Poetry:reading,marketing, creating

First, a note about the Grind- it's not closing. The shop has a new owner who's trying to get more up and running, including poetry readings. I have become the de facto organizer. You know the routine- if you want to get something going, do it yourself. I wonder if this would count as a public project? Reading reams of poetry to a near empty room except for for folks bribed in off the streets (and family members who have a certain obligation). I suppose I could make a requirement for my IVY Tech and IPFW students to attend since we all know how much students will do for a grade.
Second, Saturday afternoon ramblings. Much of the post-nap afternoon has been spent doing internet research on finding places to send off poems and stories. I realize that a good portion of the marketing is a numbers game but I hope the chances of acceptance are better than making a sale via spam (one sale per 12.5 million spams) [A side question: why is it called spam? I personally like the canned ham product and don't care for its name being besmirched. Slide the loaf out of the can, stud with cloves and pineapple chunks and back for 20 minutes. {not sure why a recipe came out}]
I had mentioned in one of the reaction papers that most of my writing has been done off on my own without benefit of too many classes or workshops which tends to feed the insecurity already present. This may be one of the difficulties of having such a scattered education consisting of seven undergraduate institutions, two graduate, and now I'm off on a third at IPFW. Why all the schooling? Why not? I enjoy learning and the academic environment. And it provides a level of acceptable purpose.
That last phrase is one I want to play with for a moment: acceptable purpose. Is creative writing, the production of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction (a category I have little familiarity with) an acceptable purpose beyond the notion of "hobby"? Yes, I know that we have attacked this notion in the class every time it comes up but it continues to nag. While we rail against the notion, don't we have to live in it? Jesse said that she would take any shit job provided evenings and weekends remained for writing, but isn't trying to fit writing in the edges of life turning it into a past-time? The idea of taking any shit job is a romantic one which becomes leads to disillusionment. Life moves in and writing moves the corner of the room. I have now written myself into a place I hadn't intended- a place of grumpiness and curmudgeondom. Scrowls grow upon the brow making intense the signals of delusion. I'm going to stop now and get on with something else. And I have yet to resolve the issue of acceptable purpose. Check back again, if you like.

Poets Wanted

Wanted: Poets willing to give public readings for the promotion of poetry and their own writings. My son and I stopped in the Grind Coffee House on Maplecrest this morning shortly after 10 and after realizing that the layout could easily fit an open mike reading, I asked the owner who quickly went along with the idea. Anyone interested? Nothing concrete as of yet, but if you are interested, let me know. See you Thurs.

A pot of soup

Sunday afternoon. The chicken carcass is on the stove, boiling with its vegetable buddies. The chicken, before becoming a carcass, was dinner, with roast vegetables, and Irish soda bread I baked Saturday morning as a break from the usual pancakes. I didn't have to go to all the trouble to roast a chicken whole, carefully tending it so that the bird was neither raw nor dry, basting it with olive oil and herbs. An easier meal could have been had and, more than likely, would have been appreciated as much. Boiled hot dogs. Instant potatoes. Crock-potted cut up chicken rendered down to mush with a can cream of chicken soup reminiscent of countless church recipe collections and "easy meals for the hurried and harried homemaker." Such food would have been eaten with about as much bother, and would have given necessary nutrients for the day, sufficient calories to feed the internal fires of human life. But I didn't. I took the more rigorous way and, before you give too many accolades to the love and care of family demonstrated by such devotedness, I did it from very selfish motives. I did it for me because I like to eat good food, food prepared, (nay, crafted) to taste a cut above the average. I cook for myself and my family sort of tags along with what's set on the table. My dislike of the mundane drives me to do what may take a bit more time but tastes so much better. And this is why the carcass is on the stove being recrafted into chicken stock. Thanks to a modern gas range (and not hot coals on the hearth) the task will be accomplished without much help from me. Let her simmer! Let her steep her flavors into the water, magically changing Fort Wayne tap water into something delightful. Not quite turning water to wine, but still delightful.

Why whine about the wine

This blog is inspired by the glass of mediocre merlot sitting three inches to the left of the computer. I could go in greater detail but I fear I would be going the way of certain French hyperrealistic literature of 20 years ago. Such activities are to be refrained from. I had lunch with an old friend with whom I meet about once a year in January. He comes to Fort Wayne for an annual business meeting and we make sure to have lunch. Old friends with whom one can speak openly are to be cherished for they are rare. Brenda Ueland wrote a piece on our need to find someone to tell our stories to and without those listening ears, we tend to move away from our deeper humanity (or our truer humanity) and into the conventional realm of polite, yet stulifying discourse. I would not go so far as to call it conversation because conversation has a much deeper effect. True conversation can change both parties. The opposite of true conversation is a hurling of doctrines at each other in the pattern of "I'm right and if you refuse to agree with me you must be wrong." I've experienced far too much of this sort of discourse over the years to have any ear for it any longer. Civility is a lost art which, I hope, is making a slow comeback. One more point of hope to lay upon the new President.

I did a word count on the previous blogs and discovered for the week that I was two words short. Here they are: Two Words.

Here's the situation: I read a book on reading and I go off searching for those books. Like Erasmus I have a difficulty deciding betweeen books and food. My family would much prefer that I go for the food, they like to eat. They like to read as well, but are more akin to going to the library than the bookstore. But if all went to the library to borrow a book rather than the bookstore to buy a book, how would authors be paid? Do library purchases count toward sellerdom (best and otherwise)? Perhaps we have a solemn duty to go and buy books in order to support publishers in the hopes of better and better books being made available to the buying public. I find I rattle on. Is this not allowed in a blog? Since blog is so close to bog this opens the way to enter the swamplands of verbal meanderings. I have meanadered from my first point, that of going after recommended readings. On my most immediate shelf I have several books on writing such as "Read like a Writer", "Chapter after Chapter", "ABC of Reading", "The Art of Writing Poetry" along with many others. Each of them has a recommended reading list. Add to that my own compilations of lists of books to read. I feel like I am always many books behind. Add to this the difficulty of which era to delve into. Ezra Pound suggests I go back to the Iliad in Homeric Greek. Koine I can handle. Homeric would be a new study all together. I could dismiss it out of hand as being totally impractical or I could look at is as a challenge. Could I do it, that is, do I have the mental and linguistic resourses to tackle such a project? Yes, given a pile of dictionaries, lectionaries, etc., I could make a go of it. Do I have the time for it? That is another question. Mr. Pound also suggests I delve into Chaucer, a more wholesome prospect for I do love Chaucer even though I have been remise in getting through the whole. Maybe a few bottles of mead and a roaring fire would lend to a fulsom and vigorous reading- aloud of course, not worrying if I got all the proper Middle English pronounciations correct. After that, more books tracing literature's past. Here then the frustration: I'm always going back to the beginning, like an undergrad.
I hope that in the above I don't sound like too much of a prig. Or intellectual effete. Though traces of that abound. The simple truth (can truth be simple?) is that I love to read, want to be well read, and am always playing catch-up. And I love to write. The two go hand in hand. I've chatted enough about my frustrations. Next time, perhaps certain joys and delights.

A first blog

First blog, and I've a cold that has wrapped itself around the throat like a tightening band of barbed wire, or I've swallowed barbed wire, or a hawthorn tree, or sandburrs, or an alien with claws, or a cyber hedgehog of titanium. You get the idea.
This afternoon, despite the cold Iim braving the weather to search out a used bookstore for Ezra Pound's ABC of Reading. I'm a sucker for books. Tell me to go read a book and I'll hunt it down and read it. This could be a problem, this bibliophilia.