Juliet Cook's Blog, page 86
April 13, 2018
April 12, 2018
Another Cardinal in my front yard
A Red Cardinal in my front yard, April 12, 2018
A NEW Review of the Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, "Paloma" by Jennifer E. Hudgens at Drunk Monkeys
"“Paloma” is fascinating both in style and content. Hudgens uses interesting structural choices to create what act as staccato thoughts, which is appropriate— the collection is dedicated to their late friend Lauren, and each piece holds a memory as delicately as you would a butterfly’s wing."
from a NEW 100 Word Book Review of the Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, "Paloma" by Jennifer E. Hudgens.
thank you very much to Drunk Monkeys for this review.
read the rest HERE - http://www.drunkmonkeys.us/2017-posts/2018/4/11/100-word-book-reviews-paloma-jennifer-e-hudgens
acquire your own copy of "Paloma" within the Blood Pudding Press shop HERE - https://www.etsy.com/listing/562664430/new-paloma-by-jennifer-e-hudgens?ref=shop_home_feat_1
genuine feelings/conflicted feelings/conflicted forms of expression/death...
I have mixed feelings about poetry open mics, because on one hand I do want to share parts of my creative self, but on the other hand, I often feel uncomfortable publicly sharing my poetry unless a literary magazine or press specifically chose to accept it for publication. Sometimes publicly sharing it in front of a crowd feels a bit too close for comfort to forcing myself upon other people. Granted that doesn't necessarily make sense, because most of the people who attend poetry readings are other poetry people who chose to attend for a poetic reason, but I sometimes (possibly incorrectly) sense them looking away from me or rolling their eyes. I can visualize a specific guy looking away last time I read one of my poems in public, but that doesn't mean I know WHY he chose to look away.
If I was chosen as a featured reader (rather than random open mic reader), I sometimes feel better about it - but overall, I still tend towards feeling edgy and/or somewhat awkward and/or rather uncomfortable.
However, I don't want to be invisible or unknown or unseen or unheard or un-involved in the poetry scene. But with that said, I'm no scenester. I don't want to attend reading after reading in order to be a big part of a particular scene, and not allow myself enough time to focus upon my personal creative process. I feel the need to focus quite a bit of my time and mental energy on creative processing and writing by myself.
But on the other hand, I do like to not only read other poets, but also listen to, meet, and sometimes interact with other poets. I don't want any poets to feel un-heard (unless they want their whole process to be private), but I tend to relate to poets who are into the actual creation of poetry more than poets who are into being a big part of the poetry scene. I'm not saying some people can't be significant parts of both to an extent. I think it's a balancing act that different people balance differently.
I personally alternate between focusing on my own poetry - and focusing on other people's poetry via my small indie print press (Blood Pudding Press) and my online blog style lit mag (Thirteen Myna Birds) - and sometimes reading my poetry/listening to other's poetry in person/in public.
But the primary mental/emotional part of it for me and my personal poetic/artistic expression is via the actual writing and the actual poetry.
Also, I often feel like with my own poetry and my press poetry and my slow reading, I don't have nearly enough time to focus on just reading for the sake of reading - whether online literary magazines or print chapbooks or books. I'm not kidding when I say that I literally have HUNDREDS of unread poetry chapbooks and books in my home, because I like to support small presses by acquiring books that seem appealing to me, but also my reading is WAY slower than it used to be (before my stroke) and my brain is different than it used to be, and I can't read/process anything quickly, so it's hard to combine my own writing with a print press with an online blog style mag with reading other stuff too. That change of my brain sometimes makes me feel sad.
But I'm happy to be a creative individual, primarily poetry focused, with occasional spurts of visual art.
***
On another level of sadness, I sometimes feel like I am terrible when it comes to talking non-poetically about certain emotionally devastating issues, including death.
I don't just want to tell someone that I'm thinking of them or praying for them (even if that is true); I want to express more/deeper/more individualistically, but sometimes I don't know what to say or how to say it, unless I say it poetically/artistically in a way that's open to interpretation.
It's not that I'm unemotional or don't have real life feelings.
I think I'm good at expressing my feelings on a small scale personal level; but I'm not good at expressing my feelings on a larger scale level, in which lots of people are expressing themselves in rapid succession. I guess I'm not good at rapid succession?
I don't like to open presents fast, because I want good gifts to last as long as they can.
