In spite of a very crazy week I’m still on track with the 30 poems in 30 days challenge. The rain delays on Monday afforded me time to compose a page-length poem. It’s no where near the ideal of composing 75 lines of poetry per day, but it’s a much needed discipline just to fill a page in my moleskine notebook.
Recently, I heard, or read, someone responding to the question of which is more important: growth or innovation. The person responded innovation, because innovation feeds growth and not the other way around. HBR provided the following points of innovation:
Link: The 4 Ps of Innovation
Ray Gonzalez’s prose poem “Beginning with Two Lines from Rexroth” begins with the opening line:
I see the unwritten books, the unrecorded experiments, the unpainted pictures, the interrupted lives, a staircase leading to a guarantee, the glowing frame of wisdom protecting me from harm after I escape the questions of a lifetime.
There’s an urgency to these lines that remind me of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl.” Also, there is a strong collision of abstract ideas and images as in the following line:
There is no agony and waste, only the steps into the frontier where it is easy to hide.
There’s an interview with Ray Gonzalez on Bombsite where he discussed who he crafts line and prose poems.
A writer laments that he has a huge Facebook following, but it doesn’t convert to readers of his book. From AdPulp:
Gregory Levey, communications professor and author of Shut Up, I’m Talking, says, “if my online fans can’t even grasp that the fan page they’ve joined is for a book, I’m not particularly optimistic that they’ll read the book in question – or any books at all, for that matter.”
Ad Age’s Simon Dumenco opines: “Facebook has become such a burden and a time-suck that they’re only able to devote a fraction of their shattered attention spans to it. They’re reacting to friends’ updates and clicking ‘like’ buttons and joining fan pages like Pavlov’s dogs — it’s becoming mechanical, thoughtless. The opposite of ‘engaged.'”
(Link: Yet Another Facebook Story: A Mile Wide But An Inch Deep)
After reading this I may just pull the plug on my Facebook account (though I know, like the Hotel California, Facebook doesn’t really let you leave).
If my voice is not reaching you
add to it the echo—
echo of ancient epics
Afzal Ahmed Syed‘s poem “If My Voice Is Not Reaching You” offers such a great opening stanza. A poet can go almost anywhere with those opening lines and a reader will follow with intrigue.
The title says it all: Kindle and iPad Books Take Longer to Read than Print:
…reading speeds declined by 6.2% on the iPad and 10.7% on the Kindle compared to print.
(Link: Kindle and iPad Books Take Longer to Read than Print)
Deborah (of 32 Poems) invites interested persons to write a poem a day for the next 30 days. The invite was sent out on Sunday (and I didn’t read it until today… so, I’m a bit late), but I think I’m up for the challenge. Anyone else?
Read more details about the challenge here: 30 Poems in 30 Days.
A few months ago I began brewing my coffee through a tea infuser. The glass decanter for a coffee press I used had shattered and I was awaiting shipment of a stainless steel coffee press. So I brewed a cup of coffee with an infuser and was amazed by an excellent cup of my favorite bean beverage.
The stainless steel coffee press arrived and I began using it daily. It took me awhile to get used to the taste (coffee tastes slightly different in a steel press). The convenience of putting the coffee grounds in the press, adding hot water, pressing, and (more often than I’d like to admit) hauling the press to the office.
Then a programmable coffee maker arrived and I was giddy at that thought of waking up each morning to the smell of freshly brewed coffee. After a few days of that I decided to revert back to the slow process of a single cup of infused coffee. The coffee maker added a plastic oily taste that I really didn’t enjoy. The steel coffee press had a slight metallic taste that reminded me of drinking coffee from an enamel metal camp cup (which wasn’t bad, just different). The glass coffee press had the best flavor. But there’s something about the slow, ritualistic ceremony of pouring hot water onto the infuser and watching a light layer of foam appear on the grounds that is very appealing to me.
When I read the following story in the Mountain Xpress, I found a local establishment that caters to me coffee snob tastes. Here’s five comments made in the article:
Here’s a five step approach to successful blogging list I discovered.
- Decide WHAT the Post Should DO for You
- How Can I Be Helpful?
