Here is the list of poets who will be included in the Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Anthology! For those who submitted work by the May 7 deadline, please review this list and make sure your name appears below and that your name appears the way you want your work attributed in the collection. If your name is not listed, or if your listing is incorrect, send an email to info (at) readwritepoem (dot) org, and I’ll make sure you get added.

I also have several books to give away as part of the Read Write Poem Challenge Pledge raffle. I will announce those winners here at Read Write Poem within the week.

The contributors:

Amy Marie Taratus, Andy Sewina, Angie Werren, Barbara Young, Cara Holman, Cathy McGuire, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, Christina Hile, Damian Caruana, Dan Rako, Derrick Armitage, E. Jason Riedy, Emily Manger, Erin Davis, Evelyn N. Alfred, Ingrid Jendrzejewski, Irene Toh, J. D. Mackenzie, Jaelle n’ha Gilla, Janet Hawtin, Jeeves, Joanne Johns, Joseph Harker, Julie Mehta, K.C. Koppy, Katharine Whitcomb, Katherine Hager, Kelly Eastlund, Lani Jo Leigh, Larry Patterson, Lawrence Congdon, Lee Lawton, Linda Cosgriff, Linda Jacobs, Linda Watskin, Lindsay Penelope Illich, Lori Wiens MacDonald, Maria L. Castejon, Marian Veverka, Marianne McNamara, Marie-Elizabeth Mali, Matt Blair, Matt Quinn, Maya Ganesan, Meresha Crewer, Michelle Weaver, Neil Reid, Pamela Sayers, Pamela Villars, Rallentanda, Renee DeCarlo, Rhiannon Grant, Rob Kistner, Robin Morris, Robin Rosen Chang, Robin Turner, Ron. Lavalette, Sarah Sidney Coty, Shanna Germain, Shari Lynne Smothers, Simon Seamount, Sophie F Baker, Susan Sonnen, Tiel Aisha Ansari, Tim Keeton, Tina Celio, Todd Miller, Troy Kehm-Goins, Uma Gowrishankar, Veronica Hosking, Vivienne Blake, Wanda McCollar, Wayne Pitchko, Zeenat Arsiwalla

It is with regret that I inform the membership that Read Write Poem will not be moving forward under new leadership. My only option at this time is to close the site down. The community’s editorial, maintenance and technical needs have grown exponentially, to the point that instating another all-volunteer team with the skills and time to lead the site is impossible.

The site will remain live through April for NaPoWriMo and will post a member-authored writing prompt every day during the month of April as part of the Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Challenge. In late May, the Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Challenge Anthology will be published and will include work by those who complete the challenge.

The final editorial piece will be published on the site May 1. It will wrap up the Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Challenge and detail how to send in work for inclusion in the anthology. At that point, the site will be closed in terms of new editorial content and news items. When the Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Challenge Anthology is completed, it will be posted on the site, as well as at issuu.com.

After May 1, Read Write Poem will remain open as an archival record of the work that has been shared here since 2007. The social networking elements of the site will be removed May 1. Between now and then, members should retrieve any private messages or group posts that they want to preserve.

Thank you to everyone who took part in Read Write Poem over the years. Again, I am sorry that the site must close. If anyone has any questions, feel free to email me at info (at) readwritepoem (dot) org. I look forward to seeing other online communities and collaborative workspaces come into existence that build on the mission of Read Write Poem and expand that mission far beyond the groundwork laid here. Though this is the end of Read Write Poem, it is neither the end of poetry, nor of community.

Dana Guthrie Martin founded Read Write Poem in 2007 as an extension of her work as co-founder of the Poetry Thursday site. She writes poetry and prose, and lives in the Seattle area with her husband, her robot and her two hermit crabs.

