Thursday, February 19, 2009

Two things poetic

1) Finished a poem today. First time since.....May 08, I think. Long process, that one. But it feels tight, so rock on. A friend of mine, a poet, once said that in writing poems I "whittled jolly ranchers." That's about right: slippery and unyielding little suckers they are in progress, but they seem to sit solid after they're done.

2) Have I mentioned how much I am amused--and not in the good way but in the condescending and dismissive way--by the dramatic, eyerolling, stalking-around-the-front-of-the-room, tossing-finished-pages-with-a-flourish-onto-the-floor, white-guy-rap, and to my mind fundamentally insecure brand of poetry reading? No? Well I won't here.

7 comments:

Dr Write said...

Hmm...I wonder who comment 2 is about...I have an idea...

Lisa B. said...

ooooh, snap.

Anonymous said...

Congrats on the poem finishing! That's exciting. Will you be sharing any of it here (she asks, hopefully)? And re: #2, right on.

Renaissance Girl said...

Gosh, Ink, thanks for asking, but I'm afraid it might blow my thin pseudonymity. I'm honored you care, anyway.

Unknown said...

I don't read that way.

But I do write that way.

It is all quite dramatic.

Renaissance Girl said...

I write that way too. But I'd rather let the poems do the prancing. (By the way, I also hate the breathless-whisper and/or uninflected poetry reading. I wonder why some poets can't just treat their work like actual utterance.)

Kristen said...

Werd. One of the panelists at biggie-sized conference (incidentally, the one e.g. and I were looking for Neruda at) read his/her entire scholarly paper excerpt in that bizarro a-tonal Poet voice. I actually wish he/she had thrown the pages with flourish.
Sort of.