WordWacky

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain….

So begins the first poem in Poets & Writers’ National Poetry Month celebration, which could also be called “A Dead Poet a Day.” This first one is by T. S. Eliot (who, if you believe the story told in the movie Tom and Viv, wasn’t such a nice guy), “The Burial of the Dead.”

Writer’s Digest blogger Robert Lee Brewer is holding a Poem-A-Day Challenge: write a poem every day in April using his daily prompt, post it in the comments section, and you’ll earn a badge for your blog or website and a certificate. There’s also some other prizes, which I’m unclear on because I didn’t read the myriad rules & blah blah blah.

For me poetry can be painful (if you don’t believe me, try reading all of the first day’s entries on Brewer’s site). Not just other people’s poetry, either. My own is perhaps the most painful, since not only do I have to read it, but I bear some responsibility for it, too. And I’ve done nothing but failed at these NaWhateverMo challenges so far. So maybe I will or maybe I won’t participate, but I can almost guarantee that all 30 of my poems (or however many I do manage to write) will not be available for public consumption.

Other poetry month activities include Poem in Your Pocket Day, which not only seems a little silly to me, but also invites that tried, tired joke, “Is that a poem in your pocket….” On the Academy of American Poets’ website, I learned that they’ve trademarked the whole poetry month business (not cool), and made a celebratory poster (pretty cool).

I guess when everyone thinks poetry, they think T. S. Eliot, who, though he might have been a cruel month himself, was in fact a darn fine poet.

In a month there is time… to write 30 poems.

I’m not really a reader of USA Today. I think of it as too conservative and dumbed-down to waste my time on. Sometimes I glance at it over a hotel continental breakfast. And for some reason, my workplace, known for its staggering cumulative intellect, peddles this newspaper exclusively in the cafeterias.

But today, amid the ”greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression,” a friend pointed me to a story by Craig Wilson in the USA Today that is worthy of some note: it’s National Punctuation Day.

Today is National Punctuation Day, a day set aside to reflect on the fact a semicolon is not a medical problem. At least that’s what NPD founder Jeff Rubin, a former newspaperman, wants to impart.

I hesitate to write about punctuation since it has never been my strong suit. Commas especially. Or is it commas, especially?

I have long held the belief that I must have been sick the day commas were taught. Where to put them. When to use them. When not to use them. Do you put one before the conjunction in a simple series of three or more items? (The answer is yes. I just looked it up on Rubin’s website, nationalpunctuationday.com)

I am a great fan of punctuation. Generally I try not to be a prescriptivist when it comes to language rules, but I am so fond of punctuation that it’s difficult for me to keep my directives and opinions to myself. (Lest you now take great joy in scouring my prose for punctuation errors, let me disclaim that I am not perfect, and even the best of us punctuation nerds can benefit from an editor. So please, feel free to correct me.)

Opinions? What would opinions have to do with something so precise as punctuation?

Style guides, those taskmasters of prescriptivism, differ – for example, on the serial comma rule. The Associated Press Stylebook, which lords over the majority of journalism in this country, deletes the serial comma. While The Chicago Manual of Style insists upon it. Maybe it’s because my true love is fiction, but I take Chicago’s side on this (and most other) punctuation quibbles.

I read a good portion of Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. I didn’t finish it, in part because it was overdue at the library and in part because though it was funny, I wondered exactly how much of her British punctuation rules really applied to our ‘Merican habits. I did appreciate that, though she was not in favor of comma proliferation, it was a matter of taste, not standards.

I love the comma. For me, that half breath taken is like life itself, breathing its way into sentences. A little pause brings character and drama to otherwise flat, dull sentences. And when there isn’t a pause denoted by the comma, there is visual deliniation, a guide for the reader of the sentence. What commas do is eschew obfuscation — that is, they clarify a sentence. It’s especially important when some knob is trying to read your precious word strings aloud.

So I loved hearing that my liberal peppering of the comma was tolerated, even by those not so comma inclined, like Truss.

I’ve also made dear friends with the semicolon. As Wilson points out in his article, they are somewhat too pretentious for casual communication; I’m loathe to put them in e-mail. But they are handy little buggers, creating conjoined twins of sentences that would otherwise be merely adjacent.

