If you've been here a time or two, you know I’ve always believed there is a poem out there everywhere. So many of my ideas for poems come from people I see and places I go that I’m really never at a loss for something to write about. I’m constantly saying, “Now, there’s a poem.” Still I like to work with prompts. I keep a list of them that I get from the Writer’s Digest’s poetry editor, Robert Lee Brewer and his Poetic Asides blog. He posts a prompt every Wednesday. Sometimes he’ll combine it with a request that we write in a specific poetry form, e.g., Haiku, Nonet, Luc Bat, Tanka, Ekphrastic, Quatern, Tritina. So I get a prompt, but a poetry lesson as well. Robert writes about things he knows and loves. The words are simple, homey, about his wife and children. I relate to that. He also conducts two poem-a-day challenges a year in April and November. I’ve participated for the last several years. At the end of the month he asks us to submit a chapbook of our best few poems … [Read more...]
Fellow poet, Jennifer Payne, welcome to Choices today!
That I love poetry should be no surprise to my readers here, so it pleases me to no end to host the author of the book of poetry, Evidence of Flossing: What We Leave Behind, today during her WOW! Women on Writing blog tour. Jen has also provided us with her thoughts about meditation, something I've dabbled in over the years and always feel guilty about when I don't do it. I thank Jen for her guest post below. Exploring Mindfulness by Jen Payne 1. A Meditation on Bugs I hadn't walked five minutes up the trail before they ambushed me. A swarm of gnats dropped down in front of my face like a thin, black veil. Two flies laid claim to my ears bzzzzzzzzzzzzzing in stereo. Their siege left me breathless afraid to inhale. My swatting swat, buzz, swat, buzz, swat, buzz, buzz! was moot. By coincidence, I had recently watched that scene in the movie Eat Pray Love in which the Julia Roberts character successfully sits in meditation for a full hour despite an enthusiastic swarm of … [Read more...]
Meet Susan Day – grand-parenting expert
I fell in love with poetry as a child. I loved reading it and having it read to me. And as I got older I loved learning what the poems meant. Now I am a published poet. My guest today, Susan Day, an expert on grand-parenting and author of the soon to be released book, The Top 10 Things Happy Grandparents Never Regret Doing!, writes about how important it is to teach children to memorize, read aloud, and write poetry. Please welcome Susan Day to Choices. The Importance of Teaching Children Poetry by Susan Day By studying poetry, memorizing and learning how to create poems, children can increase their language skills immensely. When studying poetry children are required to remember the words, and the rhythm or meter, in which the poem is meant to be said. This skill actually plays a powerful part on a child's ability to learn and recall information from a wide range of subject areas. Sadly, many classrooms underestimated what an important learning tool poetry is. A poem might be … [Read more...]
April is National Poetry Month
I started reading poetry in grade school although I didn't start writing poems until much later. Once in a while I'd write a poem or two when I was upset emotionally or feeling lonely, but not regularly until after my son's suicide. It was the only way I could deal with my grief. It still is. Reading poetry regularly is a given. During April, National Poetry Month, Knopf sends me a poem a day, and the website Poem-A-Day sends me a poem every day all year round. Sometimes over a dozen poems are in my reading queue. I also write poems regularly - this month especially since I'm participating in a poem a day challenge. Poetry is my favorite writing genre. It's hard to know if my poems live up to Lori Anne Ferrell's criteria as discussed in her LA Times Op Ed piece below, but many have been published, so they must resonate somewhere. A book of poetry that's worth $100,000, and so much more by Lori Anne Ferrell "A few months ago, I was talking to a former student about how … [Read more...]
Author Rebecca Fitton finds writing is healing
I'm pleased to introduce Rebecca Fitton and her new book of poetry, Wave Rider, as she embarks on her WOW! Women on Writing book tour. Wave Rider is a poetic reflection of author Rebecca Fitton's long journey to heal from sexual abuse, abandonment, and neglect, building a new world based on wholeness of body, mind, and spirit. Her journey has taken a lifetime. To use the metaphor of waves, sometimes the undertow nearly drowned her but she survived. Now her beautiful and profound book offers inspiration to others who have also suffered greatly from abuse. Here's my Review Rebecca Fitton's Wave Rider, a book of poetry, shares her beginnings as an abused child and her rebirth later in her adulthood. She divides her book of poems into three sections: Darkness: her poems of her life with a mother who doesn't want her and an uncle who abuses her. She lived in this frozen, silent darkness until she was forty years old. In a poem early in the book, she writes, I learn … [Read more...]
Thoughts of gratitude in the new year
The holiday season has come and gone once again. As always, I view it as bittersweet. The holidays bring up too many reminders of my son Paul who died just three months shy of his 28th New Year's Eve birthday. We visited his gravesite on his 45th birthday as we do on his death day and birthday every year. I also view the holiday season with gratitude. Besides my continued good health, the love and support of so many family members and friends, and my ability to live a productive life, that I can even think in terms of being grateful is a miracle. However, as bad as life was after Paul died, and as much as I continue to miss him, I have found out that with such a tragedy come unexpected gifts. Paul's death has made me a stronger person, physically and emotionally. It was as if I accomplished getting stronger through brute force. I met and interacted with people who had been through similar experiences; I took writing classes and workshops; I went back to work outside my home with … [Read more...]
Election day thoughts
Maybe Robert Lee Brewer meant to give us prompts associated with the election of Donald Trump on Tuesday. But whether he did or not, I turned yesterday's and today's November 2016 Poem A Day challenge prompts into poems about the election results. I'm still in mourning. I'm still in shock. And I feel it's a poet's role to put our thoughts down on the page - especially at times like this. As a poetry friend wrote me yesterday: 'Regardless of how you feel about the election results, I think it is important to remember we need POETS now more than ever. That poetry is both power and peace. It is up to poets to build a citizen of something new.' The prompts for November 9 and 10, respectively are: Take the phrase Call Me (blank), replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then write the poem. Possible titles include: Call Me Al, Call Me Crazy, Call Me Batman, Call Me at 3 O'clock in the Morning, etc. Call Me Sad There … [Read more...]
