121. National Poetry Month

Happy National Poetry Month!

      While all writers spend a great deal of time reading and refining their craft, April is the perfect month to redefine one's personal goals as a writer. Not only is the spring weather inspiring with all of its symbolic rebirth, but it also offers the opportunity to get involved in larger communities of writers that meet to celebrate poetry's presence. I am actually considering starting a small writer's group or workshop for young writers (around ages 18-30) in the Haverhill or North Andover area of Massachusetts. If you are local and would be interested, please contact me at jessica@wickedlittlewhimsy.com!
      My personal goal this month is to receive at least one acceptance letter from the many magazines and journals that I have been submitting my work to over the past few months. A little persistence goes a long way, and I hope to see it pay off! I also am challenging myself to be more diligent with my writing schedule so that I can write for one solid, uninterrupted hour each day. I find that setting a routine is the best way to ensure that one will have the time to fit writing into a busy life, and I am determined to etch a routine in stone over the next few weeks.
      If you are looking for some works of linguistic art to get you inspired for National Poetry Month, I recommend you go on a scavenger hunt to find the poems that I have listed below. These are a handful of my personal favorites. Some are available online and others you will have to track down at your local library (which is also wonderful day trip, as the presence of so many gorgeous books is sure to put you in the mood to write).

"Homage to My Hips" by Lucille Clifton

"The Red Poppy" by Louise Gluck

"Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats

"The Nazi Doll" by Yusef Komunyakaa

"Days" by Philip Larkin

"Grotesque" by Amy Lowell

"A Birthday Present" by Sylvia Plath

"In a Station of the Metro" by Ezra Pound

"To the Desert" by Benjamin Alire Saenz

"Her Kind" by Anne Sexton

"Sonnet 116" by William Shakespeare

"The Good Life" by Tracy K. Smith

"Black Telephone" by David Trinidad

"Love After Love" by Derek Walcott

The game is afoot!

120. Dream a Little Dream

     I am currently enjoying a surge of poetic energy. I attended the AWP Book Fair earlier this month, and while I was steadily writing and submitting my work before the event, meeting so many extraordinarily talented writers, editors, and publishers at the fair gave my imagination a shot of adrenaline. It was astonishing to feel the spark of kinetic energy shared by every individual in the convention hall - a room full of consumers, creators, and conduits of innovative writing. I left the event with two bags full of magazines, chapbooks, and journals to peruse as well as dozens of business cards, posters, broadsides, and flyers encouraging me to challenge myself to send my work to a variety of established and fledgling publishers.
     After coming down form creative high induced by the event, I reveled in another boost by receiving confirmation that 2 of my poems are appearing in the current "Lardo" issue of Meat for Tea and one of my photographs has been accepted for publication in the upcoming spring issue of Green Briar Review. If you'd like to take a peak at my poems "The Gravity that Grounds" and "Unabortion," you can grab a copy of Vol.7 Issue 1 of Meat for Tea here.
      As it has been awhile since my last post, I thought I'd make this a multi-purpose post by not only sharing my recent adventures, but also by leaving you with a prompt to fuel your next creative tryst. Since December I have been recording my dreams in a journal, which is a common practice for writers and artists. I wasn't sure that keeping a record of my dreams would actually affect my work, but I have found that my dreams have not only become more vivid, but also more frequent since December. It is as though my subconscious has noticed the attention and is now whoring for more - craving to be seen, heard, and preserved.
     I keep a dream journal separate from my everyday journal. On one side the cover reads "Sweet Dreams" while the flipside of the journal is designated for "Nightmares." This unique little book was a Christmas gift from Jeremy and I could not be more grateful for the encouragement to take note of the thoughts and images that I used to allow to slip away into the night, like lovers that leave before morning without so much as a note. Now they leave letters - detailed accounts of the night's happenings.
     At the end of the week I like to go back and pour over my dream notes and meditate on what my subconscious is proccupied with. Looking at my journal, I consider the content of my dreams and what these dreams indicate about my thought process. After finding something in my dream notes that intrigues me, I sit down to write and allow those dreams to be fulfilled through the reality of my poetry.   
     This week, I encourage you to start a Dream/Nightmare journal for yourself. There is no need to buy a book designed for the purpose. You can make one yourself out of a plain journal by marking the front and back covers and putting a divider in the center of the book, keeping half for your lovely dreams and half for those that make you wake with cold sweats and chills. After a few nights of keeping tabs on your sleep-induced imaginings, you will start to salvage images and themes that can be used in your creative process.

119. Prompt: Gratification of the Ingrate

Post-college life has been hectic. While my new job as a library assistant and my shop All You Need is Pug are both keeping me busy, I do find that I have more time to write for myself now that I am not spending the majority of my time constructing elaborate arguments on Plath's poetry or papers discussing novels by Bristish Modernists. Of course, I argue with myself in regards to these subjects from time to time, but it is always much more exciting to do so in my head than to force it out into a well-crafted thesis. It is safe to say that I don't (yet) miss college.

Each day I try to give myself a writing prompt to consider. I don't always get the chance to sit down and write, but when I do, the  act of allowing the prompt and its results to ferment yields interesting material to work with. Today I felt foul and hideous. I didn't want to go to work, I was in no mood to write, and every distraction or problem posed was magnified by my frame of mind. It wasn't until a co-worker said to me "I'm exhausted, yeah, but thank God I have a job. I'm thankful just to have a job." I am sure she didn't realize it, but in that last moment before we closed the library up for the night, I felt incredibly selfish for being so unappreciative of my opportunity to work and to make a new career for myself. Inside, I shamed myself for the pity-party I had indulged in throughout the day and determined to shrug off my agitation so that I could enjoy the end of the evening.

When I got home, still considering what she had said, I came upon a photo that I took a few months ago of a house on a back road in Concord, MA. Heading home from Walden Pond, I saw the house and pulled over to take a photo of its graffitied panels. This image, combined with my co-worker's accidental inspiration gave me today's fuel for writing: how do I express my love and my gratitude? This display of affection spilled over the side of a house (an inhabited home, not an abandoned building - which makes it all the more intriguing) is incredibly public, while I tend to keep my emotions locked up, only allowing them to leak into my writing or my artwork. Today, crack open your notebook and let the emotion go. Make a list of what you are grateful for and why. Write love letters and "thank you" notes that you will not send. Even if this exercise does not yield fodder for a future poem or story to feed on, you will at least have the satisfaction of feeling good about taking the time to tap into the things in life that make each sun-through-the-shades morning worth waking for.

118. For the Romantics