Sound Can Find No Home

Still, body stripped & blanket draped, you lie
where your final cries rise to mix with sounds
in undulant trees & descend disguised
as August noise. The waning day dies loud
with voice as evening winds laced with smells
of charcoal fires convey laughter from crowds
gathered about a store-front clown, and swells
from a calliope mount toward clouds
drifting in the silent advent of dark.
Sonant waves wash across your heaveless breasts,
but sound can find no home within the stark
confines of your lifeless form. Pulsing crests
pass unheeded, & grief’s urgent sobs die
at your ears. Life’s flood ebbs, returns, flows by.

Originally published in Red Jacket, 1993.
© copyright 2004, 2009 the Grandpa at The Word Mechanic Blog.
All rights reserved.

Another Signs of the Times

Name on a bakery in South San Francisco

Galli's Sanitary Bakery

I don't even want to guess what that means.

Had no Internet access for the past two days, but had a very close encounter with nature and with my most severe phobia. Will catch up next week.

Leaving Eden but Still Drifting

We close the gates behind us
today at noon .
Our travels aren't over.
Travels that took us
the last few days to Fairfax,
Occidental,
Healdsburg,
but always returned us to Sebastapol,
to the double wooden gates
at the end of a graveled lane
that open onto Eden.

Last night after the Sonoma County Fair,
we ate dinner in an Italian restaurant
at Railroad Square in Santa Rosa.
Today we'll have lunch
with my son and his family
to say goodbye
and to be with
our youngest granddaughter
one more time before driving to Jenner
on the coast and up Route 1 to Timber Cove
to an inn that sits on a cliff above the ocean.

When we get back to Atlanta,
I'll paint what I've seen
and let Eden infuse my days.


The house we've been staying in is at the end of a gravel lane. The property backs up to a state park, and there is a vineyard bordering the north side of the property. The land has an olive grove that the owners harvest to make their own olive oil each year. There are apple trees, peach trees, pear and plum trees, fig trees, walnut trees, and one lemon tree. The grounds are surrounded by blackberry bushes with the most lush blackberries I've ever tasted. There are flower gardens, rose trellises, a vegetable garden surrounded by huge lavender and rosemary bushes. Aside from Hawaii, it is the most Eden like setting I have ever been in. And everywhere you drive, it is more of the same.

This has been a time to just let go of schedules, of deadlines, of angst over whether or not we are doing the right things with our lives or over why we aren't doing the things we know we should be doing. It's been a good week, and there are a few days left, and I intend to enjoy them.

Gray Sonoma Morning

waiting to eat a second breakfast
with my granddaughter
it's overcast, not the typical fog
that rolls in from the ocean overnight
and obscures all but the hint
of an outline of hills
behind the olive trees
then burns off and lets
the sun come through

the fog is gone now
as it always is by this time

I can clearly see the field
and the hills with their foliage
but the crystal clear air
is chilled and filled with random
drops of condensation
and the sky is still grey
I've photographed the grove
and the hills behind
in as many different lights as I could
and I've stood or sat
just looking from the deck
to lock the various shades of light
and the olive trees
with the shivering silver
of their green leaves
inside my mind so that later
when I look I can see
what the photo doesn't show

it's grey this morning
a quiet calming peaceful grey
the quail
still walk along the edge of the yard
and through the bushes
behind the garden
the roses still stretch
up from the porch
as if pointing at the sky
where yesterday I saw
an eagle and three hawks
and last night
as I did the night before
I saw
through the front room window
two stars
rising above the eastern horizon
to shine brightly
through the distant trees

Still adrift in California

dancing before breakfast
and then the farmer's market in Sebastapol
coming away with fresh caught wild salmon
and baskets of tomatoes
eggs benedict market style for lunch
market style=no ham or bacon
spinach with sundried tomato pesto instead
then a visit to screaming mimi's ice cream
the hottest spot in town
for a taste of local strawberries
an afternoon of photos
and a set of new acrylic paints
red headed woodpecker in the tree outside the window
that evening planked honey mustard salmon
and roasted corn on the cob
home made pesto and summer squash
market tomatoes
and ice cream with
the sweetest blackberries I've ever tasted
all made sweeter by family
summer in Sonoma County

California drifitn', back next week

adrift in Northern California
enjoying a private Edenic retreat
listening to Bob Marley's One Love
on S's play list
contemplating generations
and anticipating the soft sweetness
of the freshly picked blackberries
I plan to add to my next pot
of Twinings green tea

a rather disjointed post

My favorite NPR (National Public Radio) program is This American Life. Sunday night I was listening to it -- I know, I should have been on the blog reading all of your fantastic posts, but it was This American Life -- which is a collection of stories and this week's topic was fear of sleep.


The first story was about sleep walking and doing things when you did that could kill you. It happened to Mike Birbiglia, a comedian who told the story at a club called The Moth. You can access the club Web site here.

It would be worth your time to spend some of it on both of the sites linked above. But that's not what this post is about. Ira Glass, the host of This American Life, does very insightful commentary about the stories and the story tellers. When Birbiglia's story ended he gave background on the comedian and the club and concluded with the statement "Catch him before he becomes too famous." So I'm sharing him with you. But that's still not the point.

I've met a lot of people in the Blogosphere. And I've made a lot of friends. And I watch them become more and more famous. And they still say "hey" to me. That's good. The Blogosphere is a place to catch people before they become too famous. That's the point. I'm glad I'm here. because I'm glad you're here.

I'm standing up for my writing

Literally.

