Pre-Ramble: “So, what time are you going to get back from the poetry reading?” my daughter asks …

Up until last Thursday, I could confidently have told you that I had never been asked, nor had I ever answered, this particular question in my entire unpoetic lifetime. In fact, it would be safe to say that I have pretty much avoided poetry in a passive, oblivious kind of way.

Luckily/thankfully, I have some good friends who are way out ahead of interesting, edgy stuff like this who invited me to an evening of poetry that they had won in a silent auction. Twice cool here – my friends were actually in attendance at an event that would be auctioning off this kind of thing, AND, they actually bid on it!

This impromptu, cultured event was hosted on the cool, hip veranda at a cool, hip Minneapolis design firm, 45 Degrees Minneapolis.  The evening began with a wine and brie meet-and-greet, followed by a brief introduction of the guest speaker/poet/bard (love that word), Gregory Hewett.

Hewett is an Associate Professor of English at Carlton College and has been a Fulbright Fellow, Fulbright Professor, and a Fellow at the Camargo Foundation, Cassis, France. He currently teaches American Literature and creative writing, and his fourth book of poems, darkacre, was published in 2010.

“Greg Hewett’s poems create fresh dimensions where language and human experience become one … from estate properties to artistic legacies … Hewett is a master architect of the poetic suite, and his house contains many mansions … a penetrating, richly metaphoric survey of the human landscape.”

Beyond academic accolades, Professor Hewett proved to be an extremely accessible teacher and very likeable guy. He was quickly able to assess the highly variable levels of poetic awareness in the room (Dr. Seuss counts on some level, right? … ), and tailor his approach to the readings accordingly.  He gave us a smattering of things … writings by Whitman, Dickenson, Elizabeth Bishop, Carolyn Forche, Frank O’Hara, C.D. Wright … I rattle off these names as though I have any sense of the depth and context from which they assume their meaning.

As I ponder this neat new realm and “dwell in possibility” (to quote Dickinson – ha!) … it occurs to me that, until you’re aware of it, poetry, in all of its richness and complexity, is swirling all around you every day like a sound you can’t hear … a whole spectrum of colors you can’t see … like a firefly waiting in the woods until dusk. Beyond rhyme and meter - really, beyond the boundaries of reason - until you’re truly aware of it, poetry has properties at some quantum level that don’t even register, let alone resonate.

The Take-Away: I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Professor Hewett, and my beloved friends, for the poetry primer, a quick flash into this fascinating corner of the word world. Thanks to you, I am inspired to take some more steps along this fork in a road that, until now, has been way less traveled.

Pre-Ramble:  I want to understand it, but I just don’t. Several tech-savvy folks, including my kids (one of whom is an IT major), have patiently tried to explain to me how Twitter works.  It makes sense when I see Ashton Kutcher tweeting stuff on TV …

I mean, I can do facebook and text-messaging and blogging (sort of) … I even have a Twitter account of my own.  But, something just isn’t lining up for me yet, so I guess I’ll just have to hang out in the nest until the light bulb goes off.

Meanwhile, in way more than 140 characters, a piece in Sunday’s NY Times (3/20/11) describes the emergence of Twitter as a promising literary format on the collective anniversary of the very first Twitter message ever sent and World Poetry Day. 

The article cites ”Twitterature,” a book featuring “eighty works of Western literature boiled down into Twitter messages” published in 2009, that sets the stage for the next Twitteration (heh-heh … I could sit here and think up Twitteritives all day … ) of the short form style and invites poets of all ilk to try their hand at a 140 character Twitter poem.

“The Twitter haiku movement appears to be well underway … and linguist Ben Zimmer said he thought the growing popularity of the service (Twitter) as a creative outlet could be ascribed to the same [challenge] that goes into writing a sonnet … of accepting those kind of limits.”

Some of the poems submitted to the Times appear alongside the article; fine efforts by actual poets.  For me though, a Twitter poem is going to have to go a LONG WAY to beat out my favorite poetic form of all time — the Limerick. 

The Take-Away:  Like any endeavor that challenges us to work within parameters, I definitely believe that Twitter has a place in the pecking order of creative communications media. We’ll have to wait and see what linguistic innovations the nascent Twitterati can come up with.

