Confession Tuesday - Do The Math

My body keeps telling me it’s Monday but it isn’t. No, it has been a week since my last confession even though being off yesterday for Labor Day makes it feel a lot like a Monday work day. So join me if you will…

Dear Reader: 

I confess that 3 day weekends make me wish they were all that way. Actually they make me wish they were longer still. Give a guy a day off and he wants two. I confess that I get greedy that way.  

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Over the weekend I tried to utilize some of the extra time doing what I call the administrative things a writer does. I’m not fond of these things but unless you are going to take the Emily Dickinson career path and stash your writing away in a dresser drawer and hope someone comes along and gets it published for you after death then the proactive approach seems to be necessary.  So sending out your work becomes the dreaded necessity.

I confess that I was not fond of math in school. Algebra was in my view something I needn’t concern myself with and I recall that my grades in the subject would testify to that fact.

Strange as it may seem, my post school days poring over and processing detailed election poll data, strategizing over ward and precinct numbers, margins of error, voter turnout, and then there was my fascination with baseball statistic.  My wife likes to remind me these are the very uses that I swore I’d never need such complexities of math for.

But over the weekend I noted that on Duotrope – my submission tracker tells me that I have sent out 56 submissions in the past 12 months and that I have an 8.89% acceptance rate and that is higher then normal (though I haven’t a clue as to what normal is).  So I confess that I am again dragging numbers into my life – my poetic life at that!  I confess it feels sleazy talking about it.  

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Shamefully I confess that I also check my blog analytics from time to time. I suppose it is a good thing that I don’t yet have a book published or I’d be checking that sales ranking daily like it were the Dow Jones or something.

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I confess that my San Francisco Giants are torturing me with their play these past few weeks.

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I confess I need to pay my library file and check out some books

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I confess I watched like three old episodes of Friends last night and felt like it was the good old times again.

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I confess I’m loving the weather today because it is so San Francisco!   And I confess that when I’m resorting to confessions about weather it must be time to stop.  Have a great week everyone!

Thought on Waste and Enjoyment

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. ~ Bertrand Russell

Will I Ever Write a 9-11 Poem and Other Thoughts on America Since that Fateful Day

I recall once before blogging about 9-11 and remarking that I had never been compelled to write a 9-11 poem. Given that we are approaching the 10th year anniversary of that tragic event I thought it was worth addressing this again in my own mind and explore some other post 9-11 impacts of  my own.

While it has been nearly 10 years I think 9-11 remains pretty fresh in our minds and the feelings most Americans have remain pretty raw. I think there are several reasons for this.

• Any child of say 10 up into the teens was old enough to realize what happened on that day and ten years later these people are young adults. They have grown up with nearly half there life under the specter of 9-11 and therefor for many of these people it is a singularly defining moment.
• The events of 9-11 prompted an American war response that has continued to this day, at considerable expense to the American economy and loss of life and quality of life for many American servicemen and families.
• Since 9-11 we have all seen dramatic changes in security that have eroded some personal liberty and freedoms for which Americans have long held themselves different from other world citizens.

In spite of how fresh in our minds 9-11 remains for us I have continued distance from it poetically.  I recall one draft of work that has some vaguely distant reference to 9-11 but certainly is not a poem about 9-11.

Immediately after the attack everyone and their pet dog was writing poems about the event. I totally get this because poetry tends to be a terrific release of emotional energy. But doing so, releasing such energy onto a page does not necessarily make for the best poems. There were in the days and weeks immediately thereafter some horrible poetry written on the subject.  Not all of course was bad, I've read some remarkable ones, but I decided long ago that any poem I would write on the subject would need to be quite remarkable.

To me the 9-11 tragedies lives on daily. It is as if the loss of innocent lives that day were somehow not enough. It lives on in many ways and the least of which I'll summarize here:

• Fear!  Not a new word to us for we've been warned about the cost of fear on our lives decades ago, but to be frank, fear now touches us every time we travel, it has reached our economic stability, and it courts families daily that have sons, daughters, husbands, wives, etc. overseas in war zones.
• Civil liberties... in the years following 9-11 the individual civil rights and privacy of Americans have been in a watershed of erosion.
• National stature...  So many things from the breach of rules we have lived under for such a long time with respect to treatment of prisoners in detainment  to the very ill-conceived reasons for preemptive war in Iraq have led others to question our stature as a leader of the free world.
• Military readiness - our ability to defend ourselves from real threats has been severely compromised by the misguided long term military engagements that continued today as a result of 9-11, and to what end? Have they made us any safer?