Putting together a book of poems
I've been putting a poetry manuscript together in response to a submission request from a press asking for books written by women over fifty. I figure I'm well over fifty, so why not? The requirement is to compile a book of sixty to one hundred poems. I've been gathering my poems for the book during the last month or so. I've written a lot of poems - certainly more than the requirements of this submission, but the big question is: how many of them are good enough to put in a manuscript hoping to win a $1000 prize. As of today, I think I've completed the gathering phase. The next step is to organize them. I really had no idea how to do that. I've submitted to chapbook competitions before but never a full-length book. So I went to my poetry book shelf and looked at how some of my favorite poets (Ellen Bass, Billy Collins, Maxine Kunitz, Dorianne Laux, Joseph Millar, etc.) do it. Some just number the sections, some use the title of one of the poems in the section as the title of the … [Read more...]
August small stones
Now that I'm on day 16 of the September Pebbles 2016 challenge I thought I'd post my entire list from the Awake August 2016 Small Stones challenge. According to the page guidelines post "No advertising. No selling. Just your thoughts and ideas and have fun.This page is for your small poems and thoughts, please share and enjoy each others talents. Everyone is individual and that makes this page brilliant." When the Awake August challenge was over, people in the group decided to keep posting, so the page admins changed the challenge to September Pebbles. I'll post those sometime next month. A young girl with white-pale skin and wine-red hair visited for a week. We kissed goodbye this morning. The strains of Unchained Melody bring back memories of 1955 and two besotted teenagers swaying in time on a hot August night. A long walk with a friend on a hot summer day brings a connection of compassion, understanding, and love. We can't stop talking. An orange-streaked sky … [Read more...]
New writing and old
I've started to write about something new. I haven't a clue yet where it's going so I don't want to reveal the topic yet. I just want to let you and the world know. That's a way to keep me accountable. I can't go ahead and disband this new writing project because I've now put it out there. You all know and I know you'll keep me going. I'm also going through some poems I've written over the years. I'm looking for material to submit. I wrote the one below back in 2011 at my favorite poetry workshop at Esalen Institute in Big Sur California. Unfortunately my favorite three poets/instructors, Ellen Bass, Dorianne Laux, and Joseph Millar, aren't doing this workshop anymore, though I went to a workshop at Esalen with Joseph about a year ago. That was wonderful as well. So the theme for this poem was "changeability." We were asked to make changes from line to line, using word series, thoughts, length of line, and language. Other aspects of this theme are: anaphora - repetition of … [Read more...]
Turning grief into art
Chanel Brenner, Alexis Rhone Fancher, and I are reading our poetry tomorrow night at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Tustin, CA. Our theme is turning grief into art. Each of us has lost a son, and each of us have turned to writing as a way to deal with our grief. There is no cure for us, however, writing can be a soothing balm. If you live in the Los Angeles area, please join us tomorrow night in Tustin. … [Read more...]
Congratulations, Keith Alan Hamilton!
My poet and walking friend, Keith Alan Hamilton, has just released his new book of poems: Peace Out Poems about My Abnormalities Normality. The poems are about stigma, mental illness - including depression and bipolar disorder, and suicide. "I hope for those who read it, it will be of benefit to them. There is a huge stigma overshadowing those who suffer from mental conditions like depression or being bipolar. Even more so for those who have committed suicide. That reality will not change until my type of story is told and understood. To me, the stigma overshadowing a day-to-day survivor is even worse. When you are a depressive with thoughts of suicide cycling in your head day in and day out..... it is far harder to survive and keep going than it is to submit. It is easier to be considered mentally ill and medicated, or to have taken ones life than being someone who successfully copes day-to-day and is a productive contributor to life. If we are going to show others that … [Read more...]
Don’t be afraid to submit
Three out of five isn't bad. In the last couple of months I've submitted five pieces to contests and anthologies mostly at the urging of my recent poetry instructor, Thresha Haefner at The Poetry Salon. And I found out that submitting really pays off. It's like lottery tickets. If you don't buy one, you have no chance of winning. In all I submitted three poems, a poetry chapbook, and an excerpt from my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On. Two of the three poems were accepted one is still in review, and the excerpt was accepted to appear in a suicide loss anthology. Unfortunately the chapbook didn't make it, but that doesn't mean I'm giving up. I'll submit it again and again to wherever seems suitable. And so as not to keep you in the dark, here are the two poems that will come out soon: Stop and Go will appear in Yellow Chair Review's In the Words of Women anthology, and Remnants will appear in the 2016 Porter Gulch Review. Stop and Go On the drive up the coast I … [Read more...]
Time to put my ass in the chair
I'm a little late getting started this year. Two much movie going I guess. Last week we saw three more movies: The Big Short, Concussion, and Brooklyn. All great I'd give them all an A. But now it's time to get back to work. I told myself I guess the word is resolved to open up my novel again and see if I can bring it back to life. I put it aside at the end of last April when I went to work my consulting job in Colorado and sent it off to several beta readers. I was also devastated by one particularly scathing review that literally stopped me in my tracks. But, enough is enough. I've put a lot of work into that book. I cannot just throw it all out. I was also encouraged by the movie Brooklyn. Like my novel it's about immigrating to America. Of course our stories are very different but it makes me feel that immigration stories are still alive and well not like the scathing reviewer said. Plus there are several boarding house scenes in the movie that are great role … [Read more...]
