tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-64643072956230886702024-03-21T11:20:42.184-07:00Day PoemsAlexa Mergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17959328651318935206noreply@blogger.comBlogger53125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6464307295623088670.post-9865551339290963082014-02-12T14:02:00.000-08:002014-03-05T11:36:37.979-08:00Thank Ewe.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Dear Reader, Thank you for your attention to Day Poems. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I'm resting this site. Please browse the existing posts for ideas for your own writing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">For good poems to read, hop over to <a href="http://www.yogastanza.org/" target="_blank"> Yoga Stanza</a>. </span></td></tr>
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Alexa Mergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17959328651318935206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6464307295623088670.post-56477828500460620862014-02-07T09:38:00.001-08:002014-02-07T09:38:15.838-08:00Poetic Mind Tip #5: Take Local Poetry Classes<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Learn from others. Identify poets in your town offering classes. These may be available through a college, community center, or out of a private home. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You'll be prompted through creative exercises. This poem, "<a href="http://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/02/halfway-alexa-mergen-poem/" target="_blank">Halfway</a>," emerged from a class offered by Sacramento's <a href="http://www.susankelly-dewitt.com/" target="_blank">Susan Kelly-DeWitt</a>. Susan encourages creative leaps in writing and revision. She had us pass our poems through an online translation program that placed the poem in Russian, then back into English. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In "Halfway," I had started with the word "noon." The translation led to the notion of a midpoint, which opened the poem to new possibilities. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's never too late to start writing poems. Teachers welcome new and seasoned writers. When thinking about how a poem happens, all experiences contribute to the discussion. SIgn-up for a class. Create. Support your local teaching artists.</span><br />
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Alexa Mergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17959328651318935206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6464307295623088670.post-82027192560720265782014-02-06T15:02:00.001-08:002014-02-06T15:02:41.395-08:00Stories on Stage-Davis<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Saturday evening, February 8, actress <span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px;">Analise Langford-Clark will read my story "Learning to Swim" for Stories on Stage - Davis. For more on the event, please see a preview article in <a href="http://www.theaggie.org/2014/01/30/bringing-stories-to-life/" target="_blank">The California Aggie</a>. Hope you can attend!</span></span>Alexa Mergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17959328651318935206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6464307295623088670.post-38496880393386829842014-02-04T09:52:00.000-08:002014-02-04T10:00:00.613-08:00News & Poems<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Writing a poem is unpredictable. A poem may be delivered by the muse to receptive ears within hours. These are a gift! Another poem may take decades to complete. Once completed, a poem's destiny is uncertain; it may never be heard by anyone other than the poet's sleepy cat or tolerant friends. Very few poets attain such stature that they have a ready audience for their work. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Journalists, on the other hand, usually work quickly and know their work will be widely read. Their stories are archived.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mary Akers, editor of <a href="http://rkvryquarterly.com/masthead/" target="_blank">r.kv.r.y. quarterly</a>, invited journalist Matt Weiser and me to have a conversation about the processes of writing news and poems. Click <a href="http://rkvryquarterly.com/discussion-with-alexa-mergen/" target="_blank">here</a> to read the exchange. Mary has a field for comments if you want to weigh in.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eliza Griswold is a contemporary poet <i>and</i> journalist.</span></td></tr>
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Alexa Mergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17959328651318935206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6464307295623088670.post-27034625663533462242014-02-03T10:44:00.001-08:002014-02-03T17:02:25.073-08:00Daily Prompt: A Poem about Letter Writing <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To improve, writers reflect on the process of what happens as they write. On Day Poems, I've offered up the value of having a pen pal, sending a postcard, and making a card to give to someone. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Try writing a poem about writing a letter. Doing so requires you to consider audience, setting, and character. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Writing is a solitary act. You enter into a relationship with your reader that is imagined before it's realized. Somewhere I read that a relationship exists before the people are there to fill it. In this way, writing is an act of faith. Writing a letter exemplifies that faith: you compose in the present moment something you hope will reach the hands of another at a later time. (If you've ever sent a letter and had it returned to you months later, then opened and read what you'd intended for the recipient, you've had that somewhat surreal experience of interiority, gotten a peek into your internal workings.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Daily Prompt: </b>Write a poem about writing a letter. For an example, read "<a href="http://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/02/preparing-a-missive-alexa-mergen/" target="_blank">Preparing a Missive</a>," a poem I wrote while thinking about my Ohio pen pal. My thanks to <i>elephant journal </i>for publishing it this week.</span>Alexa Mergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17959328651318935206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6464307295623088670.post-10973204886518120412014-02-02T10:49:00.000-08:002014-02-02T10:49:35.471-08:00Poetic Mind Tip # 4 : Keep a Notebook<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thanks to <a href="http://www.elephantjournal.com/" target="_blank">elephant</a> for publishing my poem "<a href="http://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/02/poetry-alexa-mergen/" target="_blank">On the Island of Recollection</a>." While culling old journals in December (an annual ritual) I found the poem scribbled on a final page. It needed some reworking. Since I had started the poem years ago, I've written about <a href="http://www.ehow.com/facts_6768682_can-rubber-boots-recycled_.html" target="_blank">rubber boots</a> and read <a href="http://www.kinfonet.org/krishnamurti/quotes/memory-acts-as-a-resistance-against-the-movement-o" target="_blank">Krishnamurti's</a> writings on memory and <a href="http://www.lewishyde.com/" target="_blank">Lewis Hyde's</a> on gifts. All that ended up in the poem, this time around. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Poetic Mind Tip #4: Keep a notebook. </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It doesn't have to be a journal or diary, meaning you don't need to write in it daily. But keep a pad handy, jot down ideas, let them sit, and reread them occasionally. You may find an idea you want to pursue. There are lots of great books on journaling. Kay Adams's <a href="http://journaltherapy.com/journaltherapy/bookstore/books" target="_blank">Journal to the Self </a>is one. And I recommend Terry Tempest Williams's <a href="http://www.coyoteclan.com/" target="_blank">When Women Were Birds</a> for an unusual perspective on journal keeping and the creative self. </span><br />
