Reading + inspiration

Tonight, I'm attending and reading at the launch of Floating Bridge Review 3, over at Jack Straw Studios, 7:00 PM.

Hearing and reading poetry is always exciting, but tonight I'm going to read a poem or two inspired by work, my day job. Imagine Dilbert plus a prose poem in a Russian novel. Yes, my work inspired that.

What else is inspiring?

I'll admit that I'm an absolute sucker for this, the kind of marketing videos that tell someone's story. Yes, they're marketing, but I love the stories. (And in this case, I love the fact that Microsoft made a video that includes poetry!)

Check it out, and if you're in Seattle tonight, swing by Jack Straw and hear lots of poetry.

And let me know: What inspires you?

My kind of Italy

Yesterday, after a hiatus of several years, we finally found a new outdoor table.

I've been steadfastly obssessed and in love with Italy. The food. The language. But most of all the romance of sitting at a table under the trees with some wine and bread and cheese and olives. Time to talk and sit and listen to the birds, watch the light move across the evening.

And now I can have that romantic bit right in my own backyard.

After we snapped this picture, we sat down and told each other about our day.

Little dreams coming true.

How do you bring your dreams into your life?

Word! (A new blog)

Today, I launched the new Microsoft Word blog, for which I'm technically the curator, or the content strategist, or the...something like that.



Weighing in at one post, it's a bit of a baby, but it's packed with links to help you get started using Word 2010.

People often refer to passion, and that your work should reflect your passion, or be rooted in it. And I often scratch my head and wonder, "What's my passion?" or "My passion is poetry, but how can I get paid for it?"

But I also have a passion for helping people to do good work, and helping them to do the grunt work or administrative work (think page numbers and tables of contents) quickly and easily so that they can use their fabulous creative energy to create.

What do you think?

What's your passion? (And how do you live it in the world?)

Flags for you

The front page of the Seattle Times today highlights the work of Ross Palmer Beecher, who is one of my favorite artists. She has put in decades of persistent work at her art, an inspiration! It's always good to see her get some recognition.


Here's a picture of one of her flags, from the Greg Kucera Gallery website.

What's another word for…

Smoke?

I try really hard to avoid repeating words in a poem unless I'm purposely trying to make a point or set up a particular rhythm. I admit that I'm a little obsessive about it.

So I wanted another word for smoke, as in the noun, as in smoke rising from a campfire, as in follows beauty or gets in your eyes.

The online thesaurus associated with Microsoft Office offered only three paltry synonyms for the verb and not a noun anywhere.

I trundled downstairs and lugged up the big, swanky, hardcover Roget's. No smoke anywhere.

So far, online sites are yielding synonyms for pot and baseball pitches. I could work on this all day. I'd rather not, though.

Any ideas?

Where do you look for words? When do you give up and either keep the repetition or write something completely different?

And tonight, the air will thicken when fires color the sky.

Happy Fourth of July.

More [frag] ments

I've been finding this approach helpful.

Taking old poems that weren't quite working,
deconstructing them,
using images,
writing in the margins

writing more
in the margins

over several days,

pulling it all together then,
looking at what fits,
paring and pruning

not just for fragment poems
but for regular poems, too
(I need a name for those…).

What works: I write over days.

I don't require a 20-minute continuous effort.
I don't require the zone.

But I keep looking at images,
looking at everything from the days before,
and images come,
images fly out of the darkness,
then quiet

another image, maybe
while I'm walking from the bus (maybe
in the middle of the night).

Also, because I know
I'll be gathering this poem
over time, I feel less pressure
to write something good

to choose whether it works now
or discard it.

I just keep writing
in the margins

and loving it.

Have you tried this?

What ways do you push
or stretch
your edges, your known?

Gushing

In a good way…

In praise… in delight...

Today I opened up Susan Browne's Zephyr, from Steel Toe Books.

OH MY GOSH!

These poems are amazing.

These poems are conversational—chatty even.

…like pondering how twenty-five hundred
left-handed people are killed annually from using
right-handed products.

You think maybe you know these poems, maybe you worked with them at an ice cream parlor or a bar. You can imagine sitting in these poems' kitchen, at the blue Formica table, and drinking coffee, or lolling on the river bank with a bottle of red wine.

And then

a little gasp

Your sister talks to her husband's ashes
that are in a black enamel box on her dresser
between the Eternity perfume bottle and a dish of earrings.

but the conversation continues

You rode your bicycle up the hill behind your neighborhood,
stood in the mustard weed and listened to the eucalyptus leaves clapping...

and you're enjoying the way the images careen, as though you're on that bicycle, too, until suddenly the shoe drops, the axe falls, the bough breaks, and something in the world, something in you has changed.

Thank you, Ms. Susan Browne.