The Making of a Great Poem

Over the years I've come across a few people... some contemporaries, others from the past that own a collection of thoughts, of sayings that are so profound that I find myself amazingly nodding my head yes, yes! to the vast majority of their collected quotations. One such person is Anais Nin. I could do a lengthy post of such profound statements from her, and I have quoted her here several times over the years-  but today I have chosen one thing that she said that I believe embodies what I think should answer the question, What should a really great poem do?"

 

Nin says, "It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it." 

If in the end, a poem can achieve this... can take the familiar and cause us to look at it and see something different, or in a different light... that is art... that is poetry!


Who Speaks To You! What person/persons has/have many profound quotations that speak to your core thoughts and belief systems?

Off to Bed with a Book to Read

I've had a pretty productive day of writing capped off with watching   game one of the NLCS between San Francisco Giants and Philadelphia Phillies. Giants take the opening game on the road 5-4. Cody Ross again going yard tonight. Not once but twice!  At right he celebrates after the first with Giants pitcher.

Whale Sound - Another Voice

One of my older poems is featured on Whale Sound. If is always interesting to hear your work read in someone's voice other than your own. Some of my family members expressed that they liked the poem better hearing it in Nic Sebastian's voice.  I do love her reading voice- it brings a whole other level of artistry to any poem.

Here is Nic Sebastian reading my poem for Whale Sound:    The Cousin


Another of her readings - the poem by Terresa Wellborn  A Different Leaving.  Terresa's words and Nic's voice... I love what this collaboration results in.

Magpie Tales 36

Light is Reversible and I Wear It—

inside out

snug about me

a compression bandage

that heals the anxious pricking;

nervous needles of daylight—

people I don’t even know
that pass me
that press me
that push me to the brink.

Day is my hell—
my holy hell.
I am safest with it
under my surveillance
at a distance.

©2010 Michael A. Wells

Magpie Tales 36

Confession Tuesday

Sometimes I think that reaching Tuesday is like hitting another milestone on your odometer- you’re driving down the road and note that it just rolled past 55,000, and soon it’s 80,000. Next thing you know you reach 100,000 and everyone in the car is doing a foot dance to celebrate. Then, 150,000 and 175,000 and now you aren’t dancing but praying.

 

It’s confession time…

 

Dear reader-

 

It’s been another week and so many miles of life since my last confession.

 

Fall is an interesting time of year because it seems to be about slowing down. Darkness comes earlier and it seems that this draws the day out because you are up during a darker period of time longer than normal. Fall is also a perceived changing of the guard. Summer is dying off and you know the trees will soon be bare and their tentacles will rake the sky till the snow falls and the cold northwest winds choke off nature. In spite of all this doom and gloom, fall is not without grace and beauty and I keep trying to tell myself this— even as the baseball season vanishes and with most other forms of life.

 

This past weekend I confess I was depressed, even as my San Francisco Giants survived to reach the playoffs. My head felt like it was clogged with fog in all of its grayscale colorless form. Later, that gray would set like cement into the worst headache to carry around. I realize I’ve spent more time inside lately then out and I don’t suppose that has helped. Still, it is that time of the year that I battle this more than any other.

 

On Sunday there was an outside poetry / art event that I was thinking I would attend, but in the end I stayed home to watch the Giants game. I confess that my decision was based upon the fact that poetry events come and go, but it’s not every year your team makes the playoffs.

 

Any hope of this improving as we started a new week vanished yesterday as I learned that a coworker battling a terminal illness passed away over the weekend. While I suppose it was not that I never anticipated it, the last contact we had left no indication it would be so soon. I was stunned. Everyone was stunned.

 

Everyone have a great week and be safe!

N.J. organizers say Dodge Poetry Festival attendance as large as past, more diverse | NJ.com

 

NEWARK — Greg Gillett and his wife, Mary Jo, have traveled from Michigan to New Jersey many times to attend the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, but the event produced some pleasant surprises this year.

The festival moved to the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark from Waterloo Village in Sussex County.

Despite the presence of four U.S. poets laureate, "there were fewer big names than other years," said Mary Jo Firth Gillett.

Yet the poetry teacher in the Detroit area said she found that a plus.

 

Full Story:  N.J. organizers say Dodge Poetry Festival attendance as large as past, more diverse | NJ.com

 

 

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San Francisco Wins Series - Advance to NLCS! Celebrating!

Outfielder Cody Ross Homers in the game tonight.  The Giants win the series on the Road in Atlanta.