9 to 5 Poet

This morning was gorgeous and sunny, though still a little cold, so I decided to document what the beginning of a Minnesota spring looks like. Most of it’s pretty gray, but I got to see some interesting things in my neighborhood as the inhabitants were waking up and the sun was warming the softening ground.

Mostly Minnesota spring looks gray and brown, as above, but I began to see other colors in the neighborhood. Especially when I started walking in the alleys that run in between two streets.

It seems that people throw away the most interesting things, especially on a Sunday morning.

After finding the above, I saw three emo boys in black hoodies and black jeans being dropped off back home, carrying a half-empty cardboard case of Heinikens.  I was too shy to ask if I could take their pictures.

Then, I found the neatest porch.  A flash of color in an otherwise still dreary area.

At my workplace, I work with adult learners.  They joke a lot about “the R word,” or reflection.  In many of their classes, they are asked to reflect on ideas. They write reflective papers.  They complete reflective essays in tests.  They’re big on reflection.  Personally, I don’t think reflection is so bad, but it’s been a while since I’ve been in school and asked to reflect on things.

Since we are a Lutheran school, we have voluntary chapel as a service for our adult learners, should they choose to take advantage of it.  I’m not Lutheran at all, but I attend chapel on the days I work, so that I’m supporting a service for our students. (Most of the time there’s only three or four of us present, including the person who is leading.)  Today, the service leader handed out Buddhist quotes to us and asked us to, using that darn R word again, reflect between each reading.  He tried to match our quotes to our personalities.  Here was mine:

Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed. — Buddha

Now, I’ve met this very nice gentleman once. But man, has he got me pegged.  I can be a little rigid at times. (Okay a lot rigid. A lot of the time.)  I think part of it’s personality, part of it’s upbringing, part of it’s just habit.  Whatever the motivation, I can be very shielded with people I don’t know, and sometimes with people I do know. 

My rigidity is something that I work on in my writing, for sure..  I always think that I am being so vulnerable and unguarded in my writing, and I’m really just shielding what I really feel with language. I often confuse thinking through an emotional issue and feeling through it.  I’m so much more comfortable with my intellect’s capacity to connect than my heart. 

I guess that this is something that I have come to know about myself and accept as one of my opportunities for growth.  I just didn’t realize that it was so apparent to the outside world.  So today, I want to just reflect (there’s that R word again) on this quote and wonder at the ways I can open myself to the world. 

If I wasn’t such a dork when it comes to computer stuff, this would have taken much less time.  The blog has a new, pretty WordPress home.  You probably don’t need to update your links or feeds, but WordPress doesn’t use the www. prefix. 

In other random blog related news, my friends and I have started a new movie-reviewing website, Attack of the Movie Watchers, which is also a pretty spiffy WordPress blog.  So basically, I’ve been the domain purchasing queen lately.  (Asphalt Sky is on the docket, after I finishing laying out the issue.)  A stressful experience, but good.  I started this new blog because I wanted a space to review movies, but didn’t want to do it on this literature-related blog, so I made a new one and invited some friends. 

Oh, and speaking of literature and writing a lot, I’ve decided to commit myself to NaPoWriMo.  read. write. poem. is organizing some extra prompt-age in their sidebars and created a pretty button, which you can see below. 

So that’s my life in a nutshell.  How’s yours?

The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

– “To Be of Use” by Marge Piercy

Today, a professor at work sent me this Marge Piercy poem in the campus mail, because we had discussed it in passing two weeks ago.  He couldn’t recall the name or the author, just the ending image of the vases and bodies being of use.   It helped to inform my work all day today, since I hung it above my computer monitor.  I love working at a college.

I was really struck this morning by this article in the LA Times.  It describes how in Pakistan, as in many other countries throughout the world, poetry is taken very seriously. In fact, the people who are working for freedom often write or recite poetry in order to get their ideas across to the people.

