Baking bread, shuffling poems, and how do I write polemic? And two poems I love...

Well, the weather has upended my plans a little today, but I really don't mind all that much. I was going to wash floors, but it's damp/chilly, and they would not dry quickly. I'll try again tomorrow. They aren't gross, just it's time, if you know what I mean. Instead, I'll bake some sourdough bread. That will be nice, and it'll warm up the house a bit. This cool/wet trend is helpful for the garden, but it's really inconvenient for the pool and for sitting on the deck with coffee. 

That all said, I hope to begin shuffling poems today. I have so many copied off, and I think I might have an organizational principle figured out (book in three sections). I changed the working title, and maybe that'll help me figure out which poems go in/out and where. And I drafted a new one yesterday! It's been a bit since I've written anything much. Partly due to my time being really pulled elsewhere (four-year-olds hate it when you are on the computer, unless it's to look for puppy pictures). Partly due to my weird eye thing (seems to be resolving, amen). And partly because I frankly have so many angry/sad/annoyed/hopeless feelings about the world writ large, the nation as a whole, and even some of the error-filled decisions being made at the state level. 

Those poems, when they come, are sloppy and fraught. They react, but don't create new spaces for thought. I'm not skilled enough with polemic to write them, might not ever be, but that's all that's rocketing through my brain lately. I have to settle in and figure out how to write about what's wrong and troubling without being so topical and time-dependent that the drafts die on the page as soon as they are brought forth. The "occasional poem" is the work of far more deft poets than I am, at least at this point. In the meantime, and it's likely to be a long meantime, I just write stuff down, add it to the folder of flat drafts I have going, and hope that at least by writing stuff down I can get it out of my head once in a while. 

My friend Dawn Potter, newly-minted Poet Laureate of Maine, has a fantastic poem up in Vox Populi. It is written in two voices, and it speaks to the atrocity that occurred in Biddeford. She's asked that, if you like it, please share it widely. She's damned brilliant, and her heart hurts the same as the rest of ours. At least she can figure out how/what to say. 

And that all said, I have some mundane things to attend to, and then I'll start shuffling my poems around. I need to create something: loaves of fragrant bread, order in my home, poems on the page. It's an antidote to all of the destruction and toxicity that is darkening these days. It's all I have. 

Hugs and love,

C

Bonus poem: one of my very favorite political diatribes was written by Percy Bysshe Shelley, "England in 1819"-- give it a look. One good thing about being a real poetry nerd is that what we see around us has happened before, and the poets were there to record not only facts, but the feelings. We are not alone.