The topic of Dana’s inaugural “Workshop Redux” column was specificity — the role specific language plays in making a poem more (or less) successful. The topic of this month’s column is a close relative, embellishment. Here the choice for the writer is how much detail to provide rather than how general or specific to make it. The antipode of embellishment I would call minimalism. I don’t mean minimalism with a capital M, which refers to various artistic movements in which visual art, music, literature etc are stripped of traditionalist elements — a far larger discussion. Rather I limit the term here to simply mean less detail: a sparer approach to words and phrasing.

Minimalism exploits some of the same advantages (and suffers from some of the same drawbacks) as the use of more universal language. With a minimalist approach one often enjoys a stark tone, which can bring with it powerful solemnity. There’s a reason why the “Gettysburg Address” fits on the back of an envelope. Compression tends to be a feature of a minimal style, enhancing both tension and ambiguity, as one can’t explain as much. Moreover, as with formal prosody, the writer is coerced into the cogitation necessary to find the right words to fit in a small space, which fosters not only economy but also precision. Lastly, poems that avoid embellishment tend to flow nimbly, whether through a discursive list of scenes or sub-topics, or an overarching narrative. Since the prime directive in writing is to get the reader to go from Point A (the beginning) to Point B (the end) without deciding in between that the piece isn’t worth the effort, a minimalist approach has the simple-minded though practical advantage of not scaring off one’s audience with a lot of text. Consider the intimidating effect of some of those long descriptive passages in 19th century fiction … .

Embellishment on the other hand allows more latitude and space — a bigger canvas on which to daub, and the freedom to more fully create oneself. Concomitantly, one tends to find more clarity, greater amplitude of emotion, and a more nuanced voice. While a poet can register a certain immediate gravitas with a minimal style, it is often difficult to achieve the intensity of emotion possible with expansive phrasing. Embellishment when effective is like color and detail in a painting, providing the chance for expression both richer and truer to the real world or to the imagined world of the writer. While a terser style allows one to move quickly, and a more embellished piece takes the risk of bogging the reader down, if successful it can be more engrossing, and more transforming.

Which is better? Well, the answer is … it depends (poetry being, unfortunately, full of decisions between equally defensible choices, like those two maxims, look before you leap, and, he who hesitates is lost).

So without further hesitation, let’s look at this month’s poem, “Crucifixion” by Hayden Carruth, and its evil twin, a version of the piece I’ve edited (vandalized) in various not so subtle ways.

Crucifixion

The colors on the hillside have faded,
the fruit trees lost their leaves, the mist
often with us, as today when I gazed into
the orchard, thinking of how I died
and was revived. I saw a cross there
with a man nailed to it, and I said: “Are you
the Christ?” He must have heard, for in his
agony, he nodded. Farther off
I saw another cross with another man
nodding, and another, a legion of crosses
in the trees, each with a nodding figure
nailed to it. I know about death now,
how silent it is, even when the pain
is screaming. Tonight is silent, dark;
And when I looked, I saw nothing, just my own
nodding in the window. It was as if Christ
had nodded to me, and I had nodded back.

Crucifixion

You understand the colors on the hillside have faded,
we have the gray and brown and lavender of late autumn,
the apple and pear trees have lost their leaves, the mist
of November is often with us, especially in the afternoon
and toward evening, as it was today when I sat gazing up into
the orchard for a long time the way I do now,
thinking of how I died last winter and was revived.
And I tell you I saw there a cross with a man nailed
to it, silvery in the mist, and I said to him: “Are you
the Christ?” And he must have heard me for in his
agony, twisted as he was, he nodded his head affirmatively,
up and down, once and twice. And a little way off
I saw another cross with another man nailed to it,
twisting and nodding, and then another and another,
ranks and divisions of crosses straggling like exhausted
legions upward among the misty trees, each cross
with a silvery, writhing, twisting, nodding, naked
figure nailed to it, and some of them were women.
The hill was filled with crucifixion. Should I not be
telling you this? Is it excessive? But I know something
about death now, I know how silent it is, silent, even
when the pain is shrieking and screaming. And tonight
is very silent and very dark. When I looked I saw
nothing out there, only my own reflected head nodding
a little in the window glass. It was as if the Christ
had nodded to me, all those writhing silvery images
on the hillside, and after a while I nodded back to him.