I don't like to express strong sadness fast, because I don't want it to come close to ebbing too soon.
I don't know if any of this makes logical sense.
I don't know what to do sometimes.
I don't know.
***
So sometimes when a poet I know suddenly dies, I don't know what to say right away. I don't want to be silent about it, but I also don't want to be someone who hardly ever says anything about someone when they're alive, but suddenly seems to have a lot to say shortly after they pass away.
But I certainly don't want it to seem as if I'm ignoring someone after they pass away.
But I also have mild aphasia based memory issues that seem to further add on to my not knowing what to say.
I do know that poet Marthe Reed suddenly passed away and I feel sad and upset about it, but I do not know what to say in a larger scale way. I did not know her very well on a personal level, but I have been aware of her poetically for years. I think I initially became aware of her through the Dusie Kollektiv, which I was involved with for several years, which was a truly wonderful, unique, creative, incredibly poetic, individualistic, expressive experience. I've read several of Marthe Reed's chapbooks and they still exist within my home space. I am aware of her Black Radish Books. I've seen and briefly met her in person at a writing conference I attended. I don't remember what we might have said to each other, which upsets me. Online, I've heard her read with my poetic collaborator j/j hastain - Marthe Reed and j/j hastain were poetic collaborators too. I truly appreciate Marthe Reed's long term genuine poetic passion and ongoing poetry flow. I feel sad that she's passed away too soon and I feel for those who knew her on a more in depth personal level. I am glad that her poetry will live on.
Sometimes I feel like I don't communicate enough on a personal emotional level, in large part because I tend towards becoming overly emotional, to the extent that loss devastates me.
But then I worry that my reluctance to express feelings about death on a personal level aside from art/poetry might cause it to seem as if I am just ignoring death and I am not.
***
Sometimes when I try my best to express my true feelings in the moment, I end up ruining things.
But sometimes if I don't express myself, I feel too close to approaching stagnation.
If I was chosen as a featured reader (rather than random open mic reader), I sometimes feel better about it - but overall, I still tend towards feeling edgy and/or somewhat awkward and/or rather uncomfortable.
However, I don't want to be invisible or unknown or unseen or unheard or un-involved in the poetry scene. But with that said, I'm no scenester. I don't want to attend reading after reading in order to be a big part of a particular scene, and not allow myself enough time to focus upon my personal creative process. I feel the need to focus quite a bit of my time and mental energy on creative processing and writing by myself.
But on the other hand, I do like to not only read other poets, but also listen to, meet, and sometimes interact with other poets. I don't want any poets to feel un-heard (unless they want their whole process to be private), but I tend to relate to poets who are into the actual creation of poetry more than poets who are into being a big part of the poetry scene. I'm not saying some people can't be significant parts of both to an extent. I think it's a balancing act that different people balance differently.
I personally alternate between focusing on my own poetry - and focusing on other people's poetry via my small indie print press (Blood Pudding Press) and my online blog style lit mag (Thirteen Myna Birds) - and sometimes reading my poetry/listening to other's poetry in person/in public.
But the primary mental/emotional part of it for me and my personal poetic/artistic expression is via the actual writing and the actual poetry.
Also, I often feel like with my own poetry and my press poetry and my slow reading, I don't have nearly enough time to focus on just reading for the sake of reading - whether online literary magazines or print chapbooks or books. I'm not kidding when I say that I literally have HUNDREDS of unread poetry chapbooks and books in my home, because I like to support small presses by acquiring books that seem appealing to me, but also my reading is WAY slower than it used to be (before my stroke) and my brain is different than it used to be, and I can't read/process anything quickly, so it's hard to combine my own writing with a print press with an online blog style mag with reading other stuff too. That change of my brain sometimes makes me feel sad.
But I'm happy to be a creative individual, primarily poetry focused, with occasional spurts of visual art.
***
On another level of sadness, I sometimes feel like I am terrible when it comes to talking non-poetically about certain emotionally devastating issues, including death.
I don't just want to tell someone that I'm thinking of them or praying for them (even if that is true); I want to express more/deeper/more individualistically, but sometimes I don't know what to say or how to say it, unless I say it poetically/artistically in a way that's open to interpretation.
It's not that I'm unemotional or don't have real life feelings.
I think I'm good at expressing my feelings on a small scale personal level; but I'm not good at expressing my feelings on a larger scale level, in which lots of people are expressing themselves in rapid succession. I guess I'm not good at rapid succession?