I have some kind of sciatic nerve problem, or at least that's what the physician's assistant thought it was yesterday. It's aggravated by sitting at my desk, partly because I don't have good chair poster when I'm leaning over the keyboard working. After about an hour or so, my leg begins to hurt enough to make me very uncomfortable, and after about another hour, I can't bear to sit there any longer. The only thing that helps is to stand up and walk around. So I started last week standing at the kitchen counter to work when it got bad.

Last weekend I had to work both Saturday and Sunday, and I thought why even bother to sit down? So I used some wire shelving we have to hold my laptop and stood the whole day each day while I worked. I also found that in addition to my leg not hurting, standing let me think a little more clearly about what I was writing. Whenever I got stuck, I just walked around in a little circle and by the time I got back to the keyboard, the words I needed were there. So I kept standing all week long.

Yesterday when I saw the PA and she was giving me some exercises to do, she suggested that I should try to stand to work. (I told her that usually I could hardly stand to work, but I don't think she got it. So I just said OK.)

A few months ago I was working on an article about physical activity and I came across a research study that focused on the benefits of standing as opposed to sitting. It turns out that people who do their job mainly sitting (like bus drivers, for instance) have a tendency to die sooner than people who stand more. We all know about the value of exercise, but this was true even with low level physical activity. So maybe pain is not such a bad thing after all.


Here's the first draft of a poem I did today after coming across some notes I'd made for an essay. Too early to tell whether I like it or not, but I thought I'd share it.

The running of the ideas (first draft)

When the gates were opened for the running
of ideas, three men were trampled at the start.
Two more scrambled over the walls that lined
the street. And only the bravest stayed in front,
shouting the whole way, cheered on by rabble
leaning from the balconies above
and smiling critics -- middle-aged women and men
holding dry martinis, drinking rum.

At the ring the crowd roared as the first idea--
proud, brave, and very strong--gored the rider's
mount and threw the rider to the ground.

No one could slow him. No one could tire him,
until the bravest fighter of them all
stood before him and with his cape and grace
took pass after pass and brought him to his knees.

The crowd chanted its approval. They'd seen
a work of art. And the idea, its hind legs
lashed to the horse, was, without dignity
and without ears, dragged from the dusty ring.

© copyright 2009 the Grandpa at The Word Mechanic Blog.
All rights reserved

The poet in me is a recluse

He doesn't want to be. He just withdraws.

Just some random and spontaneous thoughts on breaking into poetry

• Who do you read? I know people who go to art museums and look at an abstract and say. "My five-year-old could do and has done better than that." The truth is, there's a lot of abstract work I don't like. But unless I look at a lot of that, and where it came from, I can't critique it. And if I can't critique it, I can't do it. Do you read one poet? Do you read one style of poetry? The abstract painter I appreciate understands and can do perspective and realism. In fact, the realism painters I appreciate understand and can produce the abstract concepts that underlie it. The same is true with poetry. If you can't see what there is that connects Billy Collins, Alan Ginsburg, Ezra Pound, John Milton, John Keats, and Timothy Steele, you need to read more.
• Why do you want to write poetry? Do you have a vision to share? Or are you writing in your diary with broken lines? The point is poetry is an art form. If you want to become a poet, if you want to be read by other people, please make it because you want to share what you see. And to share, you have to be aware of an audience.
• How resilient are you? Poetry is an art of rejection. Most people aren't going to understand you. And the gatekeepers, the people who edit the journals where your poetry is going to be published, aren't even most people. And the natural response to rejection is to become imitative. When you do, you've destroyed your reason for being a poet.

the master s words

there is a way they have
............to make you feel dwarfed
....with all, their, commas,
.....and broken phrases
.......and misplaced parenthesis
........and wordsthatruntogether
........................to obliterate thoughts
it s a little like drinking christmas
............wine without a glass or
.......making illicit
love
........for the first time
they have a way to make you feel smaller than an ant
.........crawling across a super highway
but they lift you up above the clouds
.........................to drop you
........suddenly
..................falling
....................past birds
........................hurdling
........................downward
........................praying
........................for an updraft

Originally published in Wisconsin Review, May 1976.
published in A Matter of Mind, Foothills Publishing, 2004.
© copyright 2004, 2009 the Grandpa at The Word Mechanic Blog.
All rights reserved

Flowers

water color on paper

It Was Just a Silly Typo

“Time came and went to fast.”
It gave up hours, minutes, gave up seconds.
It passed up the future, ignored the past.
All transactions pending were suspended.

Time came to seek a place of solitude,
To find a way that it could reckon
With the stationary sun over truths
And other matters it knew could not be answered

In earth’s day to day rotation. It called to
The stars to join them, to stop their dances.
It even asked the Western Wind to lie still
Against the water until it calmed the prancing

Waves. And when all things had bowed to time’s will,
Time rose again and went to have its fill.

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

More signs of the time

Saw this in a gift shop on the square in Marietta, Georgia.

Hardwork must have killed someone.

Happy 4th.

Notes on Getting Published

(1) I once sent a group of poems to the Amherst Review. I waited a year to get a response. Finally, almost one year to the day after I sent them, I got a letter saying they wanted to publish one of the poems. I sent them the writer's info and waited again. One year later the issue with my poem was published.

They had left out a word.

(2) The only sure way to get published is to outlast the rejection slips.

(3) The times they are a changin.

Typically, when you send a poem to a literary journal, you can expect to wait anywhere from 6 weeks to 6 months to get a response. Ideally you can use that time to get your mind off the work you just sent out and turn to other work that needs to be completed and sent out. Then when the to-be-expected rejection letter comes, it's no big deal, because you've already moved on to other things that have assumed greater priority. That let's you get reacquainted with the work that came back. You can look at it objectively and analyze it to determine whether you need to trash it, revise it, or simply find a better match to send it to.

