Publishing is all well and good, but doesn’t a writer write to inspire the people they surround themselves with? More importantly does not a writer write to bring serenity to their soul? Yeah, I post my stuff on my blog for the world to see, but I do that so that I can share my rambling with those that close to me. Each one of those poems I have written has a part of my heart in them. I don’t think I would want a publishing company to tell me my work isn’t good enough.
I would love to be published, but not for the sake of immortality. Frankly, immortality is overrated. Even with your stuff in print you can be forgotten. The only way to be truly immortal is to touch the heart of a person so deeply that they remember you whether they know your name or not. Immortality can be as simple as a smile given to a person down on their luck, or that comforting word that makes them smile in turn.The reason I want my stuff published isn’t to make a living, but to share the stories that have dropped into my mind with others. I want to inspire others. If one person reads something I’ve written and remembers it fondly, then I have done my job as writer. That doesn’t mean I am immortal either. It just means that my words touched another person’s heart.

If a person's goal is to be published just to be immortal, it would seem to me that that person does not get the point of writing. For me writing is an outlet; a way for me to express what I am feeling, a way to get emotions out that I can't normally express to people, or a way to get some story down that I thought of. I think that writing just for the sake of writing is great and if a person happens to get published, all the better for them. But I really don't think it makes a difference. Published writing is more easily accessible to the public but that doesn't necessarily make a published work better than something that was unpublished. If someone hears something or reads something and comes away with a thought, an idea or a feeling then that is what writing is all about.

I want to agree with Okuni that if just one person takes something of meaning away from her performance, her poetry will live forever because I am sure that this is true of anything we do that transforms another's life. I am jealous of those people. I want to hear, and if possible read, Okuni's poetry. Being published may assure Dr. J. that his words will be immortal, that is, if his chapbooks survive. For me, being published would make it possible for my words to be shared with many more people. Its epehmeral and immediate nature makes Okuni's poetry more rare and more precious. At the same time, its a bit sad that so few people get to experience it.
What do YOU think?

Now for books!! On vacation I read 5 books.
1. Magician's Guild by Trudi Canavan - it's British and not available in the US. A poor girl is angry about the yearly Purges that sweep all the poorer members of the City out of the slums and away from their homes. She is so angry she throws a rock at the Magician's that oversee the Purge. Surprise! The rock magically breaks through the Magicians' protection and knocks one magician unconscious. Now the search is on for this untrained magician who is hidden by the Thieves until her strong uncontrolled magic threatens everyone around her. Pretty darn exciting! There are two more books in the series.
2. Dear Miss Breed by Joanne Oppenheim. I mentioned this biography earlier. The book is about Japanese American children and the letters they wrote to one caring children's librarian in San Diego during their internment in World War II. Excellent look at the issues of internment and the humiliations these children and their families suffered.
3. Hedging by Annette Myers. An adult murder/suspense/mystery thingie book. I picked it up for free last year at Book Expo. Diverting. A woman finds herself in danger, chased by thugs who want to kill her but she has no idea why. She has amnesia! When she finally finds freinds who remember her, she still has to unravel the past weeks and why people around her are dropping like flies. (Well, not really.) I kept reading. I did want to know who she was and what had happened. But she kept fainting every time she re-met someone from her past. And she was modern so she couldn't even blame her corset!
4. Enthusiasm by Polly Shulman. Oh, this one was fun! Julia's best friend, Ashleigh, is the kind of girl who goes on months long crazes - like an Arthurian craze where everyone has to speak in "thees" and "thous". Right before 10th grade begins, Julia gets Ashleigh to read Julia's favorite book, Pride and Prejudice. Yep! Next thing you know Ashleigh is calling Julia, "My dear Miss Lefkowitz" and decrying jeans as "revealing the shape of our lower limbs". Ashleigh talks Julia into crashing a nearby boys' boarding school's fall dance in search of "suitable gentlemen" of "breeding and refinement" and they fall in love with the same guy. What follows is a very Austen-like comedy of errors.
5. Sweet Potato Queen's Big-Ass Cookbook and Financial Planner by Jill Conner Browne. I'm not sure you-all want to know. This book is hilarious, raunchy and full of extremely dangerous recipes. Definitely a girl-read.

Last night I went to a poetry open mic, and the hostess (with mic and PA system) did not show up. Three of us poets did - and it resulted in a really serious discussion about publishing and the value of words preserved on paper. One of our number was a very shy guy in his early twenties. He writes elaborate and evocative blurts, highly emotive and far from the bland job he has (working nights in a supermarket.) Another is the Hindi writer and educator Dr. Joshi Hosni. He writes in a very formal English, and his new chapbook is a tranlation of his Hindi poems. Dr. J writes about the textrues of everyday life - and is almost evangelistic about convincing his audience to join his point of view. (It is also notable that this gentleman is a Brahmin, an educated and monied upper class person.) Then there was me, female spontaneous poet with nothing published lately. Definately not upper class.
So, Dr. J's stance was that being published will make you immortal, that being on paper is the most important part of writing. Shy guy wants desperately to publish, but feels his stuff is too personal. I do on-the-spot pieces which savor and include the works of other poets I have appreciated in an eening. My stance is: you don't have to publish to be immortal. If you create an authentic place that you can share with your audience, and even one person carries away something that enriches his or her life or point of view, then you live in that other person's enlarged life, and you are immortal. What do you think?

I'm in North Carolina now - not my home state - and away from my books but the last post makes me think. I feel that students can learn about literature by reading books they enjoy. However......if a book is required reading, no matter how good it is, a significant portion of the class will be resistant to it. Why is that? I know that's the way it was, and sometimes still is, with me. And I can't remember what I was required to read in high school, except for Shakespeare, Poe and Silas Marner, either. But I can't remember a lot of things anymore.

Current Read: One Good Night by Mercedes Lackey
Just Finished: Tales of Pain and Wonder by Caitlin R. Kiernan

I'm a Parkland graduate :::rolls eyes::: and I have often listened to what other people were required to read in school. And I never had to read most of it. Maybe it was because I was taking business classes (I think, it was ages ago) and the reading list was either shorter or just different. But books like Animal Farm, 1984 were not part of the list. Yes I had to read Shakespeare (actually enjoyed him) Edgar Allen Poe (enjoyed him too) and Old Man and the Sea, to name a few. I'm sure there are more, but none of them really sticks out in my brain. There was one about a utopian civilization that was kinda messed up. The people were on drugs or something... I kinda remember it but can never remember the name, just that it was strange. But I digress.

My point is that in school none of the books that I was required to read really stuck with me. Except maybe Poe. Poe is still very cool.

Wouldn't it be better if maybe the required reading was something the students would enjoy. Granted I understand some authors and their writings are used to teach different writing styles like Iambic Pentameter and Narrative and what an antagonist and protagonist are. But wouldn't it be more interesting if they threw in something a little different. Throw in some Stephen King, John Grisham or Michael Crichton.

I don't know. Maybe this is just the midnight mutterings of someone who just needs to go to bed. But all I know is that the books I remember reading in high school were not the books I read for any class I ever took. Except Poe. Poe is cool.

Alternative history makes my skin crawl, but!!!!!!
The "1633" series by Eric Flint has some really hilarious scenarios! Here's the setup - an unidentified force lifts the relatively modern town of Grantville, West Virginia, into the middle of the Thirty Years War in Europe! So we have modern technology, U. S. ideas of government and social relations, gender, truth, justice and the American way...effectively changing the history of everything. Pretty soon the West Virginians have allied with Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, and formed the Conferated Principalities of Europe, and making some really angry, really powerful enemies. This made me brush up on the European history of the 17th century. Yow! And fun.