There once was a writer of romance, /
Who left very little to chance. /
Her imagination /
Was only a way station, /
For her prose to cavort and prance.
.
.
#limerick #romance #writer #imagination #cavort #prance #writinghumor #poem #poetry #davidebooker #october #monday #101022 #2022
Filed under 2022, Monday morning writing joke, poem, poetry, Poetry by David E. Booker
There once was writer named Maxwell, /
Who wrote only about things factual. /
Imagination, he said, /
Was overrated and dead. /
Then he was eaten by a Pterodactyl.
Photo from Staunton News Leader, 1936
Poetic justice
You divorced me today,
But you can’t take my words away.
My words are worth
All your penny love on this old earth.
You claim you are owed
For being subjected to my odes.
You’ll receive neither cent nor couplet—
I don’t care if penalties double it.
This divorce has no rhyme nor reason,
So, love, take a haiku for the season.
I have given you my best.
I doubt you can stanza the rest.
David E. Booker
032221
World Poetry Day
A writer and a genie were trapped in a stuck elevator.
Writer: “Can you get us out of this?”
Genie: “Is that your wish?”
Writer, after thinking about: “Maybe we’ll wait.”
They wait two hours. Then three. Then six. Then….
Finally the writer said: “I wish for everybody in this building to have a wish.”
The genie wasn’t sure what he was getting at by that wish, but there was nothing in the rules against wishing everybody in the building have a wish, so he granted it.
The elevator doors immediately opened. But before the writer could step out, the elevator doors slammed shut and the elevator plunged downward, then upward, then crashed through the building and when it finally stopped the elevator doors opened on hell. The flames shot into the elevator, growing larger, brighter, and hotter.
Shaken by the experience, the writer sputtered: “I wish I had never made my wish.”
The slammed shut. The fire was gone, and the elevator was exactly where it had been when the wishing first started.
Eventually the doors were opened and as the writer was helped out, somebody asked him how he had managed to survive over nine hours in such a small space with nothing to do.
The writer smiled: “I’m a writer. Many days I spend my time in a small space where nothing seems to happen. Usually my imagination fills in the gaps. This was more or less a typical day for me.”
Filed under 2018, joke by author, Monday morning writing joke
by Sue Zalokar
“Well, imagination is based on experience. The way everything in the world is made out of the elements combined in endless ways, everything in the mind is made out of bits of experienced reality combined in endless ways. So a child’s imagination deepens with living, with wider experience of reality. And so does a writer’s.”
–Ursula K. LeGuin
Source: http://news.streetroots.org/2014/08/14/otherworldly-and-utterly-portland-ursula-k-le-guin
Ursula K. Le Guin started writing when she was five and has been publishing her work since the 1960s. Throughout her career, she has delved into some of the most insightful, political, ecological and socially important topics of our time. She has created utopian worlds and utopian societies. She boldly challenged gender barriers by simply doing what she was born to do: write.
Her first major work of science fiction, “The Left Hand of Darkness,” is considered epoch-making in the field for its radical investigation of gender roles and its moral and literary complexity. At a time when women were barely represented in the writing world, specifically in the genre of Science Fiction, Le Guin was taking top honors for her novels. Three of Le Guin’s books have been finalists for the American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, and among the many honors she has earned, her writing has received a National Book Award, five Hugo Awards and five Nebula Awards.
In Paris in 1953 she married Charles A. Le Guin, a historian, and since 1958 they have lived in Portland. They have three children and four grandchildren.
After some correspondence, Le Guin invited me to her home to talk. I arrived bearing fresh-picked berries from Sauvie Island. She took me into her study and showed me the view she had of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980.
Ursula K. LeGuin
Sue Zalokar: I can only imagine. I don’t know much about the history of the eruption. Did you have much warning?
U.K.L.: There was lots of warning. The mountain had been rumbling and shaking and dumping black matter on her snow all spring. It was really bad luck. They thought she’d gone into a sort of a quiet phase and so they told people they could go that weekend to their cabins, run in and get their belongings out. Well, that was the weekend she blew. So that’s why there were 60 to 70 people killed. You can’t predict a volcano.
I got really fascinated with the volcano. About a year and few months after the eruption, the whole mountain was called “The Red Zone.” You could go part way up and then above that, you had to have a permit to go in and the only people that were going in were loggers dragging dead trees out. The roads were destroyed, there were just logging roads. Me, a photographer and an artist, got a permit to go in (to the Red Zone) as a poet, a photographer and an artist.
S.Z.: Awesome.
U.K.L.: How about that? I hardly ever pull strings, but we pulled a few and we got a day pass into the Red Zone. We drove around in this awful, unspeakable landscape of ash. Nothing but ash and dead trees. And the trees, just like grey corpses, all pointing the same direction where the blast of the eruption blew them down.
