30 Poems in 30 Days: Staying Positive
September 23, 2007 by J.C. Hewitt
This is Day 20 of 30 Poems in 30 Days
The Other Kind of Stress
Poets can be a sensitive lot. In a way, that’s what poets are known for. Unfortunately, it can be a poet’s undoing. Writer’s block, in most cases, is simply a lack of confidence. A person gets so wrapped up in negative self talk, that no matter what they put on the page, it never seems good enough. When it reaches the point that the poet can no longer put words on the page at all, it has become a severe problem. Try to recognize when you are being overly self critical. Here are some ways that all people, including poets, sabotage themselves. Please note that I am adapting some of the material from Walt Schafer’s book, Stress Management for Wellness.
Negativising: Focusing only on the negative aspects of a situation. For example, if someone reads your poem and has mostly positive things say, but you focus only on the criticism, you are negativising.
Awfulizing: Focusing too much on a problem or obstacle until you build it up into a disaster. For example, you decide you can’t write today because you can’t find your favorite pen and without that, you won’t produce anything good.
Catastrophizing: This is when you go into a situation expecting the worst. For example, you decide not to submit your poems to a poetry magazine because you “already know they are going to turn you down.”
Ovegeneralizing: This is when you take a single negative event or piece of data and apply it to a much larger situation. For example, if you write a bad poem, you decide that you must have “lost it” and you might as well give up. Plenty of good poems get written right after bad poems.
Minimizing: This is when you downgrade praise or an accomplishment. For example, if you get published by that magazine you thought would never publish you, you decide that it must have been a fluke or they didn’t get very many submissions.
Perfectionism: Setting impossibly high standards for yourself or for a situation. For example, deciding that you have to have the perfect word to finish a line and you can’t move forward until that word comes to you.
There are other ways to sabotage yourself but I think you get the point. Don’t focus on the negative aspects of your writing. Its good to want to improve, but don’t paralyze yourself with unreasonable expectations or poor self image. Just write.
Today’s Poetry Assignment
Write a poem that begins with a negative image or statement and ends with a positive image or statement.
Today’s Featured Poet
Sherman Alexie is a Native American poet, novelist and stand-up comedian. He is a prolific writer who probably doesn’t know the meaning of the words “writer’s block”.
- Review of The Business of FancyDancing and Old Shirts & New Skins
- Sherman Alexie’s Iowa Review Interview
- General Commentary on Sherman Alexie
- Alexie’s Web Site
Books of Poetry
Hidden Pages
When the green cloth book of
American Literature, edited by
Curtis Hidden Page,first turned up
In my search for something to
Read, I was only ten. There were
Very few books in the house and,
This one was sacred, it had belonged
To my father’s mother, German bred,
It was taboo, hands off, off limits,
I sneaked it anyway, and wore the pages
Bare for there were letters from Poe
Re-printed in the footnotes
And these were the Days of Our Lives
That replaced TV we did not yet have
Last night I looked at the book shelves
That have since been built, and the
Many tomes that squeeze themselves together
Vying for position, sleepily hiding themselves
Among the dusty bunnies or sleek new copies
Depending upon their alaphabet. I am reading
The ones untouched, one by one, collected by
The years for just this time in life when
The once absent books and shelves now
Cover the walls in my house, and real letters
Come with my daughter’s geneology. The green
Cloth book is in retirement,and the pages brittle
And crisp to the touch rest safely
Under cover from the years,
Hidden pages
Stuck in the Middle
I climb and climb and climb
And only find myself in the middle
Stuck
Between two people who have lost all respect for each other
I climb and climb and climb
Until the desert, the world, becomes a small garden below me
Jagged rocks are willing me to fall
Bees buzz in my head and I can’t see their hive
The breeze whips slivers of my hair around my temples and they tickle
Momentarily distracting me from their squabbles
I don’t care anymore if she rises above
Or if he stays below
I don’t want to be in the middle
Cast between them like some dirty white flag
I step away
Off in another direction to find my own mountain to climb
I need to pave my own rough path
Amongst the cactuses and the bees
The unsympathetic earth and loose rocks
I’ll stumble
and though I may not have anyone to hold me up when I do
I would rather die alone in a crevice than surrounded by useless competition that is meant to do nothing but keep me in the middle
I climb and climb and climb reaching for the sky above me
Leaving the desert, the earth, behind.
Requiem for the Sacramento Office
Eliminate Members
Headcount Management
Diligent Business Decision
Transition Out
Cost Effective Capacity
Continued Competitive Market
Informed Position Placement
Team Level Repairs
Prudent Professional Service
Outsource Decisions
Evaluating Eliminated Positions
Appreciate Current Success
Like the wink-wit of yours John.
Thanks Pearl!
Hmmm, I was recently boasting on another site that I don’t do “chopped-up prose.” Famous last words, perhaps? But anyway …
THE SAGA
It was a fair bugger of a day.
Shouldn’t have got out of bed.
He nearly didn’t fast.
“It doesn’t say so,” he said.
Lucky I checked the form myself.
He drank all the water but I still don’t know
if he finished it by the time he was supposed to.
We get to the lab for his ultrasound
and it’s all a mix-up. We front up at Kingscliff,
they don’t know a thing about it.