But now we use the Internet to submit our work. Some journals still take three months to decide to tell you no. But one day last week, I got a rejection email 12 hours after I had sent the poems.

Problem/Solution

I know I haven't posted much about the agonies of editing recently. Wait. Come to think of it I haven't posted much of anything recently. Hmmmm. Well, anyway, as I was saying, I got this gem of a sentence today in an article about feeding an adult dog.

An adult dog's diet can contain up to 50% carbohydrates, including 2.5% to 4.5% fiber, according to the National Research Council, a scientific research unit of the nonprofit National Academies.

So...
.............. let's take a look at that sentence. First of all, it's 30 words. Now 30 words is a long sentence in an article aimed at an audience whose reading skills are defined as basic. The company I'm doing this work for defines basic as high school level. But that may actually be a little high for the general lay audience of adult readers they are trying to reach. When I edit or write for them, I shoot for an eighth grade reading level. (Which has nothing to do with the level of the intelligence of the audience. It only involves the ease with which the audience can take the information in.) The reason I aim for an 8th grade level is that a 6th grade level, which is more accurate, takes more time than they want to pay me for.

But this isn't really about reading level (or how much I get paid). It's about putting information in a sentence the audience can use. Now when we take a look at the sentence, it seems there's some important information in there. How do I know? Because there's a really impressive source being cited. Come on, we all know about the "National Research Council, a scientific research unit of the nonprofit National Academies," don't we?

PROBLEM # 1: Who says this (or "says what," because by the time I get to the end of the sentence I've forgotten what I was being told)? And why am I supposed to believe them? Their name sounds impressive. But who the hell are they? I just formed a group here in Atlanta where the CDC is located. We call ourselves the National Citizen's Healthcare Oversight Committee. Now we're probably going to be able to convince a lot of people about what we say. Why? Because we're right here where the CDC is.

Actually, my group is going to be more successful. Everybody has heard of the CDC. Well, not everybody, but enough. Can I have a show of hands. How many of you out there know what the "National Academies" are, or is it is?

Solution #1: Actually, I happen to know a little bit about both the National Academies and the National Research Council. But I'd have to Google them to be able to tell you who they are and what they do. And there was a paucity of hands raised just a moment ago.

So the first thing to ask as an editor is does the writer explain anywhere in the article who or what these agencies are? No. As a matter of fact, that is the only time their names appear in the article. So the solution seems easy. If you are going to call on an authority to vouch for your claim, then you need to make sure your readers know who that authority is. So the first option is to tell them.

But, no. That's a problem because it's going to take up a lot more space than it warrants and that's going to take the reader farther away from the real point of the article: What kind of dog food should I buy for my dog? (As I type this, Yeats is staring up at me with a hungry look in her eye. But then, she's still a puppy. Puppies are supposed to be hungry.)

The second thing I ask as an editor is do we really need the attribution. The answer is no. This is not a scientific paper for a peer reviewed journal. The website where this article will appear has a major reputation as an authoritative source. And underlying that is a rigorous fact checking and medical review process. Plus they hire good editors who are going to check these things out, even before the article gets to those stages. So we drop the attribution and come up with this:

An adult dog's diet can contain up to 50% carbohydrates, including 2.5% to 4.5% fiber.

Now that's much better. The message is clear with nothing about the National Academies to get in the way. It works because the website and the parent company have believability.

And look at that. I've actually solved two problems. I've cut the sentence in half. It's now just 15 words. A manageable chunk of information.

Problem #2: Yes there is a problem number 2. How do you calculate and confirm those percentages when you buy dog food. And I'll tell you that elsewhere in the article the writer pointed out that coming up with this information is hard because you can't rely on the label. And right. The writer didn't tell the reader how to determine the necessary percentages. Oh, me. An editor's work is never done.

Solution #2: Ignore the problem. Let the readers do some research of their own. You of course know that's not the correct answer. The correct answer is to send the article back to the writer and ask for more information. Taking the attribution out was an editor's call. Explaining how to figure the percentages is a writer's job.

Unfortunately, I didn't send it back. I didn't have time, and this article is part of a major launch, which is scheduled to happen very soon. My decision to let the article go as is was based on the fact that there was enough information in the article to make it useful and interesting and that it was an important part of the launch and needed to get into review. That was step 1 in figuring out a solution. Step 2 was realizing there really isn't enough time to make the article complete. It needs to go into review.

I would never knowingly make that kind of decision with an article that would involve injury. But now you know how articles that are less than perfect end up in print or on the web.

Protecting cyclists

A friend sent me these two awareness tests. Let me know how you do.

Here's the first:




And Here's the second:

Recommendations

I've spent most of the day looking at online literary journals. In particular, I'm looking at what gets published under the heading of poetry. Whenever I do that, I often come away discouraged about the lack of poetry in the poems that actually get published. Today was no exception. I did, though, find a couple of journals I would recommend. One is Boxcar Poetry Review, which has just published it's 20th issue. The other is Blackbird. I'd recommend spending a little time with each of them. And if you do, come back and let me know what you think.

Harvard Square

At Au Bon Pain the old men sit around
a table, scratch their noses, and contemplate
the fate of kings and queens then demonstrate
their prowess with a calculated frown.

A young musician plays her violin.
Her notes compete with phrases in the air
and foreign words that jostle through the square
like cups and napkins blowing in the wind.

