Lingual X

Insomniac Poet, Feminist Activist, Bookworm, Flashmonkey, and Serious Knitting Needle Wielding Yarn Snob

What do you do about writer's block?

"I don't believe in it. All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don't get plumber's block, and doctors don't get doctor's block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expects sympathy for it?"
~Philip Pullman

I've got two blogs, and I hope you'll visit them both!

At Lingual Tremors, my main blog, you'll find various insomniatic ruminations about poetry, politics and the general state of the world from a radical feminist, sassy, over-caffeinated and slightly punk'd perspective. It's a site dedicated to my sporadic reflections on feminism, poetry, politics, and pushing the liminal sphere of social change.

This blog draws on many poetic and feminist philosophies. I am greatly influenced by poets committed to social justice like Nikki Giovanni, whose epigraph appears on my banner.

"Rage is to writers what water is to fish. A laid-back writer is like an orgasmic prostitute--
an anomaly." ~Nikki Giovanni

"In the interstices of language lie powerful secrets of the culture." ~Adrienne Rich

“I think that the job of poetry, its political job, is to refresh the idea of justice, which is going dead in us all the time.” ~Robert Hass

I started my "LX 365," in 2007 as part of the "365 Project" to take 1 photograph a day. For quite a while now, I've been increasingly addicted to capturing NYC life through my camera lens. I think it's an obvious extension of my poetry: poems=images. However, this visual poetry is a little more immediately accessible.

I was going to quit my 365 project after I posted my last picture for 2007. And then? And then, I began to reflect on the best times I had in 2007. Too many of them were spent behind the camera, learning how to look differently at the world around me. Too much of 2007--in a good way--was spent trying to translate my everyday experiences into images in a new way. It was challenging, frustrating, exhilarating.

I came to love the quiet moments at night when I looked at the pictures I shot that day and evaluated them. I loved discovering something I've never fully achieved in my poetry--a real sense of humor on the page. Some of my pictures are really funny and, I think, capture my sense of joy in the world around me. Because I am a political poet (and blogger), my writing is often tinged with the negative, the critical, the urgent. But in photographs I discovered my ability to express the joy I feel everyday (I love that old Tasha Tudor book, Take Joy!). And, I loved being a part of a community trying to do the same thing. I relished the moments when I had time to look at the other 365 blogs to see how people were changing and advancing their craft.

While I didn't always post once a day, I did manage to take 365 photographs in 2007. I am continuing this blog in 2008, so please stop to see what I'm seeing (and capturing!) in 2008.

"The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own." ~Susan Sontag