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.

Are Book Reviewers Passe?

Another great article for evening reading, this time from the New York Times.

This article claims that the traditional newspaper book review section is dying a slow death. And it seems to be true, from the evidence they provide. Large national newspapers are decreasing and collapsing their book review sections. The trend could be a shame, since regional reviewers tend to critique regional writers. However, all is not a loss.

According to the article, literary and book reviewing blogs are growing. They claim to "democratize" the book review process, making it accessible to the common reader. The article lists several popular and well-established book reviewing sites, including Book Slut, Emerging Writers Network, and The Syntax of Things.

I am one of those anachronistic bloggers who still like the traditional newspaper book review, albeit delivered to my gmail inbox on Sundays. I feel that there's a bit of a romantic notion to the old-school book review. They tend to be written by experts, people who have studied the art of critique. Certainly, I have romanticized the people involved, as well. What a life, to hold the book industry in the palm of your hand, able to decimate it (or inflate it) in one swoop of your pen.

Yet, I can see the benefits of putting literary criticism on the web, especially since many people feel that they aren't good at critiquing literature. By making criticism accessible to discussion on the web, we are broadening the base of informed literary critics. We are creating a new culture of book love and book awareness, even if we're staring at our laptops instead of getting our fingertips stained with ink.

Weekly Word Count, April 30-May 6

I wrote 1 poem this week for Poetry Thursday, so 500 words.

15494 for the year.

Two Articles for a Saturday Morning

This morning, as soon as I woke up, I had two really good articles in my inbox. I didn't know which one to blog about, so I'll do both.



Sassy Magazine

The first is about a beloved and short lived magazine that helped formed by identity. I'm not kidding. It was called Sassy magazine.

Do you remember Sassy? It was like a love letter to all girls who didn't fit into the YM/Seventeen demographic. It was for girls who listened to punk music (or wanted to listen to punk music), girls who thought about politics, and girls who were creative and wanted to do something. Sassy helped give publicity to the 'zine craze of the mid-90's (a precursor to blogs if there ever was one) and helped create a social identity for anyone who was different. In college, I knew who I could be friends with by virtue of their knowledge of Sassy.

My dad, who sent me this article, introduced me to Sassy in the very first issue, because he had a job interview with the creator before they launched. I read almost every issue since then. This article is about a new book about the rise and fall of this magazine, because apparently it never made money.



"Go home and write
a page tonight
and let that page come out of you --
Then, it will be true."

Theme for English B by Langston Hughes

The next article is not as joyful -- it's actually quite scary. When I think about it, I don't know where I fall. According to the LA Times, there is a student in a suburb of Illinois who has been arrested for a creative writing assignment that includes fantasies of a killing spree in his high school. In the killing spree, he obviously kills students, but then also has sex with their dead bodies.

The things that disturb me about this article...
1) The article implies that this scene was written in response to the English teacher's instructions to "not censor yourself, keep writing, write whatever comes to your mind." This is pretty typical creative writing guidelines, especially in high school when students don't enjoy writing.

2) The student, who was referred to the police, apparently didn't fit the profile of a teen killer and so is now being lionized in the article. He may lose his ability to join the Marines.

3)I find myself alternatively feeling bad for this student and getting mad at this student. On one hand, students should be able to write whatever they want without fear of censure or censorship. On the other hand, this paper is tantamount to a bomb threat, which doesn't fall under any free speech protections. How careless could he be? I find myself swinging between these two extremes, one of which agrees with article, the other of which loathes it.

Happy reading!

Planting Season

I've been writing a lot of these domesticity poems lately. I started over a year ago with two and then a fallow period for months. Since I've been writing seriously again, they've been occurring to me more often. As a series, I don't know where they're going, but I like them.

Domesticity Poem #4

Despite the stream
of rush hour traffic below,
the plumes

of exhaust, and all day
noise, together,
we have done this:

pushed impossible
small seeds into peat,
watered and waited.

Now, days later,
on our narrow stucco
terrace, in a plastic

hothouse, tender tendrils,
green and white,
unfurl under our eyes.

For the first time in years,
we have coaxed
something new

out of something small,
hard, and cracked open.
Each new morning,

I marvel at the shoots
sending new fragile roots
into the soil,

at the minuscule
fleur-dis-lis leaves
reaching towards the sky.

Poetry Book Club Selection -- Native Guard

The Poetry Book Club Selection is Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey. I will post a discussion post on May 21st, so that we can discuss her book. I'm really looking forward to it!

I'm Not Turning In To Oprah, But...

I do like one of her special books. A couple of months ago I picked up the Po Bronson book What Should I Do With My Life? at a library used book sale. I finally gotten around to reading it.

Surprisingly, it's very good. In it, he describes the lives of people who are either in the process of figuring out what to do with their lives or has already figured out what to do with their lives. He conveys their themes in short, descriptive chapters that seem to be working towards a larger idea...although I don't know what that it is, yet.

Now, I've always liked books like this. In fact, I read the book Gig about a year ago and it still sticks with me. But the way in which Bronson tells these stories, he seems to be honoring a person's personal path towards knowing oneself. And that they can be found despite or because of our work.

I was reading this evening and the following paragraph, from a chapter about a college career counselor who is kind of directionless, blew my mind:

Tomorrow, some five thousand students would dress in their gowns, and walk through a ceremony to mark the beginning of the rest of their lives. They were young and exuberant brimming with potential. Were the prepared to hang on to that feeling, when pedestrian reality would try to box them in? Were they ready? Partly because of my own experience, I wanted to stop each of them and whisper, "It might very quickly get overwhelming, but hang in there." pg. 31 -- What Should I Do With My Life? by Po Bronson

For someone who is always searching, this was a nice little wake up call.