Watermark

I am a Real Writer & I can prove it

 

Many thanks to Janni Lee Simner, via Erin Noteboom

But really important people have more than one certificate on their wall, and who is more important than the poet? So I worked this one up, too:

 

This idea was stolen from:

J. B. Handelsman, New Yorker, March 10, 1973

Via Ron Sipherd at The Well

Oh, you want one, too? Just in case, I made up a gender-inclusive blank one. Just add your name and the date, and there you are.*

*It has been brought to my attention that more detailed instructions might be useful. If you are not a member of flickr, you can't download photos, so first, join flickr -- it's free, and you can always unjoin if you want. Then click here; above the image you'll see ALL SIZES -- click that; then click and download the size you want.

You can then use any photo editing program to add your name and date -- now that you have a flickr account, you could upload it into your own account and use Picnik to do this; or print out a copy and do it by hand.

If all this is too much for you, just email me and I'll send you the image.

Pens & Meaning

An excerpt:

When I was about twelve, I went through a period of stealing pens from my classmates. Later I realized that the Freudians would see this as some phallic reference. Later still, as I began to understand how my own mind works, and how I, as a poet, work with metaphors and symbols, I came to believe this was less subtle, less (or perhaps more) primal than that.

What, after all, are pens for? What do they do?

They are instruments of speech. The pen is mightier than the sword.

It is also mightier than the penis.

We pick up the pen, we set the point to paper, and we write. We speak. It is possible to believe that a bold and beautiful pen might speak bold and beautiful thoughts.

Today, tinywords sent me this haiku:

moonless sky
so much darkness
from my pen

--Josh Wikoff

Did I believe, at some deep level, that if I could only find the right pen, appropriate the right instrument, I would be able to speak the darkness I carried?

Make it beautiful?

NEW POST!

Cathy wants a NEW POST!, and she's not alone.

So I sit here, looking at the blank New Post screen, wondering why it's been blank for so long. At the same time, I'm watching the news, and it occurs to me that the difficulty is that reality has become too amorphous for me to write about. The world has become, if not unreal, surreal.

How does a poet tell the truth, when truth becomes so elusive; so apparently insignificant?

I know this is not new. I've seen a lot of politics in my life. I remember watching, with my Grandad, the McCarthy hearings, and the Democratic convention that nominated John F. Kennedy.  A tiny television; a technological marvel bringing us the (North American) world in black & white.

My Grandma, near the end of her life, told me that one of her greatest regrets in life was the vote she cast for Richard Nixon. A life-long Democrat, she was frightened; she was afraid; she believed the lies.

So it's not that the obfuscation of politics is new to me. I've even noted the current version here, and here.

Perhaps my tolerance has diminished.

But this era of sanctimonious prevarication seems so much worse. Our tolerance of it, as citizens, seems so much higher. Our Fourth Estate, now seemingly recovered from its post-Katrina outrage, has once again retreated into referee mode.

Well, not entirely.  But I still see "reporters" "interviewing"  this side, then that side, as if totally conflicting -- and clearly verifiable, or not -- facts have equal weight.  Fact-checking, alas, continues to be rare.

This is the scary part. The unnamed White House aide (could it have been Scooter Libby?) told  Ron Suskind of The New York Times:

"...when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

And he (I'm assuming a he) was right. They have created their own reality. They can do what they like, and they do.

I can study what they do. I can try to discern the actual reality beneath the created one.

But I cannot write.

MFK FISHER on not writing

"I think that many people want to write, but of them few have the will to. I write more than half the things I do or say or think. I can see the words on the sheet of paper and see the pen writing them. And in my head a voice, a kind of silent reading voice, reads them not from but to the paper. Often what is read is good. There is a quick sureness about some phrases. At times they come too patly, with a smart-aleck tone. But I don't write. I write a few letters, which grow less interesting as I age. But that is all. It is because I am lazy, and that is true of most of the people who think in prose. Laziness and a vague fear."

