More signs of the times and an apology

Strange, but it seems the swine flu is actually good for the economy. I saw this sign next to a gas station yesterday as we were driving along:

"Hand wash--$10"

Now for the apology. I've not been able to do anything in the blogosphere this past week, not even get to any of your blogs. And I am sincrely sorry for that and know it's my loss. But I'll be back in a few days, and I hope we can pick up where we left off.

More on poetry

Kringle from A Poetic Journey Through Life left a comment on my post about free verse and traditional form and asked to hear my thoughts about what she said. Here's what she said:

I found your post interesting... though I am no expert, I have done a fair amount of studying on the role of poetry and journal writing (I call it personal writing), in the development of the self. In my research I have found there are many reasons persons write... and yet too some of the poetic musings you discuss are related to semantics and syntax. Yet too, for many, poetry is merely an exploration and expression of self that leads to a transcendent place. Common themes I have found are the personal exploration and creation of selfhood through the personal writing. So perhaps part of all of this relates to the writer, the skill, and the purpose by which it is written? I'd appreciate your thoughts..

I think the points she makes are really good. Having taught writing for more than 20 years before becoming a full-time freelancer and having continued over the years by developing new writers as an editor and teaching as an adjunct faculty member, I'm well aware of the role writing plays in self discovery and development. And as a poet, I know the power of exploring poetic expression. One way we create and discover new knowledge is through metaphor, and metaphor is at the very heart of poetic expression.

I know that many people use poetry to both "explore" and "express" self. And there is a very long history and strong tradition of poetry being used in multiple settings as a form of therapy. And whether someone uses poetry as a form of private journaling or in a more formal therapeutic way, there is nothing "mere" (in the sense of limiting or simple) about the act. And anything that helps us achieve some level of transcendence is certainly outside the critical arena I intended that earlier post enter.

But we need to make distinctions. Poetry written as part of a therapeutic program and the lines and metaphors that you and I and millions of other people all over the world scribble into our journals at the end of a day or while sitting with a cup of tea in a coffee shop is not the same as poetry printed or posted on line in literary journals and zines or as poetry in even more mainstream publications. Poems in journals and poems that come out of a course of treatment are private poems. They are not and should not be subject to the same rules and expectations that poems presented as art are subject to. That doesn't mean that poems written in journals and written as therapy can't also be artistic and good. Some are excellent examples of the poetic art. But poems written for publication and for an audience are by definition an art form and can be expected to do certain things. There is a tradition they belong to. There is an ancient history of poetry as art and a history of theory just as ancient. Somehow the poems that are presented as art must carve out their place within that tradition or fall by the wayside. Those were the poems and that was the poetry I was referring to last Monday.

Another signs of the time

Went to eat at a new Japanese restaurant today a couple of miles down the road from the house. This sign was on their door:

To our patrons:

We closed between 2:30 and 5 o'clock during the week

.

The message is clear. But come on. Someone could make a lot of money rewriting signs.

Preparation

I recommend that you find the book Love That Dog by Sharon Creech. I'll blog about why in a day or so. But it's worth finding first.

In the meantime, watch and enjoy. S found it for me. ILY, S.

Some thoughts about free verse and traditional form

I've looked at a number of "literary journal" web sites over the last few days reading "sample poems" that reveal the editors' taste. I have to tell you I'm not overly impressed with a lot of what I see. And here is some of my thinking.

First of all, poetry should be something more than prose, or at least something different. And new poetry should do something more than old poetry, or at least something different.

Taking bad prose and breaking it into lines that make it resemble a poem doesn't change the fact that it's still bad prose.

Free verse is not prose broken into lines. Good free verse has structure of some sort and rhythm of some sort.

Free verse means verse that is genuinely "free" to explore language in interesting ways. It should use language in a way that prose doesn't and in a way that traditional form doesn't. It should explore new syntax.

Formal verse and free verse share the same grammar but not the same syntax. But some poets approach free verse as syntax without grammar.

Unless free verse genuinely explores the nature of rhythm of both language and image, it is a lazy approach to writing poetry.

When a person encounters a poem--either through writing it or reading it--that person should ask and attempt to answer -- what is exciting about the poem's language? what is exciting about the way the words are working together?

The Seasons

I New Orleans

The blues the man plays
Are like the early flowers
At the end of our walk —
Fragrant, perennial,
And eternally sad.

II Lake George

The lake was exquisitely cold.
The day unbearably hot.
The water like crystal. And you,
An apparition,
A memory, a promise.

III Cleveland

The night in the upper boxes smelled of sulfur
From homerun fireworks exploding at eye level
Then hanging above the field like gray clouds
Because no wind would push them over the lake.

IV Wolfeboro

The incredible silence of snow
Beneath the pine and birches. Only the whispering
Skis telling secrets to the groomed surface
And you disappearing ahead where the trail turns.
A premonition. A secret fear.
Dispelled an hour later at a table
Looking out over the sun glossed ice of the lake.

