It's In The Mail..... almost

 The procrastination is over.  I've readied my submission to an annual review that I am especially fond of.  This will be my third year of submission. The first year - zing I was accepted. Last year nada. So I'm trying to remain hopeful that this years material has something that will stick. Everything all done up and stamped. Just need to drop it in the mail in the morning.

For some reason I always feel good when I submit to this review. I don't know why, I just do. Anyone feel that way about any place in particular that you send your work?

Word List:

A new year calls for a new word list. I decided this on the way home from the office tonight.  I sometimes get away from my list and it really is sad, because having a list of uniquely interesting words at my finder tips often will spark something. That's just a side benefit. What I rely on the list for is to get me away from using the same words often when I'm writing. If I use it, I cross it off my list. The idea is to keep adding words even as I subtract them.

Feeling kind of yuckie tonight. Almost like I'm trying to come down with something. Headache and mussels ache. I think I'll try and read a while, if my eyes and my head will cooperate.

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Stretching.... Ah, Saturday Morning

Listening to Savage Garden / Crash and Burn.....

It was cruel and unusual punishment working yesterday but this too has past.  I need to go to the store this morning. Old Mother Hubbard is starting to look like she's among the privileged. I don't think procrastination as a plan is working. Time for the backup plan.

The sky is overcast and it's dreary out. Don't appear to be changing anytime soon.

I need to mull over some  submissions I want in the mail by Monday.

Have a picture I want to work on too to submit to a journal. This would be the first time submitting photos.

Clock is ticking in my head. I hate that.

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I saw this and thought what a great thought to begin the year with...

“Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. When we really listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other. We are constantly being re-created.” ~ Brenda Ueland

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Kick Starting the New Year

 Besides getting up this morning and writing, I went this afternoon to the Writers Place for the 4th Annual Writers Place - New Years Day Celebration Reading. It's a 12 hour Poetry Reading Marathon that Sharon Eiker organized based on the annual Bowery Poetry Club event in New York.  So from a creativity standpoint I feel like the year has gotten off to a good start.

I thought now might be a good time to roll out some resources for those writers looking for good start to the year.

• The Artist's Way.  This is something I just learned of this past week. Julia Cameron has put together a fascinating program that is geared for artists of all types. The program is a 12 week concentrated effort to spark creativity. If interested, check out the web site here.
• Bob Ragland the non-starving artist~ I heard an NPR story about Bob Ragland - He is an upbeat, energetic fellow that has made a living as an artist and tells other what he has learned that makes it work. The NPR story is here.  You can find his web site here. The story mentions a pamphlet of his road to success. It's simple and focused. I'm sure it can be modified to any art venue.  The Stuff You Won't Learn In Art School 
• readwritepoem poetry prompts
• The Writing Site

There's a few things to get you thinking if your having trouble getting the new year started.

Best wishes to everyone in 2009!

Technorati Tags: Wiriters Place,creativity,NPR,Bob Ragland,The Artist's Way,poetry prompts,things you won't learn in art school

 

Always My Favorite Issue

 The Jan/Feb issue of Poets & Writers is out. One of my favorite issues - the 12 debut poets for the year. The past couple of years I have known someone on the list. Not so this year. Based however on past experience with this list I need to get busy looking for some of their material. Those selected in the past have generally been a great crop of poets and for the most part they are very good reads.

Also there is a delightful piece that was written by Kim Addonizio titled First Thought, Worst Thought. Kim provides poetry exercises to inspire writers.

I haven't read it cover to cover yet, so there may be more gems awaiting me.

Technorati Tags: Poets & WRiters Magazine,Kim Addonizio,12 debut poets

 

W.S. Merwin featured on PBS News Hour

W.S. Merwin has become one of my favorite poets over the past couple of years. At 81 he is still quite an active writer and has yet another book coming out  "The Shadow of Sirius."

PBS has done a profile and featured some of his poems and it can be seen on their web site here. I enjoyed it. I think it's worth taking a look at.

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Seasons Forgiving

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 Having a glass of Chardonnay and wishing it were morning rather than evening. Daylight has slipped out of sight and in its place is the evening before back to the office.

