poetical in review

It’s now been 14+ months since the Poetry Writers group i created really took off, and has continued going strong... So pleased -- we’ve got a good tight group of serious writers, who each bring wonderful qualities to our monthly meet & critique. We.ve created a monthly “challenge” or poetry prompt for everyone to write a poem from,,,,,and i have successfully been meeting that personal challenge each time. Also, having the disipline of ‘1 poem deadline’ each month, it follows that the creative juices are further stimulated, and i often start or complete another 1-3 poems each month, depending. ‘Which is the whole trick of being a writer -To write and write and write, keep that creative muscle limber & Buff...

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All my poems need polishing, but here's

titles of everything i’ve created over the past year:

Quadriga
Never the Night Before
Caesura in my Thirties
Vino Blanco Rapt
The party
Homebound in the Guggenheim
Doorways
A Poetry Reading in Venice
Scenes of Unimportance
and the streetlamp’s still on
Reading in Retrospect
Frames
in my bed…
Peppermint Gates
Fling
the Classics
Stillborn mother father
Sfumato

"Late Night Thoughts upon 9th time listening to Twain Bio...."

……..well, another mostly quiet day at home, called in sick due to a.m. queasiness, then about the time I planned to pull it together, misjudged a step on the stairs and tumbled down three steps, bruising my ankle, so wound up not even making it to class either, tho I finished my response paper on time, ah well, still have way too much to take care of, to get to yet, one would hope I could also get some other writing done while home all day, but i was barely finishing reading and making notes for the response paper, cooking up the package of hamburger, watching the Mark Twain special on PBS (twice), then getting the kitchen cleaned up, I’m still tempted to take care of a few more things around the house, but also realize I’ll never get up on time in the a.m. if I don’t get to bed fairly soon, sigh, so it goes,,,,,I‘m too listless during the afternoons, and only motivated late at night, Ye Olde Fight The Night syndrome, not good not good forgetting back into a decent sleep rhythm, I still want to get back to doing a daily mediation, and am tempted to do so before I go to bed, then again think it’d be better for the morning, a calming , centering to start the day, h’mmmm………..Oops now they’re restarting the Mark Twain series, I’ll have to make myself pull away from it, and not spend another two hours engrossed in it, tho I could almost re-watch again how his life shaped his writing, what sources in his life events always fascinates me, finding out where different writers draw from…..I always intend to take notes of the ways that they developed their craft, by what they took note of, what books and how many they read, how often they wrote, what practice they had that developed their craft (e.g. Twain spent time as a typesetter, achieving a tactile sense of the placement of words), -- I ought to keep a journal, because I always wind up forgetting the particulars, just come away with a vague sense of their process, or never recall it in the forefront of my own writing enough to make use of such, A fascination yet no application, a theme running thru much of my life dissatisfaction…..I’m always reluctantly wishing that I could start the day over, a "wait till I’ve got it together, and am on time, prompt, prepared, and Then begin the day" on the right foot, even today it’s a dissatisfaction because I already had in my shower and would not have had to take of that, leaving me much more time to prepare and be on time to work, now blown, in this next a.m. I’ll have to take care of that as well of everything else, oh well…….right now I’m thinking about rearranging the altar table, dragging out the box of the nightstand (to remind me to get to putting it together), and then perhaps reading alittle EFM material, but at the same time I notice its 4:30am, and I’m planning on getting up at 8:30, which is a rather incongruent set of plans….(and I wonder why my life happens to me as it does…..??)

(a subtext of Twain bio “….He was an extreme noticer, he was a prodigious noticer”)

Late night sigh, my concentration is waning, tho I don’t fee l like I’ve said anything much yet, still wishing to get into some deeper thought or perspective or insight, but itching to go ahead and arrange the altar, rearrange the box, read the EFM text and get on with the next possible day, , always the urge to write and create and produce poetry, prose, something good, creative, something different, is stronger than the actual ability to do so……But then again I let go (and should ) of the attachment for writing any thing “good”, just write , just get the words on the page just spill out the words, the thoughts, the whatever muse you’re musing, just keep the writing muscle warmed up, you have to learn to just be able to capture your own thoughts on the page accurately, that in itself is an admirable goal, a craft to pursue………….. (4:40am)

late on a tuesday evening...

………….strange, I just looked at the stats of this disc version & the computer hardcopy of this file, and I did not realize it had been since 9 days ago that I last wrote/accessed anything to this ‘renewed journal’,,,,because I’ve wanted to on at least a dozen occasions, and thot that I Had managed at least once, but guess not --! Frustrating, I’ve been so much in the mood to write on various occasions lately, even today I kept wanting to get to it all work-day long, and then even after the office closed I really wished that I could, but I knew that in order to 1) read the chapter 2) get something to eat 3) drive to Redeemer, I would run late if I attempted to do any more than just that, so again I had to forgo writing, and I had gone to bed last night with the mindset of getting up in enough time to do some sort of freewrite, but of course, no, overslept and rushed around getting ready for work again, so yet another missed, frustrated instance where nothing gets on the page, and even tonight, tho I Am getting to it, by now my brain is tired, the thoughts I’d wanted to capture are gone, and I’m much more in the mood to eat, watch TV, go to bed with a book and read, trying to mindfully marshal my thoughts together at the end of the day just isnt the same as having alert, awake, mindful thoughts on things, I’m always regretting and feeling frustrated with any time I get into lots of reading for some class, to not be able to write extensively my thoughts, reactions and discourse to it, right now I‘ve got Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle along with St John’s Dark Night of the Soul’ that I’d like to write much more coherently on, plus the other books I acquired recently from Half Priced: on the Labyrinth, symbology, myth and ritual, then my recent reading on old paganism and ritual magick, as well as the two new books I got on friday about Mysticism and The Art of Sexual Magic, and even this book I got as a freebie from the cleaning out of the offices, A Norton Anthology on African American Literature, I get wanting to pick it up and read and write about it, altho I don’t have any time to do so, between the 2 books for my “Mysticism “ class and EFM readings….which I want to write on as well…….I guess it’s a good thing to have this interest and impulsion to want to read and write about so much lately, to be excited about such things, tho I’m continually frustrated in my efforts to write very much, and don’t know if I come up with anything very deep, critical or analytical to write over any of these things, just seems like I have such surface responses to things, cant seem to get into any deeper, more expansive, integrated view on such writings, in my response paper last night, all I could write regarding Teresa’s words was her self-deprecating language, couldn’t get past that to any level to perhaps consider Why she used such word choice or possible ends of using such language, or even look past it to understand the significance of what she intended to say beyond that,,,,,I just got all caught up in the words themselves, and couldn’t break through to any deeper level ~ again, frustrating. oh well ….what else is going on about my head, am almost wanting to abandon this right now, go off and do some of the reading I spoke about, curl up with my written journal, go stir up some more ideas and things to write of, at this point it feels as if I’ll just babble on nothing in order to fill up the page, and I don’t want it to come to that ,nor do I want to fill the page with mindless ramblings, its
more of that urgent, wanting to record, wanting to capture, wanting to write/create something real and meaty that grabs me from time to time, without there being anything solid behind it, backing it up as a solid foundation, h’mmmm….something to do with Fall, and colder weather and darker days and holing up inside with a brewed spice tea or a caffe latte to scribble one’s deep thoughts that appeals…..