Poetry
This week: The Junque Drawer Edited by: Fyn More Newsletters By This Editor
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I don't have pet peeves; I have whole kennels of irritation. ~~Whoopi Goldberg
Artists don't talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers, it's stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work. ~~Paddy Chayefsky
If I can write it, I can cope. And I've been writing many books, but in every book, I try to explore something in my own soul that I need to solve, I need to understand. ~~Isabel Allende
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A junque drawer...(or junk if you prefer) is where you stuff all the things you don't know quite what to do with, the things that don't really have a place or the things you do not want to lose! The kitchen one has seventeen (I counted) thick, blue rubber bands, odd sized screwdrivers for what must be the world's teensiest screws, a back stage pass from a J. Giles concert at least forty years ago, someone's graduation tassel (no clue what the colors were!), flashlights, a nut cracker, a packet of three Christmas light bulb replacements, several car fuses, a ruler, a comb, a ticket stub from some raffle we obviously did not win three years ago, a postcard from someone named Freddy (neither of us has a clue, but it is a pretty picture of mountains out west) and a pile of birdseed in the back left corner. (Well, the birdseed is now history.) There's also three mousetraps (that perchance should have been set!), a thirty-two cent stamp, seventy-three pennies of which eleven are Indian heads and six keys that we have no idea what they unlock. Digging deeper,(yes, while writing this--Hubby is helping) we discover a blue jay feather, a white button, two bottle caps, an expired insurance card from 1997 and six Writing.com physical merit badges! (I was looking for them!) Hubby says he doesn't think the drawer has been cleaned out since he moved in in 1997. Well it has now and I rescued my merit badges!
I have two (well three actually) junque drawers for writing. One is in my desk and is full of dog-eared notebooks, slips of crumpled paper, sticky (no longer) notes, pens, calendars, and journals. And an old wallet. No clue why. The other drawer is the one in my head. Both of these drawers are where I file away odd words I love like serendipitous, flimsy, mauve, splendiferous and detritus. I keep idea who time has not yet come. Odd phrases that have worked their way into my poetry like fish-bellied moon and clouds boiling up like an impending argument. Half-scribbled poetic meanderings, beginning chapters that fizzled out before they ever made it to paper and ideas. Many, many ideas.
Peeves too as I have this ever growing list of word atrocities that drive me batty. Writers who don't know the difference between its and it's and use them interchangeably. Words that aren't like 'anyways' and irregardless' and phrases like 'could of' or 'must of' all of which give me that nails on a chalk board feeling. (I pity those who have grown up in a white-board world who will never know that sound or the smell of chalk on the first day of school!
There's a notebook in one drawer full of hastily scribbled down facts and where I found them. Necessary tidbits like the number of steps in the Statue of Liberty as well as the number of stairs leading to the top of the Waterfall Trek in Watkins Glen, NY. Lines from songs no one sings anymore fill pages. ('Mairzy Dotes', anyone? 'High Hopes' and I'll ask you if you'd like to 'Swing on a Star.' Do you know if, indeed, the chewing gum loses its flavor on the bedpost over night and who said 'Farewell to Tarwathie'? Do you know who actually is buried in Grant's Tomb and what color a white horse is? Are you a turtle? <------Can't wait for the answers to that question!
A murder or a storytelling of crows, an exaltation of larks, a bellowing of bullfinches, a convocation of eagles, a flamboyance of flamingoes and a parliament of owls. (love this one! See below!) You just never know when you might need them. Or that in Australia, on the nineth of June, 1346, the moon was full. Histories like where Friday the 13th came from, who was the original peeping Tom and just whom did he have the audacity to peep at? Odd facts. I am a repository for minutia.
Stray arguments rattle around as well as those perfect comeback lines that I thought of too late to be used but that just maybe I will find a place or storyline where they will be perfect.
Like dried flowers, tucked away, preserved, my junque drawers are full of saved ideas, momentous thoughts, excellent rejoinders, the undared and the unspoken words and actions. They are the drawers of dreams, unwritten (as yet) poems and tales and they are infinite. What are some of the things in your junque drawers? Don't have a clue? Perhaps tis time to rummage through and just maybe, come up with a new idea for a poem!
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Steve adding writing to ntbk. responds: Selling my poetry is something I've thought about.
The tips you provide are useful indeed.
Thanks for some of your experience meted throughout the NL, for this helps the reader realize there is hope to be published one day.
Copenator out!
Monty says:There are many ways of poetry to sell as you say Fyn. I thought they were going to sell better after I was no longer around
Results for the 2016 Anthology will be emailed out by the end of the month! Barring unforeseen circumstances, broken glasses, a finicky computer and people's crazy schedules! |
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