Poetry and the New Yorker

Cover of New Yorker

At the moment it is Poetry with a capital 'P' on the course. My assignment is due in a couple of weeks but I think I've cracked it this week. I dreaded it but finally it wasn't so bad and I found something to write about which I enjoyed and I think was suited to the poetic form (or at least the form I created). To tell the truth I actually enjoyed it. But in the long run poetry is not for me, I think.

As a result I have spent too long this morning downloading from the New Yorker, audio files of authors reading the short stories of other authors, which they then discuss with the literary editor of the New Yorker. My thinking is that these are current and quality, something to aspire to, something to learn from.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/podcasts/fiction

I also subscribed to the magazine which at 80Euros for 47 issues delivered to my door is a pretty good deal I feel.

I tried revisiting my incomplete Nano novel this week and still cannot work up enough interest to return to it on a serious basis. I think there is some good writing in it but there is also a lot of wordage done just to pad out the word count. One day....

Second assignment

I got my second assignment back this morning from the OU Creative Writing course and was nearly in tears when I read a 90% mark for it.

It is a short story called The Smell of Plums.

Now I just need to write the assignment for Start Writing Plays course, which is due by 28/01.

I keep changing my mind about it but time is running out.

I am also wading through the Poetry part of the Creative Writing course. Poetry is not really my thing but find it disheartening how many people think they are poets. Good poetry is wonderful. I love Ted Hughes, Dylan Thomas and Seamus Heaney. I particularly love a poem called The Great Horned Owl by Charles Simic. Rhay, my friend and writing mentor lent me a book of poems by Cynthia Rylant called God Went to Beauty School. It is a short collection of short poems about God in human situations - it is simply beautiful, and I don't believe in God but it is funny, true and human.

Yes like the little girl with the curl, poetry when it is good is very very good but when it is bad it is horrid.