OuLiPo for You, Li Po

Okay, this is OuLiPo for anyone, not just for Li Po, and it can be found at the blog We Who are About to Die, five links to using OuLiPo restraints in your own writing.

A particularly fun one is an online N+7 generator. N+7 is a technique in which nouns in a text are replaced by the noun that occurs 7 noun-entries later in the dictionary than where the original noun can be found. But which dictionary to use? And what exactly counts as a noun? All these concerns are eliminated by using the N+7 generator, made by OuLiPo-ist Jean Lescure. Just type in, or cut and paste, your text and let the generator make all the calls for you.

Check out the others at the blog link above.

Visual Poetry in Argentina

This was posted on Facebook by expat poet Taylor Mignon. Other than what you see above, I have no information and don't know what this is about, but it looks so interesting, I just had to share.

Create Creativity

Daniel Coyle has explored talent hotbeds, localities from which a disproportionate percentage of superstar athletes, musicians, artists, or scholars come from. In "The Talent Myth: How to Maximize Your Creative Potential" published in the UK Independent Blog, Coyle lists the ways that you can reach more creative potential:

1) Stare.
2) Steal.
3) Be stupid.
4) Be spartan.
5) Distinguish hard skills from soft skills.
6) Honor hard skills.
7) Disregard prodigy claims.
8) Choose the best mentor.

Good reminders of what we can do to master the skills we love.

Time of Useful Consciousness

At age 92 (93?), Lawrence Ferlinghetti is coming out with a new book of epic poetry chronicling "American consciousness." It's called Time of Useful Consciousness, which is an aeronautical term meaning the time between oxygen loss and the moment a pilot becomes unconscious due to that deprivation, the last chance the pilot has to save himself. Ferlinghetti uses this as a metaphor for the ecological condition of the earth and our response (or lack of ) to that.

Ferlinghetti is interviewed by Michael Silverblatt at KCRW's Bookworm show. Enjoy hearing from this legend.

L'Esperance at the Asian Art Museum

Mari L'Esperance reads her poem "Anju, from the Far World, after seven paintings by Fukuyo Matsui. The reading was at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum.

Tracery, what a ghostly word, and such a pleasure to say. Thanks for sharing this poem, Mari!