Archive

Tag Archives: creative process

Rachel Carson, Speaker for the Silenced

December 10, 2014
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

001Here is the consummate environmentalist. She fearlessly spoke out against the profligate use of pesticides, which she wisely renamed “biocides,” and her successful battle against the propaganda and dirty-dealing of such as DuPont was the single most important factor in the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Thanks to Wikipedia, YouTube, and any number of environmental websites on the Internet, her passionate voice may be heard instantly by anyone with computer access. Her message is just as timely as it was in 1962, the year of publication of her Silent Spring, whose title refers both to the loss of birdsong due to pesticide collateral damage and the potential Earthwide silence should the rapists of Mother Earth continue their fell practices.

I am working on a double-acrostic poem and page on her which will be the final needed ingredient for my manuscript of Natural Distractions, the poetry/image collection that I’ve been working on every day. Here is the work in progress:

002

ETA on the completed manuscript, and with it the completed Rachel Carson page, is tomorrow morning. Upon its completion I’ll convey it to David Chorlton, a fine environmental defender in his own right, for editorial assistance. Stay tuned! [determined smile]

2nd Anniversary Post: Where To Now?

December 3, 2014
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

cairn1

The photo was taken on Sedona’s Bell Rock some time ago. At lower left is the shadow of the wayfarer’s head. In the midground is a cairn, a trail marker of stones cylinderized with baling wire. From each cairn not the beginning nor end the wayfarer ought to be able to see the cairn preceding and the cairn following. As long as there is a cairn in sight, then, the wayfarer is never lost; and, indeed, at upper right the wayfarer sees the next cairn on the journey.

There have been 676 posts in the two years of this blog, whose anniversary is today. Once Sam Shepard was asked how many plays he had written, and his answer was “Too damn many.” I saw his Fool for Love at a Phoenix-local theater about twenty years ago. It was good and weird.

I am going to use the love I have for making posts in this blog to incentivize the completion of a manuscript I started, with editorial help from award-winning poet David Chorlton, more than a year ago. I will be limiting my blog posts to one a week until the manuscript is finished.

After I finish the manuscript (working title: Natural Distractions), I’ll resume regular posting until the end of the year. Then I’ll finish the second manuscript I’ve got hanging fire, for a children’s book with the working title Sizegirl and Cloudboy. Again, I’ll be one-a-weeking this blog till that ms. is in the rearview mirror.

Somewhere in there should be Volume II of LIVES of the Eminent Poets of Greater Phoenix, Arizona. I’ve done at least as many poet page/profiles as I did for Volume I–declaring victory and bundling it all up has been long overdue. Disorganization has been the bugaboo of my creative existence.

In addition to, and aside from, all that, my realio trulio creative heart’s desire is making large-scale versions of the best of my pages. I hope to do at least one such in time for entry into the Glendale Arts Council’s juried show I enter every year.

That about sums up Where To, conceptually anyway. Please wish me luck and wherewithal, dear Reader!

the process

November 24, 2014
Uncategorized
2 Comments

we put some stuff in our mouths
and open the food-intake part of our throats
and the stuff goes down the esophageal chute
and in about eleven seconds
it goes to a holding area known as the stomach
which uses an acid bath to leach the good stuff
and sends it on its duodenal way to be absorbed
via fingerlings called villi
and on down through windings of sausage-casings stuff
and the good stuff gets taken some here some there
and the extra or bad stuff gets packaged for offloading

and it all bears a resemblance to taking a stream of thought
and worrying the good engagement out of it
and refining it into words
while extracting the extraneous and the wrong
via backspace delete and cut

each of our glorious bodies are editors
chemical processors
and fertilizer manufacturers

and why that is a source of shame and not pride
is in the labyrinthine history of our convoluted culture

Conceptual Help Asked For and Received

November 4, 2014
Uncategorized
2 Comments

Yesterday I wrote a poem called “second understanding,” thus:

second understanding

he understood her ONCE
she was not available
but not coy
not hard to get
(paradoxically it was hard to get that she was not being hard to get)

subsequently they meshed
loved
fought
yearned
cried
and
(both feeling misunderstood and both feeling dissatisfied)
separated

now they circle, wary noncombatants
and he realizes
if he could understand her a second time
if he could get her motives and heart’s desire
and the key to her easy-smile lockbox
they would be safe to shore
second understanding
to get her to really get her
to get her again
to get her again

together again

It was posted in my Notes in Facebook. My talented painter friend Rachelle commented favorably, and there was this exchange in the thread:

Me: Thank you so much, dear Rachelle! Wondering if and how to illustrate it. What do you think?
Rachelle: Ooo! Seriously? I’m honored you’d ask me. Give me a couple hours-I’m at work now, but I’ll give it my full attention this evening. Cool beans

True to her word, Rachelle later instant-messaged me. Our exchange is reprinted here with her kindly permission.

