There’s a new journal on the block, and in one journal they’ve managed to capture both what I love and what I hate about sonnets.

14 x 14. Some good. Some terrible. All sonnets.

I do admire this one by LM Price.

This time it’s Irving in the icu.

I donated a pile of stuff to a local animal rescue organization, hoping I could boost my mood. It didn’t work.

I’m not good at love. I can only do the easy parts.

I decided to start submitting work, only I’m too stupid to use Duotrope to keep track. It’s sad being me.

Fun wid fro

New frocut. Man!

I kin now make mah’ fro look ‘esactly likes Heat Miser’s fro. Ha! Right on!

De ‘espression ain’t far off, eider. Ah be baaad…

Rather unhappy thunks about poetry

Af’er th’ debacle wif Raintown, ah went back t’mah earlier posishun of “Publicashun? Who needs it! Fry mah hide!”

So, ah’s not mighty happy t’come t’th’ realizashun thet ah reckon ah might need it.

ah’s feelin’ incredibly isolated fum poetry, an’ I’ve finally added two an’ two an’ unnerstan’ thet when I’ve felt this hyar way in th’ past it’s been on account o’ ah have isolated mahse’f through resistance t’publicashun.

It ain’t th’ publicashun in an’ of itse’f thet kin groun’ mah writin’. It’s th’ attempp t’take part in th’ larger cornvahsashun.

But, oh god, ah’s so tired, cuss it all t’ tarnation. ah doesn’t be hankerin’ t’reckon about submisshuns an’ pickin’ an’ choosin’ an’ wawkin’ so hard, cuss it all t’ tarnation. But when ah doesn’t, ah doesn’t does ennythin’ wif poetry. It’s eifer th’ hard road o’ no road, cuss it all t’ tarnation. Am ah ready fo’ no road?

Mebbe mah Mammy was right an’ th’ whole poetry thin’ is a phase. ah’s jest slower at gittin’ on over mah phases than no’mal varmints. (Oddity, ah nearly wrote “real varmints.” Apparently, ah reckon ah’s Pinocchio.)

Years ago, Steve and I were at a Meijer and, for some reason that escapes me now, we were looking at art prints. I think we just didn’t have much money and wanted something to hang on the wall.

I saw a print and fell in love with it, but it wasn’t what I was looking for. It wasn’t bright and it wasn’t modern and it wasn’t surreal or strange or anything of the sort.

It was just a house. And there was a man walking away from the painter, and a horse looking at the painter. That was it.

Two days later, we were back in Meijer as I looked frantically for that print. I wanted it. Desperately. It was gone.

Two years later, I found it. We were in a mall. We walked past a poster/print store and I saw someone flipping through a collection of prints and somehow spied that picture in the fraction of a second it took for the customer to flip past, uninterested.

I bought it. We were still broke, so I couldn’t afford to frame it and didn’t want to mar it, so it stayed rolled in kraft paper and I unrolled it all the time and just stared at it.

Two years later, my mother had it framed for me.

Today, we were at a different mall entirely and I saw a print and hopped up and down and pointed and hollered “It’s my painter! It’s my painter!” This print was framed and with a little plaque that showed the painter’s name.

So now I know his name. Peter Sculthorpe. My painting? “Buckskin.”

Isn’t it amazing and strange how a piece of art, whether a painting or a poem, can sit in our hearts for so long, so silently?

I don’t know if I need a snow day, but I need an intervention. I’m addicted to Snow Day.

Don’t believe me? Do a lookup on “jsgoddess.” You’ll see how I’ve been spending my day(s).

Hmm. The banner appears to be gone. I killed it! Snow Days

A cornudopia, if you will.

Never visit Wal-Mart in December. You have been warned.

“Critics being critics – there has been, is, and will be attempts to impose rules on free verse that (in theory) assist in making judgments about them.”–Gabriel

Most other art forms get a daily dose of public opinion to keep them honest. A snob might bemoan some purer form falling by the wayside, and I might even be that snob on occasion. The rules that critics have applied to free verse are better seen as genres–it’s easier to compare a mystery to another mystery than to a cookbook–and while I don’t particularly want to read horror, we wouldn’t even know that there is a market for it if it we refused to publish it in the first place. Why is poetry different? We can point and laugh at the Dan Browns of the world, safe in knowing we can’t even be compared. We have no expectations of poetry being popular, so we can feel validated by the lack of popularity and our own misunderstood genius.

“Oh, we got both kinds. We got Country and Western.”–Blues Brothers

There are huge chunks of the population that don’t want Country or Western, but poetry critics don’t seem to want them to have the choice. Yes, it’s a chicken and egg question: Is the market for poetry so small that we have to limit publication, or is the market so small because we already have?

I can’t answer that question. Come on, you knew I couldn’t. Don’t look at me that way. But I think the internet, the world of blogs, online publications, and similar outlets can find out. Right now, we’re still operating under the principle that there isn’t enough space for all of it, Country, Western, Swing, Hip-Hop, Rock. We have to squash one genre to allow our chosen one room to grow. But there is a near-infinite number of pixels available and we’ve got more elbow room than sense.