At Least Look It Up, Would You?

Pet Peeve Alert: a "positive" review of a poetry product that reveals the ignorance of the reviewer.

In the library today, I picked up a copy of Book Page, a free paper whose sole function seems to be advertising new books. Therein, I found a microreview of the new Billy Collins Live. Without meaning any disrespect to the reviewer, whose other reviews I found useful and informative, her treatment of the Collins CD is just awful.

The review opens with this comment: "... I have a mad, albeit intellectual, crush on ... Billy Collins... and, more importantly, you don't have to like poetry or know anything about its structure or esoteric intricacies to love Collins' work." So, you love the former poet laureate because ("more importantly"!) you don't have to know diddly about poetry to love him. None of those inconvenient esoteric intricacies. That's encouraging. That would make a great blurb.

Later: "I can't think of a more listener-friendly poet, a fresher voice...". I need to ask: Fresher than what? And what does listener-friendly mean? Small words? Slow cadence? Poems about everyday objects? While I do enjoy Collins, I find his reading style to be a little monotonous. Stack him up against Coleman Barks at the Dodge festival, or even Sharon Olds (and let's not even mention more theatrical performers like Sekou Sundiata) and he's a weak cousin - he's a great speaker, but not a great reader. I've seen performances on Def Poetry Jam which might not have been as well crafted as his poems but were much more engaging to the ear than typical live Collins.

And the clincher - the truest sign of a fictionally positive review: "Don't miss (this CD), his first appearance on audio". Excuse me, but this is just wrong, and it would have taken nothing more than a simple Google search to turn up a prior recording. An error like that, one which the most casual of Collins fans could spot (not to mention one who purports to have a "mad...crush" on the man) sours me to everything else in the review. I simply don't believe any of it.

Is it wrong of me to dismiss the whole review based on that factual miss? Or is it reasonable to think a reviewer of poetry might find a few minutes to, you know, take in a little poetry?

Letting Me Hang Around

If it's true that people form opinions on you based on the company you keep, then the current issue of the Edison Literary Review is going to have to go on my resume right away. My little effort, "The Good Thing About Rain" is mingling alongside poems by Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Kurt Brown, and BJ Ward -- Laura Boss, Therese Halscheid and Peter Murphy -- 50 pages of strong efforts, mostly by poets within commuting distance of the industrial belly of New Jersey.

I can't wholeheartedly direct you to this year's Harvest of Poetry, the annual reading by poets represented in this issue, because I have a pretty fine event running opposite it, but I can encourage you to buy a copy of ELR.

Celebrating the Body

AAP announced a new exhibit in the September newsletter: poems about the body, inspired by a similar exercise at Salon. It's a pretty good exercise, albeit fairly predictable. Personally, I'd like to have seen less Sylvia Plath and more younger contemporary poets.

In a very quick walk through my home library, I came across a few good options for an extended corporeal poetry collection:

• Kelli Agodon's "New Hips" (These are softer than the ones I wore/before she grew inside me) from Small Knots.
• BJ Ward's "Instructions for Using The Tongue" (Don't be too careful--/better to be overflowing/with what the tongue can offer./Sweet generosity returns to your soft mouth) from 17 Love Poems with No Despair.
• Beth Ann Fennelly's "Three Months After Giving Birth, The Body Loses Certain Hormones" (And my hair starts falling out. Long, red hair on the sheets, clogging/every drain, woven through the forest/of my brush, baked into brownies,) from Tender Hooks

Seems there are three motifs to poems about the body: wistful for what it was, wishing for what it might do (and with whom!), or whimsical at what its state says about our state of mind. Anyone got one that doesn't fit one of these molds?

An Early Writing Lesson

Readers who share my passion for teaching creative writing to kids -- not to mention anyone with kids of their own -- may want to scrounge up a copy of the Harold and the Purple Crayon Board Game. This extraordinary little game by BRIARPATCH Games is simplicity itself: You draw a card with an object on it. Then, just as Harold does in the Crockett Johnson books, you draw the object onto the erasable gameboard, then you add that object to a story you're making up on the spot. If you're playing with winners and losers, the object is to remember the story and tell it reasonably consistently with all the objects in the correct order. If you're like the writers in my house, you skip the victory conditions and just tell the wildest story you can.

If mine are typical in any way, kids can start participating in this round-robin storytelling event as soon as they can handle a marker without getting a purple tongue. Most of the objects can be drawn well enough without much of an eye, and interesting visual interpretations can contribute to the story (this weekend we wound up with "a dragon the size of Massachusetts" because of the shape my daughter gave him).

There are a dozen ways this can be adapted to other writing exercises with young kids. But whether you teach kids, have kids, play with kids, or are a kid, this is something you should have on your shelf. I don't think BRIARPATCH is making it anymore (and there's not one on eBay that I can find right now), so if you spot one, grab it. You wont be sorry.

One I Don't Regret (a Blogoview question revisited)

Jeff proposed today that blogging poets post their favorite of their own poems, and posted his own excellent Raku to kick the idea off. I took a quick look across my own published works* and was immediately reminded of a poem from BJ Ward's Gravedigger's Birthday, "The Poems I Regret in My First Book", which begins:

Irretractable, obnoxious children
having tantrums on the dog-eared tabletops
of these pages, screaming out
"Failure! Failure!"
in an otherwise classy joint.

Turns out that of the couple dozen poems of mine that have appeared in journals, I'm happy with about half. I wonder if that ratio holds true for others.

Anyway, it seems like a good idea to think about our own work from time to time and remind ourselves what we like about it, and why we think we're any good at this scribbling business. I picked this poem for this exercise because it still, 15 years after I wrote it, surprises me - first that I conceived it, and second that I can hear in it a little of what I eventually matured (I think) into some of the elements of my voice.

History
(this poem first appeared in Grasslands Review**)

I dream of Lincoln lately
limping from his ancient attic
hand on whitewood handrail
softly moaning of peace.

Curtain clouds conceal
both the man and any reason
for his choice of me to see -
I'm no Illinois schoolboy.

Tonight, asleep, I'll call
upon the wispy words of Adams
whose honor lay in anger,
whose wars I understand.

* so limited in this exercise because I still think blogging = publishing.
** but is updated in form here slightly, because I just can't stomach initial caps in my own work anymore.

