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Showing posts from 2017

Words Thing: Fangle

Another word that, if it were a word, would have given me a handsome score in Words With Friends. Also one of those words which should be a word. As George Carlin said, the concept of chalance exists. fangle To fashion something, but not in a pioneering, innovative or iconoclastic way. A product engineer might fangle a kitchen mixer with slightly better blades or a razor that stays sharper a little longer. The thing may be said to be fangled, but certainly not newfangled.

The Words Thing: Ramotions

  for David Brehemer If our feelings were rational then coming through fire with a suspicion we faked it as though chemistries beyond our reasoning weren’t working unseen to protect us, would never happen; and we’d rest injured but assured that what we feel is intelligent, more than doubt is real. The deeply sensitive poet David Brehemer was saying that emotions aren't rational, but that maybe there is a psychological phenomenon of emotions that are rational. He suggest the name "ramotions" as a portmanteau. 

The Words Thing: Conifer

When a young man, I planted a stand of cedar, Canadian yew, redwood and fir. Now I conifer the job of their upkeep to you.

The Words Thing: Spontannuity

A playful series of short poems titled with the single words the poems are about.  Spontannuity An Elvis impersonator I once interviewed used this localism more than twice. You can understand it to mean a specified income payable at stated intervals for a fixed or a contingent period, such as a lifetime, in consideration of a gargantuan pompadoured banana skating across frozen bacon grease.

The Words Thing: Detail

This was the first, or one of the first, in this playful series of short poems titled with the single words the poems are about. Detail As I played with a tiny toy horse, my mom noticed and commented on the way its crafting included “every little detail.” I said, “No, it's an h -tail.”

The Words Thing: Hairdid

This series of short poems is emerging. They're titled with the single words the poems are about. Some of these words come from playing the app Words with Friends, essentially Scrabble. When I get letters that should rearrange into a word, but don't quite make it, I start inventing words like: hairdid I love your hair! You must have hairdone. Once, you hairdid often; but these days, one only hairdoes what one can hairdo.

The Words Thing: Rote

Question: is blogging still a thing? Effective for purposes of what? And then? But anyhow, here is this project I'm thinking on, and maybe if I start to post the pieces here, they will appear to coalesce (I love the word coalesce) into something besides coal in lumps. The Words Thing: short poems titled with the single words the poems are about. Favorites. Least favorites. Fascinations. Miscellaneous. Embouchure. Heliofranticulating.  Ah, the spell check doesn't like old coins. All the better. So:  Rote This , written, is set unchanging in place. Still this, literally this, set. I may change my mind but these words, these this-es, repeated, are rote.

My last full repository

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The fortune cookie fortune says "YOU ARE AN ARTISTIC PERSON. LET YOUR COLORS SHOW."

Saving bits from a completed notebook

Oh, I should take a picture of the hardbound book that's served me since around October. It's been a good one. Some one-offs that I want to save: Sesquipedalophobia, the fear of long words, makes sufferers distressed when they find out the name of what they have. Would I trade the fantasy of world peace for the illusion of personal peace? What gets me is not knowing that i could die at any moment so much as knowing that I am at every one.

A poet's progress

Found out my book One Way to Ask is on the new releases shelf at the Richmond Public Library. I must go visit it. My mind also says: bring copies to El Cerrito, Albany, Berkeley, etc., etc. They will host a reading of the Richmond Anthology of Poetry in April and One Way to Ask in May! Through Natasha Dennerstein I have met Maw Shein Win, the poet laureate of El Cerrito. We talked about co-hosting at some point. Busy day ahead, but hope to submit The Trip in its new revision today.

Poetry progress

I forgot to mention yesterday that I am working on a series of haiku that, although uncredited, will be the best read poems I've ever written. I am writing a series of haiku that will appear throughout the worldwide facilities of a very large tech company, okay Google, to gently remind employees to behave in polite and respectful ways. When launched, I will try to post photos.

Today's poetry progress:

Wrote a new poem draft, probably to about 80% "done," following a listing for poems about donuts. Mine is about the slang "jelly donut," that my old comedy group used to use for jokes that lacked an idea and a punchline, an unformed joke or bit. Made a significant change to "The Trip," a sequence of 37 poems about my family's summer trip. I took out the largely unneeded epigrams on each poem. That change followed feedback from rehearsing my reading of selected poems from The Trip at Tell It On Tuesday. The show is next Tuesday, February 28, and it will be better than it would have been thanks to the rehearsal and this change. Also made improvements to two poems in the sequence. Sent a copy of Richmond Anthology of Poetry to the SF Poetry Center at SF State University following introduction to one of the curators through my friend, poet Lauren Schiffman. Sifted through poetry listings for possible future submissions for The Trip. Received po