Poetry Tips: Incentives

There are days, even weeks or months, in which a complete lack of desire to write occurs. You may have been going strong, you may have been diligent, but then the interest begins to wane. Taking a break is always a good idea but when you feel like writing has become a chore rather than a joy, it may be time to bring in some sort of incentive to keep going.
For example, mine has been treating myself to an Oreo cookie when sitting down to work on my poems when I least feel like it. Other times has been treating myself to window shopping if I spend a designated amount of time working on my writing—even if it is just tweaking already existing poems. Your may be allowing yourself a nap on the weekend after you’ve spent thirty minutes working at your own written words. Perhaps you’ll allow yourself a treat like an Oreo for the days you least feel like writing.

Let me know what incentives you use in the comments section, I’d love to hear about them…

Thanks for dropping in, please stop by again next week…

Alternating Current Open Submissions

Alternating Current is seeking up to five poems, deadline is November 30th, 2010, for Poiesis Issue #5.

Send these via e-mail, include your contact information and add “Poetry Submission” in the subject line to:
alt.current@gmail.com

Alternating Current publishes a wide variety of poems so if you have a poem that often has trouble finding a place to go, this is where I’d recommend sending it.

Good luck to all who submit, please drop in tomorrow for more Poetry Tips…

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://www.juked.com/2010/09/nopicnic.asp
“No Picnic” by Julie Marie Wade

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=239948
“The Owl” by Ange Mlinko

Thanks for clicking in, please stop by tomorrow for more Open Submissions…

Lilliput Review Issue #176

This issue is packed with flora and fauna, quiet contemplations, and sentimental poems. Below I am happy to share a few of the issue’s treasures:

#18

Toward Kiyomizu
Crossing Gion
Under moonlit cherry blossoms
This evening, everyone
Passing is beautiful.

By: Yosano Akiko, translated by Dennis Maloney

Isn’t this a beautiful poem? Forget candlelight, we can envision passerby under cherry trees in the fading light of sunset and envy Yosano Akiko’s view.



Summer Fruit – sharing 2 of 4 poems by Lyn Stefenhagens of Osprey, FL:

Cherry

Garnet,
tart and sweet;
your tongue finds the pit,
your fingers the stem
and both are stained
by a fruit that seemed
prim as a nun, intact.



Raspberry

Each little nub,
dark as your blood,
is chambered like a heart.
If you eat, take great care;
the vine which protects it
is jealous. Beware.

Both poems make me want to run out and buy these fruit. The Cherry is portrayed as sweet and innocent until its inner nature is revealed and the Raspberry is given the importance of being a vessel of life as a heart, so precious that its vine seeks to protect it for its own. Both are wonderful poems. The other two fruit poems are wonderful as well but I want to entice you to get your own copy of this issue to read the other two.




every horizon appears close now
no tree can
taste its own fruit

by: Chris Ellery by San Angela, TX

I envision a Texas sunset (I challenge you to argue that any other sunset is more beautiful than the sunsets in Texas) settling over fruit trees and casting a light so becoming that the poet wishes the fruit tree knew not only how beautiful its fruit looks but how lovely the fruit tastes.


If you enjoyed this sample I urge you to subscribe to Lilliput Review. You can subscribe to SIX issues for a mere $5.00 via Pay Pal at:

http://lilliputreview.blogspot.com/

The blog itself features poems that Don Wentworth posts from previous issues along with countless other wonderful things, including Issa’s Sunday Service. So please visit the blog and consider a subscription to this tiny and fabulous collection of poems.

Thanks always for reading, please stop in again tomorrow for more Poems Found by Poet Hound…

Moving Poems

When I was visiting the Lilliput Review blog, Issa’s Untidy Hut, there was a feature on Moving Poems and I’m so glad I visited. You will be, too, check out the short films here:
http://movingpoems.com/

Thanks for clicking in, please stop by tomorrow for another featured journal…