4 posts tagged “poetry”
According to neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran, poetry comes from our earliest tree-climbing ancestors and adaptation requirements which evolved into synesthesia.
If that doesn't sound incredibly complex and scare you away, read more.
Synesthesia is the affliction which affects poets, painters, novelists eight times more than common folks.... and in short, it is the way we "hear colors, see flavors" or in my experience, experience emotions in glorious brilliant color. It helped us evolutionarily so that we could mix-and-match different brain functions, and apparently, climb trees better.
Among other things!
My friend Brooke just left New York to get married and move to Portland, Maine, and she gave me this beautiful book...
which is GORGEOUS, and I have started browsing, but don't want to share yet. John O'Donohue is an Irish poet.
In the meantime, I will leave you with the classic prayer which was inscribed on Mother Teresa's wall in Calcutta.
Anyway by Kent Keith
People are often unreasonable, Illogical,
and self-centered
Forgive them anyway.If you are kind, people may accuse you
of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.If you are successful,You will win some
false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.If you are honest and frank,
people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.What you spend years building,
someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.If you find serenity and happiness,
they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.The good you do today,
people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.Give the world the best you have,
and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you have anyway.
You see, in the final analysis,
it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.
Here are my favorites this week from my Twitter feed. I can use up to 140 characters for each... and this is my favorite creative project recently. Constraints are surprisingly liberating! Please send me feedback.
true love's shadow / a spark can not burst / to flame
but in the presence of the other
---
Found: on concrete city floor
iridescent
winged butterflies
huge shattered moths
four inch tiger-striped
wasps.
Beauty misdirected.
---
springtime -
motherhood awaits.
pen beckons. heed it -
and then you, my dear, will
blossom into flame
A week or two ago, I decided that it might be fun to play around with the phenomenon of "micro-blogging" which is sort of new (circa 2007, old only to early adopter geeks, like me) with some creative writing. The idea is that you have a blog, but it's a "micro-blog", i.e. each post is limited to 140 characters. There are a whole slew of poets on twitter, and many of them are "following me" or in my "following" list (akin to the "neighborhood" on Vox). Some are trying micro-fiction, and some are trying poetry, haiku, or something else. Here are a few of my recent posts, and my twitter channel is here (tweetpoem), definitely take a look, sign up, and maybe even subscribe.
a cocoa-colored seagull presides at the waterline.
black beach corpse bugs scavenge
through beach grass necklaces
with sea spittle pearls.
3 am: the eardrum of the night.
you whisper secrets to me
not meant for
any mortal ear.
first night in a new beach house
all night
surf crashes from every orifice.
wind chimes tinkling madly in the wind.
red wine filters the evening
softens edges
warms food
tightens the distance between friends
I have to say that the most exciting thing for me is that I haven't written anything poetic (and these are mostly fragments of prose) in years, and I am SOOOOOO excited to be having poems "come to me" again.
It seems perfectly appropriate that its spring.