What P&W Suggests You Can Do

Poets and Writers suggests the following ways writers, specifically, can help in the rebuilding the comminunities of New Orleans:

• The Katrina Literary Collective has been created to collect and distribute books to victims of the hurricane. For more information, contact the Amber Communications Group at amberbk@aol.com.
• A Louisiana Disaster Relief Fund has been established to receive monetary donations to assist libraries in Southeastern Louisiana. For more info, visit the American Library Association at http://www.ala.org
• The American Booksellers Association has created a Bookseller Relief Fund to assist independent booksellers affected by Hurricane Katrina. For info, visit http://www.bookweb.org/
• The Southern Arts Federation has set up an Emergency Relief Fund to assist arts organizations and artists in those Gulf Communities most devastated by Katrina. For more info, go to http://www.southarts.org/

Indulging My Technophobia

First let me point out that I make my living turning technology into things useful things through the art of engineering. That said, stop telling me about the iPod nano already.

It's an odd situation, being an R&D professional and a technophobe all at the same time. Well, maybe not a technophobe, but certainly not an early adopter of personal technology. Heck, I still don't have cable TV in my house. I'm going to have to mooch off my cousins to catch my boys in action this fall.

This attitude of mine spills into to my writing. I don't think a great deal of most online journals except those that use the technology to deliver something the page can't. I don't compose at the keyboard - except entries this blog, and not even all of those. I compose audibly (dictating into a tape recorder) or with pen and paper. There are a couple reasons for my avoidance of the computer, but the main one is that I get so wrapped up in capability (formatting, spell-checking, etc.), that I often lose the idea. The point of composing, for me, is to translate the kernel in my head to some fixed form ASAP. Anything that distracts me from that - or God forbid, enables me to start editing it as I go - is bad for me - it slow my process and sometimes costs me content.

I have enough trouble defeating the editor within. I don't want my Dell contributing to the battle.

Letting Others Tell It

I don't feel like anything I could say about what's happening in N.O. right now would add much. Here are some more cogent commentaries than I have to make:

• Joe D'Andrea talks about a grand gesture from some small hands.
• Alison Pelegrin (author of The Zydeco Tablets) is living through it.
• The American Red Cross is one of the better ways to send your money. But use any matching gifts you can in the process.
• The always reliable Washington Post has a good Special Report on the aftermath.

Pace Yourself

I'm thoroughly enjoying the current issue of Smartish Pace. Like a ball-player in his last year, this journal made its best effort in the last issue of my subscription. Among the delights:

• Denise Duhamel's "eBay Sonnets", a linked series of 7 sonnets treating her poetic habits as auction items
• Seven efforts by Bob Hicok, who is always worth a read
• Emily Lloyd recalling an evening preparing to be Jackson Pollack on a difficult night
• 32 Poems' John Poch collaborating on some hockey haiku

The whole issue is quite good. Smartish Pace cares more about the order of the works it offers, and particularly about poem sequences by single authors than many journals do (or so it seems to me), and remains a place to find interesting translations. You should think about subscribing.

Very Sharp Pencil. Too Much Eraser?

Just finished Sam Swope's I Am A Pencil, chronicling his time as a teaching artist with grammar school kids in New York City. It's a good read (you can find the first chapter here), and a valuable one if you are as interested in teaching artistry as I am. The book discusses many of the exercises that he does with one particular group of students, including a year-long one in his last year with them. It also highlighted for me some interesting issues about the concept of artist as teacher.

First, in the preface, he points out that he's corrected most of the children's poems and stories for grammar and spelling. And throughout the book, he provides evidence of his own examples of correcting them live in conversation. I have two small issues with this. Is it the role of the teaching artist to make such corrections? I regard the TA's primary task as infusing kids with energy and appreciation for the arts, and correction is at best neutral, and at worst counter to this. But this particular group of students were largely immigrants or first-gen Americans born to immigrant parents; should you reinforce "proper English" with these kids whenever the chance appears?

Because he spent three full school years with the same class, he got to know them well, and he discusses their personal issues in some detail, and his involvement with their lives and their young academic careers. I guess I was surprised at how much fifth graders were willing to discuss with Swope in his role, and how much he seemed to be able to influence them, and they him. One thing he alludes to but I don't think did very well was suspending his own feelings in trying to reach the kids. I think you need to be neutral-to-encouraging with a side of safety whenever you are dealing with children and you are not in a position of authority over them. By definition, the teaching artist is not the authority in a classroom; that's the teacher's job.

I Am A Pencil is definitely worth reading for a sense of the potential of and problems in the teaching artist's experience. You will learn a few new tips for teaching, but you'll learn much more about what writing and relationships can mean to children.

Best Bio Ever

This is from The Onion, where Wil Wheaton writes the Games of our Lives column for The Onion A.V. Club.

When Wil Wheaton (contributor) was in 9th grade, his English teacher, Mrs. Lee, told him that he'd never amount to anything because he was "a stupid actor" and "the worst writer [she'd] ever known." Wil would like to thank Mrs. Lee for her inspiration, and invite her to kiss his ass.

Though she was a little more gentle with me than that, Wheaton's experience reminds me of my 11th grade English teacher, who tried for six months to fit my writings into a 5-paragraph essay format, with the net result only of her disliking me and me disliking the grades she gave me. When we got to poetry, we began to undersand each other. After I handed this cinquain in, we got along fine.

poet
fluent artist
adding to English class
a moment's sojourn from boredom*
to beauty

* - of course, I changed this word to "grammar" before turning it in. Weakens the piece, but you have to know your editor's preferences, after all.

Beat the Block

Writer's block is nonsense. Writer's distraction, writer's apathy, OK. And in my case, it's the old writer's-need-to-play-StarCraft compounded by writer's laziness. But there are ways to shock yourself out of the unproductive times. One such is Leevi Lehto's Google Poem Generator. After playing with it for a while (and creating something Mr. Lehto generously posted to his Google Poem Anthology) I find seed lines running through my head again. The trick is to collect enough seeds to do something useful with.

The Commish Speaks on Beer League Poetry

Jilly linked yesterday to an interesting article comparing poets without poetic training to weekend athletes. High school teacher Rob Keast writes:

I am proposing that we lower our expectations of amateur poetry, along with all amateur art. At the next wedding, when the toast turns into verse, just relax. Grade amateur poets on a lower scale, as we do adult amateur athletes and amateur gardeners. Forgive the once-a-month poets their lack of degrees, their ignorance of who Charles Simic and Adrienne Rich are, and even their banal observations. Amateur poetry should be as free from expectation and awkwardness as the beer leagues are.

