Tuesday, April 15, 2008

I Like to Pretend I'm a Poet

So, I haven’t completely forgotten about this blog. No, it’s been hovering over my head, constantly raining down failure.

But, in an attempt for Present Liz to keep a promise Past Liz made to Future Liz, I’m reviving my commitment to the initial premise of this blog, and am going to begin posting again. And I’m going to try not to be negative about it all (which is harder than I think it would be to dig to China).

With that, I’ll proceed with the purpose of this post.

As some of you may know it’s National Poetry Month (NPM). And I’ve been receiving a poem-a-day from 3 different websites. I’ve enjoyed opening up my email and being surrounded in words—some that have resonated with me, and some that have made me say “Huh?”

This is why I love poetry. It makes me ponder. It makes me cry. It makes me want to be better. It makes me look at the world differently. To me, all poetry (even the bad ones) is worthwhile.

So, I wanted to share (with the two of you) a little bit of new stuff coming out of aspiring (and a few established) poets. The university I work for has a writing program, and in honor of NPM, they published "Poetry Sleepover.” Basically, it’s an online literary magazine. They had poets submit whatever they wanted, and then over a period of 24 hours, they selected, edited, and published this online version.

(I submitted a brief poem modeled after one of my favorite poems by Ezra Pound and they selected it.)

If you have a minute or ten, read through a couple of the poems. There’s a great variety of different styles and topics. Something for everyone!

And, if you have a few more minutes to spare, why don’t you write a poem of your very own in support of NPM? It doesn’t have to be anything spectacular. Trust me on that. I’m an expert at non-spectacular-ness.

Yay for words!!!*



*Tomorrow I'll be posting a special request. So, stay tuned!

3 comments:

rachelsaysso said...

On a Prairie Home Companion on Saturday they were reading love sonnets that listeners has submitted. And, no surprise, I found myself crying during one of them. Here's the: http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/features/lyrics/2008/sonnets/04.shtml

I was mentioning to Katie just the other day that I've come back around to really loving poetry. For a while I was a little medium to it but I'm totally back now.

rachelsaysso said...

Oh, and WELCOME BACK! And CONGRATULATIONS on your poem being selected!

Amanda said...

I'm so glad you're back.
I am trying to teach poetry in Writer's Workshop right now to 5 year olds. I was really worried about it since I don't write poetry or think in that way. No worries, they have plenty to say and no fear! It's very eye opening.