Thursday, July 16, 2009

Franz Wright

Franz Wright

A priest.  It figures.  Those who know me will understand.

Poets they said I should read:

  1. Franz Wright
  2. Mathew Dickman
  3. Michael Dickman
  4. Michael Burkhard
  5. Joshua Beckman
  6. Blue Mountain Poets
  7. Robert Creeley
Poets I have read:
  1. Jane Miller
  2. Olga Broumas
  3. Jorie Graham
  4. Judy Grahn
  5. Rita Mae Brown
  6. W.S. Merwin
  7. Galway Kinnell
  8. Marvin Bell
  9. Steven Jesse Bernstein
  10. Dr. Seuss (does he count?)

Why is validation for your poems so important?

I have so enjoyed this week.  It's like a real vacation and I haven't thought about work or my responsibilities at all.  I wake up, get myself off to breakfast and then to my workshop with the fabulous Mark Doty and all the other chapbookers in my class.  There are 15 of us plus Mark.  I feel that I'm learning a great deal about how to read poems in a very warm, safe and loving environment, and in a fairly brief period of time.  Mark is a great teacher and I highly recommend him to anyone!

Each day we do either 2 or 3 students.  This means we go over each collection of poems for approximately 35 minutes.  We have all read all the poems prior to the workshop--almost 400 in total.  We are predominantly looking at the form of the chapbook, but we review individual poems at times.  Many of my classmates have already published a fair number of poems, chapbooks and even books, and all of them are very well read.  They have been especially kind to me because I haven't.  I feel out of my depth most of the time.  I get symbols, mood, tone etc., but I am not well read in poetry and do not have much to recommend.

I was the 3rd student to read--my classmates picked out two poems they wanted me to read.  They knew much more about the poems than I did, they had given them such a close reading, and in many cases several close readings.  They said things like quirky, creative, interior, funny, etc.  My cheeks were bursting to smile I was so happy.  This was pretty scary for me to do.  The poems have been put away for about 12-15 years due to tragedy and pain.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

What I've Done this Past WEEK!

  1. talked to my dear friend Tracey from ETSU days.
  2. read about 500 poems for Centrum
  3. gained about 4 pounds in one day due to birthday cake to die for by Margurite at work!
  4. proofread the two papers to be published in ANS this fall from my dissertation!
  5. wrote first draft of grant request for HITECH money
  6. trained a new ARNP for the hospital
  7. attended 14 meetings at work and didn't fall asleep.
  8. started a new blog: Lisa Trigg's Poem Repository
  9. loaded most of my poems to the new blog
  10. reloaded the wordpress software for PR about 4 times before I got it to work.
  11. learned a lot about my host/server and wordpress.
  12. the new Thesis Theme is fantastic, and I will be using it for a while.
  13. lost my content for my of Course Foucault, the autoethnography of my dissertation blog and will have to start over with it. Had to load it 4 times to get it to work.
  14. did not buy a new computer. my better smarter half pointed out that I bought 3 new ones last year, so. I still feel like I need a new one!
  15. made a new friend on FB who wants to deposit some poems in my new poem repository! Hello Paulinerose!
  16. found denise's phone number and heard her voice on the voice mail
  17. mailed regalia back to the graduation people.

Saturday, July 4, 2009

In Preparation for Centrum

I have spent a quiet morning without television reading poems for the workshop. I'm about half way through a 1 inch binder of poems. When I get tired of that, I read my own poems aloud to reacquaint myself with them and to remember that young woman who wrote them. They are all about women. I don't know how I could have cared so much. Now I'm looking for lost poems on among the files I found from my first computer, the old 286! So far I've found several that I haven't seen in many years:

Benediction

Blank Pages in a Letter of Regret

Four Lebel Interchange

We Will Give the Names New Gods


I've also found a letter from my brother when he started college!

I'm missing some poems too. News From A Board, and one about a homecoming queen. I guess I'll have to dig out hard copies.

These poems are about women for the most part and a little juvenile! I did find some fiction I liked.

I've been looking for good self publishing software for an online chapbook. I just downloaded and will try the new Thesis Theme for Wordpress.

While reading the poems in my red chair I fell asleep and dreamed the poems were read on a game show and we competed for something I can't remember now. Maybe that's the point!

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Hello Again

I've been sucked into the immediate gratification of Facebook & Twitter. Is that good for me? I plan to return to blogging. Am preparing for Centrum Writer's Workshop with Mark Doty. I'm reading poems from my classmates and I never realized how many poems I'd be reading for this event! It's kinda fun but having no pometry background I don't know what to say about most of them!