A Great Post on How to Read and Enjoy a Poem

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I am still devoting most of my writing time to finishing the revision of my poetry manuscript (hence my continued lack of posts), but today I ran across a very interesting post that I thought anyone interested in poetry might appreciate.  As one of my readers, I am hoping you are interested in poetry; I realize it is a bit much to ask you to be as enthusiastic about it as I am.  In the spirit of promoting a wider audience for poetry, I share the following.

Ann Kroeker posted one of her poems in support of a friend who is participating in a poetry dare: a crash course in poetry appreciation over at the poetry site Tweetspeak.  While reading about the poetry dare (what a great idea!), I found this post written by Tania Runyan about how to read a poem.  She suggests starting with advice from former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins: Hold it up to the Light.  Runyan then proceeds to show you how, using a short poem full of images.

If you are not sure you “get poetry,” go read Runyan’s post.  It will help you “get it,” I promise!  And, it will fire you up to share poetry with others.  Seriously, if it doesn’t, you could always check back here for my upcoming posts about teaching poetry to my children.

In the spirit of sharing poetry, you can read excerpts from my poetry chapbook Entre la claridad, here.  Go ahead and try the Collins/Runyan reading method outlined in the link above on my poems.  I dare you.

If you only started reading this blog in the past year, here is a little information: Entre la claridad is a short book of poetry, written by me, mostly in English, with some Spanish phrases to more accurately reflect the dialog of South Texas.  The title can be translated as “Moving into Clarity.”  

You can purchase the book directly from the publisher, Mouthfeel Press.  (FCC notice: I do not receive income from book purchases, but I greatly appreciate your interest in my writing.)

Also, please update your subscription to this blog if you have been using Google Reader and have not done so already.  You can subscribe to this blog via e-mail using the form in the upper right sidebar, or via bloglovin’ by clicking on the button in the upper left sidebar.  Or, simply subscribe using any other feed reader.  Thank you for your readership.   

As of today, I am still seeing blog posts in my dashboard at Blogger; lately (like the past month) these notices have been coming and going, so I have moved all of my subscriptions to bloglovin’.  More on that in another post. 

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In 2013 I linked with: Catholic Bloggers Link up Blitz, Motivational Monday, The Better Mom

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My Favorite Posts from 2012

I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight three of my favorite posts from last year, one for each of the main themes I cover in the blog: liturgical lessons, healthy eating, and my poetry.  These themes are highlighted in the blog button I created last summer:

Feel free to hang my button on your blog!  I would be happy to hang yours in exchange, so contact me if you want to do that.  I also have a square button highlighting the healthy eating theme (pictured below).  Someday, I’ll make square versions of the other two themes.

My favorite liturgical post of the year is “Tabletop Shrine for Mary” from April 29^th. 

 

Here I share my idea for a table dedicated to Mary.  As I stated in the post, we continue to update our shrine, changing out the items we display there as we move through the liturgical calendar.  Right now, our accordion books about the Magi are standing there keeping our Mary statuette company.

For my favorite healthy eating post of the year, I choose “Healthy Eating: How to Get Started” from June 18^th.

Sharing what I learn and the recipes I try during our healthy eating quest is one of my passions, so I believe this post is a good introduction to how I incorporate healthy whole foods into our family diet.  This post offers suggestions for easy and quick healthy breakfasts as well as information about the detriments of sugar.

My favorite post of the year about poetry is “National Poetry Month” from April 10^th.

Another of my passions is promoting poetry, particularly from the angle of changing its reputation for being “too difficult” to understand or “irrelevant” to contemporary life.  Of course, I believe neither of those things!  In this post, I shamelessly promote my own poetry, and unsuccessfully tried to start a conversation about the relevance of National Poetry Month.  Try, try again on both accounts.

I hope you enjoy (re)visiting my favorite posts!  Feel free to tell me about your favorite posts from last year, or to offer suggestions for upcoming post topics.  I am still spending my writing time revising my book manuscript, but hope to return to regular posting in a month or so.

Linked with: Catholic Bloggers Link up Blitz, Best of 2012, Top Posts of 2012

Writing Project, Blogging, and All Saints

Have you wondered where I have been lately?  BUSY, BUSY.  I have so much I want to blog about, but very little time.  And now, I will be posting less often for a while.  Not sure how long this blogging slow down will be.  Here’s why: I have a new writing project!

Actually, it is an update to an old poetry manuscript.  You see, last week, I read at the Houston Poetry Fest.  I had a great time: listening to other poets, meeting those poets, reading my own work, and feeling like I was part of a poetry community again.  One of the poets I met there is an editor at a small independent Texas poetry press.  He has asked me to submit my full length poetry manuscript to him for publication consideration.

Have I mentioned before how nurturing, welcoming, and friendly small presses can be?  This is not the first time I have encountered a poetry editor who is willing to take a chance on my work and is offering a generous amount of time to read and consider my manuscript, knowing little or nothing about it.  I was fortunate enough to encounter the same generosity last year with Maria at Mouthfeel Press after a friend suggested I send a chapbook manuscript there.

You are probably wondering: Elisa, didn’t you just publish a book?  How did you find time to write another one already (you do have limited writing time after all)?  I did just publish a chapbook, which is a small book of poems, usually about 14 – 30 pages long, with a limited press run.  The editor I just met is interested in a full length volume of poetry, which is at a minimum 48 pages long, and usually has a larger print run (meaning the publisher prints more copies and keeps the book in stock for a longer time).  Often poets will include poems from their chapbooks in their full length books, so a chapbook is like a preview of a longer book.  You can learn more about chapbooks at my friend Katie’s blog, here.

So, I have not actually written a whole new manuscript.  I have an old manuscript that I started revising, updating, and reordering a few years ago.  But, I never finished doing that after I had my second child.  That is what I will be working on a few minutes at a time for the next couple of months.  When I put together the chapbook manuscript last year, I included some of the poems from this full length book, and some from a second full length book manuscript (still mostly unwritten, sigh).  I plan to use the moments I previously spent writing blog posts to work on this book so I can send it to the patiently waiting editor.

New Writing Project Means Fewer Blog Posts.

I hope you will also patiently wait for me to rev up the blogging again after I complete the manuscript.  I do plan to post now and then because I will need some time away from the book manuscript to gain perspective.  Also, I have promised to write about so many things.  For example, I really hope to write Part 2 of the Dual Language Learning post soon.  Plus, I’ll be reading and responding (although slowly) to your comments, and making a few tweaks to the sidebars.

In the meantime, I leave you the link to last year’s post about All Saints Day, where I describe an easy way to put together saint costumes, and different ways we have made saint images to learn and play with.  This year, we are working on costumes for Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, who was canonized today, and Our Lady of Guadalupe.  Read about how we put together saint costumes, and find links to other costume ideas and games here.   

You can see my other posts about saints here.

You will always find me linked at The Catholic Bloggers Network Monthly Round up.

Karri at My Life’s a Treasure hosts a weekly My Favorite Things Link up, and I am linking this post there.

Hazel at Tell Me a Story hosts a weekly True Stories Link up, so I am linking there too.