The Figment
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What is Poetry? What is a Poem?
People are keen on over defining things, and in the long run I believe doing so leads us in a straight line to fascism. Not everything has to be categorized in a jar. However, for the purposes of grant writing and educating little kids, its always good to have some kind of definition ready to…
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Creative Reading
No one ever really thinks about the effort it takes to read something. As though consumption is thoughtless and blind. Often, of course, it is. When was the last time any of us paused to consider the culinary feats of a 30-minutes-or-less pizza? But, just as obviously, we all read, we all consume our books,…
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Look for poetry that stirs you: Rhythm
For me, that’s always going to have some punchy rhythm. Rhythm in poetry is made by word choice, order of words, length of lines and stanzas, etc. It’s easiest to feel it in strictly structured, rhyming poems like Shakespearean sonnets. It’s probably why that kind of poetry gets taught so much in school. Even if…
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Change
– a poem because it’s better as a blog I am faced w a new beginning Nothing in my material life will change: Same money to pay for food and light, Same beautiful partner I love, Same pets whose fur delight and comfort me, Same home, tho small, remains snug and lovely. Same existential trap…
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They say there’s no catching up on sleep, and it must be true.
In three decades I have only gotten “enough” sleep for maybe a month. Nights I stay up shouting, crying, letting the Void emerge from under these chewed up ribs and tear apart my day and life and work, shred the love I have for whoever is before me, and if there is no love there,…
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When Empathy Kills: Tolstoy & Flaubert
It makes me shake with rage to think of classical novelists who try to imagine being a woman and find no rational way to live in the restrictive male dominated societies and so have write their protagonists into killing themselves. Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina jumps in front of a train Gustav Flaubert’s Emma Bovary eats…
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A Despair
It’s end of day and I’m pushing away from my desk in my office in my home where I pour my brilliance and energy. Everyday I am revolted that this office is my studio. The place I make art. The place I read poetry. The place I photograph myself trying to have a good time…
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Aesthetics I Wish I Could Live
Perhaps these are out there and people are already living them — if you know them, give me their contacts! GhostFlapper This is my dearest desire. To have died at the height of your youth and power as a flapper in the 1920s. BFFs with Josephine Baker. Crushed on and rejecting of Hemingway. Beads and…
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Take My Choice
I’ve removed choice from my days for many things – feeding my cat and rabbit, thinking about art, eating. But there are many choices that remain – when to feed them, whether to also look at or learn about art, and hugely what to eat. decision fatigue …even thinking whether to keep writing about it…
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A Mindscape of Frost and Fate
I do not stop on paths contemplating how they’ve been pre-travelled. I do not dawdle in wintry woods. Things need to be done, and seeing their need, I see the silver path to fulfillment. Each idea, each priority, every whim and fancy that floats before me, whether offered, imposed, or simply appearing, they all receive…
Erin Oubliette 