Snuggle

Was at Barnes and Nobles tonight and picked up A Poet's Guide to Poetry by Mary Kinzie. Wished I had picked it up on Amazon first though. Cheaper.

I am only about 15 pages in and so far I am quite impressed. I think she has been reading PFFA. Seriously ... despite of course the time line issue. The same outlook on craft and commitment to the work of poetry. Read read read is her motto it seems too. I am looking forward to the rest. I think it will be slow going, but that is just how it will be.

Between this and my new housecoat, red, and quite fluffy, I am quite the snug little not-bug.

Have a good one.

Eliot reads Prufrock

I don't hear this poem in my head as lyrically as Eliot seems to read it, but veryvery cool. My reading of it isn't the standard, of course. From Choriamb:



The anesthetized line, too sing songy but the I am no prophet line is just as I hear it. Now I want to hear him read it without the music.

cost benefit

No I haven't been ignoring you all, but I have been sick, the family has been sick. Influenza A has introduced itself to us all. Polite, don't you think? It stuck its foot in our door, and like a pushy salesman, made its way in. Didn't even leave any encyclopedias or sharpened knives either.

So the Napowrimo 08 thread is already up at PFFA. Evil that is ;-), plus almost April. Those go hand in hand. I am contemplating a thread name, but haven't come up with anything more inspired than Vicky's Entangled (Tangled?) Thread. I will work on that some more.

I can't imagine I have that many poems in me again. I say that every year. I wonder what the cost benefit analysis would be for the poems, after doing it 3 years already. Trending where? I don't know what vacuous well I will dredge this out of. I have been blank for months now, given illnesses, and sicknesses, and work being oh too busy.

But I really do want to do it. I like the structure it gives the year, and that shocks (and galvanizes) me some, that I have lived long enough now to actually see years as a whole, rather than moments. I look forward to April now, when it used to be a very forgotten month for me. Looking to summer, I overlooked April, and May even looking forward. I don't do that anymore. April has pinned me to the year. It forces me to focus, and I know I need that. I wish I didn't need that prompt, but I will admit I do.

If I actually complete this, it will bring the total of poems (I use the term very loosely) to 120 that are butterflied around me from just the Napowrimo efforts. Plus the others that I have written over the past years. I wonder how many there are. I also have been thinking in terms of collecting my poems in groups, by themes, just to see what emerges.

Anyway which way, have a great evening!

What is different from the others?

- Rape or abuse, or sex without a plot.
- Gore or violence for their own sake.
- Gratuitous character death; we want 'little deaths' not snuff.
- Racist or homophobic fiction.
- Sex with minors.
- Bestiality, though werewolf sex is acceptable.
- Scat.
- Clichés.
- Poetry.

I am so amused by the inclusion of the last item of unacceptable submissions for a new online magazine.

My god, for all that is holy, no poetry, that would be horrible! LOL

About the poetry

I have a lot to learn.

I have new links to add to my Bloglines now.

As to the AWP, just being there and being able to be there, being a good enough writer to be there, and for one's hard work to be recognized by peers, should count for a lot.

Off to the many links I have found.

Next up or marking ambition

How to Live in the Heartland by Twyla Hansen (damn, she did a 9 Mile Prairie poem, that is what I had planned on writing about one day, not that I won't, but still ;-)
School of the Arts by Mark Doty

The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing
The Jane Austen Book Club

Last two for book club. Question, are all book clubs becoming clubs that read books about book groups? I have a feeling tis so.

I was going to get another book of poetry, by Asian poets, but I knew this bunch would be enough for a while. That one is next up, next up! Given my absolutely microscopically slow reading pace lately, that might be a while.

Have a good one!

Facts of the day

If I lived in Edinburgh, I would have a much more active poetry life. I would go to all the Grog events!! Mostly I am saying, "Damn!"

In other news, I have been busy. I haven't been writing, but I have been busy. I would suggest a correlation, but that would be presumptuous.

I read a poem this morning. It has been resonating all day. Interesting way to start the day, with those resonations. It changes your day. It added a little kindness where there may have been a frustration.