Finally, I see a reference to define my position on the subject. Mr. Keast is right and wrong. Yes, there should be an equivalent low-pressure venue for amateur poets as for amateur softball players. But - and this is the the critical point for me - just as you wouldn't send onto the softball field someone wearing a hockey mask and bowling shoes, you* cannot send to the microphone someone who does not own a poetic softball bat - who does not own and use some of the tools of poetry.

I don't expect the open-mic readers in my series to be able to quote Frost or talk about ways to teach poetry to 6th grade English classes or know which journals are prestigious, which are well-respected and which proliferate crap. I don't expect them even to know if their own work is any good - even accomplished poets often struggle with that. But I do expect them to know what makes their poems different from prose, and their prose different from poetry.

For much of my audience, this means rhymed stanzas. That's fine. Even if I don't care for it, I respect that they attempted to craft something into a poem.

The foul line, the rules of courtesy, the scoring system... even beer league bowlers know there are rules.

*A note on "you": here, I'm talking about poets and reading series hosts with an educational component to their job descriptions. If you take seriously the act of spreading the art of poetry - no matter what way you practice your own poetry - then it's "you" I'm talking to here.

Funnies Business

Warning: Subject about to be taken way too seriously for far too long.

My local newspaper is having a week-long debate about the funny pages. The editors are considering changes to funny page content, and are soliciting input. It's a good idea:

The usual technique is for the newspaper to cancel the strip most disliked by the editors. Readers get up in arms, complain bitterly, and the comic is either restored or not.

We'd like to avoid that seemingly inevitable two-step. It doesn't work for us, and more importantly, it doesn't work for you. It's nothing but an exercise in aggravation for nearly everyone.

That's where you come in. Over the next few weeks, we'd like your help in guiding us in our upcoming evaluation. We'd like you to tell us who in your house reads the comics, and what you expect from those pages.

- from the Newark Star-Ledger, August 7 2005

Reader comments have been all over the map and fairly predictable, ranging from "keep the funny pages funny - put politics elsewhere!" to "I appreciate a thought-provoking comic aimed at my generation." I've been up and down that continuum myself, finally arriving at a comfortable place thanks to comments from my wife and Penn Jillette.

Critical point #1: After listening to me spew how "even though I've loved Peanuts for 35 years but shouldn't we let the strip go with Sparky's memory", my wife asked me a simple question: Who are the funnies for? Simple question. I'll come back to the answer.

Critical point #2: Studio 360 interviewed Penn on The Aristocrats movie. It's a brilliant idea and I can't wait to see it, but that's another issue. He made a simple point about the language: The movie's tagline is "No sex. No violence. Unfathomable obscenity." If you're surprised by the cussin', you either walked into the wrong theater, or you're looking for a fight. You're not being set up - you knew what you were getting into.

Back to #1: My daughter has fallen in love with the comics. We sometimes sit down and read them together, and she winds up asking me - repeatedly - "what's funny about this one?" Well, nothing. Often it's "nothing I can explain", sometimes it's just plain "nothing." But the things she does find funny, like the strips of Peanuts I read when I was her age (often literally the same ones) do reach her. Now here's my problem:

The juxtaposition of Peanuts and Garfield and Family Circus, and Rose is Rose with, for example, Wally Winkerbean's excursion into Afghanistan, creates a problem for me. I read Funky Winkerbean, but I'm not ready to introduce my children to the good and bad about Wally's minesweeping expedition. So I have to actively exclude (cover up) some material to have access to what I want, rather then simply opting into the content I choose.

I think that's the problem with people's gut reactions about the funny pages. The "think of the children" argument is ignorant and narrow. There's a place for Stephan Pastis's often brilliant and sometimes psychotically vulgar Pearls Before Swine. I just think that that place is not directly below Baby Blues.

Is it reasonable to ask the Comics Editor to consider consistency of target audience within a single presentation? For example, put Ziggy, Heathcliff, (yes, and Peanuts reruns, since so few artists are writing for that audience anymore) and such on one page, and strips with more adult content and targets somewhere else - not above them, not below them, and not on the facing page. In discussing The Aristocrats, Penn argued that vulgarity that surprises you, that prevents you from being prepared for it, can reasonably be considered unfair - that as a customer of an art product (TV, movie, etc.), you should not be assaulted with what you do not choose to see, and what you do not choose to permit your children to see. That's the argument for permitting more operating freedom on cable channels, isn't it? Doonesbury is already on the op-ed pages of many newspapers because of its content, no?. But by the same token, the market should provide what the customer wants - if that's grown-up content, political primers, and the occasional impaling of a criminally stupid crocodile, so be it.

I think Penn's got an excellent point. I wonder if the same argument applies to the comics. And I wonder what editors of other forms think.

Summer Date Saver #2

The new season of the Spoken Word Series has been posted. As my top two criteria in selecting readers for the series are individual excellence and variety across the group. I'm quite pleased with how the schedule worked out. We only have seven Sunday afternoon events scheduled this season, so mark your calendars now!

September 11, 2005 Linda Lerner & Amy Holman
October 2, 2005 Kathleen Shea
November 6, 2005 Gina & John Larkin
December 4, 2005 Ed Foster
February 5, 2006 Stuart Greenhouse & Sharon Lynn Griffiths
March 5, 2006 Charlotte Mandel
April 2, 2006 Delaware Valley Poets

Supplementing the Sunday readings we will have a writing workshop in January, and the second annual Visible Word, partnering the visual with the verbal, in May; more on those events as the details emerge.

A Box to Hide an Idea

There's a terrific essay by the great Ursula K. LeGuin on the CBC Books site. I cannot represent her meaning here (and if you are in touch with her opinions on the Earthsea miniseries, you know I shouldn't try!), but I'll try to capture the critical point:

Stories are not packages designed for the delivery messages. You don't start with a message, then build a story around it.

This is a fundamental truth in writing, and not a new one. But its presence on the Children's Book Council site reminds me, as I consider year 3 in the evolution of my hobby/passion to teach poetry to children, that I must avoid teaching them to learn what a poem really means, because it can really mean different things to different people. I get so disappointed when people tell me "that was a great poem; I really understood it". That, my reader friends, is not a tier-1 compliment. Of course, I want you to find great value and connection with the work. And I want it to touch you in a way that is meaningful and particular to you (what I've called "The Hmm."). But if what I was after primarily were your understanding, I certainly wouldn't write you a poem. I'd present you a rational case, with straightforward logic and a clear conclusion. The opposite of a poem.

