Of Interest to Poets Around the Internet

Below are a few interesting reads on the Internet for poets and those interested in poetry- hope you find something the touches your interests.

• Letters of Interest - shares Letter to a Young Poet
• Poetry Magazine - 100 Poets for change - back for a second year 
• The Guardian - John Clare, The Poet of the Environmental Crisis - 200 Years Ago
• Washington Times - Photo of Emily Dickinson at 30?
• The Atlantic - Found Poetry from Amazon Kindle Reveal
• SF Gate - Chandler Poet finds focus after bipolar diagnosis
• NPR - Safe Landing For 'Stag's Leap'? On Sharon Olds' latest book
• The Atlantic - How Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey Wrote Her Father's Elegy
• The Christian Century -  No Poetry in Politics

Anniversary Missed~

September 2nd was the 9th anniversary of Stickpoet Super Hero.  Nine years of blogging at this site and I somehow missed the anniversary.  That's what life does for you.

In a way perhaps it is fitting that it passed without an anniversary fan fair post. I'm probably blogging less these days then I have in the past. In 2005 I had a total of 421 blog posts - a nine year annual high. The last time I exceeded 400 posts was 2007 and last year I had a total of 257. There are times when I want to so a particular post on a topic but I'm busy and days pass and so does the urge to write that particular post and I'm thinking about something else to write about altogether.

I would like to believe that as I move into the tenth year on this blog that I find topics and craft writing that is increasingly interesting and perhaps is more engaging with readers. I don't want to be just going through the motions of blogging for the sake of it.

The fact that I have blogged with less frequency is not to say I have less interest in blogs as a media. Some have suggested that Facebook and Twitter have diminished the relevancy of blogging. I disagree with this notion and believe that these two newer venues have significant places in the communication spectrum but when best used they supplement blogging rather then replace it. If you said today we must do away with two of these three forms of communication I would argue to save blogging.

I do think Facebook and Twitter have become popular for a couple of reasons. One is the narrowing focus many have on reading. To may 140 characters has become  something the can wrap their attention around. Maybe that's because of how busy we have all become but I think it also reflects a decline in the emphasis overall of reading. The other aspect is the electronic aspect of socialization that has in many respects replaced real face-to face-socialization. In this respect, blogging differs from Facebook and Twitter and underscores why I believe it remains an important means of communication.

All this is to say that I Stickpoet enters year 10 with a anticipation of continuing dialogue and information as well as sharing some personal aspects of my writing journey.  It's my hope that we will look back on this current year no matter the number - with quality first and quantity second.

Confession Tuesday

Dear Reader;

I confess that the DNC tonight was powerful stuff. Each of the speakers made this election relevent and personal.

I confess that I'm tired and going to bed.

Journal Bits from the three day weekend...

• Oh my God it's September! So hard to believe that this year has actually come to this. This month will be the stretch for the Giants run to post season.
• Lazy Saturday under the potion of stationary rain pushed here by Issac with a September chill piggybacking the storm. 
• The shadow cast dirt upon the stairs-/each time I've walked them today I've been barefoot and lax in my resolve.
• The neighbor's flag waves-/it's the most friendly gesture I've seen.
• No one much minds us-/I like it that way. The quiet/turned inside out.

The Mag 133: The Women of Summer Night

Summer Night - 1913 by Albert Bloch

They gather in secret

in the garden of delight

they leave behind 

much shame

and every other form

of constraint-  real or imagined

in the twilight of tenderness

they speak of no evil

they harbor no disdain

they are hear for each other

they are hear for themselves

they are here and this is why they come

The Mag 133

Michael A. Wells

I confess...

For the past hour I've been making a list of phrases and questions that comprise subject matter for free writes that will hopefully lead into some new poems.  When you are brainstorming in a relaxed manner that allows your mind the freedom to explore such ideas without pressure it's amazing what you can come up with.

This has been a lazy approach. The cap on my fountain pen comes off, I write a line or two, re-post the cap, few sips of a drink and something hits me again and I jot another one down. There was no certain number I was looking for or specific amount of time. I fixed something to eat during the process but at some point I thought, this has been a good start - and after some rest tonight, the second phase of some free writes will start tomorrow. 


On another note, I love it when I go back to my old journals and read through them only to find a poem draft that surprisingly I says to myself, did I write this?

Thinking about Client Eastwood the other night...

Immersed in the unexpected satirical dialogue with an empty chair, I thought why do we have elections anyway? The line between serious and funny morphed into the sad and pathetic. Poor Client, a man of major significance, with Dr. Emmett Brown hair managed in two hands full of minutes reduce himself to cognitive deficiency before millions of people, mock a sitting president at the same time he demonstrated significant disregard for facts.

The extent to which any of this was funny lies not in the lines themselves, but the fact the the convention handlers allowed this miscarriage of both fact and humor to eat up one sixth of the national TV coverage
prime hour on the mos significant night of the convention. Who was responsible and what might they have been smoking?