For my generation, 9-11 although certainly tragic represents not a singular defining moment in our lives. We have had many of them. Much the same way generations before us have.  Perhaps my problem is that quite frankly my generation has had way too many tragic events.  The 1960's alone were littered with the losses of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy and the Vietnam War. And let me say at this point I am not going to engage in debate over which is worse, the murder of one man or that of some 3,000. The deaths of JFK, MLK and RFK were not singular losses but the loss of hope and dreams for millions. They were no better or worse then they deaths on 9-11 as all were tragedies of a national level.

I suppose the one thing about the lack a poetic response to 9-11 on my own that mystifies me is that I am not at all adverse to poetry of witness. I actually am a pretty big advocate of/defender of it. Carolyn Forché is just one of many poets I admire, with a reputation for very such very work. But 10 years later, I still have nothing to add.

8th Anniversary!

A couple of weeks ago I was aware that the anniversary of my blogging at stickpoet was nearing an then I got busy and plum forgot about it until I read a comment from a reader this morning wishing me a happy blogaversity.  There is a small countdown tab at the lower sidebar that alerts readers the number of days till the next one.  It is obscure enough that it only catches my attention every so often.

It is true... this is the 8th anniversary and the 2,922 post and I look back and realize that anyone who blogs for any length of time invests a lot of themselves into the process.

Over these eight years poetry has not only been a passion but become a part of my daily fabric.  I am a true believer in the concept of a poetry lifestyle. I means you are constantly aware of things about you in a way others aren't. It means you are always looking for the language in pictures. Always trying to simplify the complex and sometimes look for more then there appears on the surface. I think there is a certain spirituality between the poet and the universe that just doesn't exist otherwise.

To those who stop by on occasion to read stickpoet or those who subscribe to a feed, a big thank you.  I especially appreciate those who leave comments & become part of a dialogue. Non-spam comments are always welcome. Spamers however, don't waste your time, due your existance the comments are moderated and those posts never see the light of day.

I have a few ideas for some posts and topics for the very near future that I hope many of you will find interesting. So thanks again and keep coming back!

Magpie Tales 80 / Poem: Promises

An hour clocked

in the wet footprints

cast upon past

each fleeting step

measures an instant

a crack     a mother’s back

a broken promise

I will do well in school

I will not stray

trouble will not

be my downpour

raining in some dark alley

hunkered under red

umbrella from showers

there are no guarantees

otherwise

Michael A. Wells

Magpie Tales 80

Questions to ask when...

Dana Guthrie Martin asks the poignant  question, "Why does this poet live in my house, and is this the best place for her?"  Her Poem here

Confession Tuesday - Fleeting Edition

Come Along with me to the confessional…

It’s not only Tuesday again but it is almost the end of August ~ uh, what’s up with that?

Dear Reader:

I confess that I’ve absolutely no idea where August has gone. Seriously! It feels like it has been dwarfed by February… There just seems to be no accounting for the days. Has someone taken them while I was not looking?  And I know summer is fleeting because I come home in the evening and these little kids in helmets and John Wayne shoulders are practicing football on the baseball diamond across the street.  That is just not right!  I confess that I find such encroachment unacceptable. I’m sure that there is some sort of Capricorn justice in my logic.

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I confess that a blog which I read often and have found to be creatively stimulating had dropped off the radar and it saddens me.

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It seems there are a lot of people who are operating with something less then a full deck mucking about in this country these days. I’m sure the United States doesn’t hold any exclusive lock on such people. And to be sure, not all of them are Christians, but there seem to be a disproportionate amount of them that call themselves Christian fundamentalists.  Now, I’m not an atheists but it seems to me that the Florida pastor who has called for the creation of a National Registry of atheists could do better pasturing his flock then stirring up hate for absolutely no justifiable reason then his own lack of good judgment.  Perhaps doing so would prove to be too challenging to him. I confess the more I read thing like this, the more I am convinced such people have no concept whatsoever as to what Christianity is.

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I confess that I have fleeting thoughts about self-publishing a manuscript. I confess fleeting is a word that has been hanging around me lately.  I confess that I worry that one day all my thoughts will be fleeting.