Wordgrove Post & Review

Quoted in the Grove:

Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
~Flannery O’Connor

Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.
~Russel Lynes

Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin. ~Stanislaw J Lec

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These are the cynical words of seasoned writers, and there is a truth to them for those who demand excellence in their reading. There are writers to satisfy them, and this is as it should be. Wordgrove, however, is about opening doors and not closing them, about providing a platform for writers, about encouraging anyone wanting to write and helping when possible

Wordgrove has used a writing contest in the past to further these goals, and has been encouraged to do so again by club members. There’s been time slippage (the contest is both late and shortened), with a reduction in prize money, but the contest for the Wordgrove Prize is on!

All that remains to launch this year’s contest is to announce the theme so that imaginations can be turned loose to do what they will with it. Here then, this year’s theme:

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It might be a matter of great moment taken from history or experience, be the result of a birth or death, is certainly prominent at the beginnings of love and at the end of it. It could be heart-pounding world-hopping adventure or the inferno that burns in silence. Discovery of any kind, doors of memory opening, too much of something or too little of it, events imagined or witnessed. The world grows by it and is over-full of it. Life is gravid with it, fairly vibrates with it, so that writers are challenged to capture and channel this electricity of life we call Drama

Drama keeps the world from boredom just as it puts it at danger. Perhaps our choice is over-broad, but no matter because our theme for the 2013 Wordgrove Prize is: Drama

Following whatever instinct, path or thrill that Drama conjures up for you, your challenge is to harness this energy, to shape it and breathe into it and give it the magic of life with words. You may enter one piece in each of three categories: Poetry, Prose, and Journal (diary or blog entry, dated essay/etc). The soft deadline is Sun 1/20, when voting begins

Tables will be in place for early drops beginning on, Sun 1/13. Early drops work better for vote getting. A table will be provided for those who want to participate but don’t wish to enter the voting. Complete instructions will be provided in a blue Script on a red stand near Writers Platform

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Posted from the Grove:
Prewritten for Thurs (1/3/13) 5 pm Pacific/8 Eastern is: Alaska, rope

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@Writers Platform: *a previous review
Library Table:

~Greenie: A’Glow*, and Silent Song*, and:
Evening’s Silent Song
An idyll of pastoral serenity lacking only someone to share it; an Eden that begins with Eve alone

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Prewritten: gift, tiding
~BarTalk: Spirit of Xmas

Impromptu: rain, rust

~Piffin: .Elemental Me.
Non-standard elements of nature, the brine of tears and blood and dust fuse into cold organic rust; non-standard rhyme scheme, outlines on a sidewalk in a portrait of broken trust

~Stejovis: rain, rust
A game in the rain can only mean football; paper cups disintegrating, spilling yours, wearing another’s beer in the rain and loving it

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Writers in Residence:
WG Nutters have been going thru drawers and old files looking for old favorites to bring out in their pazs while beginning work on their contest pieces. Haven’t they.

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Quoted in the Grove: (reprised from archives)

We think caged birds sing, when indeed they cry. ~John Webster

Deep within the soul of the lonely caged bird
Beats the rhythm of a distant forest
Etched upon its broken heart
The faded memory of flight.
~Ginni Bly

If only I could so live and so serve the world that after me there should never again be birds in cages. ~Isak Dinesen

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Posted from the Grove:
Prewritten for Thurs (12/27) 5 pm Pacific/8 Eastern is: gift, tidings

A busy week, so this abbreviated edition of the Post & Review. One pleasure not to be missed is welcoming new members, so we happily welcome: xxxcometxxx, Mary Christmas, Martha Christmas and debzone. Readers are always welcome, but we are especially happy when new writers join in when they join. We hope to hear more from each of you

A reminder: Next week’s Post & Review will contain the theme for Wordgrove’s writing contest for the Wordgrove Prize. It is a single word theme. Those entering will have two weeks before dropping submissions begins, three weeks before voting begins on Sun (1/20/13), polls close at midnight, Mon (1/31)

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@Writers Platform
Library Table:

~Stejovis: The Night They Raided Min Ho’s
Misadventure as burlesque

~Greenie: A’Glow
After the sun sets into dusk and the ending of light, the beginning sounds of evening, the start of a Southern breeze, the bugs weaving light fly contrapuntally to the emerging stars of night; as written by one who sees, who pays attention to the moment

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Prewritten: ballerina, heartbreak

~Stejovis: Ballet Shoes
The exquisite torture of anticipation and eXCiTeMenT of a six year old who needs (please? please?) her shoes for the performance before Christmas, and … and … she’s dead. What?! Can’t be! She can’t be! Gun shots, and empty shoes for Christmas

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Impromptu: fire, silk

~Stejovis: two haiku and two tanka
Silk has the feel of transparency to fingers as they flicker over fevered flesh, there’s a sizzle, then the flash of hot desire; silk clings like a flame to skin, floating above it, rippling with naked color; ingredients ignite and it burns, a confession

~Piffin: .Cannibal Nights.
The short conscious journey to extinction and demise; the warring brain that kills the soldier prods the genius; is death today, what words to leave, and how to prepare?