Beside a tree a great dane lies untended,
doesn’t move for a boy with purple hair,
doesn’t mind a woman lost in prayer,
keeps its head down until, its vigil ended,
it rises when its master says, “Come on.”
Old men in baggy pants exchange their pawns.

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


I had a conversation with an artist named Kashley yesterday. He was alone in a gallery in Roswell, Georgia. He had told the owners of the gallery, both of whom had other commitments, that he would mind the gallery for them since he was going to come in and paint there that day anyway. He has a series of limited edition still lifes that are all about cocktails, and he likes to display the original next to the reproduction so that people can see that the reproductions are not digitally enhanced. So he had an original there, and he was painting a new picture.

The pictures are extremely detailed. They include vodka bottles or whiskey bottles. A liquid being poured into a glass. Glass ashtrays. Cocktail glasses with olives in them. I'd seen the work before, and what I admire about it the most is the way he works with the transparency of the glass, the way the light plays through it and then through the liquid, and the way he handles the texture of the surfaces that can be seen through the glass--a table, or a wall, or a fireplace.

It takes him three months to complete one of the paintings. The process begins with staging the still life and taking hundred of pictures of it. Then he takes a month to complete the first rough painting, which he then goes back to and paints over, filling in detail and pulling out color and light. This second painting takes another month. He then repeats the process again, adding more detail and removing brush strokes.

He also does abstracts which grow out of the textures and colors he finds in nature. He's been painting professionally, he told me, since 2006, and he currently has work in galleries in three different states. You can see some of his work on his Web site here, but it's much more impressive when you can see the actual work in front of you.

I enjoy the paintings, and I enjoyed the conversation with him. And I enjoyed watching him work. I have no other reason for telling you about him than that.

This Fascinates Me

Ok. Cloudia caught me sitting at my desk and really made me feel guilty with her latest comment on my last post. (If you've never visited her at Comfort Spiral you are really missing something special.)

I promise I'm coming back to the Blogosphere soon. But I have been busy writing articles about the health benefits of having pets, Ewing's sarcoma, DTaP, and the like, and editing articles about things like rheumatoid arthritis or how to get your dog to eat dog food. (My days are simply eclectic.)

But I am coming back. In the meantime I found this little gem by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain and thought you might enjoy it. (I was looking for a video of the theme to High Noon, but came across this instead and found it fascinating.) Have fun. And in the meantime, please do not forsake me. . .

Moonlight

One thing I never shared with you
..........was the moon outside my window
..........when I was a child in August
..........with a chill in the summer air.
It was so clear and white
..........that late at night
..........it had to be closer than it really was.

Published in A Matter of Mind, Foothills Publishing, 2004.

© copyright 2004, 2009 the Grandpa at The Word Mechanic Blog.

All rights reserved.

Some thoughts about other things

My father was an artist. He used to tell me that anyone could draw. Although, he did manage to let me know that he didn't think I did a very good job at it. He also wasn't very enthusiastic about my poetry when I was a teenager.

My youngest brother and my second son got his talent.

I did enter art work in the fair when I was a kid. I got my share of ribbons. But I never felt like I really understood what my father did when he painted, or worked with clay, or did pieces in enamel.

As a teenager, I liked to work with chalk and also oil pastels. I liked the feel of using my fingers to blend the colors in a sky and on a lake.

I drew pictures once in a while, mainly sketches and doodles, after I became an adult. But I didn't get serious about it again -- and I'm really stretching it to say serious -- until we moved to New Jersey in 2000. Then I started working with watercolors. They were crude, but S liked them and started buying me more paints, pencils, sketch pads. And I kept it up after we moved to Birmingham, Alabama, a year and a half later. I did more pencil sketches than anything. I like to draw.

Two years later we moved back up to Massachusetts, and I lost the incentive. So the art activity (and the photography I'd been getting more and more into) dropped way off. Now that we live in Atlanta, I'm interested in doing more art.

When I was young, I never thought my father was very successful at teaching me to draw, which was strange because for years he taught art to kids in his home on Saturdays, and a number of them went on eventually to study art and take it up as a career. But now when I do pick up a drawing pencil, I can hear him standing behind me telling me I wasn't doing something right and know that I did, after all, learn something.

If you haven't visited Rene at Not the Rockefellers, you should. I feel like I learn something about writing when I read her blog. And I really like her mission statement: "To inspire and encourage others to write freely." It's followed by a wonderful quote from Martha Graham. Check it out at the top of the left hand sidebar.

In Between

Original artwork by the Grandpa

Deaths and Funerals

She removes a book
From the broken shelf and lets
An envelope fall
From between pages

Then spreads its contents
Before her and counts, twelve red
Petals with a card,
Its message blurred by

Water from greens. She
Opens the Morning
News, wanting to read again
His name and feel young

Arms suddenly lift
Here from the floor to sway her
To the melodies
She’d thought she’d forgot.

Originally published in Ohio Journal, Autumn 1979.
© copyright 2004, 2009 the Grandpa at The Word Mechanic Blog.
All rights reserved.

I have a new poem scheduled for publication in the July issue of The Chimaera an online "literary miscellany." The poem is "Captain Lee," and it will appear in the journal's Feature Theme section. The Feature Theme for Issue 6 is "poems in well-wrought form."

I've actually seen worse

[The person who sent this list of hospital chart bloopers to the listserve for freelance medical writers I'm on said she couldn't vouch for the veracity of the list. But believe me, I've seen worse. I'm willing to bet these were actually entered on patients' charts. The comments in brackets are mine. Enjoy.]

HOSPITAL CHART BLOOPERS....

