Frost quotes

As we move closer sunward and closer to Robert Frost's birthday, March 26, I like the thought he gives us with just a few words: "Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words." That is why I call poetry, emotional knowledge, and that experience is not enough, to know who we are, our feeling thoughts must be pressed into words. Frost again, Poetry "It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. . . in a clarificatiion of life. . . a momentary stay against confusion."

Sensate

As I await the warmer days and will see the garlic sprouting up from the earth. . .

quote

"We write to taste life twice, once in the moment and then in retrospection." Anais Nin "A professional writer is an amateur who did not quit." Richard Bach

quotes/thackery

"Every day there are a thousand thoughts within a man, that he does not know, until he takes up a pen to write." Thackery

Why write and share? "What constitutes the dignity of a craft is that it creates a fellowship; that it binds men together and fashions for them a common language." Antoine de Saint-Exupery in, Wind, Sand and Stars

The Taste of

Fabulous evening last night. Mary and I made a "Poet's House Call" -- invited to a friend's home, where 10 of us enjoyed dinner then shared favorite poems, including Ferlinghetti, Langston Hughes, Sara Teasdale, Bukowski, etc. This morning I was reading La Cucina, the Italian cooking mag. The back cover has an ad for Rose liquor with the lead in line of: "The Taste of Love"; the inside cover was an ad for a coffee maker with "Simple Pleasure," and an ad for their sponsors with gourmet magazines, the line, "Across North America." Voila. Re-arrange the lines, found poem that can be a power prompt: Across North America Simple pleasure The taste of love when You kiss your mate before going to work The smile from your baby Sunlight in the bare winter trees The taste of love when You walk in the door, tired from work And smell heavenly dinner aromas Holding your lover's T-shirt to your nose and enjoying the memory of last night Well, you get the picture. WRITE ON

New Years. I think of Ralph Hodgson's poem, "Time, You Old Gypsy Man" and suggest that you Google it. Its brief and timely. Today the weather an responding to the cold brings this short, almost Haiku: Crunching through the snow Freezing wind bites my face. Arms Loaded with firewood.

writing is work

So, now that I have made the fire in the fireplace. added water to the heated bird fountain, fed the cats, cleaned up wrapping paper, and procrastinated as much as possible, I will sit down my butt and write the Christmas story that has been on my mind for three days.

As you may know, I had knee surgery recently, that and other life challenges knocked me out of both energy and motivation to write here. I like today's crossword puzzle clue, a quote from the French novelist, Albert Camus, "A work of art is a confession." I say yes, especially when the work of art springs from our deepest emotions, values, knowledge, etc. I had to stay in bed with my leg higher than my heart -- keep fluids from pooling in my leg and foot. So I had time to read magazines and clip out what I call "Power Prompts." For me a power prompt is any phrase, or memory, that prompts me to respond, either with words or actions. Most of these came from lines in advertisements in magazines: unmask yourself a second chance for in case you forget introducing anti-aging benefits (A the fearof growing old -- emotion based -- poetry) baffling behaviors (A good prompt for a short story) experience good clean sense I COULD GO ON AND ON ABOUT THESE, like, "What anti-aging benefits? to be able to hear the worm eating through the bark of the tree? like knowing how to rise to heaven and return in two seconds?" but you get the point, so take on and write, or open a magzine and find your own power prompts, their triggers for what lies within us.

Daily poems

Let me remind us all that if you go to www.poets.org and sign up you can get daily, poems. Here's a shorty by Blake: Eternity by William Blake He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy He who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity's sunrise.