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THE POET BY DAY: What’s it all about?

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
Mary Oliver

What’s it all about?  

In a quiet way, this site is a rebellion against elitism in the world of poetry. It specializes in featuring talented but lesser know poets and underrepresented voices. It also features poetry initiatives for peace, sustainability and social justice and poetry news, events and publication opportunities. It supports freedom of expression.

Its purpose is to gratify my own pleasure in the world of poetry, to acknowledge poets, to encourage poets and writers (including those just finding their voices) and to explore the world of poetry, to honor the space in which poetry bares witness and offers us comfort and vision.

The name “The Poet by Day” is not a reference to me. It is in part to remind myself not to stay up all night reading and writing. However fun that might be, it’s just not healthy.

“The Poet by Day” gives a nod to a desire I believe we share: that our art is/could be our day job. The name, however, is primarily meant as encouragement to take it a day at a time, to be present in this moment and in our work, and to regularly exercise the writing muscle.

I hope people write whatever the spirit moves them to write about in whatever form/s feel natural to them and without comparing their work to that of others or worrying unduly about publication.

“To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard.” Allen Ginsberg years and years ago in Writer’s Digest 

The daily order is to free your creative spirit, to find yourself in your art. Your poetry – or whatever subtle alchemy calls to you – is first a gift you give to yourself. All else will follow.

© 2018, text, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved

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ABOUT THE POET BY DAY

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The State of Blogging

Blogospher Map, A Network of Interconnections courtesy of Jenna Greenbaum under Attribution license and originally published in Discover Science. I was unable to find references for the numbers but still think it’s visually interesting.

Thanks to Die Erste Eslarner Zeitung for bringing the WebsiteBuilder.org graphic report to our attention.  This is mostly about blogging as business, but there’s some information of possible interest to hobbiest bloggers, writers and poets toward the end of this report: ideal number of words in a title, best post-length, best time to blog … that sort of thing. You should find a few helpful hints amid the engaging trivia. Enjoy!

THE STATE OF THE BLOGGING INDUSTRY

courtesy of WebsiteBuilder.org

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Consolation, fun and gusto . . .

“I am a product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes, and the noise of wind under the tiles.  Also, of endless books.” Surprised by Joy, The Shape of My Early Life, C.S. Lewis

Life happens – sometimes with breathtaking speed – until it doesn’t; so we are happy after all with the activities of these times:  dealing with some rather major life-changes … along with balancing work on The Poet by Day, the evolving Coffee, Tea and Poetry, and monthly issues of The BeZine, themed theatre for August. I am excited to be collaborating on this issue with my son, Richard Lingua, as well as a cascade of talented writers and poets and The BeZine core team (The Bardo Group, now The Bardo Group Beguines), recently dubbed The BeZiners by John Anstie.

This year has been a struggle and I’ve finally have to admit that the practical strategy for the moment is to cut back on various activities until I can reorganize to accommodate new circumstances. I know you understand. No one’s life is free of challenges to the status quo. That is, perhaps, a good thing.

“It is a very consoling fact that so many books about real lives – biographies autobiographies, letters, etc. — give one such an impression of happiness, in spite of the tragedies they all contain … Perhaps the tragedies of real life contain more consolation and fun and gusto than the comedies of literature?” The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves

Meanwhile, I am determined at the very least to bring you Sunday Announcements (yesterday’s will post later today), Tuesday responses to Wednesday Writing Prompts, and Wednesday Writing Prompts. They may go up late, but they will go up.

Having said that, I have a slew of reviews and other material to share with you – all resting in wait for time and energy to do right by all the fine poets and writers I love and love to share with loyal and supportive readers who just happen to be writers and poets as well. You rock. Things are looking up even for bringing back the American She-Poets series. Please bare with me. Thanks for your patience … and poem on. Reading and writing is the stuff of magic. Literature, like life, does in fact offer consolation, fun and gusto. One vs. the other might just a matter of degree.

Warmly,
Jamie

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A writer is so like a spider ….

On Facebook, there’s a video making its way around Facebook that gives us a view of a spider at work on his web. As I was watching it just now – fascinated, though spiders are not my most favorite creatures – I thought how like a writer this little guy is. He starts to spin his web without a thread in sight. In effect he spins on faith. It’s a faith very much like ours when we pick up a pen or sit down at the keyboard. Often we don’t know what the words will be, how the story will end, or what is the best cadence and flow for each subject we chose to address or the story we are inspired to tell through poetry or fiction. We proceed in the faith that the perfect word, the perfect ending, the perfect cadence will come to us. We have confidence (perhaps a shaky confidence at times, but confidence all the same) that our writerly thread will be there as needed.

Note: Given a message on this post received elsewhere, this is NOT about writer’s block, something I never had. In fact, if anything, this is the antidote to potential block.

If you are viewing this post from an email, you’ll likely have to link through to The Poet by Day to watch the video.

The spider collection is under CC BY-SA 3.0 license. Details on each photo are HERE.