happy bloggiversary to me

Read all about Poetry Friday here.

Yes, poetry fans, this weekend marks the 9th birthday of 

my juicy little universe!  

Next year, for the 10th anniversary, I will do some extravaganza of gratitude like making a lengthy found poem out of your--YOUR--comments over the years. But for 2017, at the end of a weighty and irregular week (and I mean that in the medical sense), I have only enough energy to point you in the direction of my very first post, made before I even learned that there was Poetry Friday.

It was about typing, and the sole commenter was my friend and critipue group partner Robin Galbraith (@RobinGalbraith), now the proud holder of a Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA!  (Speaking of typing, for no discernible reason the KUE key on my computer has stopped working. Now how will I type "kwakwaversal"?)

Speaking further of typing, I have held forever the position that writing by hand (including drafting and doodling and note-taking) has a different character than writing by typing, and my notebooks are very important to me.  But this has been the year that I had to admit that actually getting any writing done seemed to be related to abandoning my notebook and just typing on my laptop.

I'm still pondering why this is--is it a function of my fast-paced intense inside-the-DC-beltway microculture, which makes writing anything by hand feel inefficient?  Is it that my brain, fueled by a constant stream of think-too-much adrenalin, can't wait around for my handwriting to keep up?  Are those two things pretty much exactly the same, and should I try to relax?  Your views welcome.  : )

So here's my own poem about typing, a skill so very much more important now than it was when I took typing in high school in 1979.  (I have a second grader who has taught himself to type rather fast using two fingers on his right hand and his left thumb, and who will be therefore very well prepared for his computer-based assessments next year.)  I found this poem lurking in that very first post...


Keyboard Magic

I go around with 
letters dangling from the tip 
of each finger—

the h, j, and m jangling like charms
from my right index,
the c, d and e each occupying a joint

of the left middle,
the o ringing and ringing
my right ring finger,
a sparking a little flame from
that powerful pinky--

letters and numbers,
punc-punc-punctuation marks
trailing each move of my fingers
like the starry streaks 
that follow the sweep 
of a movie magic wand.

(c) draft HM 2017


The Poetry Friday round-up today is with Irene Thirteen--tippy-tap your way over and see what's popping at Live Your Poem!