Diving In or a Step at a Time

This week jumped from a cold and rainy Spring, to a hot and sunny Summer. I took my first dive into the lake, was greeted with an icy bite, and got right back out. Saturday, I took the slow walk down the ramp, but didn’t get all the way in. Which was better? Each had its purpose. This seems like a metaphor for reading and writing. The first time reading something, quickly diving in then getting out. But then studying something you read, slowly moving deeper and deeper. Or in writing, diving in, writing the draft as quickly as possible to get everything down and then getting out. Then revising, slowly getting deeper and deeper.

Today’s Poem

It’s Quadrille Monday at dVerse Poets Pub, and Whimzygizmo’s work to put in our poems of forty-four words is “place.”

This life doesn’t provide a place card on a placemat

I’m stumbling around trying to find my place—
like a game of musical chairs
with half the seats
and Loki in charge of music,
or being placed in the middle of a race
in a hoop skirt, stilettos, and blindfold:
an unfair placement test.

Poetry MFA Week Six Review

This week was a bit tricky. The last week of Doug Kearney’s workshop was about Revision, and the MFA was about reviewing everything I’ve written in the last five weeks and finding what I haven’t been writing yet, and taking risks. The prompts given didn’t help me write deeper as they intended, but they did help me get through some review and pick out my favorite lines.

Writing: Though I didn’t feel like I got very far with my review of last month’s writing, I became aware of something I haven’t been writing about during a conversation with a friend, and wrote a poem draft right after I put down the phone. And later in the week a poetry prompt inspired me to start writing about my vacation, finally.

Reading: I didn’t read through everything I wrote in April as I wanted to. I did get a good start though and I’m excited to keep ruminating on all the work I’ve done so far.

Portable MFA Week Seven: Time and Space

This week is about working with stanzas. Stanza means room in Italian. I think it will be interesting reading and writing poems like moving through a house, exploring different rooms.

Writing: This week’s assignment is to choose two pieces of my writing from last week and experiment with the use of the stanza.

Reading: This week, the assignment is to look back at some of the free-verse poems by other writers I’ve read not just in the last seven weeks, but also over the past several years, noticing what the poet is doing with stanzas. So this week I’ll be reviewing and comparing poems by Ada Limón, Louise Glück, and Stanley Kunitz, along with the poems from Poem-a-Day to see how and why they use stanza breaks.

I found two free online poetry courses that I haven’t taken yet: Poetry with Prof. S. P. Dhanavel from Indian Institute of Technology Madras provided by class central. And Playing with Poetry: Creative Writing and Poetics from The University of Newcastle Australia on Future Learn.

Time is precious, and I appreciate that you spend some of your time here at Experience Writing reading and learning along with me. I set up a buy me a coffee account, so you can buy me a beverage to support what I do here. It will help a lot.

Happy Reading and Writing!