Big Window

Oranges

In terms of literature, art, and film, what first comes to mind when you think of oranges? 

I'm still traveling but will provide a personal response tomorrow.  Tune in then.

Seasonal Greetings

It isn't the stars themselves

but the spaces in between them.

--by Krucial, 4th grader

May the holidays bring you closer to the beauty of this world.

The Velocity of Light

Write a title for this photo. 

{Again, photo courtesy of Christine at eleventwentyseven.}

One

Write a poem that is actually one long sentence.  It must contain one of each of these things:

• a small animal (i.e. tree frog, gecko, etc.)
• a brand name (i.e. Mazola, Hasbro, Taco Bell)
• a synonym for road
• a color
• a date (i.e. February 18)
• the word "scratch"
• somebody's name
• a loud noise

The sequence you use is up to you.  Share your work if you feel like it.

1st by Cole Swensen

1st

This is what you must know: (this

is the background of the story, the

foundation, the

                                  1) the city is white

2) most cities are white

3) All cities are white; it's in their nature, by definition and clearly stated

4) that a white city is often far away, often far out to sea, at times across a

plain, a shimmer or as if silt falling, fine-grained, a counting sand, a seed well- timed

1) made of talc

2) made of chalk

3) made of sugar, which melts in the sun. This is a city on which the sun pours down.

A man in passing glanced in a window, and all he'd ever seen was there. In the next street a person turned at a sound. In the next one, a boy walked along, counting the paving stones. One, one, one, one, one.

Cole Swensen © 1999

Open 12

Compose a window poem, a perfect rectangle or square (as perfect as is possible for you) inspired by this picture. 

Photo: courtesy of eleventwentyseven.

The Million Dollar Question

Let's say you won one of those very fancy *genius* awards.  Hypothetically, of course, let's say that after taxes, you'd end up with $80K a year for 5 years. 

What changes, if any, would you make in your life?  Would you quit your job?  Are there foreign countries that you'd want to visit?  Maybe you'd launch your own publishing company or set up a B & B.  How would you spend your days?

The Weather Channel

Is writing an isolated activity for you?

Describe your ideal writing situation.  What environmental factors seem most relevant to good writing for you?

Periodically

There are a whole bunch of literary magazines sprawling across my desk, and I've been grooving to them.  On deck we have: eye-rhyme: Journal of Experimental Literature, Spinning Jenny, The Canary, and POOL.  I'm amazed at the diversity and beauty of literary publications that's available these days. 

Here's a poem from POOL that I reread with enthusiasm.  It's by Cal Bedient.

Come In, Kansas City. Kansas City, Come In, Please. While herself is ruby slippered in pomegranate seeds in the dark beneath the plains, killing time, who is gardening in the heartland? A poet I knew outside Allegory woke to find the icy night still red-sore at the horizon mouth, then lay back on a pillow purple from the brown-hearted grapes of his hair. Even in summer the people herd large roses into the been of childhood. And the corn trembles on its little ankles, like Chihuahuas. Americans, do you want me to go on? Yes, tell us more about the heartland. At times, the rain-struck scalp of the prairies smokes again in the hand of the paleface sun. But the wide rivers are so fine no one crosses them: they unroll like sheets of Reynolds Wrap before it's slathered with apple crumb betty pie. The good folk camp on the banks like trees and watch the shining republic of desire roll by. Tell us more. Today, a deputy caught two boys drag racing on riding mowers down Main St. in Ellston, Iowa, whereas in Tegucigalpa the dog-boys sniff shoe glue to survive the cold nights and no one stops them, in their seed time. by Cal Bedient

The Starry Nights

What are you planning to read during the winter break? 

I usually have some ambitious plan up my proverbial sleeve.  One year I read One Hundred Years of Solitude, which remains a favorite novel of mine.  It just so happens that I had a broken leg at the time.  That figures into the narrative in ways I can't explain exactly.

Tell Us

Okay.  Tell us about your very first publication. 

An email from fiction writer Ann Bogle led me to start thinking about this question.  She told me that for her first poetry publication, only a vanity press would do. 

