FREE CD OF LOCAL POETS

Technorati Tags: Poetry,Johnson County Library,Michael Wells,CD

Monday, September 8, 7:00 at The Johnson County Library, 8975 W. 87th Street, Overland Park, Kansas : Poets on CD release party and reading

Why should kids get to have all the fun? We deserve a reading program too! Come hear great poetry and find out how to participate in the BlitzRead! adult reading program at our kickoff party. The first 50 attendees will receive a free CD of local poets reading their work.

Yours truly will be there to read and is featured on the CD as well.

 

Where's Sarah?

  It's Sunday after the GOP Convention and everyone is busy facing the questions via the traditional public affairs programs that air on Sunday.

• Democrat Barack Obama on ABC's "This Week."
• Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden, on NBC's "Meet the Press."
• Republican John McCain on CBS' "Face the Nation."

So the question is where is Sara Palin? Is she not ready to field unscripted questions? When do voters get to hear the GOP Vice Presidential candidate answer the same questions being put to the other candidates? Is this asking too much?

Technorati Tags: Sarah Palin

Sensory Triggers

Mary Biddinger writes in her blog Word Cage about sensory triggers. Those things that set off a particular behavior or thought by recreating a past experience.  Isn't it true that the best poems usually are able to take us to experiences that that we are able to relate to; that by the poets very words we can suddenly taste Grandma's apple pie or feel the warmth of the fireplace against our face  on a cold November night, while smelling the oak log burn and sipping hot chocolate? Words properly chosen have the power to transport us to another time and bring alive real experiences of the past.

So I sit here this evening thinking of things that I would consider sensory triggers I can relate to.

• The smell of cut grass takes me to a Saturday or Sunday afternoon at the ballpark. The warm sun beating down on the green field.
• When I feel the lawnmower with gas it takes me back to when I was a kid and my Grandmother would stop for gas. Those were pre air conditioning days and with the windows down it aroma of gasoline was particularly sweet and strong.  I always am transported back to that little filling station in town and still see the sign reading 34 cents a gallon.
• The feel of those wood spoons you get with Frosty Malts feel like rough, dry tongue depressors in the doctor's office and make me want to cough.
• When I'm handling something that tends to dry my hand out a lot, I am suddenly on an out of town trip, headed home to Kansas City, along the roadside changing a flat.

Those are just a few things that come to my mind.  There are lots of music triggers that take me back to the sixties, seventies and eighties. Events and places.

I think I should spend the next week listing such triggers in my journal. 

Technorati Tags: Mary Biddinger,Word Cage,sensory triggers poetry,writing

A Look At Ginsberg's Letters

The Letters of Allen Ginsberg, edited by Bill Morgan, is now available from Da Capo Press.

I've not had an opportunity to read this yet, but regular readers will be well aware how interesting I find journals and letters of poets. Given the impact on Allen and other Beat poets on the American literary culture I have to believe historical accounts of his correspondence would be absolutely fascinating.

Pocket Change

Humanity spilled- tossed about,

jingled in the the pockets

like small change.

A bit here and a piece there

the sum of which is whole

but spread about

without custodial care.

The casual acceptance-

disrespected by dispersal

to quail and disintegrate

in the shadows

of rich indifference.

A mind full of likes....

• Disheveled like a truce gone bad.
• Bristling like the cloak of a porcupine.
• Daunting like down by seven runs
  in the top of the ninth-
• Scorched like the bottom of a cooper kettle.
• Bumped like a kid out of line.

Unconscious Mutterings Week 292

Unconscious Mutterings ~ link

Word & Thought Associations

here's mine:

Groceries :: sacker
Deodorant :: anti-perspirant
Psychic :: healer
Cherries :: picker
Spooky :: ghosts
Yogurt :: Dannon
Kitchen :: sink
Nothing personal :: negative dig
Be nice :: children
Delivery :: baby