BEATNIK BEATS ON AFTER NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE

Photoprapher find here

Watching the Super Bowl half-heartedly. Fell into a creative funk for a couple of weeks after DAW rejected Ghoul World, and my poetry manuscript about prostate cancer experience also fell short in two prestigious contests. Of course, those contests were filled with many excellent manuscripts by well known poets. I shouldn't feel so bad, but I thought my writing days were done. Nothing was issuing from my inner sanctum except the sound of silence, but this week, a couple of poems were handed out through the sanctum doors into my conscious brain, and I began to write a memoir for the umpteenth time. I've got some interesting psychological thoughts and insights to share, but I have to deal with the old grouch synaptic self that undermines me at every turn. "What makes you think you've got anything worthwhile to say?" I sent Ghoul World limping out again. Hell, it's only been rejected about 20 times. What's that in the scheme of things? Nothing. And two eight line poems slipped into view from the synaptic self. I really love the eight line form and Hanshan's temperament that I fell in love with. Somewhere in my unconscious self, there exists a hermit in the Chinese mountains.

BEATNIK SILENTLY STUMBLES INTO ALGEBRA

As of November 30, 2018, I've stopped writing and returned to working on intermediate algebra problems. It's fun to sit in coffee shops and work problems and learn new things. When I retired in 2003 at age 66, I began working at algebra. I monitored courses at the community college in Spokane. I had the goal of learning calculus. My father was a tool designer and, of course, as a CNC machinist, I used lots of math to perform my duties. Math is in my genes so to speak.

I did not win the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize at the University of Pittsburg Press where I had submitted my ms based on my prostate cancer. The poetry was authentic and pretty decent, actually, but the competition is stiff. All the most recognized and ambitious poets submit to it, so it's no disgrace not to win. The same ms is still at the Iowa Review, and Ghoul World is still at DAW which says it will take at least 3 mos. to respond. I've still got several poetry submissions out at various literary magazines, and I do have a piece of prose history that's to be published by Geoff Peterson's in his Archipelago.

The reason I've stopped writing to be honest is that I tried to write a poem the other day. If writing is going well, the writer gets hits of emotion as he works. They reward writing. When those emotional jolts disappear, there's no impulse to continue writing. Writing is its own reward, and when one isn't being self-rewarded, it's time to take a break.