They Should Do Lunch

Even after the nail biting defeat and elimination of the ASU Sun Devils last night in a 10 inning 7-8 loss in the College World Series, the morning sky was strikingly resolute with a cherry blossom sunrise. Life goes on.

If you've read my blog very long, you have likely figured out that I am not impressed with John Barr's efforts to bring poetry to the masses. To be clear, I have nothing personally against Mr. Barr and in fact I applaud his desire to further the art of poetry. It is not his objective but rather the means to that end that I dislike, both from a practical point and an artistic point of view.

Poetry, like any of the arts, is a broad expression of many genres. Not every song, not every painting, not every photo and certainly not every poem strikes everyone the same way. The way to strengthen any art for is not to divide it's benefactors or practitioners. This is where I part with the John Barr's of this world. So when I read a commentary by Mike Burnside - Winning ways in the war of the words , I found myself whispering under my breath, "...yes, yes!"

Barnside suggests that Barr would do well to use a model more like that of Peter Gelb, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. He argues that if there is any art that struggles more in public persona then poetry, it is perhaps opera. And opera, like poetry, can easily be divided into accessible and not so accessible groupings. Barnside give Peter Gelib high marks for promoting opera across these divides with great success and suggests Barr and Gelib do lunch. Not a bad idea!

Half...

"Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half." ~ Gore Vidal

Ten Reasons Rejection Letters Aren't All That Bad

1. They are much preferred over bills.
2. They are tangible confirmation in the existence of life forms elsewhere.
3. You can wallpaper your room with them.
4. In a pinch they can be used as backup for toilet paper.
5. They remind us to recycle our work elsewhere.
6. You can write new drafts on the back of them.
7. They can help demonstrate to the IRS that your writing was not profitable this year.
8. In large quantities, they may establish you as an authority on rejection, which gives you the basis for writing a profitable book on the subject.
9. Mementos for the grandchildren
10. They are like a losing lottery ticket they you didn't have to buy.

Father's Day

Couple of items from Father's Day.... A Waterman Phileas fountain pen -burgundy and black marbled ( picture doesn't do it justice) and my ASU ball cap complete with "Sparky" the Sun Devil. By the way, ASU won their opening round of the College World Series Saturday. They play again tonight.

The pen is from my lovely wife. It is gorgeous and way more pen then I would have bought myself. Writes as smooth as honey. It will certainly make both journaling and hand written poetry drafts much more enjoyable.

Speaking of Father's Day.... Enjoyed this piece about Donald Hall & the poems he wrote on the passing of his father. While he write about the experience right away, the poem took 17 years to complete.

Julia Keller, who is cultural critic at the Chicago Tribune suggests the proliferation of first-rate bloggers is evidence enough the world is filled writers who deserve a large audience. However, they easily become specks lost in the masses. If everyone's a poet, then nobody is.

Hasn't getting work noticed always been the problem? Keller makes a case for the problem. What is the solution?
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Melissa Tuckey interviews the Iranian poetess Farideh Hassanzadeh for Foreign Policy In Focus. Very provocative ~ worth reading.
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Looking forward to some baseball this afternoon. College World Series game between Arizona State University and UC Irvine. ASU is noted for a strong baseball program. My daughter is starting her studies there this year. We'll sit down to enjoy the game together this afternoon.

Defragmenting the brain

Sometimes I wonder where those thoughts come from in the middle of the night. But mostly I wonder what happened to them when I fail to write them down. Sure I get bursts of creativity at other times during the day but it seems some of the more innovative, riskier ones, they often seep into my cranium when not bombarded by multiple conversations, the phone ringing and knowing I am late with a project or to a meeting. It would seem the less cluttered mind that has the widest venue in which to work. So I suppose the object here would be to try to figure out how to clear the mind at will and then let what floods in take root and grow.

First Draft: Leonardo Likes Gulls: Running of the Poems - Or Why Seattle is a Great Place for Poets & Poetry

First Draft: Leonardo Likes Gulls: Running of the Poems - Or Why Seattle is a Great Place for Poets & Poetry

What a cleaver idea... thanks Kelli for sharing this story of the Running of the Poems by The Poetess at Green Lake. This is the kind of activity that I like to see to broaden the reach of poetry to society today. It's the integration into normal everyday life and common places. I am far more impressed by this sort of undertaking then the John Barr approach to gutting literary art to make something more palatable to spoon feed the public.