Originally published in A Matter of Mind, Foothills Publishing, 2004.
© copyright 2004, 2009 the Grandpa at The Word Mechanic Blog.
All rights reserved.

To be in the moment

This post is in response to a post on ....45 and Aspiring's blog.

I was reading the other day about a shared concept of time in physics and in certain philosophies. I'm not a physicist or cosmologist, nor am I a Buddhist. But I'll try to summarize what I understood and how I interpret it.

Time is an illusion.

There is no past. What we call memory is only a construct that currently exists in our mind in the now. It doesn't matter what we've done or what we might have done. Neither can change the now that we have. What the construct called memory can do is constrict the way we experience the now, limiting our ability to fully participate with the now that is.

The future is no more than an infinite array of possibilities. And none of them is predetermined. And none of them is actually real until we perceive it. But here's the catch. The only thing we can perceive is the now.

Mindfulness is a Zen concept that means to be in the moment, also known as the now. And Christ gave the same advise in the parable about the lilies of the field and birds of the air when he told his disciples to not be concerned about their future. There is no point to it. As long as you are in the now, as long as you are mindful, you have what you need. He also said to become like a child. I found this on a site called Zen habits in a post called 5 inspirations for being in the moment.

Children. There’s no one better at being present than a child. I love to watch my three-year-old son, Seth, as he plays. He’s not thinking about what happened to him yesterday, or what he’s going to do later today. He’s Spiderman, and he’s fighting the bad guys, and nothing else in the world exists. If he gets mad about something, he overreacts, and nothing else in the world matters but what has upset him. But he’ll cry about it, and then soon return to normal, happy again, the offending situation forgotten without a grudge. He has no cares about tomorrow, and for that, I love to watch him. We need to use children as inspiration, and try to be like them sometimes. Jesus instructed us, “Be as a child,” and those were wise words.

That makes sense to me. Being in the moment is not easy. And sometimes the moment feels painful. But when you accept the moment and become part of the moment, fully conscious of your being--your breathing, your thinking, the light and darkness around you, the sounds, smells, and tastes--everything seems to be in place. And what lies ahead are infinite possibilities. But you can't get to them if you insist on letting the "past" shape your perception of the now. I know. My own gets in my way all the time. And sometimes just being mindful feels as if it requires too much effort. But it is worth doing. Letting go of the past and letting go of the attempt to shape the future is a source of strength that makes any of those infinite possibilities possible.

Thoughts on Being a Freelancer Supplemental

Writer and Editor

A couple of week ago, I said a writer is "someone who knows words and knows language and gets turned on by using both well (and by seeing other people do the same thing). A writer is someone who is curious about a lot of different things, and knows ways to satisfy that curiosity--how to research, who to ask, and what to ask in order to get the right information to share with readers."

An editor is a lot like a writer but different. While a writer's passion is words, an editor's passion is text. A writer uses words for a lot of different reasons--to convey information, to explore ideas, to persuade, to incite, to define the world the writer inhabits, to create meaning. Text is what results from the effort to do those things. But text usually is not an end in itself.

An editor understands there's a special relationship between text and its intended audience. Text without readers, that is text that exists outside a community, has no power. It can't inform. It can't incite. It can define nothing. (Just an aside here. A writer can also be the sole audience for what is written.)

The editor is like a bridge between writer and reader. The editor's first task is to make the effort to understand exactly what the writer is saying and what the writer is trying to do by saying it. And the second task is just as important. The editor needs to understand how the audience is going to respond to the text and whether or not that response is going to be the one the writer wants. Then it becomes the editor's job to bring the two things -- the writer's intent and the audience's response -- as close together as possible.

The jobs are different. But one quality identifies both -- a passion for language, including a passion for using it well. It's no surprise that the best writers and the best editors often do both tasks very well.

From the Choir Loft

Singing is twice praying.

On alternating days we sang the Mass
At seven, boys, then girls, then boys again.
Sometimes the only ones who'd show
To sing were me and Hal the organist,
And I could barely hum a note. Refrains
Eluded me, so Hal would sing it solo.

Now Hal had music in his hands and feet;
The organ's pipes were a part of him.
But when he tried for music from his throat,
Well, Father said it sounded kind of sweet
If sweet meant scratchy, hoarse, and thin
And not unlike the bleating of a goat.

From Kyrie to Agnus Dei, Hal
Sang all the parts, sang treble, alto, bass
And never worried what the music said.
The words were all that mattered. Still somehow
He'd hit the final note then turn his face
And wink at me and proudly raise his head.

Hal quit the church when Kyrie became
The simple English Lord and anyone
Who wanted stood and strummed communal chords
For Masses where the singing was the same
As elevator sap, and Hal seemed stunned
To learn that music is in deed the words.


