Days 30 and 31

One nice thing that is sabbatical allows is that you can write for yourself first. Often with deadlines, I find myself writing for an audience before I write for myself and what I mean is what would I really love to write for myself in about things? For example, my mythology and boys project now seems like it would be a project solely on baseball with submit those along the lines of the end of the season the end of summer The Boys of Summer leaving and what it means 4 things to become over. I took asmund to the baseball game last night the third-to-last game and found a few poems in our experience. I went the night before and found by myself that's sinking depression. So I'm getting these in poetry form in the overall project book would be something about that, maybe an extension of strikeout, about the difficult father-son relationships as well as friendships.

Today I also wrote three poems and response to Kevin ponds as well as wrote the final poem for Kelly painting project. And her artwork is worth $1,700 and I need to get it back to her right away because of that!

I can see that on Monday I will need to do lots of editing of all of this as I know I have some major poems from these last few days I need to get into Word document and get them sent out.

Day 29

Today was Barbara and my third meeting at the pond and Gage Park and it was so productive today. We are really enjoying this time together and collaboration and discovering our collaboration what it means. We simply sit together and we can feed off the energy from each other of just being at peace in the park, of looking. I will often look at what she is sketching and use that as a moving Force to discover when I want to write about next. She looks over and we have a talk and she decides what she'd like to sketch. For example, she was sketching the bridge and did this amazing sketch of it, while I was writing about the bridge about the phrase things being under the bridge while it's growing with ivy.

We then felt cold and went to Blackbird and we talked about her ideas of using black white and gray paper and that I hadn't even thought about how to present my poems yet. I've always wanted to learn how to use a Letterpress and this might give me the chance to learn, to reserve time to learn how to use Letterpress for using the press to make poems. Really, this sabbatical might be all about having time again to learn something new to write in the way I love writing to explore things that I haven't thought of. I'm writing a lot about carrying the children now too which is sometimes tough to think about how to enter those poems. I'm so close to them so how can I write from that distance that poets need? I've been using a lot of what my boys say as ways to enter poems, but now it might be the experience itself of leaving home of what it means to go to the park to the pond.

As far as the Letterpress there is that faculty member Michael Hager who has the Letterpress but I don't think it's working. There's another faculty member who has her own Letterpress and boy did I forget her name. The Lawrence Arts Center allows people to use their Letterpress. Also 712 Innovations has a laser cutter so having cut out poems might be a really interesting effect for what the poems look like black paper with a green background coming through to make the words.

We also discuss then a collaboration as installation as I told her about making a piece from different pieces to form the shape of the pond. This would introduce the element of time, a meditation, Assembly not just looking and moving on but being stopped asked to look at each piece read each piece look at the photos with a sketches throughout the pond just as we sat in front of the pond doing that, looking at each piece of the pond and as well as a whole. I'm going to start looking for leaves for Barbara to use for nature printing and it made me think of how my boys love leaves how I love doing sketches of leaves with crayon in that with leaf printing it looks so organic because you're not sure where the ink will go.

Finally, this is a time where asmond made a small canvas that said no and he let out his energy and feeling a frustration into a positive thing on canvas. How may I work with us for my own either in poetry form or an art. How can I have my children continue doing sketches and drawings for possible book?

I've been also quoting a lot of the things that Barbara says and that might be its own interesting thing?

One of our discussions today when she saw I was carrying around a book ironically called the carrying by Ada Lyman, that she looks at art for inspiration to if she feels stuck. I like to carry books around in the same way that I'm not alone in my writing. Today, this book served me well in my own creativity. This is just a reminder to pick up my books to about childhood writing as soon as they come in through interlibrary loan.

Day 28

I sent three ekphrastic poems to Cally Krallman based on her paintings. I will finish one more.

I am doing a lot of editing today. I've also sent poems out for publishing. It's even eaiser than it was just years ago!

This afternoon: send children poems and 
I want to edit the park poem, send to Pleides.

Venom https://entropymag.org/woven-as-they-walk-through-the-door/

Submit the predator and Venom essay to entropy Arts culture and to Bennington review.   https://entropymag.org/what-entropy-editors-want-to-publish-in-2018/

http://www.batcityreview.org/submit/


Copy over poem from messenger

At some point: compile all of the poems about the boys, mythology, toxic masculinity



PROJECT: Ritual of ____

Drive Ins
Comic books
singing
dancing

Day 27

Read through and ordered Napoleon Dynamite articles today. I am hoping to finish this essay first, as it is speaking to me.

I also want to mine through my writing. I need to get a lot of what is in my Moleskine typed.

The boys are doing their homework as I sit with them.

Day 26

Even though we use Sundays for day of rest we had a chance to do a lot of planning and getting ready for our house so I was on the computer and I submitted a few poems to different literary journals. I'm also looking at what other things to submit and where to submit when the time comes.

To work on this week
Napoleon Dynamite essay
The Predator and Venom essay

Cally ekphrastic
Type up pond poems

Royals poem

Days 24 and 25

I am getting past that worried that I'm not getting done what I want to get done into finishing these projects and seeing that the work has come to fruition.

When Victory is finishing the syllabus and course policy statement for the psychology of Poetics class. I submitted them last night.

Another Victory is the collaboration between Barbara and me. We are both finding it regenerative, allowing for 2 or 3 hours at as a space to create allows for a lot to happen especially as we return to the same space, the pond and Gage Park just close to the Rose Garden. I've noticed she starts with sketching a tree, something she said she never makes time for just to sit down and sketch. I noticed I don't allow for a lot of time for me just to sit down and write whatever comes to mind, that many of my poems are generated from prompts or impulses that hit me to write the poem instead of immersing myself into a space. Even when I did the poems for this removed Utopia, I didn't allow for enough time to truly immerse myself into each space I wrote from. We were also pleased to think we're not sure what this work will look like what it will turn out to be. I started imagining I 1 complete pond made of different parts of poems and her photographs and sketches. I really enjoyed doing the concrete poem of the pond, and I wonder if that is a form I could repeat to show that the same pond is not the same pond that it is a different Pond every time you visit. This is because not only something has changed in it and the water has changed and the landscape has changed but the viewer has also changed.

We do have a lot of yard work today, but I am marking today as another day of riding as I collect the books about childhood which can be found here: http://dennisetzeljrsabbatical.blogspot.com/2018/06/poets-writing-about-children.html

I will be doing some initial response writing, as well as sending Kevin the response poems for his Three Palms you recently sent me. Sure it's a lot of work I did

Days 22 and 23

I was able to do a lot of writing on my own and both Lincoln and Omaha. A visit to Madeleine's classes really invigorated me on one level but I did grow tired on another so we skipped the open mic night we were going to do and I am thankful we cancelled.

The Alamo Drafthouse in Lavista just outside of Omaha was truly amazing they had built their own theater and it was so incredible lots of people were there just even on a Tuesday late night I was totally floored. I got to see the Predator so I'm getting to work on my Predator sa a little more.

The items that need the most attention right now for me would be the psychology of Poetics class and getting the syllabus finished, sending work to some new literary magazines who would ask for work. Also there is the Little House s a I would really love to finish I am so close.