "If You Forget Me" by Pablo Neruda.
9. Add a short poem to your tag line or signature on your e-mail so everyone you communicate with gets that poem all month long.
10. Write a poem on your sidewalk with chalk.
11. Leave poems on note cards in books you return to the library.
12. Read a poem aloud at dinner time.
13. Post a favorite poem on the office bulletin board.
14. Send a poem on a postcard to someone you owe a letter to. (remember snail mail?)

Once poetry month is over, it is just possible that you may have started a pandemic. Probably not, but at least you tried.

Poet Laureate of the Blogisphere and other things...

Thanks to Jilly, I caught this note on the 2008 Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere. Click on the link to see details about nominations, etc. Last year I didn't catch it until nominations were over, but I did make it in time to vote. Previous winners:

Amy King, Ron Silliman, and Jilly Dybka.




On another note..... China Resists Human Rights Link to Olympics

By Sam Beattie Beijing - 27 March 2008

China hosts its first-ever Olympic Games, in just five months. In Beijing, people are working hard to clean up the city and to get ready to host the world's most prestigious sporting event. The city has undergone enormous changes in the seven-year build-up to the event, but human rights activists say the government has failed to live up to some Olympic promises. Sam Beattie reports. Full Story

Good, Bad and Ugly

Is it that time again? NaPoWriMo or National Poetry Writing Month is but days away. A time when those who participate in this ritual will pen a poem every day. When engaged in such practice, I can assure you that there will be some really bad material written. But just as practice makes perfect, the odds are that if you write thirty poems, there will be some keepers. At at the very least, some bits and pieces of verse that can be recycled into something more meaningful.

It's been my experience in the past tho find this practice a bit intimidating because you write for three or four days and look at what you have and it can be pretty unsettling if you are one who pushes yourself for perfection or as I tend to do, become that ugly critic of my own work. In spit of knowing at the onset that in most instances, for me to achieve a single poem I am happy with, I will besides the first draft, rewrite the thing many times over the course of weeks or months when I say I am writing a poem every day, I still want to feel that I've in fact written a poem that has some value.

I think for this purpose, I will establish another blog specifically for the NaPoWriMo poems. That way I can feel comfortable with the disclaimer that what is there, is both the good and the bad . Recognizing this is different from my normal writing process is important to me even if no one sees what I write. I will link the new site here for those who are brave enough to venture into these perhaps murky waters.

Poets Against The War Anthology

Last night was our bi-weekly meeting of K.C. Metro Verse - a local chapter of the Missouri State Poetry Society. I did not take much of my own to read, but chose to read three selections from Poets Against The War.

My selections were:

1. Of a Forgetful Sea by Kelli Russell Agodon
2. Freedom From Speech by Terry Tempest Williams
3. On A Photograph of a Severed Hand by Jim Shugrue

I was taken by the number of poets my own age who were anthologized in this book. I recall seeing a seventeen year old, s few 20's and 30 somethings, but it is amazing the number that are my age. Men and women who were part of the Vietnam generation. There are a lot of profoundly committed voices that experienced the tragedy of our misadventure in southeast Asia and continue to be guided by the wisdom they acquired through that experience. Unfortunately we were lead into Iraq by those who failed to learn from the mistakes made in the 1960's.

Nature

Nature

Light rains on stones
Moss hides in the northern shadows
A trickle of assembled wetness tears up
Rolling down the rocks of solitude
The air in our midst circulated
By Sunday morning church fans
We pause to applaud
And continue on

Awakening

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

~Carl Jung

When the name Naomi Shihab Nye comes up at one of the meetings of our local chapter of the Missouri Poetry Society, eyes around the room generally light up. In fact there is quite possibly no other living poet who invokes such universal positive response. Oh we all have our favorites and what I like, another may not be so fond of. I think most of us have at one time or another seen Ney in person and the gentle qualities of this woman are remarkably contagious.

Ney is a person who is not only at peace with herself, she is at peace with the world. She describes herself as a wandering poet and she has traveled extensively. She has ties to Missouri but most recently has been living in Texas where she works with children in elementary schools. Her heritage is a mixture American and Middle Eastern ancestry, which brings a unique perspective to her view of the world and her writing as well.

Regis Behe writing in a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article relates how Nye sees her mission as allowing everyone to experience poetry and to counter the myth that it is elitist or the province of intellectuals. She wants others to awaken their own poetry and to remember language can be very sustaining even when you feel very alone.