Adverbial Ketchup
Assemble some words, all your favorite words,
your biggest and best, most delicious of words;
Grind them with verb sauce, and odd punctuation,
Pepper with rhyme (to suit the occasion)
Then, if you will, some adjective yeast,
To bubble and build to a metaphor feast:
Rising unchecked o’er the brim of your brain,
spilling, and spreading, again and again--
poetry dough to be punched, to be kneaded,
to be stretched, to be strained, to be coaxed, to be wheedled,
and shaped at long last into poetry stuff,
some rich with thought and some with pure fluff,
but poems in makeable, bakeable form,
wrenched from the oven-- and read while still warm.
Mary McElveen
April 2010
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Purge!
When I was in college, I worked as a lab tech (at first summers, and then throughout the year) for a wonderful British professor of organic chemistry at the Johns Hopkins Med School. He was not only an excellent chemist, but a great teacher as well...subscribing to the Bear Bryant School of teaching: if it turns out well, then all credit goes to the player. If it turns out badly, it's the coach's fault. Anyway, C.H.Robinson was very generous with credit and quite sparing in his blame. And I deserved more of the latter than the former, I regret to say.
In any event, what brought Dr. Robinson to mind was one of his quirky habits: when the lab became too messy to deal with, he would barrel in the door one morning at full speed, announcing that we were having a PURGE. Glassware was washed and returned to cabinets, lab benches cleared, remains of old experiments poured down the drain. Forgotten tea mugs (and he had a quantity of those!) were located, drained, washed and bleached to pristine state. In short, the lab was restored to a state where things could be found, not only where they belonged, but in a usable state of cleanliness. Even lab coats were not spared. Concentrated, focused activity always produced the desired results. In retrospect, I think Robbie's 'purges' taught me more about doing science (and doing life) than any class I ever took. Mess around as much as you like with experiments, try new things, explore all the weird little corners of the subject, but when you come right down to needing an answer, FOCUS!!! And work your butt off.
The reason for this memory? We are having our own purge at our house. The top floor has reached maximum disorder, and chaos has started the trip down the stairs, invading the second floor--the landing first, then creeping into the bedroom and sitting area. The only thing standing between us and total disaster is one flight of stairs.
So we are setting ourselves the Sisyphean task of purging the third floor and all that has descended therefrom. The boxes are at the ready; the center of our storage space has been cleared; we have a surplus of black Hefty bags to load with discards. We have even sought out names of movers that will come to pack and load the detritus that we deem necessary for life as we know it, and transport it to storage. The first wave of labeled boxes has been moved today: a full jeep-load. This one is bound to take more than one day, but if we maintain our focus, and are willing to expend the requisite effort (and dollars), we should be able to transform our pig-sty selves into the clean and efficient household to which we aspire. Excelsior!
In any event, what brought Dr. Robinson to mind was one of his quirky habits: when the lab became too messy to deal with, he would barrel in the door one morning at full speed, announcing that we were having a PURGE. Glassware was washed and returned to cabinets, lab benches cleared, remains of old experiments poured down the drain. Forgotten tea mugs (and he had a quantity of those!) were located, drained, washed and bleached to pristine state. In short, the lab was restored to a state where things could be found, not only where they belonged, but in a usable state of cleanliness. Even lab coats were not spared. Concentrated, focused activity always produced the desired results. In retrospect, I think Robbie's 'purges' taught me more about doing science (and doing life) than any class I ever took. Mess around as much as you like with experiments, try new things, explore all the weird little corners of the subject, but when you come right down to needing an answer, FOCUS!!! And work your butt off.
The reason for this memory? We are having our own purge at our house. The top floor has reached maximum disorder, and chaos has started the trip down the stairs, invading the second floor--the landing first, then creeping into the bedroom and sitting area. The only thing standing between us and total disaster is one flight of stairs.
So we are setting ourselves the Sisyphean task of purging the third floor and all that has descended therefrom. The boxes are at the ready; the center of our storage space has been cleared; we have a surplus of black Hefty bags to load with discards. We have even sought out names of movers that will come to pack and load the detritus that we deem necessary for life as we know it, and transport it to storage. The first wave of labeled boxes has been moved today: a full jeep-load. This one is bound to take more than one day, but if we maintain our focus, and are willing to expend the requisite effort (and dollars), we should be able to transform our pig-sty selves into the clean and efficient household to which we aspire. Excelsior!
Friday, April 23, 2010
New Poet Laureate--Welcome, Amy Young!
As of April 13, Alexandria has a new poet laureate. Emerging from a field of six competitors, Amy Young was named as Alexandria's second laureate. I wish her all sorts of good luck, and know that she will enjoy her tenure as much as I did mine. Alexandria is so supportive of the arts, and over the past three years, I found that poetry is near and dear to the hearts of many of our citizens. One of the biggest pluses of this office is that you get to meet a great variety of people, in any number of situations...and all are interested in and curious about what a poet laureate does, and are extremely receptive to the idea of having what I often thought of as an ombudsman for the literary arts here in Alexandria.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Poetry Month
As a recently deposed poet laureate (my term expired March 1, and my successor has yet to be named) I am experiencing a weird sort of withdrawal. This is April! It's Poetry Month! But for the first time in three years, it's not my responsibility, and I'm wondering what to do. I still have a few gigs to attend in the last week of the month, but I am not scrabbling for venues, or looking for sponsors, or having meetings to decide exactly what is to be done to bring poetry to the city of Alexandria. It is strangely quiet around here.
Which probably means that I have the time to actually DO something this year, instead of thinking of ways to involve other people. I have pledged on a poetry website to write a poem a day this month. Since it is now 5:30 PM on the first day of the month, I have six and a half hours to do my first one. Not a good sign to break my pledge on the first day, despite the intervening dinner tasks and other items I've postponed till this evening. Hmm. Maybe I can do TWO tomorrow--it's a light day. Unfortunately, I can't just slip a quarter in the writing machine and have a poem pop out like a pack of gum. That in itself could be a poem. However, what has happened in the past three years is that I have all but abandoned my prose in favor of poems. No one asks me to read prose, and so I have needed to keep up a fresh supply of poetry for all occasions.
I have all but forgotten how to write sentences that don't break in the middle or lead to serious introspective conclusions. Perhaps I will turn that on its head and write comedy for the upcoming year. God knows I have enough material...But, for now, I am updating my blog--which constitutes the junk food of my writing menu. Do you want fries with that?
Which probably means that I have the time to actually DO something this year, instead of thinking of ways to involve other people. I have pledged on a poetry website to write a poem a day this month. Since it is now 5:30 PM on the first day of the month, I have six and a half hours to do my first one. Not a good sign to break my pledge on the first day, despite the intervening dinner tasks and other items I've postponed till this evening. Hmm. Maybe I can do TWO tomorrow--it's a light day. Unfortunately, I can't just slip a quarter in the writing machine and have a poem pop out like a pack of gum. That in itself could be a poem. However, what has happened in the past three years is that I have all but abandoned my prose in favor of poems. No one asks me to read prose, and so I have needed to keep up a fresh supply of poetry for all occasions.
I have all but forgotten how to write sentences that don't break in the middle or lead to serious introspective conclusions. Perhaps I will turn that on its head and write comedy for the upcoming year. God knows I have enough material...But, for now, I am updating my blog--which constitutes the junk food of my writing menu. Do you want fries with that?
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