So we come to the exclamation point, that much-maligned symbol of exuberance and emphasis. Like many students of my generation, I was initiated to proper composition with a slim copy of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. According to Elements, this abrasive slash marring the end of your sentence “is to be reserved for use after true exclamations or commands.” Egads! We’re using it wrong. Of course, Strunk doesn’t sink to talk at all about multiple exclamation points, which in my opinion are one of the greatest scourges of the Internet.

There we have it, my punctuation manifesto, in honor of National Punctuation Day. [Editor's note: Exclamation point omitted in deference to Strunk and White.]

Hey, Western Washington, tonight is a great night to eat out and support literacy in your own community.

Dish Up Literacy is an event sponsored by Page Ahead, an organization that promotes literacy by distributing books to kids and encouraging their parents to read with them. Eat out tonight, Thursday, September 18, at any of the participating restaurants, and they will donate at least 20% of their proceeds to Page Ahead.

Make sure to mention when you go that you’re at the restaurant for the event, so the proprietors will continue to participate.

  Just in time for Pride weekend, Tom Spanbauer will be visiting Seattle to read from Faraway Places. Spanbauer’s first book has been reprinted by Hawthorne Press, a cool Portland indie publisher:

All of our titles are published as affordable original trade paperbacks but feature details not typically found even in case bound titles from bigger houses: acid-free papers; sewn bindings that will not crack; heavy, laminated covers with double-scored French flaps that function as built-in bookmarks.

The new volume features an introduction by A. M. Homes, who’s a new favorite of mine. From the introduction:

Faraway Places, Tom Spanbauer’s first novel, is not enormously long, but it is a big book. And it is masterly—a near perfect book. Built upon keen observations of human behavior—ranging from God, to farming, the scent of one’s father, the magic of sex and the exact number of steps from here to there—there is enormous originality, drama and spirit to this tale. It is a family drama with a pitch perfect crescendo. The story is hypnotic, mesmerizing, delicately brilliant—and so well made. While you are lulled by the language and the characters, the storyline builds and then like a well timed firework explodes—surprising, enthralling, captivating.

I’ll be there to get his paw prints on my yet-to-be-purchased copy of In the City of Shy Hunters.

You should be there, too.

Tom Spanbauer
Elliott Bay Books
Friday, June 27 at 7:30 p.m, Free!
101 South Main Street
Pioneer Square, Seattle

Tomorrow is Richard Hugo House’s Write-O-Rama, a day of rapid-fire writing workshops to get you started or keep you going on your writing projects.

Write-O-Rama is a full day of hour-long workshops offered to anyone who wants to write by the creative writing teachers at Hugo House. On June 7 we will hold over 30 writing workshops, and to sustain you as you write we will also have free food, beverages, two open mics, and a wrap party following the last session. Guests will have the opportunity to generate new writing, meet fellow writers, share their work, sample the work of Hugo House writing teachers and find new motivation to write.

If you’re too far away to get there, Write-O-Rama is also a fundraiser. You can donate to my campaign by visiting the Write-O-Rama Laureate page and designating me as your sponsoree (under Dedication).

Apparently Woody Harrelson is not only a “hemp” activist, but a spoken word performer:

“…Morality is legislated
prisons over-populated
religion is incorporated
the profit-motive has permeated all activity
we pay our government to let us park on the street
And war is the biggest money-maker of all
we all know missile envy only comes from being small…”

Check out the full piece (with visual accompaniment).

Speaking of the spoken word, here are a couple of performances featuring Seattle writers coming up in the near future:

Bent & Andrea Gibson
Tuesday, May 13, $10 at the door

Champion slam poet Andrea Gibson performs with great local queer poets.
Re-bar, 1114 Howell St, Seattle
$10 at the door
http://bentwriting.com

Writers in the Schools: 2008 Student Reading & Celebration
Thursday, May 22, 7 p.m., free!

“The best of the best” elementary, junior, and senior high Seattle students perform their original work.
Benaroya Hall, 200 University St., Seattle
For free tickets e-mail wits@lectures.org or call 206-621-2230
http://www.lectures.org/wits.html