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Totally looking forward to the Variations on Funk reading tomorrow night! I have to work until 6, so I'm going to have to super hustle in order to get home, feed and medicate the cats, grab a fast bite to eat (I'll probably have a Luna bar and call it dinner), and get over to the Waldron for the 7:00 reading. It should be well worth it.
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I've managed to get my grubby little hands on an mp3 of Bruce Springsteen's performance of "Point Blank," one of my very very favorite songs of his (it's on The River), from Seattle the other night. I have been listening to it obsessively. It's haunting. And now I remember that sometimes it's nice to be haunted.
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Not doing NaPoWriMo this year, although I am going to make an effort to write more -- or at least more often -- than usual this month. Thinking about it, I realized that in the past I've written many of my NaPo poems on my lunch break. But for a number of months now, I've been using my lunch break to take a nice brisk walk, on the theory that at my age (forty-six!) it is probably time to make an effort to be less of a desk potato. I've lost about 50 pounds in the past twelve months, and I'm not willing to risk backsliding for the sake of a few poems. If I get myself healthier I'll live longer and write that many more poems, right? Sure.
I do think NaPo is a great thing, though. You write by, oddly enough, sitting down to write. Not by sitting around waiting for the Muse to strike. For those of us who find ourselves inclined towards waiting for the Muse, it's a good thing to take charge of the process and say, the heck with waiting, I'm going to write. I've also found that having the self-expectation that you will write a poem every day makes you just a little more alert to poem possibilities all around you, being open to letting a poem take off from the slightest little thing. And that's a good space to be in.
But I'm just a bit too crazed right now. I may try to do a daily poem some other month, like maybe October. Just not this month.
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I've been offered a pretty cool project for the near-to-middling future. Should be a lot of fun. More on this later.
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For anyone who missed it Sunday and would like to listen in, the podcast of my "Poets Weave" appearance from this past Sunday is now available. Go to http://wfiu.org/podcast.htm, scroll down to Poets Weave, and for now the link is right there on the front page. (When they get a new one up, you'll need to click through to the Poets Weave page and grab it from there.)If you listen (and if you feel so moved), let me know! :)
2 comments:
I think that I'll do NaPoWriMo, although as it comes right during exam month it is mighty inconvenient. However, I also have a poetry writing class, so it can be considered school related :).
I have recently learned that I do not actually write poems. I write drafts. I EDIT poems. It is a quite liberating thought.
And I will be pulling up your podcast as soon as I get the technological hookup. I can either install iTunes, convert the pod to an mp3 or borrow an ipod from the school library (I love being spoiled rotten). I had massive technological problems which all boiled down to needing to use IE for the radio station's website instead of Firefox :p. By the time I figured it out, or more accurately by the time tech support got out of the shower, I was just in time to hear the recording thanking the sponsors :pppp. I will let you know how fabulous you were as soon as I get ahold of the recording.
Gardenwaltz: Hey, the podcast is already in mp3 format ... all you have to do is right-click to save it to your computer, then you can listen with the audio player of your choice. No need to install iTunes or anything like that. :)
I like the idea of writing drafts, not poems! I always talk about having "drafted" a poem, not having "written" one ... to me "I wrote a poem" sounds like it's finished, and I hardly ever know when a poem is finished until days (or weeks or months) after the fact.
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