Actual writings from hospital charts:

1. The patient refused autopsy.
[My mother once called me and left a message saying that my sister-in-law's breast cancer surgery had gone well, my sister-in-law was doing fine, and they'd have the results of the autopsy in a couple of days.]

2. The patient has no previous history of suicides.
[Thank God for that. Hospitals need all the paying patients they can get.]

3. Patient has left white blood cells at another hospital.

4. She has no rigors or shaking chills, but her husband states she was very hot
in bed last night.
[Probably sprained something.]

5. Patient has chest pain if she lies on her left side for over a year.

6. On the second day the knee was better, and on the third day it disappeared.

7. The patient is tearful and crying constantly. She also appears to be depressed.
[You think?]

8. The patient has been depressed since she began seeing me in 1993.
[It's not me, Doc. It's you.]

9. Discharge status: Alive but without permission.

10. Healthy appearing decrepit 69-year old male, mentally alert but forgetful.

11. Patient had waffles for breakfast and anorexia for lunch.

12. She is numb from her toes down.

13. While in ER, she was examined, x-rated and sent home.

14. The skin was moist and dry.

15. Occasional, constant infrequent headaches.

16. Patient was alert and unresponsive.

17. Rectal examination revealed a normal size thyroid.
[Sure glad I wasn't the patient!]

18. She stated that she had been constipated for most of her life, until she got
a divorce.
[That's what happens when the guy you marry turns out to be an absolute s***.]

19. I saw your patient today, who is still under our car for physical therapy.

20. Both breasts are equal and reactive to light and accommodation.

21. Examination of genitalia reveals that he is circus sized.

22. The lab test indicated abnormal lover function.

23. Skin: somewhat pale but present.

24. The pelvic exam will be done later on the floor.

25. Patient has two teenage children, but no other abnormalities.
[I had that once. It seemed to last forever.]

Brandy and Poets

For scrambled eggs and bushy haired poets,
A toast with brandy at three a.m.
For piano players and wooden back benches
Stories we’d tell never again.
Brandy and poets and breakfast in bed.

Dreams and words; how we both did know it
Over stingers and bourbons at one a.m.
Impossible dreams, emotional wrenches,
Stories they’d tell of us time and again
When dreamers and poets both dropped over dead.

Originally published in Post Crescent, March 1975.
Published in A Matter of Mind, Foothills Publishing, 2004.
© copyright 2004, 2009 the Grandpa at The Word Mechanic Blog.
All rights reserved.

(Figure I'd better post something. Yesterday I had 0 page hits.)

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.

The power of a single phrase

Daniel Silva is one of my favorite spy novelists. He doesn't just tell a good story; like the other greats--Le Carre, Deighton, O'Reilly--he tells it well. This passage is from his latest book, Moscow Rules.

There is a VIP reception room at Ben-Gurion Airport that few people know and where even fewer have set foot. Reached by an unmarked door near passport control, it has walls of Jerusalem limestone, furnishings of black leather, and a permanent odor of burnt coffee and male tension. When Gabriel entered the room the following evening, he found it occupied by a single man. He had settled himself at the edge of his chair, with his legs slightly splayed and his large hands resting atop an olive-wood cane, like a traveler on a rail platform resigned to a long wait. He was dressed, as always, in a pair of pressed khaki trousers and a white oxford cloth shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. His head was bullet-shaped and bald, except for a monkish fringe of white hair. His ugly wire-framed spectacles magnified a pair of blue eyes that were no longer clear.

That's a marvelously descriptive pasage that introduces us to the character Ari Shamron. But what I want to call your attention to is a single phrase that makes everything work--"like a traveler on a rail platform resigned to a long wait." Take that away and what you have is a description, with no context. That phrase defines the mood not just of the man but of the scene, and it points to the inevitability of what is to come. It's a visual image like a definin camera shot in a great film. It's a close up not just of the man, but of his mind. There are other great phrases in the passage--"a permanent odor of burnt coffee and male tension," "a monkish fringe of white hair." Taking them away would diminish the paragraph, but not in the same way taking away the image of the traveler on a rail platform would. And it's not just the phrase, it's the visual quality of the metaphor (that sets up the visual description of the man) and its placement in the middle of the paragraph so that everything revolves around it. Some people are masters of the language. Daniel Silva is one of them.

Sharing

Check out the new song by Rachael Chatoor. It reminded me of some lyrics I wrote several years ago. I also did the music but wasn't really happy with it. If Rachael wants to do music for it, she can have the lyrics. (Anyone else, please ask first. It's copyrighted.)

Paper in the Wind
(Song Lyrics)
By the Grandpa

[A]
The music stopped while I was dancing
On a street all by myself,
And all the questions I’d been asking
Felt like dust inside my mouth

[B]
The friends I had around me
Are like paper in the wind
Their faces lost in shadows
Of other places I have been

[Chorus]
I tried to call from San Francisco,
I got caught in your damn machine
It said
Leave a message, sorry we missed you.
Our son’s gone off to chase his dream.

And I can’t tell you where I’ve been

[B]
Each morning I wake hungry
But nothing’s left to do
Too late to say I’m sorry
Too late for missing you

[Chorus]
I tried to call from San Francisco,
I got caught in your damn machine
It said
Leave a message, sorry we missed you.
Our son’s gone off to chase his dream.

And I can’t tell you where I’ve been

[C—Waltz time]
I dreamed I danced with my mother,
A song from another day.
We held each other tight
Her smile made the music play.
I dreamed I walked with my father.
We talked along the way
By the time we got home
We had nothing left to say.