Hayden Carruth (1921 – 2008) was a distinguished American poet and critic. A New Englander and a political radical, Carruth was noted for the range and sympathies of his voice. His poetry is often bucolic but hard-hitting and engaged, confronting both the pragmatic and the existential. His weighty themes include social inequality, war, aging, grief and death.

“Crucifixion” was one of Carruth’s later poems, published in 1990, shortly after a suicide attempt via pills and liquor.

Carruth led a hard life, performing manual labor, often working long hours but insisting on writing nocturnally. He suffered both physical and psychological ailments, including alcoholism, anxiety, depression, tobacco related emphysema and cardiovascular disease, and ultimately the strokes that killed him.

Which version of “Crucifixion” did he write? Hopefully you said the second, or I didn’t do a good enough hack job in the first.

This is one of my favorite Carruth pieces, but let me point out that this is so despite the fact that I’m not religious, and that “Crucifixion” doesn’t resonate with me for any votive aspects it may have. My interpretation tends to suggest Carruth himself is talking here about wholly human suffering. A quote from another of his poems tends to confirm a secular, and even romantic adaptation of religious icons for purposes of consecrating the secular:

Always I was adamant
In my irreligion, and had good reason to be.
Yet prayer is not, I see in old age now,
A matter of doctrine or discipline, but rather
A movement of the natural human mind…
I prayed. Then on paper I wrote
Some of the words I said, which are these poems.

What I experience reading “Crucifixion,” is remarkable composure and dignity, in spite of the autobiographical facts. To suffer is neither erudite nor ignorant, and self-destruction is usually foolish, yet in their aftermath the poem’s meditative perusal of them is wise and benefits from a long life and a social conscience. Despite the deliberate even leisurely diction, and plenitude of detail, I sense the poet’s restraint. The tone is level. The phrase “You understand” is intellectual, conversational.

You understand the colors on the hillside have faded,
we have the gray and brown and lavender of late autumn,
the apple and pear trees have lost their leaves,

He speaks like a guide, a Vermont local to a “flatlander.” He holds back, not out of reticence but for the sake of pacing, his desire to let the story take its time as it tells itself. His details put you in his shoes, but his emotional reserve lets you remain in your own, lets the poem, and his experience, accumulate and stir inside you.

Why should a poem describing this kind of agony exhibit such patience? For me the answer lies in the perception of the sufferer that one’s suffering is endless, whatever its duration. Here Carruth looks back on trials that have lasted decades, but which in aggregate finally became too much to bear in spite of his successes, his admirers. This is why I think he chose the cross with its excruciating public display and private experience — we live among others who witness and even understand our pain, yet can’t begin to feel it (or so we believe). And even a moment of this pain lasts a very long while. Forever doesn’t mean hereafter, but here and now.

the mist
of November is often with us, especially in the afternoon
and toward evening, as it was today when I sat gazing up into
the orchard for a long time the way I do now,
thinking of how I died last winter and was revived.

This poem deserves its embellishments because visual acuity in the sufferer approaches omniscience — every detail in the sick room, every crack in the ceiling, every leaf on the tree blowing in the window glass is evident and noticed. Carruth conveys this persuasively. But the irony he also communicates is that the sufferer observes (as part of his environment) other sufferers in their agony and desolation.

And I tell you I saw there a cross with a man nailed
to it, silvery in the mist, and I said to him: “Are you
the Christ?” And he must have heard me for in his
agony, twisted as he was, he nodded his head affirmatively,
up and down, once and twice. And a little way off
I saw another cross with another man nailed to it,
twisting and nodding, and then another and another,

Every movement is accounted for, not just the nodding, but how many times, and that there is acknowledgment, affirmation. Also ironic is his choice of conceit. For the crowded hillside of crucifixions he uses terms that might have described Roman soldiers:

ranks and divisions of crosses straggling like exhausted
legions upward among the misty trees, each cross
with a silvery, writhing, twisting, nodding, naked
figure nailed to it, and some of them were women.
The hill was filled with crucifixion.

