But this isn’t a post about the abysmal publishing prospects for poets. (In the coming months as I embark on a more fervent submission campaign, I’m sure I’ll have plenty to say about that). Instead, this is my virtual application of electro-schock paddels to my virtual chest. Because one of the things that did resonate with me in the panel was when of the editors — in discussing how writers need to use every available tool to reach audiences — said that if you had a blog, the worst thing you could do is let it lapse. “If your blog is dead, you are dead.”

Um… I put my finger to my wrist. I did indeed have a pulse. And it was quickening in fact. With deep embarrassment, because I knew that she was right.

As the stay at home mother of an energetic & precocious 3 year old, I have difficulty finding time to shower, let alone blog. And over the past year, I’ve become something of a professional-hobbyist baker. I’ve laid the foundation for a writing, editing, and development consultancy. I co-coordinated a large-scale poetry festival at the Free Library of Philadelphia. And I began gestating another human being (a wee girl due to be born in December). So, I’ve been keeping busy. And yet I have felt the absence of writing, personal & public.

For many writers, at least for me, writing is one of the hardest jobs to do. It is also the one I love the most. But that hardness — in the face of so many other life priorities & immediate gratifications — makes it the easiest thing to put off. Many writers (and even non-writers) will also tell you that one of the most intimidating thing about writing is the blank page. I would say the out-of-date blog is on par, if not worse. Because instead of nothing, you must face the date, time, and content of the last thing you wrote. Whether you like it or not. It stares you down and challenges to come up with something better. Now. And to keep it coming. Sometimes, the only way to get past the challenge of the blank is to start writing. And so I do.

Ignore this post. Because it is nothing more than a throat clearing. My long-winded. A-hem. I will have something more important to say another day. But for now I am just clearing the weeds, making a path.

This week, I debuted my first set of poetry postcards/broadsides at my reading in Elkins Park. I designed four unique cards (4×6 inches) featuring four different poems, using word art, images, and ink stamps. I’m really happy with how they came out, and people seemed to like them (they bought them!) so I was inspired to create a way for folks to view and buy them online.

If you’re so inclined, you can check them out here and on Etsy.

I hope to be making more cards with other poems in the future. Any feedback on these “first edition” cards is most welcome.

Here’s the thing I’m feeling iffy about. Madras is a nonprofit, and the website explains that all net proceeds from books sales are donated to a charity of the author’s choosing. Now, I come to you as a woman who has spent the better part of her life trying to be of service — giving away my 8th grade field trip spending money to a homeless man in D.C., volunteering in high school, college & after, and ultimately settling into a career as a nonprofit fundraiser & manager. I am all about supporting nonprofits of all shapes and sizes. BUT, I don’t understand why the writers can’t make a little money off their writing?

Now, I don’t know what exactly Madras means by “net proceeds” — maybe they have built in some compensation to the writer — but it seems to me that writers can raise their voices and use their work to support nonprofits, without sacrificing themselves. We need to be able to leverage our art to get money from those who really have it to spare, rather than just giving up what little we might earn.

And this isn’t the first I’ve heard of this… the Poetic Arts Performance Project here in Philly that aims to “use our poetic gifts and those of artists from around the country and globe to help other charitable organizations in the Philadelphia area.” That’s commendable… and yet, I often wonder about arts organizations (which are hobbled to begin with) trying to help other organizations. Why can’t it be enough to raise up the arts, to focus on raising up the arts, and let the art have the powerful social effect that art can have. Keep what little money you might make and put it back into your own organization, so you can spread more art, whether that’s through publishing more stories that won’t find a home any other way, or putting on kick ass readings & educational events. I wonder… do these organizations think that they need to bribe potential patrons with the promise of a tax write off? Do they think it somehow makes it okay to pay for art by not really paying for art by giving to something “more worthy”?  Honestly, I suspect these organizations recognize that they aren’t going to get rich off their books and events, and they altruistically believe that what little they raise can make a difference to another struggling organization. And they may be right.