LeGuin says: "The complex meanings of a serious story or novel can be understood only by participation in the language of the story itself. To translate them into a message or reduce them to a sermon distorts, betrays, and destroys them."

You can substitute any art form for "story". Now how to teach this? More to come.

Summer Date Saver #1

It does get quiet in Poetryland this time of year, no? Well, here is something to look forward to:

4th Biennial WARREN COUNTY POETRY FESTIVAL
Saturday, October 1, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m
Blair Academy, Blairstown, New Jersey
Featuring: HAYDEN CARRUTH, JEAN VALENTINE, ADRIAN C. LOUIS
Also Featuring: CRYSTAL BACON, JOHN BARGOWSKI, JOE-ANNE MCLAUGHLIN, PETER MURPHY, PRISCILLA ORR, EDWIN ROMOND, GRETNA WILKINSON.

Events include readings, panel discussions, workshops, and open mics. All events are free and open to the public. Questions? Please contact BJ Ward, Artistic Director: naturalpublishedradio@att.net

I've attended the last two of these events, and they're just marvelous. I'd gladly pay my way in, and yet we get it for free! Workshops in the morning, readings in the afternoon, opens around dinner time, and a 2-hour reading after dinner.

And don't worry, the nice folks at the Blairstown First Aid Station will help you find your way home.

Suspecting the Muse

I like to think I respect everyone's writing process. You may be excercise-driven, you may be wordplay-driven, you may court inspiration or wrestle with it whenever it visits. All of this is cool; I'm primarily a wordplaying inspiration-courter, if this matters.

But when your process results in 5-6 things a day that you call "poems", I have an issue. I just don't think this is possible. Call me a snob (which may be true), call me an academic (which I obviously am not), I just don't think it's possible to produce poems in bulk.

If every stone were a gem, gems would cease to hold wonder.

The Week That Was

I spent most of the last week in a class for my job. It was really a terrific opportunity to learn things applicable to my job and useful for my personal and professional development. Sometime during the week, I remembered a conversation I had with my then-boss when I was a little baby engineer. He said he was going to take an American History course at a local college. When I asked why, expecting him to give me a well-roundedness, or management-degree argument, he said "Because I haven't learned anything in a while."

Hmm. I've been chewing on that in for a dozen years. This was someone who made his living researching and applying new technologies. And he was telling me he hadn't learned anything in a while. In a sense, I guess this was a well-roundedness argument. It also sets the scale for what he considered a "learning".

Lately I've been drawn to topics that require research moreso than I've been in the past. Been putting them off because I "haven't had time" to learn about them. That sets a scale, too, doesn't it?

Jersey Music

Since the grand total of my own literary output this summer has been -- wait, let me count -- zilch, let me leave words behind entirely and direct you to two musical events of note if you're in my neighborhood:

Maureen started a series about the New Jersey Music Hall of Fame. The first inductees have not been mentioned, but the pool of artists in contention is huge. NJ Music is as varied as NJ Poetry. Which tells you something.

And on the not-quite-ready-for-the-hall-of-fame list (because they have day jobs and just don't get to play much anymore, it seems) are the fine folk folks at Broadside Electric. I had the good luck to spend some time on stage with one of their ranks back when we were whippersnappers. He played the leading men. I yelled a lot and got pantsed. Some things never change. Anyway, Broadside Electric is helping build a Bridge to the Future in August. The show features an awesome line up. Plan to go. I'll remind you.

Finally, if I may, though many have already said it better: Goodbye, Scotty.

Game-Making as Creative Writing

I happen to agree with Bruno Faidutti that a good game is a good piece of writing. A good new game requires enough of a plot to be captivating to new and old players. This is especially the kinds of games I like to play: involved strategy games that expect one to spend hours learning rules and hours playing by them (and, if you're like my friends and me, hours arguing about them).

In the current issue of The Games Journal, Faidutti says:

Like a film or a novel, a game tells a story—but a story which changes with each game. Like a film or a novel, a game is inspired by all the works (books, films, and mostly other games) which have preceded it, and is part of a cultural tradition through references and quotes. This is definitely why I consider role-playing games, undoubtedly the least technical form of gaming but by far the most social and literary, to be the quintessence of gaming. There are of course technical and mechanical aspects in creating a game, testing and adjusting various systems, but the same applies to films and novels, neither of which are considered technical creations.

Children, especially, require a story to hold their attention in a game. Even a classic game like Sorry! takes on an added dimension when, instead of pawn chasing pawn, it's Peter Pan stomping on Captain Hook.

Well, it does in our house, anyway.

In Your Own Words

Jilly links today to an article on a scam vanity publisher who "illustrated" an aspiring author's books with photocopies of the Berenstain Bears. Reminds me of a particular incident back at the college literary magazine: a "writer" submitted the lyrics of Perhaps Love and Annie's Song as her own poems. I don't know if she thought we were ignorant or idiots or if she was playing a joke on us. None of the editorial staff knew her, so the last seemed unlikely.

Sometime later, we included a list of "things we don't want to see" with the weekly call for submissions we ran in the school newspaper. I think the list looked like this:

• no excerpts from your Halliday and Resnick
• no John Denver lyrics
• no letters from your mother

Amazingly, we got more submissions from this person after this call. She did alter the name she submitted under though; she added an unusual middle name.

Anyway, this comes on the heels of hearing from a poet who read for me a couple years ago that a publisher who'd had his second manuscript "approved" and tied up for a year abruptly took down a website, disconnected phones and tried to disappear, except he happened to catch her before she could do so.

I suppose I can understand the disappearing publisher - that's simple embarrassment. The Berencopy Bears are simple greed. But what would prompt a person to represent the lyrics of a song that had only recently been on the radio (this was 1986 or 1987) as their own? And if you were going to do that, wouldn't you at least pick a song that didn't debut as Muzak?

Science, Speculation, Introspection

As usual, Maureen's got another angle on things with her discussion of War of the Worlds. You should go read her summary (especially if you're from the Garden State), but I'll hit a couple key points for you:

• War of the Worlds isn't about War. Or The World.
• Don't mix death rays and Martians with Tuesdays and Morrie.
• Science fiction is fiction based in science.

The last bullet derives from her Writing Prompt: "Write a little sci-fi story that has to do with some scientific fact that you know. (I learn most of my chemistry from the Food Network.) Make the science the solution to or center of the story. War of the Worlds? CSI? MacGuyver?"

