"How to be alone" by filmmaker Andrea Dorfman and poet/singer/songwriter Tanya Davis is beautiful and perceptive in word, image and tune.
After viewing the video many times, I realized that the benefits of being alone are visually implied in the film by Tanya's being in nature, outside or away from screens which constantly and digitally connect us to others.
One of my favorite lines is "Start simple: things you may have previously avoided based on your 'Avoid Being Alone Principles.'" What's yours?
Even if it keeps you up all night,
wash down the walls and scrub the floor
of your study before composing a syllable.
Clean the place as if the Pope were on his way.
Spotlessness is the niece of inspiration.
The more you clean, the more brilliant
your writing will be, so do not hesitate to take
to the open fields to scour the undersides
of rocks or swab in the dark forest
upper branches, nests full of eggs.
When you find your way back home
and stow the sponges and brushes under the sink,
you will behold in the light of dawn
the immaculate altar of your desk,
a clean surface in the middle of a clean world.
From a small vase, sparkling blue, lift
a yellow pencil, the sharpest of the bouquet,
and cover pages with tiny sentences
like long rows of devoted ants
that followed you in from the woods.
Intergalactic travel has So much to do and see. Now I must land my spaceship— There's no room left for me!
I wrote the poem's end first, then went back to the beginning, and wrapped up with the middle. The image of a crowded, souvenir-filled spaceship propelled it forward.
This week's (completely and totally optional) idea from Liz and Dana at Poetry Thursday is to use the phrase "an open window" in a poem. Here's my take — a haiku:
An open window — Words flash by, diving, soaring. My ink captures them.
Now for the "thanks". Liz and Dana started Poetry Thursday in February 2006, and the end of August brings the site's close. (A new poetry site/online community is in the works, so stay tuned...) I want to thank them for so many things:
- for creating a strong, thriving poetry community in Blogville - for loving poetry with passion and for sharing it so openly - for giving us a gift every week with their Thursday call for poetry-related posts - for inspiring and creating momentum in our poetry and prose - for connecting so many of us globally
I could go on, but this list captures their generous, wordy, bold essences. Here's to you, Liz and Dana, Goddesses of Poetry, with much admiration.
Thanks, also (of course), to all fellow Poetry Thursday community members. I've so enjoyed reading your poems, recommendations, observations, and your comments on my posts. It's been a supreme pleasure getting to know so many of you a bit, and I look forward to our future meetings here, on your blogs, and at new online poetry communities, getting ready to sprout. Cheers.
The creators of Poetry Thursday have decided to take down their poetry shingle. At August's end, our weekly online writing/poetry community will cease. Founders Liz and Dana have enjoyed their 18-month run, and are now ready to move on to other endeavors.
But wait! Another poetry door might be opening. A few generous Poetry Thursday participants are creating a new online community to fill the void that will be left behind. More soon.
The above video, "i lived on the moon", has inspired me to poetry. It is animated by Yannick Puig, who was inspired by the band Kwoon's music to make this for their song. The combination of image, story and soundtrack are absolutely stunning.
I've been living in an imaginary world lately. My young one has reached the age where an unfamiliar sound outside the window most definitely means a lion is approaching. We instantly morph from parent and child into two explorers saving baby animals as we run from the predator, our arms full of plush creatures. Tinker toys become a satellite space station, until it breaks and spills rocket fuel all over our carpet. Then a dinosaur with a mop appears but admits it cannot clean the entire mess by itself. So three firemen, one firelady, and another dinosaur with a special "cleaning mouth" show up to help. And these were just some of today's adventures.
At this age, children create imaginary monsters and conflicts in order to problem solve, to develop mastery over social skills, to learn to deal with emotions. Seeing this now with my own child, it's so clear how this rich pretend world helps to cement feelings of self-confidence and budding independence. We have to do this, and we've all gone through this. We humans are wired to do so. The mythical quest to overcome obstacles and grow beyond them will forever be a basis of our stories — our most personal and private ones, and those we share as a culture.
