Bah.
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Your weekly fall poem that is woefully late. All apologies…
Autumn Birds
The wild duck startles like a sudden thought,
And heron slow as if it might be caught.
The flopping crows on weary wings go by
And grey beard jackdaws noising as they fly.
The crowds of starnels whizz and hurry by,
And darken like a clod the evening sky.
The larks like thunder rise and suthy round,
Then drop and nestle in the stubble ground.
The wild swan hurries hight and noises loud
With white neck peering to the evening clowd.
The weary rooks to distant woods are gone.
With lengths of tail the magpie winnows on
To neighbouring tree, and leaves the distant crow
While small birds nestle in the edge below.
John Clare
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I’ve introduced my creative writers to flash fiction and they’re taking to it like ducks water. I think they’re intrigued by the compression of language and ideas required in flash fiction. Also, let’s face it, flash fiction is cool. In order to give them a wide variety of examples, I bought Flash Fiction edited by James Thomas, Denise Thomas & Tom Hazuka. They compiled flash fiction from the likes of Raymond Carver, Julia Alvarex, Joyce Carol Oates, David Foster Wallace, and John Updike just to name a few. I’ve been reading all night an pulling examples I think my class will like. I’m looking forward to class tomorrow.
I met with the blank page again today, but our group was a bit small. We’re received the go ahead from the library for our National Novel Writing Month project, but I might have to tweak it a bit in order to get in done in a time frame that is realistic for our members.
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My department chair gave me this Salvador Dali print to help me battle aganist my depressing white walls. Gotta love Dali…
Brianna Pike 