Rachelle: Here are my thoughts…
An image of a rubiks cube-
You figured out how to solve it once, but now.. you can only get one side solved. You could take it apart- but it will never work right after that. The joints will be loose and the colored stickers askew.
To solve it again takes an uncomfortable amount of effort but ultimately satisfying result-IF you can ever do it.
I dont know. Prob not helpful but thats the image I got. And burnt orange houndstooth check pattern/feel.
Other than that-I got nuthin

Me: That’s GOOD! I’ll try a sketch. Thanks!!

Rachelle: Really? I was cringing after i hit send lol

This shows two things about Rachelle. She is generous with time and help, and she doesn’t know her own strength. She and I belong to a Facebook arts group where we all create and share what we’re working on. She is unfailingly encouraging and kind in her comments. She’s also great about describing her own works in progress and what she goes through stage by stage from conception to completion.

I liked the idea of a Rubik’s Cube of Love, so close to perfect but impossibly far at the same time. Here’s what I ended up doing, with the thanks to Rachelle built in.

001

A Middle Name To Live Up To

June 12, 2014
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

The middle name starts with a W. People would ask, “What’s the W stand for?” and often they thought they heard this in reply: “Whatever you say it is, it’ll be right.” But what was actually said was, “Whatever you say it is, it’ll be Wright.”

“Wright” means “maker.” In my more pompous moments I have said it means “Creator.” But its original meaning referred mostly to things of wood; thus were dubbed Shipwrights and Wheelwrights. Later, Playwrights. Perhaps one fine day Dreamwright will be a legitimate profession. One may dream.

As a Wright, it is incumbent upon me to make things. Here is something I made in September of 2005, via the process described a couple of posts ago as “the superheated glory of RAKU:”

001And here is something I made in July of 2008, and “digitally remastered” just this morning:

002

The text is a triple-acrostic sonnet that goes like this:

Full fathom five to fifty off the reef
For all the Captain’s faithful to his staff
Onsurgent waves tall as a tall Giraffe
Obsess, convulse, and bloom like an O’Keeffe

Let’s pack it in lads this is so unreal
Let’s lash the sail and say that I’m a fool
Let’s learn our lesson and go back to school
Let’s NOT feed lampreys–sucks to be a meal

O MY, spake Bo’s’n–I’m already Jello
O LORD cried Brother–I donwanna halo
Whoopee! said Zooey–why so bleakly stay low
Why Shore said SureShot we’ll be coolly mellow

West of the Sun, Wise are the Woken Few
Whip out the World Wide Web O Brothers New

I love that I have made two such diverse-but-not-opposite things. About the poem I have a perspective just shy of six years from its creation, telling me that despite its adroitness of meter, rhyme and storytelling within the straitjacket of the acrostic form, scholars of the future will not take it seriously due to its scattershot clownishness. That’s moot, though: Not only did I make it, but it reflects my mind with a good transparency. And so in conclusion, ye Creatives, ye Makers, ye Wrights–go thou and do likewise, with my blessings and bonhomie!

 

Furnace Blast from the Past

June 10, 2014
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

The Superheated Glory of RAKU

Give to the fire ceramic ware
And wait–the ware will glisten–
Uplift the drum; grip tongs with care;
Now grasp; place; burn; imprison
The ware in what were ‘garbage’ cans–
Lo! They contain flamed treasure!
Enjoy the smoky night–and, fans,
Thanks for the shared, pure pleasure.

001

The process as practiced at Phoenix College in the mid-2000s involved preheating raku-glazed ware in an old open-topped kiln, placing the ware where a fifty-five-gallon drum could be lowered to contain it, gas-firing the ware till it looked through the peephole as if it were sweating, raising the drum, and pulling the ware out with tongs and placing it in metal trash cans containing combustible material. The material would catch fire and then the trash can lids would be slammed down, trapping the smoke within. A couple of hours of that and you’d smell like you’d been in a poker room full of cigar smokers. You’d be tired, hot and probably singed a little. You’d feel Glorious.