This straightforward prompt gets at a huge point. I think it was the great Robert Heinlein who said (paraphrasing) he didn't like the phrase "science fiction"; he preferred "speculative fiction" because he was merely looking forward to futures that were entirely possible and writing about them. Bingo.

A great deal of science fiction simply isn't. I'm an original Star Trek fan, but very, very little of that original series was science fiction. Gene Roddenberry didn't even consider it SF; he called it "Wagon Train to the stars". Here's how you can tell: If the technology is integral to the story, and the story cannot exist without the techology, you've got science fiction. You could also apply a rule that you must change/enhance/eliminate one of the laws of our universe, thereby creating a different one. I think I've talked about this before.

But this new angle creates what I think is an extraordinarily useful question set for evaluating your own work:

1. What am I trying to create? (narrative poems? speculative short stories? romance novellas?)
2. What structures and styles defines what I am trying to create? (rhyme? use of dialogue? pages of exposition?)
3. What have I included in my work that fits that definition (form? bug-eyed monsters? Prince Phillip's sweat-moistened pectorals?)
4. What have I added that is different, special, and interesting to that definition? (??????)

This gets back to having to have a definition of poetry, but I'll hold off on rehashing that for a while....

From Businessweek via Jilly, public-sector managers realize the value of clear writing" :

"You have to be able to write, convert an idea and turn it into words," said Bob Kerrey, the former U.S. senator and governor from Nebraska, who is chairman of the commission.

In public office, "I read things that were absolutely incomprehensible," Kerrey said. He shudders to think how Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, published 229 years ago Monday, would have read in standard, government-worker bureaucrat-speak.

"It would be 10 times as long, one-tenth as comprehensive, and would have lacked all inspiration," Kerrey said."

This is at least as big a problem among technical professionals, and I think there's a critical learning that leaks out of the non-fiction world to affect us all. Writing gets circular when its purpose is to prevent people from doing the wrong thing, as opposed to enabling them to do the correct thing. Many technical and business writers are so concerned about make sure no one misses the learning that they approach it from all possible angles, inevitably confusing themselves and their audience. If only more writers took a true teaching approach: Make the learning simple and available, and help the audience find it on their own.

Frankly, this is where my own poems fail most often. I'm so concerned about the clever bit that I overpackage it. And I'm a fiend for clever endings. The poems of mine that have been received the most positive feedback are generally the ones I've thought "weren't quite done". This explains in part why it's usually been the "filler" poems (the one or two I use in a submission package to complement the one I really think the editors will like) that gets selected for publication.

Maybe If They Just Read More?

In P&W's "The Contester" column, Kevin Larimer talks about fairness in the aftermath of the fall of Foetry. Being a bookless novice, I know I'm an underinformed opinion on this, but there's a critical point here that I haven't seen get much airtime: Judges are more likely to prefer poetry that adheres to influences they value, no? Consider the Best American Poetry series. Sure many of the names remain the same, but you can see the links between the poetic "style", if you will, of the editor and that of those appearing for the first or second time.

So why are we surprised that even in blind judgings there would be stylistic and experiencial links between judges and their students? I know that I've entered contests because I felt a particular affinity or respect for a certain judge. And I know that there are some fine poets whose work I admire who'd think mine was simple and boring, and frankly I wouldn't submit for their judgment.

I guess my point is this issue is more compliated than a set of guidelines from CLMP can cure. As long as judges show preference for the work closest to their own, the appearance of conflict is inevitable. Which is why I find Ron Silliman's post today so very interesting, reaching as it does into a school of poetry he dislikes to find a poet whose practice in that school he does like. If you separate the skill from the experience, create objectivity based on construction and craft, the value of similarity would diminish, no? Am I way off base?

Openness is of more value than rules. Rules without openness will be without impact.

This Is NOT Why We Do This

Courtesy of Mr. Keillor:

"It was on this day in 1857 that Charles Dickens gave his first public reading. He liked to perform in public, he could make good money at it, and it got him away from home and from his wife. His first reading was of A Christmas Carol."

There are Dickens references turned up by a casual search. This chronology is part of one that has some good information capsules.

Hmm. Now that I read it again, Dickens; readings were the polar opposite of modern poetry readings, no?

TTFN

The original voices of Tigger and Piglet died this week. Both men were underappreciated, I think - Paul Winchell was an inventor and comic innovator, John Fiedler was a talented multidimensional actor.

I do feel a sense of loss today, for my childhood and for two talented performers. And I think this is a brilliant sendoff that Winchell would have appreciated:


Well done, Matt. (Go view the original. And read the "Poetic License to Kill" story from the archives while you're there!)

Is it "Self-" if they pay for it?

The Document Company is holding a book contest. Hurry, submissions are due Friday.

Birthday Banter

Mr. Keillor informs us that today marks the birth of both Frank O'Hara and Lucille Clifton. I think tonight I'll take one of his books and one of her books down off my shelf and alternate - one poem from each - for an hour or so.

Then I'll take two aspirin.

Words and Pictures?

Have you taken a look at the American Film Institute's long-awaited Top 100 Film Quotes yet? It's an interesting read. Everything you'd expect is there, I think, as well as homage to some great movies that had no really seminal single lines. The excellent film critic Stephen Whitty had a great column just before the thing was release, talking about filmmakers' decreasing respect for dialog. That may be true, but I'm more perturbed today about the AFI's complete lack of sense for climactic language. The list captures good lines from critical movie moments, but it frequently misses the peak, the poetic moment, if you will of these dialogues. Some examples:

• At #91, from the Abbott and Costello movie The Naughty Nineties, AFI selected "Who's on first." If you're familiar with the routine, one of the great comedy bits ever, would you say this line captures the spirit of that scene? Or would you immediately bark out "I don't know. THIRD BASE!"
• A couple notches up, we have a short Katherine Hepburn speech from "On Golden Pond". It's a lovely scene. It was a lovely moment. The lines are memorable only because they were Kate and Hank; otherwise, they're pretty ordinary. This was a very good movie. I've never, ever, heard it quoted.
• Up at #82, from all the marvelous lines in National Lampoon's Animal House, AFI selected "Toga! Toga!". Uh huh. If you want to quote that scene, it's "There's only one thing to do. Toga Party." Maybe the dialog that follows it. Or give me something Bluto said. Or better still, list "Thank you sir, may I have another," which I've heard uttered at least once a week for 20 years.