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<br />Alexa Mergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17959328651318935206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6464307295623088670.post-19582362938517729832014-01-26T21:50:00.001-08:002014-01-27T14:27:55.406-08:00Daily Prompt: Not Too Late<br />
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One of the best things about Sacramento is the <a href="http://eskimopie.net/calendar.htm" target="_blank">Third Sunday</a> poets. Anyone is welcome; the venue varies; participation is free. Group members take turns creating prompts. Last fall, I volunteered to facilitate. I arrived at <a href="http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-book-collector-sacramento" target="_blank">The Book Collector</a> with pages of poems and ideas. And waited. And waited. Would no one show? I bought a good book (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/20/arts/m-c-richards-poet-potter-and-essayist-dies-at-83.html" target="_blank">M.C. Richards</a>) and packed to leave. </div>
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Then, Nancy hurrying toward the door. We sat on the floor and got started. The day became like one of those cloth dolls that changes when flipped. We talked and wrote...and another woman arrived. I have heard church-going friends quote, "Wherever two or three are gathered...." It did feel as if our little group was granted inspiration. </div>
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Nancy Wallace wrote this beautiful poem.</div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Why I Was late</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">When I came into the dark hall with pomegranates </span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">the french toast and coffee and a new bundle of herbed eggs </span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> had already begun in the bright kitchen needing only </span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> in my mouth with buttered eggs on it to </span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> begin an October Sunday breakfast <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>oh</span></span><br />
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<span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px;"><b>Daily Prompt: </b>Been late somewhere, sometime? What happened? Borrow Nancy's title, "Why I Was late."</span><br />
<span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px;">To read Nancy's "Winter in Detroit," visit <a href="http://www.yogastanza.org/2014/01/27/surya-namaskar-nancy-wallace/" target="_blank">Yoga Stanza</a>.</span><br />
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Alexa Mergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17959328651318935206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6464307295623088670.post-90029595389047835312014-01-24T14:27:00.001-08:002014-01-24T14:27:38.985-08:00Poetic Mind Tip #3: Make a Card<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When you hand-craft a card for someone you love, you hold the person in your mind as you cut, paste and stitch and prepare a surprise. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Below are two Valentine beauties for inspiration.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZQ-97Qx2BGq8GveAasog4xafFaHJT8Hn8OBmoN-YRIoM9nTGJbYGUuyy93nBs6tCjE_JWpX8_NBtNgZxUuqKntT-MobM5NMb_vp-tzp7ZVh8ewQyfQnXGUby4rPnJr4qzzn-HGjFbK0sY/s1600/cards.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZQ-97Qx2BGq8GveAasog4xafFaHJT8Hn8OBmoN-YRIoM9nTGJbYGUuyy93nBs6tCjE_JWpX8_NBtNgZxUuqKntT-MobM5NMb_vp-tzp7ZVh8ewQyfQnXGUby4rPnJr4qzzn-HGjFbK0sY/s1600/cards.jpg" height="321" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: center;">Made by Sacramento artist and photographer Lynn Marlowe</span>Alexa Mergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17959328651318935206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6464307295623088670.post-162532097701434332014-01-20T16:25:00.000-08:002014-01-20T16:25:22.471-08:00Daily Prompt: Send a Postcard<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A poem can take the form of a letter. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hugo" target="_blank">Richard Hugo</a> wrote to Kizer from Seattle:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Dear Condor: Much thanks for that telephonic support</i></span></div>
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<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">from North Carolina when I suddenly went ape</i></div>
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<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in the Iowa tulips. Lord, but I'm ashamed.</i></div>
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<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was afraid, it seemed, according to the doctor</i></div>
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<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of impending success, winning some poetry prizes</i></div>
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<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">or getting a wet kiss. The more popular I got,</i></div>
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<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the softer the soft cry in my head: Don't believe them.</i></div>
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<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You were never good. Then I broke and proved it.</i></div>
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<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ten successive days I alienated women</i></div>
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<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I liked best. I told a coed why her poems were bad</i></div>
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<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(they weren't) and didn't understand a word I said.</i></div>
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<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Really warped. The phrase "I'll be all right"</i></div>
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<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">came out too many unsolicited times. I'm o.k. now.</i></div>
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<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm back at the primal source of poems: wind, sea</i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>and rain, the market and the <a href="http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/richard_hugo/poems/16978" target="_blank">salmon</a>. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Letters are wonderful. But a postcard requires concision: the perfect combination of form and function. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Daily Prompt:</b> Write a poem, your own or another's, on a postcard and stick it in the mail. Need an addressee? Send to <a href="http://poemcrossing.com/about/" target="_blank">poemcrossing</a> at the Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry.</span></div>
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Alexa Mergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17959328651318935206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6464307295623088670.post-59545431911407497242014-01-16T09:34:00.001-08:002014-01-16T09:35:18.618-08:00Autobiography, a poemThank you to <a href="http://inlandiajournal.org/" target="_blank">Inlandia</a> for publishing "<a href="http://inlandiajournal.org/2014/01/16/alexa-mergen-2/" target="_blank">Autobiography</a>," a poem about wind.<br />
