4/25   this dance with this blog. how can I have something to say, drudge & isolato that I am.  read a recent blog post from Chris Cottrell (thethepoetry.com), fine poet, editor  and literary activist here, talking about the renaissance of the portland poetry scene,  “important” readings. and it’s great for this energy to be about. I cant say too much as I don’t go out to hear the poetry, which to me is the criteria. folks communicating, exchanging ideas now and later, yeah, but what’s being written/performed?

people have networks. despite the bad economy some folks are travelling around, staying with friends and reading here and there. one house series in town, whose title has suicide in it, had Eileen Myles read  (she was in town for a PSU reading), while another had a poet listed as among 2011’s best by the new york times) these are good connections.

what ’xactly is the measure of poetic activity, thinking quality and quantity must both be factors.

places. strata. how much cross-connection is happening between scenes/series. some overlap, some don’t. open mikes share being that kind of reading; some folks visit various series, while some tend to the same venue.

I feel a little weighted by my history, maybe viewed as established coz of duration, coz I’m not much social, but I’m not an insider, not a teacher, (though most colleges don’t do much to spread word of writers coming to read, and tend to totally ignore local writers) operating solo. in my past and currently limited activities have gone more for bringing together a variety of folks, which other than Show and Tell doesn’t happy much elsewhere. probably haven’t done a good job at connecting more with newer folks and factions. have a sense of connection with Show and Tell and with Spare Room,  despite my rare appearances.

4/15  I vibe up on people I see, whether driving, walking or at work, their costumes, the roles we play in the hive we live in, the succession of roles never directly linear. after a day at work when it seemed as I had taken in a lot of empathic vibes/observations/understandings (not in an explainable sense—seeing the more multi-dimensional (need a better word for that, ‘bigger’ isn’t right)) I wrote a poem along those lines. here’s the first stanza

I see you on the street:  waiting, walking, carrying,

wheelchair, bicycle, shopping cart,

long coat in august, short sleeves in december

the style your wear, posture, angle of head, glaze of eyes

furtive, challenging, yearning to be elsewhere, invisible

yesterday in Eugene and especially today driving across town, seeing peoples costumes, intentions, movements, at the gym as well where I had a sense (a feeling, a non-visual vision) of the my belly being a hemisphere all white with releasing. sending forth all the people and lives of the world out into the present. I spread my arms wide so my belly had more access to open space

bodhisattvic tendencies/allusions. to claim is to not understand. my investment in and identification with poetry is challenging to this attitude, my judgmental side is perking.

poetry serves many purposes. some people like looking at photographs of real places. some people like abstract paintings. to keep my heart and other receptors open, to keep the energy into and from the language, what I didn’t know I knew, all this intelligence gathered and in warm dark places the data spontaneously manifests/escapes/seeds a broad swath.

4/2    at workshop I taught this weekend, on performing your own works, someone asked if I thought some poems were just meant to be on the page, not read aloud. I wanted to say No, it’s the nature of language to be spoken. instead I said there’s a range of poetries, some being things that a person needs to get out of them. didn’t say I don’t think those  releases are often poetry.

maybe teaching a class on two consecutive weekends is making me think too much about poetry, audiences, standards, my own paranoia/insecurity. better to just act like I’m fully committed and paddle on. feeling the return of  pessimism on poetry, power of art/the irrational, hope, etc. part of my balancing nature to bring this on myself after two weekends of poetic exchanges. its one thing being a loner but then when you see who else is on your ‘side,’ (more accurate a term when you consider the polyhedral nature of who we are) feelings go all over the place, misorientations.

grant me the strength to change those things I cannot accept.