Taped Political Messages On My Answering Machine

Does any politician or campaign official actually believe that I listen to anything past the first five words of these unwanted solicitations? Sometimes I even manage to hit delete before I've heard four words. And I'm working to get quicker.

Does anybody listen to these taped messages? Sometimes if I make the mistake of answering the phone and it turns out to be one of these messages, I'll talk back to it, give it my list of demands, so to speak, but usually I get bored and hang up before either one of us completes our spiel.

Never fails, after I hang up, one of my kids always asks whom I was talking to, and I can honestly say, "Nobody."

Is this a metaphor for what representative democracy is becoming in the age of media?

A Shakespearean Insult Generator

is located here.

Zooks!

Fra Lippo Lippi as Poetry Foundation mp3.



Lippi's Banquet of Herodias

"Putting Down the Night"

This is a gif of a James Galvin poem from a site called Organica News. It's from his book X.

Boiling down some notes taken at James Galvin's lecture at Loveland Public LIbrary

This morning James Galvin spoke at the Loveland Public Library. He spoke primarily about writing as a way of working something out.

Galvin began by stating that he'd been told that he was going to talk about technique in writing, but that he didn't really think he knew anything about technique. Everyone laughed. Then he went on to say some things that I thought sounded pretty smart.

Among those smart things were these:

"Technique is where temperament and method meet." He went on to say that temperament is something you can't do anything about, so he suggested focusing on method.



"You know all those Paris Review 'Art of Writing' interviews? Reading them won't help you. You have to figure it out on your own."

"Most writing is born of the anxiety of not knowing. There are some writers who write from a place of knowing [he mentioned Milton and Blake]..., but most writing is born from anxiety about not knowing."

"Method is a way of tricking yourself into letting the language do the talking for you. Because the language is smarter than any of us. It knows how to do it."



"What you think isn't interesting, and what you feel isn't interesting; but what you think about how you feel, and how you feel about what you think, that's interesting."

"When you're writing, it often helps to have somebody in mind that you're talking to.... To have a focused and vulnerable or tender voice, it helps to have someone in mind."

"Most of the time in workshops we talk about things that are not good to talk about. We talk about things that are good to have talked about."

"Writing it down is more important than getting it published."

"The point of making art is empathy."

"Conduct Your Blooming In The Noise And Whip Of The Whirlwind"

Gwendolyn Brooks

In the late 70s Gwendolyn Brooks gave a reading at Colorado State University. Yusef Komunyakaa happened to be working on his MA in creative writing at CSU at that time.

When Brooks read, she always invited a few students from her afternoon workshops to read with her at her evening reading. She of course, invited Komunyakaa to read.

After a couple of other students of that day had their moment in the spotlight, Komunyakaa was brought on stage by Brooks. This was before he'd published any of his books, not even Lost in the Bonewheel Factory with Lynx House. When she introduced Komunyakaa, Brooks proclaimed that the audience was getting an early view of man whom she guaranteed would be an important force in American poetry.

James Galvin Reading

October 19, 2006 Writers on the Plains: Author James Galvin will read and sign books at the Rialto Theater (228 E. Fourth Street in Loveland) at 7:00 p.m. This event is free and open to the public.
[too late]

October 20, 2006 Writers on the Plains: Author James Galvin will read and sign books at the CSU Lory Center Bookstore at 7:30 p.m. This event is free and open to the public.

October 21, 2006 Writers on the Plains: Author James Galvin will conduct a seminar in writing techniques at the Loveland Public Library (300 N. Adams in Loveland) at 11:00 a.m. This event is free, and a sign-up sheet is available at the library.

Phone # to Loveland Library (970) 962-2665--Punch #3 to get the reference desk librarian. The sign up sheet for the lecture/seminar is there.

Mary Reufle Video from the Berkeley Lunch Poems Series

Mary Reufle

Presidential Debates 2008

Unless you start planning now, forget about getting tickets to the main events:

2004

What next?

Editorial in Salt Lake Tribune

Anyone Could Be Noone

asknoone

How long can blogs just sit without even a cricket chirping?

Google Videos of Poets

Berkeley's Lunch Poems Series

Found this at the Ploughshares blog.

Patch together a poem

In a recent interview, Billy Collins says he tries to write each poem in one sitting. He says that it's easy to spot poems that have been pieced together later, that they're stitches show. So your assignment is to take pieces of some old poems and stitch them together so that they work as a whole.

October Rejections Coming In Already

Caffeine Destiny 9/17/06, rej 10/1/06

Shifting tide?

Are you a Republican?

I'm not, but if I were, I wouldn't be anymore.