(Here’s a poem loosely modeled after a formal structure invented by Donald Justice. It was yesterday’s prompt from NaPoWriMo, but I found it especially challenging. This one took me two days) I There is something odd and possibly wrong about writing a poem with the Notes app, at a gate in the Atlanta airport, no less.FewerContinue reading “#559: There is something odd and possibly wrong”
Tag Archives: books
On Finding a Routine
Embarrassment of riches: retired guy has enough time on his hands to do any thing he wants, has a list of such things at the ready, and yet, some of the things he wants to do he doesn’t do–or, more accurately, doesn’t do enough of to satisfy his own self-critical assessment of his productivity. HeContinue reading “On Finding a Routine”
On the Twenty-ninth Day of 2025…
…I discover that Jim in Percival Everett’s retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is fully literate. He’s read Voltaire, Rousseau, and Locke when he’s alone in Judge Thatcher’s library, and on Jacksons Island, after he gets bit by a rattlesnake, he has conversations with these literary and philosophical giants in fever-induced hallucinations, and isContinue reading “On the Twenty-ninth Day of 2025…”
The Twenty-first Day of 2025…
…was unremarkable, at least in my personal sphere. I accomplished very little. I woke up late, meditated, scrambled an egg, walked the dogs, listened to a couple of albums, The Last Dinner Party and Father John Misty, respectively, culled through some Project MA demos for the next album, texted with my musical partner from thatContinue reading “The Twenty-first Day of 2025…”
On the Fourteenth Day of 2025…
…he is not chosen for the jury. He gets as far as the courtroom for the interview process between the attorneys and potential jurors. He even gets a seat inside the box. But he finds himself so baffled by the line of questions from both the defense and the prosecution, so surprised at their apparentContinue reading “On the Fourteenth Day of 2025…”
On the Twelfth Day of 2025…
…I finish Earth to Moon, the memoir by Moon Unit Zappa. Minutes after finishing, I will attempt to sum up, to share the experience in miniature. First, I must confess it took me a flipping long time to finish. I think I started reading this fall, maybe in September or as late as October, andContinue reading “On the Twelfth Day of 2025…”
NaNoWriMo 2024: Adjusting My Expectations
The point of any kind of forced creativity experience or challenge is to simply do the creative thing you want to be doing but perhaps wouldn’t be doing otherwise. I am all for it. I’ve done more than a decade worth of a poem every day in April, I’ve participated in songwriting challenges that resultedContinue reading “NaNoWriMo 2024: Adjusting My Expectations”
I’m Thinking About Giving Up on Writing Fiction on the Cusp of Another NANOWRIMO
In both Novembers of 2022 and 2023 I wrote 50,000 words for the National Novel Writing Month challenge. The results were two sloppy, hastily written rough drafts of novels. I would expect nothing less from such a challenge, the purpose of which is not to write a masterpiece, but to spill out as quickly asContinue reading “I’m Thinking About Giving Up on Writing Fiction on the Cusp of Another NANOWRIMO”
#542: On the Note Wendell Hawken Wrote to Me, the One I’ve Been Using as a Bookmark in Her Book of Poems
The note she wrote to me almost a year ago, the one I’ve been using as a bookmark as I’m reading her poems, says: “Michael – thought I was out, but I found one.” Even though it doesn’t take me long to remember what she was trying to say, I love the ambiguity of itContinue reading “#542: On the Note Wendell Hawken Wrote to Me, the One I’ve Been Using as a Bookmark in Her Book of Poems”
#540: Masturbation Is Not A Thing
Here’s a poem I drafted quite a while ago, I think, while I was still teaching, that I was too hesitant about publishing, not necessarily because of the subject matter, but because this classroom inspired story was too recent, too close, and I might have been gun shy as the result of an earlier experienceContinue reading “#540: Masturbation Is Not A Thing”
michael jarmer 