CREATIVITY CAN'T BE CONTAINED IN ONE CUP

 Image -

My Muse Takes Me Out to a Sidewalk Cafe

Focused

This morning, as always,

she pours creamer,

instant coffee and then sugar

into the precise center of her cup,

forming a bullseye in the bottom,

before stirring it all into a morning brew.

This is her cauldron, her ritual

for keeping her life on target.

                          by Ruth Zachary

 

The process of creating art, for me, whether
expressed in visual forms or in words, is an intuitive process,
in which connections between different images
are noticed, and demand to be recorded.
The connections between diverse images seem to
convey meanings beyond those of single images
viewed alone. They become visual metaphors. Often
similar ideas spill over from one medium to
another, as here, in a photo montage to a poem.

This post originally was created in November of 2008 © by Ruth Zachary on a former blog with the same name, but canceled by Google Dec. 2013

THE BEST LAID PLANS

Nature's Bounty                                                 © by Ruth Zachary

Hi Blog Followers!

I am sorry I have not kept up with my usual schedule for blogging… about four times per month.

I have been “blessed” with a bumper crop of apples on my two back yard trees. Usually having an organic approach to harvesting my back “forty,” meant the apple worms got about 90% of the apples. This year, cool Weather not only went just right for only minor freezing, and also eliminated a lot of the worm problems. Rain also filled the branches with glorious fruits, that clung to their mothers tenaciously, until several branches broke off from the trees, and fell to the ground, branches, apples and all. Other branches weighted by fruit hung down to the ground, so that I could mow the grass only witha careful strategy.

I pruned the low hanging branches and salvaged the apples. First I rescued the apples from the fallen and drooping branches, sorting the good from the bad, until I had filled 23 recycled grocery bags with mostly pre-ripened apples.

Not wanting to waste good food, I looked for places to give all these delicious sweet apples, I called the local Food Bank, but they were deluged with apples from other sources who had experienced the same sort of blessings. Finally the Salvation Army, which maintains a kitchen picked up my first shipment of apples.

"First shipment", because the job is not yet complete. There are more apples, now nearly ripe, that I hope to distribute to Orgs that help the homeless and needy. Plus, there will be some for home use,and to give to friends and neighbors.

So I will post my blogs as I am able, and you will know why I have missed a few dates before and after this post.

Image and Writing © by Ruth Zachary

SHORTER IS BETTER

Draft Horses, Watercolor                          © by Ruth Zachary

Noontime Interlude

I don’t remember their names,
those big draft horses waiting
during one of their trips home and
standing by the pump house patiently,

still wearing their collars,hames,

and harnesses as they drank
from the tank. Behind the fence,
their large frames withdrew to
the shade, often resting one foot
at a time on the edge of a shoe,
tranquill in their tedium.

What is
indelibly etched in my mind is the
smell of the clear air, the peaceful
almost-silence just before a breeze
exceeded the resistance of rust,
causing the windmill to start up;
exacting the shriek of metal on metal,
lacking any subtlety, as the blades
gathered speed and faded to a
transluscent gray, against blue sky,
as if protesting indentured labor,
while the horses ignored the noise.

SHORT POEMS ARE BETTER.

In my opinion, poetry is usually better when kept short. Being wordy has always been my problem and it is still true with my creative writing. The challenge for me is to find a way to shorten it.

One way to handle a long poem that  is to break it into shorter poems, each complete in itself. These poems can be identified as a suite of poems under one title.

Think of the passage of time in the poem. Try to focus upon on one small soundbite of time, not an epic. The expressing that moment of  realization stimulated by emotion, is the challenge, and then hopefully will be conveyed to the reader.

Writing Exercise: One good way to begin a poem is to write out the idea in prose. Place the steps in the right sequence. This becomes the framework for the poem. Next, remove all extra words from this structure so it conveys the basic idea.

Read it aloud. Break it up into lines that sound natural.

From there, these building block words are supplemented with ones that offer more intuitive understanding. Usually the additional words are those that appeal to the senses, sounds, smells, images, tastes, the feel of something, like touching it. Write until you feel it is finished.

Much of the content of this post appeared at another time on an earlier blog by the name, R.Z. Writestuff

Writing and Images on this post are the Copyright © of Ruth Zachary.