This summer, I’m going to be taking a bit of a blogging break. I’m still going to write for Read Write Poem, including a new column that is very exciting. But this little blog needs an official rest, rather than the unofficial one I unwittingly initiated at the beginning of this month. I’m going on an eight day vacation in two weeks, so I’m going to use the next 3-5 weeks to figure out what I want to do with my blog. I may continue this blog, move to a new URL, or see what it’s like to live without blogging. My guess is I’ll have a blog in some form, but I don’t really know what that form is yet.
I started this blog as a way for me to focus on my writing while working an intense job. Luckily, it’s did the trick. I’ve produced tons of poetry, met some great online people, and had an outlet for my poetry. Two and a half years later, my life has shifted in some wonderful ways, and as a result, my relationship to writing has shifted.
My new job, which I am very passionate about, has become a larger focus for me. As a result, I’m going to undertake a new graduate degree this fall, which will allow me to focus on more academic writing and ponder bigger issues about creativity and education. Good news, but I don’t know what this means for poetry and for my blog writing.
Once I figure out what I’m doing, I’ll post something here and on my Facebook. Until then, thank you for reading and for your friendship!
This interesting article from today’s New York Times is a profile of the founder of slam poetry, who wonders whether slam poetry is too commercial now. I don’t know where I stand on this, but it’s an interesting article, nonetheless.
This weekend, Soulless Machine and I went to Chicago for one of my best friend’s wedding. The weekend was a blur of catching up, making new friends, singing along to ABBA (or Prince or various disco songs), and deep joy and happiness. It was such an honor to witness my friend committing to sharing her life with her husband, especially since I remember her as a 19 year-old.
My favorite part of the wedding had to have been the quote from Tom Robbins that they used in the ceremony:
“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won’t adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words “make” and “stay” become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.”
I adore this vision of love that my friend and her new husband have and I am so excited to see how they are going to aid and abet each other.
The weekend was also a little bittersweet, because I knew it was going to end. Following college, all of my close friends scattered to various points in the country. We are in Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin, California, Washington, South Carolina, and Arizona. We don’t get a lot of real life, face-to-face time together anymore, so any of these big events are our only opportunities to congregate, celebrate, and touch base with each other. Luckily, as a group we’ve decided that we’re going to make sure that there’s a wedding every two years, so that we have excuses to convene.
I have a lot of other thoughts swirling around about this weekend, and the moments that I shared with my friends, and how I was able to reflect on who we’ve all become in these ten years since college. But right now, as I am recovering from the tsunami of fun that was this weekend, I’m going through a bit of friend withdrawal.
Below are some of my favorite shots from the wedding. I’ll be posting more on Flickr and Facebook (ones with people in them) later in the week.
Mr. & Mrs. Pac-Man on the Cake
The Table Centerpieces — old books, of course.
Dancin’ in the Garage (taken by Aaron M. Wilson)
“Like clean pieces of paper that can be easily written or painted on.”
KAING GUEK EAV, chief jailer for the Khmer Rouge, at his U.N. trial, referring to children used as prison guards by the Khmer Rouge, TIME Magazine
I know he once carved
habits into them, inscribed
his commandments into their tender
unformed selves. His words
a mosaics of shoulds and
musts, nevers and alwayses.
I wonder what happened
to the willful ones,
the little boys who refused
to guard, refused the stain
of gun oil on their sublime
soft skin. Did he ever
slither past their defenses,
finish his job? Or did they remain
blank forever, glazed clean?
Personae
I wrote and created this today, after waking up with part of this phrase in my head. I realized pretty early on that I had just the right pictures to match with these words.
I was wondering, since my recovery from NaPoWriMo last year was long and poem-less. But this year, I feel more invigorated, as if I’ve been jump-started. Everything is feeling a little more inspiring around here. Even with all of this happy-inspiration, I have to remind myself that this too will pass and I will feel creatively bankrupt at some point. This is just the nature of creativity — it ebbs and flows. Still, I’m going to take advantage of it while I can.