But I’m not convinced… I’m not sure that doing this doesn’t just reinforce the idea of writing as folly, hobby, something readers can & should get for free… unless its by someone a major publishing house has told them they should pay for.  I know that no one goes into writing for money… but why must writers always be hobbyists, why must we exhaust ourselves at full-time jobs so that we can pay the bills, so that we can live, so that we can write. Why can’t we try to get a least a little compensation for all the hours, heartache, tears, and papercuts we endure as artists.

Everyone else does it. I know its hard for some of us to understand that people who are scientists, engineers, and technologists are really passionate artists in the work they do. Only they make medicines and machines, and they don’t give them away for free just because they loved the process of creating and because they are so impressed with what they made. Hells no. If that was the case, everyone would have a car, a computer, and an iPod.

Maybe that’s over-simplified. And maybe not. All I know is when I buy a book or go to an event, when I’m really impressed by a writer, I feel great knowing that writer is going to get a little compensation for a job well done. A writer who needs that money to keep doing the best damn job she can. Making art. Putting it out there, in people’s faces, saying I am worth something. I am valuable. Listen to me.

But tonight I had a great reading at the Elkins Park Free Library and a few people, including a very generous spirit named Ruth, asked about my website – and so it seems its time to get some motivation back.

As far as readings go, this one was pretty awesome. 30 whole minutes! Enough to present a variety of my work & not feel like I’d overstayed my welcome. And the room was packed, at least 20-30 people. But only about 1/2 of the audience read in the open mic, which means the rest of the folks were there to listen & enjoy poetry. As someone who hosts a monthly reading, I’m still amazed & delighted by those crowds. But then again, those that did read in the open mic were talented and genuine with their art. What’s more, I sold 10 of my brand-spankin’-new poetry postcards (more info & pictures to come).

Many thanks to everyone who was there! It’s always an honor to get invited to read. Tonight was an honor and a pleasure. Plus, I serendipitously discovered a great little reading venue just 10 minutes from my house. Bonus!

It seems in this web 2.0 world, we’re all trying to brand ourselves.  I know I do it sometimes.  And over the past several months, when I wasn’t blogging, I was thinking about if I wanted to keep this blog alive — and if I did — what I wanted it to be.  My favorite writing is at once self-reflective and capacious.  Much as I criticize the “I”, I have always needed it. I know no other way to meet the world, than through the lens of my own experience.  And yet that I hope, at its best, it is somehow larger.

So that is what I hope for this blog.  Since my son was born and I left my full-time job in nonprofit for my round-the-clock job as a stay at home mom (SAHM), I’ve found myself questioning the choices women have and the choices writers & artists have.  And, of course, I am thinking about the same social, political and artistic concerns that I’ve always had — only now, I spend most of my days with a pre-verbal little person who can’t real engage in the conversation (yet!).  For better or worse, this space is where I hope to create flash essays (ala flash fiction, perhaps?), discuss the art & poetry in my world, think through my emerging concerns about womanhood & motherhood, and have some fun with domesticity, mostly by sharing my baking exploits.  I may post occassional personal news or links, but I won’t post poems — that’s not my deal.  Although I do hope this blog will become a breeding ground for bigger better essays and poems that will find homes in the publishing world.  Most of all, I hope this blog & its essays will be broader than my own experience and that they will be honest, full experiences — not just glimpses of my best angle.  Anything less and I guarantee I will lose interest in myself, just as I would anyone else.

Okay okay okay.  Enough self reflection.  Onward, to more adventures in writing, motherhood, and life!

I’m particularly satisfied with Wikipedia’s definition of “memoir,” particularly this bit (which may or may not be attributable to Gore Vidal, I can’t tell from the way the entry is arranged):

It is more about what can be gleaned from a section of one’s life than about the outcome of the life as a whole.

