Why Write?

I wrote on another site about the idea of devoting 20% of your time to something outside you regular "work.". It's a philosophy followed at Google and other companies. It could be a workplace habit, but it could also be something to follow in your non-working life.

My 20% seems to be writing, whether that is poetry, journaling, research or essays online and in print. If I devoted a fifth of my free time to one writing task - like a poetry manuscript - I might be a more successful writer. But, like most of my distracted life, I split that percentage into writing different things in different places.

There are five blogs that I write on regularly, including this one, and three others that I contribute posts to occasionally. I don't get paid to do that writing. But I wouldn't say that I do it for "fun" either.  Plus, I do the regular Poets Online website which archives all of the prompts and poems that have been submitted since 1998. It's hard to explain to most people (especially to my wife) exactly why I do it.

I was reading another blogger, Maria Popover, who writes the Brainpickings.org blog. She has a "writing tip jar" on her site which says that "Brain Pickings remains ad-free and takes 450+ hours a month to curate and edit, between the site, the email newsletter, and Twitter. If you find any joy and value in it, please consider becoming a Member and supporting with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of coffee and a fancy dinner."

That is like the public television and radio model. You listen, so you should pay something. Luckily, enough do pay, but the paying listeners are a small percentage of the listeners.

Most bloggers don't have a pay model or a contributor model using PayPal or some other subscription. Some blogs have ads. I do that. Amazon ads are one of the most popular vendors. I will put those links here for books I am discussing. But from all five of my blogs, I am surprised when in a three-month quarter they generate enough sales to have Amazon make a minimal payment which is only $10. So, I'm not getting rich by writing online.

I had always hoped that the ads would cover the cost of some domain names and hosting that I pay every year. You pay to own a domain name like poetsonline.org. Some sites, like this one on Blogger, are hosted for free. Others require a yearly fee.


There are people who blog and make a living at it. There are people who are poets and make a living at it. But not many. Every poet I know does something besides write and publish poetry to earn a living. Teaching is the most common job, whether it is in a school or in workshops.

So, why do we write our blogs and poems? I haven't come up with a definitive answer, but I have some ideas for myself.

I do hope it gets my name out there as a writer and that it leads to further opportunities and maybe some income. So, it is advertising for myself.

I like telling people things that I think will be helpful. I have been a teacher since 1975. It paid the bills, but teachers know that part of the reward is knowing that you are doing something good for your students and, in some small way, for the world.

I also like the occasional connections that come from writing online. That means anything from the person who "favorites" a post, makes a positive comment, emails a note, links to your writing. I have even had a few people find me online and ask me to do a workshop or give a presentation at a conference.

But all that perhaps isn't enough to "justify" the time spent doing this.

What are the other things that keeps us doing that 20% that we don't get paid to do? Whether it is poetry or volunteer work, why do you do it?  Comment?

Robert Frost: Darkness or Light?

From The New Yorker blog:

Photograph: Library of Congress.

�It�s hard to imagine the author of �Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening��the watcher of trees and grass, of frozen lakes and forested darkness�pinning up political posters in a crowded San Francisco bar. But, while the personality that comes through in Frost�s poems was a genuine one, it was also edited...

Yesterday was the fiftieth anniversary of Robert Frost�s death.

Joshua Rothman looks at the poet�s two sides: http://nyr.kr/VSHmr5

Poetry By Heart

United Kingdom's Department for Education is funding a nationwide poetry-reciting contest that asks kids to spend some time lingering over a poem. Long enough to learn it by heart.

The program is called "Poetry By Heart" and it is similar to the American "Poetry Out Loud" program.

At a county level, students memorize two poems from a list of 130and recite the poems by heart in a series of competitions. Their website has a nice selection of poems that are well known and not so well known - especially for American audiences.

The interview I heard said that the intent was to learn them "by heart, not by rote." They define that as meaning "that if you learn by heart it means you take the poem right into yourself, it becomes part of you. And it remains with you, probably for the rest of your life."

A difficult distinction to impress upon a young person. But hurrah for the trying.

Interview: Jean Sprackland, "Poetry By Heart" Contest via NPR

ALWAYS ALMOST, NEVER QUITE by David Howard

at home ?in the interpreted world

-
Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies I





1





The tree on the slope is contingent upon
your voice.

I hear nothing so the tree won�t bend �

I need that tree to bend.



The horizon does not want poetry to keep
going.

Intention? No star meant to be admired and yet�

Praise is impossible without doubt, ask a
teenager.



The

Crescent Moon

Crescent moon -
bent to the shape
of the cold.

    ~ Issa   translated by Robert Hass The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, & Issa

Newly Discovered Sandburg Poem Has Topical Relevance

A previously unknown poem by Carl Sandburg has been by a volunteer working at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The typewritten poem is titled "A Revolver."

Its discovery comes at a time when guns and violence are very much in the news in America following the Newtown school shootings and new legislation proposed by the Obama administration.

A Revolver

Here is a revolver.
It has an amazing language all its own.
It delivers unmistakable ultimatums.
It is the last word.
A simple, little human forefinger can tell a terrible story with it.
Hunger, fear, revenge, robbery hide behind it.
It is the claw of the jungle made quick and powerful.
It is the club of the savage turned to magnificent precision.
It is more rapid than any judge or court of law.
It is less subtle and treacherous than any one lawyer or ten.
When it has spoken, the case can not be appealed to the supreme court, nor any mandamus nor any injunction nor any stay of execution in and interfere with the original purpose.
And nothing in human philosophy persists more strangely than the old belief that God is always on the side of those who have the most revolvers.

Many of Sandburg's undocumented poems and drafts are in the University library collection and were donated about a year ago by Sandburg's wife and daughter.

Carl Sandburg, who died in 1967, was a Illinois native. He received Pulitzer Prizes for poetry in 1919 and 1951. He received another Pulitzer in 1940 for his biography of Abraham Lincoln, a historic figure that he admired very much.

A University of Illinois English professor emeritus, George Hendrick, who has edited collections of Sandburg's poems, said the poem appears to be from the writer's later work. He speculated that the poem might be related to Lincoln's assassination.

"One Today" Inaugural Poem by Richard Blanco

Poet Richard Blanco reads a poem for President Obama's second inauguration. Blanco is the first Hispanic and openly gay man to read the inaugural poem.





One Today

One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.

My face, your face, millions of faces in morning�s mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper -- bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives -- to teach geometry, or ring up groceries as my mother did
for twenty years, so I could write this poem.

All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the �I have a dream� we keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won�t explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
onto the steps of our museums and park benches
as mothers watch children slide into the day.

One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
as worn as my father�s cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.

The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
mingled by one wind -- our breath. Breathe. Hear it
through the day�s gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.

Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
or whispers across cafe tables, Hear: the doors we open
for each other all day, saying: hello, shalom,
buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos d�as
in the language my mother taught me -- in every language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives
without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.

One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
for the boss on time, stitching another wound
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.

One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn�t give what you wanted.

We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always -- home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country -- all of us --
facing the stars
hope -- a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it -- together.

by Richard Blanco

The text of the poem was provided by the Presidential Inaugural Committee.