Early in the film Dead Poet’s Society we have a scene where the literature teacher, Mr. Keating, played by Robin Williams is teaching from the approved text book, and he has a student read from the preface of Understanding Poetry, by Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, Ph.D.

To fully understand poetry, we must first be fluent with its meter, rhyme, and figures of speech. Then ask two questions: One, how artfully has the objective of the poem been rendered, and two, how important is that objective. Question one rates the poem's perfection, question two rates its importance. And once these questions have been answered, determining a poem's greatest becomes a relatively simple matter. If the poem's score for perfection is plotted along the horizontal of a graph, and its importance is plotted on the vertical, then calculating the total area of the poem yields the measure of its greatness. original screenplay by Tom Schulman, film directed by Peter Weir

Of course, the punch line of this scene is when the teacher informs the class that graphing the vertical Perfection and the horizontal importance of a poem is excrement
The teacher feels that this attempt at turning literature into something that can be scientifically analyzed is poop pure, stinky, and simple.

. . . in my class you will learn to think for yourselves again. You will learn to savor words and language. No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world. original screenplay by Tom Schulman, film directed by Peter Weir

The position of the fictional Mr. Keating seems to reflect the a sort of sixties approach that rules don’t matter, it is how the work makes you feel. Does the poem move you?

This, “does it move you” approach to understanding, and writing poetry has lead to a bunch of poetry that is sloppy, excessively esoteric and nearly impossible to decipher.

There was a growing trend in all the arts to throw the traditions and the rules out the window and just be moved. This movement can be seen in the stream of consciousness novels of James Joyce (Finnegan’s Wake), the splatter paintings of Jackson Pollock, and millions of poems that fill the ear or mind with a jumble of images and words that fill the mouth like a raw egg, but make little if any sense.

Look at the opening lines from one of Americas prolific and often published poets, James Dickey

THE SHEEP-CHILD

Farm boys wild to couple

With anything . . . . . . .with soft-wooded trees

With mounds of earth . . . . . . mounds

Of pine straw will keep themselves off

Animals by legends of their own:

In the hay-tunnel dark

And dung of barns, they will

Say. . . . . . . I have heard tell

That in a museum in Atlanta

Way back in a corner somewhere

There's this thing that's only half

Sheep. . . . . like a woolly baby

Pickled in alcohol . . . . . because

Those things can't live . . . . . . . his eyes

Are open but you can't stand to look

I heard from somebody who ...

Copyright © 1966 by James Dickey.

The poem may make sense, to someone, but it is not simple sense, nor is it apparent, or obvious sense. The average person is not going to read these lines and go, “Wow, that’s neat-o mosquito.” It just seems that for a time, poets tried to intentionally write stuff that could not be understood. The more personal, esoteric, abstract the poem was, the deeper the work was suppose to seem.

Instead of looking at how the image of a bird represented the grieving child’s desire to escape this misery of death, the readers were left saying, “When I read this poem I feel like I’m getting smaller and smaller.” Uh, what?

Of course, just because abstract expressionist art and abstract expressionist poetry are esoteric doesn’t mean that graphing a poems perfection and greatness is the way to go.

There is a newish trend in poetry to make the poem easy to understand. This doesn’t mean there are not cryptic lines and odd passages, but the goal of these new poets is to keep the reader in mind, and to communicate something to the reader.

In the 1960’s is seems that poets wanted to be impossible to understand, assuming that the more enigmatic their poem might be the better it was. After all, if you don’t understand a poem and everyone around you is oo-ing and ahhh-ing, it is easy to think, “Maybe I’m just to dumb to get it. It is better (of safer as far as my personal ego goes) to just go along acting impressed.”

There are some steps one can follow that might help you understand a poem better.

Step 1
Read the poem two, or three times. At least one of those read-throughs should be done by reading out loud. There are, at times when hearing the poem will give you clues you would never get from a silent reading.

Step 2
Look at the title. It isn’t always important, but it is an opportunity for a good writer to add meaning to the work.

Step 3
Pick out words or phrases you do not understand in the poem and look them up. If the poem contains words you don’t know, then until you do know, you won’t know all that the poem has to offer.

Step 4
Ask, who is the speaker. While a lot of poems are confessional poems expressing the emotions of the writer, poetry is still a literary word and you can’t assume that the speaker in the poem is the writer of the poem. Robert Frost has several narrative poems where the speaker is a female. Know where the poem takes place, in what era, what time of the year. Understanding such things will help you with point of view, and imagery.

