JuPoWriMo: Am I really that crazy? And… Are You?
Some of the people with whom I participated in NaPoWriMo are diving into JuPoWriMo: June Poetry Writing Month. Instead of a poem a day, the challenge is to write ten poems in June, one every three days. The idea, I think, is to continue the forward momentum from NaPo at a pace that won’t drive everyone completely insane. Again.
Edit: The rest of this entry is altered from the original, because on reflection insanity is more fun in groups.
I think I’m going to try it, although I’m going to use this blog rather than the forum I usually post at—for some reason, I want to JuPo in semi-privacy.
However, support is nice when you’re doing something crazy. Anyone else want to jump in? I can give you a temporary account here, so you could login and post here. The rules (as much as there are rules) for this are:
- Ten poems in June, ideally one every three days.
- If you want to write around a theme, go for it. If not, whatever comes to you.
- This isn’t a workshop—from my NaPo experience, I can tell you that criticism is zero help in the middle of an exercise like this. All comments on posted works stay encouraging (I add this because of my conduct in workshop; we all know what I’m like. It won’t happen here—this is a fun challenge to get the creative juices juicing.)
And that’s it. Really. What say you? MMM? JSK? Another S? PPP, want to engage in some JuPoWriMo maddness?
For what it’s worth, I’m going to center my poems around the idea of a twelve-step program (ten poems… twelve steps… I’ll deal with the problem later). I’ve considered using “Cat Bloggers Anonymous” as the overarching theme, but I’ll probably go with something like “Twelve Steps to Forgiving the Sins of the Father.” Although that’s a bit… preachy?... for me.
Are you in? It’ll be fun!
But why would you want to know?
Every once in a while I think I should make a proper blogroll. You know: the blogs I read frequently, the blogs I never read but list because that’s the thing to do if you want to appear connected, the blogs I’d like to read someday but haven’t yet, the blogs with the cool-sounding names that I wouldn’t read if someone paid me, the blogs that once linked to me for some obscure reason so that I feel honor-bound to link back… and so on.
That’s what a blogroll is, right? It’s a high-school popularity contest all over again. I lost that contest in high school; I doubt I’d win it now.
Besides, who really cares what blogs I read? Do you really think you’d know me better if I told you I read [Snarky Blog] every week? Sure, I’d look all powerful and connected to the [Snarky Blog’s Circle of Influence], but in reality I’d still be an outsider knocking on the door. Do you need confirmation that I’m blundering around in my own little corner here, largely unnoticed?
Ok, here: I’m blundering around in my own little corner, largely unnoticed. It’s confirmed.
I just don’t understand it. What’s the fascination with blogrolling? Why do you care which blogs/sites I read frequently?
Spontaneous Outpourings Recollected in Tequila
There’s a new face on the literary scene: Quick Muse. The concept: two poets are given a prompt and fifteen minutes to write. Their keystrokes are saved, so on the QM website you can watch the entire poem unfold, including edits and erasures.
Editor Ken Gordon explains the project in an article in Poets & Writers: he wants to know whether poets can produce their best work under spontaneous circumstances. According to a New York Times article on Quick Muse, reactions from poets have been mixed. Mark Strand (politely) declined while Robert Pinsky is set to face off with Julianna Baggott today.
I think the intimidating part of the project isn’t the time limit so much as the expectation of quality. Robert Pinsky is quoted at the end of the NYT article as saying “You may not write your best, but you should be able to write something that is memorable.”
Are you kidding? I have poems sitting in the draft stage for eighteen months while I try to create something memorable. The thought of trying to do that in fifteen minutes? Terrifying. There’d better be a big shot of Tequila waiting for me if you want me to try that.
Oh, all right, then. It’s two a.m. There’s no one around to see and there’s a bottle of whiskey in the kitchen. I’ll give it a shot. So to speak.
Rather than steal Quick Muse’s prompt, I’ll use an excerpt from Sherod Santos’ A Poetry of Two Minds:
Seen from one perspective, Eurydice serves a crucial role in the fate that Orpheus must undergo if he’s to gain full powers as a poet. She comes to represent the descent into the poet’s unconscious, the knowledge of the depths indispensable to artistic authority. As Hélène Cixous has observed, “We need a dead (wo)man to begin. To begin (writing, living) we must have death.”
All right, then. Off to set a fifteen minute timer and begin writing.
I Have Discovered Ponies
I went to the show today to hang out, see how everyone was doing, that sort of thing. While I was there, I was asked to take Pony out for a walk—she’s young, was getting experience, that sort of thing.
We walked, and when I was tired of walking, Pony turned out to be the perfect arm rest size—you can prop your elbows on her back and watch the riders in the show ring. It was very comfortable. And then, if you wanted to ride, you could just hop on from the ground. No sticking your foot in a stirrup up by your ear so you can swing up, as on a horse… nope… one hop and you’d be on Pony’s back! (Not that I got to ride Pony, but she’s that perfect size, you see?) Plus, there’s the Pony Attitude, which… there’s nothing else like it—it’s the combination of a smart brain testing the limits of what it can do all multiplied by the Pony Cuteness factor. Pony Attitude. It’s very cool.
Oh my. Forget buying a horse: I want a pony.
Now We’re Cooking with Oil
All right. I’ve imported all the posts I’m planning to import. From 400-some posts, I picked 30 or 40. Even for me, that’s a lot of irrelevant material to cull.
Comments… comments will take longer. I can’t import all of them (there are 1000+ in the two databases, and I don’t have the software to auto-sort them for the posts I did bring over, convert them to the new database structure, and then save them here. Nor do I have time to do it all manually.)
I’m sorry… I really do value your comments, but they aren’t all going to make it into this new system. Some of them will, but not all.
Please don’t hate me.