Workshop Babble

I'm new to this blogging thing and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be writing about. So, here goes another entry: You know, I feel it's always a bit of a crapshoot when it comes to a workshop environment. I think it all boils down to chemistry whether or not it's going to be (a) a productive class, and (b) it will not feel like an eternity. Last Thursday, I really found myself enjoying all of the stories and poems that my classmates shared. Even though I was riding the Caffiene Bus, I wasn't anxious to bolt out the door. There was a great variety of styles and the skill level was up there. Let's face it -- most people take night classes because they have to. Jobs, family, and sometimes more classes fill their daytime hours. Maturity and mutual respect I find in greater abundance in night classes, too. I like that our class seems to be lacking in the deluded-psuedo-artist department -- yes, you know the type. Try too hard to be obscure and figure they'll fool everyone into mistaking their nonsense work for genius? Obvious attempts to be "quirky"? Speak with an affected tone? Anyway, I think our class has that special chemistry which will make a productive semester fly by. Do I sound like a kiss-ass? I hope not. I'm just babbling about the first topic that came to mind: my feelings regarding where I spend my Thursday nights.

Abstraction poem

Generosity

My grandparents giving me “pin money.”
Spending it at Barnes & Noble on a rainy Saturday afternoon.
Getting rid of the chill after the bookstore stop by
relaxing amid bubbles in a claw-foot tub,
my book’s pages wilting slightly in the humid air.
Relaxed now, I sink into crisp clean sheets, cool to the touch,
smelling faintly of Tide detergent and bleach,
and I continue with my story all snuggled up and warm.
The hissing of the light rain outside my window slows my breath
and makes my book heavier in my hand.
The rising sun makes the inside of my eyelids go gradually from black to gray.
Swinging my legs off the side of the bed, I let my toes wiggle
a good morning to the plush pink carpet.
Reaching towards the scarf-covered ceiling my mom’s voice wafts up
the stairs, gently urging me to start my new day.

Abstraction Exercise

In class last week, we had to do an exercise which we were given words representing an abstract concept and then had three minutes to write down the images that came to mind. It was a fun and insightful exercise, to say the least. For example, the word "rage" was given and somehow I got from "rage" to a "commercial depicting a brightly colored tossed salad." It could have been that I hadn't eaten dinner before class, but it was weird knowing that my mind went drastically off on a tangent. This exercise is certainly one I will be using for any future poems I write; I will sometimes get stuck on an abstract concept and it is hard to get around all of the cliches. In the past, whenever I used a concrete image to describe an abstraction, it was usually by accident.

Stay tuned for the next posting, a poem created by using the abstraction exercise....

Wow, that was easier than expected!

This is my first attempt at creating and writing a blog. The process of setting it up went a little easier than I had anticipated! Now, if I can just lose this standing-in-front-of-everyone-in-my-underwear feeling, I might be able to think of something with substance to type.