Our goal is to provide you with a prompt every day from which you are to garner inspiration and submit a poem. How to submit will be very easy. Just put your poem or short story in the comments section and hit post. You may not immediately see your post, but it is there under the "Comments" section. You may need to click on "Comments" to see your poem. It is there on another page.
You may need to have a Gmail account to post in the comments section.
Most of you do have Gmail, but for those of you that don't it's
extremely worthwhile to open up one now! That way you've got a chance
to get your work out there in the world.
Today's poem or short story prompt is the word "paper"
REAL/UNREAL
ReplyDeleteThe beauty of a piece of paper is that it's real. It's difficult to talk about the difference between analog and digital music. Some people just don't hear it. But you can't miss the difference between words on paper and words on a computer screen. Even more, you can't miss the difference between a drawing done on paper and a drawing done with digital media. When you scribble an idea on the back of a napkin with a ballpoint pen, you have something tangible, something real, something you can touch. It endures in time and space. There is a certain weight and finality to it. Look closely, magnifying class close, and you'll see the ragged edges of the ink as it's absorbed by the paper. You'll see the surface of the paper isn't smooth, it's has texture, if you look close enough, it looks like the cratered surface of the moon or a white jungle. There's beauty in that chaos.
Maybe beauty isn't an appropriate criterion for decisions about media. Maybe all we care about is effectiveness. Does it convey the information? Does it get the job done? Yes. Digital media, digital music, online newspaper and magazines, virtual worlds in which you never meet another person face to face, never shake hands, never touch them, hug them, hold them. They get the job done.
But is it going to enough?
- Mike Fedel
April 2013
Childhood Labor
ReplyDeleteThese are the jobs that I held as a child:
Paper Girl
Seed Seller
Babysitter
Curbside Number Painter (until the city cracked down--apparently one needed a vendor license)
Weed Puller
Night Crawler Catcher & Fireflies in a Jar (death interrupted this enterprise)
Bottle Scavenger & Bottle Returner
Pussywillows & Licac Floral Artist
Spider Killer (I was the only person in my family not afraid of them and I got a nickel for every dead spider)
I worked for myself
No boss
No deadlines
The cost of living minimal
Catherine Powers
Copyright 2013