The Wordsmith's Forge

Our net connection was spitty Thursday-Friday and down all day yesterday.  It's back at the moment, but no telling if it will stay up or not; just so's you know.  I'm trying to catch up with backlogged stuff.

 Yellow lilies.

Sorry that I couldn't post this yesterday; our net connection was down.

This is Part 3 of a freebie poem from the July 5, 2011 Poetry Fishbowl, thanks to new prompter quennessa.  (If you haven't read it yet, start with Part 1 and Part 2.)  This is a remodeled version of the awful plot from Sucker Punch.

WARNING: This entire poem is violent, and contains many misogynist characters bedeviling the heras.  It may be triggery for some people. Part 3 contains reference to nonconsensual bondage, betrayal, violence against women, and a cliffhanger ending for this installment. If such imagery tends to upset you, then you might want to skip this poem.  But if you're okay with valiant heras struggling against terrible obstacles, here it is.

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Another $5 landed in the general fund today.

There are three open epics to which you could direct funds: "Enki's Messengers" needs $3.50 to reveal the next verse.   "Fiorenza and the Witch-Son" needs $1.50 for the next verse and $3 for the one after that, so you could get TWO verses of this poem.  "Igor's Creature" needs $4 for the next verse.

Everyone is invited to vote on which of these three poems should get the $5.  I'll check the poll Monday evening (net access willing; it's been awful recently).  If there's a clear winner then, I'll close the poll.  Otherwise I may leave it open longer.

 Someone inspired me to look for a book I remembered loving.  Couldn't find it directly, so I defaulted to the generic category, and it appeared on this list of duet poetry for kids.  I highly recommend I Am Phoenix: Poems for Two Voices which is all about different kinds of birds.  It's good for all ages.  I think I was in high school by the time I found it.

It is often said that nobody likes poetry these days.  Certainly poetry is hard to sell and not well thought of in wider culture.

However, I happened to mouse over the "Poetry" interest on Facebook today.  It said, "1,251,718 people like this."  That's quite a lot, especially since it's just one service on the Internet.

I think there are a lot more people who like poetry than are easily counted.  They don't have a lot of convenient ways to connect.  A large amount of modern poetry is kind of crummy, and it's not easy to find the good stuff -- you pretty much need the patience to treat an entire magazine rack (or the web) as a slush pile until you find something you enjoy.  There are some subcultures in which the demand is higher, such as Paganism and speculative fiction.  But in general, poetry is kind of a stealth hobby.  It has more fans than are readily noticed.

In business terms, that's an untapped market.  I love the way that crowdfunding gives me direct access to my fans, and it's poetry that has done well for me.  I also love the fact that crowdfunding lets people ask for whatever kind of poetry they most want to read.  I can almost always meet the requests, and I've had some that seriously took me to the edge of my envelope.

 meeks (who is meeksp on LiveJournal) has updated her status.  She is back from hiatus and accepting sketch prompts again.  Creative folks and readers are encouraged to offer prompts.  Donors, there's a tip button on each sketch post so you can throw something in the artist's hat (which I note now shows that cute little white-eared hat from her icon).

She is presently at work on "Dragons Next Door" which relates to the writing of aldersprig.

Currently tied for most linkbacks are the previous sketches "Rin" (also by aldersprig) and "Without Fail" (a Torn World story that I wrote).  The picture that gets the most linkbacks will get more work done on it; this is a monthly contest to reward people for activity.

Next project will be a new sketch inspired by my poem "Shine On."  Woohoo!  Please watch for that one to pop up so you can comment on it.  Enough comments on a sketch will also get it refined in more detail.

my_partner_doug pointed me to this thoughtful exploration of the debt ceiling by a Republican economist.  It is the most logical, fact-oriented, least partisan coverage of this issue that I have seen yet.  Frankly, I'm not impressed by how any of the politicans have handled this particular chocolate-coated nut cluster, but it's nice to see that someone out there is trying to examine the ways in which they are contemplating shooting America in the foot.

For a list of bullet points summarizing Greenhaven practices, see "Points of Interest" in the "About Us" section of the "Home" tab.