Lately I keep tripping over people who are either “building a legacy” or are trying to convince me that I should be doing one too. It’s beginning to make me all kinds of grumpy. These strangers are telling me that my life will only have “meaning” if I do stuff that will somehow “impact the future” after I’m long-gone. That one makes me scratch my head. It’s even a bit intimidating. Me, I’m still walking towards my dream and I’m…
[Writer’s Note: This post was written at the height of the Bitcoin madness, before it imploded and left gaping holes all over the place. It seems to me that I’m not the only one who got confused by the Bitcoin virtual world. Makes me feel less stupid, that.] ACK! I’ve been wandering around, lost, in the Bitcoin virtual currency world these past few weeks in (another) failed attempt to understand what the heck is going on with that. I chose…
In a world of seven billion-plus souls, one of our deepest human needs often goes unfulfilled – the need to be heard. That may be one reason why the Spoken Word movement, once a subculture on the fringes of the mainstream, is gaining widespread acceptance around the world. THE RISE OF SPOKEN WORD “Spoken word poetry” was born in Chicago in 1984, when a construction worker, Marc Smith, started reading poetry at a popular club and encouraged others to join…
Ever since people started talking to one another, they’ve explored the power of words. The power of LOGOS (the Word) has been the fundamental foundation for building a religion, a culture, a movement, a life. Words can move you. Words can move other people. That’s probably why everybody talks so much.
I was looking through an old poetry journal of mine, looking for something to use in a post. I found a folded sheet with a poem by a dear friend who died recently, Pat Masumoto. The poem was dated September 10, 2015. I remembered that Pat asked me to read this poem for her at a Maui Live Poets gathering she wasn’t able to attend because of conflicts in her hectic schedule. Memories came flooding back and I was missing…
Annette Simmons, in her excellent book about writing memoirs, WHOEVER TELLS THE BEST STORY WINS, advises, “…we must learn to conjure up genuine emotions and relive the story in our imagination in a way that feels significant to us first so our story feels personally significant to others.” As with storytellers, so it is with poets. One of the best ways for a poet to connect with her audience is to tell a story in a way that feels immediate…
