5 for Friday

A Billy Collins trail "5 for Friday" featuring

1 - Word Lovers Unite!

If you are a word lover, you are in the right place. Think of this blog as a virtual bulletin board for words that surprise, inspire, connect, and resonate.

2 - A lesson learned

I am a first year teacher at an "alternative school" for at-risk students in Santa Cruz CA. I am examining and reflecting on my practice and my life around it.

3 - Constant Growing Amazement

Amazed LDS wife, mother to 5, grandmother to a growing herd. Loves life. If it is creative, I love to do it!

4 - The Borrowed Poem

Be patient that I address you in a poem. There is no other fit medium.

5 - MPL's Blog where the top read posts in the last couple of days were:

• More Like "Lame Monster"
• The Biggest and Baddest Bear Ever
• Required Reading Before Seeing Pirates of Caribbean 3
• Big Bad Texas Gator
• 8 Ways Pirates of Carribean steals from Return of the Jedi

Enjoy!

Me~Tronome

Continuing the Billy Collins trail, we find ourselves in the Windy City with Larry Sawyer:

Poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in publications such as the Chicago Tribune, Court Green, Vanitas, MiPOesias, The Prague Literary Review, Coconut, Exquisite Corpse, Ygdrasil, the Miami Sun Post, and Ocho. Poetry was recently anthologized in The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century (Cracked Slab Books, 2007). Larry Sawyer curates the Myopic Poetry Reading Series in Wicker Park, Chicago and edits the online literary magazine www.milkmag.org.

Enjoy!

Merisi's Vienna For Beginners

Continuing the Billy Collins trail, we find ourselves in Vienna where:

All images are original works copyright of Merisi, and are protected under International Copyright laws. They are for online viewing purposes only and may not be copied, saved to a computer hard drive, reproduced or distributed without her express permission.

The images are delightful, wonderful, dramatic... help me come up with additional adjectives for this wonderful photo site.

Recent posts reveal the following headlines:

• Promise of Spring
• Bewitching
• Metamorphosis
• Elephant in a Porcelain Store?
• Walking from Liliengasse to St. Stephan's Cathedra...
• Women in Vienna

Enjoy!

Bibliolatry

On the Billy Collins trail, we find Bibliolatry:

I believe reading is essential to living a good life. This blog is my attempt to share my favorite (and not so favorite) works. Recommendations and opinions are welcome.

Where you can find the following recent posts:

• The Longest Title EVER
• Do you read a poem a day?
• The First Annual Bibliolatry Awards

Enjoy!

Five for Friday

From the "Billy Collins" trail today we find these Five for Friday:

1 - Today I am happy (interpret that ecstatic if you want) to bring you my interview with Linda Urban. She is the author of A Crooked Kind Of Perfect, a novel that was so so so good, that I had to read it TWICE within the same week. You can read my review of A Crooked Kind of Perfect here. It has been nominated for a Cybils. And it appeared on the Amazon's Best of 2007 list. Be sure to visit her official site and her livejournal site.

Read the interview and then cruise around the rest of Becky's site

2 - I think it is time for me to accept the fact that 2007 will become the last year I read without reading glasses. My vision has always been 20/20 and is still good. However, during my last few annual eye exams, I seemed to "qualify for" reading glasses. I think I got my first pair 4-5 years ago. I'd wear them once in a while, mostly for fun. This last year, I noticed that I needed glasses to read small print directions, etc. Lately, I have noticed that reading in bed lasts about 10 minutes before I fall asleep.

Read the remainder of this post then cruise around A Year of Reading.

3 -Last night was our staff party. We normally have some sort of gift exchange with a theme to make it funny or thoughtful or whatever, like last year it was bring something to show what kind of super power you would like to have. The year before the theme was bring something that tells us something we don't know about you. These were fun and provided lots of laughs. However this year we were all talking about how we just wanted something easy. I suggested a book exchange. We did it and it was great. I am a friggin genius.

Everyone had to bring one of their favorite books. We did one of the ridiculous games to figure out who drew when. When you unwrapped the book you had to guess who brought it. When the person was guessed correctly they had to say why it was one of their favorite books.

Read the remainder of the book exchange and then more at Vindauga.

4 - I don't give out a wish list to friends or loved ones for myself. I share lists of needs my kids have, and one or two "wishes" b/c we just don't really do the Commercialized Christmas thing. My extended family is too huge, now...we all just get together for a family reunion, and that is a blessing in and of itself. The family has grown so that my Mom and Dad have 21 grandkids and 15 great grandkids, now.

