May Golden Shovel #3

source: Missing Out on a Lot, but Creatively Filling the Void

She thinks there is no trace of her missing

Stories since she threw them out

Of the Milky Way. She put them on

A comet trailing teal-colored wings, a

Free message to aliens that no lot

Here is large enough to land in. But

The stories return, lumped in a stewpot creatively

Spiced and seeded with a filling

Too rich for Earth creatures, who are the

Lost angels still searching the void.

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I’m continuing to use Terrance Hayes’s Golden Shovel poem format, as proposed by the Sunday New York Times "At Home" section, for 30 Poems in 30 Days during National Poetry Month.

 

Take a newspaper headline that attracts you.

Use each word in the line as the end word for each line in your poem.

Keep the end words in order.

Describe the story that the headline is for.

The poem does not have to be about the same subject as the headline that creates the end words.

 

 

Blogging A-Z: I Is for Imagination

            Jack used his imagination to keep himself from being bored. At the gym, he would tell himself stories, usually stories that happened to him or that he knew about other people. But he would improve the stories, make them more intriguing, more humorous, more dramatic. Sometimes he would play with these stories from his life so much that, he said, he sometimes couldn’t remember which was what really happened, and which was the embellished version.

            I often suggested he write his stories, but he never did. That, I believe he thought, would turn it into work. He has always written for pay. Writing for the fun of it, which I do a lot, did not appeal to him. So his stories exist now only in the e-mails he exchanged with friends and family. He engaged his imagination in choice of words, in choice of detail, rather than in making things up. Mostly.

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April’s writing challenge is to blog every day, with each post beginning with a letter of the alphabet from beginning to end. We skip Sundays, except for April 1, so as to have 26 days in the month.

Remembering and Forgetting

My husband’s memorial is in three days, and I am only now knuckling down to write up my comments. (Yes, I do have to write out what I will say. I have only once ever given a talk based only on notes, and I have given many talks. I’m good at writing the way I speak.)

            It is not easy. First, it has to be about him, not about me. I have been writing memoir quite a bit lately, which is ultimately about me. It’s hard to shift the focus. Second, I know there are stories he used to tell, about his growing up, his family, his various workplaces, and I used to think, I should write these down — but I never did. My memory is not that good. He remembered stories about my life that I’d forgotten. Now his memories are gone. But I'm trying not to think about what's gone, just what I do remember.

            Third, our daughter is going to speak at the memorial, so I have to make sure I don’t steal any of her material, or say anything that might embarrass her. So we’re e-mailing back and forth.

            Fourth, fact-checking. Did the friend I think recommended a job really do it, or was it someone else? (E-mai

ls.) What was the name of the editor on the start-up magazine he worked on for a week? I spend time on Google, then decide the whole story isn’t necessary.

            Fifth, his oldest friend and his younger brother cannot come to the memorial from their homes in Colorado and Kansas. So they wrote reminiscences and sent them to me. The friend needed an editorial discussion to encourage him to write more, while the brother needed a heavy editorial hand to cut down what he’d sent. (These will be read by a friend and my younger brother, respectively. So I have to send the finished products off to them as well.)

            So that’s been my day so far. Still working away.