Even Poets Have to Grow Up Sometime

When I was younger I used to write poems that used the word "fuck," just to prove that I knew what it meant.
And write about drugs I had never used (and never likely will) as well as ones I had, and about Lacanian psychology and esoteric critical paradigms.
Now that I've been writing for a while, and reading for a while, I've learned to relax and write (not always, but often) with everyday words, on everyday things.
With much better results, too, but that's in part due to age and practice, as much as the subject matter. I'm sure I'll find a home in some poem for the "F" word again, some day, some way, as well as a stray paradigm or two.
Like everything else in life, writing doesn't get simpler; it just gets a little easier.

Poetry and Ghosts

I was just thinking about ghosts and how they can only communicate through sound, and not through any of the other senses. Poetry, likewise, was originally exclusively oral, and only recently has become a visual phenomenon. The ancient sort of chanting verse was closer to music in giving off vibrations that approach the tactile. (The deaf can dance to music, even though they can't hear it, because they can feel it.)
Does this mean hearing is our crudest sense, since it's permitted to ghosts, who are, according to most conceptions of earthbound, once-mortal spirits, damned? And hence no doubt stripped of their most valued privileges?
Such musing doesn't discourage me from poetry, since, after all, I don't literally believe in ghosts, of course. It just makes me want to work harder at making my poems seen, felt, smelled, tasted.
That was always the most evocative realm of the Tibetan Wheel of Life to me, the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts. Since they have no stomachs, what are they hungry for? Expression, of course. Connection. An audience. Even hunger itself. Poets all, perhaps.

Reading List: Kim Addonizio and Cate Marvin

It's taken me awhile to find poets who are kind of doing the same thing that I'm trying to do, only doing it better (and selling books :)

Successful hometown poet Kim Addonizio, in her latest volume What Is This Thing Called Love, and Cate Marvin, another hometown poet with a critically acclaimed sophomore effort, Fragment of the Head of a Queen, are such ladies. I will sit at their feet and take notes (not literally, of course, lest I unwittingly lift something ;)

Even Atheists Write Poetry

... and some of it is pretty good.
I'm thinking of submitting something myself.

The Eloquent Atheist

Reading List - Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times

I found this book at Barnes & Noble tonight. As a customer mentions in his Amazon review, the title and cover art may turn some people off, and he does have a point; the suicidal-looking high school girl on the black and white cover does make it seem, in combination with the title, like a narrative of a psychiatric disorder -- something poetry has had enough difficulty in distinguishing itself from...
And other reviews accused the editor of selecting poetry for "the lowest common denominator" -- i.e. that the average person would be touched by (oh, the horror! ;) And we wonder why the average person doesn't read poetry anymore, with these kinds of attitudes abounding.
The book is actually a British import, which explains, I guess, both the somber look and feel and the bravado of the publisher to actually try to market poetry to the masses... and with success, it appears... The book is a bestseller over there. Good for it.
I've been reading through it and I find the selection quite meaty... maybe not in an academic sense but in a visceral sense, which is really closer to the point of it all, at least, in my opinion.

More fun with grammar curmudgeonry

This peeve is the one that's probably dearest to my heart because it's* so pervasive.

Bob the Angry Flower on "its" vs. "it's"

* correct usage :-P

My new favorite pastime

(Poetry aside, of course.)

FreeRice.com

I posted this on my other blog, but it bears repeating. A fun little word game that boosts your vocabulary while contributing to U.N. food donations to help end world hunger.