The Descent by Sophie Cabot Black

Last month I heard Sophie Cabot Black read from her new book The Descent at Brazos Bookstore in Houston.  Afterwards, I couldn't stop thinking about the poems, so I ordered the book.  Now I'm steeping in these lyrics of quiet intensity.  The phrase "quiet intensity" is a poetry cliche of sorts, so I want to qualify it by saying that it's not a phrase I use often or lightly.  I'm a fairly booming person, socially at least, and I don't naturally think of intensity as quiet.  In the case of these poems, though, it really seems to fit.

If The Descent were a film, I think it would have a dark, liquid beauty.  The soundtrack would be dominated by cello, and the voice-over would be a disembodied one that is nonetheless full of feeling. 

Whenever I hear a poet read her own work, it adds something to my understanding of her poems. While reading The Descent here in Houston, Sophie's performance was very understated.  She offered little in the way of storytelling beyond the narrative impulses lodged in the poems themselves.  So what I got from the performance was a chance to hear the poems in her own voice.  But clearly, for me at least, this was enough. 

Here's a poem from this book by Sophie Cabot Black:

OUT DEEP

We are a boat without love. Love

Works a way through the current,

Headed for us, waving. It is

Unclear to whom she speaks;

It is even possible

Something behind us

Moves her. We came

All this way for the unbroken

Water and such light I can no longer see

Where we are. You must

Guide me: nothing more can be done

If we are to get to shore. In return

I will keep your story,

The one you will tell the others

When we get home.

Traffic

Tell us about a time when you experienced the so-called writer's block and then found a way to move through it.

My method/madness tends to be interdisciplinary.  I dwell in music or art or film until something starts happening.  As I've gotten older, I find that I am more comfortable with unproductive weeks or months.  Whether this is maturity or complacency, I'm not sure.  I tend to think of the fallow fields, a time for every season, you know.... 

Portrait of an Artist

The way that Hollywood portrays writers, artists, and poets in film can be truly annoying.  Tell us about the movie that you've found most galling. 

Rapid Transit

Can you think of a work of art or writing that embodies VELOCITY in a particularly powerful way? 

A Sort of a Song

Let the snake wait under his weed and the writing be of words, slow and quick, sharp to strike, quiet to wait, sleepless. -- through metaphor to reconcile the people and the stones. Compose. (No ideas but in things) Invent! Saxifrage is my flower that splits the rocks. William Carlos Williams

art-o-matic

Have you ever played with the typogenerator?  It's my newest place to play the procrastination game. 

Here's how it works.  You type in a few words, and the computer does a Google image search based on your list and creates a digital work of art based on what it finds. I'm trying to rationalize this activity as a new step in  the revision process, but I'm not completely convincing myself. 

The Question: Inspiration

Is there a visual artist whose work inspires you?

I think that for me the love of art and literature are very much intertwined.  Which is not to say that I write directly about paintings or sculptures--I don't usually do that--but I am transported by art just as I am by poetry. 

I tend to move through phases (some might say obsessions) with different artists.  There was Paul Klee, Louise Nevelson, Stuart Davis, and Richard Diebenkorn.  Their work still moves me, but I move on.  I like to read their letters and diaries if they're published.  Sometimes I even prefer an artist's take on the creative process to a fellow writer's. 

The featured artist for this post on this blog hoy dia is Robert Rauschenberg.  His work really does inspire me.  I like the visibility of his process in the final product.  I like the combination of language and symbol, collage and painting.  I like the way his work changes across the years as he moves through time.  Living in his native Texas, I've gotten many great chances to see his work, even though it is probably better known and appreciated elsewhere. 

Source Code 11

In oPen 11 I provided half a poem.  Here's the poem by Ralph Angel in its entirety:

This

Today, my love, leaves are thrashing the wind just as pedestrians are erecting again the buildings of this drab forbidding city, and our lives, as I lose track of them, are the lives of others derailing in time and getting things done. Impossible to make sense of any one face or mouth, though each distance is clear, and you are miles from here. Let your pure space crowd my heart, that we might stay awhile longer amid the flying debris. This moment, I swear it, isn't going anywhere. Ralph Angel