April is here again. I come to this sacred month of poets with little expectation simply because of time constraints. I have undertaken the task of being the voice of our high school baseball team and April will see two home games per week, making for long, killer days. Nonetheless, I will write and post as often as it is possible.
Happy Writing, Y’all! ~Jill
Seems that reading Ezra Pound leads to contagious insanity in poetry writing. Take a look at qbit’s wild ride of a poem!
On Finding Ezra Pound, insane, locked outdoors in a cage in Italy after WWII
John Berryman, The Cage
This much is known: A bee winging it
at the resonance of quantum verse,
subatomic buzz weaponized
into stanzas, words in flight,
les mots juiced like wine –
can ride the fog of war from Idaho
to Pisa, then jackknife
out of the smoke into a cage
where he stings and swings
the cold bar blues.
Flying into rage, insults flying
like rain and sleet flying in the face
of reason, he’s St. Francis of the wasps
and hornets, nectar held tight between his knees,
praying in the sun to piss.
Unknown: how to equate
the velocity of scribbling, scrabbling
at the speed of unsound mind,
with reaching past sanity and breaking off combs
until detritus of poems run sticky in your hands.
For Jillys Where’s Ezra?
Yes, I’ve been absent from Jilly’s for a few weeks and I want to express my appreciation to all who have been in touch. January turned out to be a month of bugs – both viruses and editing bugs struck. I took some time off to drink lots of hot tea and really dig into some writing and editing projects that have been calling my name. It has been a very fruitful time.
I would like to mention two things:
Firstly, the February Edition of Casting Bricks did not happen during the course of my off time. I may make some changes to our collaborative poetry challenge, so if you have any suggestions, please let me know!
I would also like to let you all know that my poem, Fervency, which posted here in November, was selected as the Second Place Winner of the January Contest over at Vita Brevis!
I mentioned above that I have spent some time in the editing process recently. Fervency was poem that went through a good deal of editing, with the help of a couple of good friends in the WP community. It is a pleasure to work with fellow poets in the writing process. Thank you!
Creating an Audio Recording through Sound Cloud
Disclaimer: I work from my laptop and it is Windows based. Also, I have not upgraded to Windows 10 out of sheer stubbornness, so some things may be different. If you work from a Mac, all bets are off.
You also need a microphone. Perhaps you work from a computer (desktop) that doesn’t have a built-in microphone. (My laptop does, but my PC doesn’t.) No worries! You can purchase earbuds that have a tiny microphone built into the cord. Or you may have something like that already that you use for your cellphone. It’s a pretty cheap little thing and it actually gives a better quality recording than my laptop microphone. Just plug it into your computer and then get that Sound Recorder or Voice Recorder and move on to step 2. UPDATE: If you look at the comments below from Frank & Bjorn, you will see that they both use Audacity, which is a free upload. Much appreciation to both for this essential bit of information!
2. Practice/Record/Save If you are not used to the sound of your own voice, no worries! Most of us are a bit put off by our recorded voice. No, that is not exactly what you sound like – your real voice is much better than that! The Delete button is a wonderful thing. Speaking of which, once you Stop Recording, your file goes into the Save / Save As process. NOTE: Pay close attention to where it saves the file once you name it. Mine defaults to OneDrive, which I don’t use often. It took me a few minutes to locate my file the first time. Because I work in a Windows environment, my files save as a .wma (Windows Media Audio). You may also find that your file is an MP3 file or M4A, depending on your computer.
You can update the image (not necessary at the moment, but nice once you get comfortable with Sound Cloud). You can also assign a genre. I go with Custom & Poetry or sometimes just use Story Telling or Entertainment. You can describe your track. You can do none of these things; it’s all optional.
Click SAVE. Now click on Go To Your Track. Click the Share button. Now click Embed. Three images come up. Choose the one in the middle – Classic Embed. (The one on the left will give you this HUGE sound cloud image on your blog.) A little box is there that says CODE: 
Click it and it will highlight like you see in this image.
A Collaborative Renga that qbit and I completed as part of the December Casting Bricks Challenge. It took us a week to get through it, but the outcome was worth the work! (It also plays nicely with my Wordless Wednesday post today.) Look for Jilly’s January Challenge on Friday of this week. All are welcome to join in with some collaborative poetry!
What the winds can’t heal
The contrails sever
Winter howls
from a wounded sky
Spliced fragments of discontent
litter the cutting room floor
Boneyard
Of the hunched and hungry
light that has never shone
Moloch’s restless domain
Its bitter meal
usurps our Threnody
Offspring of the beatnik fringe
slice their tongues on prosody
Their teeth drowned red
from parsing wine
The young so wise
abbreviated flights in time
Dovetail earth an sky
mulled, singular, primed
Jilly’s Renga Challenge – Winds Can’t Heal
For Jilly’s December Casting Bricks
In the September Casting Bricks Challenge, NoSaint has managed to lasso the illusive Coltrane in his completion of my Challenge Poem. I’m impressed! Take a look at what my talented friend accomplished!
Uniquely crafted words from one of my favorite poets. This deserves a close read for the allusions and the musical quality. Qbit really kicked it with this poem!
She said I had
Paleo blue eyes,
Light the color of water
From before Fire –
Then dawn over Manhattan
Greeting us
Like the oldest sunrise
In history,
Where my ribs, ancient,
Are stuffed in the mud
Of Olduvai Gorge,
Aching for excavation,
The sun
Introducing
Day Ten Million
With ten million more to go –
I pull my bones out of bed,
To go walk the dog.
In faces we see years, or the lack thereof, tones of skin, lips of color and grin stretching out to welcome us or drawn tight to hide away the pain of days and nights, winters and spring, of living too much or not enough, walking the path to the river or the River, the dip of birth or the dip of death, the planting or harvesting, and as we walk by them, in the water, in the grass, in the tree or air, it is not in their faces that the story lies, it is in their eyes, their eyes, their eyes.
Eyes looking outward
Skeptical angry or no
The tale is thereby told
We are writing Haibuns over at dVerse tonight. Join us!
© Words & Photos by Jilly All Rights Reserved
Hello My Collaborative Poetry Friends!
The continuation of Casting Bricks is not forgotten. I wanted to share my plan and get any feedback you might care to include. We began with the July Challenge and I would like to continue with a once a month challenge posted on the first Friday of each month. That means our next collaborative writing challenge would post on Friday, August 4th and remain open for the entire month.
I know that I ran gleefully into completing all 11 challenge (half) poems from July, finishing them in about a week. That writing frenzy was followed by the clear dull thud of my head hitting the keyboard of my laptop! I also did not have much original poetry to my credit during that week, and while I loved the collaborative challenge and learned much from it, I like the idea of pacing myself.
We now know that our Mr. Linky works very well and that will make it all much smoother. I will give more detailed directions on August 4th for the nuts and bolts of it all.
Please feel free to extend the invitation to any poet who might be interested in joining in with Casting Bricks; the more, the merrier!
Cheers! Jilly
The calculated unpredictable dissonance of Monk balloons off the living room walls as we toast marshmallows arguing about whether you or I are right-brained or left wondering if that bird that launched from the trees across the lake were an eagle or early owlPoem & Photo © Jilly's 2016 A Quadrille Join us over at dVerse!
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