My Two Blessings

Trickery with X  for  National Poetry Month X-rays and xacto knives No, let's not go there. X-factor, No, I don't watch that either. Xenophobia Nope, none of that.  Xenogenesis Nah, my son looks like both of us. Although my three sisters and I all have different hair color. No one believed we had the same mother and father. Xenomorphic,  Lots of odd rocks in our collection. Xanth, I did love Piers Anthony's imagery world  When I was a teen. Xavier Cugat, He was married to the cuchi cuchi babe. Charo for those too young to remember. X  Beware the big bold x of the railroad crossing. Don't try to beat the train. Xeroxes to Xylographs modern to the past.  Time for me to make my exit, since I find that I'm quite perplexed. 

I've been derailed by nonfiction. Would never have believed it.  Me, who only reads fiction and likes to escape into a book has embraced nonfiction.  I knew absolutely nothing about flash fiction or flash non fiction before I started taking courses at WVU.  First I read Dinty Moore's Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Flash Fiction which led me to the Field Guide for Writing Flash Non Fiction I’m intrigued by Moore’s history of flash non fiction.  It’s renewed my interest for reading Montaigne’s Essays which has been languishing in my stacks. It occasionally yells ‘read me, read me’ and I say, ‘okay in a few.’   I’m fascinated by all the rabbit trails, authors and essays and magazines to read and absorb.  “Bernard Cooper offers perhaps the first attempt to define the brief essay form...To paraphrase Cooper, then, the brief essay form is discrete, sharply focused, and must be held up, studied like a small tableau, to review the secrets of human...

Friday Flash  Night Road  Decided to revisit Oulipos today and share my experiment utilizing Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken which turned out to be a big failure. I tried the N + 7 route which is replace the major nouns with another noun which is the 7 th one below it, in the dictionary.  However the first line ending up being  Two robbers diverged in a women.  After I stopped laughing and got over my hot flash, tried a few variations but it just wasn’t working.  Then I got the bright idea to take book titles and transform them into a story, but got as far as a weird poem.  Which is below for your viewing  pleasure.  On the Night Road  Death Comes Brightly Burning Across the Endless River On the Night Road. Dark Shadows  In the Woods Scream for Me, On the Night Road. Flashback Phantom Rainwater Dark Harbor. The Door Within All Through The Night Vanished A World I ...

Josephine Wall's Fairy Bubbles Universe Under the vast dark sky Unity binds the heavens Unusual pockets of stars Unlocking the black Underneath it all Understanding bursts our imagination Unlimited in potential Unabashed beauty Unique minds unspoiled

April is the 20th anniversary of National Poetry month  and I'm not much of a poet but like to play with Oulipo's .   So for your entertainment and mine, here's an oulipo made up of book titles  containing the letter F  from my shelves, in the form of four line stanzas.   Enjoy!  The People From the Sky Worst Fears Realized A Pirate looks at Fifty Final Approach.  Boy From Reactor Four Writing From the Inside Out  Flashback Fear the Dark. Fairy Godmother Her Fearful Symmetry Isle of Fire The Forgotten Garden, Fancy Pants Breach of Faith Foucault's Pendulum Things Fall Apart. Now it's your turn!