i met with jill yesterday at our favorite starbucks. it had been so long since our last meeting. a few months, i think. we did free writes on an exercise from a poet companion. neither of us felt like we achieved much with the writing, which would have been a part of our challenge to march through the book and jump start our writing. we both have aspirations. we’re both setting writing goals.
we decided more drastic measures are in order.
we have both done well with daily challenges in the past. we’re all over napowrimo and that kind of thing. we get all excited and there’s nothing like it for forcing the muse out of hiding. for me, the trick is that it distracts my inner critic. the act of writing a poem a day sends her a message: no time for objections. gotta go! although i’m sure we’ll continue using the poet companion for part of the work, the poems will come from wherever they come.
after yesterday’s empty free writes, we spent a couple hours talking: hatching plans to run away from our families, sharing stories from our haphazard attempts at mediocre daughtering, parenting, marriage and creativity, wondering out loud how to reconnect with words and images and metaphor. the good news is out of the conversation, we each discovered a few poem nuggets in the experiences we shared and we stumbled upon “the gong.”
it was in a story i told about my yoga teacher encouraging me to start a yoga gong. it’s a practice. something you do every day. you set a goal for the number of days you want to do it and you count your days of success. if you miss a day, you start over at “one.” (i have not completed, nor have i sufficiently attempted, my yoga gong, by the way.)
right before we left, jill blurted out, “poetry gong.”
and now here we are, it is day two.
and two poems are done.
did i really blurt that out? i am not kidding, there is an imposter running around as me. she looks like me, but she says and does things that i (the real me) have no idea she is doing. dean has told me a few things i’ve said recently that i have no recollection of.
of course, i remember poetry gong.
wouldn’t it be cool if someone had recorded our conversation, then we could use it as a bunch of found poems?
that’s one of the benefits of our email chats. there’s a written log.
but there’s nothing like a face to face, regardless of its inherent recklessness in failing to document our true, poetic brilliance.
[...] forest poem In free write, my poems, poetry gong, process on October 14, 2008 at 8:57 pm poetry gong, poem #3 / this poem was sparked by yesterday’s post a via negativa, “in a yellow [...]
[...] many colored fiction poem, part 1 In my poems, poetry gong on October 15, 2008 at 9:55 pm poetry gong, poem 4 / i have a fantasy about writing a long, long section poem introduced by a few lines from a [...]
[...] maureen listening nathan1313 on the many colored fiction poem,…dale on the many colored fiction poem,…jillypoet on the many colored fiction poem,…slynne on running awaythe many colored fic… on a poetry practice [...]
[...] In my poems, pantoum, poetry gong, writing as therapy on October 17, 2008 at 10:23 am poetry gong, poem #6 / a pantoum, only the second i’ve ever attempted. the first was a collaborative [...]
[...] not being dramatic In my poems, poetry gong, process on October 18, 2008 at 8:09 pm poetry gong, poem #7 / i was in expressive art training most of the day today, and so i was worried about being [...]
[...] tantrum poem In my poems, poetry gong, process on October 19, 2008 at 8:34 pm poetry gong, poem #8 / i feel like having nothing to do with poetry today at all. but being nearly a third of [...]
[...] therapy poem In mental health, my poems, poetry gong, process on October 20, 2008 at 10:26 pm poetry gong, poem #9 / i’m still basking in the glow of my dinner date tonight. none other than [...]
[...] In collaborative poetry, my poems, poetry gong on October 21, 2008 at 9:53 pm poetry gong, poem #10 / i have been writing a line-by-line with ingrid at durable pigments and we declared it [...]
[...] colored fiction poem, part 3 In my poems, poetry gong, process on October 22, 2008 at 1:00 pm poetry gong, poem 11 / as i explained a little bit ago, i hope one day to have a series of poems based on an [...]
Great idea! I’ve heard of piano teachers doing this sort of thing with their students too, like setting a goal of 100 days of practice in a row. The poetry gong. You could start a whole blog with this concept.
I stopped by to tell you I bought The Poet’s Companion, and today wrote a poem based on an idea from a list of things I hate and things I love. Somehow my dog ended up in the poem too. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the blog!
[...] skin poem In mental health, my poems, pantoum, poetry gong on October 23, 2008 at 9:19 pm poetry gong, poem #12 / really? number 12? it seems like it has gone fast, this attempt at 30. but i know [...]
[...] fiction poem, part 4 In my poems, poetry gong, process on October 25, 2008 at 10:46 pm poetry gong, poem #14 / the whole history of these posts for me is detailed here. today, the only explanation [...]
[...] humpty dumpty poem In my poems, poetry gong on October 26, 2008 at 10:16 pm poetry gong, poem #15 / another rough day to be trying to write. i’m happy to be half-way through with [...]
[...] list poem In my poems, poetry gong, process, ramblings on November 3, 2008 at 8:37 pm poetry gong, poem #23 / jill and i met yesterday and we each wrote a pantoum that included the same two [...]
[...] to the rescue In american sentences, my poems, poetry gong on November 4, 2008 at 10:29 pm poetry gong, poem #24 / in my mind, i had already composed the email to jill apologizing for the fact that i [...]