Pre-Ramble:  There’s a special irony associated with being too busy with writing work to keep up with the blog that was supposed to be a showcase for your writing work.

This isn’t the kind of thing that I am usually hired to write … at least not yet.  But, if you happen to come across a venue that needs writers who write about being too busy to write, please pass that along.

Well, so,  meanwhile, my blog-idea-starter-news-clipping-pile is getting closer and closer to the ceiling …

Before I get back to work, I’d like to share a recent truth I’ve learned … DON’T BE FOOLED by that cute little word “tweak.” 

Technically, it is supposed to mean “fine-tune” … make minor adjustments … minute modifications … etc.  …

But really, when someone says,

“I just made a few tweaks to the draft … ”

… it means they totally ripped the hell out of it; no phrase was left unscathed.

The Take-Away:  Consider yourself warned.

Pre-Ramble:  I have always loved words and as a person who uses them on a regular basis, a recent conversation between University of Minnesota faculty member Anatoly Liberman and MPR’s Kerri Miller about stand-out words from 2010 caught my ear. 

Fulbright Scholar, McKnight Fellow, BBC commentator and all-around wordy guy, Anatoly did his best to deliver a rollicking good take on word origins and usage, while steadfastly maintaining the requisite prim and bookish demeanor. As expected, his vocabulary was rich with varietals and his delivery impeccable.  You could hear his pinky extended from the teacup through the radio.

Refudiate.  Apparently, the folks over at the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) annually scan the 2 billion plus words flying around in our collective lexicon to select new ones to add to the dictionary’s roster of over 600,000 entries. More than 2,000 new items were added or revised this year   including “vuvuzela” (that long, super-annoying plastic horn wielded by fans at soccer tournaments) and “staycation” (lame, money-saving holiday spent at home). 

But wait — there’s more!  Clearly, the OED has made a conscious attempt to be more trendy and relevant.  A peek at their website reveals several new online features including topical word references, historically significant words, and even the uber techy-geeky “word cloud” …

Each month we offer an example of a new feature of the OED Online in action … This month we consider the changing language of ‘youth’, celebrate words served up at the Mad Hatter’s tea party, remember John F. Kennedy’s speech fifty years on, and count the change from 1000 years of banking and finance …

… the Historical Thesaurus of the OED, which provides a fascinating insight into how English has been used in the past, … charting the development of English over 1000 years … discover synonyms for individual words in the OED (and then trace their development over time), and chart the linguistic progress of a chosen object, concept or emotion, …  January’s word cloud is made up of historical synonyms for youth—from ‘frumberdling’ (c.1000) to ‘studmuffin’ (1986).

The Take-Away:  Let’s face it, words can be a ton of fun. I’m telling you, there is nothing more entertaining than listening to Professor Liberman respond to a caller on the entomology of the ”slangy expression” “junk.”  (Also discussed at length by Ben Zimmer in the NYT Magazine’s On Language column.) 

Post-Note:  FYI – there is even an alternate hip meaning for the word “word” … in street vernacular it means something like, “I hear you” … “I get it” … “Yup” … “Yo” … “I concur with your assessment” … It’s kind of a short verbal thumbs-up or fist bump.

Pre-Ramble: I’ve found that a really good blog post comes out of place where there is some personal investment … of curiosity, empathy, frustration or annoyance (there’s nothing like a good rant). Also, I find that if I choose three topics and start meandering around in my head, I will eventually be able to pull together something moderately to skillfully compelling by the end of the time available, or my patience,  whichever comes first.

Blame it on the holidays – Lately it’s been tough to narrow in on a combination of topics that click.  And it’s not because the meaty topics aren’t out there … I mean, seriously – President Obama just took an elbow to the face on the basketball court (how’d you like to be THAT guy?!) … Prince William just got engaged (how’d you like to be THAT gal?!) … and everyone is holding their breath to see if we all spent enough on Black Friday to qualify for a recovered economy. What is not to like here? All of these are potentially perfect blog post topics … tantalizing, really. But today somehow, the only thing calling to me is fatigue-induced petty festering over grass on the other side of the fence. 

Yesterday was Sunday, so that means that the Sunday New York Times is here, which means that there is A TON of expertly crafted articles and stories about fascinatingly obscure subjects that I can barely bring myself to read, because they are just THAT GOOD. Even the wedding announcements are well-written and insightful.

