To turn a procedure into a fissile poem

Be scannable might be a good advice for a prose writer. But if the reader of your poetry is jumping a para, theres not much left to scan.

Woman mined. begins with a commonplace

snap you with an ultraviolet camera,
show you what you've done to your skin just
by living.....

Carolyn Creedon has jumped from a quotidian scene in a specific setting, a cosmetic department , from the material to the emotional space of a life time.

Exercise: Take a procedure done at any place that offers service - doctors, hair salon (or car wash) and see if you can hop onto the next circle post leading to the altar at the center of the lake.

Another exercise: Create out of tornado of fish.

Reigning nonfiction

Author: Lee Gutkind

Three rs of narrative nonfiction. An article by the author using the example of Rebecca Skloot's Henrietta Lacks story.


Creative nonfiction playing by the rules. Give the nonficion writers a break or name a new category. Sounds like there is a need for rule book.

Be scannable. Never thought I would find that as an advice to a writer.

Galvanize

An article
Leyden jar
Luigi Galvani

At home travelling

Andrew McCarthy
Lenga tree
El Calafate glaciers

At the end of prologue when the author is relieved that his wife is not freaked out having just missed a flight after a jangling ride in a foreign country brings two points to light. One, that travel is important to him. Two, that his partner knows this.
Our author is a blur traveler. He is back from one place and already onto another trip before the family can get to grips with it. His partner to be wife ghost travels with him. The reader can sense the guilt in the solo trips.
The author is mostly comfortable with loneliness. His patience for others is checked in a boat trip on the Amazon. There is a scene described, where a girl has an infected tongue hanging out. It couldnt have been in the book without a happy ending. Just when I was ready to chuck the book, there are references to further action on that matter.
The author shows an interest in the history of the places he visits. Goldpanning in Osa Peninsula, he meets people who have settled down in a place where they went on travel.
The Kilimanjaro hike is funny to read with the oximeter being passed around, like an elimination round on 'The Chopped'. The guide says that the most difficult ones are honeymooners and that too men as they are busy taking care of the women and forget about taking care of themsselves. A nurse in the delivery room said similar things and asked my husband to eat so he doesnt pass out when the baby is ready for the world.
All through the book, his wedding is planned which happens in the end in Dublin.

I have seen the movie Mannequin a long time ago. An the sculpted lady is Kim C. Wow.

Authors travel writing
Ever since I read of Kilimanjaro trip, I set my exercise to 'Kilimanjaro' profile on LifeFitness.

Easy book to carry along

Read twice

Debora Greger

The cover seems very familiar. Chairs. The women in them are focused on are they turn their back and focus into the inner world. 

I have never read poetry of Florida so much. 

Feeling cold is not something we ever go for. But the poets lines urge you to divest the objects of their agreed symbols and utility and build new ones in the process of comprehension.
With Tomas Transtromer (can I refer to him as Transformer) as inspiration, I can see where she gets her obscurity in her poems from. 

The reader cone

I didnt think I would read much of this book from the LARB review. How do reviews manage to accomplish distancing the readers instead of getting them into the reader cone. (A review like this comes from the other end of what the book could have been). But once into it, I like the book's development as it goes through reading and women in history.

Silent reading. As kids there was a stage where we had to graduate from reading aloud to silent reading. It is interesting to know that at some point most reading was done aloud in a room. 

The introductory point where the book had me was about the myth of Philomela were weaving was used as a communication tool to point to the times when education for women was not prevalent.

the book lists the service of many women towards paving the path for other women to learn. By digging up history it breaks the common held knowledge of the lack of educated/powerful women in Arab countries. The book is geared towards women in the west and Europe. There are a few references to the east. I kept thinking about how was it in India.

A slate article

A review

Author interview

Walk 'into' mountain

(Poetry exercise)
1. In Hardy's novels, stretches of path can carry memories of a person, just as a person might of a path.
2. how we are scattered, as well as affirmed, by the places through which we move.
3. He(Edward Thomas? or Hardy) imagined himself in topographical terms. corners, junctions, stiles....
4.For paths run through people as surely as they run through places.
5.what do I know when I am in this place that I can know nowhere else? And then vainly, what does this place know of me that I cannot know of myself.

