by Dave Jarecki
Growing up in Pennsylvania, I remember mid-March as being a battle between cabin and spring fevers. Some years, the season’s last blizzard was coming; others, kids gathered at outdoor basketball hoops for two-on-two, double-elimination tournaments.
Regardless of the weather or place in the world, by the end of a long winter or start of a sudden spring, the sexually restless among us are done being cooped up. In many cases, two or more will go off to conjugate. A percentage of such excursions predictably leads to the creation of children. This explains why so many of my friends — not to mention their own kids — were born in December.
This act of pairing up, bedding down and making a third human is as bizarre and chance-driven as anything else that happens during our lives. Still, not too many people sit around and ponder the haphazard nature of getting it on.
Consider the fact that, before people can meet people, other people need to meet people just to create the people who will one day meet, fall down and sometimes make other people who will one day meet people. Follow the trail into the future and the line never ends. Head in reverse, you eventually arrive at the first meeting of seed and soil.
Who or what but a poet can sit around and give thought to this topic, let alone write about it?
And with that, my lovers and friends, I beseech you. Go forth with this notion. Or go back. Multiply with your words.
 Dave Jarecki writes poetry, fiction and nonfiction from his home in Portland, Ore. Read and listen to his work, as well as the work of guest writers, at DaveJarecki.com.
by Deb Scott
It’s Thursday, and time to post links to the poems you wrote for us this week (or leave us your entire poem in the comments).
Did you find you favored other people’s words? Did some give you fits? (And if you wrote using some other inspiration, that’s OK, too. You never have to write to the prompt. We are not like that around here.) Whatever you did, or didn’t do, share it. And come back tomorrow for the next great prompt.
Please read this page to find out how the Get Your Poem On and Read Write Prompt posts work.
Remember that work linked from this post is shared in precisely that spirit: sharing, as opposed to critiquing.
If you haven’t done so already, please read all the pages under About in the navigation bar.
If you participate in a Read Write Prompt, we ask that you link back here in your posts, either with a link to Read Write Poem or by using the Read Write Poem badge in your post. Sidebar links are great but it helps others find the site when you link in every post you contribute to the project. It’s not a lot to ask in acknowledgment of the work everyone is doing in providing prompts for members to use.
 Deb Scott is a community director for Read Write Poem and co-manages our Virtual Book Tour. She admits to loving Wordles if for no other reason than to admire all the offerings. Deb blogs at Stoney Moss.
by Ren Powell
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.
by David Jarecki
 The Book of Men and Women, by David Biespiel “That’s what’s interesting to me. The state of being both lost and found.”
David Biespiel is widely recognized as one of the leading poets of his generation, a liberal commentator on national politics and also an expert in teaching writing. He has taught at every level of education, from a one-room schoolhouse to large university campuses, and has lectured and spoken to audiences throughout the United States. In 1999, looking to create an independent writing studio, Biespiel founded the Attic in Portland, Oregon’s historic Hawthorne district.
His publications include Shattering Air, Pilgrims & Beggars, Wild Civility, and most recently The Book of Men and Women, which was among the Poetry Foundation’s selections of top poetry of 2009. In addition, he has been honored with a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, a Lannan Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature.
In The Book of Men and Women, Biespiel addresses the times in which we live with a perspective that shifts from global to introspective with ease. Always eager and willing to find new layers of metaphor, Biespiel goes to one of our oldest knonw source documents — The Book of Genesis — to help get the collection started. When we met in January to discuss the book, one of the first things we talked about was what it’s like to “cover” Genesis, and whether or not it benefits the reader to brush up on the ancient script.
I recently heard you mention that the Bible, specifically the Old Testament, informed some of poems in the book. As it relates to your opening poem, “Genesis 12,” do you think someone needs to be knowledgeable of this particular chapter to appreciate the piece?
I wrote it under the assumption that a reader would google Genesis: 12.
Essentially I was trying to write my own version and interpretive dramatization of that particular chapter of the Bible. The word I use is covering. I cover Genesis: 12 like the band on the corner covers “House of the Rising Sun.”
The Biblical Genesis: 12 is the point where Abraham is leaving his homeland and headed to Canaan. That’s the transition. If he doesn’t leave Ur, or wherever he was from, and go to Canaan, a lot of things don’t happen. Essentially, Abraham is a fanatic; his trek is related to his fanaticism.
My view of fanatics is that they’re so far around the bend in their fanaticism, that they come right around to the edge of doubt. If you could flip them, you could do so easily, and they wouldn’t know what they’re doing. People who come out of fanaticism often say things like, “Wow, it was like a bad dream.” Or an addiction.