Peruse the list yourself. Some I like ("Don't call me Shirley", "Here's Johnny", "There's no crying in baseball"), and you can't really argue with most of the top 20, but for the most part, I think the list just misses the climaxes of the scenes it quotes.

Which has me thinking: it's part of the poet's approach to always know where that climatic second is, no? Because we write (for the most part) in distilled language, and (for the most part) in snapshots and images and fragments, we can't afford to be just off, can we? If we are, the poem simply doesn't work. Unfortunately, with our own words, it's not always obvious to us that this is the root of a failed or stalled poem. Movies have a luxury we don't.

As do top-100 lists.

Voice, Definition 2: Voice as Instrument

Poetry Daily informs us that Billy Collins has a new CD out. I like Billy Collins. I have some of his books, and I enjoy and still find useful his Poetry 180 project (I don't really undersand the purpose or connecting thread in 180 More, but there are many fine poems there). He's an entertaining speaker when he discusses writing process, or how to craft a collection, or when answering questions from an attentive audience. But his poems? Hearing him give them voice doesn't do much for me.

This brings me to the line between "poetry" and "performance art". In my Poetry Hosts group, we've been having a pretty active discussion about what "defines" poetry, and whether we as hosts should attempt to teach this to our audiences at all. In my series, I've heard entertaining performances of material I'd not call poetry, as well as poor readings of really excellents poems. So this leads me to ask: What's more important to me?

Bottom line for me: the poem exists on the page. Oral presentation of that poem may improve understanding or enjoyment of it, but if it doesn't work on the page with some attempt to apply some of the tools that separate poetry from prose, then we don't have a poem. I think I feel this so strongly because I believe poetry must be inhabitable, that I must be able to step inside a poem and hear it in my head, in my voice, for it to be successful.

This doesn't mean that a poet presenting a poem in his or her own voice shouldn't be a delightful thing. But the director in me wants that presentation to be more than, and different than, someone else's. Some examples that come to mind:

Lucille Clifton works on the page (I especially like the Clark Kent poems), but when she breathes into her own work it takes on a personality that suits the poem. It's her, mostly, but it's a dramatic embodiment of the work, more. I find the same in Coleman Barks. And while his own work and his presentation of Rumi share a slowness on the page and in his reading, it's a different slowness - his own work is sarcastic and nostalgiac, Rumi is neither of these things.

I can't go on about slams much, as I've never been to a real one, though I've featured good slammers in my series. Good poets who are good slammers follow the rule. You can feel on the page some of the energy that would exist in presentation. Different in your mind than in your ears, but there.

Back to Billy Collins: I never hear anyone but him when he reads. He doens't present his own work in a way that makes it different than what's on the page. I do enjoy his work, but I don't think I'll be buying this CD; I'd rather have the book.

A quick postscript: If you've belonged to AAP ever, you may have purchased or received a collection of reading excerpts. Dig it out and see if you don't find some great, great poets whose readings just don't improve their work.

Happy Father's Day

With Love
by Ray Bradbury

for Leonard Bradbury

My father ties, I do not tie, my tie.
On some night long ago, in June
I tried to try
My first tie snarled upon my vest
My hands all thumbs
And presto-chango
Something Awful This Way Comes.
My father quietly came by
And studied me and stood behind.
"Be blind", he said.
"Stay off of mirrors.
Let your fingers
Learn to do."
His lesson lingers. What he said was true.
Eyes shut,
With him to help me over up, around and under-out
Somehow a knot miraculous came about.
"There's nothing to it," said my Dad.
"Now, son, you do it. No, eyes shut."
And with one last dear blind perceiving
He taught my crippled fingers
Arts of weaving. Then, turned away.
Well, to this day, how dare I boast,
I cannot do it.
I call that long-gone sweet tobacco-smelling ghost
To help me through it.
He helps me yet;
Upon my neck, his breath, the scent of his last cigarette.
There is no death, for yestereve
His phantom fingers came and helped me tuck and weave.
If this is true (it is!) he'll never die.
My father ties, I do not tie, my tie.

from I Live By The Invisible (Salmon Poetry)

The Poet in Orion's Belt

When you spend your formative years among geeks, and then attend a geeky college twice to major first in geekdom, then in geekdom management, you occasionally get to reap benefits such as the following sentence: I'd like to wish my friend the astronomer a happy birthday.

It's actually a happy belated birthday, since I missed the actual event, but I figure when you make a living looking at things that actually happened (or rather: were emitted) tens of thousands of years ago, what's a week here or there?

And let me take a moment here to point out once again the confluence of science and poetry: This career scientist not only was with me on the staff of our college literary magazine, but was an extremely talented stage performer as well. He was always the leading man, I was always the comedy relief (see #5 below), but that never bothered me. Really.

Anyway, as Jennifer will attest to, the sky is a beautiful and inspiring place for a poet. And in their truest sense, the scientific and artistic impulses are not that dissimilar. As Livinia Greenlaw said during her tenure as Poet In Residence at the Science Museum in London: "...science stems from human enquiry and our experience of the world. And in that sense it is as subjective as poetry."

Things You Didn't Know About Me

NOTE: I'm only doing this because I want in on the Deb/Dale Bowling Challenge.

1. As a former head kegler for his college team, David can out-bowl Deborah, C. Dale, and most anyone else who stops by here today. But not his mother. (Note: Trash talking between two people 3,000 miles apart is best done if you are not located on the straight line path between them.)
2. This is a guarantee: if you have been to a doctor in the United States in the last 15 years, you have seen or had used on you a medical device that David had a hand in developing.
3. He won the New York State Accordion Association championship for pop music performance by a 12 year old with a performance of the theme from Star Wars (near-disco version).
4. Unaware of how it would brand him for life, David founded the Chess Club at his high school.
5. David holds the modern record for times pantsed on stage at Stevens Institute of Technology.
6. He can operate a slide rule.
7. He has never lived more than 15 miles from the Atlantic Ocean.
8. Three-word sequences in normal conversation often prompt David to break into song. Especially into showtunes.
9. He has no fewer than 10 relatives who have performed music (solo or in a group) for audiences of 500 or more people.
10. David once captained a softball team called The Slugs.

Intro to Poetry: The Mix Tape

Steve set it up this way:

You've just met someone you think is special. They're smart, but they don't really read poetry. However, because you're who you are, they want to learn more about poetry. To get them started, you must create a "poetry mix tape" of 10 poems as a starting point for their reading.