Machair
William Fox essay - cognitive issonance in isotropic place
NYT review
An example of what William Fox says
Hachure map
Miniature lake of mercury in Chinese king tomb

Syntax virus

What is a syntax virus? In the notes the author says that it is an exact grammatical replica of another poets poem, injected with her words.

Area 25  poem is about a part of brain called area 25 that can help relieve depression for some.  Not until this poem id the book start for me. up until this the list in the poems seemed like
chubby cheeks
dimple chin....
syntax virus of Sylvia plath's You're seemed like that rhyme. The poet does love rhyme's, what with 'the countin sing no 5'. At least 'one two buckle my shoe' reaches the end faster.
In Paradise-Un, not in this book, the poet shows her talent, her ability to be inspired and sustain the journey of that projectile.
Area 25, Still murmur, Riddle in the vein of poems on body.
Playing with words in Self-medication (This article will lead you to raw poetry exercise.)
But it must be with the experimental angle that the poet delivers simple, elegant The Darker sooner

A fan
Review of poets previous book

Adam Zagajewski

Life as a board game

Dots and Boxes is a game like tic tac toe. How does love compare in your life to the claiming of lines that can be connected and the concomitant boxes that can be claimed.

Apophasis at the All Night Rite aid and other poems.

In the Apophasis poem, the poet 'not wanting to be alone' is shown the door to the moon.

Litany by Billy Collins that begins with an exact pin pointing of what 'you' are goes into an apophatic phase with what you are not.

A Brief poetics of the Hinge, an article by the poet Catherine Barnett is her search for hinge in poetry, where there is both movement and restriction like that offered by a tether. In Providence,

some of the best sermons

dont have endings, he said

comes to my mind as an example of the restriction and release. (A poetry exercise, map the dynamics of your poem to a physical object and vice-versa)

chorus is the title of many poems in this book. One thing the title helps with is the conectedness and the identification of the literal chorus for/of many voices. But with so many under that tag, readers will have to remember the first line of the poem for its ID. Couldnt these poems be put into one section with 'Chorus' subheaing and look for any other interesting internal theme.

Agape  is for word lovers, not the ones who like them by sounds but for those who like them for their meanings sometimes only and sometimes many.

Coming to the style of the poems, with so few lines and words, the reader is forced to think what the poet intended instead of just bagging nice phrases as low hung fruit and proceeding to the next poem. Having hooked the reader into the gap of the poem, there is no choice but to fill our thoughts after the question in Inventory, ii

Really, what chance do any of us have 

for moments of bliss?

But proceeding on without waiting for us to come up with suggestions, she  dismisses them.

Inventory

In Old story, The clock doesnt have an amygdala. With no Amygdale, there is no sympathy. As in the warning time and tide wait for none.  Whats natural than time and waves, but the measuring of them makes them so inorganic. In 'to speak of other things' gardens speak in a way reminiscent of the serpent eating its tail. Styrofoam in 'Scavenger hunt' shows an imbalance of  biodegradable activity and chemical nonbiodegradable inactivity.

A review

Open Verse

Printers Devil Review is looking for essays on Charles Olson  Projective verse

The essay itself starts with an assumption that we want verse to go ahead and stay of use. the essay is supposed to end with 'Objectism' reducing the writer of the verse to an object. Let us see if verse can have meaning without the relevance of the life of the breather. Can verse 'put into itself certain laws and possibilities of the breath , of the breathing of the man...'.

When we talk of energy discharge from poet to poem to reader it seems like a uniform thing. But there are peaks to it. How do we transfer that?

Related article by Fred Wah

Walking like a fox. Slowing down to natures pace.

Saving birds

Guinea pigs are the experimented. But so are pigs. Earlier explorers left pigs on uninhabited islands to see how well they fared before trying to inhabit it themselves. 

Rhinos

I had to pick this book for 2 reasons

1. Rick Bass

2. The book before it was about White rhinoceros

The tales beneath the board

Authors site

An article
The first part is about the incident that changed the author's life like Bethany Hamilton's.
The later part of the book talks about the acute senses of Great white shark. They dont do well in captivity.