Two poems, journal entry and a blog entry

Today, I wrote two poems and a 630-word journal entry and now this blog entry. No, I did not get up early this morning. I couldn’t pry my eyes open. I even contemplated taking a sick day from work but with my upcoming move up to the boogie-down Bronx…I need every penny I can scrape up.

It feels decadent to be able to work on my writing. The office is quiet enough to let the words bubble up. Each piece takes me at least an hour because there are phone and people interruptions. But poetry becomes almost a meditative practice as I read and re-read the lines over and over again. I’m listening for the music of the piece. There is a certain rhythm structure that underlies each one. I also play with language and look up words in the dictionary and thesaurus to find better flavors to give a poem a different color. Both pieces are pretty rough and I’ll work on smoothing down the edges when I get home tonight. I just need a couple of hours to distance myself enough from the piece to look at it with fresh eyes tonight. So far I have 4 out of 5 pieces for tomorrow’s writing group.

I am cold and achy; they’ve turned up the air in the office. I know they do this to circulate the otherwise stale air but it doesn’t help my cold much.

Tonight, I’m going to Akilah Oliver’s memorial service. My stomach is tied up in knots at the prospect of attending but…it may help me come to terms with her death. I’m afraid my pragmatic nature has escaped me in this instance. I looked up to her. She was an amazing poet with a steady, critical eye. She had a way of making me feel competent with the whole writing poetry thing. She treated me like a peer. When I took her class at L.I.U., I felt capable of getting better at the craft and my work flourished. I’m so grateful for the semester that I had her as a professor.

Peace

L~


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