Today's Word

SENESCENCE, n.

The state of being old; the process of getting old.

Classic Film

I remember watching this film several years back. Thinking about it now, it's relevant to what REALLY goes on in Washington. Mr.Smith Goes To Washington was made in 1939!

Those of you in the New York City area can see it on Sunday, November 3rd, at 11:00AM.

www.filmforum.com

Words Of Wisdom

I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me-like food or water.

~Ray Charles  

Poetry At The Shed

Trace Peterson & Burt Kimmelman

Featured Poets: Trace Peterson and Burt Kimmelman November 1, 2013, 8:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. The Shed, 366 6th Street (btw 5th & 6th Ave's), Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY A reading by Trace Peterson and Burt Kimmelman. Tim Trace Peterson is a poet, editor, and scholar living in Brooklyn. The author of Since I Moved In (Chax Press) and numerous chapbooks, Peterson is also Editor/Publisher of EOAGH (http://eoagh.com) and co-editor of the new anthology Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics. For more information, visit http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/peterson/. Burt Kimmelman’s eighth collection of poetry is Gradually the World: New and Selected Poems, 1982 – 2013 (BlazeVOX [books], 2013). In addition to poetry, he has published a number of books of literary criticism and scores of essays on medieval, modern or contemporary poetry. Recent interviews of him by Tom Fink in Jacket and Geoffrey Gatza at BlazeVOX (text), and George Spencer at Poetry Thin Air (video, in two parts) are online. For more information, visit BurtKimmelman.com. Sponsored by The Shed Info: info@theshedspace.org http://theshedspace.org

Today's Word

PORTMANTEAU

A large traveling bag

Words Of Wisdom

A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain around us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out.

~Virginia Woolf

Discipline

I have been writing much the past several weeks. Poems mostly, but also short stories, commentaries, and even a novella. If there's one thing I've learned is that the need to be disciplined saved much time. It can be a challenge for me because I think much faster than I write. It's one reason why people think I write left handed because it is slanted, but I'm a righty.

I'm sure many a writer has struggled with this but it is a necessary aspect of a writer's life. Set aside time during the day to write. If I write one poem I feel that I have accomplished something. It doesn't seem like much but to me it's mission accomplished.

Homer

Homer is a Greek epic poet credited as the author of The Iliad and The Odyssey. Questions abound about whether he wrote these two masterpieces.  Not much is known about his life.  Homer (800 BC-701BC) also wrote Homeric Hymns.

More Novellas

The Tenth Man- Graham Greene
Aura- Carlos Fuentes
Maggie: Girl of the Streets- Stephen Crane
A Clockwork Orange- Anthony Burgess
Breakfast At Tiffany's- Truman Capote

Greek Poetry

I have a strong interest in the poetry of ancient Greece. That society fascinates me from the standpoint that there must have been much creativity and poetic expression. There are numerous types of poetry from that society; epic, lyric, iambic, elegiac, to name a few. I have imagined myself living during that time. I would have loved to have listened to Homer, who penned Iliad. Sappho is another I would have loved to have met.


Many times I have wondered if I am continuing the tradition of poetry writing not from a Greek perspectivr but from life as a whole. Having Native-American ancestry, I see myself carrying the tradions of my ancestors.

WORDS OF WISDOM

When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost.


Billy Graham

List Of Novellas

I was looking up the meaning of 'novella'. It is a fictional, narrative prose piece longer than a short story but shoter than a novel. I looked up a list of novellas. Below are some of them.

Billy Budd, Sailor-Herman
Melville Quest For Pandaria-Sarah Pine
The War Of The Worlds-H.G.Wells
The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde-Robert Louis Stevenson
The Pearl-John Steinbeck
The Mist-Stephen King

A Second Time

For the second time I was in Barnes and Noble. This time my wife was with me. We browsed through numerous books, especially the cookbooks and poetry. We wrote down a number of recipes in the composition book Louise brought with her. I scoured through a number of poetry books. There was Proust, Roethke, some Chinese poetry, a poetry Anthology and other works. Essay was a favorite of mine in college so I looked through some essay books. I glanced through Herman Melville's 'Billy Budd, Sailor after discovering that it is in fact a novella. I did some research into the structure of a novella and definitely see myself writing one in the future.

Spent Day At Barnes and Noble

I spent the day at Barnes and Noble today. It was nirvana to me because I browsed through so many books, especially the cookbooks and the poetry books. I read Mary Oliver's 'A Thousand Dreams'. I wrote down a few recipes to try out. Just being around books invigorates me. As I sat there, I concluded that I am a writer. I have a passion to write and have a book published. I am working on a chapbook, putting it together. I have written essays, short stories, commentaries, plays,and poems. My challenge is to harness my thoughts and focus on one thing at a time.

Words Of Wisdom

The best way out is always rough. Robert Frost

Been having some computer issues so I using a tablet. Love this thing!

Jack Kerouac

 

One of the founding members of the Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) was a novelist and poet. When I read his famous book On The Road, it was like being on a crazy journey that could have ended between nowhere and anywhere. As I reflect on it, On The Road WAS Kerouac; offbeat and unconventional.

I am fascinated by the Beat Generation which also gave us Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti (still going strong at ninety-four). Kerouac wrote whatever came to mind.  He called it spontaneous prose. It took me time to understand his poems, which I found somewhat disjointed. I also read Mexico City Blues and enjoyed it. Other books include Big Sur, The Dharma Bums, The Subterraneans, Desolation Angels and Visions of Cody. 

Jack Kerouac was proud of his French-Canadian heritage and being an American. He wrote some poems in French which he could speak fluently. Kerouac was also a loyal Catholic. The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado is named in his honor.

Mexico City Blues [113th Chorus]
Got up and dressed up and went out & got laid Then died and got buried in a coffin in the grave, Man— Yet everything is perfect, Because it is empty, Because it is perfect with emptiness, Because it's not even happening. Everything Is Ignorant of its own emptiness— Anger Doesn't like to be reminded of fits— You start with the Teaching Inscrutable of the Diamond And end with it, your goal is your startingplace, No race was run, no walk of prophetic toenails Across Arabies of hot meaning—you just numbly don't get there