A Poet Gets No Respect

I can feel the lazy days of summer ahead, but they aren't quite here yet.

Any of you seen the movie Prairie Home Companion? It was a movie I had been wanting to see. My wife was not real interested and we never saw it when it came out. Cathy did however record it on our DVR knowing both my daughter and I wanted to see it. We've had it for a week or two now, and Cathy decided to make a night of it.  We got pizza and settled in and watched it.  I enjoyed it thoroughly. Both Cathy and my daughter Shannon by the end were fighting to stay awake. Neither were impressed.   My wife's explanation as to why I might have enjoyed it was that it reminded her of my poetry... inaccessible.

On a related note, I subjected my immediate family to only one poem this Poetry Month. They seem to believe they are subjected to way more then any sane person should have to endure through their connection to me. So I sent them on the last day of April one poem. They all received one poem from me. I chose the Billy Collins poem, Introduction to Poetry. The poem concludes with the following two stanzas....

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Now Cathy liked the Collins poem, but she responded in an email, "It's the poet that needs to be tied to the chair and beaten with a rubber hose for writing an inaccessible poem...and I'm sure we all know what poet I am talking about. :)

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May Day - May Day

May 1st and I've taken a break from writing today aside from my daily journal entry.

The break from writing a poem is suiting me well so far.  There's almost a hour left of the day, I suppose I could get the itch, but I'm thinking not.  Who knows, perhaps overnight I might wake up with some brainstorm. Hey, it has happened.

I realized one of my poems that had previously been publish was added to the Johnson County Kansas Public Library's poem a day feature on their Internet site. It can be seen here.

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Day 30 - Poem-A-Day

April Adieu

So long National Poetry Month-
You were just thirty days out of a year.
You brought heaps of poems
to my email, so many that reading them all
will stretch well into May, when many others
have returned poetry to the back burner.

Gone too will be my open opportunity
to preach the virtues and love of poetry
to the poetically deprived.

Even during your own month, we risk
retribution from many who will not
allow us to share what joy we find
woven into the soul of your many stanzas.

But not all is melancholy today-
No, today too ends the Poem-A-Day
challenge I undertook at the onset.
To take a predetermined prompt
for which I have not control
and mold it into a single, artful, cohesive
poetic unit each day.

Even the love of poetry-
yes, even a driving passion for writing
cannot prevent such an undertaking
from taxing the mind and sometimes
in the late hours of the night,
the body as well.

So, goodbye poetry month. So long
for now. I shall not stop reading
what many great poetic minds created.
I will turn to you over and over
throughout the year. And probably
after a momentary pause,
I'll return to the page with ink
and write from that place deep
within the human spirit
where poetry is born.

Maybe, just maybe-
come next April, in a weak moment,
I may forget how difficult
the daily birthing process
of creating these poems was
and again accept the challenge
of a poem-a-day.

Poetry & Silence

"Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them." ~ Charles Simic

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They're here!

For the third year in a row I've produced a Poetry Month broadside featuring one of my poems that has been previously published elsewhere. They have finally arrived from the printers. I have 100 of them and they are available at your request as long as they last. If you would like one of these please drop me a note with your snail mail address at stickpoet@aol.com. It's just a little something I started doing to celebrate poetry.

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Poem-A-Day Challenge - six poem left

 Counting the poem for today (which I'm still working on) there are 6 remaining  in the April challenge.

I must say that a very badly want to do a free write, without a prompt, without a pre-determined

topic and the pressures that have come with this challenge. Yes, April is the cruelest month!

On another note, I was reading the comments on a post by Kelli and checked out Ouroboros Review  that received a thumbs up by Maya. It has a very professional on line presence. I was truly impressed. I also noticed Deb Scott has a couple of poems in the most recent issue.

Two other reviews I like have releases up...Right Hand Pointing  - issue 25 and  Autumn Sky Poetry - issue 13

Meanwhile, back to the poem I was working on.

Technorati Tags: Autumn Sky Poetry,Ouroboros Review,Right Hand Pointing

What if..

 I suppose one could argue that poetry has become a habitual aspect in my life. Without considering this in a negative connotation  that is often associated with the word habitual, I have up till now viewed this in the context of what I have considered a lifestyle. For several years, I have convinced myself that a poet (or any artist) would only enhance their level of creativity by developing a lifestyle that had a vigilant awareness to their surroundings that allowed them to constantly be open the the poetry in things.

What would follow or at least one would hope-  transforming theory to reality, is that by achieving this poetic point of view, it could only result in good things in connection with their work. If you hand not fully achieved a poetic lifestyle, to the extent you were striving to get there, again would be a positive thing, no?

Perhaps achieving such a state of mental awareness and focus has noting to do with improving the poet's work.  What if it is simply symptomatic of a neurosis?

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