So those who inflict pain are also its recipients, collectively, and in slow solitude.

Finally we reach the core of Carruth’s epiphany, which is his simple statement as a witness, and as a victim. Again, the stylistic embellishments are deserved, essential, because they describe his ambivalence, his stoicism. Pain is something one doesn’t talk about, doesn’t confess. To do so is weak, self-betraying, “excessive.” But he does so, stating the paradox of communal indifference with eloquence reminiscent of Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts.”

Should I not be
telling you this? Is it excessive? But I know something
about death now, I know how silent it is, silent, even
when the pain is shrieking and screaming. And tonight
is very silent and very dark

Given his proletarian fealties, Carruth intends the poem’s circumstances to be amply extrapolated. This isn’t just a hillside for the despondent, but for anyone who suffers.

Carruth isn’t finished though, because the other half of his revelation about anguish concerns each person’s relative insignificance. Thus the poem arrives at and ends with this still deeper reflection:

When I looked I saw
nothing out there, only my own reflected head nodding
a little in the window glass. It was as if the Christ
had nodded to me, all those writhing silvery images
on the hillside, and after a while I nodded back to him.

This closing embellishment allows Carruth to reveal what mortal anguish looks like once the personal elements are withdrawn, how it is at last accepted, humbly and without drama. After the nadir of his overdose, Carruth recovered, remarried and went on to live and work successfully for nearly twenty years. I wonder if he’d have found the wherewithal to write “Crucifixion” in the way that he did had he merely survived his near-death, and not triumphed over it. Perhaps he wrote this as if he really did die — metaphorically — so that everything that followed came from an inner place of serene comprehension. Perhaps it was this that allowed him to be so liberal with the materials of his experience, and his poetry.

Reprinted from Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991 (1992, Copper Canyon Press) with permission of the publisher.

David Moolten’s latest book, Primitive Mood, won the 2009 T.S. Eliot Prize from Truman State University Press. His work has been widely anthologized, and his honors include a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship and a Pushcart Prize. David is also a physician specializing in transfusion medicine. He writes at Edible Detritus.

The idea that talent and suffering go hand in hand in the life of poetry has become legendary; and the “starving poet” is now an all-too-familiar archetype. I think it’s time to blow some kisses to this archetype and bid it adieu. Why? Because it keeps us small, scared and struggling. And it keeps our poetry starved for something bigger in us.

The truth is, starving poets are too busy trying to make ends meet to write much poetry. And the well-fed, reasonably-employed poet has such comforts as a roof over her head and some tried-and-true organizational skills to employ toward the success of her writing life — whatever she defines that success to be.

A few years ago, when I had the good fortune to hear Mary Oliver read, she mentioned a review in which the reviewer had no particular objection to Oliver’s poetry per se, but seemed quite troubled by the fact that this poet found the time to lie around in the grass and contemplate nature. Oliver must have a trust fund, the reviewer concluded, in order to afford such leisure, thereby suggesting that poetry is available only to the independently wealthy.

The truth, said Oliver, is that she lives extremely modestly on money she has earned. And in so doing, she is liberated from the overwhelming demands of “making a living” so that she has the time and space to make a (writing) life. What Oliver clearly understands (and the reviewer clearly doesn’t) is that the wealth of creativity is available to every single one of us in any given moment. We need only choose to tune in wherever we are — whether it be a field of daisies or a swath of concrete — and start writing.

If we don’t question the popular paradigm that aligns “wealth” with money and we make the pursuit of cash a primary goal, we may find that we have little time left over for poetry. And on the flip side, if we neglect our material needs in pursuit of a life poetic, we are likely to end up in real, uninspiring distress.

