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Friday, November 21, 2008

What Poets Do....

I've been a little lax in blogging of late, so I will try and catch up a bit tonightPhoto_090608_001.  It's been a long week and I am so glad that Friday has arrived. It will be so nice to have a short work week next week.

I elected to pass on the Mia Leonin reading at Rockhurst University last night so I'm unable to provide a review.  Instead before retiring last night I read some of the poetry of W.S. Merwin and Dana Goodyear.  Two poets I enjoy but quite different in style.

This week I ran across a short but dynamite explanation on the net written by Joe Carter entitled What Poets Do. In the simplest of terms, Carter discusses what poets do that makes them invaluable. Yes, I said invaluable. With all the usual suggestions that poetry is closer to irrelevant then not, such words pulled my eyes out of my sockets. I recommend taking a peek at his explanation here.  

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Poetry Happenings

Wanted to note a few items of interest - First off is Issue 23 of RIGHT HAND POINTING is out....  Dale Wisely is editor.  Dale always seems to put together a worthwhile read.

Tomorrow night...  Thursday, November 20th - the poet Mia Leonin will appear at Rockhurst University as part of the Midwest Poets Series. She is of Cuban-American descent. Her credits include two book of poetry; Braid (Anhinga Press, 1999) and Unraveling the Bed (Anhinga, the Van K. Brock Florida Poetry Series, 2008). She received a Green Eyeshade Award
for theater criticism and was selected as a fellow in the NEA/Annenberg Institute on Theater and Musical Theater. She received an Academy of American Poets Prize, a Money for Women Grant by the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and a 2005 Florida Individual Artist Fellowship. She teaches at the University of Miami. This is a special treat for Rockhurst in that Leonin was a 1990 Graduate of Rockhurst University.  There is a reception at 6:00 PM and the reading begins at 6:30.  For information about this series or other Rockhurst University cultural events, call The Center for Arts & Letters (816) 501-4607 or (816) 501-4828 or visit
www.rockhurst.edu/artsandletters.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Unconscious Mutterings Week 303

Unconscious Mutterings ~ link
Word & Thought Associations

here's mine:



Please stop :: quit
Move over :: outta my way
Sweet as :: candy corn
Bet :: gamble
Mad about :: you
It’s over :: split-up
Intend to :: plan
Blame :: game
Jefferson :: airplane
Heartless :: bitch

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Unconscious Mutterings week 302

Unconscious Mutterings ~ link
Word & Thought Associations

here's mine:

 

  • Coverage :: full
  • Cynical :: attitude
  • Gust :: wind
  • Improvised :: poor
  • V :: victory
  • Guests :: lecturer
  • Brutal :: torture
  • Grant :: funding
  • Pull :: drag
  • Streaming :: vegetables
  •  

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    Sunday, November 09, 2008

    Stop Blogging?

    I suppose I owe a credit here to Robert Peake, so Let me get it out of the way before I go further into this. I will do so for three reasons.

    1. It was after reading his post Blogging, Reincarnated that I was lead to Paul Boutin's Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004
    2. By my citation of Peake's blog I am actually acknowledging that I read someone else's blog, thus affirming the relevance of such a practice to me.
    3. While I have no way of knowing if this is the case, Robert may actually achieve some boost to his ego by my mentioning his blog. In any event, doing so is harmless.

    It is true what Boutin writes about how blogging has evolved into something that become an industry. It is also true that most bloggers will never have the draw of a Daily Kos, The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan or Wired Blogs.

    When I started blogging this blog, (though there was one earlier) in September of 2003 I had no delusion, no expectation that my blog would be read daily by tens of thousands of people. I am not now looking down the long barrel of disappointment and feeling threatened by any of the big name bloggers. Suggesting that if I quit now I would be in good company because Jason Calacanis who made millions blogging gave it up is insignificant to me. Perhaps if I made millions at anything I might give it up to tend to dealing with my financial portfolio in these turbulent times but I'll cross that bridge when it becomes a problem.

    Blogging going mainstream is in fact a tribute to its success. Oh I know, success can be too much of a good thing. Boutin suggests that Twitter, Flicker and Facebook make blogs look so, 2004ish.  Many people have taken social networking to these levels and maintained blogs at the same time. And yes many of the big name blogs have become impersonal.  That is not necessarily true of the countless other bloggers who are not commercialized.

    The niche of writer and or poet bloggers fills a large void that has become a part of the changing social fabric in our culture.  In recent years we've seen dozens of publication of the correspondence between peers - the likes of Robert Lowell, James Wright, Helen Bishop, Ted Hughes, Anne Sexton, etc. In the days when U.S. Mail was full of folksy letters and banter between people, writers had a chance to openly express themselves on a more intimate level with other writers. The present day writers has lost that touch. It is not necessary for me to feel I am being read by thousands upon thousands of other writer/poets. There is however a benefit in that smaller networking, from sharing trials and tribulations, rejections, successes, writers blocks and new ideas with a few others and at the same time listening to them as well. 

    Twitter has caused a good deal of interest among some people. I could argue however that it is just taking mass instant messaging to another level and instant messaging is so 1990ish.  I have a facebook. I broke down and did one, but largely because of the messages from the countless literary journals that have a presence there and a few people who (coughing here) actually have blogs. It is a connecting source but hardly the same as blogging.

    Boutin may actually be able to persuade some people to stop blogging. But if he is successful in making his point that blogging is really so passé he could wake up one morning and find that no one is reading Wired's Blog. But that would give his argument a whole lot of credit.

     

    Saturday, November 08, 2008

    Conversation with myself

    gPOETRYBUTTON

    When a writer is engaged in the creation of a novel, there is an audience that he/she should have in mind. I've never quite accepted that premise where writing poetry is concerned.

    It seems to me that when I am writing poetry I am having a conversation with myself. Quite frankly the process will rise and fall upon the very nature of internal conflict within this very conversation. I think it was Frost who said (and I am paraphrasing) that he never knew how a poem would end till it did. That underscores a good part of the conversation that takes place. This is true when in draft and it continues in rewrite.

    I think the distance between poetry and philosophy can be placed on a pin head. It is during this creation process that some of my great philosophical battles with myself occur. Sometimes taking issue with long held notions. Sometimes standing something on end to see how it looks from a different view. This is true with the message but also is true with the form the message takes.

    An example of the latter would be that sometimes I like to throw punctuation out the window and at other times I cannot convince myself that it works without it.

    If someone were to ask me to describe poetry, my answer today, (and tomorrow this may be different) poetry is the sum of my parts jumbled. They may not look like me, or mirror my life experiences, but the product reflects an assemblage of who I am. My poetry is my biography.

    This is different from "confessional poetry" in that it is not to say that what I write is about me or about my life. It is rather about what who I am can conger into image. This is what happens when I am in conversation mode with myself and a pen.

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    Friday, November 07, 2008

    Journal Bits

    A few bit and jottings from my journal recently...

    • vases stand tall/and empty on coffee tables/that seem lost without coffee./green plants offer no proof/of authenticity
    • quote from Charles Simic - "The sense of myself existing comes first. Then comes images and then language."
    • The asparagus was green/with envy next to the Julian carrots./My therapist would ask/how this makes the carrots feel.