Seeing my little one face and overcome these pretend, yet also very real, frights leaves me speechless most days. I've seen already that I can't provide all the answers to these big questions, but I also know that being there, like the steadiest rock, in the process, is so vitally important. This video somehow helped me find words around it:
We hold hands To explore and imagine together, To create and tell our stories, To face monsters. Our hands still touch Even when You are on the moon And I am at my tree. I will see you Because I can fly now! Through it, Above it, I can do it. I'll be there soon.
Visit Poetry Thursday for a vast collection of poetry from our community.
I wrote a Shakespearian sonnet about one of Gotham's characters. Perhaps you've already met...
Into Metropolis, I brought with me My poker face, blank checks and references. After his moist hand shake, we sped to see Some properties’ abundant offenses: A window’s broken glass; burned, melted rugs, With ceilings extra low; thin plastic walls; A deli below sent up extra bugs To feast amongst the dark garbage-strewn halls. “Such a view — the Empire State Building!” I squinted, smiled, and told him, “No, it’s not.” The Chrysler Building stood there tall, laughing At someone who in his own lies was caught. I started towards the door, shaking my head At the day’s worth of slippery I’d been fed.
The project has taken place in many different places over the
years, ranging form private homes to specialized public book
collections. The process is the same in every case: culling through a
collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping
the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence,
from top to bottom...Taken as a whole, the
clusters from each sorting aim to examine that particular library's
focus, idiosyncrasies, and inconsistencies — a cross-section of that
library's holdings.
Her book groupings tell their own stories and also much about the books' owners. Shark is a New York-based journal of poetry and art. The editors publish it from "a home office lined wall-to-wall with books."
My bookcases need some rearranging. To remove all books from their usual spaces and re-shelve them according to new narratives would make finding one an entirely new challenge.
When MTV started in 1981, it revolutionized the way people heard music. For the first time, listeners saw the music along the lines of the musicians' artistic vision. (We rabid fans and true believers didn't realize until later that videos were often more the directors' or their agents' or the record company's p.r. and marketing department's creation.)
With this added visual dimension, we felt closer to the music and the musicians; if the video also featured the band in it, and the lead singer sang right into the camera, many impressionable teens could believe that the band played just for them. These virtual mini rock concerts cemented our love for our favorite songs and singers; even decades later, I can't hear many tunes without also recalling snippets from the accompanying video.
Billy Collins, former U.S. poet laureate, has a series of animations for his poems. They are poetry videos, and when we view them, we understand his poetry in a new way. We see Collins' and his animators' shared visions for his words. He calls his poetry videos "action poems."
In addition to TwitterPoetry(my related post here), I've recently found three other accounts devoted to sharing the most powerful wordy punch one can fit into 140 characters or less:
-- Twitter Fiction — Email submissions to [email protected]. -- Twaiku — It's Twitter + Haiku. Seems to randomly pull "tweets" from the Twitter public stream and arrange them in a haiku-like format. -- futuristic cybercafé — The account page states: "*a twitter poetry jam* This is not a commercial project. We do it for Art." They're taking submissions.
As Twitter's "micro-blogging" catches on, these types of tweets may become more popular.
There's a need for them. Attention spans are divided into increasingly minuscule pieces each day; are these reading lengths all that the digerati can handle?
My name is Kristin Gorski. I recently earned my doctorate (EdD) in instructional technology and media. My research focuses on technology and literacies, writing in digital spaces, and how media literacy may support academic literacy (among other incredibly interesting topics). On occasion, I’m also a freelance writer and editor. “Write now is good.” is my personal blog about writing, creativity and inspiration (with healthy doses of technology in relevant places). I started it in blogging's heyday (2006) and still post to it, time permitting. If you'd like to collaborate on a project, have writing/technology/creativity info to share, or want to say, "Hi," contact me at kgwritenow (at) yahoo dot com.
To read more about me, click on the "ABOUT" link below.