But if we agree that a prosperous life is one with time to literally and figuratively smell the roses, and then luxuriate in the time to write about it, then we are establishing a root system for a new “poetry of prosperity” — one which we feed and water with our attention and our words. By recognizing, welcoming and prioritizing both our material and creative needs, we have a far better chance of striking a balance that feels like true wealth and can sustain us over the long term.

For money, I write marketing content for businesses such as Blue Shield, Intuit and Wells Fargo. For love, I write poetry and nonfiction. I’ve always considered my “day job” to be a critical part of my creative process; it pays the bills and hones my writing skills so I can have the luxury of doing what I love most — writing creatively. By choosing to be grateful about the opportunities my day job creates rather than grumpy about the time it takes from the writing I’d rather be doing, I’ve discovered more and more opportunities to bring the two together until a few years ago, love and money converged in the authoring of Writing the Life Poetic: An Invitation to Read and Write Poetry (2009, Writer’s Digest Books).

And with this shift, I have an even greater appreciation for the skills cultivated for more than a decade at my “day job,” which has sculpted me into a high-performance communicator skilled at meeting deadlines, promoting effectively and generally following through on my goals and commitments.

For me, the choice to be satisfied with the cross-fertilization of all of the work that I do is true wealth.

No matter what your financial status, time limitations or family commitments might be, I know that you have the skills and the creativity to cultivate a spirit and a practice of prosperity both in your life and in your poetry. In fact, you can choose right this minute to start re-imagining the “starving poet” stereotype as the “prosperous poet.” Once you start investigating, you may be surprised to find yourself shaping a life that is wealthy with time, inspiration, community and even money. I’ll bet you will find yourself doing more and more of what you love most without sacrificing anything but an old archetype whose time has come and gone.

Sage Cohen is the author of Writing the Life Poetic: An Invitation to Read and Write Poetry and the poetry collection Like the Heart, the World. Learn more at Writing the Life Poetic.

I have always loved the power and possibility of online communications. Back in 1995, I remember proposing that my university’s literary journal be created and distributed in an online format as opposed to a print format. The faculty adviser for the project scoffed at the notion. “Who would want to read poetry on a computer,” he asked.

Look how far we have come since then. Even though some still scoff at online literary journals and magazines, or at least eye them with suspicion, it’s clear that they are rising in popularity — and that audiences are gravitating to work delivered through this medium. Apparently, a lot of people want to read poetry, and learn about it, online.

I founded Read Write Poem in 2007 because of my love for and belief in the capacity for online communications as a means to lessen or remove barriers to information and resources, including art. I also saw the power of online communications in removing geographic barriers by making information available for free — anytime, anywhere on the planet. The goal of Read Write Poem at launch was simple: to leverage the power of the internet in the creation of an interactive and collaborative virtual space for poets of all levels to learn about and share poetry.

The community’s mission has grown out of the same premise on which is was founded. Read Write Poem facilitates a vibrant online community that gives readers the tools they need to make poetry central to their daily lives, both in virtual and real-world environments. The community encourages readers and writers of poetry at all levels to be more engaged with a wide range of traditional and contemporary poetry, with other poets, and with members of their local, regional, national and international communities. Read Write Poem works in tandem with and also outside of traditional frameworks such as academic institutions, providing an alternative method for learning, teaching, sharing and discussing poetry.

The site has also grown since its inception with the addition of profiles, wires, groups and other interactive elements, as well as a fully fleshed-out online magazine with new content every weekday. And, of course, we still have the weekly writing prompts that keep members challenged and engaged.

In short, Read Write Poem has evolved to the point that it is nothing other than a remarkable place. We would not be here without the participation of our more than 1,000 members, or without the talent and hard work of our contributors, senior contributors, managers and directors.

Especially deserving of thanks is Deb Scott for her tenacious dedication to the project and all her efforts, including managing the site for a year and a half and serving as a community director for the past 9 months. Special thanks also to community director Nathan Moore, without whom the energy of the community would not be what it is, and to technology director Andre Tan, without whom the social media elements and overall design of the site would have been inferior, if not impossible.

