Full day & Play Ball!

Settling to watch the World Series game tonight.  Looking for a good game tonight with the series tied 1 game apiece and the series moves to Philadelphia.  Pulling for the Phillies!

Today was busy. Brought some work home from the office for the weekend.  Did some of it today and saved some for tomorrow.

Send of poetry submissions.  Printed out hard copies of some of my work to sift through looking for manuscript material that I already have to assess what I still need to work on. Lots of stuff I intentionally didn’t print out. I messed around on some rewrites as well.

Made the dogs happy – taking them for a walk.

Chatted with one of my daughters for a good half-hour today.  She’s away at school and I’m missing her, so it was a real treat.

Made dinner tonight for my wife who spent day at the office.

If the game isn’t too late ending, I’ll probably read a bit before turning in. Not counting on a quick game though.

Happy Birthday Sylvia

Sigh….  I’m often tuned in enough to think this time of year that the 27th is Sylvia Plath’s birthday but I almost missed it this year. She remains a strong influence in my poetry tastes so I am often thinking about her on the anniversary of both her birth and death. Kudos to IVY for keeping the memory alive!
If you are headed soon to a Halloween party and want a costume idea with a literary theme go here.  What a fun bonus for those in Emily Dickinson costumes…. Hand out plastic flies while reciting the immortal line: "I heard a Fly buzz—when I died..."
Yesterday, Poet Kelli Russell Agodon opened up and shared a lot of information about the making of her latest book that will be out next fall.  Her blog post, The History of a Manuscript, details the path to publication of her manuscript titled Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room.  If you are thinking in terms of working towards publication of a manuscript, read this post. This recommendation is not meant to discourage anyone, but introduce a bit of reality to the process. As I’ve said here before, Kelli’s first book, Small Knots is among my favorite poetry books. Her work inspires me and her talents establish her as a poet whose advise I take seriously. 

Technorati Tags: Literary costumes,Kelli Russell Agodon,Sylvia Plath,Ivy Alvarez

Journal Bits

It's that time again...

• the paper absorbed everything and said nothing
• the night is an unsettled dog
• Mary Oliver quote - “Do you think the wren ever dreams of a better house?"
• the exit signs determined in their request
• it's a casual uncaring / not rooted in any harsh disinterest / more maladaptive to the day at hand
• losing myself in the moments of a hair cut / or the making of a spare key / that light headed tingling that forgets everything / suspends all thought in mid air

You Don’t Say….

I think the most un-American thing you can say is, 'You can't say that.' ~ Garrison Keillor

Actually, I think this is a splendid quote.

 

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It was an Apple Betty Kind of Sunday

 

The cooler weather, the fall leaves, I don’t know it was just calling me. Besides I bought some Honey Crisp Apples yesterday at Target… it just seemed the right thing to do. I got no complaints.

It has been dark here all day. We had thunder earlier that sounded like war planes had hit the field by us. Was very unnerving to the dogs.

 

I was thinking yesterday and this morning both about what seems to be a difference of late on how distraction affects me when writing. For the longest time I never seemed bothered by conversation in the same room. Television, or any excessive movement around me, I just took in stride and kept on writing. This has however become increasingly annoying to me and I’m not sure why.

It could be that I am trying to be more attentive to what people around me are saying. However this would not explain why the TV was not annoying to me before when I wrote but can be not at times. There definitely seems something has changed; but what? Before this mysterious development, I always prided myself in the fact that I could pull out my journal and pen and write anywhere, anytime. I just know some smartass out there is thinking I’m going through the writers change in life.

Technorati Tags: food,apple betty,writer distractions

Robert Pinsky at Midwest Poet Series

The Midwest Poet Series has hosted some wonderful poets over the years and yet last nights reading by Robert Pinsky is a standout among the many readings I’ve witnessed there myself. This is my first personal encounter with Pinsky, who by the way turned 69 this week and doesn’t look it.

His reading or let me call it an interaction with the audience was a lot different then most poetry readings in that he was very laid back and mingled stories with his poems and mid way through took questions and requests for poems to read. Yes, requests. This was particularly impressive because it implied on one hand, that he was confident there would be people in the audience well enough read on Pinsky, that they would have poems in mind that they wanted to hear; and that he would be able to produce those poems from his volumes of work quickly without fumbling through said work. It went perfect!

According to Pinsky, he would be a musician rather than a poet were it not for one thing; his lack of talent. Still, he is more than a casual musician and his love is the Sax is evident. I think the lyrical aspect of his poetry suggests that he is very tuned into sound.

Another strong component of his writing is the way he threads history through his poetry. He suggests that he writes for the dead, and quotes a mantra, “We do not worship our ancestors, we consult them.” He is big on the past, big on culture and the mingling of them together.

His presence is on of reassurance. He’s a very peaceful man. Even when he talked of his anger of the things he saw during the Bush years, he was even tempered and never raised his voice, but you knew he was indignant.

A few of the poems he read, Poem of Disconnected Parts, Shirt and The Night Game.

Poem of Disconnected Parts is such a terrific example of his pull of history and culture together to inform his poetics. Shirt is such a moving poem. Again history meets the art of poetry.

It’s no wonder Pinsky was Poet Laureate for three years- he is the perfect ambassador for the art. After a brilliant reading, he was most humble to the audience as he left the stage. You felt it was he, who was honored to be in our presence.


Hear and Read Shirt

Read Poem of Disconnected Parts

Idle Hands...

Finish this sentence: Idle hands are ___________. Did you answer the devil’s tools or devil’s plaything?

How long can you sit with idle hands? Do you ever? Is this how you start to write?

In the most recent issue of Poets and Writers magazine there is an article about a writer who talks about stillness as he writes. “I’m very tolerant of stillness. I don’t mind sitting there for half an hour. I’d rather not move my hands just to move them; I’ll wait for the right thing.” Jonathan Lethem is a novelist not a poet, but his approach to initiating work on a page is maybe not a bad one even for poets. I sometimes will start with a line of something that comes to me. Maybe two or three different lines till something I feel something take hold. But when I think about my blog post on Monday and the Anne Sexton quote that I committed to thinking about all this week I’m thinking a lot more about the idle hands approach. The wisdom in the Sexton quote suggests listening hard. “Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard,” Sexton says.

It’s easy when you have a routine that says your take thirty minutes and write that you want to start writing as you sit down. The clock is on. Go! Such routine can probably create bad habits just as well as it can create good ones. But just as silence can be useful on a page, maybe it’s not a bad place to start to center yourself / your writing. In “The Artists’ Way” I think the morning pages are meant to drain out of your system all the residual sludge that can otherwise stain your work if you can’t get your mind off it. So maybe to start with, we should pause. A nice pregnant pause of sorts and then begin to create on the page as something surfaces.