Category Archives: Blogging 101

Landscape Graffiti

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LANDSCAPE GRAFFITI

A solitary oil drum, painted white,
overnight acquires its own halo,

of cast off tire seated firmly
on its lid. A flourish of pop bottle

drained empty of its soul, rises over both.
The final embellishment a belt

of  bold paint, all uppercase
bright red: “No Trespassing.”

It bears no sign of the buckshot
fate we might expect should we try

to cross its boundaries.

 

Carol A. Stephen
June 18, 2015

Response to Never Think There Aren’t Things You Can Do to Beautify the World, on Steam Punk City, at Wituals by Harold Rhenisch, Harold comments that junk has more rights than we do.  I wish he wasn’t right. Check out Harold’s journey to find art in the city landscape.

Aspiring to Poet but Running with the Lions

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Moi at the Ginger cafe

I am participating in Blogging 101 for ways to pump up the volume here on Quillfyre. Today’s assignment: changing the blog title and/or tagline.

I thought about it, but other than adding one of my favourite quotes, which has nothing to do with blogging, poetry or writing (or not much!)  I realize that I am still happy with aspiring. I’m not perspiring, expiring or retiring from writing. And anything else sounds too academic, which is not what I do.

Oh yes, the quote?  Lemme see if I can find it— Ah!  There it is!

“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.” 

English: An ancient statue of a lion with a ga...

English: An ancient statue of a lion with a gazelle between his feet, exhibited in the garden of the Damascus National Museum, Syria. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Source might be:
― Christopher McDougall, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

But then there is also this information which dates much further back than McDougall: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/08/05/lion-gazelle/

Of course, look far enough, and you read someone else saying it’s all wrong. “The antelope only has to run faster than the slowest antelope.” http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=661372

It doesn’t really matter though, because the part that resonates for me applies no matter who has the need for speed: when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.

Welcome to Quillfyre

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Moi at the Ginger cafeWho am I? I ask myself this all the time. I am a poet. Retired bean counter. Cat lover.

I write stuff. Mostly poetry.  And sometimes I blog about it. Other times, I post about events going on in and around Ottawa, Ontario. I live just outside there, in Carleton Place, on the banks of the OTHER Mississippi River.

Why do I write stuff?  I suppose because I am a poet. I express myself better in writing than any other way. And when the words and phrases that become poems spring up in my brain, I have to write them down or lose them.

That’s me over there, pondering.  Perhaps a poem was brewing then. Or maybe I was just waiting for that Moroccan soup to cool down. I prefer to think it was poem-pondering though.