Oct 1 - House With Chimaeras
Oct 2 - Expert Advice for Your Flight from Dallas/Fort Worth to Chicago-Midway
Oct 3 - Expert Advice for Your Televangelism Ministry
Oct 4 - While Jobless, I Eat Snack Foods With Famous People
Oct 5 - Bayside
Oct 6 - Shit-Town
Oct 7 - Actaeon
Oct 8 - Box and Whisker Plot
Oct 9 - Falsely Accused of Being a Terrorist
Oct 10 - The Dog in Me
Oct 11 - Dumpstering
Oct 12 - Long Knife Night
Oct 13 - Claudius
Oct 14 - Ghazal Without Repeated Word
Oct 15 - Sick Herd
Oct 16 - Houses On the Street Where It’s Sunny
Oct 17 - Things I Tried to Forget You
Oct 18 - Owner of a Lonely Heart
Oct 19 - Expert Advice for Your Day at the Track
Oct 20 - K-I-S-S-I-N-G
Oct 21 - Christian Radio
Oct 22 - three poems– Lossless Audio, If Only I Could’ve Considered Machu Picchu, There Has Never Been a Famine in a Democratic Country
Oct 23 - The Dog in Me II
Oct 24 - Catbird Sleep
Oct 25 - Neurotic Friend
Oct 26 - It’s Barely Living
Oct 27 - Dinner Party with Co-Workers
Oct 28 - Man, Exploding
Oct 29 - Ocean Quahog
Oct 30 - Penalty Minutes
Oct 31 - Halloween

Happy Halloween, people. After racing home from work to get Halloween candy in time for all the tykes in my neighborhood, and buying a metric ton of those bite-sized candy bars, we’ve had one trick-or-treater. What the junk, kids? Get on the stick and ring my doorbell with your super-scary plastic Hulk costumes. Take this candy off my hands. I don’t really want it!

Today’s the last day of the month, and in about an hour and a half, I will have written a new poem for 31 straight days. Gluttons for punishment that we are, Matthew Olzmann and I will be continuing the experiment with slightly relaxed rules, all through November. I don’t think the rest of our gang will join us– and I don’t blame them. October has been mentally taxing; I can’t think of many days when I didn’t have a little demon on my shoulder all day reminding me that no matter what I accomplished, the poem wasn’t yet done.

But the exercise has not been an empty one– I have a few drafts headed straight to the circular file and a few I’m excited to keep working on. The goal is to try to practice so much that I’m able to internalize the good stuff– so when I have a poem that needs writing, the craft will be deeply a part of what I’m doing.

So, November. 26 poems in 30 days. Yup… I get one day off each week.

IN ORDER

the dead you
wrote about
in order to
forget about
so you could
write about
the living are
still living where
you aren’t

–Bill Knott

Packet #5 is in, and I have officially completed all of the graduate work I have to turn in for three of four semesters. Packet #6 is totally optional.

Of course, I’m going to do it– one doesn’t get many semesters with Heather McHugh in his life. Plus, it’s hella expensive to go to grad school so I would be ridiculous not to get as much feedback as I possibly can. (Is that what I was thinking when I volunteered to do an annotation after completing my essay? Yeah, that was it.)

In addition to turning in my packet today, one of my favorite people from my time in the program e-mailed me today (and joined Catster… Kirk is totally going to join Catster). It’s the first I’ve heard in over a year. Happy!

Long overdue: just subscribed to 32poems.

Computer woes from yesterday are no longer a concern. All hail Bryan King! Also, while watching him and Leo blow each other up, I had an idea for a poem… despite the fact that I’m writing one per day in October, the ideas only come about once a week. See the inherent problem?

(Not literally blow each other up– they were playing this:)

I have a new organizing principle. I’m more productive already.

Hehehehe.

I recently came across an essay online extolling the virtues of reading poetry, and in the comments section, some readers cheered the author on… then posted their own work! Please, for the love of God, no!

Bandito has a blog. In about fifteen minutes, he’ll also have some Dillard’s in his belly before we hit trivia. One must never underestimate the power of El Bandito when it comes to trivia nite. The man is a storehouse of knowlegde, some of it useful.

Is there much of anything in this life that Bjork can’t make better? I was driving home today and “Hyper-Ballad” came on, a song which always moves me… but some days more than others. Today is one of those days.

We live on a mountain
Right at the top
Theres a beautiful view
From the top of the mountain
Every morning I walk towards the edge
And throw little things off
Like car-parts, bottles and cutlery
Or whatever I find lying around

Its become a habit
A way
To start the day

I go through all this
Before you wake up
So I can feel happier
To be safe up here with you

It’s early morning
No-one is awake
I’m back at my cliff
Still throwing things off
I listen to the sounds they make
On their way down
I follow him with my eyes till they crash
Imagine what my body would sound like
Slamming against those rocks

When it lands
Will my eyes
Be closed or open?

I go through all this
Before you wake up
So I can feel happier
To be safe up here with you

Substitutable for “Bjork” in the first sentence of this post: William Shatner

My work computer hosed up again this morning. I’m going to implode if I can’t get a new hard drive in it pretty soon. I just want a stable machine to work on!