That was good. Have a great evening.

Unobserved leaps

I find almost everything written by Verlyn Klinkenborg enlightening. Like today's article in the NYTimes here.

I love the lilt of timbre of his writing. Especially this bit:

I have grown used to the idea that nearly everything around me in nature happens unobserved and unrecorded. A snowy winter sometimes retains a transcript, but even those are rare.

I think this is partly what art touches upon, the unobserved that becomes observed by art. Poetry takes a moment, and makes it observable. It shines the light on the hidden, on the unknown.

I am continuing to be fascinated by the in between. The jump between the moment and the word. The place that isn't anything, but is the fuel for the thing. The moment the mark is made, those wings that are the transcript. That place that is indeed ephemeral. It ceases almost immediately, but the transcript remains. Inspiration is like this. The fuel of the word. But invisible.

I love this mystery, the unknown component to the known. This juxtaposition of light and dark, learning and leaning forward to look to the newly known.

Have a great day.

Baseball bat crack to the head

When you go out and get the mail, you don't expect to feel your life has changed somehow. Or more accurately, who the hell is Patrizia Valduga, and why have I never heard of her before?

By now you know: I need the words.
You'll learn to give me what I seek.
It's my sick mind, it feeds on words.
I'm begging you, for God's sake: speak!

Crack.

From this month's Poetry. Page 232. Don't waste time, just turn to that page, and read the selections From "One Hundred Quatrains". Damn. Part of this issue, Italian poets selected, translated by assorted people. Off to google. Crack. Both literally smoking, and smacked to the head.

Finding Marlowe

Prompted by the PBS In Search of Shakespeare marathon this morning, I dug out some Christopher Marlowe poetry I had about. I had never read Hero and Leander before. Have to say, great. Loved several of the lines especially.

And whose immortal fingers did imprint
That heavenly path with many a curious dint
That runs along his back; but my rude pen
Can hardly blazon forth the loves of men,
Much less of powerful gods: let it suffice
That my slack Muse sings of Leander's eyes;

This is truly beautiful I think. I always try to find the writer in the art, I know, a weakness. But sometimes it sits there plain.

Glister'd with breathing stars, who, where they went,
Frighted the melancholy earth, which deem'd
Eternal heaven to burn,

Awesome. The word gister'd, variation of glistened is so much harsher, next to breathing stars. You can't get much better than Eternal heaven to burn,

The PBS marathon said that Marlowe said that what you love will end you, or something approximating that. I agree completely. Your heaven will burn bright, sometimes more than one can hold.

Await the sentence of her scornful eyes; Hehe, the reader looking down at his page!

What we behold is censur'd by our eyes.

He must have enjoyed rewrites!

That is all. Have a great evening. Off to reread.

Oops

[insert a post for yesterday]

Oh well. I was busy. /excuses

Well, I was.

And as you can see the content in this post, is wildly entertaining. I will be heading home today, and hopefully the flights will be smooth.

I am not a particularly comfortable flier, as you know, heights. I huddle during takeoff and peek during the landing. I watch the flight attendants with an intensity of many suns. Only once have I seen them scared, and that did not please me.

As to writing, I did a teeny bit when I was bored during the events that I worked at here. I got the first line of a poem too, but then was interrupted. Oh well...

Have a great day!!

What should have been

Damn. They never did this sort of thing when I was studying there. I am very jealous right now. Glad to see the department doing such things. Off to download.

I have been sick hence the lack of updating here. And, because I have been sick, there is nothing to update anyway. Except as I was just writing this, I remembered a flash of a dream, that I think I meant to keep for a story. All gone, except the memory of a wisp. Heh, I typed "wish".

Have a great day.

Duck duck goose

Productive morning this was. I wrote one poem, and finished (heh, not really but I am hopeful) another. It has been a long time since that happened. I was in a mood to write something, but really didn't have any topic in mind. So I started doodling with the keyboard, and ended up with what might be a poem some day. Then I looked in my "current poetry - working on" poem file, and found the one I tidied up. Happy with most of it, but the last bit, which I think should be expanded/fixed/dealt with.

