Sestina struggles

Day 16
Monday May 30

Class again today. We had been asked to write a poem about a social issue that concerns us most. A daunting task. I wasn't quite up to it. It was a struggle to articulate the full breadth of a huge thing (Hurricane Katrina, and how it was handled) contained in neat little lines. I wrote a sestina, but I'm not quite happy with it yet...

TFH?

ANYWAY. We workshopped our poems as a group, then a group of us got some sandwiches, sat in a park, then in a cafe, and blabbed. Then Diana and I hoofed it back to our place. We both have NaviGo passes, which give us unlimited access to the metros, but we buy them by the week. We figured since we would be leaving town for a couple of days, and we both had a carnet (book of tickets) from when we didn't know what we were doing and hadn't bought the NaviGo yet, we wouldn't get our money's worth for the weekly pass and we could save a couple bucks by just using the tickets. The tickets are super limiting though...just getting to and from class is two tickets right there, but Diana and I are all over the place, and we probably take the train like 8 times a day. Poor planning on our part. ANYWAY we walked to try to conserve a ticket. It was a 45 minute walk--not so bad. We do those walks all the time, right? No. We learned we do not like Rue de Magenta--its dirty and crowded and a little too dodgy. Well now we know..

So we edited some poetry, then walked down Republique to get to our Open Mic night at Caberet Populaire. I read my poem Du Poisson, that I wrote while drinking a bottle of wine under the tree with the pigeon crap. It went well, but I do not like these things. I love poetry, but the poetry culture is not so much for me. It can get pretentious, or competitive, or boring very easily. I guess I have to reconcile the poem with the poetry world. Boo. Anyway. That took all night, so Diana and I were ready for bed when we got home. My stupid sestina still loomed over me though...

Voila, Day 16