Three years and 900 articles and news items, 1,000 members, 11,000 comments, and 770,000 page views since its founding, it is clear that Read Write Poem has made a difference in the lives of many poets and of those who love poetry. There is clearly a need — and a desire — for an open, free, accessible way for anyone and everyone who loves to read, write and share poetry to have the means to do so.

The community has reached a point where it no longer needs my daily direction. At the same time, needs and opportunities in my life require me to step out of the lead director role. I have the chance to study information science at the graduate level, and to learn even more ways that barriers to information access can be removed so that those around the world, whatever their area of interest of inquiry, will have the tools they need to learn, to discover and to grow.

Deb Scott will be taking over as the community’s lead director, and that change is effective immediately. I am thrilled that Deb is taking on the role of lead director on, and excited to see where the community moves in its next phase of development. I also thank those who have come forward to help Deb manage the site. She will be making more announcements soon about the team she is assembling, so stay tuned to learn more as the new management group unfolds.

I also regret to announce that Nathan Moore must step away from Read Write Poem at this time. He has worked tirelessly on the site and has provided some of our most valuable, interesting and innovative content. The entire community will miss his presence and his voice. He is an outstanding poet, and an outstanding human being.

Thank you all. Together, we have helped change the face of poetry. Let’s keep going.

Dana Guthrie Martin founded Read Write Poem in 2007 as an extension of her work as co-founder of the Poetry Thursday site. She writes poetry and prose, and lives in the Seattle area with her husband, her robot and her two hermit crabs.

In 2000, writer Bob Hostetler wrote an excellent article that appeared in Poets & Writers magazine called “The Intentional Reader.” In it, he talks about being deliberate about what you read as a way of fueling your writing when you get stuck. And while it’s certainly important for fiction writers, being well versed in all sorts of subjects and forms is central to the work of a poet.

I’ll take the idea one step further: being a deliberate reader is part of a poet’s job description.

Hostetler creates an annual detailed booklist in which he chooses titles to entertain and to further his growth as a writer. His list consists of at least 20 must-read titles, leaving room for picks that he discovers throughout the year.

You can read his article for the full text, but here’s my interpretation of the list:

• one biography
• one memoir
• one nonfiction
• one how-to book
• one book of short stories
• two books on craft
• at least one historical title
• at least two books by authors I’ve never read before
• a minimum of two books in a new discipline or field of interest
• at least two children’s books
• two classics I re-read every few years, something that reminds me why I write in the first place
• two international titles
• at least one book of great heft, something intimidating
• at least 12 poetry books (this goes without saying)

Last year, I read eight books and at least 15 poetry collections — painfully low numbers, in my opinion. I kept a running list in my journal of the book list, but this year I’ll use Goodreads to track my progress. My aim is to improve both the quality and breadth of titles I read. And while it’s not necessarily about the number of books, if I can read at least 20 books annually, I’m doing pretty well.

So, based on this list, what books would you recommend others add to their current reading list? What categories would you add or remove? Does using a book list as a tool take away from the pleasure of reading? Give us a sample of your reading list, and let’s see where the conversation takes us.

January O’Neil’s first poetry collection, Underlife, is available from CavanKerry Press. She is a fellow with Cave Canem poets. January writes at Poet Mom. She was born in February, in case you’re wondering. Her dad just liked the name.

Every morning these past 2 months, I have rolled out of bed, turned off the alarm and trudged downstairs to my office to set a new alarm. I sit in a beanbag chair and write, by hand, in a journal for 15 minutes. Then I head off to the shower to get ready for my day job. It isn’t that I get anything done in those 15 minutes. It is the principle of ritual.

It’s an idea I got from the choreographer Twyla Tharp’s book The Creative Habit. Tharp explains that her ritual isn’t the morning workout: it is the process of getting up and into the taxi that takes her to the gym. She explains that she actually enjoys the workout, but without the ritual, she wouldn’t be certain to get to that point each day: Other things get in the way too easily.