- The Actual Writing
- Review The Last Few Weeks’ Posts
- Repeat
In one corner Billy Collins. In the other corner CA Conrad for a dispute over Emily Dickinson’s sexual preference. This should be a great fisticuff battle… except it’s taking place in the American poetry scene which will be mostly ignored by the general public.
Repeat after me: Branding is product, service and experience.* It’s not a wicked cool logo with drop shadow and PMS color key nor a catchy slogan. It’s simple and complicated and it’s why ad agencies typically don’t get it.
- Ad placement drives profits
- Advertising creatives are spoiled. And entitled. And enabled.
- The integrated agency is a fallacy
- Advertising is a knock-knock joke. Design is a dialogue
Design is dialogue sums it up for me. Know your audience, build community, and provide consistent, satisfactory customer experience.
*Watch this video for an excellent overview of what brand is (via AdPulp).
A good book is like a good conversation with a good friend.
“Reading aloud lets you craft great writing” writes James (of Men with Pens) how goes on to offer a few tips on writing including:
Link: How to Become a Better Writer and Get Readers Loving You
The last couple months I’ve been writing scripts for a proof of concept (POC) audio production. Often I’ll find myself pausing during a reading and re-write portions of copy because it sounds weak or clunky or maybe too upbeat when it should be somber. During a recording session with other voice talent, we may continue revising copy because transitions, though they look good on paper, may not perform well. So, yes, reading your writing out load us beneficial to improving writing skills.
I’m reading an anthology of steampunk essays and fiction titled, well, Steampunk. It’s a sub-genre of science-, speculative-, historical-fiction. What’s intriguing to me is the hard-boiled speculative science with smartly dressed Victorian, British fashion. For those of you serious about Steampunk, would you believe there is a Steampunk Emporium (providing clothing and other accessories) and Clockwork Couture (another purveyor of fine clothing and accessories).
Here’s a few writing tips from the author of Til We Have Faces:
1. Read good books and avoid most magazines.
2. Write with the ear, not the eye. Make every sentence sound good.
3. Write only about things that interest you. If you have no interests, you won’t ever be a writer.
4. Know the meaning of every word you use.
It’s either a clever turn if a phrase, or not. “I grew up in the Bible Belt…” the anonymous contribution to The Sun’s Readers Write section begins and concludes that “…it was better to be an honest sinner than a dishonest churchgoer.”
The phrase that arrested my attention is “honest sinner.” Juxtaposing words in that fashion are delicious.
So, I looked up the etymology of the words to see if the anonymous author is clever or something else.
“Honest” comes from the Latin meaning “honorable.”
“Sinner,” or its root word “sin,” as far as I can find comes from the Latin meaning “guilty,” thus sinner means “guilty one.” Further, “sin” means to “miss the mark,” specifically, “to miss the mark of righteousness.”
So the anonymous author constructs a phrase meaning “honorably guilty” or “honorably missing the mark.” Either conclusion (“honorably guilty” or “dishonorably attending church”) seems disappointing. To open up the phrase a bit more — the author proposes that it is better to honorably miss the mark than to charade dishonorably in church. At this point I realize that the anonymous author reveals a logic similar to that of wet noodles. I’m too disappointed to continue to write about the author’s logical fallacies and philosophical short cuts.
(link: Fireflies in the Garden by Robert Frost)
Some evenings, as the sun sets, I water the garden. A two-gallon water can is used and one can of water per garden box seems to be sufficient. The other night while I watered the garden in the evening, the fireflies appeared to come up from the ground and surround me; almost as if the water droplets transformed upon impact and rose into the gathering darkness as luminous creatures. Within an hour or two I could see their light in the tallest oaks and pines surrounding the cottage. But, alas, like Robert Frost offers “they can’t sustain the part” of the stars above.
Like twilight time, the garden is transitioning. The snap peas began to wither a few days ago. I can’t tell if it is due to the lack of rain or the peas have passed their season of growth. I’ll plant kale and shard to replace the pea plants. So far the most produce comes from the chili pepper plant and the lettuce. The zucchini and squash are disappointing. It appears the leaves have some kind of mold; yielding only four vegetables. It’s too early to tell, but it looks like the tomato plants will yield well this year.
