St. Lawrence Area Poets

Yes, more doldrums.  No north country poetry that I'm aware of.  I have started work on a SLAP poetry newsletter for September & am roughly 1/2-way finished.  Have at least one new writer to add, a fact which always tends to wake me up.  The hope is that w/ all the eager college students back in town, a renewed interest in poetry can be expected, w/ fierce poems circulating cyberly & perhaps sluggishly thru postal mail, house to house, one at a time, how quaint a notion. 

The next SLAP meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, September 14th at 6:30 at the gazebo in Ives Park in Potsdam.  In case of rain, we'll meet at Jernabi's coffeehouse by the bridge. Some idle efforts have been made to arrange a reading at the latter end of the ninth-month, as Whitman would put it.  Check for updates.

And the Challenge, well, here it is: Write a poem using heteronyms, words that look alike but have different meanings.  They may sound the same or different.  Example: tear & tear; the stuff that leaks from your eyes & to rip something into bits.  Get it? We need a poetic Mardi Gras, a Fat Tuesday, linguistic orgy, w/ food, music, drink, & lots of cool words arranged like birds & insects, flying & crawling, constructing, even destroying.  Certain things deserve to be destroyed. 

Anyway, build poems don't destroy them just yet.  And dig those crazy heteronyms.  Lead-lead, bull-bull, fly-fly.  Is there an echo in here?  See you next time.

Bye,

-John

soundtrack: Matthew Sweet

weather: cool & breezy, brilliant sun thru the clouds

no beverage

contact John at ataraxia1114@aim.com