Day 1

Poetry prompt for Day 1: December 1st is a time for thinking of new beginnings for the month, but also the beginning of the end of the year. This prompt is a meditation of the things that have happened this year, as well as the things we hope for in its closing. Write an anaphora that begins every sentence with, "Let this December be . . . " Don't worry about being  metaphorical, but let the metaphors come as they will. Be good to yourself!

Compassion

Our students are stressed and exhausted. The one thing we can do to help out is give them self-care suggestions and time to complete assignments including the overall work they need to do outside of our own classes. Also, I don't believe in traditional finals. We need to find other ways to allow students to engage in their work other than giving them a test. Are we curmudgeons or collaborators? That's all!

Better

Follow your curiosity.
Find people riding in the same thing you are interested in, get their books, carry them with you.
Be sure to go slow, as it's not a race.
Write something, send it out, and when it comes back revised it and send it out again.
Be patient with people, especially yourself.
Remember the genre you're writing in, as well as what you are defying.

Finding angles

Again, when I feel like my poetry sucks I go to literary magazines I wish I were a part of and start examining those poems. Maybe this is a good practice, but I also know that I need to write what is real to me. I need to find my own way of phrasing. I can't rely on parlor tricks.

experimental poetry

https://berkeleypoetryreview.submittable.com/submit/146732/poetry-for-issue-50

Taking It Easy

Just like the Eagles in their song, you sometimes have to take it easy. I'm realizing in my process I have to be very careful. I just found out about another Predator and the wound opens again. So I think just collecting the images and the text might be how I work right now. But I need to approach it alongside my at the movies project. I need to keep the resilience as well as the protective side, switching back and forth.

Junk Man

http://www.kscourts.org/Cases-and-Opinions/opinions/supct/2000/20000726/81835.htm
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/junk-man-poet-and-professor-albert-goldbarth
"wrote a f- poem describing the glaze of a co-ed on his own c-"
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-old-but-not-gone-problem-of.html
How does this junk man continue? Even in his poems, he is pointing out.


And you

perhaps don't like this poem: its free verse
or its narrative or the way it uses
gender or the heavy-handed
word-play of its title.

Like I care.

I wrote this for me.
―from "‘Try the Selfish'"

And we
don't like his poem or his free verse
 narrative the way he uses women

his heavy-handed
 words about women
He doesn't care.

It's him.
 
Contaminated

https://www.epa.gov/ks/57th-north-broadway-superfund-site-wichita-kansas-fact-sheet-june-2018

https://www.epa.gov/ks/occidental-chemical-corporation-inc-facility-wichita-sedgwick-county-kansas-fact-sheet-june-2018

https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article216625720.html
power plants

 https://www.kmuw.org/post/spj-award-winner-dangerous-chemical-invades-west-wichita-drinking-water
coal