I ventured out today and shot some pictures along the Missouri River and other places close by. Still a bit of snow lingering here and there but we'll see more of it before long. Winter is yet young.

I pity those poor souls who do not have the ability to experience seasonal changes. Their internal clocks must find the year very long and unforgiving. Having four distinct season is like having four times during the year to feel like there is a fresh start.

The clock we look at to see what time of day it is, is simply a man made arbitrary measurement to time. So is the calendar. But the seasons, they are natures clock.

It's probably a poet thing to prefer natural timing to some artificially contrived medium.  

Our Vision of the Muse

Here we have to the left, Polyhymnia the Muse of lyric poetry pictured. I fully understand the mythological creation of the muse of various entities but I am altogether amused by our common day practice of viewing our muse in perhaps an erotic representation. Almost a pornographic implant in the mind as if this is the necessary level in which one must go to the be creative. An arousal if you will. And maybe arousing that something within is what is necessary to move into a creatively fertile mode. Sure, it's fun on some level to suppose that our muse sits at the edge of our desk, long legs exposed, in some flauntingly evil way to attract our attention and impose upon us some grand element of creative juice that sparks our creative libido.[Insert apologies to my female readers who surely have a different image in mind. Or maybe not.]

Our typical vision of the muse calls upon us to look to an external source. I suppose we've all had examples of persons or even inanimate objects that have provided us with a spark of imagination that was the breakthrough of some piece of art. But I feel like deep down inside each of us, that's where the muse really is.

I know that all around us are beautiful, startling, magnificent, frightening, majestic, myopic, shocking and luminescent things that give us pause and allows us to think beyond the moment. But I suspect it is the inner muse within our own minds and not some mythology that takes those things we see and experience and goes outside the box and makes of them something new and allows us to give birth to that which is uniquely ours in a collaborative conception with our inner muse.

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San Francisco airport to feature carbon offset kiosks - News- msnbc.com

 

Here's a positive story for the spaceship earth~!

updated 9:50 a.m. CT, Fri., Dec. 26, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO - San Francisco International Airport is planning to give guilt-ridden travelers a chance to offset the air pollution emitted from their plane rides.

San Francisco airport to feature carbon offset kiosks - News- msnbc.com

Two Voices Lost this Week

Harold Pinter's death on Christmas eve marks the second loss in less than a week of British writers known for their outspoken criticism of war. The other was poet Adrian Mitchell who died a last Saturday.

Pinter's career as a playwright earned him the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature. He was outspoken publicly and often critical of the United States and even his homeland for their various foreign policies and was blisteringly critical for their parts in the Invasion of Iraq.
At one point of his life, he wrote poetry under the name "Harold Pinta."

Adrian Mitchell was a prolific poet. Like Pinter, often in the public eye with critical words for the misuse of political power and a champion of the underprivileged. I happened to be reading last Sunday at an event and chose one of his poems written during the invasion of Iraq titled "Playground." In a 2005 poll conducted by a poetry organization, his poem, "Human Beings" was voted the poem that people most wanted to send into space in the hope that it would be read a century later

From Me to You....

Just an quick note to wish readers a safe and joyous holiday season.

Peace to one and all.....

Inaugural Poet Below Radar to Most

When President-elect Obama is sworn into office the nation will hear from a poet that few of us have even heard of. Elizabeth Alexander's Wikipedia bio is shot and clearly substantiates the argument that her recitation on January 20, 2009 of a poem written by her, especially for this occasion will constitute he 15 minutes of fame.

Alexander was born in Harlem, New York in 1962. She grew up in Washington, D.C. so the so she is no stranger to the nation's capital. She received a B.A from Yale University, an M.A from Boston University, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania. She currently teaches ay Yale.

Alexander is not without honors. Her fourth poetry book "American Sublime" was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, and she was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship as well as an Illinois Arts Council award.

Reading several of her poems today, I was not on the whole impressed. Of the ones I read, only Blues from her book, Body of Life struck my fancy. Of course I've not read but a half dozen of her poems, and she'll be writing one specifically for the occasion, so there is hope that in those few minuets she will shine. What I am most happy about is that Obama has again placed poetry in a prime time slot for America.

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