My Favorite Poems

Because I've recently started running the blog for Lexington, KY's Accents Publishing, I've been reading a lot of poems. Like anything else, I've realized that most of it isn't for me, but the poems I do like, I love.

A few months back, I posted about Lexington's Holler Poets Series. The beauty of these types of readings, as well as poetry slams, is that you get to see the passion and intensity of the poet along with his or her own words. While some of it seems stilted or uninteresting, there is always great enthusiasm in the crowd. And when you get down to it, what is important in art if not the audience?

Below are some of my favorite poems of all time. If you have a favorite poem, even a limerick or haiku, post them in the comments. I'd love to see what moves other people.

Surrounded on All Sides

Want to be president of Dole? You know where to start.
Image by Ananth BS

"Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher."
-Oprah Winfrey

If you want to build houses, you need to know houses. Live in one. Not an apartment, not a log cabin. Live in a house. If you want to be a mechanic, you need a car. Maybe it's not yours. Maybe you moonlight as a valet at the local steak house and tinker under the hoods of sports cars during your smoke breaks. I don't care what you want to do for a living, but I do know that you'll never be a fish if you don't hop into the water.

The Accents Publishing Blog (and a Confessory Defense of My Pastime Habits)

Accents Publishing at AWP 2013

I am pleased to officially announce my internship with Lexington, KY's own Accents Publishing! I have been given the nigh specious title of Editor-in-Chief of the brand-spanking new Accents Publishing blog.

For those who don't Accents Publishing launched in 2010 by Katerina Stoykova-Klemer, a Bulgarian emigrant with over a decade's worth of experience as a software engineer at tech companies. In 2007, she started Poezia, a group of poets who met at a local coffee shop to share and critique their works. The group expanded to include prose writers and eventually blew up to the point that it required two separate meetings: one for poetry and one for prose.

Malcolm Gladwell on Practice

An Essay on Creative Writing

by M.T. Ross

While many learned professors have abandoned hope of ever discovering the truth behind creative writing, I for one feel that it is still a worthy cause for examination. In depth analysis of creative writing can be an enriching experience. Though creative writing is a favourite topic of discussion amongst monarchs, presidents and dictators, several of todays most brilliant minds seem incapable of recognising its increasing relevance to understanding future generations. It still has the power to shock the over 50, obviously. Keeping all of this in mind, in this essay I will examine the major issues.

Social Factors

Return of the Prompt: "When the Lights Go Out"

Photo by Stefan Krause

Despite fewer updates, I'm spending more time working on specific projects rather than practicing my story skills on writing prompts. Sure, I go to my weekly free write group, but that's all done free hand. I'd like to try a writing practice with typing.

As always, post your example in the comments (or link to it) and I'll post mine directly below this. For inspiration, use this picture I've attached to this post. Ready, set, WRITE!

REMEMBER: This is the first draft of a writing practice. It is not perfect nor is it supposed to be. The whole point of practice is to be sloppy.

Time Management Exegesis

The updates to this blog have taken a nosedive. It's not because I'm lazy, although that's an accusation I've absorbed plenty. In fact, quite the opposite. Aside from working part-time stacking books at the local lit emporium, I've started a garden, am helping with some long over-due housecleaning, and am practicing some onerous practices to explode my accessible vocabulary. I'm also working on four writing projects concurrently as well as fitting in my daily (now three times a week) writing practices. And let's not forget, I need some time to chill out, as I've become accustomed to a weekly diet of karaoke and bar trivia.

I'm finding time management a constant concern. Rather than sticking to a rigorous writing schedule, I'll stop for a day or two only to run a marathon seven-hour session in one night. I'm not sure the best way to counter, so I'll take any advice. I'm not really the "schedule type", but I'm open to suggestions. Work logs tend to backfire, spending more time on painstakingly recording details that don't matter. Once I put pen to paper, I can't stop until the inkwell's dry.

Review: Schwartzman's Review

Image by Recovering Sick Soul

I don't like to judge people based on their works alone, but that's the whole point of the critical world. Arguably, us critics are a sort of consumer advocacy group, promoting goods, services, and/or art that deserves attention while spreading even more attention on that which has earned our scorn.

Anthony Schwartzman (the critic, not the sailor) recently wrote a review for Disposable Tea on a nocturnal narrative created by his ugly, warped psyche. It was a toxic piece, both in its description of the content, but more so in what it said about Schwartzman's own artistic ability that he'd rip apart his own subconscious so handily.

Robots Will Never Replace Writers

Hey, if Superman can't stop the Robacolypse, no one can.

Robots will surely rule the world. Maybe not tomorrow or the next day. It might be after any of you are gone and your great-great-grandchildren will suffer the bloody Robacolypse on their own. But the one thing I'm sure of is that as long as there are still humans, we need stories, and robots will never replace writers.

Remember SmarterChild?The first time I talked with SmarterChild, I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. Some programmer geniuses had created an AOL Instant Messenger account that would automatically reply to you, much like the HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey or Siri in the iPhone. But in 2001 (the actual 2001), it was a sign of the future. It was the first step to real life taking that small step towards The Matrix.

Review: some dream I had

Art.

Movies and books aren't the only ways to experience stories. And what's the most overlooked narrative experience? What does everyone see, touch, taste, smell, and hear almost every night of their lives?

I've invited my pseudonymous friend, Anthony Schwartzman, to give an impression of a story. Here's his review.

Freud argued that dreams inherently have a meaning. His Interpretations of Dreams became a hallmark of psychology classes in the twentieth century until later studies proved their emptiness. But just because a story doesn't mean something, just because it's not a meaningful psychoanalysis of an artist's psyche, that doesn't mean it has to be uninteresting, nonsensical, and dull.