In both Western  and non-Western poetry, there is a strong tradition of poets inspiring (and being inspired by) political movements.  Often, these writers then end up becoming involved in the political movment they have immortalized in verse.  I’m thinking about Allen Ginsberg protesting nuclear war through poetry or dissident writers in China. 

But I think in recent years, at least in the United States, it seems that artists can be inspired by and write about politics, but not get involved.  I’m wondering if that’s healthy for the arts and healthy for political movements. It’s not like I want to inspire revolution through writing or anything, but I just think that artists and writers have a responsibility for both words and action.  Or, come to think about it, so do all citizens. 

On the First Day of Spring

The World

I say yes to a world with green meadows,
flowers, to lying in sun. I also
say yes to fury, rage, broken asphalt.
I say yes to a world with everything.

(March 1

I decided to share this quatrain tonight, because I was thinking about the Big Yes Model. I know that sounds a little strange, but bear with me.

When I went to the education conference in Tennessee, Dr. Carla DiMarco was the keynote speaker. She is a psychologist and adult educator, and she was teaching us (a group of often overstretched student services administrators) about saying yes and saying no.

Her taught us how to use her Big Yes Model — a way to quantify and visualize what you want to say yes to in your life. To simplify it, it’s a grid that you fill in what you want to expend your precious energy on. You put your “Big Yeses” closer to your center. Then, you fill in your “flexible no’s, ” things that you may sometimes say yes to, but reserve the right to say no to. And finally, you fill in your “Big No’s,” the things that you never ever want to spend your time and energy on.

Simplistic? Yep, in a lot of ways. But, I was surprised by how many things in my Big Yes category that I ignore, let languish, or put off and by how many things in my Big No category that I live with. Overall, though, I was happy with how many of my Big Yeses I pursue.

So what are your Big Yes items? How are you honoring them today?

A close friend of mine from college, Kate, has launched a new site with a friend of hers called Wednesday Machine Arts Collective. This site’s goal is to bring artists and writers together in a virtual arts festival. They plan on connecting artists of different genres together to collaborate on their work. How the collaboration takes shape is up to the artists.

To me, this is one of the best uses of the online arts community — to connect writers and artists from around the world to work together. I’m really excited to see how Wednesday Machine takes shape.

…our sun has finally returned. I never thought that a long stretch of cold weather would affect me so much. But now that the sun is returning, I’m having some serious spring fever.

Which leads me to creating. I’m starting a new project, which I’m not quite ready to unveil yet. (I want to make sure I stick to it first.) I’m finishing up submissions for Asphalt Sky, so the new issue should be out by the end of April. And, I baked muffins for breakfast last weekend. Even though they came out of a box, they sure are pretty.

I am very pleased to announce that Deborah Keenan’s Willow Room, Green Door has been selected for our April Poetry Book Club book.

Deborah has been a fixture in the Twin Cities literary scene for many years, and she fosters younger poets’ talents through her work at Hamline University’s Master of Fine Arts program and the Loft Literary Center. She’s also a founding member of the Laurel Poetry Collective. Obviously, I’m biased, because I am a former student of Deborah’s and I have a lot of admiration for her talent and generosity.

I’ll post the conversation post on Monday, April 7. Until then, happy reading!

When I was in high school in California, I taught myself how to read tarot cards. It was my first step into my own independent, spiritual practices, and it opened up doors for me.

I don’t read cards as much any more, mostly because I feel like I’ve answered my questions for now, but I still remember what it felt like to learn how to read them. So, when read. write. poem. had a prompt to interpret dream symbolism through tarot (among other methods), I was immediately transported back to that time.

Here is the daily quatrain that resulted:

Three of Swords

Everything was too big for me: width and
length of the deck in my hands, the questions
I tried to answer. Three steel swords piercing
my fragile pink heart. Too big, the burdens.

Note: If you click on the title, you can read an interpretation of the card. The picture is of the different “Three of Swords” cards from my personal decks.