(Can't) Beat a Retreat!

It's called "The Haven," a medium-size room at the Quaker Retreat Center in the Santa Cruz Mountains, where I and my friend took ourselves for a (very) short retreat, to write and do art. What we gained, a break from time itself, a stepping away from worries and woes. I wrote a good 12 pages and did some drawing; my friend put in some good time toward her manuscript about death and dying. We remembered why we are so grateful to be alive.

Anne Sexton was indeed a pretty poet but very wise under all that beauty

Cut, Cut, Expand, Expand

Anne Sexton said that the way she wrote a poem was to "cut, cut, expand, expand" and I completely understand this. I tend to over-write, dumping out whatever comes into my head as I enter the poemtrance. Then I must edit to see what possible shape is buried under all that raw material. Next, I have to decipher and usually narrow down what I want the poem to say: one of the biggest problems poets have is trying to say too much in one small lyric poem (that's why the ancients used the epic form, something we moderns have barely enough patience for). Knowing what it is I'm trying, or wanting to say, is the most difficult part of the poetry-writing process for me. Each word stands in front of a door full of historic, cultural, regional meanings; there are so many choices, yet only the one right choice for any particular poem.

Colleagues and Accomplices

Allow me to introduce you to my dear friend, who has become my writing colleague and my spiritual accomplice. We all need someone like this in our lives, more so as we age, I think, although it was far easier to sustain close friendships when I was in my twenties. We meet weekly or every other week, and have recently started using our 2 hours together to articulate what it is we are trying to accomplish with our writing and our creative lives. Then we report on what we will do in the next week. Beyond this, we talk and go to places that feed our souls; since she works with the dying and I work with whomever I can get to pay me, we have much to share about making every day a significant journey. I am grateful for this babushka buddy, and fortunate to have many friends who are so imaginative, funny, and so piercingly brilliant I can hardly stand it!

Rainy Days on Sundays

We're experiencing a squall of winter storms, thank Goodness, as the Gubernator has just called for emergency draught conditions which means we'll all be putting bricks in our toiddies and capturing dirty bath water for the spring bulbs. But for poets and artists, it means it's legit to be indoors and be creative to heart's content. I'm working on a new series of Artist Trading Cards featuring Pretty Poets in response to rudeness experienced trying to be a Poetry Examiner for the SF Examiner (they want knowledge and computer/internet savvy to boot and if you reveal any ignorance, expect the snot-nosed kid at the other end to let you know it). Anyway, it's a gentler and more rewarding thing to do art and let the whole "content provider" world go suck its big toe. Artists and Writers beware: the move to everything online means they want your goods, don't want to pay for it, and will expect that you do all the labor of producing their publications, including HTML coding, picture taking and uploading, and and and . . . Another way the corporate world profits off our backs.

French Fried: Giving Arthur Rimbaud A Second Dip

I first tried to read French symbolist/surrealist poet Arthur Rimbaud in my early 20s when I was closer in age to the age he wrote "A Season in Hell," "The Drunken Boat," "Illuminations," and other poems, and at that time I struggled to comprehend Rimbaud's verse (read in English translations).

Older and more patient with dislocation, dissociation, disintegration, and dissatisfaction with one's society, I appreciate Rimbaud more now.

Just finished "A Season in Hell," full of anguish and obvious youthful rebellion against a very constricted life. His mother sounds like a bat out of hell; he was obviously haunted by his Catholicism and its intolerance of the dark side which poets often need to confront (devils, witches, sin): the boy was ready to blow rural France. He quit writing early in his career, lived an adventurous life running guns and doing other bad things in Africa, and having mad affairs. Yet, the poet's life must become superfluous to the poems themselves, and "A Season in Hell" is worth reading for its raw energetic "yawp," especially if you need a vessel to contain your own dissatisfactions and disappointments. Here is poet as exorcist.

Friday's for Fish

Sitting here with poet Judy, trying to share my excitement about doing a blog and new website. All too much to remember and running into glitches, but shan't be turned away! Thankfully, I share Celtic enthusiasm with fellow bard and together we will conquer the mad web world. Someday, I may even have something interesting to post.

Welcome

If you have arrived here, greetings fair traveler. My world is one comprised of equal parts imagination and reality. Literature, history, theater, music and art, and those who create the vital moments and work in our world are my enjoyment. I hope to share my enthusiasms and get turned on to some of your own. I invite visitors near and far to exchange with me. A community of philosophes and aesthetes grounding in the day to day.