Watermark

Cool Cats & Poets

This is the end of Poetry Thursday; my last post with that button. But it's the beginning of:

No, I don't know what this will be. They tell us:

. . . we want to build a vibrant place for readers and writers of poetry to hang out, connect, share ideas, learn more about poetry and get involved in ways they might not otherwise.

So I think it is worth looking forward to. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, a reminder that cats and poetry are intimately related:

And you'll find more cats, though perhaps not poems, here:

• The Carnival of the Cats at Scratching Post
• On Sunday, the new carnival at This Blog is Full of Crap 
• Weekend Cat Blogging at Paulchen’s
• Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos at Snot Face & Rimbaud at The Mad Mirror
• & Friday Ark at Modulator

I've redone categories, and now have a page just for Friday Cat Blogging. For previous Friday Cat Blogging here at Watermark, click this:

 

I've also updated my Cats page -- cleaned out dead links and added a few toys: 

Don't have too much fun!

EDITED to add: Today Dave Pollard posted a cat poem:

carnal

. . .

a life of joy and purposefulness
of grace and imagination
in now time --

where stillness and movement
are one

Blog Day

On this day, blog readers will find themselves leaping around and discovering new, unknown Blogs, celebrating the discovery of new people and new bloggers.

Five WELL Member Bloggers:

WORLD CHANGING  | Change Your Thinking

WorldChanging.com works from a simple premise: that the tools, models and ideas for building a better future lie all around us. That plenty of people are working on tools for change, but the fields in which they work remain unconnected. That the motive, means and opportunity for profound positive change are already present. That another world is not just possible, it's here. We only need to put the pieces together.

Masson's Blog | A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

This site is generally, but not exclusively, devoted to Indiana politics and related issues. That notwithstanding, whatever I feel is interesting on a given day will likely make its way to the blog.

. . . either my political views have drifted leftward or politicians have drifted rightward — at least on the state and federal level. Local politics do not seem to translate into “left” and “right” quite as much, and so I tend to maintain a non-partisan view of local politics. My views tend very much toward the libertarian: stay out of my pocket book and stay out of my bedroom. Balance the budget and respect the Bill of Rights.

Ari Davidow's Klezmer Shack | 10 Years of New Jewish Music

The Klezmer revival (article revised 9/97) sparked a renaissance in Jewish music and culture. Nowadays, the revival is over--klezmer is a popular music form that is no longer exclusively Jewish, and other forms of Jewish music are also gaining in popularity. And no one questions the place of klezmer in both Jewish and popular cultures. Well, no one we care about.

WEBLOGSKY | Jon Lebkowsky's Industrial Strength Weblog

I've been putting bloggish pages online since 1993. I'm currently part of a partnership called Polycot, where I consult on web strategy and work with various kinds of web projects, most of them focused on bringing people together online or creating a more effective online presence.

. . . I don't just blog about the web. I'm a culture maven with broad interests, so I blog about diverse subjects.

~ Through The Walla Walla Grape Vine ™~

The Wild Walla Walla Wine Woman™! I believe there are only four major food groups and like my name, they all begin with the letter "C" -- Cabernet, Cheese, Chocolate, and Coffee!!! Although I have a certification in Viticulture Science, I enjoy the tasting room environment so I can visit with our wine tourists and showcase the valley's wines. If you time it just right, you might see me at a local winery screwing corks and cleaning spit buckets. I am humble. I work for wine.

I hope there's something new for you here; I know there's a lot of good reading, and listening.

Yikes!

Yes, I know.

It's weird. Images aren't loading.

I've submitted a help ticket.

Poets are Funny

This is the last week for Poetry Thursday, and I've no idea what will come next. Maybe these will cheer you up:

Copyright Robert T. Balder

Want the punchline? Click the image. Via Land Mammal.

poetryfoundation.org has a page of poet poems; these are my favorites [click the image to go to the cartoon]:

     

   

      

Finally, it occurred to me that I might find something at gapingvoid. Sure enough, a quick look unearthed this, somewhat more pointed, cartoon:

True for me.

For you?

Love 4

4.

I find Love in the kitchen.
She is solid and wide.
Her face is a secret, her hair is the sea.
She enters a room and fills it.

I want to drown. I want to know.
Plush and deep and rich, she opens
her arms, she opens her face. I sleep
with my hands on her breasts.

I drown. When I reach for the surface
I swim and swim for shore. When I leave,
I leave honestly. I take everything. I learn
to live in the desert.

   

This is part of a series I'm working on.

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

august 21 (an old poem)

you write
that you are ill
feverish

in some narrow
foreign bed
tangled

in dim
damp sheets
sun steaming

through a dingy
window
and I hope

that you are not
entangled so
alone

what cannot
be held must be
freely given

   

 

Personal Blogging|Blogging for the love of it

Mosaic by Niki Robinson

Lorelle at Wordpress published a series of posts recently on Personal Blogging, by guest blogger Edrei Zahari. (You'll find links to the whole series at the bottom of each post; don't neglect the comments.) In response, Damien Riley confesses that "Personal blogging has become my fixation," and points to The Online Diary History Project for some context.

I was pleased to see these, as I think this is a large -- and largely overlooked -- segment of the blogging community. Most of the writing about blogging is aimed at the probloggers -- that is, business bloggers (or meta-bloggers) who are blogging for money. Most of the mainstream media attention goes to political bloggers, who blog about power, and may make a bit of money while they do so (or not.)

Problogger seems a completely appropriate name for these folks; a melding of professional and blogger.

Women's Equality Day

Today is Women's Equality Day.

I discovered the women's movement sometime in the late 1960's, when I was about 21 years old. Gloria Steinem came to speak at our campus. I went to hear her, because I recognized her name from articles in one of the magazines I was fond of; Glamour, I think.

Irony is my watchword.

When Steinem began to speak, she warned her audience that if we were happy with our lives as they were, we should leave. Some did.

I stayed, because I wanted to hear what Steinem had to say. And she was quite right to warn us; it changed my life. I sat there, and almost physically experienced my world shift -- that famous click. The veil lifted. It was a conversion experience.

Orange Cats | Popular Cats | Facebook Cats

Get a Voki now!

Up there, if you click that (orange, of course) play button, you'll (hopefully? maybe?) get an illustrated audio introduction to this post. Below the cut, an updated version of the original Orange Cats post.

See also: Orange Cat Inca[n]tation

But first, a few other places for you to visit this weekend, if it's too cold, rainy, stormy, wet, hot, humid, smoky, buggy, or whatever, to be outside. If you are owned by an orange cat, or any other cat or critter, you'll almost certainly enjoy:

• The Carnival of the Cats at StrangeRanger 
• On Sunday, the new carnival at The Scratching Post
• Weekend Cat Blogging at Belly Timber
• Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos at Pet & The Bengal Brats at Pet's Garden Blog
• & Friday Ark at Modulator

Now, on to the famous Orange Cats:

Love 3

3.

When Love comes again
he's gentle and kind. He holds
my hand. He brushes my hair.
He stands outside the closed

door, reading me poems.
He speaks in parables
and metaphors. He holds
my breasts when we sleep.

When I leave, I go quietly.
I take nothing. I dream
that he weeps in my closet,
smelling my clothes.

 

This is part of a series I'm working on.

• Part 1
• Part 2