The Dog Rule

This is brilliant: the "dog rule" for journal keeping as revealed by Author Erica Perl in the Washington Post.

Back in 2008, I called it "taking out the trash" and then "magpie intelligence," but I like "the dog rule" better. Much better.

Poetry Friday: A Commonplace Book

A week or so ago, I frivolously declared my New Year's resolution to be "eat more cupcakes."

I'm not backpedaling on that. However, since I didn't record my cupcake consumption in 2009, it will be difficult to prove that I've eaten more cupcakes by the end of 2010.  So, in addition to this resolution, I'm also adding:

Keep a Commonplace Book.

Which will be easy, since I already do. You may remember that I blogged about it once and posted a picture:




What is a commonplace book? Simply a journal in which you stash poems, quotes, and generally anything else you wish to hold close. According to Poets.org, people have been doing this since the Renaissance.  Also courtesy of Poets.org is this Jonathan Swift quote, which I'm going to print out and paste it in my commonplace book:


"A commonplace book is what a provident poet cannot subsist without, for this proverbial reason, that 'great wits have short memories:' and whereas, on the other hand, poets, being liars by profession, ought to have good memories; to reconcile these, a book of this sort, is in the nature of a supplemental memory, or a record of what occurs remarkable in every day's reading or conversation.

There you enter not only your own original thoughts, (which, a hundred to one, are few and insignificant) but such of other men as you think fit to make your own, by entering them there."

--from "A Letter of Advice to a Young Poet"

I'm so relieved that "great wits have short memories." I'm going to use this as my standard excuse next time I forget your name two seconds after you tell it to me.

Anyhow, my resolution is to keep adding to my commonplace book, and to start a new one. My daughter gave me a planner for 2010, one of those lovely Moleskin ones, and instead of using it to plan, I'm going to use it to record one commonplace thing about each day of 2010. Not an essay, not a paragraph, just the few words I can squeeze into the rectangle allotted each day. Because part of being a writer is observing the commonplace.

Today's entry: My oversized coffee mug, heavy as a cereal bowl, presses into my cupped palm. The weight of it is comforting.

I invite you to join me. If you need an actual journal to begin, and don't want to use a datebook, consider this creation available on etsy which has a love poem by Tennyson on the cover.

I'm clipping the poem framed on its cover to post here:

Spring (from The Window)

by Alfred Tennyson

Birds' love and birds' song
Flying here and there,
Birds' song and birds' love
And you with gold for hair!
Birds' song and birds' love
Passing with the weather,
Men's song and men's love,
To love once and forever.

Men's love and birds' love,
And women's love and men's!
And you my wren with a crown of gold,
You my queen of the wrens!
You the queen of the wrens —
We'll be birds of a feather,
I'll be King of the Queen of the wrens,
And all in a nest together.


P.S. I love thinking of a commonplace book as a nest.

Poetry Friday is hosted  by Great Kid Books, which is featuring the Cybils Poetry finalists today.

A Magpie Intelligence

This picture's from my journal on Jan. 19, 2002.





The phrase "a magpie intelligence" had caught my eye like a shiny object, so I wrote it down. (You can see the other unrelated trinkets I stashed on that page too.)

Are you a magpie writer? Do you collect random phrases, names, and ideas years before you know what to do with them? Is your journal as completely random as mine is, like a half-built bird nest?

And did you know that the magpie is in the same intelligence class as chimps and dolphins? (Yes, that makes me feel better.)

Poetry Friday: Crossing Unmarked Snow

Crossing Unmarked Snow:
Further Views on the Poet's Vocation
(Must order this!)

After reading about my messy novel notebooks, Mary Lee kindly sent me yesterday's featured poem at The Writer's Almanac. It's by William Stafford, from the book pictured above.

Here's the beginning:

What's In My Journal

Odd things, like a button drawer. Mean
Things, fishhooks, barbs in your hand.
But marbles too. A genius for being agreeable.

(Read the rest here. Scroll down to Thursday's entry)

I also found this in my journal:

"I always thought writing was arraying words in beautiful patterns, but now I think it's more like walking blindfolded, listening with your whole heart, and then looking backward to see if you made any tracks worth keeping."

What about you? Did you make any tracks worth keeping this week?

Poetry Friday is hosted today at Farm School.