I don't like to open presents fast, because I want good gifts to last as long as they can.
I don't like to express strong sadness fast, because I don't want it to come close to ebbing too soon.
I don't know if any of this makes logical sense.
I don't know what to do sometimes.
I don't know.
***
So sometimes when a poet I know suddenly dies, I don't know what to say right away. I don't want to be silent about it, but I also don't want to be someone who hardly ever says anything about someone when they're alive, but suddenly seems to have a lot to say shortly after they pass away.
But I certainly don't want it to seem as if I'm ignoring someone after they pass away.
But I also have mild aphasia based memory issues that seem to further add on to my not knowing what to say.
I do know that poet Marthe Reed suddenly passed away and I feel sad and upset about it, but I do not know what to say in a larger scale way. I did not know her very well on a personal level, but I have been aware of her poetically for years. I think I initially became aware of her through the Dusie Kollektiv, which I was involved with for several years, which was a truly wonderful, unique, creative, incredibly poetic, individualistic, expressive experience. I've read several of Marthe Reed's chapbooks and they still exist within my home space. I am aware of her Black Radish Books. I've seen and briefly met her in person at a writing conference I attended. I don't remember what we might have said to each other, which upsets me. Online, I've heard her read with my poetic collaborator j/j hastain - Marthe Reed and j/j hastain were poetic collaborators too. I truly appreciate Marthe Reed's long term genuine poetic passion and ongoing poetry flow. I feel sad that she's passed away too soon and I feel for those who knew her on a more in depth personal level. I am glad that her poetry will live on.
Sometimes I feel like I don't communicate enough on a personal emotional level, in large part because I tend towards becoming overly emotional, to the extent that loss devastates me.
But then I worry that my reluctance to express feelings about death on a personal level aside from art/poetry might cause it to seem as if I am just ignoring death and I am not.
***
Sometimes when I try my best to express my true feelings in the moment, I end up ruining things.
But sometimes if I don't express myself, I feel too close to approaching stagnation.
April 11, 2018
April 10, 2018
Juliet created by Mish Murphy
One excitingly wonderful thing about having poetry/artist friends is that they can unexpectedly turn a photo of you into art. This is a picture Mish Murphy created based on a photo of me. Thank you very much to Mish Murphy.
April 5, 2018
is my embarrassment a brain glitch?
One thing that bothers me about myself is that I too frequently feel embarrassed about things that aren't even worthy of embarrassment. Like it's not uncommon for me to wake up feeling embarrassed by something I posted on my own facebook page the night before - and so I figure there must be a valid reason I woke up feeling embarrassed about it - but then when I read it, more often than not, it was just me expressing my own thoughts/feelings about something. So am I embarrassed by my own genuine thoughts/feelings? Am I embarrassed about semi-publicly expressing myself? Am I worried what other people might think? Or what?
I think I have a conflicted brain, because the genuine part of me is drawn towards expressing myself genuinely, regardless of what other people do or don't think. I've been like that for years. I'm pretty open to honestly expressing how I feel about things, but then I also question the validity and depth of the way I feel about things, even though they're my own feelings, so why am I questioning their validity. It's not like I'm stating my feelings as hardcore facts or something.
So for this morning's example, I woke up feeling embarrassed more than three hours before my alarm was set. I felt embarrassed that I had posted links to several old songs by This Mortal Coil (even though I liked the songs and that's why I posted them) and I felt embarrassed about this long-ish personal commentary that I placed above one of the songs. I felt embarrassed that I backtracked to 20+ years ago and I felt embarrassed about the age I am now. None of this embarrassment really makes sense. The worst thing I did was over-share my own thoughts and it's not as if anyone is being forced to read them, so what's the big deal? I'm tired of my brain waking up feeling embarrassed by me being an expressive individual.
Maybe this is part of the reason why I'm a writer. It feels important for me to openly, creatively express myself, but I'd rather do it on paper (or on the screen) rather than expressing myself in person and feeling semi-randomly embarrassed the next day. But even though my predominant form of creative expression is poetry and I enjoy writing poems and having them selected for publication, I often feel edgy and awkward and borderline embarrassed about being part of a public poetry reading, because then I have to read my words in front of people in person, which sometimes feels too presumptuous or assumptive, even though it's not.