~whitefeather: Fire / silk  (haiku #2* )
Among his play things
Shadows dance in the moonlight
Her state of unpantiedness

*Quoted. How neologisms answer a need; you saw it first in Wordgrove

~BarTalk: 1+1=2

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Writers in Residence: No new work to review

Wordgrove’s focus narrows briefly and directs its attention to the upcoming writing contest. Nutters, friends of Nutters, members of other clubs and residents of There are all encouraged to enter. Nutters should have writing time penciled in on their calendar for the month of January, an excellent way to begin the year. Until Writers in Residence resumes at contest’s end, this space will be given to news, encouragement and comments at appropriate stages of the contest. Next week it begins

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Quoted in the Grove:

Do stuff, be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.
~Susan Sontag

A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something.
~Wilson Mizner

Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long. ~Walker Evans

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Posted from the Grove:
Prewritten for Thurs (12/20), 5pm PT/8 ET is: ballerina, heartbreak

Tho whitefeather already has a poem crafted on themes of ballerina and heartbreak (see her wordgame poem: acrobat/oven), it promises such good material that we thank her for being first

~thx @Merry Christmas at Wordgrove: Found, a new paz by thx on WG’s west end that cheerfully celebrates the season. Sweet, happy, fun; includes recognition of the Christmas backstory

GaryBob suggested this week’s music video:
Miss Atomic Bomb, by: The Killers

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Note to anyone hosting flagged events in Wordgrove: We suggest not placing the flag on the Platform, as rubberbanding for 30 seconds on arrival is not the experience most visitors favor

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The last piece of business for this week is to announce that there will be a Wordgrove Prize writing contest this coming January. The theme will be announced in the last Post & Review for this year, Sun, 12/30/12.

Those entering may submit one piece in each of the three categories: Poetry, Prose, Journal (diary or blog entry, or dated essay). Length limit is 1 book, altho linking to an illustrated piece is allowed

Entrants can begin dropping their submissions on Sun, 1/13/13, voting begins a week later on 1/20, and ends Thurs midnight, 1/31. A Silver Quill is awarded in each of the categories, the Gold Torch winner is chosen by the sponsor. The award ceremony will be mid-Feb

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@Writers Platform
Library Table:
~Piffin: Trust, Word Games ~ Oct/Nov, Carousels of Glass

~Greenie: Broken Doll, Disappearing into You,

Stejovis: Pre-Written Sketches, and:
Home for the Holidays (prewritten for 12/6/12)
Delayed by storm, cold and ravenous, arriving at childhood’s home long after bedtime darkness; hand reaches for the hidden key without thinking, sneaking quietly-so-quietly not to wake her, bypassing the adhesive pull of spice and feast slow-cooking on the stove only to be busted by her … by Mom with grins and kisses and hugs better even than memory

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Prewritten: inkblot (make up your own story)
http://wordgrove.com/inkblot.html

~Stejovis: Ahnonay Portal
The keyhole, ever the keyhole, the keyhole and the beckoning mystery; the Alice of wonders on the other side waving ‘come’; first strangeness and blackness, then the stars

~Piffin: .The Monkey in My Mind.
Death by suddenness, or decision; thinking about it being a waste of time when the real question is: after, what then?

~BarTalk: The Inkblot

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~Impromptu: shackled in a Korean jail

~Piffin: .Seoul Searching.
Apart from the unforgivable pun scribed in the title, begin the story in chains, commingle memories with back road borders, twisting mountain roads, monsoon rains, danger, with destination Quonset huts a mile below in sight

~Stejovis: The Night They Raided Min Ho’s
Local thugs versus Bible smugglers in the North; into this fever pitch, add kidnapping and a chase by the national police who are easier to outrun than the communist party bullets that follow later; ends with an illegal high-speed border crossing, the crash and escape that could only be bested by the vehicle in flames; ah, the joy of shackles in a protected Korean jail

~BarTalk: Sold

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Writers in Residence:
~Stejovis @Meditatio: Tally Pieces
Once and present tally poems, with instructions and assembly kit for inquiring poets to try on their own

~Greymane @Greyed Expectations 2: Not Today
The fool, with the stale breath and clacking bones of death, taunts of the end to come; the poet concedes the point, but defies him, not today

~Jessalee @Creative Intentions (new hill site)
Looking into the new dawn sky, with the snow slow-falling looking like meteors in the sky, climbing to enter Jessa’s new watchtower paz, finding one book and the Gold Torch it earned:
Watching Winter and Notes on writing it
Tragedy and miracle, surviving alive from the waist up, and how half a life concentrates the rest; told in the poetic form with the enchanting name of envelope quintet: (abbba)

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