[A]
Too many miles between us
I’ve done things you cannot know
Nothing stays the way it was
I’d talk longer but I’ve got to go

[Chorus]
I tried to call from San Francisco,
I got caught in your damn machine
It said
Leave a message, sorry we missed you.
Our son’s gone off to chase his dream.

Why can’t I tell you where I’ve been?

[B]
Sometimes I hear the music echo
And turn to greet a friend
Nothing but my shadow
And paper in the wind
Nothing but my shadow
And paper in the wind

© copyright 2009 the Grandpa at The Word Mechanic Blog.
All rights reserved.

Thoughts on being a freelancer, lesson one

A long time ago when I was reliable, meaning when I could be counted on to post regularly, and when people left comments, a few readers asked me to blog about my writing career. Truth be told, it's not that interesting. I write and I edit because I like working with words and meaning and ideas, and I like getting ideas across to other people. I'm also good at it. Plus, I don't know what else to do. Everything else seems boring.

[Well that's not exactly true. What's boring is reporting to someone else and letting that someone else dictate how I spend my time. If I'm going to screw up, if I'm going to miss out on life, I want it to be my fault. I don't want it to be because I didn't have any choice but to do what I was told. And there are a lot of other things that are not boring. I miss being an English teacher. I miss running college writing centers. I miss sharing ideas about how people learn with other professionals. And I really miss helping students realize what they're after. I also like to draw and play the piano. I'm not very good at those things, but I like doing them. And I like punching the speed bag. (There was a time in my life when I wasn't bad at that.) And if I could figure out how to make money doing any of those things, I'd give it serious thought. But I digress.]

Next, several people have asked me for advice on becoming a freelancer, and it occurred to me that I could do both, talk about my history as a writer/editor while talking about what it takes for one person to do it.

So, Lesson Number One in How to Become a Full-Time Freelancer: Don't Quit Your Day Job.

In 2006, there were 305,909 people making money as a writer or an editor. That really isn't a very large percentage of the working force. 197, 495 (or 65%) of them were "employed." That means they weren't working for themselves. 108, 413 (or 35%) were classified by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as self-employed or unpaid. For 80,000 of those workers, writing or editing was classified as their primary job. And for 28,000, writing or editing was a secondary job.

Now there are several important things to note in the above paragraph. The first is, given the amount of writing that gets done every day, there aren't that many writers and editors who are working, comparatively speaking.

The second thing is that the overwhelming majority of those who are working are working for someone else. They are not self employed. They are not their own boss. They are not masters of their own time. If you want to write or edit and get paid, your best bet is to find a job where that's part of the job description. There are a number of sites on the Internet where those kinds of jobs are listed. Google writing jobs. You'll find them.

The third thing to notice is what I bolded in the paragraph above. BLS labels self-employed writers and editors as potentially unpaid. There are a lot of people out there who will publish what you write and pay you by sending you a copy. There are even some, who will make you pay for the copy. Other people will pay you by the word--often starting around 2 cents. And I know things have changed since I started, and you can write stuff and post it on site on the Web at a site that will pay you based on how many page clicks you get. Well, call your family. Call your friends. Tell them to click through. Tell them to tell their friends to click through. And then wait.............

The unfortunate thing about that is if you don't have a network (meaning connections), and you don't have a track record (meaning publications), you actually have to write for those people [two cents a word/pay by click]. It's the only way to build a publications list. You need that to get jobs.

So when I was in my 20s, I read everything I could about making a living as a writer. I went to college, dropped out, went back, dropped out again, went back ad nauseum. Finally, I dropped out and went to work in the hospitality industry. I was the youngest maitre d' in the history of Brookside Country Club. And I was damn good. But there was one thing that was consistent. I never stopped reading Writer's Digest. [That is not an endorsement. In fact, for those who are serious about wanting to write for a living, I'd recommend not reading it.] And I focused on the things that would make me an instant success. I settled on syndication. That was the way to go. You write something. You send it to a syndicate. They sell it and split the money with you. It's easy living.

So I was a young husband and father. We traveled. [ha!] We went from Columbus to St. Louis. I talked to people in whatever job I had. So I came up with an idea called From Here to There. The idea was I wrote these little essays about the people I met or the sights I saw. And then the syndicate would sell them. We'd be rich. We'd use the money to go somewhere else besides St Louis and write about it. It would be a wonderful life. I sent it off to syndicates. I got rejected over and over again.

That's not the way it works. [To syndicate, you get get your work published in several different local venues. Then you gather data to show that readers are reading it and responding. Then, maybe a syndicate will be interested. The real way it works is the syndicate finds you.] My approach, though, did work for some people (the ones who wrote the articles for writer's digest). For the vast majority of us who were clueless, it was just one more indication that we were not cut out to be writers.

We like to think of ourselves as Ernest Hemingway or Joan Didion. The truth is most of us are Joe the electrician [the plumber was a false identity] or Rosie the riveter. The Romance of writing catches our attention. The labor of writing somehow never peaks over the horizon. Writing, for the vast majority of us who make our living this way, is hard work. And it's work the uninitiated are never told about. Unless you have a track record, you are not going to make it as a full time freelancer. [There are always exceptions.] So keep that "day" job. Or better still, make that "day" job a writing job.

Enough about you. Let's talk about me. I had publications as a kid. Still, aside from a couple of prizes, I really didn't get paid for anything I wrote until I was in my mid twenties [maybe I'll talk about what happened when I first got paid in lesson two]. I didn't go out on my own to become a full time freelancer until I was in my late forties. I didn't feel comfortable at it until I was in my early fifties. But then again, I'm not all that comfortable right now, and I'm a long way past my early fifties. Still, I make a living. I have money coming in. And I have jobs in hand and jobs on the horizon.

