(FEMA markings)
(a "Make it Right" house)
(Stairs to Porches with no houses)
"We are only lost when we can be found."
-Henri J.M. Nouwen
Call for Submissions: Chicken Soup for the Soul
14 hours ago
Called to be Yourself
"In the quest for the true self, one ... begins to appreciate and accept one's personality and one's life as an essential way that God calls us to be ourselves."
—James Martin
—James Martin
I will not yield.
"To deal with what we cannot change, the first step, all too often evaded, is to know what about ourselves will not yield. But that is NOT the end of the matter; there are usually ways of coping."
- Martin E. Seligman
I think that people cannot change unless the part of them that will not yield, wants to change.
- Martin E. Seligman
I think that people cannot change unless the part of them that will not yield, wants to change.
When standing at the sink and hear words call...
Bounding Valves
Our wheels beneath
have no graveled crunch.
Springsteen sings to us
and we back to him
and as your hand inches closer
I know that this was a good idea.
Following Kerouac’s tread marks
is not for the faint of heart
or for those
who love luxury.
It is for people
like us
who enjoy
just getting by–
Finding what is important
inside the passing of occasion,
in fresh and aged faces
and in car seat
scaling
fingertips.
A Barbara Hamby Poem
This is one of the poems from the awesome extension of National Poetry Month's Poem-a-Day emails. I love the wonderful use of sound repitition (which is usually not my thing, but Hambly pulls it off perfectly here) and the vivid engagement of the senses, particularly visual and also taste (check the candy montage).
by Barbara Hamby
A-bomb is how it begins with a big bang on page
one, a calculator of sorts whose centrifuge
begets bedouin, bamboozle, breakdance, and berserk,
one of my mother's favorite words, hard knock
clerk of clichés that she is, at the moment going ape
the current rave in the fundamentalist landscape
disguised as her brain, a rococo lexicon
of Deuteronomy, Job, gossip, spritz, and neocon
ephemera all wrapped up in a pop burrito
of movie star shenanigans, like a stray Cheeto
found in your pocket the day after you finish the bag,
tastier than any oyster and champagne fueled fugue
gastronomique you have been pursuing in France
for the past four months. This 82-year-old's rants
have taken their place with the dictionary I bought
in the fourth grade, with so many gorgeous words I thought
I'd never plumb its depths. Right the first time, little girl,
yet here I am still at it, trolling for pearls,
Japanese words vying with Bantu in a goulash
I eat daily, sometimes gagging, sometimes with relish,
kleptomaniac in the candy store of language,
slipping words in my pockets like a non-smudge
lipstick that smears with the first kiss. I'm the demented
lady with sixteen cats. Sure, the house stinks, but those damned
mice have skedaddled, though I kind of miss them, their cute
little faces, the whiskers, those adorable gray suits.
No, all beasts are welcome in my menagerie, ark
of inconsolable barks and meows, sharp-toothed shark,
OED of the deep ocean, sweet compendium
of candy bars-Butterfingers, Mounds, and M&Ms-
packed next to the tripe and gizzards, trim and tackle
of butchers and bakers, the painter's brush and spackle,
quarks and black holes of physicists' theory. I'm building
my own book as a mason makes a wall or a gelding
runs round the track-brick by brick, step by step, word by word,
jonquil by gerrymander, syllabub by greensward,
swordplay by snapdragon, a never-ending parade
with clowns and funambulists in my own mouth, homemade
treasure chest of tongue and teeth, the brain's roustabout, rough
unfurler of tents and trapezes, off-the-cuff
unruly troublemaker in the high church museum
of the world. O mouth-boondoggle, auditorium,
viper, gulag, gumbo pot on a steamy August
afternoon-what have you not given me? How I must
wear on you, my Samuel Johnson in a frock coat,
lexicographer of silly thoughts, billy goat,
X-rated pornographic smut factory, scarfer
of snacks, prissy smirker, late-night barfly,
you are the megaphone by which I bewitch the world
or don't as the case may be. O chittering squirrel,
ziplock sandwich bag, sound off, shut up, gather your words
into bouquets, folios, flocks of black and flaming birds.
Nous Devons Laisser La Vie de Pirate
Depart the Ship
The thing you leave
was never timeless.
Shamefully, it fell down when it
began.
Years of loving devotion
you knew would end in divorce.
Sacred idioms and refrains will no longer be served up
in the correct and precise amounts they were.
Ticking, rattles
and reverberations
must now be purposefully sought.
We will walk on–
Detached and assiduous mutineers.
-J. McIntyre
Four Score...
"I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten thousand angels swearing I was right would make no difference."
- Abraham Lincoln
Vidéos à la part
Check out some Cyrus Fell Down, Brett Dennen and Angus and Julia Stone videos I made pour la YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvZsLjxhwRE Cyrus Fell Down
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt7u0WvguHQ Brett Dennen (4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13r3bvn6KCk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW_2K_O6Hzw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGsfLhKEoo0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1mQRmheKrk Angus and Julia Stone
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But What Does it MEAN!
I got into Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. This is an MFA dream come true. I started dreaming about going there as a junior in high school when Ginsberg was still alive and active with the school.
But, what am I supposed to do?
We had decided I was staying here to go to EWU since Naropa was a last minute "I'll never get in" panic plan. I have been exchanging emails with the EWU MFA department. This has been are very positive aspect.
One big problem: Financial Aid is a big deal right now for Universities, hence, they are taking a bit longer than usual putting these aid packages together, awarding Teaching Assistantships, etc. EWU did say I was getting a $500 scholarship, which, while not much, is a good chunk of the in-state tuition. EWU also has a solid teacher training base, which is a huge selling point.
So, I got into the Beatnik school. I love all things related to this movement. But, how do I really know I will like it? I would have to fly down there and experience the environment (Boulder, workshop process, meet professors). That seems like the only real way to make a decision. I can't move and uproot my whole life (Husband's State job, house that we own, child in third grade, family within an hour away, health insurance, dental, eye care, etc) on a whim. It is a big risk. One that cannot be made on one's passionate obsessions and drives to be counterculture alone.
I am very thankful for all of my professors and their input as I would hate to let them down with a wrong decision. I horribly want to make them proud.
But you can't have everything, can you?
But, what am I supposed to do?
We had decided I was staying here to go to EWU since Naropa was a last minute "I'll never get in" panic plan. I have been exchanging emails with the EWU MFA department. This has been are very positive aspect.
One big problem: Financial Aid is a big deal right now for Universities, hence, they are taking a bit longer than usual putting these aid packages together, awarding Teaching Assistantships, etc. EWU did say I was getting a $500 scholarship, which, while not much, is a good chunk of the in-state tuition. EWU also has a solid teacher training base, which is a huge selling point.
So, I got into the Beatnik school. I love all things related to this movement. But, how do I really know I will like it? I would have to fly down there and experience the environment (Boulder, workshop process, meet professors). That seems like the only real way to make a decision. I can't move and uproot my whole life (Husband's State job, house that we own, child in third grade, family within an hour away, health insurance, dental, eye care, etc) on a whim. It is a big risk. One that cannot be made on one's passionate obsessions and drives to be counterculture alone.
I am very thankful for all of my professors and their input as I would hate to let them down with a wrong decision. I horribly want to make them proud.
But you can't have everything, can you?
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