Motivation Mondays: I Need a Better Word for “Muse”

Before the musing, here are some places to read/listen submit, and also some bragging.

**One of my favorite poetry-soulmates, Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, was kind enough to include me in her Indiefeed series on the women of performance poetry. Being in my own iTunes queue was a pretty exciting thing to wake up to the other day. The series will be pretty incredible, so if you aren’t subscribed, go there soon! And here’s their submissions page, too! Do it!

**The Legendary is taking (audio and text) submissions for their upcoming Slam & Flash Issue until March 10. Really, you should submit to them every month. They’re the nicest editors in the world.

**Radius is a new journal headed by my Worcester favorites Victor D. Infante and Lea Deschenes. You should submit to there, especially if you write political poetry or like to make up forms like I do.

Anyway!

I’ve decided that I don’t want to call anyone a muse again. It’s such a passive, limiting idea, and it doesn’t do justice what happens when the creative spark crackles between people like a miracle.

Often I’ve called someone a muse because I'm overwhelmed by him or her, as a way of trying to control something uncontrollable. It’s often a way of sublimating desire, which leads to good poems, then bad poems, then tears. “Muses” have sort of shimmered in and out of my life, often because I’ve loved them so much I’ve just gone ahead and alienated them. (I thought about retiring the word “crush” for similar reasons, but, to paraphrase the Fugees, me without a crush is like a beat without a snare.)

So what do you call what really happens when a combination of people becomes a crucible for art? For when you adore another writer on solid ground? For a kindred spirit who makes you brave and light fires underneath you? For the people in your life who are so revolutionary as to make you listen to your own best ideas?

Soulmate is almost right, but not quite. I’ve never bought the idea that we only get one soulmate, per person, per lifetime. The soul is big and it needs a lot of different things.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve always thought this song is about. Pardon the typos in the video-- Gaga’s real video has too many poisonings for a post about love.

Motivation Mondays: Pantoum Therapy

I'm writing this with a sunbeam shining directly on my heart, because later today I get to go to THE ADVENTURE AQUARIUM with my niece and nephews and then have cupcakes to celebrate Holden and Quinn's birthday! Hooray.

Anyway, so I've decided to include some writing games in with the Motivation Mondays. If you decide to try any of them, you can email me the results at serotoninfactory@gmail.com--maybe I'll post them. :)

Anyone who's ever been in one of my grown-up poetry classes knows that pantoums are the best thing for writing about something that obsesses you, something impossible, something you can't get away from. The repetition lets you just go ahead and obsess to your heart's content. Here's one I wrote about the Gulf Oil Disaster last summer. I don't know how else I'd've ever put that feeling into words.

Going with the Wikipedia definition from last summer: "The pantoum is a form of poetry similar to a villanelle. It is composed of a series of quatrains; the second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated as the first and third lines of the next. This pattern continues for any number of stanzas, except for the final stanza, which differs in the repeating pattern. The first and third lines of the last stanza are the second and fourth of the penultimate; the first line of the poem is the last line of the final stanza, and the third line of the first stanza is the second of the final. Ideally, the meaning of lines shifts when they are repeated although the words remain exactly the same: this can be done by shifting punctuation, punning, or simply recontextualizing."

Here we go!

Stanza 1:

Line 1
Line 2
Line 3
Line 4

Stanza 2:

Line 5 (repeat of line 2 in stanza 1)
Line 6 (new line)
Line 7   (repeat of line 4 in stanza 1)
Line 8 (new line) 

***Write as many stanzas as you want to.***

Last Stanza (This is the format for the last stanza regardless of how many preceding stanzas exist):

Line 9   (line 2 of the previous stanza)
Line 10 (line 3 of the first stanza)
Line 11 (line 4 of the previous stanza)
Line 12 (line 1 of the first stanza) 

Call for Submissions: Friday Love Poems!

Hi all!

As some of you know,every Friday, I like to put up a love poem. That's where you come in.

How to submit:

1. Email love poems (pasted in the body of the email is best...) to serotoninfactory@gmail.com, with the subject "Friday Love Poem". Include your bio and info.

2. To submit a video, just send me link to your You-Tubed love poem.

3. Previously published is very okay, just include where your poem appeared before so I can make a big deal about it.

4. If you've got a picture you like to go with your poem(s), email me that, too!

Also! If you go to the right and click "Follow," I will mail you a present. It will probably be a mix CD.

XOXOXOXO, Jane