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<a href="http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1278/1069385334_c6bab7baf7_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1278/1069385334_c6bab7baf7_z.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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The journal includes inspiring photographs and recordings of most poems. Check it out.Alexa Mergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17959328651318935206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6464307295623088670.post-77513176675715026762014-01-15T11:12:00.002-08:002014-01-15T11:12:41.559-08:00Daily Prompt: Full Moon Poem<a href="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7455/9113043708_66e8fae4f9_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="131" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7455/9113043708_66e8fae4f9_z.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tonight, a full moon. This January moon is called Old Moon or Full Wolf Moon. Each month's moon has a name. Some occurring later in the year include Snow Moon, Worm Moon, Pink Moon, Strawberry Moon, Sturgeon Moon, Hunter's Moon. (A full list with dates can be found at the <a href="http://www.farmersalmanac.com/full-moon-dates-and-times/" target="_blank">Farmer's Almanac.</a>) </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The moon is a poet's delight. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've carried this moon poem with me for years.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">WELCOME TO THE MOON</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Welcome precious stone of the night,</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Delight of the skies, precious stone of the night,</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mother of stars, precious stone of the night,</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Excellency of Stars, precious stone of the night.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anon., t</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">ranslated from the Irish</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've written my share of moon poems. This one, about a sliver of moon, appeared in <a href="http://kritya.in/0501/En/poetry_at_our_time8.html" target="_blank">Kritya</a>. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">MOON CANOE</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tonight the moon is a canoe </span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">alone in the light soaked city</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">sky. Other places darkness</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of night floods spaces between</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">trees and boulders, along shores</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and above lakes. So many canoes</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">dugout, fiberglass, plank, aluminum,</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">perfect form of floating. In you </span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’ve glossed rivers and lakes capsized </span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">more than once spending days after </span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in damp clothes and sleeping bags.</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Moon canoe, you are moving to</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">full each night. White pool, we are </span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">your paddlers.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Daily Prompt:</b> Go outside tonight and observe the moon. Write a poem to or about it, four lines or longer. Perhaps set a month-poem challenge: a poem a month about the full moon. </span></div>
Alexa Mergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17959328651318935206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6464307295623088670.post-69041949311194952014-01-14T10:34:00.001-08:002014-01-14T10:35:23.014-08:00Poetic Mind Tip #2: Read the Funnies<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The funnies, as my spunky grandmother called newspaper comics, are to your poetic mind what a daily dose of vitamin D is for your body. </span><br />
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<a href="http://garfieldwebsite.wikispaces.com/file/view/favorite-garfield.gif/54368016/favorite-garfield.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="265" src="http://garfieldwebsite.wikispaces.com/file/view/favorite-garfield.gif/54368016/favorite-garfield.gif" width="400" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Giggling/chuckling/guffawing/ laughing over <b>Baby Blue</b>s or <b>Zits</b> stimulates belly, heart and imagination. Tracking the drama of <b>Mark Trail</b>'s adventures sharpens concentration. Like poetry, humor relies on insight, juxtaposition, originality, timing, nuance and irony. See <b>Dilbert</b>, <b>Pickles</b>, <b>Luann</b>, <b>Drabble</b>, <b>Foxtrot</b>, <b>Doonesbury</b> and <b>Frazz</b>. Other strips (<b>Wee</b> <b>Pals</b>, <b>Mutts</b>, <b>Non</b> <b>Sequitur</b>) get you thinking about humanity. <a href="http://www.frankandernest.com/" target="_blank">Frank and Ernest</a> utilizes the poet's key tool: word play. And check out <a href="http://beakman.com/index.html" target="_blank">Beakman Jax</a>. While ostensibly answering children's science questions, Jax shines a light on life's paradoxes and absurdities. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Two online sources for comics are <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/comics/" target="_blank">The Washington Post</a> and <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/fun/" target="_blank">The Sacramento Bee</a>. I read 'em in print with the <i>Bee</i> before tackling any other news.</span>Alexa Mergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17959328651318935206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6464307295623088670.post-52491236653553314962014-01-09T12:17:00.002-08:002014-01-09T12:19:30.375-08:00Poetic Mind Tip #1: Correspond with a Pen Pal<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>This is my letter to the world that never wrote to me</i>. - Emily Dickinson</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Poems allow us to slow down, notice, reflect. Lyric poems, especially, hold a moment still--long enough to view it--the way a photograph or a painting can. A difference with the poem from visual art, however, is the degree of internalization. A word, and its sound, functions as thin gauze of meaning. Picture a beaded curtain hanging in a doorway, each bead a letter, each strand a series of words that make lines. You can slip through those dangling strings of beads and get somewhere else, to the other side of a question or into a deeper awareness.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Why bother? What's so great about being aware, present, sensitive even? You have to answer that for yourself.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I can tell you that this quality of attention necessary for writing poems, what I call "the poetic mind," can be cultivated in other ways. One of the most satisfying? A pen pal. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Write a detailed letter, by hand preferably, calling on powers of observation, description, and a sense of interiority. There's an element of gift-giving, which poems also have, the notion of making something for someone else as a way of sharing the world. Among poets are great letter writers, Rilke, Neruda, Bishop and more. But you don't have to be a great poet to write a great letter. Find someone in another city, state or country and take the time to write. Within a few months, your relationship to time will change and you'll be thinking more like a poet, which is to say, like someone who believes in truth and beauty, in being present and noticing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Need inspiration? Check out <a href="http://theletterproject.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">The Letter Project</a>.</span>Alexa Mergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17959328651318935206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6464307295623088670.post-78143096201929619092014-01-04T18:19:00.000-08:002014-01-04T18:19:25.762-08:00Bruce Forman's "Journey"<br />
