Poetic Verbs, April 29-May 7

I think I assume that when I call myself a poet, inspiration comes easy. I lounge around the house, doing everything but reading and writing, and assume that the words will start flowing. And then they don't.

But, when I focus on my actions and how they add to my writing, it comes a little bit easier. Notice I say a little bit. Life is still mundane. I still need to pay my bills, clean the litter box, and go to work every day. However, when I accomplish actions that are intended just for writing, I have this little space set aside in my brain for poetry. Then, this little space starts collecting images. And it starts expanding, like a sponge, looking for the little things that will add up to a poem.

For instance, when I was driving home today, I wasn't listening to the news on MPR and getting depressed. I was seeing the lilac bushes in bloom along the highway, I was noticing the upended plastic yellow football helmet lying abandoned on the side of the road, and I watched the clouds wreathe the downtown skyline in a gray mist. I may write about them later, I may not. But I noticed them.

In addition to that, I...

* wrote a haiku

* purchased pens and highlighters at the dollar store -- pens for writing and highlighters for my Poet's Market

* started a verb journal which lies next to my computer. I used an old black speckled composition, and wrote "Poet is a Verb" across its cover.

* read One Red Eye by Kirsten Dierking like a graduate student, marking lines and poems that I like, to exercise my poetic sensibilities

* started considering, in the back of my head, turning my old fiction project that died into a poetry project

* wrote a poem for Poetry Thursday

* discovered the Poetry magazine archive at the Minneapolis Downtown Library -- it dates back to 1912. I picked up the volume for 1961 and found poems by Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and Muriel Rukeyeser.

* added my site to 2 blogrolls

* surfed other participants at Poetry Thursday to see what their work is like

* purchased (finally) Natasha Trethewey's book for the Poetry Book Club

That's it for my week. If you want to share your poetic actions for the week, I would love to hear about them. Please post a link or a list in the comments.