One of my latest inspirations comes from our very own Read Write Poem’s News Feed. Apparently, they got the idea from this post at the NewPages Blog. The post highlights Altered Books, the act of taking a used book and turning it into a source material for your poems. People who alter books do it in one of two ways: they can rip the bindings off a used book and use each page as a canvas, to write poems from the words on the page. Or they can keep the book as an artifact, decorate the outside and the inside and turn it into works of art. With or without poems on the page.
After reading all this, I thought, Of course! This combines my fledgling love of collage with my constant love of poems and books. Why haven’t I heard of this before? Then, I went out to my local Salvation Army and bought three used books, one for ripping the binding and another two for turning into artifacts. Because I want to try it and practice.
Yesterday, I wrote my first poem out of my ripped binding book. Unfortunately, I love the poem but hate the way I laid it out on the page. I don’t know yet if it’s salvageable, with more decoration. The hard thing about this process is that each page is one of a kind. Once you mess it up, you can’t start over. So, I think my challenge will be to a) practice a lot, with an eye towards learning rather than creating a finished product and b) learning to incorporate what I see as mistakes into the larger vision for the page.
With that being said, I wanted to share at least the poem, because I think it’s cool. My source book is Down by the River by Edna O’Brien.
Down by the River 7: Fruits
Scalding. Scalding.
incursions
move in whorls.
Our Lady knew.
She would never
get crushes
never
get in there.
She imagined
looking for accommodation
His name was
Dust
He suffered.
he was far too happy
a succubus who ministered.
I’ll keep practicing this art and hopefully have something that I like as a poem and a visual piece, by the time I get through O’Brien’s 200+ page (and now unbound) book.
- It’s spring. Finally, blessedly, spring!
- The lilacs are blooming. The trees just burst into flowers last weekend. There’s a big lilac tree right next to a bus stop I pass every day. I love spying people sniffing the flowers while they think no one’s watching. (See item #1).
- All of my favorite-ist shows are having season finales next week. Now that I know who Alpha is, I want to know who Jacob is.
- I’m actually learning how to use Microsoft Access for a huge project at my work and it’s fun, in that nerdy, lose all sense of time sort of way. I’m reading a dummies book and everything.
- I’m waking up at 5:30 in the morning, the sun is shining, and I’m not tired or cranky. (See item #1)
- It’s two weeks until I go to Chicago for a good friend’s wedding. I get to see some of my closest friends from college, which will be awesome.
- It’s also the first time my husband and I have been back to Chicago-land since we left eight years ago. Even though we’ll be clear on the other side of town, I hope we’ll get to visit our old ‘burbs. On the top of my list is a visit Seven Dwarfs to get an ice cream sundae. This old school family restaurant was mere blocks from very first apartment. It’s so nice to give directions that include “take a right at the neon dwarf.”
- I got to buy a new dress and new shoes. (See item #6)
- It’s eight o’clock at night, the sky is a light pale blue and there’s an almost full moon rising like a ghost. (See item #1)
In between all of the poetry writing last month, I began taking a course through my work on developing my leadership skills. I am really enjoying the class, because it’s part reflection and part studying. The class has been a welcome respite from the go to work-go home-do nothing track that I had been on this winter. Five years out of graduate school, and I’m missing attending school. Again.
However, there is one part of the class has me stressed, sweaty, and terrified. I have to write my mission statement. I’ve never written a mission statement for myself before. I’ve always associated mission statements with cheesy corporate retreats and ropes courses. At my school, the faculty associates mission statements with developing one’s calling and purpose, so they aren’t quite so goofy.
While working on this mission statement, I’ve really been trying to reconcile my two passions in life: writing and poetry and working in higher education. I’ve never known how these two things fit together. They always have felt like two separate and distinct portions of my life. I do one so that I can support the other or I do one at the expense of the other. I’ve always wished that I could have a congruent life, where all of the various pieces fit together.