Read the remainder of the 'wish list' and then more at Take Time to Smell the Coffee.

5 - Since I wrote why I don’t put a price tag on my poems and that I believe if people want to have a job full of monetary reward, the role of “poet” may not be the best job for you, I want to write the other side of this—that while I believe that if you are writing poetry *solely* to make money, you may have boarded the wrong train—I honestly do believe poets and all artists should be paid better AND well for their work.

What? You ask, You just wrote a whole post how you give away poems and you aren’t in this to make money. Yes. That is true. But do I believe a poem is worth as much as “The Break-Up” starring Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn. Yes, I do. In fact, I think poets *should* be paid as much those two, and especially as much as Cameron Diaz—actually *I* should be paid for having to sit through a Cameron Diaz movie, but that’s another issue.

Read the rest of this posting and then more at First Draft: Leonardo likes Gulls

5 for Friday

On the Billy Collins trail today we find:

1 -

Like Donnell Alexander says, "It's about completing the task of living with enough spontaneity to splurge some of it on bystanders, to share with others working through their own travails a little of your bonus life."

But, it's mostly the kind of place that folks looking for "girls and cars" stumble across by accident.

Visit Tiny Cat Pants for more of this...

2 -

Regardless of their current eternal standing, people who leave shopping carts haphazardly in parking lots may end up going to hell. I know there’s no direct reference to intentionally orphaned buggies in scripture, but I think it may be implied.

read more of Michael Snyder, the author of My Name is Russell Fink, here

3 -

My new chapbook is out! Another Circle of Delight has hit the stands (well, okay this blog and my website). I did a preview reading in Crockett at Valona Cafe a couple months ago. Publisher David Alpaugh (Small Poetry Press) found the cover art, which thrilled me. Click on the cover art to see a bigger version. The title and cover art refer to the keynote poem (is that an actual term?), "A Walk After Reading Dante's Paradiso."

Find out more about the chapbook and author Rachel Dacus here.

4 -

An American woman, newly embarking on the second half of her century here on earth, reflects on Life in General, and her own in particular

Read more on Becca's Byline here.

5 -

"What it all comes to is a confused and incoherent mixture of stories which are as old as the hills but are still unfinished" Ward Six is a daily digest of book reviews, literary analysis, personal observations, anecdotes, and opinions.

visit Ward 6 here

Optimistic Voices

Susan, another find along the Billy Collins trail, writes about herself:

I'm a committed-to-aging-well, unable-to-do-anything-in-25 words-or-less, ruby-slipper-wearing eternal optimist, attempting to figure out the circuitous journey I call my life: where I've been, where I am, where I'm going and who will be my traveling companions, continued or new. In my 5+ decades on this planet, I've realized that change is not necessarily worse, just different; I've learned that saying "I don't know" has become incredibly liberating; I've intuited that there is no such thing as perfection (whether it's another person or a seashell); I have become less demanding and more forgiving/flexible by the relaxation of my guidelines; and I've figured out that, even though I'll always be an Instant Gratification Leo, sometimes delaying the reward can heighten the pleasure, too. I am more discerning to minimize the negative influences in my daily dealings (while still understanding the importance of moral obligations), and attempt to surround myself with people, activities and things that bring me joy - I want to make every glorious moment count... and I'm committed to making this world a better place, one day at a time...

Recent posts are listed as

• Am I Too Blue? (Lucinda Williams)
• My Friends (Dar Williams)
• What Do You Love More Than Love (Dar Williams)
• The Last Fare of the Day (Richard Shindell)
• Seasons of Love (from the musical Rent)
• My Way (Paul Anka... sung by Frank Sinatra)
• Nightswimming (R.E.M.)
• If I Only Had a Brain (The Scarecrow)

Consider adding Optimistic Voices to your RSS Reader of choice

The Collective Blog of Stephen and Erin

a double hit today, another on the Thursday 13 meme that happened also happened to be found on the Billy Collins trail.

They have a published schedule:

• SUNDAY - HymnSunday (stephen)
• MONDAY - Favorite Poems (erin)
• TUESDAY - Weekly Poll (stephen/erin)
• WEDNESDAY - What We've Been Hearing/Watching/Reading (stephen/erin)
• THURSDAY - Thursday 13 (erin)
• FRIDAY - Pic o' the Week-o (stephen/erin)

So you can add this site to your RSS Reader and check in on your favorite day!

