A Day In The Life Of A Poet

Yesterday, a wonderful audience of 6th thru 10th grade at MacLaren Charter School here in Colorado Srings. Afterwards, a 6th grade student asked me if I wanted to hear one of her poems and I said yes. She said, "First I was a seed, and then I sprouted, and then I became a flower, now I'm a seed again." I praised her for the lovely words and the idea within them, and then her mother arrived and she hurried away before I could get her name. And driving home Rumi's words came to mind, "For ten thousand years I was a mineral. The I was eaten by a plant and for ten thousand years I was a plant. Until I was eaten by an animal, and for ten thousand years I was an animal, until I was eaten by a man. Note, how Rumi's poem dead ends with death by man. But the girl's poem continues the life cycle.

October Poem

With this wind humming in the wires I'd like to know what was whispered in the ears of the leaves that made then screech to yellow then blush to red. What was said to the bear to traipse off and curl up into a black ball to ignore us all and snooze until spring? What was said to my hair to make it change from brown to white and who knows why the sky is blue? But I know this, the garlic I planted on Sunday will simmer in pasta sauce next summer. The basil I harvested this morning will dry from green to bluish-brown and tang our salads all winter. As for the wind, no one talks to the wind.

Emerson's affections quote

So many life duties, distractions, planting garlic, picking the last of the ripe tomatoes, laying floor tile to finish the entry-way, going to the junk yard for truck parts, left my hat there, under some rusting hulk -- excuses. But, I think of Emerson's quote, "The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed, there is no winter and no night, all tragedies, all ennui's, vanish -- all duties even."

Let me share with you a thought from Rumi, which I use to encourage myself to go out a write Plein Air and stay engaged in the world. "Don't run around this world looking for a place to hide in." Rumi. Let me share with you a few Poet Laureate experiences from this week. On Monday I gave a seven minute performance at the Chamber of Commerce/COPPeR arts awards luncheon. What a challenge and joy to share poetry with 300 business men and women and civic leaders. At luncheons, often, when speakers are talking, the audience keeps eating and talking and there is a lot of noise. When I read, there was absolute silence. Since then I have received numerous congratulations from men and women. I share this not to toot my own horn but to encourage all poets to practice oral presentations and to see themselves as having a gift that others do want to share in. Wanting to end on a humorous note I closed with my zucchini poem: Zucchinis flower Growing so many green fruits -- Tonight, lock your doors. This brought good laughter and long applause as I stepped off the podium. Exiting, a couple came up to me, "We loved the zucchini poem. We had a fund raiser and zucchini was in the silent auction -- whomever made the highest bid did not have to take home any zucchini." On Wednesday, at the bequest of English department chair Dave Reynolds, I gave a poetry performance/reading to the all school assembly at Fountain Valley School. A wonderful and appreciative audience of 300 students and staff. I selected poems about being a teenager but because of the season of autumn I also read the Julesberg, Fall Harvest poem. Later, in the workshop, a student told me how much she loved that poem. I thanked her and told her I wrote that poem 40 years ago and her eyes widened open -- and I said, "yes, 40 years ago -- good poems are timeless." Thank you for reading.

Fantastic Poets

At the end of this ramble is today's writing "sensating the poem" exercise, a brief one, from what I used in my workshop on Saturday. First: What a week of poetry this has been, performing at Blissfest in Manitou, then on Saturday giving a "sensating the poem" workshop for the Authorfest of the Manitou Springs Library -- a wonderful group of writers attended and then Saturday evening, hosted by Aaron Anstett, went to a performance by Colorado's western slope pre-eminent poets, Art Goodtimes and Rosemerry Trommer. They were fantastic -- best poetry performance I've been to in years. With poetry in other languages, poems sung by Rosemerry, chanted by Art, some performed together, they slapped my ears with wonderful word power, awakened new energy for writing, and stole my heart. I regret, not being able to video-tape them to use their performance as a teaching tool. Benefit: New resources and joy: Rosemerry has a website, http://www.wordwoman.com/ and Art, "aka, thunderbear" just google Art Goodtimes poet and you'll find him. Today, at lunch, I will perform three poems for the Business and the Arts awards luncheon, before 300 people, at the Antlers Hotel. Scared. I shiver. Cannot eat before performing. Remind myself, this is about the audience, not your ego. Give them accessible poems, celebrate life, share the magic of words. Exercise: Write down three experience that were or are important to you. Then pick one, then describe what: it looks like, feels like, smells like, tastes like, and sounds like. Write several images for each sense. Then write a sensate narrative description rich with these images. Third: add the reason what prompted you to write about this in the first place, that sixth sense, then re-write it one more time, start with a TITLE, and flow with your feeling words into a sensate poem. Creativity is in the doing. Write.