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the port of diminishing returns -- Miranda Lake


Send your poems, prose, photos, videos
etc. to the upcoming qarrtsiluni issue:

ECONOMY
Economy has its roots in Greek — oikos and nomos — meaning the principles necessary to maintain the household. It’s a thoughtful word. The study of economics, until the 18th century, was a branch of philosophy.

And it’s the word of the moment. It dominates the evening news. It’s determining how we spend or save; whether we remain in our homes, keep our jobs. It has governments around the globe cutting, bailing and re-thinking spending plans. It’s full of associations: think Wall Street bull or bear or greed. Think sub prime mortgage. Then there’s the technical jargon: quantitative easing, collateralized debt obligation and the fallacy of composition all seem ready for metaphor.

With this in mind, we urge you to think broadly, associatively and imaginatively about this touchstone word. Consider economy of movement, expression or effort. Think fuel, cash or gift economy. In your investigation, remember the epigram and the epitaph, both concerned with the economics of composition. Think about how the subject might inform style, as well as content.

However, don’t be burdened by the word’s current negative connotations. For Hannah More, a 19th century British religious writer and philanthropist, the word resounded with hope. She described “the economy of the heart, which saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits.”

I'm co-editing with Anna Dickie.

transformation

Poems at qarrtsiluni. Check the journal out. Great combination of image and text.

news

I've been pretty remiss about posting here recently. Lots going on family wise that intervenes as it must. And summer is whirling past me in sad and good ways. And always too fast. So it goes, Billy Pilgrim wisely pointed out.

And so it goes that I have news to share. In one of my incarnations I get to work with one of the best small museums around -- The Katonah Museum of Art, where I've been giving workshops as a visiting writer. For the past few years, young writers, from 3rd grade through high school, actually bring their notebooks to the museum's galleries and write--poems, other stuff. It's a pretty wonderful collaboration indeed. The folks in the museum's education department are completely into exploring how writers and visual artists collide, how poems and other kinds of writing can arise from the experience of close looking, how we learn how to think by looking and then writing.

The exhibitions at the museum range from contemporary artists using glass to ancient Buddhist texts to this summer's California Impressionists. In another life maybe I was or will be a visual artist. However, in the here and now, I can't draw worth a hoot. But I love the stuff -- the brushes and pencils, the palettes of messy colors bumping into each other, the darkroom, the kiln, the drawing board. I like to get lost in the looking, to visit places in my imagination when I look and write. And working at the museum lets me breathe in all kinds of visual works.

And now I'm officially writer in residence...ta da! I'm excited about the unfolding of this endeavor, about creating more collaborations. Who knows -- dance and writing and visual art, music and art and writing. It's a work in progress. Above, I've posted a painting from the summer exhibition, All Things Bright and Beautiful: California Impressionism.

One more small headline -- another poem accepted by the online journal qarrtsiluni! Do visit and read some of the work there. The latest issue on water has been compiled as a podcast. Take a listen and you're bound to feel as if you've had a nice long swim in the surf. Good things happening there, so I'm pleased to have my poem, "Anecdote of Air," included in the upcoming issue on "transformation." I'll note its posting here.