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    A Poetry A Day

    Filed Under being creative, books, inspiration, local, movies, poetry, quotes, small happinesses 

    Poetry every day this week:

    Last night the DH and I had a few hours to kill before our movie (Sunshine) began, so we went to Powell’s Books. I spotted a $9 copy of Writing the World, a book about William Stafford’s poetry. On the first page of the Introduction is the poem from which the title came:

    In the stillness around me that no one can cross
    I am writing for life.
    The world like a leaf turns as it falls.

    Those first three lines have been revolving in my head all night, even as I slept.  I also picked up two books by Stafford himself, The Answers are Inside the Mountains: Meditations on the Writing Life, and a collection of poems, Even in Quiet Places.  The only book of Stafford’s that I owned before is Every War Has Two Losers, which was how I became introduced to him.

    Earlier in the week, while cleaning at my old house, I found a deck of Poet’s Corner Knowledge Cards. Over the next few days, I read through them, setting aside the cards that interested me the most. So now I have it in my notes to read (more) Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Visits to St. Elizabeth’s” by Elizabeth Bishop, Yeats’ “The Second Coming,” the works of Harlem Renaissance poet Claude McKay, and Rilke’s Duino Elegies.

    While at Powell’s I was very tempted to get some of those works, but decided against it. I can still hear Robert Fritz’s suggestion to focus on one thing at a time. That is very hard for me to do, but necessary for long-term sanity.

    This morning when I woke up, I prepared myself a Medifast chai latte, loaded the dishwasher, and then sat down to write my “three pages.” After this, I read through my favorite poetry cards again, wrote two poems, re-read sections of Writing for Life, and THEN I pulled out the laptop.

    And the first UU blog I read is MoxieLife - where today’s subject is a poetry contest! There is even a prize - a copy of The Practice of Poetry. The challenge is:

    Write a poem that introduces a family member and a superhero. Of course, this is an imaginary encounter, but because you know your family so well the poem can be rich in reality. There aren’t any other rules except I think it is fun to use either my most repressed relative or my most flamboyant. It also works well to have this be a rather long poem of 20 - 30 lines but that isn’t necessary and there is no particular form of verse ether.

    If you are so inclined, join the contest! It will be fun. Hopefully later sometime today I’ll be able to squeeze a poem out. One thing the poetry workshop I attended earlier this month taught me is that to write a poem is no big thing. You can do it any time of day, and it doesn’t even have to be finished. You just have to do it. It may not be good, but at least you’ve done it. You can’t write a good poem if you don’t write anything at all.

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    One Response to “A Poetry A Day”

    1. jacqueline on August 22nd, 2007 8:40 am

      I love the idea that you can write a poem anywhere anytime. Thanks so much for the wonderful mention… really I am blushing.

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