    MFK Fisher    Stay Me, Oh Comfort Me: journals and stories 1933-1941

Poetry Thursday|Cam's Poetry Meme

  This week's prompt was Cam's poetry meme:

1. The first poem I remember reading/hearing/reacting to was ...

"Jabberwocky" is a poem (of nonsense verse) written by Lewis Carroll, and found as a part of his novel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). It is generally considered to be one of the greatest nonsense poems written in the English language.

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe ...

'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!'

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought--
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought ...

2. I was forced to memorize (name of poem) in school and …

I don't remember being forced to memorize any poems.

I do remember being encouraged to memorize Bible verses, which no doubt contributed to my love for the rythms of language. It would have been the King James Version of the Bible.

I did memorize Jabberwocky, above, and didn't have to look that up before I typed it.

3. I read/don’t read poetry because …

I read poetry because it keeps me alive, awake, paying attention. It reminds me who I am; who I am not; who I want to be.

4. A poem I’m likely to think about when asked about a favorite poem is …

I have a lot of favorite poems, I think; too many to list here. That one up there is certainly still one of them. I tend to respond to questions like this by thinking about a poet the questioners might like, and directing them there.

I have too many favorite poets, too.

My favorite just now is Jack Gilbert, because that's who I am reading.

5. I write/don’t write poetry, but …

I write poems, but don't actually expect anyone to read them. I'm surprised when they do, and even more surprised when they like them.

6. My experience with reading poetry differs from my experience with reading other types of literature …

... in that poems seem much more personal to me; they elicit my own emotion in a more sudden, intense way; seemingly bypassing my rational, thinking self.

7. I find poetry …

... in surprising places. Under stones and pepples. In the river. On my dinner plate. In the newspaper; on a neighbor's roof. On the side of a bus. In the trucks changing gears on the bridge.

8. The last time I heard poetry …

I listen to poetry a fair amount, online and on the radio (Garrison Keillor) -- but the last time (InRealLife) I heard a good poet, who is a good reader, do a reading was several years ago, when Pattiann Rogers was here. Now, there's a poet who brings you out of your chair. She's also a great teacher.

I've noticed that many poets are not the best readers of their work. Perhaps it's because so many of us are actually introverts. We're meant to be sitting alone by some deeply seductive body of water. Reading someone else's poems.

9. I think poetry is like …

Nothing else. It's closest to music, perhaps; or stories told to children, generation after generation, until they acquire the depth and wisdom and patina of great age, and become something new again.

I feel that I want to say something more about this. I've been involved in several discussions elsewhere about poetry as craft; poetry as talent; poetry as personal expression; poetry as spiritual practice. I think, for the practicioner, it can be any or all of these things.

But to make a poem, a good poem, that is a skillful thing. Just as making a table, or a house, or a concerto, is a skillful thing. Anyone can take some boards and a hammer and some nails and make a doghouse -- but if they haven't learned, if they haven't studied doghouses, or wood, or carpentry, or tools -- then that doghouse is likely to fall down. Now matter how 'talented' they may be with spatial imagination.

I am often surprised to meet people who want to write poetry --  but never read poems.  Or people who want to be a writer -- but never write -- or read -- anything other than tabloids. They are eager to talk about tools -- which computer, which software, which expensive fountain pen, which leather-bound journal (and I can talk about all this, myself, quite happily) --  but ...

If you want to write (not be a writer; not be a poet) -- this is what you need:  paper; a pen or pencil; the determination to make time and pay attention; and lots of  books. Library books are fine. Second-hand books are fine. Just be sure they are good books, of the sort you would like to write -- and then read them. Read some more of them. Read them again.

Read some books about writing by writers you admire. Try out their suggestions. Write, write, write some more. Remember that growth requires compost: write shit. Write some more shit. Let it ferment awhile, while you write some more.

Do that for a long time. Find out who you are. Write some more.

Now you have begun.

Have I forgotten anything?

[Please come by and Introduce Yourself!]