Tag: poetry

December in October

Published on by Grace12 Comments

We’re in our 5th day of rain and December temperatures. At 3pm it’s 54º – that’s the average temperature here in December.  October temperatures are supposed to average around 70º – so brrr!

Staring out the window I thought – Christmas. But the light is wrong. It’s not December light.  I’m very aware of how the light changes from month to month, season to season – how about you?

I actually wrote a poem about the changing of the light –

Nov 26, 2013

Light

I sit at the dining room table with the lights off.
Staring out the window, the November light is Decemberish.
And then I remember that December is only 4 days away.

It is a sort of rainy, sort of cold day.
It is sort of an uneasy day.

It is 2 o’clock in the afternoon as
I sit at the dining room table
with the lights off – it feels so much later.

But even tho the November light seems
like December, the day does not.
I think December does not feel so unsettled.
But I don’t remember.

I can feel light, I experience light, its weight and substance.
I can smell light and sometimes I think I can hold light.
Light talks to me and tells me stories.

Today the light tells me a story of December
Of darker days and longer nights
Until the subtle shift. December light whispers
Soon…

Why can’t I remember how December light feels?

We’ve been living here 10 years now and I am so over this place but not the view from my windows…

Tradition!

Published on by Grace6 Comments

Lisa informs me, via Facebook, that Dunkin Donuts has already launched their pumpkin spice mishegoss. The interwebz search says Starblechs won’t be doing theirs until August 30th.

So splitting the difference, here is my annual ode to all things pumpkin spice –


I stopped being serious

Published on by Grace14 Comments

 about writing a long time ago. I never wanted to/aspired to being a prose writer, a writer of novels or stories. I always wanted to be a poet.  In 6th grade I declared that as my chosen profession and Mrs. Forlano (you remember her, right?) said “You mean poetess” and I retorted “No, I mean poet, it is a neuter noun” Little ole rebellious me.

I don’t read a lot of new poetry because poetry has changed; it seems to me to be just prose chopped into short sentences. But it also seems that is just me. Yet, one of my favorite newer poems is exactly that – prose in short sentences and yet immediately recognized and experienced as a poem. I’m so confused. 

I always insist that poetry must have meter/rhythm/music; I have always been somewhat dismissive of “prose poetry” and “free verse” – it just doesn’t scan for me (you see what I did there?). There is a lot of crap poetry around the blogosphere – and the mistake I see most people make is – they don’t put in the work. They don’t maintain the imagery or the metaphor. Poetry is damn hard work. Writing is damn hard work – it is not just spewing words on a page. 

I just had an exchange with a friend – she is so talented and gifted with words, language, metaphor. I call her the Empress of Metaphor. Her writing is lush and lovely. I don’t always understand what she is writing about and I don’t care, I just love the way the words flow. She is super smart, well educated and a lot of her references and metaphors go over my head but I get the beauty of them. 

Anyway – she is finally getting ‘serious’ about writing and she said “… but need a bit more discipline and some work around craft.” Craft – she is working on her craft. (Craft: Skill in doing or making something, as in the arts.”)
 
I stopped working on my craft long ago. When I was young I took poetry workshops, I took writing classes, I worked it. I still do when I settle in to write a poem but there’s the rub – the discipline part. That and the fact that I write personal poems. I don’t comment on the world at large or Nature. I only write about how I feel. And most days, these days, I don’t feel much of anything. 
Yet – I’ve talked about this before – I think in quatrains. My thoughts come in poetic form – with rhyme often, certainly with meter. I’ve got rhythm! 
But I have written prose that knocks MY socks off. I read my own stuff and think “Damn, that’s good.” But when it comes to prose I am only a writer of good lines. But my voice is my voice. I write the way I talk. But better because, oh hey, I can edit what I write. You may not realize how much goes into simple, seemingly off-the-cuff posts like this. 
At any rate, I no longer have any pretensions to being a real life ‘professional’ published writer. My goal of having a book of poetry published is long retired. I don’t even consider myself a serious writer. Writing for me now, maybe always has been, is just a form of therapy. I think if I had any kind of social interaction I would write even less than I do now. 
I will always prefer pen and paper to typing – 

I think in quatrains

Published on by Grace4 Comments

Spring never happened, 

Summer is here. 
Quick trade of hot chocolate 
For a cold frosty beer.

Was sitting, just looking out the window, wondering what time I would have to close the windows and turn on the a/c and – the above popped into my head. Just that, nothing more. 

A quatrain is a 4 line poem with alternate rhyming lines so technically speaking that’s not a quatrain. But close enough for government work.