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 21px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i> within a stark white world--</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 21px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i> an icy stream cascades from</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 21px;"><i>-Bruce Forman</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;">Remember </span><a href="http://www.sacbee.com/2012/04/06/4395185/wild-wolf-or7-is-back-in-california.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;" target="_blank">OR7</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;">, the lone wolf that journeyed into California in 2012? Naturalist Bruce Forman brings OR7's story to the stage. I worked with Bruce on revising the poem that will be performed with music and dance. The project merges art and science--two sides of the same coin of life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;">Come see! </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>1. What inspired you to write "Journey"?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The long solo journey for a young wolf to take...is inspirational. The idea of wolves re-establishing in California after being extirpated is exciting; it may still take years, but it's now possible. Who knows, maybe OR7 will come back with a female wolf. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>2. What steps did you take to prepare the poem for performance?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I went through an analysis of scenes that worked fine as a poem but needed more time to breath on stage for dance movements, for emotions to gel, for artistic quality to be realized. Having a poetry critique and feedback from dancers really helped. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>3. How does art figure into environmental education? </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Art is very important in environmental interpretation or education as it appeals to a person very differently than information. Art can inspire, evoke emotions, express a point in a way that way words have difficulty. Art, whether music, dance, masks, costumes, lights and/or the poetic verse, adds key layers of the experience that can change a person's attitudes, emotions and ultimately behavior. Information is important as a foundation, hence my interest in having a wolf lecturer to open the program with the science and politics of wolves. And the storytelling element which follows adds to the richness of perspectives about wolves.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>4. What facts would you like people to know about wolves?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Wolves have a right to live just an any other animal, for their own intrinsic value. Wolves as a keystone species are vital for healthy food chains and the balance of habitats. Wolves are team players with various roles that help a pack survive. We can learn much from wolves, from parenting to hunting to reducing stress and increasing compatibility within a pack. Wolves are excellent communicators. Wolves represent hope, for the recovery of nature in our world. We need to have more of [what <a href="http://www.aldoleopold.org/home.shtml" target="_blank">Aldo Leopold</a> calls] their glow of "green fire" in our society, by first finding our own green fire.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>5. Have you encountered a wolf in the wild? </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I experienced seeing a distant wolf on my honeymoon in Alaska at Denali National Park. It had this haunting, stoic look, gazing out on the vast open mountainside. But in terms of intimacy [with the wild], it'd have to be swimming with a wild dolphin in outer cays of Belize on scuba trip. After a full day of diving, docked at a tiny island, I joined a dolphin near sunset, and we swam and played. It was very perceptive, affectionate and powerful. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>6. Tell us about your other projects as a naturalist and writer.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm working on a new book of poems on cranes and introspective elements, from love to loss, friendships to aloneness, dreams to realities of living, and a few oddballs. It will be accompanied by awesome crane photographs and illustrations. The writing is largely done, photographs taken and moving into next steps of production, hopefully in time for fall. Possibly as an accordion book with book ends so the changeable beauty of it can be displayed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As a naturalist, I'm involved with starting a new wildlife festival in the region, developing a new trail at an awesome yet trail-less natural site in the region filled with wildflowers, waterfalls and unusual, less seen wildlife. And I'm expanding an environmental education project (in its 29th year) to advance environmental science and conservation literacy of youth. I'm also wanting to return to Alaska with my family and close friends, to raft the Alsek-Tatshenshini Rivers over two weeks, and howl with the wolves. </span></div>
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Alexa Mergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17959328651318935206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6464307295623088670.post-41131766459868018602013-12-31T14:04:00.001-08:002013-12-31T14:04:33.478-08:00Currying the Horse, a story
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thank you to <a href="http://www.whlreview.com/" target="_blank">Wilderness House Literary Review</a> for publishing this excerpt of my novel manuscript <i>Tangle Creek</i>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Iris reached for the curry comb. When John handed it to her their
</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">hands grazed at the sides of their palms, causing Iris to shiver in ripples
</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">along her spine as the horse had. Goosebumps raised up on her arms
where her cardigan sleeves were pushed back.</span> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">She took the comb. John covered her hand with his, stepping behind
and encircling her, not near enough for contact, a distanced embrace just
close enough to warm the air between them, an insulating layer in the
space of their separate lives. Reach, sweep, brush. The barn door was
</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">open. A crisp breeze traveled through the alleyway, freshening the stall. It
</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">brought to Iris’ lips a taste of the nearness of spring beyond winter’s im-
mediacy. She panted from exertion.</span> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">“Gently over his shoulders and hips,” John said softly. Iris felt sweat
</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">moisten her neck and bead on her forehead. John pulled back from her.
