The Problem With Poetry

Confession Tuesday - It's All Good

It’s at time once again. Let’s go to the confessional.

Dear Reader:

A week since my last confession and a much better week weather wise. The weekend I wanted to Xerox and run off like 365 days like it.

Today it was actually warm in my office in the afternoon which resulted in my turning to a fan for some relief. I confess I get crank when the office gets warm. A co-worker visiting me in the afternoon on a mater thought it cold. I swear I don’ know what she was talking about. I felt like at best I was pushing around warm air. I confess that I’m keeping my fingers crossed for Thursday as our office is going to the ball game and I’m counting on this weather to continue.

Last weekend I wrote a very good draft in one sitting.  I confess that makes me uneasy to say because I know how rate those instances are. Still, I’ve done one rewrite – one very small change rewrite on it and I’m just letting it sit a bit longer while I think about it some more. I want to write like this all the time though I confess I realize how totally unrealistic that is. That’s why I tend to not get too excited about NAPOWRIMO in April. I’ve done it and produced some keepers but it tends to ad stress to the writing mix. Not a good ad-in ingredient.

I confess this month has some very exciting components yet ahead. My son is getting married and my daughter who has been away in school is retuning permanently. No kidding, this is not a dream. I keep pinching myself and I have the red marks to prove it!

Writers Lead Russian Opposition

RIA Novosti, the largest Russian news agency, reports that leading Russian writers spearheaded a 10,000 person protest against President Vladimir Putin's rule: A host of Russian literary figures led thousands of people through the squares and boulevards of downtown Moscow on Sunday afternoon to an opposition camp that has become the epicenter of the challenge to the rule of President Vladimir Putin.

Protest leaders say that arbitrary and illegal arrests of  persons by the Russian government has lead to their opposition to Putin's reign.

Writers and in particular poets have held a special place in Russian society over the years. It will be with watching to see what course this opposition takes if the government clamps down especially hard.

Behind the Deak

A shadow fell across his leafy brow.
The sinister one. The heavy one.
His feet were big as his buckets
propped on his desk-
it was the mammoth dark wood desk
that created a chasm between him
and anyone who strolled in.

Casual was not his color.  Casual was too close.
It allowed for comfort and that tilted the scales
in the wrong direction.  Always he strives to be
that backhand shot across the net that comes to you
in such a way you have to lean hard and fast to return
the serve and only with dumb luck will the volley be back
in his court anytime soon.

A Poem Takes Place

"A door opens, a door shuts. In between you had a glimpse: a garden, a person, a rainstorm, a dragonfly, a heart, a city. I think of those round glass Victorian paperweights ...a clear globe, self-complete, very pure, with a forest or village or family group within it. You turn it upside down, then back. It snows. Everything is changed in a minute. It will never be the same in there - not the fur trees, nor the gables, nor the faces. So a poem takes place."  ~ Sylvia Plath

Thank You Maurice for the Gift of Your Imagination

"I believe there is no part of our lives, our adult as well as child life, when we're not fantasizing, but we prefer to relegate fantasy to children, as though it were some tomfoolery only fit for the immature minds of the young. Children do live in fantasy and reality; they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do."

Maurice Bernard Sendak  - 10 June 1928 – 8 May 2012

Let the wild rumpus start in heaven!

Confession Tuesday - Roundup Edition

Dear Reader:

I have the day off today and it suddenly occurred to me that I should have a day off every Confession Tuesday.  I actually have it off because it's Harry S Truman's birthday. I know that some of you may find that odd, but around here the nation's 33rd President is a pretty big deal.  And who am I to question a paid holiday. It could be celebrate dirt clod day and I confess it would be happy to have it off.

I confess that this past week we've had too much rain for my liking. I can hear the green stuff growing again and that means I need to mow the lawn. [sigh]

This past week I've been moving lots of things around including adding the book case above to our bedroom. I confess that I have a habit of many books scattered all about the house. I have book cases in my office but I will still carry books out including especially the bedroom. Now I don't have an excuse to let them pile up in the bedroom and I will be able to find many of those transitory books with greater ease.

Another benefit of the new book case and cleaning in my office I have managed to locate what I believe to be nearly all of my personal journals. I confess that these did not have a specific home and now about 20 of them occupy one shelf dedicated just to them. I confess this has inspired me to plan to recycle through these some 4,000 plus pages looking for gems that I can go back and inspire me to take them steps beyond where I left off.

Reading in Remembering Randall - a memoir of Randall Jarrell written by his wife Mary von Schrader Jarrell, she discusses Randall's work on Translations as something he turned allowing him to use his writing energies  even when he felt poemless himself. She talks about him at times wondering if he had already written his last book.  I confess that reading this was encouraging to me in that I realize someone the callabur  of Randall Jarrell also had doubts and dry periods.

I  confess that I'm looking forward to a summer free of dry writing periods. Hey, I can hope!