I wish I could say that every morning when the alarm goes off at 6 a.m., I have hopped joyfully out of bed, looking forward to writing my page of non sequiturs. Some Mondays I have crawled slowly on all fours to the office and cursed a blue streak when there was no ink in any of the pens (all of which I tossed back into the drawer, of course – carving dry and desperate spirals in the margins of my journal with empty pens has become a ritual in itself). But no matter how late I actually get started, I have always prioritized the 15 minute writing alarm. It means there have been days I got to work with damp hair and no make-up. And that is fine. I’ve found that, vain as I am, I am honestly a person who values her identity as a writer — as defined and evidenced by the actual activity of writing — more than her identity as an attractive and tidy person. More than the dignity of matching socks. More than a packed lunch.

Believe me, the 15 minutes isn’t the enjoyable workout. It is the taxi ride during which I establish for myself the reality of my days.

I admire people who manage to get up an hour early to make time for their writing. I may someday choose to try that. At the moment, though, this ritual of 15 minutes is about becoming conscious of how I prioritize my time: what happens when I try to write and the other things in my life that prevent me from writing. Or that I have thought prevented me from writing.

This morning, for example, my pen stopped on the page because I heard the song birds for the first time this spring. They were “twittering at 6:06 outside my window” and I couldn’t think of a thing to write after that statement. I just listened. For a moment, it seemed the birds had returned and the Muse had taken off. Then the garbage truck arrived and idled and strained and coughed and left. These sounds are some of those other things that get in the way of my writing.

This morning’s production on the page looked more meager than usual and I trudged downstairs to the shower and then off to work. To my students: more “others” that take up my time and days and thoughts and keep me from writing.

This afternoon, my time will be filled with grant-writing, something other than the kind of writing I want to do. Then I will have to tidy the house, pay bills, make dinner, prepare lesson plans, quiz the kids on their homework … I have a whole list of other things to do before I can settle down in front of my computer to work on my own poetry.

Who am I kidding?

Do I sit down every single day to write poetry? No. I watch TV. I read magazines. I surf the web. I write in seasons. Like the songbirds that showed up this morning, the Muse will arrive and slip under my skin again, as long as I leave the door open.

I have found that the 15 minutes I spend each morning writing, even when it is nothing more than “can’t stop thinking about the bills, can’t stop thinking about the bills” in increasingly larger script, is like looking out the door each day. Maybe the Muse will come today. Meanwhile all these other things, things that “get in the way” of my writing fall into lines — on the page.

I have forgiven myself for not having the discipline to sit in my office from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. and write. Or for not getting up at 5 a.m instead of 6 a.m. The 15-minute ritual has had the effect of making me mindful. I have discovered that the right thing for me to do is not to cut out the “other” things, but to realize the integrity of my life as a poet. It is all this other stuff that I will draw from when the Muse finally shows up and gives me the opportunity for a really good workout.

Who said success is when preparation meets opportunity? Isn’t that also a good definition of poetry?

How do you deal with the other things that get in the way of poetry?

(I actually wrote this post before reading Robert Peake’s column. It may as well have been in dialogue. Seems we might have a mutual muse.)

Ren (Katherine) Powell is native Californian living on the west coast of Norway. Ren has published three collections of poetry and 11 books of translations. She is a graduate adviser with Prescott College’s brief residency MA program and is pursuing a doctorate in creative writing at Lancaster University in England. Learn more at her website.

Ask a poet a question, get a flurry of questions in reply. At least, that’s what my mind did when I read this month’s question “How do you write poetry every day?” I came up with more questions, such as:

• How do you not write poetry every day?
• How do you write good poetry every day?
• How dare you write poetry every day?
• How does poetry write you every day?
• How do you be a poet every day?

That last question is one I am answering in my own life by living it. And the ways I have found to answer it involve addressing all the previous questions, fanciful though they first may seem.

