I'm still working on those 6-10 lines per day I wrote about earlier this semester. They seem to be paying off in poems. Recently, though, I've been writing a lot about my mother, and my efforts to construct a poem from these lines are taking me nowhere. (I'm considering seeking professional help for my poem and my psyche). I decided to mix it up for tonight (and share with you, reader) my lines. Taking my inspiration from a classmate's wonderful poem entitled "More On What I Don't Know," I thought I'd try my hand at writing some things I do know (which, as graduate school/adult life teaches me daily, isn't very much). Here's my short list:
- Knowledge will get you so far. Knowing how to treat people will get farther.
- When baking cookies, grease the pan even when the recipe says not to (I'm anxious to hear your response to this one, Jenn!)
- Love a sappy song well aware that you can't make someone love you with a song.
- Eating breakfast makes me hungrier by lunch.
- Once upon a time, my parents were people, too (making all the mistakes that personhood requires)
What are two or three things you know for sure?
4 comments:
Hmm...I've never greased a cookie pan in my life. Do your cookies have lots of butter in them? (Mine usually do). Are you using a coated cookie pan? (I suspect that you do not.)
They make these really cool liners called "Silpats"--they work like reusable parchment paper--that you can line your cookie sheets with. Then you don't have to grease the pans!
Some things I know for sure: I'll usually get what I need to get finished done, even if it doesn't seem like I will. Homemade baked goods are always appreciated. A cat makes the best and worst sleeping companion.
Wow. I leave the interwebs for two weeks and you go all crazy with the blog!
I'll be back to post some comments soon. Lots to say, esp about the poems.
Hair dressers, hotboxing, ditch zinnias, and pug calendars: these are the things of poems!
It's all about the baking paper, really. It comes in a roll like waxed paper but refuses to catch fire.
One thing I know for sure is waxed paper WILL ignite in a hot oven.
Tim,
I love this idea of listing what you do know. It's so practical and right on the money. Who was it that said we should only write what we know and that's it?
Just a suggestion here: try a paradox exercise with those six sentences. Take the first part of the sentence and write it's opposite. I got this from poet Laurie Lamon (who's wonderful by the way) who, I think, got it from Mark Strand. Anyway, it works like this.
-put "When" or "if" in front of the first part of the sentence.
-then, write that first part's opposite.
The idea is to open up to the leaps of metaphor and image that occur naturally in our brains but get bogged down by logic, self-censorship, and language.
So:
If my parents were people to, then...
and so on.
What fun!
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