</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">She moved from the horse’s off-side to his right side, intent on the sweep-
</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">ing motion, willing herself to work out the tug she felt in her heart, the
ache in her belly. She could forget herself in this task. She could clean and
tend and wear herself out this way. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Read the full story <a href="http://www.whlreview.com/no-8.4/fiction/AlexaMergen.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>. </span><br />
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Alexa Mergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17959328651318935206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6464307295623088670.post-1168932341317796352013-12-28T17:37:00.001-08:002013-12-28T17:39:08.946-08:00Interview with Connie Gutowsky<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The newest collection from Sacramento poet <a href="http://www.sacmetroarts.org/ArchivedCountyLines.html#ConnieGutowsky" target="_blank">Connie Gutowsky</a> is <i>Play</i>. In the word "play" lies the Middle Dutch root <span class="ff" style="font-style: italic;">pleien</span><span class="ff" style="font-style: italic; font-weight: 600;"> </span><span class="ff">for</span><span class="ff" style="font-weight: 600;"> </span><span class="ff">"l</span><span class="trans">eap for <span apple_mouseover_highlight="1">joy</span>, dance<span class="gp tg_tr">." Connie has brought her delight in words, word-play, music, image and meaning to my workshops on </span></span>creativity, poetry memorization and Day Poems through the years. She's also invited me to work with her on polishing poems. Putting our heads together over her luminous poems while sipping coffee at an outdoor cafe are treasured times. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Below is a poem from <i>Play.</i></span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Read on for an interview with Connie, an attorney with keen attention to detail and broad experience with people. </span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>CHICAGO</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">August 2013</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hand-in-hand along Michigan Avenue, we stroll</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">past giant sculptural heads with human faces— </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">fuchsia, fern, & other floral hairdos popping</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">out their tops. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Bareheaded in the windy city, we walk my husband’s </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">historic high school campus, enter what once</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">had been his father’s fire station, stop for deep-dish pizza, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">work museums, & later take the river tour.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Of we seven, four leave for Wrigley Field.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Three—taxi to afternoon tea at the Drake Hotel.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hailey, brown-haired, brown-eyed, ten-year-old, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">selecting words from the menu, </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">pencils a quick poem before ordering. Lined up </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">on a banquette, the waiter snaps our photo before I flip </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">my Chocolate Opera petit four;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">bittersweet frosting smears my white cuff—</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Clumsy fingers that I lick! Protocol for high tea: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">steep, rest a strainer on the cup’s lip, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">then pour. For the second cup, I forget the strainer, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">my mouth awash with dark leaves. The harp plays on. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I’m stirred to fuchsia reflections—</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">a string of perfect days</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">clad in terra cotta, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">ginger plum red. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>A window into a poetic mind</b></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">1. The title of your collection is <i>Play</i>. Why "play"? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I chose the book title <i>Play</i> because as I organized the poems into sections, I noticed the word “play” appeared in at least one poem in each section. I was hoping to evoke the many meanings of “play” in my title.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">2. Does play come into your writing process? How?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My practice of poetry includes reading, writing, and bringing poems to study groups for critique. It feels like “play” — endemic to our species— in that it is absorbing, outside routine life, a kind of performance requiring practice, imaginative and brings happiness.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">3. When did you start writing poetry? Why?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I began studying and writing poetry seriously in 2002 after retiring from the practice of law. I had leisure and the opportunity to pursue an interest first aroused when a was a young student.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">4. You paint as well. How do painting and poetry influence each other in your work?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Painting and poetry influence each other in my experience by calling for attention.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">5. How does your background as an attorney influence your poetry--subject matter, style, other ways?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As a criminal defense attorney, I became enured to the importance of communicating with clients, judges, juries, family, and colleagues in clear, persuasive often creative but plain-spoken language. I learned to become capable of my fears and limitations. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">6. This past summer, you participated in a Day Poems workshop. How did that process affect your writing?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Participation in the Day Poems Workshop affected my writing by expanding my intention to pay attention, to take time, to play with and in the present.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">7. What poets do you enjoy reading?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I rarely re-read poets right now. I’m so involved in workshops which introduce me to new-to-me poets. I try to find something to like in every poet I read. Some favorites are: Szymborska, Whitman, Moore, Haas, Hall, Eliot, Jon Davis, Levertov. Too many to name.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">8. You travel. What's the most poetically inspiring place you've ever visited? Why is it inspiring?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I tend to be inspired wherever I travel. Europe in my 20's, Chicago-always, NYC always, even my home town and anyplace in Oregon. I am inspired when I travel because my mind-set shifts in unexpected ways.</span><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP746_isq2OovzNmeEpIx88scQRyxOwsi5rMq1o7XLi-2obxpRICEhFtArWWeO9pPk5t_Vz1UZPRk3lig8vTWKeDvWga15f9elWle7jT0nyh99fcxCH8YI_5QhVL0E3_UsyOMDyhKD1qvJ/s1600/play.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP746_isq2OovzNmeEpIx88scQRyxOwsi5rMq1o7XLi-2obxpRICEhFtArWWeO9pPk5t_Vz1UZPRk3lig8vTWKeDvWga15f9elWle7jT0nyh99fcxCH8YI_5QhVL0E3_UsyOMDyhKD1qvJ/s400/play.jpg" width="297" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Play</i> by Connie Gutowsky (Random Lane, 2013)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">9. You've studied poets and their biographies. If you could invite a poet, dead or alive, to dinner, who would it be? What would you serve? Why?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’d invite Wislawa Szymborska to dinner and serve her a pork chop with sauerkraut because she wrote an essay, “Nervousness,” in her book <i>Nonrequired Reading</i>, about seeing Czeslaw Milosz in a restaurant when she was a young writer, horrified that he was relishing a serving of a pork chop with sauerkraut. Years later, she found herself dining out, glanced over to unexpectedly find the great poet there also; both having ordered that same dish.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">10. You are active in Sacramento poetry workshops. What is the role of local community in shaping a poet?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The role of the local community in shaping a poet: support, inspiration, introduction to the vast world of poetry and guidance therein, camaraderie, mentoring, play. We in Sacramento are lucky to have a rich poetry community.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">11. What's your favorite poem from your collection? Tell us the story behind that poem.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">In one of my poems, the lines “our mother instructs each one of her eight children/You are practically my favorite child." I feel that way about each poem in my book. There is a story behind (and within) every one.</span></div>
