So I'm soon to start in with the festivities for the New Year with inlaws. Will I be able to post before the end of the year? I don't know. So just in case I am too overwhelmed later, let me wish you a Happy New Year right now.
And provide you with a link that explains some of the Japanese New Year traditions.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Submitting to the Subconscious
Jennifer Haupt explores writing rituals at the Psychology Today blog, asking, "Writing Rituals: Spiritual or Simply Habits?", a question she doesn't actually bother to answer....
She does mention a few rituals of various writers, including the following:
"At the end of each writing day I think, What do I want to write about tomorrow? I ask questions about the bare bones of the scene or chapter: Who needs to be here? What's the mood? Are they inside or outside, alone or in a crowd? What should be resolved or undone by the end of this scene? Then I put the questions on my pin board and close up for the day. In the morning, not only do I know where to start, but I've given my subconscious mind a chance to scribble in the details."
- Susan Henderson, Up From the Blue
Earlier this year, I saw similar advice from Julianna Baggott on her blog, Baggott, Asher, Bode, about letting your subconscious do some of the work for you. Here's what she had to say:
2. If you can't (or choose not to) write in the mornings, still run your eyes over your pages so you can keep your characters at the fore of your mind as you walk through your day ...
9. And, of course, tell yourself you're going to write. Let your subconscious begin to prepare the material, and then show up.
I tried these tips earlier this, and they were very helpful to me, especially thinking about the poem I was working on just before going to sleep. But I've since forgotten to keep this habit up. What a great reminder as the New Year comes!
She does mention a few rituals of various writers, including the following:
"At the end of each writing day I think, What do I want to write about tomorrow? I ask questions about the bare bones of the scene or chapter: Who needs to be here? What's the mood? Are they inside or outside, alone or in a crowd? What should be resolved or undone by the end of this scene? Then I put the questions on my pin board and close up for the day. In the morning, not only do I know where to start, but I've given my subconscious mind a chance to scribble in the details."
- Susan Henderson, Up From the Blue
Earlier this year, I saw similar advice from Julianna Baggott on her blog, Baggott, Asher, Bode, about letting your subconscious do some of the work for you. Here's what she had to say:
2. If you can't (or choose not to) write in the mornings, still run your eyes over your pages so you can keep your characters at the fore of your mind as you walk through your day ...
9. And, of course, tell yourself you're going to write. Let your subconscious begin to prepare the material, and then show up.
I tried these tips earlier this, and they were very helpful to me, especially thinking about the poem I was working on just before going to sleep. But I've since forgotten to keep this habit up. What a great reminder as the New Year comes!
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Philly's Finest
I grew up just outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It's the city I name when asked for my hometown, though I have only one brother (and his family) living there now. So I'm especially pleased to hear that Philly has chosen its first poet laureate, and it's the most deserving Sonia Sanchez.
Another reason to be proud to be from Philadelphia, PA!
Another reason to be proud to be from Philadelphia, PA!
Poetry Plan 2012
I've been inundated with work and busy with the holidays, so I haven't been writing poems. Last week, to remedy the situation, I took out all the finished poems I have to see how close I am to a new manuscript. The good news is that I am closer than I had thought. The bad news is that there is, as of now, no obvious way to organize these disparate poems.
For both my first book and chapbook, I wrote poems with themes and structures in mind. I'm that kind of person, in general: I like structure and form and repetition. But I didn't have any cohesive ideas after I finished my first book-length book, so I just wrote orphan poems, and now I have a stack that is nearly manuscript-length (although stacks go up, so that should be manuscript-high, perhaps?). Anyway, at first, the morass panicked me, but I calmed down and realized this is just a new opportunity for me to try and suss out a structure or themes after the fact, instead of before. A new challenge.
Earlier this year I wrote a post about books of poems with overall guiding principles and/or themes versus poetry books without, and at that time, I found some resources showing ways to organize a manuscript (scroll down to the bottom of that post for the resources). It's time for me to review those resources and find a guiding principle or two. I'm short 10-20 pages for a complete manuscript, so I'll try to identify my organizational structure and then write what I need to knit together the poems I've already got into some kind of cohesiveness.
So that's my poetry plan for 2012. What's yours?
For both my first book and chapbook, I wrote poems with themes and structures in mind. I'm that kind of person, in general: I like structure and form and repetition. But I didn't have any cohesive ideas after I finished my first book-length book, so I just wrote orphan poems, and now I have a stack that is nearly manuscript-length (although stacks go up, so that should be manuscript-high, perhaps?). Anyway, at first, the morass panicked me, but I calmed down and realized this is just a new opportunity for me to try and suss out a structure or themes after the fact, instead of before. A new challenge.
Earlier this year I wrote a post about books of poems with overall guiding principles and/or themes versus poetry books without, and at that time, I found some resources showing ways to organize a manuscript (scroll down to the bottom of that post for the resources). It's time for me to review those resources and find a guiding principle or two. I'm short 10-20 pages for a complete manuscript, so I'll try to identify my organizational structure and then write what I need to knit together the poems I've already got into some kind of cohesiveness.
So that's my poetry plan for 2012. What's yours?
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Books for the Holidays
Did you get any poetry books for Christmas? If so, which are you most looking forward to reading?
I got a nice stack of poetry books from my husband and from my parents (yay and thank you!). Among them, a few that I am particularly excited to read are:
A Point Is That Which Has No Part by Liz Waldner. This won the Iowa Poetry Prize and the James McLaughlin Prize about a decade ago, and I've been wanting it ever since. It's title refers to a definition from Euclid's Geometry, which is what immediately drew my attention. I bought another book by Waldner in the meantime, but somehow I had never gotten this one. So excited to have it, I started reading it on Christmas afternoon. The University of Iowa actually offers the entire text online here.
Paul Guest's My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge is also a book I've been wanting to read, and now can. Guest writes about his paralysis since a bicycle accident at age 12. As our family copes with devastating health issues, I find myself drawn more and more to Guest's poetry about struggles with the physical, written with poignancy, wit, and a realistic edge.
the true keeps calm biding its story by Rusty Morrison is probably the book I was coveting most this Christmas season, as I am in the throes of a poetry crush on Morrison, but didn't have this volume. But I've blogged about Morrison before...
So how about you? Did you get any particularly coveted books this holiday season?
I got a nice stack of poetry books from my husband and from my parents (yay and thank you!). Among them, a few that I am particularly excited to read are:
A Point Is That Which Has No Part by Liz Waldner. This won the Iowa Poetry Prize and the James McLaughlin Prize about a decade ago, and I've been wanting it ever since. It's title refers to a definition from Euclid's Geometry, which is what immediately drew my attention. I bought another book by Waldner in the meantime, but somehow I had never gotten this one. So excited to have it, I started reading it on Christmas afternoon. The University of Iowa actually offers the entire text online here.
Paul Guest's My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge is also a book I've been wanting to read, and now can. Guest writes about his paralysis since a bicycle accident at age 12. As our family copes with devastating health issues, I find myself drawn more and more to Guest's poetry about struggles with the physical, written with poignancy, wit, and a realistic edge.
the true keeps calm biding its story by Rusty Morrison is probably the book I was coveting most this Christmas season, as I am in the throes of a poetry crush on Morrison, but didn't have this volume. But I've blogged about Morrison before...
So how about you? Did you get any particularly coveted books this holiday season?
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