James Longenbach presented a lecture titled “The Excess of Poetry” at the Warren Wilson College MFA program for writers this morning. Here’s a few of the notes I wrote:
There are more notes I wrote, but they are a bit scramble. Longenbach presented poems by Keats, Dickinson and Pound as way to explore the “fine excess” of poetry.
GermanHeit is an excellent resource for those interested in learning to read German (or learn in better) or those desiring to know more about life in contemporary Germany. Recently, GermanHeit published a post about the German author Herta Müller — winner of the Nobel Prize for literature — regarding her novel “Atemschaukel” (link: GermanHeit). I inquired if there is a reliable bilingual or an English edition and GermanHeit replied with a link to an excerpt (link: “Everything I Own I Carry With Me” – an excerpt). A link to zeitgenössische Dichter (link: Die Deutsche Gedichte-Bibliothek) was also provided after I mentioned I enjoyed reading Durs Grunbein’s poetry. In one of his collections, Grunbein portrays a grasshopper as a Stoic philosopher in the poem “In der Provinz 3.” One of the qualities of Grunbein’s poetry I enjoy is the way he unfolds a poem and an image or thought is revealed in an arresting manner that catches the reader slightly off balance.
The Warren Wilson College MFA program for writers provides free readings and lectures to the public. The first reading begins tomorrow night. The reading schedule is posted on their web site (link). I plan on attending as many as I am able. However, a passage from one of Günter Grass’s novels makes me wonder about the validity of creative writing programs.
Here unpolished literary attempts were read aloud and critiqued…. based on the American notion of teaching creative writing. (Crabwalk, Chapter 2)
Czeslaw Milosz’s birthday is today. Just in case you wanted to know.
To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.
Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees
That half a proper gardener’s work is done upon his knees,
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hand and pray
For the Glory of the Garden, that it may not pass away!
(link: The Glory of the Garden by Rudyard Kipling)
The correlation between gardening and prayer had not occurred to me until I read that Kipling poem. American culture has forgotten how growing one’s own food is a lot of labor and often a gamble. This year there has been sufficient rain, but previous years these mountains have experienced drought. In years past I’ve lost plants to a Spring frost, plant mold and blight. But when Kipling wrote those lines ubiquitous herbicides and pesticides where unavailable as well as genetically modified plants. Gardening and spirituality have always been connected, but only in recent history that we have forgotten that truth as the culture detoured to a road of industrial foods.
So far the garden has yielded a modest supply of lettuce for occasional salads, a dozen or so snap peas, a half-dozen chili peppers. The tomatoes should be coming in soon as well as the squash. The first load of vermicompost was used in the garden box where the peppers grow. (It may be difficult to see in the photo, but there are two green totes behind the tomato garden box where I vermicompost table scraps.) At the current pace, worms compost one tote of table scraps every three to four weeks. It’s hard to imagine that this little garden provides so much work that many evenings and weekends are filled with labor on my hands and knees.
I can’t complain and all my bills have been paid.
Thank you so much for all the wonderful…Link: PlankEye
This weekend, I visited the 90s through the portal of my compact disc collection and discovered that some of my favorite, modern, alternative, somewhat indie, but mostly obscure bands released their creative energy upon the world around 1995. Most of them didn’t survive the threshold of Y2K. Those who did survive Y2K, panted, sputtered, and collapsed shortly after 9-11. As I listen to some of the old tunes I recall how some of these songs resonated with me. Room Full of Walters came out with a song that articulated a message I didn’t have words for. At the time, I lived in the gun-totting, bible-thumping, concealed-arms permits Southern state. First time I heard the song, I said out loud, “You read my mind!”
Jesus Christ would never carry a gun
but you defend your right to bare one….
What’s up with you?
Why do you do the things
you do in the name of God?Link: Room Full of Walters
Straight out of the university with a degree in graphic design, I had a passion for art. During the day I’d work at a small publishing company designing newsletters and booklets for residential and commercial properties, but at night I was painting, writing and reading. My goal was to have a solo show with at least 20 paintings. That’s when the music of Dimestore Prophets hit me like a two by four.
