It's about time

Romans 14:22

So it's finally come to this.  I am probably going to be your weekend blogger for a while, considering that when I get home from school I am not really in the mood to blog and things are only going to get busier---though I may have some built in down time at school, waiting for students to come to me and ask for assistance with on-line courses.  But that's not really what this post is about.

I have not written a poem in months.  When the summer began, I had a head full of steam to sit down and write poetry.  I had a head start on my third manuscript with a series of poems based in the early years of my home town's history.  I was going to write and start putting together the framework to that third manuscript, and it was going to be a labor of love, a return to a more familiar voice, and a real project.  I had envisioned it in toto, and while it was going to be far from an organic thing, it was gong to be the book which would introduce my more mature, controlled voice.  But to steal from S.E. Hinton, that was then and this is now.

August 27, 2011 finds me on the other side of summer without a single phrase added to the poems I started the season with, and I don't like that one bit.  I know I have dry spells and I have come to live with that.  I am not entirely angry about that.  Upset, maybe, but not angry.  I am bothered that my best artistic work is never the art I conceive of in the whole.  I m frustrated that when I make that particular attempt, almost everything I write is mediocre.  I am saddened that I have to wait for inspiration to come my way rather than find my own way into creativity.

You see, I am really good when it comes to writing prompts and workshops.  Give me a prompt and my mind races to see what I can create something very entertaining and artistically satisfying.  Otherwise I am a prisoner to the whims of my muse, some lonesome hitchhiker with his thumb out, waiting for the occasional ride.  Put me in a room alone and if the stars aren't lined up, I may as well be one of Shakespeare's monkeys on day one trying to write Hamlet.

It's time for me to write again, so if you are out there, dear sweet muse, please pay me a visit.