“the mockingbird says, hallelujah, coreopsis, i make the day bright, i wake the night-blooming jasmine”

– Barbara Hamby, brought to you by my daily dose of the Writer’s Almanac

One of the best pieces of practical advice about surviving as a creative person in college is this: sign up for the daily Writer’s Almanac e-mails. If you have time to read it, then read it, and if you don’t, then don’t.

I think that was almost four years ago, and I’m still receiving these e-mails and loving it.

During the insane times of the semester, I have deleted every Writer’s Almanac e-mail without opening it and moved on to more important things. During the slow times, however, like this summer, it’s really delightful to take five minutes to read a poem and then read through what happened on this day in the past that’s of literary importance.

Often times, I’m not even interested in the poem, but it always broadens my mind a little to read it, and sometimes I fall in love with one, like the opening of Barbara Hamby’s poem “Thus Spake the Mockingbird,” which is the title for this blog post.

And sometimes I just like having a little impromptu party for the birthday of an author or the anniversary of the publication of one of my favorite books of all time.

One time, the Writer’s Almanac mentioned Hiroshima, and got me started thinking about nuclear power, which had me reading wikipedia entries for hours, as well as checking books out of the library and reading as much scientific information about the current state of the Chernobyl countryside as I can find. I’m still on that jag, as a matter of fact, and the e-mail that sparked it came about two weeks ago.

It’s a way for me to educate myself a little bit (unless I get really interested, in which case it becomes a lot a bit) with hardly any effort, in a way that can be crammed into almost any e-mail reading session, but can be opted out of without guilt on days when I’m overwhelmed. And then it’s back, the next day, reminding me to take five minutes and think about a poem.

How is that not a brilliant plan to help maintain a practice of meditating on your craft?

Because as much as I think of myself as a disciplined person, it is so easy to let thinking and reading — since they don’t have a deadline or immediate benefits — slide to the back of the shelf of the pantry of my creative life. You know, where all the mold grows. And then before you know it you’re 40 and haven’t written a poem since college (or so my imagination constructs it. I haven’t even graduated yet).

And it’s not just limited to poetry, either. NPR does a Song of the Day that you can either listen to on their website or sign up for as an e-newsletter.

Nice, right? Now if I could only find a “monologue of the day” for theatre practitioners, I’d be convinced that the interwebs really is the best thing ever invented. . . .

13 days until school starts

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