Originally published in Birmingham Poetry Review, Summer/Fall, 2005.
© copyright 2009 the Grandpa at The Word Mechanic Blog.
All rights reserved

Who would have guessed?

I did a search on my name and it turns out that I'm in a very exclusive crowd. (One of them is my son and one is a competitive cyclist.) You might want to try it yourself. (And, no, I did not use the Grandpa. Why would I name my son the Grandpa?)

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 11 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Open Journal

I appreciated the comments that some of you left on yesterday's post. And I have to agree that I like the images and generally like the feel of the lines. But I don't think there's enough there yet to call it a poem. There are some possibilities but no way to bring them to life. That means the sentiments remain private--between the speaker and his/her love. In that equation, there's no room (or there's too much room) for the reader. And there's no way in to the poet's vision.

The thrust of this fragment is toward a statement on art and passion. But the lines have no context. And without context, as plesant as they might be, they become cliche. The poet needs to push them beyond that to make them push -- or invite -- the reader to participate in the making of meaning. [Music is the purest art form (or perhaps it's dance), and poetry is the art of meaning.]

So where does that leave me as the poet. Sometimes changing one or two words can make all the difference. It didn't tonight. My sense is this IS a fragment. It's a part of something bigger. And I have a sense of a good poem coming on.

I missed it

I didn't know. Yesterday's post was post number 200. I wonder if that's significant.

Morris Dancing (May Day 2009)

The morning and the evening glimmer.
Heaven turns and the earth's heart swells.
Dancers in their ribbons shimmer.
Peepers sound like Morris bells.

These people have their drums and horns.
They have their song and watchers' eyes.
Callers tell them of their forms.
And with their simple faith in earth and sky

The dancers' feet repeat the sounds
Of new life stirrings underground
And with their steps and song awaken
Ancient legends the world's forsaken.

They dance for Demeter's cyclic plight,
And the earth responds with green delight.


Originally published in A Matter of Mind, Foothills Publishing, 2004.
© copyright 2004, 2009 the Grandpa at The Word Mechanic Blog.
All rights reserved.

Well this feels different

This morning, I finished the last piece of work in front of me that had a deadline. From 10 AM on, I have been unemployed. This is the first time since 1998 that I have not had at least one contract job still waiting on my desk to be done. I'm not worried. I have money coming in and there will be other work. It's just a strange feeling. It's also an opportunity. I can use the time to focus on doing more of my own creative work.

You still have time

Tomorrow is the second annual Poem in Your Pocket day. You can find out about it here. And if you need suggestions, check out Mommy's Nintendo at The Itsy Bitsy Monkey blog.

I've been impressed with the way the blogosphere has responded to National Poetry Month. I've been pleasantly surprised over and over again when I go to people's blogs and see them putting up a poem because it's National Poetry Month. I think we need a National Poetry Year. All in favor, leave a comment. But before you do, check out Willow's post for today. Wouldn't you like to see posts like that every day for a whole year? I would.

Billy, Age 44

“Is it true about Billy?” someone asked me this morning.
That was the first I’d heard about it.

If I’d looked hard enough
I might have seen the dying
that is the end
of summer,

the grass burning brown,
caterpillars spreading tents
in the tops of trees

and the horn worm clasped
to its leafless stalk while wasp
larvae nurse its sides.

All this time without
a sound, like night storms passing
north, silent flashes

through the calm chirps of crickets.

Originally published in Columbus Dispatch, May, 1982.
© copyright 2004, 2009 the Grandpa at The Word Mechanic Blog.
All rights reserved.

[Note: This is one of those poems that took several years to write. It's about a co-worker who committed suicide after taking a week off from work to get all of his affairs in order, including transferring the house to his mother's name and all the money in his bank account into his mother's account. The impetus for the poem came from a realization I had when I heard of his death that I'd seen the moment he had made the decision. There were just the two of us in the front of the store. It was close to closing time and we were both standing at the front counter filling out orders we'd taken over the phone. I looked over at him just as he looked up from the order form and stared out the front window. The look on his face was calm and resolved. He finished up the day's orders, said goodbye and left. That was the last time I or anyone else at the store ever saw him. So I wrote the poem about Billy's suicide multiple times. Sometimes I went into the history of his time in Korea or other times I wrote about the death of his father or about how Billy lived alone with his mother. He was an avid bowler so there was an attempt to write about bowling. I'd get the poem out again and again, revise, put it back the way it was, toss it out and start over. Then one late summer afternoon, I was sitting on my back porch watching a storm gather in the west and feeling a cooling breeze, and there was this poem in front of me. I think I took all of five minutes to get it down on paper, and I knew this was the Billy poem I had been trying to write for years. It was later published along with quotes from an interview I had given in a poetry column in the Columbus Dispatch. The topic of that week's column was the creative process.]