Third Mom - Margie

"Let me tell you about all of my mommies!" said my five-year-old son one day as we sat in our kitchen. He began counting: "There's my first mother in Korea, then Mrs. Cho (his foster mother), and then you - you're my third mom!"

So begins the tales you can find at Third Mom where Margie writes:

I'm Margie, mom of two amazing Korean teens, wife of 30+ years. Third Mom is where I think out loud about Korean adoption, which has profoundly changed the lives of my children, their families, and my life, too. All points of view are welcome.

And where she realizes:

I've been getting a lot of questions recently like these: "So how does it feel to have P away at college?" "What's the biggest difference you notice now that he's away?" "Have your family's dynamics changed?"

There are so many levels I can answer these on - the personal, the emotional, the mundane, for a start. And yes, adoption.

The personal - I just plain miss him. It's hard, REALLY hard, to accept that his wings are unfurled, and once in flight, he may end up far away from us. It's life, it's a good thing, it's the way it should be - but it's really hard for me to accept.

Read the remainder of Margie's post here.

I think you'll realize this is a place to stop frequently. Add Third Mom to your RSS Reader of choice.

RAPSU Blog

On the Billy Collins trail, we stop at the RAPSU blog:

A membership organization for anyone 50 and older, presenting programs of intellectual stimulation and fellowship.

A variety of postings like Sticks and Stones:

A fresh alphabet spells success

---

Jera and Brad Deal turned an inventive letter-hunting game with their daughter into a multimillion-dollar business. Sean Cole paid them a visit and did some alphabet searching.

---

Doug Krizner: The TV show Sesame Street's known for creative ways of introducing the alphabet to kids. One of my favorites was the Beetles singing, "Letter B." Then there was the muppet in the back alley with letters in his coat jacket: "Psst, wanna buy an O?"

Marketplace's Sean Cole actually stumbled onto a business that's kinda doing the same thing.

Read the remainder of the post here.

Or this one quoting Ben Franklin:

Benjamin Franklin once said, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." What would this founding father think about our nation's current health care system, where the focus is on disease care rather than health, on paying bills and shifting costs rather than on preventing disease and dealing with the chronic conditions that are affecting more and more of our nation's population? Where insurance will pay for quadruple bypass heart surgery but not to encourage healthy behaviors that could prevent heart disease?

Read the full insightful post from the AARP on health care here.

For the 50-something crowd, this is a place to add to the RSS Reader of choice!

Jay Prickett

Greetings, and welcome to my new site. The latest entries of my blog can be found immediately below. If you want to wade through older posts, follow the archive link in the header. Or for a hand picked selection of entries that I thought were better than the rest, click the articles link above. For more information about me, visit the bio page, where you can find links to all the avenues of the internet I run through, as well as contact info, should you wish to drop me a line.

From his intro to the new template:

I made the decision to switch to the new version of Movable Type after some major issues with both installs of WordPress. This, combined with the decision to unite my blog and my front page, will mean little to you, dear reader. But I will explain the few differences anyway. The first difference is that there is no longer a front page and a blog, instead both are now a part of the main site. There is still a shortened version of the linkroll and my latest Twitter post are in the sidebar (and both are still pulled into my tumblelog, along with whatever random crap I run across on the net). The most recent blog posts are listed in truncated form on the front page.

Check out the template and consider adding this site to your RSS Reader!

5 for Friday

Friday rolls around again. Why does it do that faster for some weeks than others? Anyway, time for 5 blogs again.

1 - A new contributor to the Joyful Jubilant Learning group, Ariane Benefit. Ariane writes at the Neat & Simple Living blog.

2 - Heading to the State of Washington to visit with a writer and librarian whose blog is called "Piper at the Gates of Dawn". Found on the "Billy Collins trail".

3 - Bike to the Burn!

Welcome to my blog, Bike to the Burn! The topic: a 700 mile bike ride that will take me over mountains and through deserts, to Burning Man, the annual week long festival in northern Nevada. People who hear what I'm planning almost all react strongly and almost all fall into one of two camps: "that's amazing!" or "that's crazy!"

4 - Found the Bike to the Burn via Mary whom I found on the "Billy Collins trail". Mary provided a Mini Ivan Report as well as How to Build your own Hobbit Hole.

5 - The Kenyon Review also has a blog and you can find it here. The Kenyon Review blog was also found on the "Billy Collins trail".

One Thing I Know

“One thing I know, that though I was blind, now I see." - John 9:25b

This blog is what I would call the Compleat One Thing I Know. It contains the contents of my old Wordpress blog "One Thing I Know," as well as the contents of my other blogs "Proclamation," "Word and Table," and "Will's World in Pictures."