I tried not to think too much about rules, to select 10 poems and see what rules seemed to have emerged. Here are 10 poems I would hand to someone interested in learning about poetry:

untitled ("won't you celebrate with me"), Lucille Clifton (scroll to the end)
"God Gives Faith to Baseball Fans", Edwin Romond
"After I Read Sandy Zulauf's Across the Bar, Victoria Takes Me Skiing", BJ Ward
“Across the Bar”, Sander Zulauf
"Bachelor Song", Douglas Goetsch
"My Daughter at 14: Christmas Dance, 1981", Maria Mazziotti Gillan
"The Word Kite", Tina Kelley
"For May is the Month of Our Mother", Cat Doty
"Messiah, Christmas Portions", Mark Doty
"Club", Coleman Barks

Interestingly, this didn't turn out to be a list of "poems I wish I'd written". I started to list out what I thought were my biases and intents, but the bottom line is these are contemporary poems that strike empathy with the reader, take great playful joy with language (even, some of them, to express despair), and can be talked about on several levels: for their story, for their individual poetic craft, and as gateways to greater body of work of the authors. One bias I should make clear: I only considered poems by poets whose work I felt I knew fairly well, well enough to intelligently introduce a new reader to.

Paying Attention to Your Voice (Part 3)

Getting back to voice, the most important thing I noticed in completing my first manuscript was that subtle variations in voice can be greatly magnified in certain context. Now, mine is a narrowly focused example, because of the gimmick of the collection (poems addressed to small daughters), so perhaps I'm more paying more attention to this than is usual. But here's an example:

A draft of a poem contained this sequence:

.............................We all check one box:
clowns, bats, death, lonelieness - we all have
one thing besides sex we can’t discuss with
our mothers, or else that brainbound rush
of red will make us five again.

In a sequence addressed to a child, with a father as the narrator, the appearence of the word "sex" is a distraction. It's out of character; I know because I've successfully avoided that word for the better part of decade - except in this poem. The rewritten section is a little different:

.............................We all check one box:
clowns, bats, death, lonelieness - we all have
one thing we can’t discuss, especially with
our mothers, or else that brainbound rush
of red will make us five again.

Weaker, frankly, but more supportive of the work as a whole. Another discovery, similar to the point Jeannine made a few days ago, was that the poems written earlier in this process (when my children were younger) don't feel the same as the ones written more recently. I've gotten better at getting past the sentiment to the interesting and ironic just beyond, but more importantly, my line has shrunk.

Aside: Does this happen to other poets? The basic construct of all your poems suddenly feels wrong and you are moved to create with different music? In my case, it seems I don't think in pentameter anymore. I've looked back to see the fuzzy period where I forced my line breaks and made some bad word choices to maintain the rhythm I used to want. But in the context of the larger work, those forces jumped out at me. Some got rewritten, some extracted.

Finally, I killed off at least one poem that I like that didn't fit with the essentially light tone of the collection, or with the subset of me that the narrating father represents. To simplify, several of the poems in the manuscript refer to Christmas, all in a neutral-to-positive way, religiously. One of the later poems I'd written for this project has at its center doubt about a particular element of my Roman Catholic faith. While it may be true to me personally, it may be interesting to read, and it may be a good poem, it just isn't necessary to the exploration of emerging fatherhood or to dialog with small children. It seemed a conversation with myself instead of with them. Maybe when I write for them as teenagers, that one will have a home.

So adhering to voice as it applies to a single collection of poems boils down to this: one book is by one person. Be complicated, be surprising, but be one person. The corollary is: if you are presenting a theme, stay on that theme; sacrifice length for coherence and sacrifice your favorite poems if they call so much attention to themselves that the reader loses his or her place in the larger work.

Ah. I feel better now. All this from a prawn tweaking a tin thing's pecs. I really gotta get out more.

A Brief Interruption

At the risk of disrupting my train of thought, there are few bits of SSP (Shameless Self-Promotion) to get out of the way:

• The Edison Literary Review has accepted my poem "The Good Thing About Rain" for the 2005 issue.
• Last Friday night I received the Robert Reed Service Award from The Center for the Performing Arts at DeBaun Auditorium. It recognizes significant volunteer efforts for bringing arts to the communities around Hoboken and Stevens Insititute of Technology.
• This quiz, which I found first at C. Dale's place, seems to think I'm John Ashbery ("People love your work but have no idea why, really. You are respected by all kinds of scholars and poets. Even artists like you."). That's an interesting fit; I'd have thought I was more Wallace Stevens. Or I would have if I thought I deserved to be mentioned in the same paragraph as either of them, that is.
• We announced the 2005-2006 season of The Spoken Word Series last week. Quality poets of several styles, some personal essay; local editors, local newspaper columnist. Watch the site for names and bios appearing over the summer.

We will shortly return you to your regularly scheduled series of blatherings about voice.

Paying Attention to Your Voice (Part 2)

Gonzo's nipples (prior entry) a little too tough a reference for you? OK. I understand. But the point is this: if you've created a universe that has certain rules, don't change the rules on me just to make a point or a joke, or - worst of all - to advance the plot. Fans of science fiction and fantasy take things like this quite seriously. {aginggeekreference} For example: In the Star Trek universe, "beaming" is possible. In the Star Wars universe, The Force runs through all things. If after two seasons Spock suddenly began deflecting phaser fire with a glowing stick, if after 90 minutes Obi Wan had suddenly materialized at the tractor beam's power source, would you stop thinking about the plot? Would you find yourself distracted by the one scene and lose sight of the larger work? {/aginggeekreference}.

Similarly with characters, if you've imbued them with certain characteristics, don't drop those characteristics suddenly to make a point or a joke, or - worst of all - to advance the plot. My point about Gonzo's comment was that it wasn't part of the action (the scene essentially stops so that Pepe can prompt the line), it was inconsistent with its context (Disney? Nipples?), and it was inconsistent with what we know about the character who spoke it (anyone who knows Gonzo as well as I do will agree).

So what does this have to do with poems? And my poems in particular? A friend once gave me a book of poems that an acquaintance of his had self-published. They were pretty standard fare - unrhymed, little regard for meter, no regard for form, preoccupied with death and badly-ended affairs. Except for one poem in the final third of the book: 3 rhymed stanzas about getting sprayed while changing his grandson. The last lines were "when changing a baby / better cover his spout". It's not really relevant whether or not this was a good poem. It came from such a completely different voice as the rest of the poems in the book that I lost sight of the collection as a collection. It wasn't a cohesive work by an author anymore. It was just some poems bound together. The collection had established the dark voice of an unhappy former cop and then sprung James Garner reading Hallmark cards on me. Boo.

