You could say I’m playing around with writing a sonnet today, as long as your definition of “playing around” is broad enough to include tapping aimlessly on my desk to The Guess Who’s Bus Rider. Our Canadian columnist Matthew Kreider loaned me one of his famous Ticonderoga pencils this weekend. It keeps a terrific desktop 70s beat, but writes terrible iambic pentameter. (Don’t tell Matthew.)
The truth? I’m off the bus and riding the rails to a quatrain wreck.
That makes it a perfect time to announce our upcoming Tweetspeak book club: Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within, by Kim Addonizio. Ordinary Genius is an invitation to explore your world through poetry — in a very hands-on way.
You’ll find ideas for making poems — a lot of them. Not every idea here is going to work for everyone, but there are some that will turn you sideways, jolt you into something completely unexpected, and keep you up nights. Some of the exercises are also aimed at leading you toward experiencing poetry in all its forms, rather than toward poems as end products. Poems aren’t products, anyway. Poems are what you make when you experience life in a certain way. Alive to yourself in the world, observant of inner and outer reality, and connected to language. (Kim Addonizio, Ordinary Genius, p. 14)
Beginning Wednesday, September 26, we’ll read poetry together, and write poetry together. By the time we get to chapter 29, we’ll read the words Write a Sonnet without sweat beading on our brow.
Come, with your chewed-up Ticonderoga or fancy Montblanc pen. Beginner like me, or longtime poet. By bus or train or Radio Flyer wagon. Make poems with us.
For September 26, read Part 1, Entering Poetry, and try to do a few of the exercises.
To learn more about Ordinary Genius, view the book trailer:
Photo by Thomas Hawk, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Post by Will Willingham.
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L. L. Barkat says
Can I come by pink motorcycle? Tweetspeak has one of those, I hear 😉
Very amusing. If you just write about *writing poems* the whole time we do this book, that would be entertainment enough 🙂
Will Willingham says
That’s what you need, you know.
A pink Radio Flyer.
🙂
L. L. Barkat says
Wagon, or scooter?
Because if it’s a wagon, I am going to have to get someone to agree to pull me around, up hill and down 🙂
Megan Willome says
Have you ever read Christopher Paul Curtis’ book “Bud, Not Buddy”? You will never look at a Ticonderoga pencil the same way again.
Monica Sharman says
Megan, I read that book years ago and loved it, but I can’t remember anything about a Ticonderoga! 🙁 I’ll have to check it out again.
Unless you want to refresh my memory…
Maureen Doallas says
No ordinary genius
can keep her pencils
tapping a ’70s beat aimlessly
for our Canadian columnist.
He’s very hands-on,
terrific at playing around
with something unexpected,
always wanting to keep you
up nights, experiencing
poetry alive, in all its forms.
No ordinary genius pencils
a sonnet sideways, then announces
today is the perfect time
to make you write the truth
in iambic pentameter, off
the bus and riding the rails.
An invitation to explore keeps
you together, in a certain way,
book-club observant of the inner
and outer quatrain of reality
without sweat beading on the brow.
A beginner, like me, exercises
the poet within; that longtime writer
Barkat goes for a stretch in pink.
Poems aren’t products, poems aren’t
language chewed up, Kim makes
clear. Some can make you famous,
if you’re no ordinary genius.
Lane Arnold says
Ordinary Genius
I hope will help me
as I’m
Entering Poetry
to join my
Inner and Outer Worlds
so that
The Poem’s Progress
will bring the poet in me
Toward Mastery
of the Genius in me
that is really ordinary
become extraordinarily poetic.
What chapters are we to read by September 26?
Joyfully,
Lane
Will Willingham says
Lane, so glad to see you’ll be joining us. 🙂
Great question — I’ll update the post as I neglected to include that. Let’s plan for the first section – Entering Poetry. I haven’t decided if we’ll do 4 or 6 weeks, so we might not tackle it all that first week, but may as well shoot for it since we’re a couple of weeks out yet.
Alizabeth Rasmussen says
I am very much looking forward to this! In the event you are looking for feedback on the 4 vs. 6-week option, I vote for six. 🙂
Thank you for doing this…I’ve been waiting for the perfect moment to jump into this book, and it has arrived!
Will Willingham says
Oh, yay. Glad you’ll be coming along! 🙂
Diana Trautwein says
DEEP breath…I’m in. Shakin’ in my boots. But your timing really sucks – that’s the weekend at Laity… Oh well, I may have to lay out at the beginning…
Will Willingham says
You know, Diana, that thought crossed my mind just yesterday.
But you can still come along, even if you aren’t able to get in and share with us the first week. You might even find a few minutes while you rest at Laity Lodge to try a few exercises. 😉
I am so happy you’re going to do this with us. I think it’s going to be good fun — and far less angst than Julia. This is fun work. She quotes Lamott in the intro, calling writing “happy work, as gratifying as sex or hard laughter or love or good drugs.” We can skip the drugs, but find it good, happy work. 🙂
Dolly@Soulstops says
You are tempting me with your writing to join…I’m glad you mentioned beginners…Thanks 🙂
Will Willingham says
Dolly, yes. Come along please. We promise to have fun. 🙂