All Are Called

I wrote a song. And instead of performing it for a few friends, or maybe a small congregation, I first performed it on a big stage, with thousands of people watching – and singing along. How am I feeling about it? Good. The Sunday afternoon reprise went better, partly because I knew folks were going …

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Px3: Poetry’s hard, y’all…

It’s been over a week since my last post, in part because I have been wrestling with an unruly piece that isn’t just a poem but also a song lyric. Yeah, the not-at-all lyric writer is composing a song. I suppose it makes sense, given my musical propensities, to begin understanding the poetics through music. I …

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Px3: Creatures of the Poetic Sea

I’ve been spending the last few mornings discovering the monsters that live in the Poetic Sea, down in Ternary Bay… I mean, what else am I to think, when rhythms, meters, and devices are given names like ‘anapaest‘, ‘dactyl‘, ‘molossus‘, and ‘tribrach‘? It’s not been a bad journey to this part of the Poetic Sea, …

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Px3: What happens when life trumps art

I’ve been slowly working some exercises on various poetic metres, finding over and over that my verse sounds strained and my rhymes are forced. At times I’ve leaned too far into alliteration and have needed an avalanche of Advil to get through it.  I have been frankly embarrassed by the poetry I’ve been writing, even …

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Px3: It sounds along the ages

I’ve been released from the heroic formality of iambic pentameter – Fry has moved us on to other rhythms, rhythms that – as he points out – feel easier to speak between breaths. In the exercises over the past couple of days, I’ve written a lot of dreck, but occasionally have had moments of meaning …

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Px3: sorrow and frustration

As I sat down to write this morning, I discovered a funny thing – a stricter poetic form actually helped me organize and work with my thoughts. I’m not sure I like today’s poem – a commentary on yesterday’s school shooting – but I think I wrote better than I would have had this been a …

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