The manuscript I just completed and submitted is a collection of poems all written as if I were speaking to my daughters. Not that the language is juvenile, but the topics are ones that derive from the experience of a man coming to understand how to deal with two small female presences in his life. The character I create as narrator is that man (NOTE: Yes, he's close to me. But since poetry is fiction, he can't really be me. Got that, Mom?), and his tone is consistent with that. Some of the poems are sarcastic, some are angry, some are frightened, but they're all consistent with that character. When I lined up the 70 or so poems I'd written (so far) for the project, which I'd never done before, I noticed that the tone varied in some of them. Less gentle, more adult subject matter, etc. It's not really relevant whether or not they were good poems. They distracted from the work as a whole and therefore had no place in the larger work.

I therefore rewrote a couple (probably weakening them as individuals), and decided a few of my favorites needed to be left orphaned. A tough process. Coming Friday: some examples.

Paying Attention to Your Voice (Part 1)

Do you write in character much? Do you take measures to ensure that your characters are internally consistent - that is, that they do and say and like and buy and discard things in a way that you find believable? That is consistent with the person your reader imagines them to be?

This is not to say your characters can't surprise us. But they need to surprise us in a believable way, one that is consistent with what you know about them. Cinderella can't turn to Drizella at the end and say "Take that, you uppity bitch." There's not much that will make me put a book down and walk away, but having characters utter inconsistent dialogue is one of them. Much of what I read for pleasure is science fiction and fantasy, so I do a lot of suspending disbelief - but if I have to suspend it a half-dozen different ways, I get tired, and I move on.

Did you see The Muppet Wizard of Oz? I was looking forward to it. I admit it. I'm a Muppet fan. I had a Dr. Teeth poster on my wall until college. I can quote the original Muppet Movie and name most of the cameos. In order. I rank Muppet Christmas Carol in my top 25 favorite movies of all time. But this movie lost me ten minutes into Oz. (Disclaimer: I'm about to discuss the believability of characters made of felt. So noted.) First, the witches portrayed by embodiments of Miss Piggy just made no sense. Were they good? Bad? Each sentence spoken by the Glinda-like character could have been attributed to a different member of the scene. But the worst offense came later when we met the Tin Thing.

OK. Gonzo as Tin Thing was cute. The set up was believable - he's fused into a lot of gadgets. Then Toto (Pepe the Prawn, about whom don't get me started) touches one of Gonzo's handles and asks what it does, and Gonzo replies "Nothing. Those are my nipples."

Forgive me, but that line is a disbelief-burster. I suspend so that my film universe includes the Muppets as real characters, then one of them speaks a line completely inconsistent with who I've believed "him" to be. The nipple line is for the writer, not the audience. Trust is broken. Channel changed. Opinion is divided on this issue, but I think it's fair to say that those with more investment in and attachment to the characters probably had the hardest time with it. Please don't confuse this with nostalgia or resistance to change. This is about a character losing believability as a character. It could be Wonder Woman praying to be rescued, Chandler Bing starting an episode by writing out a career plan. You lose trust, and therefore interest, in the character before you.

NOTE: I haven't seen Muppet/Oz past FozzieLion's appearance. I have the whole thing on tape, and I have no desire to pop it in the VCR.

What does any of this have to do with my writing? Well, recall when I said I'd learned the difference between a manuscript and a series of poems? I'll put these two thoughts together next.

Happy Oriole Day...

... from my daughter to you.

Coming next: Recognizing character voice, or Why no muppet should ever say "nipples".

"Well, he IS the Imperial Dark Lord..."

In 1978, the second-graders at Maplewood Heights Elementary School had a complex system for determining one’s place in the social hierarchy, an algorithm that took into account height, athletic prowess, popularity, sense of humor, intelligence, affluence, and a myriad of additional variables.

A year later, though, all of that had changed. By the time we entered third grade, social standing was solely determined by one factor: the level of one’s devotion to Star Wars.

From "Darth Vader Made Me Cry", by Matthew Baldwin. Curently darkening the doorway of the archives at The Morning News. While you're there, check out the archives of The Non-Expert, the column with the best motto ever: "Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. "

A New World Of Geeky Goodness

Ubergeek, underappreciated actor, and excellent writer Wil Wheaton celebrates the end of production on the Star-* (Star Wars, Star Trek) franchises as the beginning of a new era in intelligent geekdom. You should go read it - I can't do it justice - but I have to quote this line:

"If you've never tasted the sting of a dodgeball on your face, you're not a geek."

Oh, man. It's so true, it hurts anew.

Until we do so every day....

In the weeks leading up to and since NatPoMo, I've seen or heard a number of comments that the idea of a national poetry month is actually contrary to the idea of celebrating poetry. That it somehow makes poetry less necessary the rest of the year. Diann Blakely made this comment recently:

"Just as our celebration of women and black history shouldn't be confined to a single month of the year, we shouldn't ghettoize poetry to a 30-day block on the calendar"

Well, now. I do respect the sentiment that poetry shouldn't be confined or debased (the implication in the word ghetto), but I think it's terribly misguided. I think it's useful and natural to have celebrations from time to time. Birthdays. Holidays. Days of recognition. Anniversaries. Sure, I agree that you'll be the same age for the 364 days following your birthday as you are on the date itself. But the commemoration gives your friends - who won't love you any less on those 364 other days - a good reason to stop what they're doing, and take special note of you on that date.

Same with poetry. While it touches me every day, in April I made stopped my normal routine and took special note of poetry in my life. And to pass that note along to other people - notably, grammar school children for whom I crafted a series of workshops. Certainly, I could have made these school visits on October 9 or January 15. But I don't see the harm - the "ghettoizing" - in setting aside a few days each year in which we can plan for such events.

Like birthdays: until we learn to celebrate each other every day, let's celebrate on birthdays. Until we celebrate poetry every day, let's celebrate in April. It can only help.

A Gift of Red

The first blossom is on our rhododendron. There's a new cardinal nest at the foot of my driveway. The main thoroughfare through our county is about a nine iron away. Somehow, this puts me in a haiku mood.

Spring motion sensor:
cardinal nest at head height
in the forsythia