Step 5
Study the poem line by line noting the style. A good poetry book such as “The Poetry Handbook” by Mary Oliver, or the Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab http://owl.english.purdue.edu/ can be useful if you are need some instruction regarding basic poetic terms and techniques regarding fixed forms, meter, rhyme, personification, verisimilitude, onomatopoeia, etc.

Step 6
The type of poem matters. A narrative poem by Frost, is telling a story, and can, to some degree, be studied and understood like, say, a short story might be studied and interpreted. A poet like Ted Kooser writes a lot of poems that I call slice of life, or a snap-shot poems. A haiku is just a verbal capture of an instant image. Lyrical poems, love poems, letter poems, listing poems, all would be looked at differently.

Step 7
Brainstorm the images you find and what things mean and how they make you feel to help unravel the theme and tone of the poem.

Step 8
Determine the meaning of the poem by putting all of the previous elements together. A poet creates his work by combining words, images and emotions to convey a point. Once you have now broken them down individually, you can see how they work together to convey a central message or theme.

Step 9
Read lots of poetry. The more you expose yourself to a variety of poetic works, the easier it is going to be to understand new poems you come across. Reading a lot of poetry is the second best activity for a person who wants to be a poet. The first best activity is writing poetry. Really, if you want to write poetry, you should follow rules 1a (write poetry) and 1b (read lots of poetry).

Rilke Gave Bad Advice

Rainer Maria Rilke was born on December 4th, 1875 in Prague. His father was one of those hawk, hard-assed militarily inclined man’s man (like the father in The Sound of Music sort of) who sent his son to a military boarding school as a child. Apparently the personality of Rilke was such that his days in military school were days of profound misery.

I don’t know if Rilke is a good poet or not. One problem, for me, is that I can only read his work in translation, being one of those Americans too ignorant and unmotivated to have learned another language.

Check out a Rilke poem at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15814

Rilke published his first book of poetry at age 19. It may sound like an excuse, but it was easier to get poetry published in his day. Fewer people were writing poetry and more people were reading it. Supply and demand was at work, pure and simple.

One of the most significant thing Rilke wrote for most Americans reading stuff today is a little volume called Letters To A Young Poet, a collection of 10 letters that are more like essays than letters. The way I understand it Franz Kappus a 19 year old military school student,considering entering the German military, wrote to Rilke because Rilke had attended the same military school when he was younger. Kappus was a wantabe poet and Rilke was a recognized, published poet. The first letter from Kappus was asking Rilke to read his poetry and give him some feedback. Very little feedback was given to the young poet. Rilke and Kappus continued to correspond from 1902 to 1908. Those letters would surely have been lost forever, without Kappus. The young poet kept the letters from Rilke and three years after Rilke had died, in 1929, Kappus assembled and published the ten letters. in book form.

The title of the book sort of implies that this is advice from an old, wise, established guy to a young, budding new guy, but that’s not true. Kappus was about 19 and Rilke was like 27. It seems that when Rilke got that first letter from the young Kappus he saw something of himself within Kappus. Rilke had been a student at that same military school, and hated it. Kappus was torn about what to do next with his life, and wondering if he had the talent as a poet to follow the road less traveled, the one Rilke had picked.

One of the questions Kappus wanted answered is a question every poet, every artist wants to know:

Am I good enough?

Rilke’s answer is that this question is the wrong question. Rilke says that every person should go into one’s self, and seek out motive. Why do you even want to write? Rilke gets all touchy-feely about it saying that a poet needs to ask will I die if I can’t write?

To me such thoughts are silly. You have to have food, and water, and be protected from extreme weather conditions to live, but you don’t have to write to live. No one does. You may feel compelled, or driven to write, or paint, or make dolls, but it is a compelling inclination within one’s mind, but it is not a life and death matter.

Of course, all compelling forces within, when ignored, may not kill you, but they will contribute to a miserable life.

Rilke tells the young poet:

. . . meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity and so he responded. . . . as I have said, one feels one could live without writing, then one shouldn’t write at all. ~Rilke

There is a generally accepted belief that borders on conceit. Rilke is saying, Unless you have this “gift that I have” you should not do what I do. Actors say, “if you don’t have to act, then don’t be an actor, if you don’t have to write, then don’t be a writer, if you don’t have to paint, then sell shoes.”

I don’t like the advice. It makes art an elitist act, and spreads the lie that creative output is some sort of God given gift and that divides the artist from the dull, and uncreative masses.

