August 24, 2010

A Little Bit of Everything




A little bit of everything by the bay Monday afternoon: A pelican landing, a dove dozing out of focus, two fast patrol boats, and a sail boat. 2010.



Yesterday and Today

My Babylonian Captivity: Do stop in and read Tugster's newest blog. For Tugster was captured in Iran when Iraq invaded, and this is the story of that time. A story for today.

Himself: Spent over ten hours on the computer. No long breaks for anything. Walked by the bay….plodded is more like it.

Herself: …and the quilt blog too: Swam, worked on sonnet, did books at the shop, put some order into my mess in the living room while doing laundry, read, grocery shopped, cooked dinner, dragged him away from the computer to eat by the bay. Felt indescribably domestic.

Gratitude: Friends.

Sonnets…..they confuse me. I love to read them, but writing one leaves me dithering. Not only do they rhyme in a set pattern, they have a particular structure of 14 lines of iambic pentameter five times in each line. I must tell you that my brain goes blank when faced with rhymes.

Oh, I can remember recipes from my childhood or yesterday….like Bonnie D’s zucchini salad that we are eating tonight even down to parboiling the zucchini for 3 minutes. I note this morning that yesterday’s rhymes don’t quite work. Downward and blurred don’t quite make it, and with any other word I call up, nothing is there.

At an estate sale this weekend, I purchased a small, battered, LA Library volume of Dorothy’s Parker’s work compiled in 1944. One sonnet had caught my eye, and encouraged by the group, I thought I’d attempt this most difficult poetic form. Difficult is the word for it when all you have upstairs is silence.

I’ll try again this morning after I drown yesterday’s sorrows in the pool.


5 comments:

  1. You write very well. I wish I had your discipline. Your photography is a smörgåsbord and my writing is diarrhea. Trying to struggle through The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Not as exotic and intriguing as I had hoped...mostly alcoholism and casual or pathological sex.

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  2. I can't write formal poetry either. I can't write poetry at all. I just write weird stuff about mirages and the other odd things I see. Funny how that works.

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  3. I haven't written poetry in decades. I give you a lot of credit. I also haven't been to an estate sale in a long, long while. I used to love them so much.

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  4. Your photos look like they were taken near Liberty Station -- where are good friends have moved.

    When I taught 12th grade writing the only time I would allow my students to engage in rhyme is when writing an Elizabethan sonnet. I think rhyme tends to take over. You may want to try a Spenserian sonnet instead.

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