Walls

Good fences make good neighbors,’the poet Robert Frost assured us more than 90 years ago.” To the contrary…

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Vincent Donato

Poets

From a panel discussion titled “Sincerely Ironic” featuring poets Jericho Brown, Tina Chang, Olena Kalytiak Davis, Meghan O’Rourke, and Mark Wunderlich discussing the use of irony and sincerity in contemporary poetry.

Transcript::

Olena Kalytiak Davis:

When I think about clarity, I think about ambiguity, and in some ways irony. It made me want to try and understand Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity. Because it seems like it’s the same thing. We’re talking about layers.

Meghan O’Rourke:

And to me the layers are the thing I go to poetry for. I keep thinking about the Berryman line that you quoted, Jericho: “Life, my friends, is boring,” which is a brilliant, beautiful and extraordinary line precisely because it stages two things at once in that poem. It says “life is boring, life is dull, it’s the anti-Romantic.” It also says: “life is boring.” It bores into you and pierces you. Right? It does those things in one. It’s self-contradictory; it’s holding in mind the contradictory-ness of experience.

W. Washer

Window Washer

by Christopher Todd Matthews

One hand slops suds on, one

hustles them down like a blind.

Brusque noon glare, filtered thus,

loosens and glows. For five or

six minutes he owns the place,

dismal coffee bar, and us, its

huddled underemployed. A blade,

black line against the topmost glass,

Sleeping

For a Student Sleeping in a Poetry Workshop

By David Wagoner

I’ve watched his eyelids sag, spring open
Vaguely and gradually go sliding
Shut again, fly up
With a kind of drunken surprise, then wobble
Peacefully together to send him
Home from one school early. Soon his lashes
Flutter in REM sleep. I suppose he’s dreaming
What all of us kings and poets and peasants
Have dreamed: of not making the grade,
Of draining the inexhaustible horn cup
Of the cerebral cortex where ganglions
Are ganging up on us with more connections
Than atoms in heaven, but coming up once more
Empty. I see a clear stillness

Larkism

The following article is an article I enjoyed reading very much and wanted to spread the love of it with you! Enjoy!

http://jackiebuxton.blogspot.com/2011/09/larkism-sequel.html

Passion

Simple Daily Habits to Ignite Your Passion

“Above all, be true to yourself, and if you cannot put your heart in it, take yourself out of it.”- Hardy D. Jackson

by Scott Dinsmore

For the past 8 years I’ve run experiments on myself and others to better understand what makes us come alive.

This has taken me on ultra-marathons, to the tops of mountains, the bowels of bookstores, around the world and in front of some pretty fascinating people on some very deep soul searching. Finding passion and helping folks do work that embodies it has become a bit of an obsession of mine and has turned up some interesting results.

It turns out passion is not as elusive as we think. Just like daily exercise leads to a more fit and healthy body, there are habits that lead to fire in your belly. If we are to cultivate such a lifestyle we must act accordingly.

ED

Anorexia Goes High Tech

By Jessica Reaves

Developing an eating disorder is no easy task. Becoming an anorexic, for example, requires months, even years, of obsessive, destructive tunnel vision. Anorexia demands absolute, single-minded dedication. It’s exhausting — and it can be extraordinarily lonely.

That’s where technology comes in. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, anorexics and would-be anorexics around the globe can access more than 400 web sites designed solely for them. Need to know how to disguise your weight loss so concerned (read: jealous) friends will stop hounding you to eat? Looking for a few words of support as you launch into your latest deprivation diet? Or perhaps you’d like to know the tricks for satisfying that pesky weekly weigh-in at the doctor’s office?

Bringing the darkness to light

Beyond their obvious “ick” factor, the sites provide a fascinating insight into the world of anorexics. For eating disorder educators, the very language of the sites can provide invaluable hints into a troubled psyche. “I think some of these sites are worded in a way that indicates the hosts do want help,” says Vivian Meehan, president and founder of the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, or ANAD. “They’re putting themselves out there. But then they also put up a defense against it. Don’t come on the site if you’re only interested in putting us down.”

That psychology plays out almost to the letter on one of the most visible pro-anorexia sites (or “pro-ana,” as devotees call them), known as “My Goddess Ana.” Accused in the press of perpetuating a deadly disease, the site’s 20-year-old creator offers this reply. “The opening page of the site clearly stipulates that the content of the site is Pro-Anorexic and should not be viewed by those who are in recovery or are thinking about recovery, or who, indeed, do not suffer from an ED. If you are reading this as an objector to Pro-Ana sites, why did you enter in the first place when the entrance page has told you not to?”

Driving

Driving in Oklahoma

by Carter Revard

On humming rubber along this white concrete,

lighthearted between the gravities

of source and destination like a man

halfway to the moon

in this bubble of tuneless whistling

at seventy miles an hour from the windvents,

over prairie swells rising

and falling, over the quick offramp

that drops to its underpass and the truck

thundering beneath as I cross

with the country music twanging out my windows,

I’m grooving down this highway feeling

technology is freedom’s other name when

Cinderella

Yesterday I awoke very early due to the fact I had another attack of insomnia in the middle of the night and never really fell back into a deep sleep or the stage REM as the experts call it. I’ve always thought REM was a comical way of describing a mode of deep sleep due to the fact REM stands for rapid eye movement.

Well, when I’m suffering with insomnia, I have oodles of rapid eye movement, it’s just that my eyes are flung slap open, and appear to be the size of saucers and my mind is racing like the Indianapolis Speedway. Enough about REM—that is not the point of this writer’s blog.

Productivity

Toss Productivity Out

Post written by Leo Babauta.

For at least a couple of years, Zen Habits was one of the top productivity blogs, dispensing productivity crack for a nominal fee (your reading time).

I’d like to think I helped people move closer to their dreams, but today I have different advice:

Toss productivity advice out the window.

Most of it is well-meaning, but the advice is wrong for a simple reason: it’s meant to squeeze the most productivity out of every day, instead of making your days better.

Imagine instead of cranking out a lot of widgets, you made space for what’s important. Imagine that you worked slower instead of faster, and enjoyed your work. Imagine a world where people matter more than profits.

If any of that appeals to you, let’s look at some traditional productivity advice, and see why we should just toss them out.