Father writes:

I have been an United Methodist pastor for 20 years, am blessed with a beautiful thirteen year old daughter, and try (as best I can) to follow Jesus. More than any other factors, these three things define who I am. This blog contains my thoughts on matters important (or not).

Recent posts:

• The New Terror Threat: Zombies
• Posters, Postcards
• Video of the Week - Part Two: Forgetfulness by Billy Collins
• This Week’s Video - Part One: Star Trek meets Monty Python
• Collapsing Bridges, Repentance, Judgment, and God as the Divine Punisher
• This Week’s Quote: Karl Barth

and one of these indicates how we found this blog on the Billy Collins trail. Stop here and rest a while, plenty to read and think about.

Moondoggy's Pad

Moondoggy's Pad is a

Blog on poetry, literature, pop culture, and life as a Canadian expatriate in the USA

Greg Santos was born in Montreal. His work has appeared in print and online publications. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut and studies in New York.

It was found on the Billy Collins trail and worth a peek or two!

5 for Friday

Friday and time for five in honor of the 5th day of the week.

1 - We'll send you to visit with a new contributor to the Joyful Jubilant Learning blog, April Groves. April is a realtor, mother of four down in Georgia, and writer of two blogs: Making Life Work for You and My Beautiful Chaos.

2 - On the Billy Collins trail, we find Amy King currently teaching and writing in NY. Her blog can be found here. A link to four of her published poems can be found here.

3 - Also on the Billy Collins trail, we find Grub Street's Penny Dreadful blog:

grub street is a non-profit writing center dedicated to nurturing writers and connecting readers with the wealth of writing talent in the Boston area. We have two vital roles. We support writers at every stage of their development by offering writing classes, fellowships, employment, and networking opportunities, and by promoting the work of local authors. Equally important, we enrich the lives of Boston-area residents by introducing them to a community of fellow readers and writers through author-hosted book clubs, informal discussions, movie screenings and more. grub street builds on Boston's proud literary tradition by making the city more welcoming for writers, and more inspiring and culturally alive for all of us.

4 - Continuing the Billy Collins trail, we end up traveling from East coast to West coast to find C Dale Young in San Francisco writing at Avoiding the Muse:

I currently practice medicine full-time, serve as poetry editor of the New England Review, and teach in the Warren Wilson MFA Program . My books of poetry are The Day Underneath the Day (Northwestern 2001) and The Second Person (Four Way Books, Spring 2007).

5 - Finally, going to the southern coast we find Katie Kidder writing at The Poet's Lounge in New Orleans.

A venue for poetry, literature, and all things of entertainment and interest.

Katie wrote a poem about her muse:

Oh, it's so bad
to get stuck with a muse you don't want.
Why couldn't I have been assigned Bobby Frost's muse,
or someone with something like grace?


Mine belches and scratches her ass in the hall.
She has the sickly sweet smell of children
and stale Nilla Wafers, as though she was sprung
from the foam of the sofa.


She grabs at my smokes during the two-point conversion,
and she swims in my wine like a gnat.
I trip over her, by the bed, reading Plath on the floor
at six in the morning when I get up for tea.


My muse is nothing like me.
She waxes perverse in the thighs of thin blondes
when we've a perfectly good blonde at home.
And that bitch burns my old lovers' letters
and makes up her face with the ashes.


Kissing my muse, I imagine,
is like swallowing a mouthful of honey and rust,
and twisting your legs in her legs in the cold comfort of dark
is like spooning, in the sea, on the rag, with a shark.


My muse works with the mercy of bullets, falling.



Enjoy!

WhimseyLand

From August 2004:

I've been following the Best American Poetry series for 7 years. I have a complete set, something that's harder to acquire than you would think. I've also entered all the poets and contributing literary publications in a database, to make some sense of what poems get selected, and by whom, and why. I made a study of the results a couple of years ago, which, in retrospect, was both naive and accurate. I have a different view of BAP nowadays. I still believe that it's a snapshot of America's more interesting/noted/trendy poets, and not the American poetry per se. Having had a large fraction of a decade to digest the series, I'm beginning to come around to the notion that BAP does a good job of circumscribing the Big Tent. If you read five or six in a row, of course, which irons out the idiosyncracies of individual guest editors (e.g., the adored or despised BAP 2002).

