fallen verses

I’ve already done my requisite one post for NaBloPoMo, so this is extraneous, bonus, extra-special and just for you.  Seth Godin has an interesting post about:

an industry which:

• Indebts most of its customers, sometimes for twenty or more years a person
• Not only consumes most of four years of its customer’s time, but impacts its prospects for years before even interacting with them
• Enjoys extremely strong brand preferences between competitors and has virtually no successful generic substitutes
• Dramatically alters relations within a family, often for generations
• Doesn’t do it on purpose

…and

 

…according to most of the studies I’ve seen, there’s very little or no difference in the efficacy of one competitor vs. another.

And that’s not all!  While reading the Novermber Poetry magazine, I read an article by Richard Rorty.  I’m not fond of his philophical work, but I would like to quote the end of his article.  I think this is a message we, as poets and artists, need more people to see:

Cultures with richer vocabularies are more fully human – farther removed from the beasts – than those with poorer ones; individual men and women are more fully human when their memories are amply stocked with verses.

There are a lot of things going on this month, many, many things. We in the US get to see even more political advertisements, yay! For a whole year!

In the blogosphere we have NaBloPoMo kicking off today. Welcome to my inaugural post. I can write a blog post a day for thirty days. I may end up feeling a bit like Thomas the Tank Engine on some days, but I can handle this. I’ve tried to put all of the NaBloPoMo partcipants in the read.write.poem. group on my sidebar, check ‘em out during the blog-madness.
What I cannot handle is NaNoWriMo: All Hail The Conquering Novel Writers! Yes, the 50,000 word mad frenzy of writing that consumes lives for thirty days. I can barely write paragraphs, let alone chapters, hence I stick with poetry, but good luck to all of this year’s participants.

In the poetry world we have Totally Optional Prompts rolling out every Thursday. Mike and Tiel are doing a pretty good job with that site.
There is also Fertile Ground, by Jill and Carolee, inspiring us to explore our poetic acts.
A new site will be opening. Preliminary information is on the site. For some of the blogopoets, it may have some familiar touches…. Ceridwen and Co. bring ReadWritePoem.Org to the bytes we all live by.

Out in the real world, Twitter has proven itself to be one of the fastest purveyors of information out there, posting information as the earthquake in California happened while traditional television media took over twenty minutes to get the word out. Details here. Bloggers are journalists, or, at least can be considered journalists after the fact and may have journalistic immunity for their posts, if certain journalistic standards are met. Ars Technica has more info. Singapore Airlines is giving its special passengers champagne and private rooms with beds on its A380, and wants people to avoid getting frisky. I’d assume that’s a joke, but Reuters has the story.

And, wrapping up my inaugural NaBloPoMo post, a quote I found amusing, via PsyBlog:

The brain is, of course, the final common pathway of all actions. You can’t do much without a brain. Decapitation is, in most instances, associated with a decline in IQ.

“In most instances…” <<coughrepublicanscough>> See you all tomorrow.

I have added a read. write. poem. section to my blogroll which has links to all the people participating in NaBloPoMo as part of the read.write.poem. group. If you are also participating in NaBloPoMo, or want to, and “heart poetry,” check out that group, started by Ceridwen.

Now I just need to get all of those blog links added to Google Reader so I can keep up conveniently through one innocuous web address…

Also, please note, in that read. write. poem. group, I posted a totally awesome write-up about syllabic verse. Go! You will probably be disappointed, but that’s life.

I’m not sure why, but I sort of giggle at the sounds of any of these word constructions. NaNoWriMo, NaPoWriMo, NoBloWriMo, and the screenplay one I cannot recall. They just sound so fun! While I may yet decide to do NaNoWriMo, it’s unlikely. I barely have time. let alone time to write a 50000 word short novel. When NaPoWriMo rolls around I sal definitely participate, but for November, I will be doing NaBloWriMo, with the easily accomplishable goal of one blog post per day. That’s only 30 posts! I can handle that.