Well, imagination is based on experience. The way everything in the world is made out of the elements combined in endless ways, everything in the mind is made out of bits of experienced reality combined in endless ways. So a child’s imagination deepens with living, with wider experience of reality. And so does a writer’s.Twenty-five years later, a few years ago, I went back to that same area, which they thought would take at least 100 years to come back and regrow. It’s all green. There are trees coming up and flowers blooming like mad, birds, deer, elk. That mountain, she makes herself over and over. It’s quite a story.
S.Z.: Was there a specific piece of writing that came out of that experience in the Red Zone?
U.K.L.: Yes. I wrote poems called “In the Red Zone” and I wrote a piece with the same title.
S.Z.: What distinguishes experience from imagination in writing and is one more essential to the process of writing than the other?
The rest of the interview at: http://news.streetroots.org/2014/08/14/otherworldly-and-utterly-portland-ursula-k-le-guin
Filed under Writing Tip Wednesday
In sports when an injured player can’t practice, he can still get “mental reps,” the coach says.
For a writer, that would be called day dreaming.
Filed under current events, writing, writing humor
Too many politicians, in an attempt to catch fire in the voters’ imagination, do nothing but stoke the fires of the voters’ fears. –from the blog editor
Filed under politicians, politics, Random Access Thoughts, Random thought
The misunderstood PPE gargles
Are related to the ancient fargles.
They live in a land
Of neither rock nor sand,
But they fit over eyes like sparkles.
These oddly named PPE gargles
Can only be worn by gargoyles.
When they sit on the edge
Of a building or ledge
The gargles give their eyes stargles.
These stargles come out in the night
When there is no moon or no light.
And only the gargoyles can see
With their gargles PPE
All the wonders and terrible frights.
Fargles were gargles of a time
When the gargoyles lived in the brine.
And all they could see
Without the fargles that be
Was the salt, the sea, and the grime.
Gargoyle with his PPE gargles
Filed under abreviation, absurdity, animals, Cartoon, fargles, fun, gargles, gargoyle, Halloween, holiday, humor, imagination, poem, poetry, PPE, Random Access Thoughts, Random thought, story poem, word play, words, writing
The blathering idiot was about to take a flight. He rarely flew, so he was particularly concerned with the possibility of not landing, or not landing correctly. Especially with the recent spate of air traffic controllers falling asleep, discussions of Christian Armageddon/Rapture, Mayan End of Time, and general pronouncements from certain pundits that America was on the wrong track and headed for its death, he didn’t want to get caught short, though he wasn’t quite sure what short was or why getting caught short was a bad thing. Did that mean getting caught tall was a good thing? The blathering idiot was of middling height, so where did that leave him, he wondered.
The blathering idiot made all the arrangements. He wrote out a will, though he wasn’t quite sure how to test it so it could be will and testament. He made provisions for somebody to take care of his dog. He left a love note for his on again, off again, maybe again girl friend Zelda, and a few words of advice in a note for her daughter Xenia. He hoped that she would understand to definitely NOT take any wooden nickels. Though he had never seen one himself, he heard they were a bad thing. If nothing else, it might mean you’d one day reach your hand in your pocket and find you had a pocket full of splinters.
After all the other arrangements were made, there was still one the blathering idiot had not made: his epitaph. He had thought long and hard about this. What to say that would sum up his life in a few words. He spoke with different religious leaders of different faiths and even looked in several holy books, but nothing quite suited him.
He looked up epitaphs of famous people. He didn’t quite understand the one that read: “All things considered, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.” But maybe he would after he was dead. He looked at the epitaphs of the not-so-famous people in big graveyard near his house. (He did not discuss it with Zelda. Things were off again with her and what she would probably recommend would not be what he would want resting above him for eternity, particularly if her last words when they broke up were any indication.)
He asked a few of his friends. One said say something witty. Another said, why say anything at all?
As the flight time was fast approaching, in an act of desperation, the blathering idiot consulted books and documents. Over and over again, a certain set of words kept appearing. He wasn’t quite sure why there were on the pages they were on. These pages were often blank, except for these words. Maybe this was a sign. Also, he had not seen them on a gravestone before, so they might have the advantage of being one of a kind, and the blathering idiot liked the idea of being one of a kind.
The person who would have his headstone carved in the event of the inevitable looked at the words and then looked at the blathering idiot oddly. Finally, he shrugged and said, “It’s your funeral.”
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
Filed under absurdity, air, Armageddon, Blank, blathering idiot, Cartoon, Christian, End of Time, humor, imagination, Mayan, Random Access Thoughts, Rapture, satire, traffic controller, words, writing
If money were no object
Filed under blathering idiot, Cartoon, figment, humor, imagination, paycheck, satire, word play, words, writing
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