I've just begun reading BAP 2004 seriously. Lyn Hejinian is this year's guest editor, which would lead some to believe that we were in for another round of Creeley's excesses. Not so, really. This year's model is an intriguing mix of the Same Old White Guys (e.g., Pinsky), the Rebel Contingent (e.g., O.K. Davis), the PoPoMo Crowd (e.g., Alice Notley), the Big Press Run Poets (e.g., Jane Hirshfield), the Deep Poets (e.g., Carl Phillips and Anne Carson), the Poets Who Refuse To Capitilize (e.g, kari edwards), and the Poets Whose Name Is Just Short Of Believable (e.g., Heidi Peppermint). And that's not all. There's Wagoner, Silliman, Stern, Addonizio, Koch, Dinh, and Burkard. For God's sake, there's even BC. Extra points to Ms. Hejinian for inserting Mary Jo Bang between Ashbery and Bernheimer. You have to hand it her for throwing together perhaps the most eclectic volume in the series' history.

And then three years later Whimsey still is speaking!

Just scrolling through the first couple of posts I find some hidden gems. Little links going to great places with little notice of where you are going, except that you are enticed to go there.

Enjoy!

Sublimation

On the Billy Collins trail, I find this opening statement:

My about statement was here just a second ago. I don’t know where it could have wandered off to. It’s too big to hide under my header. I’m pretty sure it’s not curled up taking a nap somewhere in the archives.

No worries. I’m sure it will turn up.

Let’s just keep our eyes peeled, shall we?

For now let’s just say I’ve written lots of poems. Though publishing isn’t my focus, I have managed to publish some of them — a couple in fancy cool places but most in regional journals you wouldn’t have heard of. I’ve published less than some of you and more than some of you, neither of which matters.

I am going to start working on a big fat graduate degree in poetry this summer. Will it make my writing better? That remains to be seen. Does my pedigree really matter? Not really. Because it’s the writing that counts. It all comes back to that, doesn’t it.

Let’s also touch on this: Why I am not more serious here. Why I don’t have a buttoned up, straight-laced blog polished to a high sheen that illustrates what a level-headed and well-versed (pun intended) poet I am. The answer is simple: I don’t want a blog like that.

And her attempt at a paradelle

So go read more at Sublimation

part Life Coach, part Death Coach

Hiya.

Welcome to the ever-evolving world of Laura Young.

I'm part Life Coach, part Death coach. After all, you ARE going to die someday and that DOES have implications for how you are living today, even if you don't like to think about stuff like that. You'll find pretty quickly here that I'm not afraid to call it like I see it because I think an awful lot of people are just dinking around with their lives and need to take a good hard look in the mirror once in a while. One of my clients recently described me as "brutally compassionate". Hey, we're all human, just don't let that be an excuse for not giving your best to this life you've been given.

Be forewarned: Hanging out at this blog is not always for the faint of heart. I like to get in to the big questions of life and I'm here to tell you that there aren't Ten EASY Steps to ANYTHING! Life is about the lessons. Learn as much as you can and put it to good use. Of course, that means sometimes you have to be willing to walk right into the dragon's lair so you can see what you are really made of. You just might surprise yourself. Don't worry, if you need someone to watch your back, I'm right here.

I stand, strongly and unflinchingly, for integrity and love. Not woo woo fluffy girly love. I care, deeply, that you get out of life what you came here for. I care, even more, that you give something real of yourself back to us along the way.

Now, let's go have some fun...

This site was found on the "Billy Collins trail"!

5 for Friday

On the "Billy Collins" trail to find five sites for this Friday.

First stop, Philippines: Flickers of Flight

Second at: My Desultory Musings

Third at: A Delightful Visit

Fourth at: HartfordYorkHats

and finally at: The glamorous (or not) life of a young conductor


and a bonus sherku: spontaneous hitchhikers

Go delight, fly away
No musing, just visit
Keep your hat on, Conductor


What is a sherku?

The Borique Lens

Continuing along the Billy Collins trail, we stop in the suburbs of friendly Philadelphia.

She writes:

Hello from the sunny 'burbs of Phila-del-phia. I've been getting back into the swing of poetry these days after a too long hiatus from composing original work. In 2001, I had the privilege of being invited to a writer's retreat in Washington State and there I finally had the courage to come out as a writer and poet.

Read the full posting here.

A sample of other recent postings:

• A Queen Just Needs a Hero
• What do we want? Free and low-cost Healthcare!
• Latinos Will Not Be Televised...
• Call For Submissions

Check out the Borique Lens!