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Alexa Mergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17959328651318935206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6464307295623088670.post-44456090009011295482013-12-26T14:00:00.001-08:002013-12-26T14:00:46.385-08:00Daily Prompt: Jackets and Blouses<br />
<a href="http://stoa.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/penelope-thread.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="140" src="http://stoa.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/penelope-thread.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A friend and I were trading clothes the other day--swapping jackets and tops that no longer suit us or we've tired of--and I remembered this poem. I wrote it for a friend I knew in Yucca Valley. In chronological age, Ollie was old enough to be my grandmother, but we were kindred spirits. I never thought about years when we were together; just fun.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Elegy for Iola</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Those she sewed for herself, fit better than what I buy off the rack.</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The jacket with four round black buttons— </span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I wore at work all day while I talked </span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>About Odysseus and his journey home…</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The shroud Penelope wove during the day, unraveled at night.</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The sleeveless blouse with a zipper up the back,</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I wore last Saturday sitting on the patio </span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>With the sun on my shoulders for the first time this year. </span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I haven’t worn a full-length slip </span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Since I was a girl in velvet dressed for an assembly. </span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This old slip feels silky and cool. <br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I’ll wear it beneath a green dress at a wedding next week.</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The stitches you sewed are small and even,</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And even though the red blouse’s fabric is shiny from ironing, </span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>the print has barely faded.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>first published in </i><a href="http://www.thepackinghousereview.com/Welcome.html" target="_blank">The<i> </i>Packinghouse Review</a></span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Daily Prompt: </b>Write about a piece of clothing special to you.</span></span><br />
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Alexa Mergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17959328651318935206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6464307295623088670.post-86217724336458104022013-12-23T16:51:00.000-08:002013-12-23T16:51:50.011-08:00Daily Prompt: The Parts of the Sum<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I studied classical guitar for eleven years and practiced my share of scales. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Day Poems practice (writing a poem-a-day for a set amount of time) is similar to playing scales. The discipline of paying attention, striving for accuracy, and listening closely transfers into the poems you write outside of the Day Poems series. It works.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thoughts to encourage you to get started on <a href="http://daypoems.blogspot.com/p/day-poems-how-to.html" target="_blank">Day Poems</a>. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Poets are list makers. We collect images, words, snippets of conversation, symbols, sounds, flavors, forms, rhymes, titles. We are jackdaws, filling our nests with shiny things that catch our eyes. <b>Use the power of list making as you write your Day Poems.</b> List newspaper headlines to select from as titles for your poems. List words in Italian or Aramaic or Farsi to include in your poems. List all the names of your neighbors’ pets, the planets, every type of olive you can remember. Generate words. Words are like gnats: they travel in swarms. If you jot one down, more are sure to follow. </span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Poets are meaning-makers. They make connections between seemingly disparate things. That’s how metaphor works, connecting two unrelated things with a comparison. <b>Allow unplanned juxtapositions to happen in your Day Poems. </b>The practice of Day Poems breaks patterns and habits. If something seems to not fit, leave it for a bit. Give it a chance. You can always take it out later. (By the way, silly is okay, too.)</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b>Distill your Day Poems.</b> Even before you get to any formal revision (if you even choose to), distill. Bring observations to their essences. Fearlessly hone your insights. Let them occur. You may find that you think you are writing about garbage trucks and you are really writing about unburdening someone. Accept that insight. That’s all you have to do.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b>Let the Day Poems slow you down.</b> “Art,” Theodore Roethke said, “is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste.” If you are a person who is busy, closely connected to the internet, energetic, outgoing, or otherwise on-the-go, slowing down may feel unsettling. Try breathing evenly and deeply. It helps. Experiment with speaking your words aloud as you compose them. That activates the breath and attunes you to the sounds of words and the feel of rhythm. If you have access to them, lay in a hammock to muse, or ebb-and-flow in a rocking chair or swing. </span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Need more help slowing down? <a href="http://www.yogastanza.org/" target="_blank">Yoga Stanza</a> has poems to be read aloud. You don't need to "do yoga" to enjoy them. Just read and breathe and enjoy.</span></span><br />
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Alexa Mergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17959328651318935206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6464307295623088670.post-42672648822068010922013-12-20T13:45:00.000-08:002013-12-20T13:45:00.435-08:00"Blue without boundary"<br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An excerpt from "Cells of Solitude," just out in <a href="http://r.kv.r.y/">r.kv.r.y</a>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white;">7. With journals as portable studios, we make things and make up things. We strive to make up to the world for our limits, each new creation–poem or painting–another hat tossed into the ring of the attempt to understand the depth and breadth of the human condition.</span><span style="background-color: white;">8. By studying what happens when the sound of a jet disrupts their chorus, biologists learned that the songs of spade foot frogs form a musical camouflage that protects them from predators.</span><span style="background-color: white;">9. Each person’s poem or picture enters a biophony of interrelated soundscape across time and space, like Yeats’ song of Innisfree: “And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,/Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;/There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,/And evening full of the linnet’s wings.”</span><span style="background-color: white;">10. Art is our ant farm, our honeycomb, labyrinth, the anthology of infinite pages; each poem is a rain drop on its way to an ocean.</span></span></blockquote>
