Yeah, well...

...I did intend to be posting more frequently, but I've had to spend the past month dead for tax purposes. I didn't even try to fool myself into thinking I'd make as serious effort at NaPoWriMo, with a rather important deliverable facing my day-job-self early in May, but if you want to see someone doing it right, go see what Kelli is up to.

My kids are coming to the end of what might be the best project ever. Every child in their school is creating a poetry scrapbook, entering two poems a month with themes loosely related to their date of entry. The poems can (and in fact, must) come from a variety of sources, including Los Interwebs, actual books, and their own pens. It's been fabulous to see how this simple exercise - just reading some poems and picking a couple every month, blossomed into a keen interest and appreciation in the art and in their own writing. I suppose this blossoming was pretty well mulched, with me on the one hand and their Mom (a great scrapbooker) in the house, but the project was definitely the seed.

I judged a poetry contest last month, and I swear I wasn't too critical (for those among my 6 loyal readers who have that opinion of me), but I did learn that my engineering-influenced approach to judging was a bit distanced from my peers. I created a checklist for myself, which permitted me to rapidly screen out poems that weren't worth second reads. This isn't exactly what I used, but it makes the point:

1. Is there evidence of purposeful application of some elements of craft? (sound, purposeful line breaks, rhyme/rhythm, etc.)
2. If there is purposeful application of craft, is that particular element well executed?
3. Is there consistency of voice or POV?
4. Is word choice creative and meaningful? (that is, are latinates/germanics appropriate, are non-obvious words chosen and do those words add something to the line, etc.)
5. and so forth...

The point of such a list is not to say that I might click a few radio buttons and let an algorithm select a "best poem". However, there should be a minimum level of compliance with some standard of craft to earn consideration as a "best poem", don't you think? I do tend to think a bit algebraically, even when watching a baseball game, but I think the principal - in this case - is a sound one.

Anyway, the disparity between my fellow judges' initial impressions and my checklist-filtered impressions was striking and I'm not sure if that accuses my approach, or just my taste in poems. So though I'm not really observing NatPoMo this year (I think I'll celebrate from May 15 to June 15), I'm pulling books I love off the shelf every night and asking myself what it is I love about those poems and poets.

I'll talk a little about what I'm learning in the next few days.

Ought Eight, Part Six

Is it a truism that the busier you get, the more time you seem to have? I know for me, when I'm forced to flex my organizational skills the most, I tend to be apply them most effectively. So here I am, averaging a post every 3 days - by far my most communicative since launching this enterprise so long ago - at the same time as I'm ramping up at a satisfying rate on the day job, managing a more complex home schedule than is typical for me, actually reading some of the books in my queue, and even spent an hour (pun alert) fiddling around with songwriting, which I haven't touched in years.

If I can bowl a deuce and the Giants win Sunday, it just might be a perfect month.

The problem with all this efficiency, of course, is that it breeds opportunity, which brings with it more work. So when I was approached earlier this month about doing some grammar school poetry workshops, I couldn't resist the urge to revisit my prepackaged programs, refresh the anthologies I like to use, polish the writing exercises a little, etc. So instead of kicking back with a Blue Moon and some Numb3rs tonight, I'll be cleaning up the Burgess-Meredith-worthy piles of poetry and teaching books around the couch so my family can get near the TV tomorrow. I should know better.

But all the fiddling reminded me of the best advice I got as I was starting out with poetry workshops, which (oversimplified) is "Don't work so hard. Get the kids writing". For me, this simplifies the lesson plan: (1) Create energy. (2) Promote interest in poetry. (3) Get out of the way. Fortunately, the teachers I've worked with in the past (and present) have the same basic idea - and are sensitive to beating interest in poetry out of their students with curricula too focused on the "right answer".

That doesn't mean that this next book doesn't have a better example of rhythm and assonance, though....