Wordgrove Post & Review

Quoted in the Grove:

We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death.
~Nathaniel Hawthorne

Death destroys the body, as the scaffolding is destroyed after the building is up and finished. And he whose building is up rejoices at the destruction of the scaffolding and of the body.
~Leo Tolstoy

What if when we die, the light at the end of the tunnel is just us being pushed out of another vagina?
~anon

End quote:
It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between. ~Diane Ackerman

~~

Posted from the Grove:
We are delighted to welcome Margalo back to There and Wordgrove. She is especially welcome as the daughter of Bettina5369, and as inheritor of her legacy. Those who remember Bettina may be startled to see her resurrected and playing in game years after her passing. This is Margalo rekindling the spirit of her mother with the same sass and spunk, the same love and compassion her mother brought to the game

This editor will admit to a moment of dismay at the prospect of merging memories and losing something of the original in the process. Then the question was asked: how would Bets feel about it? Of that there’s no doubt. Bettina would have been thrilled to have Margalo reanimate her avatar and take up residence in the towering presence of her shade. This online display of legerdemain also allows Bettina’s written work to be reintroduced in the game (see above, Glass Table). Beautiful. Welcome back, Margalo. And welcome home, Bettina. We’ve missed you terribly. It’s good to see you back

An added note: There is a memorial site dedicated to Bettina @Wordgrove East. Look for the black memorial plinth and the blue eternal flame. It is worth a quiet visit

~

Prewritten for Thurs (01/30) 6 pm PT/9 ET is: talent, royal, dignity, wanton
This is the week when Wordgrove writers earn their right to be called Nutters. Use any two of the above words to complete this week’s assignment. Use three to be recognized for responding to the call of excellence. Use all four to merit a place on Wordgrove’s list of Nutters, this to be installed soon on the platform’s Glass Table. To encourage the stretch required for using all four words, a Nutter will receive one star ‘*’ for each compound assignment completed. A Book, Scroll, Script, or Rule Book will be awarded to everyone receiving 5 stars. More than one book may be earned

This allows aspiring Authors in There to be paid, and provides welcome ammunition for those writers who are being told to get a ‘real’ job. To validate your claim, you should note your munificent earnings on tax forms for the appropriate year. Then you can thumb your nose at nay-sayers, and with all dignity say ‘neener neener’ to your undeserving detractors, and walk tall ever after

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@Writers Platform
Glass Table:

~Piffin: A Thousand Thousand Names – a story of redemption
http://ledzeptshirt.wordpress.com/a-thousand-thousand-names/

~Bettina5369: The Mysts of Wordgrove
The nature of nature and the nature of Wordgrove are the same, to produce and create new life where none was before; a darkness in the green shadows hints of stories fertilized in dirt, of flowers that smell of welcome, and of birds that sing a personal truth

Prewritten: trinket, cascade

~Greymane: untitled
All the peopled wonders of imagination, of Disney, myth and legend, gather at the four corners of literature as escapees from their books, and begin a shared adventure on their journey to the sea; like lemmings, their deaths seemingly assured, they arrive to … mill around, distracted and immortal (as well-written characters are), grow bored, return to their familiar book-cells and the special trappings of their home

~Piffin: “I Don’t Know What Tutankhamen’s Favorite Song Was”

~BarTalk: the cook book

~

Impromptu: conflict, treasure

~Piffin: haiku (quoted)

Sunrise, white treasure
Conflict diamonds, market-bound
A blood-red prism

~Greymane: untitled
There’s nothing alien about sin and error, it’s all human; a plea to one’s better side, forgive yourself

~Jessalee: haiku

long red hair hangs down
mine to feel, to smell, to treasure
a conflict not to share

~BarTalk:  Love in a Modern World

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Quoted in the Grove:
Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life.
~Hunter S. Thompson

It ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.
~Jack Kerouac

To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard.
~Allen Ginsberg

~.~.~

Announcements:
The Prewritten assignment for Thursday, January 23 is: Write something (poetry, prose, journal, graffiti, hate mail, etc.) containing the words “cascade” and “trinket.” Although those words were also used for this week’s 2nd Impromptu Challenge, this is not a typo. The words were so well-liked, the group decided to use them again.

~.~.~

On the Glass Table:
~Bartalk:
Legends of the Whale (Prose, previously reviewed)
Show Me (Poetry, previously reviewed)

~Piffin: A Thousand Thousand Names (Prose)
An experimental piece, written for a friend.
The document contains an excerpt only. The completed work can be read at:
http://ledzeptshirt.wordpress.com/a-thousand-thousand-names/
Password is: wordgrove

~.~.~

Prewritten (January 16): One of the books in the library glows.