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Alexa Mergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17959328651318935206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6464307295623088670.post-51049897692274673352013-12-18T16:29:00.001-08:002013-12-18T16:29:33.687-08:00Daily Prompt: What about 2013?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="background-color: white;"><tbody>
<tr><td align="left"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In two weeks, a new year starts. What kind of a year has 2013 been?<br /><br />In "<a href="http://www.bartleby.com/142/111.html" target="_blank">1861</a>," Walt Whitman personifies and directly addresses the year. Notice in this part of the poem how the year seems to storm across the continent.<br /></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Amid the men of Manhattan I saw you, as one of the workmen, the dwellers in Manhattan;</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Or with large steps crossing the prairies out of Illinois and Indiana,</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rapidly crossing the West with springy gait, and descending the Alleghanies;</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6464307295623088670" name="10"><i> 10</i></a></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Or down from the great lakes, or in Pennsylvania, or on deck along the Ohio river;</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Or southward along the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers, or at Chattanooga on the mountain top,</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs, clothed in blue, bearing weapons, robust year;</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Heard your determin’d voice, launch’d forth again and again;</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipp’d cannon,</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6464307295623088670" name="15"><i> 15</i></a></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />In 1861, 10 states followed South Carolina's December 1860 example and seceded from the Confederate States of America. The Civil War began in April.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.whitmanarchive.org/multimedia/images/medium/030.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.whitmanarchive.org/multimedia/images/medium/030.jpg" width="236" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><br /><b><i>Daily Prompt:</i></b> Write a poem addressed to 2013. Was 2013 a man or a woman? Where was it traveling? What did 2013 wear? Conclude your poem with a string of adjectives as Whitman does ("hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year").</span></td></tr>
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Alexa Mergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17959328651318935206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6464307295623088670.post-43175760880284121092013-12-14T17:07:00.000-08:002013-12-14T17:07:02.693-08:00A Time for Reflection and RenewalI'm honored to present a "<a href="http://www.poetrytherapy.org/pdf/NAPT-2014Conference-BrochureProgram.pdf" target="_blank">Day Poems</a>" workshop at the April 2014 <a href="http://www.poetrytherapy.org/" target="_blank">National Association for Poetry Therapy</a> conference in Arizona. Here's why.<br />
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In 2002, when I moved from a Mojave mesa with a sweeping view of Joshua Tree National Park to a drafty house on a noisy corner of Bakersfield, I sank into a tangle of emotions. I knew I'd reached the nadir of misery when I yelled at my dogs and they cringed in confusion.<br />
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Days stretched into weeks and I couldn't find a job. I gardened, cooked, walked, met neighbors, read, wrote...and every afternoon the walls closed in on me until I couldn't breathe. One day in 2003, at loose ends, I browsed the internet looking for anything poetry related. In the weird way of the web, a site popped up, the National Association for Poetry Therapy. I'm not the first or last person to be drawn in by the organization's logo, pegasus on a purple background. I missed the stars I used to see from my desert patio and the winged horse, mythical creature and constellation, filled a need.<br />
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The organization was holding a conference in Miami. My mother, worried about my sorrowful state, offered to pay my way. Gratefully, I went. The conference sessions are a blur, but I remember the attendees--friendly, curious, committed to using words conscientiously, hopeful, sincere, smart, witty. A woman who knew the city took me by taxi for Cuban food and a night walk on the beach. I joined early risers for yoga under the Florida sun. The following year I attended the Costa Mesa conference where keynote speaker Li-Young Lee changed the way I think about silence.<br />
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In the year between conferences, inspired by the example of others bringing poetry to unlikely places, I offered writing workshops at Bakersfield's main library. Some of my students became friends.<br />
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When I moved to Sacramento in 2004, the arts community opened the door wide for me and I enthusiastically entered, working as a teacher and as a teaching artist in schools and a prison. I concentrated on writing, editing and publishing and let my relationship with NAPT lapse. But I missed it.<br />
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I'm dedicated to poetry as an art of skill and imagination: I've been exploring poetry for as long as I can remember as a student and teacher of literature. I'm also intrigued at how reading and writing poetry makes space in life for wonder and possibility and well-being.<br />
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My wants are simpler than 12 years ago. I read and write poetry, practice yoga, and help others read and write poetry and practice yoga. The Day Poems workshops are at the heart of what I believe is our welfare as individuals and members of a species: the ability to listen and notice, to engage empathetically with the human and non-human world around us, and create something from our experience that helps us understand ourselves and another.<br />
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Hope you can attend!Alexa Mergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17959328651318935206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6464307295623088670.post-41097707585220194342013-12-11T13:47:00.001-08:002013-12-11T13:47:36.420-08:00Daily Prompt: City Lullaby<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">People need cities. Each of our cities develops a unique character based on geography and history. Why not personify a city in a poem to honor it? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When I lived in Bakersfield, I was struck by how exploited by humans the land has been. On Baker's field settlers grazed livestock before pushing over the mountains to the coast; farmers diverted the Kern River for agriculture; oilmen planted derricks. Appreciative of her resilience, I wrote a lullaby for the city. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">BAKERSFIELD</st1:place></st1:city>: THIS CITY<br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">Before sun's up, standing on the porch with coffee and silence I want to last.<br />The carrier's come and gone. The newspaper lies on the lawn.<br /><br />This is the interlude between late night stragglers and neighbors off to work.<br />This is the time of clarity; it comes to me like water.<br />Was there a time when day broke like an orchestra's first note,<br />Like a brush stroke on blank canvas?<br /><br />This beleaguered city sleeps for brief moments only, ragged as an insomniac<br />Holding on to wispy dreams of riches and good times.<br />Phlegmatic and gray,<br />She needs rest.<br /><br />Sleep <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Bakersfield</st1:city></st1:place>, ringed by mountains -<br />Sleep Bakersfield, let the Kern run her way -<br />Sleep Bakersfield, leave the soil turn dark -<br />Sleep Bakersfield, sigh now deep,<br />Tired city, sleep now sleep.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p>first published in <i>We Have Trees </i>(Swim, 2005) and <a href="http://home.earthlink.net/~donnelc2/id8.html" target="_blank">Mytho-Poetic Visions</a></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>Daily Prompt: </i></b>Write a lullaby for a city. Imagine what she or he would want to hear. Start with where you are, in the moment, describe the characteristics of the place, conclude with a gentle lulling, using repetition.</span></div>
