Tag Archives: ds106

Golden Shovel Poems

There is a poem nestled in my email each morning. It’s the Poem-A-Day from the National Academy of Poets. I often skip it by, moving into the more urgent emails first. And then the day goes by without reading the poem. One of my resolutions for 2014 is to actually read the poem first.

Today’s poem is from Camilla Dungy and follows the Golden Shovel acrostic form created/popularized* by Terrance Hayes. Hayes used the words from Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem We Real Cool as the last word in each line to create his poem The Golden Shovel. Dungy also used Brooks’ poem to write Because it looked hotter that way. In her entry, she describes why she likes using “received forms” for her own creativity and to help her connect to other writers.

It occurred to me that this would be a great ds106 assignment. You don’t have to use the Brooks’ poem, and you can use a memorable line rather than the whole poem. Here are the guidelines from the 2012 Golden Shovel call for submissions. (The editors of the anthology asked for a contribution from President Obama. Funny what you find on the Internet. I definitely want to get back to the database of letters.)

I submitted the suggestion to ds106 and thought I should also try my own hand at it. Here’s the ten minute version:

Rainy Day Farm

Another rainy day. We
shake ourselves dry after the chores, pondering the fact that the real
work of farming must be done despite all.  But it’s cool.
This is why we
left
the suburban world for this often tough school.
We
have learned that the farmer cannot linger or lurk.
You must commit to the work, commit to the land. Pigs don’t like being fed late.
When hungry, they may decide to pay a visit to the house even though we
ran the electric wire. Each day we strike
out into the barnyard, our way hardly straight
as we
move from hen house to pig pen, dragging lengths of hose and hauling buckets of food. The animals sing
their greetings, happy in their ignorance of sin.
We
raise our voices with them, joyful despite the thin
margin of our bank account. There is, indeed, more to work than a paycheck. At night we toast our lives with tumblers of gin
and tonic. We
jig to jazz
and dream of the warm wonderful days of June
when we
will plant the fields again, sowing seed that will grow and yield and die
as the winter comes again too soon.

 

 

*The Write Mondays website credits Hayes with inventing it while Dungy suggests he popularized it. None of the bios of Hayes seem to think it’s worth a mention. Acrostics are very old with several found in the Old Testament so maybe a new version isn’t a real cause for celebration.

Of Troll Quotes and Book Shelves

I spent a bit of time browsing the aggregator in hopes of finding potential blog post fodder. I loved Tom Woodward’s rif on quotes and authenticity but could find nothing of any consequence to add except to say thanks for providing the link to Michael Livingston’s blog, which has been added to the aggregator.

So, I tried my hand at making a troll quote instead:

This seems like something that would make it to Facebook, if I do say so myself, although it occurred to me that I am very much out of the mainstream when it comes to media.


The LIbrary

From Tom (btw, that West Wing video clip in another post is one of my favorites), I headed to Ars Technica because this phrase annoyed me: “Bookshelves today are simply not as appealing as they used to be.” Really? I do beg to differ. I have no interest in spending $500 to build a book scanner so I can get rid of my books any more than I got rid of my albums once I digitized them. I still put an album on the turntable now and then. And there are just times when I want to read an analog book, one with pages, one that runs on its own power (and mine as I turn those pages). Part of the reason we bought this house is because I needed more shelves! Two more books arrived in the mail yesterday.

Then, it occurred to me that maybe I’m out of the mainstream here as well. Digital is always better, and I can turn into a 150-page-a-minute book scanner. But, when would I find time to read?

happy birthday, tdc

I started with tdc6: Create an audio of two sounds not normally heard together. I created Chicken TV.

In honor of the first year, I made the gift I pictured: a short slide show of photos taken as part of the daily create along with one of my other audio projects. The prompt was to make an audio recording of using an everyday object as a musical instrument. I chose chickens and made the chicken drum circle.

Thanks to the people who work hard to make the daily create exist. You helped me be just a little bit more creative…to stop and listen and look at my world and create from the materials around me.

Stargazing with Kermit

Happened to read Tim Owens’ blog this morning and discover the ds106 assignment of creating an animated Muppet gif. Rainbow Connection is my favorite Muppet song so here’s my gif of Kermit singing in the swamp:

What’s so amazing that keeps us star gazing
and what do we think we might see?
Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection.
The lovers, the dreamers and me.

I haven’t made an animated gif for many, many years so many thanks to the detailed tutorial from the folks at ds106!

And generally thanks to ds106 for providing ideas for creativity. I needed to do something fun on my computer today!