Uneasy Rhymes

"Hellish" and "relish."
Will keep in mind for my next sonnet (although it seems to call for a limerick.)

OK, so, yeah, I was having a really bad week. But now that the weekend's here, I feel quite un-hellish. Quite good, actually.

Last night I started the first phase of planning for an online lit journal, something I've been mulling over for about a year (and thinking about in a "someday" way for much longer.) Will take a while to get it off the ground... generating interest for quality submissions will probably be the hardest/most expensive part -- how much is a classified in Poet's and Writers? -- but it's fun to think about.

Poet's Mantra

It's probably no accident that, among recent Western adherents of Buddhism, a large number are writers or artists. The bare-bones psychology of Buddhism is a lot like the artist's (ideal) way of being. Mindfulness might be translated as very rigorous observation.

My artist's mantra would be that, wherever I am at the moment, I would aim to be perfectly there, perfectly hot or cold, but keeping what some Buddhists call the Buddha in the Center. An artist might just call this the observer, taking notes, equally serving art itself and the sanity of the artist.

And in the Western tradition, Socrates, in probably his most famous line, had high praise for the value of observation as well.

I think it was the personal credo of the poet Anthony Hecht, whom I've been reading for class, regarding the crucial role of faithful observation in the life and work of a poet, who inspired these musings.

I met Hecht when he was a guest in the first course I took in the writing program. He signed my book (well, everyone's book.) I was feeling callow and nervous, aside from my usual shyness, and hadn't been able to come up with a perfect question to ask him, as the instructor had requested (well, he hadn't said "perfect," but I had hoped to impose that requirement on myself and failed miserably.) I think it was after he read from a poem of his about Flannery O'Connor, watching the trees through the window as she was lying in bed dying of lupus, that I scrapped whatever I had come up with and managed instead an off-the-cuff but heartfelt question that included the word "rigor." His eyes sort of flashed for a moment and he said, emphatically, "Yes."

It was a moment of hope for me, even though thus far I had produced nothing satisfactory at the level I was aspiring to, that I might have an inkling of what it was all about, and therefore something to guide me and to hold onto. And it was indeed a rocky road from the first couple workshops until these last two, so that hope was a valuable gift. He died later that same year, and I felt so lucky to have had that opportunity, even though I hadn't been ready for it.

P.S. And some belated good news: That habit of submission which I mentioned earlier (of poems to lit journals... what did you think I meant? ;) has paid off with some actual publications. Some rejections, too, but, so far, in fairly equal measure, so it's definitely been worth the effort... sending some more stuff out today.)

What is Poetry? P.2

Here are the rest of my definitions from the summer workshop's recurring assignment (including a few alternates I didn't submit):

Poetry is the jargon of the subconscious.

Poetry is nothing but if's, and's and but's.

Poetry is an oasis made of sand.

Poetry is reality's halfway house.

Sometimes poetry has to be mined deep in an underground shaft; sometimes it flows over like lava at your feet.

Poetry is the alchemy of language from experience.

This semester I'm taking a course on Poetics, so I'll probably have to come up with some more.

Don't you "hate it" when people use "quotation marks" just for "emphasis?"

These bloggers certainly do.

Hee hee.
I guess this trend has bugged me so much that I've refused to analyze what motivates well-meaning souls to do this. Now, thinking about it, I guess it's the idea of appealing to a higher authority, e.g. very important people want you to know that these items are "on sale," see? It's not just me, the poor schmuck writing this crappy sign by hand who says they're on sale, but very important people. That is my best guess.

Thanks to Mr. X for the link.

And in a similar vein:
Apostrophe abuse

Writing too many lines of blank verse...

... in a row can make one go a little bonkers. After 42 straight lines of it, tinkered with until the wee hours of the morning, one might start scanning one's own name (iambic tetrameter, ended with a trochaic substitution?) and wondering if the caesura was intentional on one's parents' part.
My next poem will be a haiku.

What is Poetry?

A weekly assignment for the workshop has been to come up with new definitions for poetry. It's one of those things for which there are seemingly infinite answers (although I might not think so by the last week of the semester :)

Here's what I've come up with so far:

Poetry is the by-product of narrative, exposition, and rhetoric.

Poetry is what still matters at the end of the world.

A poem is a discrete body of compressed language that would lose rather than gain meaning and impact if clarifying or additional information were added.

Poetry, like magic, is the intentional hallowing of objects.

Lyric poetry is more like dream logic in its confusion of the tenses of past, present and future, whereas narrative prose is linear like the conscious mind.

Much of a poem's music comes from the patterns and harmonies one hears but doesn't recognize.

OT: Poetry in a Bottle P.2

My new second favorite beer: Orange Blossom Cream Ale by Buffalo Bill's Brewery
It's one of their seasonals (actually, their pumpkin one sounds kind of intriguing, too.)