Then I went shopping. Only gone 1/2 hour because I am efficient if nothing else. I think my Benadryl will be kicking in soon, so that will be that for a while.

Have a good one!

I know I am going to regret that subject line!

More love

Alive Together by Lisel Mueller
On the Grasshopper and the Cricket by John Keats
Fire On The Hills by Robinson Jeffers
I Am Not I by Juan Ramon Jimenez (translated by Robert Bly)
Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy
The Swan by Rainer Maria Rilke (found this on a Dallas subway)
To his Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvel
Selecting A Reader by Ted Kooser
Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (I have the pop up book edition. So cool)

There are always more.

ETA: Now we are getting to the oh yah, can't forget this one.

Snow by Louis Macneice...
The Road Not Taken - By Robert Frost
The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy (the whole thing)...

First go round. I love these every time.

http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/oscar_wilde/poems/11065The Ballad of Reading Gaol

With No Experience In Such Matters by Stephen Dunn
Welcome by Stephen Dunn
Mon Semblable by Stephen Dunn
Chamber Music IX by James Joyce
A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London by Dylan Thomas
Edge by Silvia Plath
Handfuls by Karl Sandburg
We are Seven by William Wordsworth
Sonnet 17 by William Shakespeare
Ya I know, a small theme emerges. Mostly from bookmarks in groups. But a theme nevertheless.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot (Yes, I know The Waste Land is a better poem, but I think this one is more evocative and truthful. Viagra use in poetry, lilac indeed.) ::waves to one reader::
Belief & Technique For Modern Prose by Jack Kerouac (a poem that is hiding as a list)
Dishonest by Michael Redhill
Shapeshifter Poems by Lucille Clifton
Request to a Year by Judith Wright
A Postcard From The Volcano by Wallace Stevens
On a Tree Fallen Across the Road by Robert Frost
Hurrahing in Harvest by Gerard Manley Hopkins
God's Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins
The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens (I think of it as Mind of Winter)
A Sort Of A Song by William Carlos Williams
The Lost Children by Randall Jarrell

More later.

Kaboom

Dr. Whupass's Bitch Ass Poetry Roundup is having their denizens post their own poetry canons. That is what I shall be gathering to post here sometime soon. What a cool idea... pass it on...

Quick review

When I was Canada a few weeks ago, I picked up Prism International: Contemporary Writing from Canada and Around the World. From the creative writing program at UBC. I had never heard of any of the writers but two short stories in particular were fabulous. Mavis Brown by Gord Grisenthwaite. Excellent. Sharp and painful for Mavis, seen in the eyes and pants of the narrator. This is how a character can be captured. Also, Entropy by J.R. Myers. Again, excellent characterization, not that you would want to know this fellow, but an interesting take on the concept of going home again. And an even more excellent closure to the story. OMG!

As to the poetry, the one that stuck me most was a poem entitled Dry by Rhonda Batchelor. Never heard of her either but her "A stiff wind off the water / carries autumn in its teeth." is really beautiful I think. Talk about grabbing the reader by the literal teeth. Liz Dolan's The Fall reminded me very much of Judith's Wright's Request to a Year. Again excellent stuff and I am very happy to have found it. Off to google.

Wayward

It has been a while, but I am still around. I don't have much to say, or update, and the little I feel I do, eh. Feeling somewhat quieted.

I should look at my newest poem I wrote just the other day. Amazing inspiration art galleries are. Two poems now from those inspirations. The energy of those locations is palpable. Not only the marble and the painting textures, and the light, but the artist's effort (can you feel that too when you see or read? I can.), or the invisibility of it too, because it seems so easy. That absence but full presence is keenly felt sometimes. The strokes, whether pen or brush, of art.

Carry on...

::sits in my chair::

I am back. More later. It has been quite a fruitful couple of weeks writing (and reading) wise for me. A poem written, several ideas for poems and a couple of thousand words of the story.

This makes me happy. See you soon!!

More later as it occurs to me

Cutwork Notions

I place my perfectly squared-edge anger
neatly in my sewing box; folded and quartered,
sectioned for use later when the furrows are erased.