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Alexa Mergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17959328651318935206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6464307295623088670.post-37472406712509213072013-12-09T09:55:00.002-08:002013-12-09T09:56:45.237-08:00Daily Prompt: Think Like a Poet<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">What does it mean to be a poet? It's not how many poems you write, what style they are written in or where there are published (or not). To be a poet is to intentionally adopt a way of thinking that expands perception beyond the literal. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Thinking like a poet frees you to dip in and out of a metaphorical way of viewing the world while maintaining the objectivity necessary to observe. Each of us filters observations through the lens of opinion and experience. That’s why a novelist can make a character come alive by telling the reader what the character notices. For example, three characters walk into an office meeting. One character notes the unraveling hemline on the skirt of her boss; another wrinkles his nose at the smell of burnt microwave popcorn; the other rushes for a seat near the whiteboard. When we read fiction, and recognize ourselves and others in the characters, we learn about ourselves and, hopefully, develop empathy for others.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Poems can also have narrators and characters. But in reading poems we learn about ourselves and develop empathy for others less from following a narrative of causes and events, motives and consequences, than by permitting an emotional response to images evoked by the poem (through "sound and sense," rhythm, music and meaning) to bubble up. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">To move through life with a poetic mind, then, means opening yourself to respond as you are, with your unique self formed from your unique set of qualities, an amalgam of nurturance, nature and chance. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">A metaphor takes us further</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Think of your </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">poetic self as a duck paddling the surface of a pond, taking in quantifiable information as needed. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As you paddle and bob along you participate in the physical world, noticing time of day, colors of leaves, location of other birds, whatever grabs your attention. You also, sometimes,</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> dip into the murky waters of figurative language where light’s refraction changes angles, shadows and shapes. This is your poetic self, on and under the surface of the pond.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>Daily Prompt:</i></b> Set yourself the challenge of making three metaphors or similes today, combining images that catch your heart or eye. Metaphors make connections. They offer one way of stretching the literal to make room for feelings and exercising your poet-self.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Example: </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You see a mother wrap herself and her child in a shawl for warmth. Later, you see a branch bent from the weight of snow over a rock.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The bending branch wraps a stone like the mother drawing a child warmly into her shawl.</span><br />
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Alexa Mergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17959328651318935206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6464307295623088670.post-994931210779775242013-12-06T13:34:00.002-08:002013-12-06T15:00:28.439-08:00Persist and Connect<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Today, I got a phone call with notice of acceptance of a short story I drafted 25 years ago. An actor with <a href="http://storiesonstagedavis.com/" target="_blank">Stories on Stage-Davis (SOS-Davis)</a> will perform the story in 2014; I'll receive $50. My story has earned me $2 a year. Not much income for my banking account. The satisfaction is having persistence pay. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Learning to Swim" tells of a teenaged girl at a campground. I wrote it for all the families I had seen in my roaming, living out of motels and cars. In years following</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> the story's first draft, I moved houses 21 times. Until recently, when I started purging files, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I carried a paper copy of the story from place to place.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The ink from the dot matrix printer that made that copy was starting to fade; "Learning to Swim" is now stored digitally in a cloud. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The story opens, "</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The summer we lived at the Lawrence, Kansas K.O.A, I learned to swim." </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've written dozens more sentences and stories. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Many of those are lost or abandoned. Why did I hang on to "Learning to Swim"? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">The answer to why I persisted with the story, rereading and revising it, is in a phrase in the acceptance email from SOS-Davis: "</span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We view you as family now...." Each piece I write that finds a home connects me with people who would otherwise remain strangers.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Often lost in a daydream of a line of poetry or an image, I don't recognize acquaintances' faces when I run into them at the grocery store in my day-to-day life. But </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I remember the people about whom I write.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I recall where I saw them, our exchange-- eyes meeting or a full conversation. And when that exchange happens, I am bound to that person and situation because my vocation is to tell of that encounter. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For we humans, who have lost our tails, tales make us human again. Silly but true. Tell a story, someone hears it: we are reminded that all of us are one household. We can choose to view each other as family.</span><br />
<br />Alexa Mergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17959328651318935206noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6464307295623088670.post-73197712926243124332013-12-03T11:30:00.000-08:002013-12-03T11:30:30.558-08:00Daily Prompt: Compose <br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Those who are bitten by the poetry bug cannot help but compose. </span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lines snag their sweaters when they are shopping for cereal; words rattle their chains in their sleeping brains. Others remember their poetic origins when they suffer a loss or celebrate a joy; they write an occasional poem marking the event for a funeral or wedding. You may be someone who has never written before and wonder if you can. Or you once wrote and abandoned the habit, or it abandoned you, and you wonder if you can write again. You can. This capacity may be dormant but it’s within you. </span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yes, there is necessary mystery in the great poems, the ageless ones written by people touched by genius. A good poem, Theodore Roethke says, is a holy thing. But there is nothing mysterious about sharpening your powers of observation through the practice of poetry. And there is value in the process of trying and caring. Every creative act is an act of faith. Wonder-ful.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Process. Practice. These are kinesthetic words. Our lives are moving forward, even as we slip back in time through memory and attempt to ground ourselves in the present through work, breath and play. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>Daily Prompt:</i></b> "Compose" comes from "to place." Composing anything--a photo, an outfit to wear, a party, a lesson, a meal, a poem--puts you in place, in the here and now. Enjoy your composition as you are composing. Breathe back into the process of creating. Wonder at your ability to <i>do</i>.</span><br />
Alexa Mergenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17959328651318935206noreply@blogger.com0