~Bartalk: Library Day (Prose)
Excerpt:
I retreated to my favorite reading nook, an over-stuffed chair in a secluded corner, and turned pages. Page after page I read the continuing story of my life, in detail. It was a journalized biography of my life written in the dry non-poetic style of a court reporter. And everything was there. Every kindness, every moment, every fall…everything…

~Stejovis: Untitled (Poetry)
Excerpt:
In this story a book is a living thing
filled with thoughts to share
and openly revealing all it has
but does not know, for its knowledge
is not its own, but borrowed from
another with a mind and heart.

~Piffin: “Alexandria” (Poetry)
Excerpt:
There’s a book full of wishes up high on a shelf And I’d rescue it now, but I can’t by myself Though it’s starting to glow, bright as futures unread, In the light of the fire beginning to spread

~.~.~

Word Games (January 16):
Impromptu 1: boo; beyond.

~Bartalk: The Who of Boo
‘S a desert beyond death
but love follows & memory
& wait patiently together
to join their master in
God’s own stellar boonies

~DWade_3: haiku
Loud derisive boos
Piercing skin like shards of glass
Beyond mild dreams

~Jessalee: untitled
Excerpt:
but i’m here after you toke, or drink, or poke
let’s get high a while, and i’m yours, no joke
in our time, i’ll comfort you the best i can
and we’ll still be together in this magic, man

~Greymane:
Excerpt:
It’s never quite the way we thought we wanted it to be
but in the end we can’t pretend that we were never free

~ReenRen:My Angel Boo Got His Wings (Poetic Journal)
Excerpt:
i wondered then why cats don’t seem to get it, do they just not care? when their best friend is gone they don’t seem aware. They seem to just say never mind! look at ME! I’m alive!

~Stejovis: A series of haiku.
Excerpt:
a bat cracks loudly
a ball sails beyond the wall
a crowd only boos

~Piffin: “Truck Stop French Toast” (Poetry)
Excerpt:
They drove ’til they ran out of gas
Then parted in the rain
They split their cash, their Turkish hash,
Their memories, their pain
The serpent went to Chinatown
To meet a girl he knew
Adam stood, dumbfounded,
Cried, “I know not what to do”
Impromptu, the Second: Write an aboriginal haiku using the words “cascade” and “trinket.”

~Bartalk: haiku
trade trinkets for sex
cascading throes loving her
dark and down under

~DWade_3: haiku
Foam-laden cascades
Tidal waves of mystery
Hide trinkets of lore

~Greymane: haiku
Didgeridoo song
Cascades over the outback plain
wind blown trinket cries

~Piffin: haiku
Cascade of teardrops
A city bought for trinkets
The Hudson rolls on

~.~.~

“You write your first draft with your heart…and you rewrite with your head.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLBEFvMkQCo

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Quoted in the Grove:

I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you — it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists.
~Philip Roth

My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests. And it always does. … Writers are always selling somebody out.
~Joan Didion

Discretion is not the better part of biography.
~Lytton Strachey

End quote:
I love you the more in that I believe you have liked me for my own sake and for nothing else. I have met with women whom I really think would like to be married to a Poem and to be given away by a Novel.
~John Keats

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Posted from the Grove:
A quiet week in the grove. Time for another walkabout, see what new writings have been dropped. Next week will report on search for new activity

The large stage-filling screen is in place for picture shows. Medium and regular size screens can be re-positioned and used simultaneously

~

Prewritten for Thurs (01.09) 6 pm PT/9 ET is: A book glows on a library shelf. Write about it

~~

@Writers Platform
Glass Table: No new drops

~

 Prewritten:  hot tub, cider

~Stejovis: The Album
The DNA of memory encoded in songs; the gift of memories and revelation spool out from a spinning disk; the gift of self held in trust by a latticework of notes and lyrics, a bestowal of self freely given … but you don’t listen

~Greymane: untitled
Gathered around a campfire sharing war stories that used to be love; promises are deconstructed for reasons of noncompliance; dreams are peeled like onions to reveal failure at the core

~BarTalk: The Road Less Taken

~

Impromptu: tango, street

~Piffin: haiku

~Greymane: untitled (quoted)

Just another tango down another lonely street
Further than I wagered but the journey’s not complete
I’ve emptied all my pockets and I’ve set my horses free
As I struggle to remember how perfection used to be

~Stejovis: haiku
Gang tuffs dance in violence, the wind sways in time with the moon

~BarTalk: haiku

~ . ~

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