Poem about a river

May on the Pomme de Terre river

Sweater weather, cold noses at night,

A thick fog, a firefly traveling downstream,

 a remnant shooting star, your hand on my hip

An update, of sorts...

The power cord for my laptop is caput so I'm updating from my phone. Ahhh, technology! 

We had a fabulous workshop tonight; the first in many months. We even talked more about putting out an anthology in December. Huzzah!

Rachael read the next chapter in her grotesque and wonderful novel. I can't wait to see how it goes... So creepy and engaging!

I'm  having an early night. More later, kittens.

Rambling, as per usual

I wrote a poem! Yays! It may make the next poetry compilation.

An observation: it is spring.

These are the flowers at our back fence! Proof of Spring!

I like to sit outside and write on my laptop in the backyard, on our patio table. Winter is so quiet. Spring is another story... it's like everything is alive. the ground even makes noise. It's just a clicking, chirping, thumping buzz. I love it.

Chase a ghost

On the side of the cement trail,
naked rib cage curling into the sky,
broken spine crushed into the dry earth.
Too big to be a rat or a squirrel,
too small to be a human, and the vertebrae
 the diameter of a toddler's sticky fist.
Surely the prey of some moldy goddess,
half-chested, grieving with her arrows,
a prayer, an offering to the flesh eaters
and spindly dandelion roots, desperate
for the fertile soil of another new Spring.

In which I ramble about roller derby and poetry

Is there anything poetic about roller derby? I mean, sure, kind of? My body sings when I hit a good pace. I feel like I'm in sync with the world... but I'm going to be real with you. I don't like sports poetry. I don't like most war poetry, either. I don't know what that's about. Maybe because of the aggression? I don't know. I don't even like hula hooping poetry (and there is a lot of it, believe it or not). This is a frustrating conundrum as I've started training for roller derby and it's pretty much all I think about.

Anyway, this month is all about refocusing on poetry (and derby derby derby derby, okay? okay). I haven't written as many poems as I'd hoped (I never do) but I've written about 10. 2 I think I might even like. I remember when I was in college, I tried to write a sonnet-a-day. That was just flat-out ridiculous.

I think I tend to write more poetry during the spring and summer because I'm outside more. I think about the things I see- I stop and hike and look at weird shit. That's normally good fodder. Oh! I'm going to quit and post this because I'm thinking about an animal skeleton I saw when Mel and I went for a skate outside. IT WAS WICKED INTERESTING.

Happy poetry month!

Peace
Love
Poetry

Concentric

The ground has been root-soaked
three weekends already, this spring.
I haven't dug my toes in the mud, yet.

Is Poetry Dead?

Is Poetry Dead? asks Alexandra Petri of the Washington Post.

I have lots of opinions (and have written at least two unpublished blogs) about spoken word poetry, most of my feelings are fairly negative but I think it's a semantic issue. I like performance art, which is what I feel spoken word poetry is- but as a written art form, it lacks in subtlety, complexity, craft, and depth. You can disagree with me, and most of you probably do, but I love written poetry. I love the cadence, the slow moving flow that the written word gives us- and I like hearing the poets slowly spill them out at readings.

Slam poetry matters, to my chagrin. It speaks to many people. I can appreciate that. I was watching a powerful piece that a friend forwarded to me:

And I put aside my frustration for the poetry in spoken word poetry to just be present with the video. Something that occurred to me: the repetition that generally annoys me is a part of the oral tradition. People like Homer and Sappho were using repetition as a part of their work (which was relayed orally). I cooled my jets.

I still maintain that spoken word and the written word are radically different, and I'm still not a fan of most performance poetry, but it's very much a part of our culture. It speaks to a lot of people.

Let's be real: poetry has never really been a craft that can support somebody. Sure, there have been a few
people here and there, but most of the classic poets were already independently wealthy, aristocrats, or sponsored by some rich family.

So all of these ramblings culminate to this thought: I hate that we're even asking the question "Is Poetry Dead?"

• People still listen and read it. 
• People are still writing it.
• Poetry has had many incarnations and manifestations in our history and in our present: limericks, lyrics, spoken word, epic, etc., etc. It morphs and flows with our language and culture, and that's okay. That's what it's supposed to do.