 

Blog Post #500

May 31, 2014
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

003

It is a day like many others. Denise and I went to pick up her Bountiful Basket order and then we went to the gym nearby and then we went to restaurant nearby and then we went home. She took the recycling to the recycling bins on Camino Real and I worked on five-minute portraiture. Ultimately we went to our respective caves to work on art and Art. She has published her latest post, “Mandalas,” and I am working on mine, “Blog Post #500.” The software is taking forever to upload my image, though it is a mere 150K or so.

So I’ll save this in draft after finishing the text, which includes this transcription of the post’s eponymous triple acrostic:

Bedeviled by the Telescum–perhaps they have my number
But here’s a fine true path to keep to boast a most high number
Loose fingers take me to a parlor shopping for a new five
Let’s do licentiousness 4 times–God knows you cannot do five
O do not look for Rhyme nor Rules: for you will find here zero
Got Truth? Got lots, good friend, but Hitting Home I put near zero

Later: opened the saved draft; used “Add Media” to upload the image, which seems a bit blurred but that’s OK; added tags that included “truth,” “rhyme,” “creative process,” and “blog posting,” but not “Telescum,” for that is a word I made up, though it may already have been created unbeknownst to me. Will now post this historic piece, Share it on Twitter and Facebook, and then invite my dear Denise to celebrate life and love.

NaPoWriMo Poem for April 43rd, 2014

April 30, 2014
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

Image

goldibear & the three glocks

one was a flaxenpelt child of the woods
one was a fabled land far & away
one was a weapon well favored by hoods
one was a thin-metal tonic array.

she played the third glock* sadly–golden yet blue
and daydreamed she lived on the shore of the first**
the second*** she shot in an old switcheroo
on film and in cinemascope: “i could burst.”

in the tradition that scholars call oral
stories are told to your children for teaching
this tale’s for grownups & here is the moral:
“old switcheroos are ofttimes overreaching.”

THE END

* glockenspiel
** glocca morra
*** glock 9mm

This is a happy day, Friends. It’s the LAST DAY of National Poetry Writing Month, and with this poem I fulfill the requirement I set for myself of writing at least one poem each day of the Month.  I feel like I am crossing the Finish Line; even so, I might try to squeeze off seven more poems/posts for a nice round 50. (Or might not. [smiles])

 

NaPoWriMo Poem Pair for April 31, 2014

April 23, 2014
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

003

tableau vivant

taxes levied leveled Levi
blimey barney’s stoned but viva
eager beamers roar & win
ukuleles sound like mint

TAB LOW/WE WANT

The candidate survived the peer review
And then her father died, as if on cue
Bulimia & travel left her raw

LOVE set her world aright & flipt her shwa
Obsessing over Style & cred & thin
Will make us OVERLOOK a crucial hint

I don’t want to clutter up the post with annotation, but I will say that Bulimia and Depression seem highly correlative. Also: I think the image has good potential for snap/crackle/poppery that has not yet been realized. I did two other scan/edits that were even less successful:

001

002

 

NaPoWriMo Poem Trio for April 16

April 13, 2014
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

Here are three poems I wrote this weekend to answer a challenge by my friend Joseph A. in our Facebook group Poets All Call. Joe’s challenge was threefold (four, if you count “Have fun!”):

Write an adult version of a childrens’ poem/book.

Write about a really bad cup of coffee.

Write about a cold, rainy spring day.

Have fun!

And here was my response:

the feline in the fedora

two children watched the raindrops paint the window
they sighed with boredom aching for a change
they hadn’t had their fun thus knees unskinned though
they’d trade unscrapedness for something strange.

as if in answer to a summons in came
an oversized and overtopped old cat
and jazzed their glazed expressions when his grin came
to prove contagious making cheeks unflat

he doffed fedora in the act releasing
two things called things who ran the household ragged
and carved the kitchen air with lightning greasing
the wheels of fun though sloppy paths went jagged

the things dived in the hat hat went ahead
and out the door of destiny cat fled

grounds for complaint?
 
i like my coffee liquid,
and non-corrosive too,
assertive but not armpit-strong.
unmerrily we scald along:
the serpent’s fang, the pitchfork’s prong,
the muck from cheech & tommy’s bong,
the nether regions of king kong.
this coffee makes me sick, kid,
but wakes me up, for true.
 
At-Brisk Children
(to the memories of Ogden Nash and Shel Silverstein)

April Showers are sometimes cold.
Take umbrellas unless you’re bold,
Watch the puddles; they’re full of sloshes;
No one any more wears galoshes.
Feel the wind going through your cloth.
Wish your face felt the steam of broth.
Go inside to relax and thrive.
You’ve been COLD, but felt So Alive!