"the rest"

One of my FaceBook friends has a birthday today. As I was writing a note on her "Wall", which originally read something like "Today is the first day of the rest . . . ", it struck me that there was a poem in there. Then I thought of the anecdote that appears at the top of the piece, and after about a half-hour of fiddling, today's poem, of four-lines, was born. I tried a few stabs at lengthening it, but it seems that after the first four lines, it is complete.

It features tight internal rhyme and some dense word-play. I particularly like the play on "quarrel", which I suppose may be obscure, although a look past the obvious in at any dictionary will open it up.

the rest

The inspiration for "open chakras"

In the picture you see Eero with his mother and maternal great-grandmother, attending the Robbie Burns Night in Picton, Prince Edward County, Ontario. The event is run at the Picton Legion by the Picton Legion Pipe band, of which my son Peter, Eero's father, is Pipe Major (leader of the band, for those who don't know what a Pipe major is.)

The morning after, in the Picton Harbour Restaurant, where we all met for breakfast, Eero, who is two, noticed the ceiling fan running above us, its light globe jiggling slightly, and said "flying light". I was so struck by the imagination there, and this fresh way of observing something we all take for granted that I wrote "open chakras", as today's poem.

400 poems

It is hard to believe I have posted 400 of my own new poems in just 375 days. I am printing them each day, and have filled one binder and started a new one January 1. (see photo below)

The new result has been that even if I sit down to write with no idea what is going to come out, I can usually start and finish a fairly serviceable poem in a few minutes. Today's poem, "I started to write a Saturday poem", was one of those: I typed what I thought was the first line, then looked up at the screen, and realized I had typed it in the subject slot. I left it as the title, and continued, realizing it was giving me the poem's theme, and the changes would provide the poem's arc.

When it comes right down to it, I often find the process of discovering the poem as rich as I hope is the reader's experience reading it.

wordcurrents: New Look progresses

Here is the latest version of the new look at wordcurrents. The photo I took in July 2006 from in front of our cottage, towards the Ontario shore. This is the view that I see from my favourite haunt, our screened front porch. That is where I do a lot of reading, writing and thinking. I don't have a computer at the cottage, so I write in a spiral notebook with a gel pen.

About the lettering in the photo: I did that in an old version of Ulead's Photo Impact, which came with a scanner that no longer works. I have finally given up on scanners. I don't think any of the three I have owned have ever scanned more than a few dozen things before burning out or failing in some way. That's no fault of Ulead, which makes fine software.

I am trying to make the site more accessible and more inviting and personal. We'll see . . . .

Gulp

I sent off my entry to the CBC Literary Awards before the deadline (today, November 1).

By the time one gets to the final umpteenth rewrite of something this long, it starts to nauseate. I have had that experience before: I get to the point where I start to dislike the piece intensely, wonder how anyone could like it, and start to debate whether it is worth paying twenty bucks to have someone read it. I wonder how any writer can go on a book tour, for instance, and wax lyrical about something that has become such a chore to approach. The awards are announced in February. Maybe by that time I will like it again.

I had a fruitful telephone conference with Linda and Stacy, the MCs for our barbershop show November 18, Daddy Sang Bass. They are going to be just what we want: fun! Now all I have to do is write the script; fortunately, we don't need a lot of material, just fast, funny, witty and brilliant. (sigh)

I am thinking of posting "Remembrance at the War Museum" in WritersBeat.com. I have already posted it in Zeugma, where it was well-received. With Remembrance Day coming up, maybe I should think of sending it to the local newspaper, although with their sloppy standards of typography and editing, you really take your chances submitting poetry.