June 1, 2008: the count is now 800 daily poems in wordcurrents

This milestone has come with no particular fanfare. It is more a tribute to the power of habit than to any other particular talent; I have written and posted a at least one new poem every day (with the exception of July and August last year) since mid-February 2006.

I know that many of them are pretty feeble; in fact, since most of them are first drafts, and I have chosen to revise only perhaps one in ten, you could say they are more flotsam and jetsam than art. But there is a kernel of strength that arises from wordcurrents: I am doing it; I have done it; I have learned from it.

I have learned that I can write. I have polished my writing synapses so that the process is pretty well automatic. Just as a musician is made by practice, so a poet must practise so that the act is made fluid and the talent can emerge.

When he turned ninety, someone asked the late cello maestro Pablo Casals if he still practised. He said he played several hours every day, as he still had so much to learn. I still have almost a couple of decades to go before I am ninety; I imagine I will still feel that way then, too. I have so much to learn.

One of the areas I would like to explore is eroticism; however, I am more than a little reticent to do so, as my extended family would be grossed out, I am sure. Just as we all know our mothers were virgins, we also know that elderly men so not think about nor remember anything about sex, so I am obviously becoming increasingly less qualified to profess to know anything about it.

My summer break is coming up. I shall take July and August off again this year.