For those of you who are still with me, the next lesson (lesson two) may be called "What Do You Know--But It's Not the Only Thing That Matters." And I'll talk a little bit more about what happened when I got my first paycheck.

You deserve a break today.

When the world starts getting a little too serious, here's an antidote. Enjoy.

Jason at Sunrise Service

It’s cold, and the wind blowing across this hill
Makes it colder. I’m not used to wearing
Winter coats at Easter, nor to sharing
Sunrise hymns with strangers. But kids will
Pull you out of bed at awful hours and fill
Your life with endless nights. They don’t care
That their lives intrude on yours with that glaring
Arrogance of youth that can’t stay still.

At eleven PM Jason cut his hand.
At midnight, in a dim and sterile room,
A young intern sewed it shut. He stands
Here now to celebrate an empty tomb.

The spreading rose of day dissolves the night.
I watch him join hands with others to sing
Hallelujah toward the rising sun.
And as I walk a little further from
Their voices rising in the morning wind,
I feel the cold rise up around my heart.

His world’s a morning filling up with light
And sun-glazed faces like a ring
Of sacrificial fire. Their antiphon
Goes with me down the hill. He’s just begun.
The road is like a ribbon with no end,
And I’m too old to remember where it starts.

They’ll sing and share the bread. I’ll set the fan
Inside the car on high. I’ll sleep at noon.

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

I'm just saying

S pointed out to me psychologist John Rosemond's parenting column in the paper this morning. I usually try not to read him, unless I need either a good laugh or a dose of "Oh my God, what's with this guy?" But today's column begs for someone to comment.

The gist of his column was that helping children develop self esteem is doing them a serious disservice. To prove it he cites unnamed evidence that people with high self-regard tend to anti-social behavior. In fact, our maximum security prisons are filled with people with very high self-regard. Well that may be true, but self-esteem and self-regard do not mean the same thing. Here's what Webster's has to say:

Self-esteem: a confidence and satisfaction in oneself; self-respect
Self-regard: regard for or consideration of oneself or one's own interests

Hardly the same. What Mr. Rosemond did was...well here's a quote from Mr. Rosemond's column:

The supposed merits of high self-esteem were sold on the basis of rhetoric.

Well if that's true (?) then I guess it's fair for Mr. Rosmond to discredit self-esteem with rhetoric. What Mr. Rosemond did was employ a rhetorical trope known as dysphemism. A dysphemism is the substitution of one term with a harsher, more offensive, or more disagreeable meaning for another term. Self-esteem and self-regard are not synonyms. And erroneously equating them does not prove Mr. Rosemond's argument that people with self esteem can't be humble or caring toward others.

But the question arises, who exactly put the focus on self-esteem in the first place? Well Mr. Rosemond does provide an answer to that one:

In the 1960s, American parents stopped going to their elders for advice and began going instead to mental health professionals--people like me. To create a devoted client base, we had to come up with something new. So we cut from whole cloth a nouveau philosophy...

In the next paragraph he says, "Mind you, we made this up."

People like me (?)...we had to come up with something new(?)...so we cut from whole cloth(?)...we made this up.

Okay. This is the man who wants us to believe what he's telling us now? I'm just saying....

In the Park

The Brownies scramble past me in the park,
A swirl of laughter like a sudden wind,
& one holds up a whirlybird, then darts
& cries out “Seed!” the others closing in.
Pencils! Pencils! They all fall down.

Their bellies flat, their laughter spent, they mark
Their books & scramble on, & I am left behind
To wonder if these scramblings are a part
Of why these seeds have wings, or how the thin
Green seeds that burrow under ground can start
Becoming roots & bark & limbs.

I marvel that before the first trees sprung
A rhythm burst from space we can’t explain.
& when I watch the Brownies twirl among
The reeling notes of birds & play their games
Of turning over rocks to find out snails,
I marvel that the rhythm still prevails.

But then I pause. Aren’t I too old to wonder
At such things? I know that life sucks life
And so sucks mine. What are these Brownies wandering
Through the park to me? Redundant seed.
Noisy children fresh from their mothers’ breasts,
Shadows of their wombs. My own heart,
Knowing only that it with time must cease,
Makes me content to let these questions be.

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

The trouble with freelancing

A lot of people who do what I did don’t last as long at it as I have. I officially stopped working for the man and became a full-time freelancer in May of 1994. That means I’m starting my 16th year in just a few weeks. I know when I tell people I make my living from writing and editing, it sounds Romantic, like I’m living the life of a knight-errant or, since I do get to write poetry, some type of medieval minstrel. The reality is it’s more like the life of a vagrant, just roaming here and there with no visible means of support and no real goal in mind.

A lot of people I know who made the same leap, do it for three or four years, but then they go back and take a job. That's because we're not making our living by writing the things we love--great poetry, amazing fiction, soaring new journalism essays that fill the pages of The New Yorker. It's a small percentage of writers who get to earn money that way. What most of us do is called contract writing or work for hire. We work for agencies, pharmaceutical companies, health plans. We write very specialized pieces aimed at computer geeks, investment bankers, physical therapists, or people with diabetes. Getting to set our own schedule means never taking a day off because if you don't work, you don't get paid. And if you don't have any work in front of you at the moment, you have to scramble to find a client and pick up another assignment.

After a few years of doing that, of living in a constant state of uncertainty about where your next pay check is coming from, a job with paid sick time and vacation, with a 401K and office colleagues to talk to during the day seems mighty appealing. Even if your client list is pretty secure, it's that not having people to talk to during the day that can get very oppressive. I have, over the past fifteen years, gone back to teaching part time on occasion, not because I needed the money, but because I just needed the human contact.

