Today marks the end of the March “Whether” blogging challenge elicited by BlogHer network. It’s been an interesting month. You learned that someone could write something about writing every day for one month.
You learned how one writer actually thinks about writing, and what this writer has absorbed of some of the needs for this career. Above all, you learned that someone else loved words and their use in self-expression as much as you do. That’s quite a bit to take in about someone else.
Along the way, there was conversation about how writing affects and is affected by the outside world. No man is an island if he writes is a truism to remember. However isolated someone is, so long as he expresses himself in words, he communicates who he is to those who read those words.
Whatever the art form, the viewer/reader glimpses the internal workings of the artist. Picasso with his cubism and abstract renderings, Pollack with his splashes of wild color, Rodin and Russell with their sculptures all spoke to the viewer. Dale Chihuly dominates the gallery when he exhibits his glass marvels. Often the “feel” of a piece tells more about the artist than words ever could.
Photographers click shutters every day, capturing bits of our world and us, to exhibit in myriad ways, lest we forget who we really are and how we came to be where we are. Times change. Technology rides a wave that envelops all in its path. Art forms and their acolytes traipse along behind, ever in technology’s wake, hoping to stay abreast of trends that sweep the beach of daily life and tastes.
With the waning of this challenge comes a new one; one on poetry. Verse is as intimate as a writer can get to the reader. Secrets, long held, roll within the rhythm of a stanza. Emotion flails toward expression within limited space and precise words.
Nakedness of spirit calls to the reader, whether at the ending, the middle, or the beginning of a poem. Verse is the art of writing with glass, exposing inner turmoil, joys, hesitations, and inspirations, all that moves or halts the poet during life. It is raw for all its precision; blatant for all its subtlety; and limitless for all its restrictions.
That is the challenge taking place from tomorrow on to May 1, 2011. Within the span of those thirty days, you will find poems posted here that are written to specific writing prompts. Links to poetry sites will mark each post. Occasionally, other poets may be revealed to those either shy of verse or enthusiastic connoisseurs.
My hope is that you all can enjoy a stopover here each day.
