A Monk in the Marketplace

Sitting quietly, watching
the hummingbird highway
in our backyard sky,
speed freak avians
zipping and diving,
narrowly avoiding collision,
not so much rivals,
more contestants in the
labor to survive.

They feed or die, those
tiny-hearted birds,
twenty beats per second.
Mandevilla bloom
becomes their arena,
long beaks dueling for
one flower, until they
spy our four-hole feeder,
competitors no more.

Sitting quietly, watching
the laptop screen
on our backyard table,
variable speed poets
warping and weaving,
neatly creating their art.
Not so much competitors,
more partners in the
need to express.

They write or fade, those
big-hearted bards, one hundred
April images per hour.
Poetic Asides
becomes their stage,
longing for what’s due
their flowing thoughts, yet
loving each other’s works,
competitors no more.

Writing about feelings

One of the most helpful guides to writing poetry I have found is Ted Kooser's "The Poetry Home repair Manual". He offers many useful insights, and since most of my own poetry is from my personal experience of life, his comments on writing about feelings are particularly valuable to me:

"Poetry would be a lost art if there were laws against writing about feelings, and the Poetry Cops would be very busy pounding on poets with night sticks... (still), to write a poem that is not just a gush of sentiment but something that will engender in its readers deep, resonant feelings, you need to exercise restraint to avoid what is commonly termed sentimentality...(however) the the absence of emotion is not what readers go to books of poetry for. we want some human heat. Each of us who writes must find a balance between restraint and expressions of feeling...One of the hardest things to learn is how poems can express strong feelings without expressly stating those feelings...Some poets have gotten the idea that they can say things about their feelings in poems that most of us wouldn't feel right about saying at the dinner table, as if writing a poem gives you permission to talk about things you wouldn't talk about in public. But we need to keep in mind that writing a poem is public, too. Your reader is right there on the other side of the table, politely and patiently listening to you. How long do you dare go on about the misery your hemorrhoids are causing you?...Self indulgent poetry almost always disappears in time, a victim of its own failure to engage the needs and interests of others. It takes a grateful audience to keep a poem alive. Expression of feeling ought to be measured against the reader's tolerance for such expression."

Eli and Ely and Me

My neighbor's grandson and I are writing a story together, at his direction. It is further down the blog. He just told me I was spelling his name wrong.

Eli and Ely and Me

Eli can read now,
says his name is wrong,
he’s an Elijah.
He’s become seven,
becoming who he’ll be.
Should I argue he is Eli,
Ely the Eel just a fiction?
Should he rule, or
ought I let him lose?
Can we find perfection?
Not that this is really
about communication.
This is Eli becoming Eli.
This is me loving Eli.
This is me loving Ely.
This is me becoming me,
still.

Welcome

If you like art forms, or care about living things, this is the blog for you. Poetry, essays, watercolor, acrylics, films, novels, music...pick your pleasure. I'll post my own work, and anyone else's which catch my eye, as painful as that sounds. I'll recommend books and films, some so obscure they don'y even make it to IMDB.com. So, as my Walt, my fellow Living Poet on the Poetic Asides section of writersdigest.com, says, "come little goldfish in my pond, interact, don't be koi."