That's it: My 30 Day Photo Challenge Flickr Set. Now I'm thinking of trying a poem a day for National Poetry Month in April. That would be more difficult to pull off, though. And less entertaining for you, I bet.
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That's it: My 30 Day Photo Challenge Flickr Set. Now I'm thinking of trying a poem a day for National Poetry Month in April. That would be more difficult to pull off, though. And less entertaining for you, I bet.
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Tomorrow is the beginning of National Poetry Month:
National Poetry Month was established by the Academy of American Poets as a month-long, national celebration of poetry. The concept was to increase the attention paid-by individuals and the media—to the art of poetry, to living poets, to our poetic heritage, and to poetry books and magazines. In the end, we hoped to achieve an increase in the visibility, presence, and accessibility of poetry in our culture. National Poetry Month has been successful beyond all anticipation and has grown over the years into the largest literary celebration in the world.
This event is also celebrated by the
League
of Canadian Poets, and famously disdained by
Charles
Bernstein and others. You can participate in the activites in
a variety of
ways:
So what has this to do with cats, you ask? Well, as Aloysius tells us in Great Feline Authors: the indigestible furball of the poem:
In the annals of feline literature, few members of my species have actually gotten credit for their own work. Henry Beard, who put together this anthology [Poetry for Cats] recognizes that felines' literary accomplishments stretch back for centuries; the poems are not just for cats, but by cats.
Just a quick search for poetry + cats at Powell's results in 43 matches. Try Google and:
[Several were omitted from this list due to popups and/or obnoxious ads.]
Then we have the individual poems and poets:
Cats just are poetic, don't you think?
Enough poetry; more critters:
Friday Ark
I and the Bird
Carnival of the Cats
Carnival of the Dogs
Circus of the Spineless
Weekend Cat Blogging
Have a poetic weekend!
My 30 Day Photo Challenge Flickr Set This is the last day. Whew!
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sweet and bitter
sugar and saltthis life
![]()
for moos
I believe this garden may have been designed by the person who helps me with mine: Lori Parr Campbell of Kinship Gardens, here in Missoula, Montana, USA.
My 30 Day Photo Challenge Flickr Set
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Well. Hmmm. I've done almost none of the tasks (except, of course, the morning pages) but I did get myself some flowers, and I'm doing gentle yoga almost daily with my visiting friend, who happens to be a yoga instructor. And I've managed a photo every day for the 30DayPhoto Challenge.
OK, I confess -- I've barely thought about AW this week, even though I highlighted a lot when I read this chapter. For instance:
As an artist, I may need a different mix of stability and flow from other people.
And:
When we are not creating, artists are not always very normal or very nice -- to ourselves or to others.
Also:
To be an artist is to recognize the particular. To appreciate the peculiar.
It is this willingness to once more be a beginner that distinguishes a creative career.
. . . the Artist's Way is a spiral path.
Cameron talks about the Zen of sports, and quotes Eve Babitz:
"Swimming," she says, "is a wonderful sport for a writer." . . . That rhythmic, repetitive action transfers the locus of the brain's energies from the logic to the artist hemisphere. It is there that inspiration bubbles up untrammeled by the constraints of logic.
Swimming was my sport, before I got ill -- except for me is wasn't a sport. It was a moving meditation -- the breathing, the stretch. And this makes me grieve for it, and may push me back to the water, even if I can do only five laps at a time. One of my first attempts at a sonnet was about swimming:
Swimming Sonnet/
a nautical metrical exerciseThe pool is long and blue and cool. I dive
into the soothing depth, the wet. I cut
the water, arms a knife, a curving slice,
a turn, another lap, a breath, a pull
and earth below is not allowed to hold
my body down and I am flying free
of ground, my cells expand, my spirit grows
and melts into the chlorine blue, I feel
the stretch of spine and soul, I reach to touch
some goal, it’s just beyond my fingertips
at last, another lap, if I could just
not need to breathe...
now slow, I gasp and kick
against the heavy claim of land-locked life,
so hard, so harsh, so shallow, short, and dry.
Finally, this chapter encourages us to build an artist's altar, which I needn't do, as I have them everywhere:
She reminds us that:
. . . the artist child speaks the language of the soul: music, dance, scents, shells... Your artists altar . . . should be fun to look at, even silly.
I'd say I've managed that.
One more week.
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No, I don't believe in magical crystals, but I do believe in mindfulness. These stones -- gifts to me years ago -- in my pocket remind me of what I strive for, with varied success: clarity (the clear crystal) and an open heart (the rose quartz.)
The green ring belonged to a friend's grandmother, and has become something of a trademark for me; the silver ring is, I believe, Tlingit -- Bear, with its tongue out, to either catch good spirits or frighten off bad ones, I forget which.
The silver bracelet was my friend Judd's.
My 30 Day Photo Challenge Flickr Set
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Some of you may remember my somewhat abandoned Blogging Blog. This was intended to be a resource for bloggers, especially new bloggers; with links to lots of tools and toys. It still has those links, but being rarely updated, is rarely visited. But that's about to change.
Blogging Blog is going to be a group blog. Three other bloggers have agreed to contribute, and more may join in the future. Look forward to some fresh ideas and energy there. I'll be adding folks to the sidebar, and they'll be introducing themselves soon.
In the meantime, a bit of blogging-related news: Stewart and Caterina, of Flickr fame, are on the front page of Newsweek! They are so cute, and folks who have met them assure me they are just this cute in person. This article, about Web 2.0, or The Living Web, is really quite well done; it explains things well and seems to grasp the essentials:
"It's clear that the Web is structurally congenial to the wisdom of crowds," says James Surowiecki, author of a book ("The Wisdom of Crowds," naturally) that argues that your average bunch of people can guess the weight of a cow or predict an Oscar winner better than an expert can. . .
MySpace, Flickr and all the other newcomers aren't places to go, but things to do, ways to express yourself, means to connect with others and extend your own horizons. Cyberspace was somewhere else. The Web is where we live. . .
My favorite is a quote from Caterina, about the culture of generosity:
. . . the most remarkable thing about Flickr is that the willingness to post pictures publicly—so ingrained in Flickr culture that you have to opt out to avoid it—creates a panoramic effect. Fake calls it "the culture of generosity," but knows that for some people, shedding privacy like that is a stretch . . .
Caterina and Stewart's generosity has been apparent at Flickr from the beginning; it's that open-heartedness that has won my loyalty there. That, and their sense of humor (Flickr has the hiccups.) This openness -- to blogging, to sharing, to mashups -- is an ongoing issue at Flickr, especially with new members -- and an issue bloggers must struggle with as well: how much to share; how much to keep to oneself; how to [realistically] relinquish control of what one sets loose in the world.
[Crossposted to Blogging Blog]
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