I must say that the sixth day of 2024 has been a rough one. I slept in a little bit longer than I usually do, then, diverging from my usual practice of hitting the cushion before doing anything electronically, other than calling up my meditation timer, I read a text message. Needless to say, myContinue reading “On the Sixth Day of 2024: The Creative Impulse, or What the Hell Am I Doing?”
Tag Archives: creativity
Mindfulness in 2023: A Reflection
It has been five years since I have written one of these end-of-the-year reflections. I’m coming into this one after rereading what I wrote in 2018. In the intervening half a decade, I must have been just too overwhelmed by COVID and the ending of a career in education to be bothered to do aContinue reading “Mindfulness in 2023: A Reflection”
A Journal of the Plague Year: #27
Be Drunkby Charles BaudelaireYou have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it—it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk. But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. ButContinue reading “A Journal of the Plague Year: #27”
Stop the Block by Writing About the Block: A Resolution
As the song says, it’s been a long time since I rock and rolled. Actually, I’ve been doing a lot of literal rocking and rolling on the drums. I’m speaking figuratively about the kind of rock and roll that typically manifests itself in poetry, fiction, and right here on the blog site. Inexplicably (or not),Continue reading “Stop the Block by Writing About the Block: A Resolution”
#315: On the Penultimate Day of April, the English Teacher in his Penultimate Year Writes a Long Rambling Poem Inspired by Sylvia Plath’s Burst of Productivity in the Months Before She Died
I’m not going anywhere, but (having lost now both mom and dad) I notice thoughts about mortality enter the noggin with more frequency these days. I’m reading, or rather, listening to Life Reimagined, where Barbara Bradley Hagerty argues essentially that there is really no such thing as a mid-life crisis for most mid-lifers. Much of thatContinue reading “#315: On the Penultimate Day of April, the English Teacher in his Penultimate Year Writes a Long Rambling Poem Inspired by Sylvia Plath’s Burst of Productivity in the Months Before She Died”
#278: When I Was Away, Before I Was Born, I Have Never Been
I attended a writing workshop last weekend taught by the Oregon Poet Laureate Emeritus Paulann Petersen where I was asked to participate in a generative process very much unlike the process I am used to in my own creative work. It was a very particular kind of brainstorm activity she called “priming.” Now, as aContinue reading “#278: When I Was Away, Before I Was Born, I Have Never Been”
A Single Dispatch from Writer’s Camp on the 40th Anniversary of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College
First of all, I was sick with a cold when at 10:30 pm I boarded the plane for a red-eye from Portland to Atlanta, a nearly five hour flight through most of which I would be sneezing and blowing and stuffing kleenex into my own private trash bag that I kept discreetly stuffed into theContinue reading “A Single Dispatch from Writer’s Camp on the 40th Anniversary of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College”
#186: On Writing Retreat
On Writing Retreat, December 5, 2015, L. L. Stub Stewart State Park, Buxton, Oregon It’s raining so hard here, it would be unthinkable to go outside for a walk. So I am stuck in this cabin without internet access and there’s only a few things to do: listen to music, meditate, read, eat, or, theContinue reading “#186: On Writing Retreat”
Forced Creativity Experiences (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly)
April concludes and the new month begins with my successful participation in the National Poetry Month challenge of writing a poem a day for 30 days. I’m happy to say that I missed not a single day and that all 30 poems are posted here at michaeljarmer.com for your reading pleasure. I thought I wouldContinue reading “Forced Creativity Experiences (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly)”
#30: The Last Poem of April
The Last Poem of April April was only cruel in that it exacted from me 31 poems, whether I liked it or not, but mostly, truth be told, I liked it, and I moved freely and by choice through the month, writing a poem every day until today, the day on which I write the lastContinue reading “#30: The Last Poem of April”
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