Poetry Friday: How a Poem Happens

My friend, Anne Marie Pace, pointed me to a new blog, How a Poem Happens.  Don't go over there unless you have some poetic time to kill because it's subtitled "Contemporary Poets Discuss the Making of Poems."  And they do mean discuss, not unload a poem and run.  Several interesting questions follow each poem, including: "Was this poem finished or abandoned?" "What's American about this poem?"

The latest poem posted there is by Richard Frost and it begins:  

My brother’s wife phones me and says I’d better drive over
right away for what will probably be the last visit,
so I get in my mother’s old Buick and two hours later
I’m at their apartment at Smugglers’ Village in Stockton.
My brother’s life has been a mess all along.
He came out of the war a drunk, lost on the horses,
failed in real estate and fiction writing,
got a good job and wrecked two company cars.
He is alternately charming and a bully, and I probably
wouldn’t be his friend if he were not my brother.
Now he is dying of brain cancer. The surgeons
have removed an apricot-sized tumor from the back
of his head. He has regained the power of speech
but is dying fast. Here I find him standing

read the rest here

As you can tell, this one's more of a loose story than the poems I tend to share. But the poet's a "working jazz drummer" so I gave him leeway to riff for a bit. :)  Besides, I like to be surprised by my own Poetry Friday picks sometimes.

What about you? Do you tend to pick the same kinds of poems to share on Fridays? Do you have a poetry type? Do you plan ahead or go with what moves you at the moment?

How does your Poetry Friday happen? 

Poetry Friday is hosted today by the talented Julie Larios.

P.S.  My own attempt to explain "how a poem happens" is here, in my post "Breadcrumbs."

Library Loving Challenge: Reading and Riding Rock!

This post is dedicated to Melodye, who suggested that I join writerjenn's Library Loving Challenge to benefit the Flying Horse Farms library. 

The challenge is simple: you comment, I donate. For every comment I receive on this post between now and midnight (EST) on March 28th, I'll donate $1 toward buying books from this Wishlist for Flying Horse Farms, a camp for kids with serious illnesses.*  And the really fun part?

Direct your comments not to me, but to THE KIDS who will enjoy the library at camp.  Leave them a message:  "Have fun!"  "You're great!" "Reading and Riding Rock!"  Anything.   I'll pass the comments on to the future campers at Flying Horse Farms. (This was also Melodye's idea. Isn't she brilliant?)

For more about my quest to build the library, see my post here.  (You're also welcome to buy a book directly off the Wishlist. Or spread the word far and wide. Thank you!)  

Ready, set . . .   COMMENT!

*Challenge donations are per unique commenter. ($1 for each person who comments)

Amuse moi

If you're going to get through a long draft, you have to learn how to entertain yourself.

When Laini Taylor wrote a post about "Surviving the Suck," I left a comment saying that sometimes I inserted things into my manuscript for my own amusement, even if later I had to take them out.  

What kind of things? 

Oh, for example, Random Moments of Beauty. Dang it, if I want to describe that ray of light bouncing in the window for three paragraphs, I will. Ditto for buying myself some tulips. 

Nicknames for characters. Mr. Large Knees.  Boy Runs-with-Scissors. Little Red-headed Herring. 

Theme songs for various sections.  "Staying Alive, Staying Alive!"  "You Can't Always Get What You Waa-aa-ant . . ."  

Outrageous metaphors.  I just twirl the dial and let the wild comparisons fly out, like a gumball machine. Yesterday I wrote one that involved dogs and a car sunroof. 

So that's my random writing advice for the day.  Consider it a gumball flying in your direction. Or a direct order to stop and smell the tulips.  I hereby grant you permission to amuse your own bad self, because really, if you don't, the suck's going get you. 

P.S. I loved Tanita's "One Shot Over the Fence" book recommendations today. She admits in full geek-out mode why "ancient, sexist science fiction" still has the power to make her happy.  And it was contagious. I found myself grinning through her entire post and itching to read about alien space station hospitals.  They should make an entire TV series out of these books, Tanita!  Yeah, we'll get the LOST writers to jump right on it when they wrap up the last season. (They could work out some of that sexism too.)

P.P.S.  w00t!  Just saw that Colleen's selection for the "One Shot Rec" is Connie Willis's Bellwether!  I share her "shameless adoration" for this title, as I mentioned here.  Colleen also has the full schedule of links to other "One Shot" bloggers.