Throughout this course, I thought about all of the things that I love about writing and working with students. And I think I’ve figured out the common thread: creation. Through poetry, I get to create something tangible and meaningful. Through my work in student services or teaching, I get to create experiences for students. The act of creation, and maintaining those creations, is the common theme in my varied work.
So, with that in mind, I’ve got a draft mission statement.
To honor and sustain creativity and lifelong learning in myself and the learners I work with, through dedicated personal practice, mentoring, and building connections with educational institutions.
I would really appreciate any feedback that anyone can give me about it, as I have to turn it in next week.
Thoughts?
Now that we’re on the sunny side of winter, I am reminded constantly why I love Minneapolis so much. It’s as if all the memories of 40-below zero days and dark mornings are erased by a few good days outdoors. These days, the air outside is fragrant with blooming or budding flowers and it’s blessedly warm and sunny. Spring fever has hit me hard.
I think my spring fever and renewed Minneapolis-love are exacerbated by the fact that my in-laws came to town this weekend to celebrate their 40th anniversary, so we did a lot of fun Minneapolis things. We took them to a teppanyaki restaurant downtown then strolled through the Macy’s (formerly Dayton’s, back in the day). We went to the Twins game last night, only to see them walk the winning run in the 11th inning. (Grrr.) This morning, we went to the Farmer’s Market this morning, reveled in the sun, and bought two plants for our porch: Thai Garden Peppers and Meadowlark Forsythia.
By far my favorite event of the weekend has to be attending the May Day Parade in Powderhorn park. See, for many years, the Powderhorn Park neighborhood of Minneapolis celebrates both the return of spring and the socialist holiday with a festival and parade, organized partially by In the Heart of the Beast puppet theatre. The parade has a story it tells, through the progression of floats, which was mostly evident without using their cheat sheet.
Even though I’ve known about this event forever, and it’s certainly up my alley, I never attended. I’m just kicking myself now, because it was so much fun. We sat in the sun, shook our mayor’s hand and wore his re-election sticker*, ate ice cream sandwiches and dug the parade.
While we were there, I took over 245 pictures, which is just ridiculous. I kept squealing and taking more and more pictures of cool puppets, cute kids, random passersby, and anything that tickled my fancy. I culled my favorite 24 and posted them to my Flickr photostream, which I really need to use more. I selected my 9 favorites (for now) to post here, which I’ve done below:
(Part of an arc that had sprouts and plants. The people who carried it stopped to feed us alfalfa sprouts and hand out free plants.)
(Reads “Thanks for the Wisdom.”)
(His placard reads “War is sweetest to those who have not tasted it.”)
So there’s another reason to love my hometown. I sat outside to watch a radical parade and got a sunburn, my first of the season. Now, if I can only remember all this joy in the middle of dour January.
* As an aside, how cool is it that a major city mayor will not only support but march in a parade that is unabashedly socialist? Go, R.T.! Now, can we talk about your support of Trader Joe’s in my neighborhood? Both my husband and I had to bite our tongues while he shook our hands so we didn’t bark at him about it.
Have you ever read this joy + ride? It’s a brilliant blog. About every two weeks, they post simple interviews from visual artists and poets, as well as display some of their work. The interviews are good, because they ask about the daily things — what’s on your nightstand, what do you like about the season we’re in — and you learn some very intimate, daily details about their interview subjects.
For their 16th issue, they are trying something different. They are asking readers to make a list of three things that give us joy on a daily basis and find a way to do each at least once per week. They’re creating a blogroll for everyone who pareticipates. Since I am always looking for the ways to increase my joy, I want to play. Here is my list:
- Finding alone time to ponder, reflect, or be quiet
- Creating something new (I’m leaving this open to poetry or art)
- Spending time with my husband outside
So those are my three things. What are yours? If you want to sign up for the blogroll, just visit this joy + ride to play.
9to5poet