I wanted to tell my version of the story from this awareness. The poem ends with the sentence, “I’m certain I’ve lost my mind.” Of course that’s what the fanatic has done: he’s lost his old mind and taken on a new one.
In the end, the poem is trying to look at Abraham as a prophet who’s unsure. The whole experience isn’t that pleasurable for him.
What the poem doesn’t address is the larger question that relates to the transitional moment in Biblical history, regardless of whether it’s factual. Instead it addresses the emotional state. That’s what’s interesting to me. The state of being both lost and found. And that’s not a Jewish tradition, per se. It’s more of an Evangelical tradition I suppose.
Abraham knows what he’s doing, but he also knows that by doing it, he’s wandering. It initiates this type of wandering motif throughout the entire collection.
You can find out more about The Book of Men and Women, Biespiel’s sixth book, at the University of Washington Press. For more about David Biespiel and his work, visit his blog.
Dave Jarecki writes poetry, fiction and nonfiction from his home in Portland, Ore. Read and listen to his work, as well as the work of guest writers, at DaveJarecki.com.
by Carolee Sherwood
What has five feet and lots of rhythm? Iambic pentameter, of course! Iambic is a particular unit of rhythm (called feet) — two syllables, an unstressed one followed by a stressed one, like this: da-DUM! Pentameter tells us how many of them are on each line — five.
I most often think of Shakespeare when I consider iambic pentameter. “What light through yonder window breaks?” (Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene 2). “Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince; / And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest (Hamlet, Act V, Scene 2).
Rhythm is critical to a poem. Whether it’s structured or not, rhythm can make a poem more — or less — readable. It takes training for our voices to use rhythm and avoid the “sing-song” trap. Lion cubs, puppies and other critters train to hunt through play: rough-housing their litter mates. We’re going to do the same thing: rough-house with our litter mates.
For this installment of “Games Poets Play,” we’re going to have a conversation, in iambic pentameter, in the comments section of this post. For example, someone may say, “Let’s see if we can talk in metered rhyme!” And then someone else may say, “That is the worst idea I’ve ever heard!” (Yeah, there’s a slight extra syllable in this one, but it still “sounds” right.)
You can say anything you want, as long as it’s in iambic pentameter and as long as it moves the conversation along (and is not too rough — remember we are playing). Please don’t put anything in the comments that’s not part of the actual discussion taking place in iambic pentameter because that may be confusing.
Who wants to go first?
 Carolee Sherwood is a poet and artist who lives in Upstate New York. She is co-editor of Ouroboros Review, mother of three boys and a veteran Read Write Poem columnist. You can find her rambling about the creative life at Carolee Sherwood and drafting poems at I Am Maureen.
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read write poem news- read write poem napowrimo anthology
June 20, 2010 | 1:36 pmThe Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Anthology is still in production. Selection, placement, layout and copyediting are taking longer than anticipated. Thank you for your patience. I hope to have the piece completed in July. For those who have emailed asking if they can be included, the May 7 deadline for submission of work stands. Those who met that deadline will be included. Please check the post on this site listing who I received submissions from by that date. If you submitted your work by the May 7 deadline in accordance with our guidelines and your name is not listed, send an email to info (at) readwritepoem (dot) org.
- read write poem napowrimo anthology
May 5, 2010 | 3:09 pmRemember that Friday* is the deadline for submitting work to the Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Anthology. Check out the guidelines for submission in the main column (to the left). On May 8, we’ll post a news item listing everyone we’ve received work from. If you submitted work and your name is not on that list, please let us know. Thanks!
*I initially said “tomorrow,” but I meant to say “Friday.”
- napowrimo congratulations, and a reminder
April 24, 2010 | 12:05 pmIt’s the final week of the Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Challenge! Just 7 days left. With that, a reminder that Read Write Poem will culminate with the anthology featuring work from those who complete the challenge. A post with details for submitting to the anthology will be published May 1. Be sure you remove any information from the site that you want preserved — such as group content and personal messages. Those elements of the site will be removed May 1 as well. The main site will remain up as an archive.
- ‘underlife’ tour at january gill o’neil’s blog
April 20, 2010 | 8:11 pmJanuary Gill O’Neil’s virtual book tour has moved to her site and is underway now. Check out the lineup at Poet Mom.
 Archive for read write poem news »
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thank you and farewell As of May 1, 2010, Read Write Poem is no longer active.
In late May, an anthology featuring work from those who completed the Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Challenge will be published here and on issuu.com.
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