Featured Photo

Poetry for People posts a photo as poetic inspiration each day.  Ben Rimes is an instructional technology educator and operates the site.  He chose my Micah photo for today's poetic inspiration.  Visit the site to write a poem inspired by the photo (or one of the many other great shots Ben has collected.

Productivity

Author Norman Mailer says, "Over the years, I've found one rule. It is the only one I give on those occasions when I talk about writing. A simple rule. If you tell yourself you are going to be at your desk tomorrow, you are by that declaration asking your unconscious to prepare the material. You are, in effect, contracting to pick up such valuables at a given time. Count on me, you are saying to a few forces below: I will be there to write."


Isn't the same true with any discipline we're trying to develop?  Count on me, I'll be there to pray or read or talk or write a letter... instead of waiting for inspiration.

open windows & unlocked doors: prophets (luke 10:28)

open windows & unlocked doors: prophets (luke 10:28)
Great poem here today. I loved the last stanza- so beautifully challenging (copied below if you don't want to read the whole poem, but it's worth the 2 minutes).
What do you think?
-------------------
If I were a prophet, I might say to you:

“In this perfectly broken world,
you must
see that which strives to be hidden,
hear those voices others would deny,
taste the bitterness of the forgotten,

and yet love all of it without exception,
as if your life depended upon it –

because it does.”

Friends

Preheat the day to a perfect 78 degrees.

Combine 5 families for one evening

Add burgers, hashbrown casserole and fruit salad

Mix 7 happy children on a trampoline with

3 completely kissable babies.

Simmer in the sweet evening for 3 hours and add

the soft red rays of the setting sun.

Fold in layer upon layer of beautiful conversation late into the night,

Sprinkle stars on top and enjoy

the masterpiece

that is relationship.

Introduction to Poetry- Billy Collins

(or why I couldn't stand teaching poetry with a textbook)

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.