October Ode Challenge

I have been thinking about the Cliffs of Moher a lot lately (pictured above). This picture exhibits how I feel sometimes about my writing. I'm right on the cusp of some thing. I need to just let go and jump, figuratively of course. Sometimes I work on one line for hours, days, and maybe even months. It helps to know there are other poets who take quite some time to finish a draft. When A. Van Jordan came to Akron last spring he shared that he writes rather slowly. And we all know that A. Van Jordan rocks.

I get more neurotic as I age and I can't put the words on the page until they are ready. I guess I work in my head a lot. I accept my process for the most part, but I do think I feel better when I am producing more.

With that in mind, I gave myself an October ode challenge. Every morning I must write three odes in less than 15 minutes. This has been so much fun. Of course, 99% of what I am writing will not make it into my next manuscript, but the point is, it is a warm-up for the day. It gives me a little poetry buzz. And, it has forced me to narrow in on the tiniest of objects instead of big huge places where cliches fester. Plus, the ode is so much fun. It gives you the chance to spend more time with poets like Neruda. It also has allowed me to be a bit more appreciative of little things.

Happy October ode writing!

Doolin

Kelli and I had a great night in Dublin on the 26th and now she is back home safely in Ohio. After sending Kelli on her way, I took a bus (or several) to get back here to my favorite place, Doolin in County Clare.

Jacquie and Greg are wonderful company and the amount of fun I have been having is insane.

I have made a friend who is a chef at a little cafe about a mile from where I am staying. He makes wonderful meals that look like something that should be in a fine dining magazine. I drink coffee, eat hummus and asparagus, do a little writing, gaze through the window at the countryside and pretend I'm never leaving.

The chef also enjoys writing so we have started a notebook that allows us to write back and forth.

I think I could sit in that cafe forever.

Today I am going to walk to the Cliffs of Moher. It will take me a few hours, but Jacquie works at a shop on the top so I will catch a lift back with her. Yesterday a man jumped. It took over twenty men to pull his body from the water. I think that makes four people this month, but I'm not sure.

Despite the sad news of suicide, I am looking forward to a tough climb and one breathtaking view.

Thoughts on the WRITING LIFE

I’m always writing something in my head. That habit forces me to evacuate the right now of countless situations. I’m wondering if I miss out on things. And most of the time I am digesting something from years ago.

I remember my mother getting irritated at Christmas when I would write in my notebook (after I opened my presents, of course). I think that at times she, and other family members, took writing as a kind of negative, ungrateful body language.

I have been spending time with Matthew Thorburn’s book Subject to Change. In the poem Triptych, he speaks of the dichotomy involved in the writing life. He says, two lives, pushing on in one, one circling back to re-imagine and rearrange.

That duality is something I think makes someone a writer or an artist of any sort.

I’m not complaining. I wouldn’t trade my writer self. It’s probably the most authentic me, but sometimes it makes me feel different and lonely.