I had perhaps my best financial first quarter since I started freelancing this year. I was busy. stretched completely to my limits. I was working so many weekends I'd have trouble knowing exactly what day it was. Things are finally quieting down and I can breathe a little easier. Except...

The end of March. Did you hear that crashing sound? That was the roof of my security shelter crashing down around me. Two long-term contracts that formed a solid monthly income base just ended. Just like that. Boston Globe Media decided not to continue publishing a magazine that I had been managing editing for them for 11 years. Not only did I feel I was getting laid off, but I had to contact the writers who wrote regularly for me and tell them I'd have no more work for them in the foreseeable future. Then right after I got that word I found out the newsletter for health care providers I had been writing for the past five or so years was not going to be published anymore, and the publishing company that did them was closing.

That's the the way business I'm in goes. I'll get more work. It's just that right now I'm feeling a little wistful for the job security of a tenured faculty member that I left to follow my dream. On the bright side, I am going to have more time to get back to the blog. I've missed it.

The Lesson

“Is there anyone here who really believes?
That’s heavy stuff about birds and lilies
in the midst of anxious thought.”

“Yes sir, “ said a small voice disembodied
and floating through the snickering air.

“And what do you do,” asked the leader,
“when the client needs lunch?”
No one turned to see
because the voice had no client.

“And what do you do when your shoes
are scuffed and your hair needs cut?”
If the voice answered, no one heard,
so full was the room with the shuffling of grins.

“‘Surely life is more than food, and the body
more than clothes,’” quoted the leader.
“Maslow tells us as much. But who is here
that would not worry about the next meal
if he were poor, and who is the one
who would not trade a friend for a blanket
if it would keep the cold out?”

“I am,” said the voice as the lesson ended.

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

Observations

Writing is the hardest thing I do. It's unfortunate that it's how I make my living.

On a more positive note. Tomorrow starts National Poetry Month. Check Mommy's Nintendo's challenge at The Itsy Bitsy Monkey. Even if you don't take her up on it, it's well worth watching her do it. I followed her last year through the whole month and quite frankly was amazed.

Piano Bar Blues

(1)
I'm just a man
like anyone else. I can
command
respect when I place
myself at the keyboard, face
bathed in blue light.
I do alright.

Not like Mary.
Fell in love with a fairy
used to come in all the time.
His name was Harry.
He'd sit here at the piano making eyes
at all the guys.
Mary never got wise.

(2)
You know
one thing I know
is you
can’t kiss away the blues.

Not the real blues.

Not the hollow note
deep in your throat
kind of blues
that wake you in the middle of the night
because the silence gets so loud
you can hear starlight
fall.

(3)
It's a job.
last week some slob
laid fifty bucks beside me.
Forget what you see,
he said. I'm not here.
My wife wouldn't understand.
All I did was hold her hand,
not like I planned
it or anything. So I fanned
his fantasy for a while,
played My Funny Valentine and with style
closed my eyes tight.
I said, I don't see nobody tonight.

They go away.
Next day
my wife,
who's best friends with his old lady May,
asks how'd it go.
Real slow,
I say.
Didn't see a soul I know.

(4)
I tell people who come in all the time
you can’t kiss away the blues,
not those lonely in a crowd blues.
Those caged bird
wicker domed
watching from a swinging perch
blues.

The kind that weigh
you down even when the door is open
because you get so hungry
not even love
can fill you up.

(5)
You know when I saw you two come in
I felt sick
like I was watching someone commit
sin.
A no win
situation,
like when you begin
a set
and get
an undeniable urge to piss.

Maybe I shouldn't say this.
After all I see a lot of dirt.
I’ve watched a lot of men chase a skirt.
Jesus, I don't mean that.
It's just when you've sat
where I've sat,

you get tired
of watching friends choose
the place you gotta be to play the blues.

(6)
No,
There’s no way.
You can try,
but you’re gonna loose
because there’s no way
you can kiss away
those blues.

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

Song of the Cuckoo

Listen to the cuckoo coming after the doves,
Mocking their cooing, mocking their cooing
With its strange double note.

Listen to the cuckoo mocking the cooing doves
While the owl turns her head
And the hawk falls on its prey
And the gull sails above the ash.

The cuckoo is a clown
That sings of love
Gone foul.

Cuckoo, cuckoo.
And the owl
Turns her head,
And the doves fly away,
But the cuckoo has found
A place to stay.

No other birds sing quite the same;
No other birds claim,
Cuckoo, cuckoo.
Who?
Says the owl.
Cuckoo. Cuckoo.


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

I don't know why anyone would want to do this

Well, maybe I do. (But pay attention to the warning!)



The one I really wanted to post was how to open a beer bottle with your teeth. Alas the embeding code was disabled.

Gee it's good to be back on the blog, even if it is only temporary still.

Get well, Braja

If you haven't heard, Braja from Lost and Found in India along with her husband and a taxi driver were seriously injured in a head on collision between the taxi she and her husband were riding in and a truck. The accident happened this past Thursday. You can find more details at Lady Fi's blog and regular updates here.

Braja is a beauiful presence on the blogosphere and has becomne a good friend to many of us. I know I go to her blog to read what she writes for its wit, wisdom, warmth, charm, and most important, its humanity. She sets a pefect example of how to be a friend for all of us. Please send her, her husband, and the driver your most positive thoughts. I know this is a difficult time for her. And I also know she would do no less for any of us.

Another sign of the times

Saw this today on a church marquee in Atlanta:

Road rage?

How would Jesus drive?