PD30 Day 12: The Poetry Journal, From Notebooks to Blackberries
September 12, 2008 by John Hewitt
My brain is not as logical or cooperative as I would like it to be. My writing process is an excellent example of that. When I sit down to write a poem, my brain isn’t necessarily ready to help. On occasion, it has just the right things to say, but just as often it has nothing. I sit and stare. I hope for inspiration. I force myself to start putting words down. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not.
On the opposite side of that coin, my brain is perfectly happy to start thinking about poetry when I am in no position to write a poem. The perfect phrase will hit me while I’m driving to work. A topic will come to me in the middle of a meeting. When I’m knee deep in a project, my brain focuses on an image or a pattern, and I want to write it down or take a picture of it. By the time I can, the thought has often retreated and I struggle to recapture it. The way to capture these stray poetic moments is with a journal.
In the days before technology exploded, a journal was a book that people kept. They wrote in it at the end of the day or the beginning of the day or some other time that they set aside. A few people may have taken it with them everywhere, but most would settle for finding a time once a day (or once a week) to write in their journal. That was when they could record their thoughts.
While it was possible to keep a journal using a typewriter, most people found using a typewriter to be a more formal occasion. If they were in front of a typewriter, they wrote poems or stories rather than keep a journal. A rarer but sometimes used tool was the tape recorder (we have digital versions now). The person spoke into the tape recorder and later reviewed it, retyped it or had someone else take it down. It was an interesting solution, but not a common one.
The computer gave us a new tool. Now it was easy to type into your journal. Typing is generally faster than writing with pencil or pen, so it freed people up to write more. The blog is an extension of computer-based journaling. Blogs allowed people to quickly publish their journals online for all to see. Eventually blogs began to take on more and more uses, but the first use was as a journal or diary.
Today a new form of journaling has taken hold. The phone has become a journaling device. My Blackberry, for example, has a small but effective keyboard. There are plenty of features on the phone that I can use for journaling. There is a notebook, a Google word processor, am email program, and a texting feature. Any of these can be used to keep a journal. One advantage of the phone is that most of us have it everywhere we go. No one is surprised to see a person carrying a phone or even typing into one. People are more surprised when you don’t carry your own phone.
With the new phones, I can now write an idea down almost anywhere, at almost any time. Sure, I can’t enter my idea while driving (they are even passing laws against this) but on most other occasions it is there and ready. I can type in that brief thought and keep going. I can even take a picture of the object of my inspiration. I don’t use it for long-form writing, so it really isn’t like the journals of old, but for short-form work it does just fine.
I’m not suggesting that anyone choose a phone over a notebook or start their own blog. These are all different systems with different appeals. We have options, and options are good. The important thing is that you find a way to capture your thoughts so you have them the next time you sit down to write a poem and nothing comes to mind.
Today’s Poetry Assignment
Write a poem as if it were an entry in someone’s journal or diary or even their Twitter account. If you want an added challenge, limit your stanzas to 145 characters so they mirror the limitations of texting.
Related links
- 30 Poems in 30 Days set for September (1.000)
- All About 30 Poems in 30 Days (1.000)
- PD30 Day 1: I Believe in Poetry (1.000)
- PD30 Day 2: Generally Be Specific (1.000)
- PD30 Day 3: A Review of Meter (1.000)
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Wandering
Today I thought about my brother
I wondered where he had wandered off to
This time
Colorado or Oklahoma
The primary suspects
Subjects of his travels
The farther he roams
The closer we find ourselves to reconciliation
Absence makes each other tolerable
Though still not quite missed
Or given value
Our parents are different by eighteen years
His young and inexperienced
Mine older
More experienced
If not smarter at least
More prepared
To raise me
He is lost in his thoughts
They dominate him
He lacks the control to focus
Or the skills to reign them in
They surround him
Mock him
Con him
Punish him
It is hard to put away the anger
I collected when I was younger
And had no space for empathy
Just panic and resentment
Of the constant threat of him
I can see the years wearing on him
The interruption has lasted thirty years now
Pulling him from youth and potential
To the first steps of old age
There will be no miraculous comeback
He is running out of moments
Wandering the fringes of a life
Without ever really finding
A place
Or a person
To be
I am not angry anymore
But there is no friendship
Or brotherhood
He is a stranger
With a bond
That keeps him on the edge of
But never a part of
My life
I know the feeling of losing an idea. I always get them just as I’m falling asleep, and they are usually long gone by the next morning. I’m still old-fashioned: I keep a notebook and pencil in my purse just in case. It’s also a good way to pass the time when waiting for something or other.
Just finished my poem for today’s prompt. I like taking a notebook to describe people on the bus, so I wrote this as if I was texting notes on what I was seeing. It was amazing how many people I could remember from real bus trips–I hardly had to invent anything! The character limit is a good idea–it really forced me to focus on the key ideas of my stanza.
Good poem, John. It really put me in that sad contemplative state thinking about my siblings and how we have grown (& moved) apart. While they aren’t really “lost” as your brother is, they are almost strangers to me. It is sad because we once sat out under the Minnesota night sky laughing under the shooting stars.
Gulp and sigh.
Thank you for putting it into words.
Clutter
Sorting through memorabilia
Of the clutter over the years
I was surprised
By the frequent fond smiles
Appearing on my face
Looking through all the letters
The cards
The writings
I was surprised at the footsteps
And sound bites of all
Who has passed my life
Cruising through my stuff
Of you
And you
And you
So many yous
So many ties
So many
Through the years
People you once knew
People you thought you knew
And people you forget you did
All the you-s
All the us-s
All the me-s
I was surprised
At how many
Left
But more so
By how many remained
Changed yet the same
Others will say
How blessed I am.
I normally say
how cursed
But today
Just for once
At this very moment
I agree
with the others
I am.
Shine On
The TV astronomer belittles my harvest moon,
My huge, brilliant, orange, haunting moon.
“Bend over and look at it through your legs.
It won’t look quite so big then” he boasts.
The newscaster has a harvest moon tip too.
“To prove that it doesn’t get larger as it rises
Just hold a dime up next to it.”
Why not just use the wrong end of binoculars?
Once a year it comes reeling up slowly
Its only design to spill awe and joy
And these little men in the black box want to tell me how
I can diminish its power and hide from its beauty.
Maryellen Gradys last blog post..LORD, THERE’S JUST ONE SET OF FOOTPRINTS THANKS TO SARAH PALIN
@ Key
How did you do with your bus journal?
@ JoniB & Sheer
I’ve lost quite a few people over the past couple years. Nostalgia is definitely setting in.
@ Maryellen
Nice poem Maryellen. No matter what htey tell me, I know it’s the moon that gets bigger, not my perspective.
i wonder i always wondered
where life is after death
my brother i bother to wonder
is he safe in heaven
what are his interest
who are his freinds there
i wonder i always wondered
if he is ok with God
if so if he could send a sign
i wonder i always wondered
how to make peace with him above
to say i am sory he is not with me
i wonder i always wondered
if i could trust his ambitions to leave
that he trusted God his soul
aloft in a better place
and will he wait for me
i wondered always wondered, wondered, wondered