Notables

Eileen Tabois posted her POETRY SURVEY: AND ANALYSIS and if you have not been over to take a gander, you might do do.

I found Mary Biddinger's blog Word Cage the other day and she offers some insightful blogging on poetry. What do you need, and why? is a fascinating look at what she has to do to write a poem. At last count there were like 9 replies in the comments and it's fun to see what everyone else has to say on the subject.

Sunday Afternoon Breather

I've been cleaning and I'm in need of a break. So this is my break. Nothing earth shattering- this blog post is likely to be more therapeutic in value than informative.

I was excited by the Women's softball team at the Olympics being 20-0! In Baseball, The U.S. was down four runs midway through their game with Canada and scoured 5 unanswered runs to win and stay in the hunt for the medal rounds. Sure I could mention Phelps, but I'm sure someone else has been talking about him.

We are coming up on the Democratic National Convention in about a week. I'm going to step out here and make a prediction on Obama's running mate. At one point I thought he might select Hillary Clinton in spite of a good number of reasons he would likely overlook her. I don't believe it will be Hillary and unfortunately I don't think it will be any woman. You have to give Hillary credit for enhancing the possibility of a woman President. I'm not suggesting anyone make bets on the basis of my prediction, but right now I'd have to say I believe Joe Biden followed by Evan Bayh are my predictions.

I would be remiss if I ended this post without a hint of a mention of poetry, so I'll point you to this amusing story... Olympics postcard: Chinese translations pure poetry. Enjoy!

Siblings by Michael A. Wells

An Audio Link of the revised version of Siblings.

More on Truth and Poetics

The other night, I noted a quote by Laurie Sheck and then headed off to bed to contemplate her words. I'll repeat them here now.

"The poet unmasks the language of power. The language of power is the language of the lie."

As I thought that evening about her words, as well as the following day I kept coming back to the thought that if poetry unmasks the language of power, and the language of power is the language of the lie, then poetry must be about truth. But that was an easy step for me because I've come to accept poetry as in essence a truth.

Now I know there are plenty of individuals who fail to understand the concept of poetry as "a truth" but for those who might be reading this and shaking their head, let me explain.

Where you often here people argue the concept of poetry equals truth is they will often ask about a specific poem and the details therein. When they find that the poem is not specifically about an incident that really occurred to the poet, they will jump on that as fiction.

For some, truth is an absolute. It is indisputable. Within that context, if you hold something to be true but I hold something different to be true, one of us has to be wrong. It is an all or nothing proposition. In the realm of poetics today I think we must accept that there are truths that are less than absolute. We can see something and explain it for example in a metaphorical context. In fact you and I may explain it using different metaphors. You may be able to agree that you can see what I am saying but you might have chosen a totally different metaphor then I. In this way, language allows for truths that are not absolutes. It is in the language of poetry that we can see the same thing in different ways sometime looking squarely at that which is disingenuous and calling it out.

If language has power (and I believe it does) it has it to the extent that we allow it to. Poetry frees us to use language rather than allow language to control us. Through poetry, that lie is looking a little less secure to me.

Technorati Tags: Laurie Sheck,poetry,language,power,lies,truth,poetics

Celebration!

Sorry, I can't help it. Sometime overnight the 40,000th unique visitor was registered in our stats at Stickpoet Super Hero!

Kudos too for U.S.women’s gymnasts Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson who won Gold and Silver respectively last night in Beijing.

*photo credit - FreeFoto.com

A parting thought....

A thought to take to bed with me tonight from the poet Lauie Sheck-

"The poet unmasks the language of power. The language of power is the language of the lie."

On that note, I'm off to bed to contemplate what this means to the poet and his or her audience.

Technorati Tags: Quote,poet,language

Chaos as an art form

Have you ever thought of chaos as an art form? I mean there are people who thrive within it and others who cannot handle it at all.

There are times when I've tried to get my shit together so to speak and found that the attempts to organize simply lead to more chaos.

For a number of years, I've carried a Franklin Planner. Back before PDAs were like the gold standard in organizing your business and personal lives. My work life became dependent upon one. Still, utilizing the proper method of indexing and what-not adds a whole extra layer of chaos into your day. I'm not saying it's unnecessary, I'm saying it requires more steps, more detail, more time, etc.

For a long time I saw myself as one who could not give up the hard copy of notations for the electronic benefits of a PDA. Then I got a smart phone (a telephone with enough options at your fingertips to launch a war) and I settled into the idea of using the PDA aspect of it. It was nice to free myself of some of the paperwork, but alas, I found that I was not able to maintain enough detail (in work related projects) to rely strictly on the PDA. So now, I do both. More layers of work in what is already a chaotic work day.

My chaos is however not limited to my day-to-day work. No, my writing is also well amerced in chaos. I have drafts and poems on a desktop at home. I have drafts in journals with heavy emphasis on the "s" and I have them on a flash drive. Some are in folders and some are not. Now I have a laptop in which I am attempting to establish greater order. It seems like such a daunting task that when I think of achieving greater order, my mental picture is something akin to world order and that seems unattainable.

So, am I blessed with the "gift" of chaos? Or did I simply work hard in my earlier life to build on sound principals of chaos till I have achieved near perfection of the art?

Then I ask myself, are there some people who are predisposed to chaos? Are right brained people stronger in chaotic traits? How about Capricorns? People with ADD? Blondes? People who love baseball? First born children? Where does it come from?