So, let us begin with the original question, and its opposite. How do you write poetry every day? How do you not write poetry every day? The truth is, I veer somewhere between the two. I write poetry regularly. To me, regularly means often enough that I still feel like I am in the game, and long enough that it matters. Robert Hass is quoted as having said, “Take the time to write. You can do your life’s work in half an hour a day.” In fact, I take about 40 minutes.

And interestingly enough, 30 or 40 minutes seems to be a magical amount of time. It’s less than an hour, and therefore harder to resist. But it’s enough to get me going, to feel that I have put in a reasonable amount of time. If things aren’t flowing, I quit after 40 minutes. If not, I often run over. Short, regular bursts, with flexibility to follow the heat when it comes, have served me well.

Next question: How do you write good poetry every day (or at least regularly)? Well, good luck. Two of the faculty at my MFA program were colleagues of William Stafford, and raconteurs. I was fortunate to hear them tell of a time during some gathering or function when Stafford split off from the group at lunchtime, deciding to eat by himself and write some poems. The rest simply ate. Afterward, skeptically and conspiratorially, they quizzed Stafford on what he had written. He handed them half-a-dozen poems. “And,” said one faculty member to the other, eyes gleaming in amazement, “some of them were pretty good.”

It seems to me that poetry is a lot like photography. The secret to getting good photos, or poems, is to take a lot of shots. Though we might not all be as prolific as Stafford, I firmly believe that writing good poetry comes from reading, writing and revising poetry often. This, of course, takes time and energy — time some might say could be better spent elsewhere. Hence, the question: how dare you write poetry?

There are many things one can do with a life, and many needs in this world. Some see poetry as a dying art. Others favor a more tangible medium. But for me, poetry is very rightly done on a dare. It is a dare against reductionism in our relationship to language, and therefore our world. I dare to explore the complex and often contradictory states of human awareness through poetry because they are there, undeniably, in my art and in my life. That is not to say my art can justify any amount of neglect in my life. I believe in Flaubert’s credo: “Be steady and well-ordered in your life, that you may be fierce and original in your work.”

This is how poetry can begin to “write me” in my life. I work for a man named David Allen, who invented a simple but remarkable methodology for managing the mundane (and not-so-mundane) aspects of work and life. Even if he were to boot me out the door today with a footprint on my back, I cannot deny that his Getting Things Done^® methodology has transformed my art and life. One of the major tenets of his approach is to capture ideas, activities and projects into a trusted system.

For many years, I captured poetry ideas in my ubiquitous pocket notebook. It seemed as though there were moments in my day when poetry could peek through the morass of thoughts and feelings that go with daily life. Now, however, I capture everything else, and know that I will process it in due course. In this way, I have managed to shift my mindset from a swirl of to-dos in my head (think Pig Pen from the Peanuts series) with the occasional glimmer of poetic insight, to living more and more in the poetic mindset. Daily meditation also helps.

Nurturing this “head space,” first by deciding to be a poet every day (whether or not one writes every day), is by far the most important aspect of my relationship to art. Combined with the (flexible) discipline of writing regularly; realizing my job is to take many shots, not expect everything to be good; and continuing to dare against all odds to be true to what is uniquely mine to express — well, this is how I answer the ongoing question “How do you be a poet every day?”

It is a worthwhile pursuit. Living as a poet is a process that heightens my relationship to myself, to others and the world around me. I encourage you to find your own ways — not matter how often you write, or how good you think it is now — to be a poet, in whatever circumstances you find yourself, a little bit more each day.

Please send your poetry questions to advice (at) readwritepoem (dot) org and leave your thoughts about this question and answer session here, in the comments section.

Getting Things Done^® is a registered trademark of The David Allen Company.

Robert Peake studied poetry at U.C. Berkeley and in the Master of Fine Arts in Writing program at Pacific University, Ore. His poems have appeared in North American Review, Rattle and are forthcoming in Poetry International. Robert writes about poetry at robertpeake.com. (photo credit :: John J. Campbell)