Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Sweating With My Blog Homies

What do cliffs, needles, blackberries, mothers, whirs, and voices have in common? Why bloggers, of course! Sometime in the past few weeks (they all run together in blog-land for me) I posted about a poetry exercise that tickled my fancy and extended an invitation for some audience participation. That's the beauty of blogging, isn't it? The community of it?

Several sporting bloggers gave it a whirl and I'm dancing and whirling with them. They all came up with such vastly different pieces using the same tools. It has just delighted me to no end to see that sort of magic at work. The exercise was The Ten Minute Spill and I outlined the instructions here.

Confession time: This exercise was hard for me. It was much harder than I originally imagined. The time limit panicked me a little bit, as did the line count, did I use enough of the words? My offerings pale in comparison with those of my fellow bloggers. For some reason, this also delights me no end. I love a challenge, I love to sweat over things. I even enjoy the feeling that I've done something rather poorly and therefore have plenty of room to stretch and improve. I will never climb Mount Everest - I find sports that can kill you somewhat distasteful. I do, however, create mini-Everests for myself to hurl myself against and grow dizzy and deplete my oxygen in the process. Thank you so much to those of you who did with me. It has been so much fun. For those of you still considering, please do. We all write for different reasons and about different things and with different voices. I think what ties us together is discovery. What's not to discover?

Here are the lovely contributors, my fellow climbers who took their ten minutes and spilled. I've also added my favorite line from each of their poems next to their links:

Larissa at Papa Is a Preacher "I'll take on all it entails, the celery, the strawberries, / The fails, the victories, all that I can be."


sebtown at In Search of a Title  "I can edge to the cliff. / I can fly. / Every day I can be scared and I can be alive."


Michelle at Buttered Toast Rocks "They teeter on a tightrope cliff edge / Dreaming dreams bigger than I had dreamed for them"


Masked Mom at Masked Mom "The desire to protect them all--from the world, from myself--overpowers nearly everything, / Until, finally, fear's voice is the loudest one in my head"


Julie at Feeding The Cat "I can't hear her voice, / or smell her spit on my hair / to hold down a cow lick."


Esbboston at My Worlds My Words My Worries "But I thought about how much I had grown in the last year, plus how much weaker my mother was getting since her ax accident..."


Please do go check out their links and read the whole poems. They are just delightful and imaginative and so very exciting. If you have done this exercise and not shared it, or I've overlooked it please link up! [If I've overlooked yours, please hit me with the Twitter stick or something and LETMEKNOW so that I can add you to the post. I just got a foot of hair cut off and I'm still heady from the fumes of the styling products.] This has been so much fun. Who knows? I may drag out a few more fun exercises that I come across. 


Oh, yeah. I promised you dreadful. Here it is. Catch me in my black lipstick and a dog collar reading this at a college poetry slam near you:


She didn't know how to jump.
The clouds lay beneath her
And tremble, wobble, no.
She didn't care a lick
about the gazes, intense as needles
from the faces below.
She didn't want her mother
to find her.
She could almost see the News vans, helicopters now.
Nothing left of her but blackberry jam.

Author's note: When I was just now typing this, I typed "feces" instead of "faces" and almost left it because it made the whole dreary affair a teeny bit more interesting. Thanks for playing with me, blog friends!

22 comments:

  1. He he he - there probably would be feces below...Hardly dreary, I would say shades of 'The Ballad of Lucy Jordon' that sent a shiver up my spine - until you mentioned poo.

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    1. http://esbboston.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/5-outta-8-aint-bad.html
      follow the link Tangled to Esbboston's blog (except he thought it was my idea somehow) where he has one to offer also.

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    2. Thank you. I had to Google 'The Ballad of Lucy Jordon' - I live under a rock - it does have a certain flavor to it, though, doesn't it? I just associate this with the maudlin goth poetry of my youth and it sends shivers up my spine but not in a good way! :)

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  2. *gasp* you cut your hair? And so I guess I should ask first, before just assuming...do you like it?

    And this is a great idea. I love that you put it out there for everyone, and then that you linked up some great poetry so we have all these new, fun places to go explore.

    Very nice.

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    1. I did cut my hair and I love it. I will probably blog about it. Nothing makes a more fascinating blog post than hair. ;)

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  3. Thank you so much for including us all in this adventure. It was great. And thanks also for rounding up all the links in one place. I had missed some.

    And that poem, is a little scary. The girl should write a blog. Between all the wonderful support and posts to read, she wouldn't have time to think about becoming blackberry jam.

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    1. Yeah, I don't know where that girl came from. I'd like to think she didn't really jump, though.

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  4. This is eXactly why I love blogging so very much, you just never know where your neXt inspiration is going to come floating by, the grand serendipity of it all. Plus we all have so many friends in common, that is very amazing to me!

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  5. Not dreadful. At. All. I loved it. And the blackberry jam was a VERY effective image. I haven't tried this, yet. Maybe today.

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    1. Ha! You should definitely try it. It's a stretch in some very interesting ways.

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  6. I saw Larissa's and popped over here but I was too intimidated by the instructions! I might try it but still afraid! Maybe on the RARE day that words are flowing...

    I like yours - honesty I thought she was bungee jumping - So I was thinking she DID jump!

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    1. Welcome! You should give it a try. It's a stretch, but it's fun!

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  7. It was fun! I wrote down the words in my notebook, found a quote I thought I could work with, and picked up my pencil....because I find there is nothing that sparks my creativity more than a slightly dull pencil scratching on lined notebook paper. Thanks again for the challenge!

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    1. It must be slightly dull. Must. Thank you for contributing! It was fun!

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  8. I love the way you have made your blog a waystation for writers. I envision a beautiful gazebo, cool iced tea and conversation. It makes me want to stay and shut out the world.

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  9. I love yours. It is dark and disturbing and, somehow, delicious, which brings me back to disturbing. I want to say thanks again for putting the challenge out there and nudging me a little here and elsewhere. It's not often that I surprise myself, but I did a little with this assignment. And thanks for taking the time to link us all up. And oh, ditto what Tara said, too. :)

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    1. You are welcome for the nudging. I have really been personally exploring the writing challenge lately. I think it's good to hone what we do well, but also to allow time and opportunity to take a risk and "surprise ourselves" from time to time. Thanks for your lovely poem! It was delicious, but not disturbing. :)

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  10. This was a fantastic exercise, TangledLou. I understand your fears and self consciousness going in, but your poem is evocative. The "needles" misled me for a minute, made me think something terrible was going on, and then I read it and read it again and got very different images. Interesting how that works.

    Your tags in this post are hilarious, by the way. :)

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    1. Thanks, Tiffanie! I really tussled with the exercise, but it felt good to do something hard.
      I didn't think anyone ever read the tags. That's a hoot!

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Thanks for reading and taking the time to say hello!