My Quiet Lightning Reading: From Scratch

Literary Round: No BS Version

Over at Brevity Barrie Jean Borich discusses The Craft of Writing Queer.

Randall Horton reviews Remica Bingham’s What We Ask of Flesh over at The Offending Adam.

I'm not sure how I feel about this list of Top 10 Hottest Poets of the 19th Century via The Writing Source. Despite that it's "meant to be fun," it still feels disrespectful. Thoughts?

There's a new issue of Rose & Thorn available, including work by the lovely Mary Stone Dockery.

Kelli Russell Agondon provides a nice list of gifts for the world-lovers in your life.

BBC News reports on Chinese writers living in a culture that censors their work and imprisons them for writing it.

Matthew Bostick doesn't freak out about e-publishing. Good for him. We might consider the same.

Karen Lillis is collecting various writers' list of favorite small/indie press books from 2012. Here's the first installment. I plan to send mine noms soon.

Cheryl Strayed shares this dynamite quote from Adrienne Rich:

"We may feel bitterly how little our poems can do in the face of seemingly out-of-control technological power and seemingly limitless corporate greed, yet it has always been true that poetry can break isolation, show us to ourselves when we are outlawed or made invisible, remind us of beauty where no beauty seems possible, remind us of kinship where all is represented as separation."  -Adrienne Rich

Funny little poetry nugget.

And finally, the Poetry Foundation gathered a list of Hanukkah poems.

When Siblings Spawn

My brother is having a baby. Well, his wife is doing the "having" (and by having I mean pushing and screaming and laboring) while he's doing the calming and the pep-talking and the ice-chip-getting.

I'm really excited. Can you tell? In case it's not clear, below is a photo depicting my excitement.

I can't wait to go home for Christmas. I leave early on December 14th. Everyone else in my big-ass family will have had two weeks with my soon-to-be-born (possibly-already-born-by-the-time-you-read-this) nephew, so I will get to love that little monkey all to myself. At least, that's what I'm telling myself. There's a lot of family that loves him. He's a lucky kid.

babies are kyooot! 

I Wrote Ten Poems in One Day

One free verse, one prose poem, one Naani, one palindromic butterfly cinquain, one semi-found poem, one erasure poem, one cinquain, one Tanka, one Cento, and one haiku.

That's ten poems in one day folks, and I did it with very little sleep (not planned that way, just happened). Never again can I try to tell myself that I'm too tired or overworked or whatever other excuse I want to make up to put off writing.

Thanks, November.

Halfway Mark

one down, nine to go

I've written one poem draft today. For now it's called "everything" and includes a list of all the things I'm afraid of and/or ashamed to admit that I'm afraid of. Here's the first line.

"death motherhood forever pain drowning sharks in a pool sharks in a river sharks dying slowly falling"

There are things I didn't put in this because I'd be admitting something for another person too. I'd like to say it was hard to write this, but it wasn't. I liked the idea of putting all this scary shit in one place. It's like putting all my crazy into a little Tupperware container and sticking it in the fridge and saying, "I'll deal with all that stuff later." *dusts off hands*

Poem-a-Day Becomes Ten Poems-a-Day

In order to catch up for my Poem-a-Day for November, I need to write ten poems today. I plan to live blog the process, which won't begin until after my writing workshop ends around noon (left coast time). If you have any awesome poem prompts you'd like to share to save me the time of having to find some myself, I'd be super grateful.

This photo is the feedback I'm working on for tomorrow morning's workshop. I will be tired while writing these poems. Even more fun.