The quote makes me wonder: what actually constitutes a “section” of one’s life? How large or small of timeframe might that be? Poetry, at least much of the best poetry, is about gleaning from moments and simple details. And the old cliche is right: Life is but a series of moments. So, I suppose I see each poem as the opportunity to write a mini memoir. The most exciting part, for me, is that these mini memoirs get to defy physics. Once you’ve written enough of them, you can string the poems together to tell a larger story, only that story need not abide by the laws of the space-time continuum. This is where the gleaning comes in. The meanings of our lives, or situations within our lives, are often less dependent upon the chronological circumstances and more upon the way our memories rearrange and juxtapose long after the experiences have ended.

How many times have you been absolutely sure that the last time you saw so and so was at such and such restaurant, only to eventually realize that’s impossible?  Such and such place wasn’t built yet, or it burnt down the year before, or you’ve never actually been to such and such but the color on their sign reminds you of the shirt that so and so was wearing the last time you saw him, although you can’t quite remember where exactly that was.  Probably, where you were at the time doesn’t matter.  It’s what you said.  It’s what so and so was wearing or doing.  Whatever it was, its important enough to be triggered every time you pass by such and such restaurant.  The gleaning comes from that connection.  Maybe you would never think of so and so otherwise.  Or maybe something else would be the trigger.  In all likelihood, whatever it is would have more to do with your subconcious than anything going on the actual world of facts.

That’s why I like to think about poetry in the context of memoir — because poetry is not bound by the world of facts, even if we’re using poetry to tell personal stories. Personal stories don’t necessarily have to be factually verifiable — at least not in our world.  This doesn’t mean, however, that the stories don’t have to be true. But there’s a big difference between “actual” truth and “emotional” truth.  Was James Frey actually in jail for year, or however long he claimed? (I never read A Million Little Pieces, although I feel like I did.)  No, but it may have felt like it to him.   That’s an extreme example of emotional truth (although I’m pretty convinced that James Frey knows is just a big fat liar who thought nothing about emotional truth).  Either way, emotional truth isn’t really acceptable in the world of prose — especially in anything like a biography or memoir that claims a foothold on reality.  But in poetry – ah! – we deal almost strictly in emotional truth.  Was the car blue or orange, it doesn’t matter.  If you’re comparing your mother’s innonence to that of the virgin Mary, then the car was blue.  Period. End of sentence.  Poetry understands that details and specifics are the cornerstones of the most engaging writing, but that those details have some sort of proof to back them up?  Poetry doesn’t care about that.  Poetry wants the best details to help us understand what it all means.

It’s late and I’m rambling.  More to come later.

But a few weeks ago, a line of dialogue popped into my head — the opening of a short story. Now, I’ve had ideas for short stories, but they usually come and go. The fascination fades after I realize that I’m only vaguely masking some incidents out of my own life and that I can’t sustain a story (or my own interest) beyond a few paragraphs. So, with this history, I didn’t even bother to write down the line of dialogue that popped into my head. I figured if I didn’t bother it, it wouldn’t bother me and we’d both go peaceably in our separate directions.

Not so. The dialogue kept coming back… and with it came a few characters, and they brought along all their baggage and personality quirks. They begged for attention — I would find myself thinking about them in the shower, talking about them (to myself) while I drove. They live in the 90s, so they forced me to start listening grunge & garage rock, circa 95-97. (Hello again, Weezer.)

After two weeks of relentless dogging, a few days ago I gave in and started actually writing the story. All told, I spent about 7 hours on it, in that one day, writing into the wee hours. It kicked my ass. I was so exhausted yesterday that I didn’t even attempt to go back to it and finish. That’s for today.

Wish me luck. If I actually get it done, it will be the first story I’ve written and finished since grade school. Phew!

Some folks may be familiar with PoetryClass, an old blog that I’ve kinda abandoned. This blog won’t be quite as thematically focused, but I’m sure to climb up on my soapbox every once in a while.

Otherwise, you can expect event notices and reviews, news about where and what I’m publishing, and general ramblings about what I’m doing, reading, listening to, watching. You should also keep your eyes out for photographic examples of my domestic prowess, including my knitting and baking exploits. Woohoo. Hold onto your hair!