Turns out he’s booked himself in
to the place at Murwillumbah instead.
But Kingscliff sorts it out and fits him in.
While he’s there I go to the op shop
and find him some brand new socks for 50¢.
The apples I packed for his late breakfast –
well guess what, he’s left them home.
“I could go to the bakery,” he says.
“Would you like something?”
“Oh, an apple slice. Or whatever you think.”
He comes back to the car.
“I got you some carrot cake,
and I got me carrot cake and an apple slice.”
“WHAT?” I couldn’t believe it.
“I ask for apple slice, and you …”
Seems he didn’t hear me.
“Here,” he says, “You have mine.”
But I go and get an extra.
We eat our apple slices silently.
The cake I stash for later.
Then we head for Mur’bah anyway.
It’s the last day of his cardiac rehab thing.
We turn off at Condong and all of a sudden
there’s steam pouring out of the bonnet.
We pull off the road right there
on this bit of gravel, it all looks deserted.
We’ve got the hood up, everything’s hot,
the lid’s blown off the water tank,
but we can’t spot a leak – when a man
walks round the corner just like that.
He’s on his way to work
at the mill over the way.
Well he lends us his phone
and tells us where we are for the NRMA,
and then he goes. We settle in
for the long wait in the heat.
Thank God for that carrot cake
and our bottles of drinking water.
When the NRMA man arrives
he tells us there’s been an accident
just around the bend outside the Ampol.
He had to double back the other way.
Two cars. A head-on. We can already see
the traffic on the highway banking up.
Then the ambulance comes past
but the sirens aren’t screaming
and it’s not full pelt; that’s hopeful.
Meanwhile, us. Still no leak to be seen
but the reservoir’s bone dry.
He’ll get us a free tow. Another wait,
we reckon, with the accident and all.
But he’s there real quick, gets the car
up on the tray, looks down and says,
“Oh shit!” There’s a gathering puddle
on the ground underneath, and it’s not
from our little car, it belongs to him.
“Hydraulics,” he says. “I got your car up
but I’ll never get it down again
without that’s fixed.” But that’s OK,
by the time we make the garage
he’s figured it out. They raise the hoist,
get it level, and back the car straight off.
“Rather you than me,” I think while I watch.
(So, are you still with me?)
Things start looking up.
The garage lends us a car.
We’ve missed the exercise session
but we get to the hospital just in time
to have the lunch and the talk.
It’s stress relief, would you believe?
We even get a meditation.
Afterwards we stay back
while she checks his heart rate and that.
It’s good enough. Excellent really,
considering all the dramas.
He’s desperate for a haircut.
The salon squeezes him in.
I check the bank accounts. Oops!
Getting low, but I scrape up the cost.
On the way we bump into Colleen
and have a good catch up.
She’s just had a promotion,
leaves next week for Mooloolaba.
I jot down her latest email and MSN.
I go to grab something from Coles,
and there coming down the ramp is Sharon.
“I’d love to buy you guys a cup of coffee,”
she says when we stop hugging.
“Meet you in 20 minutes at Sugar Beet.”
A nice long conversation, and a date
to get out to her place for lunch
one day real soon. When Andrew and I
stroll back to the borrowed car,
we’re laughing, arm in arm.
“Hang on a minute,” he says,
“I’ll just duck into Bailey’s.”
He comes back $10 richer;
they’ve sold a copy of his book.
Starting home, I get a thought.
“How’s this car for petrol?”
Just as well I asked. It’s on empty.
“We’ve got no money,” he says.
“Yes we have,” I remind him.
“You just gave me ten bucks.”
We make it to the Ampol –
no sign left of the accident now –
and get ourselves home before dark.
All things told, it was
a most providential day!
Connie, Sandra, John: I like all of these very much. What really strikes me is how utterly different they are from each other as ways of addressing the assignment. Also, this assignment seems to make for particularly strong endings!
[...] 30 Poems in 30 Days: Staying Positive [...]
[...] 30 Poems in 30 Days: Staying Positive [...]
[...] 30 Poems in 30 Days: Staying Positive [...]
In Baltimore
I’ve seen the shit smeared walls
of bathroom stalls
in public libraries,
and children, indifferent to scorn,
mindlessly clicking through porn
on public computer terminals.
I’ve seen unanswerable questions
scrawled in black graffiti
and menus offering both sushi and baked ziti,
and a dowdy female librarian
humping an exultant, acne-faced teen
behind what was supposed to be a one-way screen
when I went looking for reading suggestions.
But this is no ranting accusation–
I come in a state of adulation.
For I have read with care
the poems on the men’s room mirror and stall,
studied installations by the artists of anatomy
when in magic marker they’ve laid bare
the simplicity of it all,
have taken the political advice of a stranger
who wrote it out on a toilet seat,
have seen the ugliness of juvenility,
and listened, thrilled, to catch its heartbeat.
Saul Nadatas last blog post..In Baltimore
Excellent article. Remaining positive is a huge factor and can be shown in one’s writing style and is important to remember.
Thanks
sometimes we often fantasize with a poem that we wrote in our minds. And if we can write our thoughts in poetic form, then we will be able to get something more valuable than our own fantasies.