Truth is getting so hard to paint
Just chasing the wind, no place to begin
Mister, you’re not the first
Try working with dirt
Yeah sure ok MonetLink: Dimestore Prophets
By the time the curtain closed on the 90s I finally had that solo art exhibit.
Another Dimestore Prophets song that stung me like a bee and wouldn’t let me ignore it was a tune called “Soothsayer.” At the time, I was recovering from the effects of being in a Christian fundamentalist environment and I just couldn’t stomach religion anymore. “Soothsayer” complicated my thoughts about God and faith and life in a way that still haunts me today.
Kneel down to the
system, hail religious
grindNow jump like a
circus
dog through my hoops of fireYou won’t find a
back door to
heavenLink: Dimestore Prophets
And then there are girls. Futile attempts at romance. Negotiating various relationships. And this song sometimes captured those moments at night on the patio, drinking coffee, smoking a cheap cigar, trying to read a book about two lovers who just don’t quite connect because of class or taste or some other issue that complicates life (but makes great novels).
Better off if things were left unsaid.
Tomorrow’s sorrows waiting there once again.
The silver pinholes of the night
refuse to sing their starry song tonight.Link: PlankEye
And I realize that these songs are kind of like milestones. Some chosen, others placed in my way, but markers nonetheless to surviving the late 90s and progress on to the new century — new millennia.
Are polymaths extinct? In the ancient world polymaths shared expertise in various fields of knowledge. One example is Leonardo da Vinci — not merely a painter, but sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, cartographer, botanist and writer. More recently, Thomas Jefferson fits that definition as a horticulturist, political leader, architect, inventor, and founder of the University of Virginia. Is it possible to be a polymath in this modern world? As it relates to blogging, can effective bloggers be polymaths?
Copyblogger offers some habits of effective bloggers. The list includes:
(Link: 8 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers)
One of the things stated as an attribute of an effective blogger is:
Successful bloggers choose a topic and stick to it.
They write consistently about their chosen subject… Even when they write about something that seems to be off-topic, they relate it back to the niche they know…
This makes practical sense as far as marketability. You don’t expect comic books sold at a doughnut shop. But what about a gas station? Of course, you purchase gas at a gas station, but most gas station owners don’t make profits from the sale of gasoline. Most of their revenue comes from products sold inside the gas station. In high school, I stopped by the gas station routinely to purchase comic books. Should blogs be doughnut shops or gas stations?
In the marketing world, as in the blogosphere, an individual who chooses a topic and sticks to it is a specialist or consultant. In Peter Rubie’s Telling the Story, he presents this definition of genres:
The development of genres came about as a marketing necessity. “Category” and “genre” are marketing terms… Their purpose is basically to help you more easily find what it is you’re looking for.
Telling the Story then goes on to list seven narrative nonfiction categories: adventure, travel books, biography, history, military, memoir and true crimes. The music industry follows the same protocol: country, pop, rock, hip-hop, and so on into the sub-genres of goth-metal, indie-folk-americana, afro-celt, etc. What Copyblogger proposes is to be marketable to your online audience. If you’re a tech blog, write about technology. If you’re an organic gardener, write about gardening. If you’re a mom, write about mommy stuff. That way your online readers are trained to expect only doughnuts at the doughnut shop.
The question is this: if blogs are specialized, will that make the community more or less knowledgable? I’ve noticed that art blogs often link to other art blogs. I understand that the reason for this is to create a strong community. The challenge with specializing content is that the specialists become islands of highly focused, topical knowledge surrounded by the waters of ignorance of other general knowledge. Jacques Barzun explores the idea of specialized knowledge and more in The House of Intellect. Let me go back to the opening paragraph where I stated “more recently, Thomas Jefferson…” Between Thomas Jefferson and our present information age, the society and culture has changed so dramatically that I wonder if our institutions of intellect suppress the nurture and nature of polymaths.
Coffeehouse Junkie 