what if our homes were places not where you retreat from the big bad world but what if they were places of hospitality where we welcome people in and we share life with them and we ask them about their hopes and dreams and… their failures?
kurt hannah
Month: November 2009
painting with kidlingers on a saturday morning…
coffeehouse junkie podcasts
there are three new coffeehouse junkie podcasts (link) available this month. the recent episode features an essay i wrote — for a poetry writing workshop I’m teaching at the flood fine arts center — titled ‘the echo.’ also included are two poems that were discused in the second session of the poetry writing workshop: ‘i saw her through the mist’ by roger aplon and ‘the old man goes home’ by kell robertson.
Screen Addiction
Even when we try to avoid looking at screens, our eyes are naturally drawn to their flickering lights. The dazzling special effects of our iPhones and our video games stimulate our brains more powerfully than reality. Given the option of looking at the slow pace of nature unfold or the frenetic speed of a big budget movie playing on a tiny screen, we often choose the screen. […] Our visual addiction is masking our fear of feeling existence to its fullest.
Screen Addiction, Adbusters (via somethingchanged) (via jomc)
Good books are truer than reality
All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and the sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.
Ernest Hemingway, Esquire, December 1934 (via 52books)
Field notes
malty: My post-it note confession
Field notes
confirmed… i have a visual on snow flurries in south asheville… kidlingers are in revolt & searching for their hoth battle suits…
Field notes
this morning, i think i’ve heard more sacred hymns on npr’s giving thanks program than i’ve heard in the church i’ve attended for eight years… weird… um, so, happy thanksgiving day & imma eat some bbq now…
Field notes
yes, it’s almost 11p.m. & i just returned from the grocery store with the essentials… so i’m thinking bbq is probably the most nontraditional thanksgiving day meal ever… right?
Field notes
searching for a new chess set and board for a young apprentice… can’t decide between an isle of lewis chess set or celtic chess set…
Action book
quality paper action book (via)
Theory versus practice
Creative-writing programs are designed on the theory that students who have never published a poem can teach other students who have never published a poem how to write a publishable poem.
“Show or Tell: Should creative writing be taught?” by Louis Menand in The New Yorker (via somethingchanged)
the definition of haiku
the definition of haiku is more than 3-line poems with no more than 17 syllables… the key is the revelatory moment…
Haiku… are short, unrhymed, poems… that juxtapose two images to capture a moment of insight about the world or about oneself. (via poetry foundation)
i wasn’t kidding when i said i have a 1000-page manuscript. here’s a photo of it on my drawing table. now if i can only find where i put my lighter…
speaking of ‘inadvertently burnt’ manuscripts… i came across this interesting piece about about William Carlos Williams’ first volume of poetry…
Of William Carlos Williams’ debut slim volume, Poems, which the young and popular physician of Paterson, NJ published privately in 1909 only two copies are known to exist. Of the second state, which differs from the first in only a few respects, a hundred copies were published in 1910 by a local printer Howell at 25 cents a copy. Dr Williams took a dozen of these to the local stationery store and after a month four had been sold, so he brought home the remainder and after distributing a few copies to members of his family, returned the rest of the edition to his printer. At some point Howell, as Williams recalled in his Autobiography, then wrapped them in a neat bundle and put them away for ‘safe keeping’. After they had ‘ reposed ten years or more on a rafter under the eaves of his old chicken coop ‘ they were ‘, Williams recorded ruefully, ‘inadvertently burnt’. (via bookride)
Field notes
just returned from the river arts studio stroll… number one kidlinger is jazzed, but can’t decide what to do, ‘dad, i can’t decide if i want to paint or do ceramics or glass works’ … awesome! & to top it off… clear blue sky, 72°F outside, plus 12 bones for lunch (we ate outside next to the river in the middle of november)… how cool is that?
Field notes
around 2 i walk into the fiddlin pig for lunch & the waitress has my table ready… as i slide into the booth this song by johnny paycheck comes on the sound system… i’m just glad the kitchen staff didn’t revolt & leave the place… because the bbq & ribs were delicious…
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
American Letterpress: The Art of Hatch Show Print
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
some days i dream of steamer trunks
some days i dream of steamer trunks & where they might take me… (via creativeinspiration)
today’s running soundtrack
Bang! You’re It! – Sophomore
Massive Nights – The Hold Steady
When We Were Young – Dolores O’Riordan
Light Up Ya Lighter – Michael Franti & Spearhead
Now I’m Gone – Juliana Hatfield
Right Hand On My Heart – The Whigs
99% – The Mooney Suzuki
Gilt Complex – Sons and Daughters
today the hill won…
maybe it was the temperature: 38°… or maybe it was the 5% grade… or the 170-foot ascent… or maybe it was the cookies & milk before i went to bed after the concert…
whatever it was… it took me 33.10 to finish 5k…
In defense of readers
Reading is a necessarily solitary experience—like dying, everyone reads alone—but over the centuries readers have learned how to cultivate that solitude, how to grow it in the least hospitable environments. An experienced reader can lose herself in a good text with anything short of a war going on (and, sometimes, even then)—the horticultural equivalent of growing orchids in a desert.
Despite the ubiquity of reading on the web, readers remain a neglected audience. Much of our talk about web design revolves around a sense of movement: users are thought to be finding, searching, skimming, looking. We measure how frequently they click but not how long they stay on the page. We concern ourselves with their travel and participation—how they move from page to page, who they talk to when they get there—but forget the needs of those whose purpose is to be still. Readers flourish when they have space—some distance from the hubbub of the crowds—and as web designers, there is yet much we can do to help them carve out that space.
the creative class
… the people of the creative class are fairly certain they are destined to be creative, but can never be certain about just how creative they are. So they must seek outward signs of their blessed inner superiority, must seek or contrive recognition for their creativity whenever possible. This is that class’s essential self-consciousness, and when it is acute, it becomes hipsterism.
“Creative writing and crippling self-consciousness,” Marginal Utility (via somethingchanged)
mutually assured humiliation
Young people may regret tomorrow what they make public today but I think we will all be protected by the doctrine of mutually assured humiliation (I won’t dig up your college-party picture if you don’t dig up mine).
Jeff Jarvis, “Openness and the Internet,” BusinessWeek (via somethingchanged)
malty: My post-it note confession
Coffeehouse Junkie 