…I’ve begun this new blog on somewhat of a hairy note, I’ve decided to continue what I’ve started.  Today in my email was a link to a book about people with red-hair (thanks B). I find it fascinating– all the hype over one hair colour. I did a short paper once for an expository class about the myths of those with red hair.  Judas was rumoured to have red hair.

So to go along with this theme I found a poem by Li-Young Lee–hair it is.

Ha!

This is all more confusing and less confusing than it should be. I’ve decided to set up shop here for awhile as I’m extremely exhausted from dealing with the cyber-spam that my Blogger account seems to have attracted. Hopefully, this will be a quieter, more comment friendly atmosphere. If not, I can’t say what will happen.

So, welcome to my new home here at WordPress. I still haven’t quite figured everything out. I believe that will take a long time. There is more and less here than than at my previous blog. I certainly aim to be more impersonal and writing conscious with my posts, although I’m not certain I’ve the ability.

That said, I was thinking about repetition and how it applied to poetry, so I looked up fractals and poetry to see what was available. Here is one link that caught my attention and another. Here are the interpretations.

Of course, here there are subsequent questions about the use of fractals, but I’ll leave the questioning up to you.

Here’s a link to a picture of the teens that I worked with doing some poetry for a few hours at the Teen Writing Experience.  They were an awesome bunch of kids.

Can you hear me now?

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

An article sort of caught my eye a few days ago, and I found it interesting as I’m still trying to claw my way through Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. It’s curious, esp. after listening to a panel discussion at the Festival of Words about the joys of the internet, and how writers can anonymously comment or review their own books.

I spent a few hours at the TWE today. A great experience. I talked poetry with a wonderful group of fledgling writers. It was a great opportunity and I liked their energy.

…a list of exercises derived from things I thought I saw, and subsequently thought about far too much during my walk through Wascana Centre:

1. Write a poem about how many white dogs you see in the park (I swear it must have been some sort of dog convention as they all looked like the same breed (but what do I know about dogs?))

2. Write a poem on why the dogs seek contact with other dogs and with people in the park, while people tend to look away from each other.

3. Write a poem about the horse dung on the sidewalk (yes, horse–if not, I’m afraid there is something very wrong with the geese).

4. Write a poem about the difference between those really walking and those walking simply.

5. Title of a poem: On Being Susan Sontag (although I’m not quite sure I’m up to that one yet).

6. Write a poem about the people who exercise lists about writing poems.

…of something hits me every spring and I place fish in the rain barrel to eat mosquito larvae, and it usually works, if the fish live. This year 2 pond goldfish and 2 calico fantails have survived for well over a month (even with the June threat of being washed away from too much rain). Another wave just hit me (I must amuse myself somehow). A recent email has got me thinking about names for the goldfish. I’ve decided to call them all “untitled”. “untitled #1” “untitled #2” etc.

…this time from Patrick Friesen’s Essays & Meditations: “Poetry is a fine sanity. Anything can happen there; it is not risk-free territory”.

The posting on this blog will be rather sporadic for the next while. I’ll be sending the mind elsewhere to determine a state of sanity–perhaps finding the reverse is true.

I’ll be taking in the Saskatchewan Festival of Words, seeing some of my favourite authors read from their works, and taking part in the Karen Solie master class (to which I hear there are still some spots available, if you’re eager to join the fun).

And, don’t be alarmed– I’ve put up the comments moderation for awhile because, as entertaining as porn spam is, I’m just not that amused.

Here is a quote from the Matthew Collings book This is Modern Art. I found it quite interesting. It’s some stuff that’s made me wonder how or does it apply to writing? (Mostly I’m thinking of the modernists and post-modernists— how our own writing reflects/addresses/responds (rejects?) them).

[Jasper] Johns was influential on the development of both Pop art and Conceptual art in the 1960’s and even, partly, on Minimal art—the three big movements of the 60’s from which all subsequent movements stem and which stand at the junction of Modernism and Post-Modernism. He was sensitive to the beauty and loveliness of Modern art but emotionally detached from it. Instead of faking a feeling of identification with it, he created a form that expressed his detachment. And it was a form that seemed to sum up and crystallize a whole state of mind. An exquisitely aesthetic surface like a system of communicating points—like electrical points—only with all the points short-circuited.

Of course Picasso could never do that because he couldn’t be Post-Modern. He couldn’t be Post-himself. He could only express himself. That’s why Picasso and Matisse are considered part of the past and not part of the present. They express themselves and their sensations. They express the world through their sensation of it. But we can’t take that kind of thing for granted any more.

Even with them, we can’t totally take it for granted that that’s what they were doing because it’s us thinking about them and we think in a different way to them. But we can certainly believe it a lot more with them than we can with us. In fact we have to believe it because it’s one of the beliefs that define us—that they were self-expressive and we are not. Or not in the same way. We are ironic. They were not (123-24).