I’m barely half way into the Sunday Magazine and already there’s a very thought-provoking article on the social change required to make Michelle Obama’s children’s health initiatives successful; a story about the new Vanity Fair iPad app (I LOVE Vanity Fair, and who doesn’t love iPads?); a fascinating piece on “four towering figures in the world of words” (pinch me); a quick look inside the highflying world of private jets; and a sneak peek into the life and times of writer and director, Nora Ephron (who loves to play craps, apparently) …

“… About 900 years ago, when I was a columnist at Esquire, they had a sales conference in Paradise Island, the Bahamas, and someone taught me [how to play craps]. It is such a great game. I will teach almost anyone how to play craps at a moment’s notice… I almost always have dice in my purse.”

So, I know.  What’s the big deal about this?  Who cares about craps?  The thing is, over the holiday weekend there were two Nora Ephron movies on the telly and one of them involved Diane Keaton, and then another movie randomly came on that had Diane Keaton in it as well. Come to think of it, even that ingloriously tepid film “Morning Glory” currently in theaters features Ms. Keaton in a starring role. 

Do you see where I’m headed with this?  Of course you do.

If I was an actress, I’d be Diane Keaton’s slightly younger, shorter, less luminous sister. I’ve been told that I look kind of like her, and occasionally that I have Diane Keaton-esque mannerisms. I think this is more due to the fact that I can come across as kind of up-tight (I am up-tight) and wear a lot of turtlenecks.

Well, so, in my writer’s mash-up world, we’ve got: the indomitable, yet perfectly self-effacing Nora Ephron looking perfectly relaxed in her perfect black leather jacket next to her perfect bouquet of perfect roses in her perfect Upper East Side apartment with the perfect view of the Chrysler Building … crossed with the chippily endearing (if somewhat overexposed) Diane Keaton … crossed with the eternally revered NY Times.

Which leaves me … sitting here at midnight at the kitchen counter, swirling what’s left of the day’s cold coffee into the sink, paging my way through the day’s old news, and glancing ever so slightly sideways at this stupid Ephron interview — twisting with envy at every casually tossed-off turn of phrase, every meaningful memento, every flawlessly unstudied photograph.  

The Take-Away:  As if gazing upon her tragic collection of unused tea cups in the middle of the night would suddenly endow me with the wherewithal to write a series of successful screenplays.

Pre-Ramble:  The quality of writing is only a small part of the complex and collaborative effort that is required to prepare and submit a winning grant proposal.  Nonetheless, we grantwriters need to celebrate the “win” when get one! 

It is in that spirit that I do a little dance in the end-zone to observe the recent award received by one of my clients for the very competitive Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools (REMS) federal grant program.

Wooo-hooo!  (That’s me doing the Victory Dance.)

The cause for celebration here is not only that the long hard work of the grants team has been rewarded, but also that the initiative for which the funds have been won – in this case, school safety – will actually have an opportunity to be implemented to the benefit of the “target population” – in this case, thousands of school children who sit in classrooms for several hours every day.

Beyond fire drills and the occasional playground fall, many parents never give school safety much thought. Even excluding extreme incidents such as the mass shootings at Columbine High School (1999) or Virginia Tech (2007), emergency situations like tornados, environmental hazards or gang related violence pose a daily potential threat to students, teachers and school staff.  (And, FYI – the time to think about and prepare for these situations is not when the skies grow dark or a despondent student shows up with a backpack full of explosives.)

Your tax dollars at work - While specifics on my grant team’s proposed plan are proprietary, a peek behind the scenes will reveal a huge and arduous, but sound and competitive process that is designed to compel entities (like school districts) to address issues that need to be addressed (like a comprehensive proactive plan for student safety) in the most effective and efficient way possible. At the end of the day, the most promising projects receive funding … “promising” meaning that it is strongly likely that the project plan articulated in the proposal will be able to achieve its stated goals on time and on budget … (not as easy as it sounds).

The Take-Away: Most of what goes on in the day-to-day realm of grantwriting is not glamorous (ok, really none of it is… ), but the knowledge that we, tapping away in our little corners of the world, are able to play even a small role in a system that rewards innovative thinking and enables promising initiatives that have the potential to improve our society and the lives of individuals – that right there is something to celebrate!