Wishing you well

On a night when the sky is clear, don't close yourself in. Step out. Look up. Take in the sky. Then tell yourself that you are a part of all of that.

Thoughts on being a freelancer, lesson two

Last week's commentary on becoming a full time freelancer was about setting reasonable expectations at the start. This week I want to talk about a piece of advice every aspiring writer hears at one point or another.


So, Lesson Number Two in How to Become a Full Time Freelancer: What do you know--not that it's really all that important.


One of the most common piece of advice beginning writers hear is write what you know. To some extent, that makes sense. After all, if the closest you ever came to understanding a particle accelerator is watching coins disappear down a spiral coin wishing well funnel,



you may find it tough to explain what happens inside the Large Hadron Collider. (And what all the fuss was about -- Some kind of fear that black holes would suck up our world and everything in it from the inside out.)



But why would you try? Well let's see. My first writing paycheck was for $35 from United Way for an article I did for them on the Arthritis Foundation to use in their annual campaign. It had something to do with new treatments and helping people learn about them so they could make informed, competent decisions. My second pay check was also for $35, again from United Way, for an article about a program from the Diabetes Association to help people understand the importance of controlling blood sugar levels.

I had been a political science major before dropping out of college and going into restaurant work. I knew nothing about health care or medicine or managing chronic diseases. But the editor liked the pieces and I had my first professional credits. The key is, I did know something. I knew how to find out what I needed to know, and I knew how to ask questions and listen to the answers; so I could interview people and get the information I needed to write the piece the editor had asked for. In a sense, I did write what I knew. I knew how to learn and I wrote what I had learned.

Now there's all kinds of caveats attached to that. Notice, I wasn't writing for an audience of doctors. And I wasn't writing patient education pamphlets. I've done both those things multiple times throughout my career, but there was no way I could learn enough in a short period of time when I first started out.

So there are really two lessons to learn here. The first is that a would be writer cannot be handcuffed to the admonition to write only what you know. If that's all you do, you'll have a very small niche in the writing world indeed. And will you become a writer? Probably not. You'll be a barista who writes articles about double mocha lattes. Or a rocket scientist who knows how to make space travel interesting to audiences who read your occasional articles in Discover. But you'll always be a writer second.

A writer is someone who knows words and knows language and gets turned on by using both well (and by seeing other people do the same thing). A writer is someone who is curious about a lot of different things, and knows ways to satisfy that curiosity--how to research, who to ask, and what to ask in order to get the right information to share with readers.

That's not to say a writer doesn't specialize. For the last 13 or 14 years, I've made a good living writing about and editing works on health and health care for both health professionals and health consumers. And even though articles about health was what I got paid for when I first started, this one time college drop out glorified waiter and bartender wrote articles about beekeeping, running public parks, building a career as ceramic engineer, opening a general store, how books are bought for the library, subversive curriculum, literacy, writing a collaborative novel.

My first article in a national publication was about crepes. Even though I had worked in restaurants, I had never done anything with crepes (except for crepe suzette). But I was curious, and I created 20 crepe recipes. I even took pictures of the dishes and got paid for the photos. It wasn't that long after the Arthritis Foundation piece. And it made me feel really good about what I could do.

Now the second big caveat (the first was don't let yourself be limited by what you know) is know your limitations. For those of you who are still with me, lesson three will be The Great Hotel Fiasco--Don't bite off more than you can chew. (I'll tell you about my first real failure.)

Worth a Visit

Joy at Babble on (another wonderful name for a blog) posted a poem by Taylor Mali that's well worth the read, as is the poet's comments that she posted with it.

I need to bring back "Today's Spotlight." I just haven't had time to do it on a regular basis. But Joy's post would have been in the spotlight if I were doing it.

Oh, I was also a guest poet today on Mommy's Nintendo's The Itsy Bitsy Monkey blog. It was fun to be part of her National Poetry Month Challenge. And if you go there, spend some time looking back at the poems she's posted throughout the month. Also, I would highly recommend making the time to look at the blogs of the other poets who joined her in the challenge. She has links to their sites as part of her posts.

Process

I sometimes wonder how anything becomes a poem. It frustrates me. And sometimes I feel certain that whatever I did in the past to transform a few random groupings of words collected from God knows where into poetry I'll never do again.

For the last couple of days, I've been looking over a series of notes I made a few years after my father died. They're about his art and about his need to tell stories that defined who he was. They're about how the stories became more important as he got closer to death. And they're about not listening to them and forgetting them. They're about watching football with him eight months before he died. And they're about the nothingness we come from, are born into, and move toward.

Some of the notes are broken up into lines, as if they were originally meant to be a poem. And as I read the notes, I can hear and feel the poem that's there. But I can't make it happen. It frustates me. But it's what I do.