Another One of Those “Random Thoughts” Posts…

Random Thoughts, Early May Edition:

• I just read about this guy, scientist and entrepreneur Joe Betts-Lacroix, who says the antiaging business is “an $8 billion industry of stuff that doesn’t work.”
• Maybe poets should write poems about anti-aging research. They may not work, but they’ll pay well.
• You know you’ve made it if you’re referred to by initials or one name only and people know who you are: Apollinaire, H.D., Sappho.
• Maybe I should take up the name “Craft.” OK, how about “Crafty”?
• Speaking of, the verb “craft” is having its moment in the writing industry.
• In a conversation with other poets, I agreed that Stephen King’s best book is not one of his many novels but the how-to/memoir mix, On Writing.
• Which begs the question: How is it that a voluminous author wins hosannahs by writing a book about being direct and to the point?
• Maybe we should ask Charles Dickens?
• (Maybe not.)
• I opened my copy of King’s book and found this line: “There’s a place in A Raisin in the Sun where a character cries out: ‘I want to fly! I want to touch the sun!’ to which his wife replies, ‘First eat your eggs.'”
• What a great metaphor that line about eating your eggs is.
• Also yet another way of echoing Thoreau’s timeless wisdom (only without the yolk): “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
• Don’t listen now, but I am working on podcasting my poems. Coming soon to a hyperlink near you: my voice.
• Why is it that our recorded voice never sounds like our real voice? I mean, who is this person?
• The corollary: Why is it that the person called “you” in a photograph never looks like the person called “you” in a mirror?
• A picture speaks a thousand words—999 of them unwelcome.
• In the word “poetry” are the words “Poe” and “try” and “pot” (going left to right). Poe also lurks in the word “onomatopoeia.”
• Nevermore.
• Crows and ravens are my favorite birds. So sue me.
• Speaking of “nevermore,” I interviewed an “ex-poet” who gave up the practice because he was disillusioned with the whole business of art (or the whole art of business, if you prefer). By the end of the interview, I called him Dr. No, to which he said, “Yes.”
• When I clear out my bookshelf for library sales, I always leave the poetry books be. I think the Beatles wrote a song about this: “Let It Be.”
• When I give away books to friends, I always leave the poetry books be, even poetry books I don’t particularly care for and will never read again.
• My friends don’t read poetry books.
• Like spring colds, it’s going around.
• Every published poet’s secret favorite quote: “I’ve had it with these cheap sons of bitches who claim they love poetry but never buy a book.” Thus spake Kenneth Rexroth.
• Speaking of quotes, James Tate is always good for a laugh: “Poetry is everywhere; it just needs editing.”
• Life needs editing, too. Which tells you something.
• All of us should have at least one poem memorized. All of us should be able to answer, “What’s the last great poem you read?”
• All of us have some work to do. (What else is new?)