Ten-Finger Exercises

Expanded Quartet

Our small poetry group, derivative of the old one, has been known to us as the Quartet., and we intended to keep the membership to invitation only. We asked one man who had been part of the original group but had quit when we did, and he was delighted to be included. Today someone new showed up, completely unknown to us. We did not want just anyone who called himself a poet, knowing that there's a lot of really awful poetry out there. I was the first to arrive, and Stranger was the second, with New Guy coming soon after. Our one member, M, who had been so adamant about keeping control of the makeup of the group, was not there and will be gone for 3 weeks.

I told Stranger about the situation, that the group was not open to everyone necessarily, and he understood. When all arrived and we began our writing and reading, it became clear that he is indeed a poet and a good one. Also personable and knowledgeable. We had a very lively interaction with good, constructive comments. This evening I got a phone call from P, the teacher of the original group. She liked Stranger too, and she wanted to talk about an idea she had expressed in the group. She suggested a poetry collective, and she will make up a web site for us to share our poetry on. She is very talented at that, and I think it's a dandy idea.

A previous site she directed is still available on line but nothing new is happening on it. It is a wonderful learning site for poets which used many different teachers and encouraged great interaction among writers. You can see it at: readwritepoem.org.

One interesting thing about our group: none has a spouse who is the slightest bit interested in what we write. We all rolled our eyes and laughed.