Special BlogDay 2007 - 5 for Friday

... there is something lost when forms are open. There is beauty found in submitting you're self to a guide, in giving yourself, your freedom, over to a master. May this be God or a form, either way, there is beauty is submission that is lost in the passion of free will. Yes e. e. cummings is sexy to read. Yes Billy Collins has great images. But both miss the beauty of Frost, Shakespeare and Milton who set out to say great things (both cummings and Collins have set out for this) and mindfully craft their words to the image and the form while doing so.

Read the remainder of this posting here. And then check out Chase Whittemore writing at nighthink

The origins of music, like the origins of poetry, are buried in the dust - make that the strata of dust- of time, but we know that they've been hand-in-hand, or perhaps heart-to-heart, for eons. The lyric voice of poetry is named for the lyre which, an age or two ago and an ocean away, often accompanied it; the term "lyric poetry" has been in use in English since at least 1581, and is used to denote, as the Oxford English Dictionary has it, poetry

adapted to the lyre, meant to be sung, pertaining to or characteristic of song. Now used as the name for short poems (whether or not intended to be sung), usually divided into stanzas or strophes, and directly expressing the poet's own thoughts or sentiments.

Read the remainder of the posting here. Then check out Jeff Davis writing at Natures

To Spite the Gloaming

When no great thoughts have I to tell or sing
I then to tomes and library retire
to fuel inspiration—reading’s the thing.

All seems said or written before. What sting
to burn for creations my own but tire
when no great thoughts have I to tell or sing!

Stories tell themselves of a calm evening,
and tale-tellers to tell but lies require
to fuel imagination. Reading thing

upon thing – story upon fable to cling
and struggle with the truth of life entire
when no great thoughts have we to tell or sing.

And so it is our fine-crafted lines fling
across blank pages – spread rhyme like fire
to fuel inspiration. Reading’s the thing

that makes us write of life winter to spring
throughout cycles unbounded. But we tire
when no great thoughts have we to tell or sing;
to fuel inspiration, reading’ the thing.

© 2004 David Pitchford

And then read more of David's writing at BitterHermit's Hideaway

David is

Museum Editor for the Illinois State Museum; President of Poets & Writers Literary Forum of Springfield, Illinois; MA recipient (UIS: English, emphasis in poetry); Founder and Publishing Editor of Prism Quarterly; Author of three novels and numerous poems; Bitter Hermit (SFReader.com); all around word artist, editor, consultant, pedant and purveyor.

I would put it in a nutshell, but I’m a few pounds overlimit . . .

And then shifting gears from verse to green

Green Wombat takes public transport to work, uses compact fluorescent light bulbs in the Berkeley burrow, and dries the washing on a clothesline. But when it comes to air travel, the wombat is a carbon criminal. The conundrum of being an environmental journalist for a national magazine with a global outlook is that the more I write about green technology the more I fly. So far this year, Green Wombat has logged more than 70,000 air miles, which according to some carbon calculators means I'm personally responsible for about 30,000 pounds of CO2 emissions from my frequent flying. In contrast, the average Californian's carbon footprint from all activities is 26,301 pounds, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

Read the remainder of the posting here. Then click through to read more of Todd Woody writing at the Green Wombat.

And finally to complete this 5 for Friday, we head to the Far East to read about all things Shanghai, you need to read the Shanghaiist

You can read about

Prof Yu Dan (于丹), 38, now with cleavage
Probably the most popular exponent of Confucius ever, Yu Dan, has found her way back into the media spotlight -- this time in an IHT article which places her at the centre of the current rage for China's ancient philosophies. Her book has sold 4.2 million legal copies and about 6 million pirated versions. But wait a minute, Yu is not even a Confucian academic. She is a media professor at the Beijing Normal University, certainly one who understands that a bit of cleavage will do your popularity good, as this latest picture of her shows. We too ended up buying her DVD's and found her sounding shockingly similar to our pastor back home, except that she was preaching Confucius and quoting Hegel at the same time, and basically anything else that fit her message.

Zhang Huimin, 8, runs her way to the Olympics 2016
Little Zhang Huimin, who stands at just 1.25 meters tall and weighs a mere 20kg, has run from Sanya, Hainan all the way to Beijing, wearing out 20 pairs of shoes and covering a staggering 3,560 km in 55 days. That's an average of 1.5 marathons per day! Her goal is to win the marathon at the 2016 Olympic Games (and only God knows for now where that will be held). See that man next to her on the motorbike? That's her father, and her trainer who has made her wake up everyday at 3am for training since the day little girl could run. Starting with 3 km a day since she was three, Zhang was hitting 23 km daily by the time she was seven.

In Headliners. People who made the news this week.