Back to waking up hours before I was supposed to and feeling embarrassed about what I had posted on my own facebook page, I also had a headache when I woke up, so I didn't have the energy to re-read what I had written, in order to determine if it was truly worthy of embarrassment. I didn't delete my posts; I just changed their "Shared" status to where only I could see them. Am I turning into someone who only likes talking to myself? Well...no, because if that was the case then why would I be writing this and why would I take the time to submit my poems instead of just piling them up in boxes in my house? I don't like hiding things. I like sharing. Even if I feel semi-randomly embarrassed by parts of what I share. Sigh.
***
I'm now adding one of my embarrassing feeling posts from yesterday because once I re-read it today, it really wasn't all that embarrassing - and even if it is, it's the way I sometimes feel anyway.
"Sometimes when your mind backtracks into your past, it feels weird thinking that your own interpretation of your past self might only exist in your own eyes and mind and not in anyone else's (except for their own interpretations, which might be significantly different from your own).I'll bet I remember things about others that they don't remember about me - and I'll bet others remember things about me that I don't remember - maybe nobody remembers anything the same.Significant others in my present that are still connected with their past in parts of present life, I wonder if they can imagine how it feels to mostly only be connected with your past significant others in dreams and your own minds (possibly convoluted) memories, because you don't have personal present contact with most of the individuals you used to be significantly involved with.Maybe it's like that for a lot of people. I don't know. I mostly just know what it's like for me and what other people choose to share with me, from their interpretations."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjywQOuzeSY
I think I have a conflicted brain, because the genuine part of me is drawn towards expressing myself genuinely, regardless of what other people do or don't think. I've been like that for years. I'm pretty open to honestly expressing how I feel about things, but then I also question the validity and depth of the way I feel about things, even though they're my own feelings, so why am I questioning their validity. It's not like I'm stating my feelings as hardcore facts or something.
So for this morning's example, I woke up feeling embarrassed more than three hours before my alarm was set. I felt embarrassed that I had posted links to several old songs by This Mortal Coil (even though I liked the songs and that's why I posted them) and I felt embarrassed about this long-ish personal commentary that I placed above one of the songs. I felt embarrassed that I backtracked to 20+ years ago and I felt embarrassed about the age I am now. None of this embarrassment really makes sense. The worst thing I did was over-share my own thoughts and it's not as if anyone is being forced to read them, so what's the big deal? I'm tired of my brain waking up feeling embarrassed by me being an expressive individual.
Maybe this is part of the reason why I'm a writer. It feels important for me to openly, creatively express myself, but I'd rather do it on paper (or on the screen) rather than expressing myself in person and feeling semi-randomly embarrassed the next day. But even though my predominant form of creative expression is poetry and I enjoy writing poems and having them selected for publication, I often feel edgy and awkward and borderline embarrassed about being part of a public poetry reading, because then I have to read my words in front of people in person, which sometimes feels too presumptuous or assumptive, even though it's not.
Back to waking up hours before I was supposed to and feeling embarrassed about what I had posted on my own facebook page, I also had a headache when I woke up, so I didn't have the energy to re-read what I had written, in order to determine if it was truly worthy of embarrassment. I didn't delete my posts; I just changed their "Shared" status to where only I could see them. Am I turning into someone who only likes talking to myself? Well...no, because if that was the case then why would I be writing this and why would I take the time to submit my poems instead of just piling them up in boxes in my house? I don't like hiding things. I like sharing. Even if I feel semi-randomly embarrassed by parts of what I share. Sigh.
***
I'm now adding one of my embarrassing feeling posts from yesterday because once I re-read it today, it really wasn't all that embarrassing - and even if it is, it's the way I sometimes feel anyway.
"Sometimes when your mind backtracks into your past, it feels weird thinking that your own interpretation of your past self might only exist in your own eyes and mind and not in anyone else's (except for their own interpretations, which might be significantly different from your own).I'll bet I remember things about others that they don't remember about me - and I'll bet others remember things about me that I don't remember - maybe nobody remembers anything the same.Significant others in my present that are still connected with their past in parts of present life, I wonder if they can imagine how it feels to mostly only be connected with your past significant others in dreams and your own minds (possibly convoluted) memories, because you don't have personal present contact with most of the individuals you used to be significantly involved with.Maybe it's like that for a lot of people. I don't know. I mostly just know what it's like for me and what other people choose to share with me, from their interpretations."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjywQOuzeSY