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty. ~Rilke

I do believe that there are both positive and negative aspects of being a creative person, and I realize that not everyone practices a creative art form, but in my opinion, that is not because they are inferior, or that they were taking a smoke break when God passed out gifts and talents. Talent, and creativity is a mystery to most of us because we can’t explain why some seem to have it, and some don’t. The truth is that just because we don’t know something doesn’t mean it is unknowable. At one time humans were food gatherers. We had no idea how to grow our food. We were hunters because we had no clue how to domesticate livestock. But growing and herding were within reach even for the food gatherers. In a similar way, all of us have the potential to be poets, or artists of some kind. What happens to make the potential become a reality, that part, I’m not sure about. It may be what was valued and encouraged when you were a child. It most certainly is something that goes one in your mind, and is probably some behavior that is reinforced in some way by people who’s opinion matters to you.

The only journey is the one within. ~Rilke

The journey of life seems to me to be a inner path. This is an important truth, and it also explains why it is such a difficult path. In the mind we are interpreting the sensations we are receiving in the moment, but we are also applying our past experiences, and extrapolating on those past experiences to anticipate what might happen.

Then there is one final quote I like:

There are no classes in life for beginners; right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult. ~Rilke

Fear Poetry

Lucy Van Pelt: Are you afraid of responsibility? If you are, then you have hypengyophobia. Charlie Brown: I don't think that's quite it.

Lucy Van Pelt: How about cats? If you're afraid of cats, you have ailurophasia.

Charlie Brown: Well, sort of, but I'm not sure.

Lucy Van Pelt: Are you afraid of staircases? If you are, then you have climacaphobia. Maybe you have thalassophobia. This is fear of the ocean, or gephyrobia, which is the fear of crossing bridges. Or maybe you have pantophobia. Do you think you have pantophobia?

Charlie Brown: What's pantophobia?

Lucy Van Pelt: The fear of everything.

Charlie Brown: THAT'S IT!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Poetry is a tool for coping. In revisiting old works for revisions, I discovered I had two poems with exactly the same title.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Fear August 2005 By tex norman

For me, it was like water
to a fish. It was so much
a part of my world that I
had no idea it was
there at all. Everything I
saw was seen through fear. In fear
I lived, and moved, and had my
being. I inhaled terror
and exhaled horror. I ate
panic and had worry for
desert. I lay in a bed
of anxiety and pulled
sheets of angst up to my chin.
When I dreamed, I had nightmares,
but once I woke up, I was
sure I had not dreamed at all.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Fear September 2008 By tex norman

It is like a so long
soaking sit in a Hot Tub,
the outer me so soggy,
so wrinkled from saturation.

No. It is not something that I sit in,
it is something that sits in me—
shoes off—
unbuckled, unbuttoned at the waistband
obviously staying
clearly making itself comfortable.
Discomforting me.

No. I’m speed-walking
through the valley of the Shadow
of Death (lots of turns) and it
jumps out at me, “BOO!”
then asks,
“Trick? Or Treat?”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I find similarities between the two poems even though they were written 3 years apart. Both works seek to convey how much fear permeates everything, the speaker, -- me. I looked through my collection of poems that I send out to those folk who have asked for my Poem For The Day and found some examples of Fear poetry by other poets.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Fear By Dorianne Laux

We were afraid of everything: earthquakes,
strangers, smoke above the canyon, the fire
that would come running and eat up our house,
the Claymore girls, big-boned, rough, razor blades
tucked in their ratted hair. We were terrified

of polio, tuberculosis, being found out, the tent
full of boys two blocks over, the kick ball, the asphalt,
the pain-filled rocks, the glass-littered canyon, the deep
cave gouged in its side, the wheelbarrow crammed
with dirty magazines, beer cans, spit-laced butts.

We were afraid of hands, screen doors slammed
by angry mothers, abandoned cars, their slumped
back seats, the chain-link fence we couldn't climb
fast enough, electrical storms, blackouts, girlfights
behind the pancake house, Original Sin, sidewalk
cracks and the corner crematorium, loose brakes
on the handlebars of our bikes. It came alive

behind our eyes: ant mounds, wasp nests, the bird
half-eaten on the scratchy grass, chained dogs,
the boggy creekbed, the sewer main that fed it,
the game where you had to hold your breath
until you passed out. We were afraid of being

poor, dumb, yelled at, ignored, invisible
as the nuclear dust we were told to wipe from lids
before we opened them in the kitchen,
the fat roll of meat that slid into the pot, sleep,
dreams, the soundless swing of the father's
ringed fist, the mother's face turned away, the wet
bed, anything red, the slow leak, the stain
on the driveway, oily gears
soaking in a shallow pan, busted chairs stuffed
in the rafters of the neighbor's garage, the Chevy's
twisted undersides jacked up on blocks, wrenches
left scattered in the dirt.

It was what we knew best, understood least,
it whipped through our bodies like fire or sleet.
We were lured by the Dumpster behind the liquor store,
fissures in the baked earth, the smell of singed hair,
the brassy hum of high-tension towers, train tracks,
buzzards over a ditch, black widows, the cat
with one eye, the red spot on the back of the skirt,
the fallout shelter's metal door hinged to the rusty
grass, the back way, the wrong path, the night's
wide back, the coiled bedsprings of the sister's
top bunk, the wheezing, the cousin in the next room
tapping on the wall, anything small.

We were afraid of clothesline, curtain rods, the worn
hairbrush, the good-for-nothings we were about to become,
reform school, the long ride to the ocean on the bus,
the man at the back of the bus, the underpass.

We were afraid of fingers of pickleweed crawling
over the embankment, the French Kiss, the profound
silence of dead fish, burning sand, rotting elastic
in the waistbands of our underpants, jellyfish, riptides,
eucalyptus bark unraveling, the pink flesh beneath,
the stink of seaweed, seagulls landing near our feet,
their hateful eyes, their orange-tipped beaks stabbing
the sand, the crumbling edge of the continent we stood on,
waiting to be saved, the endless, wind-driven waves.

appeared at PoetryDaily.
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Fear By -Raymond Carver

Fear of seeing a police car pull into the drive.
Fear of falling asleep at night.
Fear of not falling asleep.
Fear of the past rising up.
Fear of the present taking flight.
Fear of the telephone that rings in the dead of night.
Fear of electrical storms.
Fear of the cleaning woman who has a spot on her cheek!
Fear of dogs I've been told won't bite.
Fear of anxiety!
Fear of having to identify the body of a dead friend.
Fear of running out of money.
Fear of having too much, though people will not believe this.
Fear of psychological profiles.
Fear of being late and fear of arriving before anyone else.
Fear of my children's handwriting on envelopes.
Fear they'll die before I do, and I'll feel guilty.
Fear of having to live with my mother in her old age, and mine.
Fear of confusion.
Fear this day will end on an unhappy note.
Fear of waking up to find you gone.
Fear of not loving and fear of not loving enough.
Fear that what I love will prove lethal to those I love.
Fear of death.
Fear of living too long.
Fear of death.

I've said that.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Fear By Sara Teasdale

I am afraid, oh I am so afraid!

The cold black fear is clutching me to-night

As long ago when they would take the light

And leave the little child who would have prayed,

Frozen and sleepless at the thought of death.

My heart that beats too fast will rest too soon;

I shall not know if it be night or noon, --

Yet shall I struggle in the dark for breath?

Will no one fight the Terror for my sake,

The heavy darkness that no dawn will break?

How can they leave me in that dark alone,

Who loved the joy of light and warmth so much,

And thrilled so with the sense of sound and touch, --

How can they shut me underneath a stone?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Fear By Ciaran Carson

I fear the vast dimensions of eternity.

I fear the gap between the platform and the train.

I fear the onset of a murderous campaign.

I fear the palpitations caused by too much tea.

I fear the drawn pistol of a rapparee.

I fear the books will not survive the acid rain.

I fear the ruler and the blackboard and the cane.

I fear the Jabberwock, whatever it might be.

I fear the bad decisions of a referee.

I fear the only recourse is to plead insane.

I fear the implications of a lawyer's fee.

I fear the gremlins that have colonized my brain.

I fear to read the small print of the guarantee.

And what else do I fear? Let me begin again.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I guess, if I had a point to all this it would be this: poetry is a tool for coping, and it doesn't matter if it is great poetry or not. I think it is fear that keeps people from writing poems-- fear that the poetry they might write will not be good enough, will suck, will be a mockery of the art.

.

The thing is, any creative act is a human act. There are a few animals that seem to make attempts at creativity, but primarily it is a human act. All art falls into two categories:

.

1. Creative expressions used to vent one's own emotions and

.

2. Creative acts used to communicate and bring insight to their target audience.

.

Maybe there is only that second one, the one where we create to bring insight, to move a target audience, and that target audience might be readers, or listeners, or an audience, or the self.

What the Haiku Means To Me

I have been writing poetry, almost daily for 45 years. I have cared about poetry most of my life. It has mattered to me, like football matters to some guys, or politics, or NASCAR. I remember the first time I was exposed to the haiku. It was in junior high school. The teacher thought it was such a simple form that anyone should be able to dash one off, after all, it is only three lines long, it doesn’t rhyme, and if you can count syllables and divide them into those three lines you have got yourself a sure-as-shootin’ haiku. The form has 5 syllables in the first line, 7 syllables in the second line, and 5 syllables in the third line. The haiku in English has 17 syllables.

So the crowded classroom of bored prepubescent slugs that we were, did what we had to do to get that English teacher to move on to something else. Since it was 1965 and the Beatles were my favorite singing group I immortalized them in my first haiku.

I like the Beatles.
I think the Beatles are cool.
John. Paul, George, Ringo.

This work fits the rules, as they were described to me by an English teacher who knew almost nothing about the form, but it is a really bad haiku.

Because I cared about poetry, I explored the form more as I explored all poetic forms. I found out that the haiku is a Japanese fixed form and so it is difficult to make that form fit with the English language. For one thing, the Japanese language consists of words that are, for the most part, polysyllabic. In-other-words, in Japanese most of the words consist of multiple syllables. In English, many of our words are one syllable words. This means that while in Japanese the form may have very few words, in English the form could have as many as 17 words, if all the words selected were one syllable words.

The haiku in English is never the haiku of Japanese.

I also learned that the haiku tends to be nature based, and describing some instant. The haiku is like a snap shot of something one might glance over and see. The haiku is suppose to freezes a single moment in time the way a photograph does.

Well, in my early years as a poet, I liked narrative poetry. I wanted a poem to tell me a story. I liked The Highwaymen, Death of the Hired Hand, The Witch of Coos, and The Ancient Mariner. What could I do with 3 lines and 17 syllables? Not much. What did a snap shot poem mean to me? Nothing.

The thing is, the haiku is a reflection of Eastern thought, of the Buddhist teachings of mindfulness, and living in the present moment. Life is a moment surrounded by nothingness on both sides, just like the haiku. It is a moment. The haiku reminds me to live in the present. The haiku says this is what is happening at this moment. You have to used memory, imagination, and extrapolation to tell a story, but the truth is we live in the NOW.

How reluctantly

the bee emerges from deep

within the peony
.................................................By Basho

custody battle

a bodyguard lifts the child

to see the snow
.................................................By Dee Evetts

Advice to Budding Poets, and Blown Bloom Poets Too

AN INTERVIEW WITH MYSELF

Q: What makes a poet a poet?
A: Poets are people that write poetry.

Q: There has got to be more to it than that?
A: No. No, not really. Perhaps you are asking the wrong question. Maybe what you intended to ask is: What makes a poet successful, and famous?

Q: OK. What makes a poet successful?
A: I have no clue. If I did I would be successful, and famous. Unless you have a specific definition for what you meant when you used the word successful.

Q: I did. I think a successful poet is one who is creating poems that are generally considered effective poems. An effective poem, and an successful poet may not be famous, or even published, but they can still be successful poets.
A: Right-o. This makes being a poet a very odd art to take on, because you can be successful and have no audience.

Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo. ~Don Marquis

Q: Wait, wait, wait. You have to have an audience don’t you?
A: No way, Jose. Emily Dickinson wrote poetry, had fewer readers than she had fingers, and yet she was a successful poet.

Q: Wrong. Millions of people have read the works of Emily Dickinson.
A: Yeah. After she died. Before she died those poems were made 40 booklets comprising more than 800 of her poems we now call fascicles. A fascicle was a little stack of papers folded into a book and she used ribbon as the binding. Until she died these fascicles sat in little stacks in her drawers resting, waiting, unread, yet the unread poem was just as well written as it was later after it was read by millions. So wasn’t she a successful poet before those fascicles were ever discovered? I think she was. So a successful poet can, at least technically be successful even without having any readers.

Q: Why seek readers?
A: All artists seek readers. Even poor ole introverted, reclusive, weird-o Emily Dickinson wanted readers, and expected readers. We know this because she did go to the trouble of taking these poems and sewing them together with ribbon binding. Ms Dickinson expected, or hoped that eventually, after she was dead, she would have readers. I doubt she expected to have as many readers and admirers as she now has, but she did want an audience. Unless you have an audience the creation of art is incomplete.

Q: How big an audience?
A: There is the question. The audience does not have to be big. The cave painting in Lascaux, France were created by artists that could have had no concept of an audience like artists enjoy today, but they had an audience. Perhaps the audience was themselves alone, or their family, or perhaps their god/higher power. If the audience didn’t matter you could simply create the poem or the painting and then, as soon as it was done you could destroy it.

Q: Why write when expectations of success/fame are so low?
A: Because successful or not, writing poetry is good for the poet. It is never a waste of time to be in touch with your own emotions and thoughts. Often, you don’t know what you think or how you are feeling because what you think and feel is going on inside of you. It is like a child that falls and skins her knee. At the moment the knee is skinned, the pain is intense, and so much a part of that child that the child may scream in agony and fear, and be sort of hysterical. Then mother takes the child into her lap, cuddles that child and says, lets talk about this knee. I think I can clean that up and put on some Neosporin and it is going to be OK. The child is instantly better because before she and the knee were one, but in her mother’s lap it is the child and the mother discussing the knee. That is putting some emotional and mental distance between the child and her knee. In the same way, when we have swells of emotion and chaotic thought we are tossed to and fro by what is going on inside of us. Poetry allows us to take what is inside, put it on a page (which is outside) and we end up with distance between us and what was happening to us and in us. distance gives up a perspective that relieves stress, and makes room for problem solving, or grieving, or venting, and stress relief, problem solving, and venting are healing acts.

I write as a way of keeping myself going. You build your life around writing, and it's what gets you through. So it's partly just curiosity to see what you can do. ~Robert Morgan

Q: So the artist, the poet, wants an audience. Is seeking an audience a good thing?
A: Hard to say. Wanting an audience can become the primary goal, and if the primary goal is to have an audience then the focus of the artist is not properly aimed. An artist may do things purely and simply to get that audience, and there is an unfortunate disregard to the art itself.

My father said, when he saw me for the millionth time scrambling to please, that I needed to learn that no matter what I did, there would be people who just wouldn't like me. When I catch myself adjusting some line, not because I think the change improves the poem, but because I think some critic will like it, I remember Daddy and leave it alone. ~Lola Haskins Extranjera (Story Line Press)

There has to be some sort of schizophrenic mind game that goes on in the brain of a creative person: one part of you keeps an eye on earning an audience, and the other part of your mind is focused on your art with total disregard of what you imagine is going to matter to other people. You are seeking to simultaneously please others, while only pleasing your own need for self-expression.

Q: Well, poetry is written by millions of people and only hundreds of people are publishing poetry, so the chances that you are going to find a publisher for your poetry is pretty slim. What do you do?
A: Well, there is always the ole fascicle idea practiced by the Boo Radley of poets Ms. Dickinson. The way to do is chapbooks. A chapbooks is usually a small paper (or card stock) covered booklet, usually printed on a single sheet folded into books of 8, 12, 16 and 24 pages. With home computers, and ink jet printers, and photocopy (Xerox) machines, anyone can create a dozen or so chapbooks. Then you take these chapbooks to poetry readings, read your stuff, and sell the chapbooks to the audience members who liked your stuff. The chapbook is produced cheaply, sells cheaply, and not only can it lead to greater recognition (fame?), but it is fun, and within the reach of even poor poets.

I love chapbooks. They're in some ways the ideal form in which to publish and read poems. You can read 19 poems in a way you can't sit down and read 60 to 70 pages of poems. ~Robert Morgan

Life Without Afterlife

I was raised to believe in an afterlife. There was a god, he had rules, god needed to be obeyed and pleased, and if you failed to please god he would toss you into a lake of fire, where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth, where the worm was not consumed, and you would live forever in eternal torment.

With the stakes so high, it takes a lot of time, and thinking, and, yes, a dash of that ole gambler/risk-taker syndrome it took a lot of time for me to even consider the possibility that maybe what I was frightened into believing might not be so.

Belief in god, at least for me, came not just from being scared that I would roast forever if I dared to doubt, it was also something I accepted because my parents told me it was so, and they were like gods themselves. They were my creators. They not only gave me life, but they sustained life. My parents provided me with food, clothing, shelter, toys, pleasant things including love, cuddling, as well as punishment when I violated their rules. God, and parents had a lot of similarities to me.

It is common for children to accept their parents’ opinions and rules without question until they approach adolescence. The teen years are times when a child must question, disagree, experiment as a way of exploring their future life as an adult.

When I was a child I spoke as a child I understood as a child I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away childish things." ~I Cor. 13:11

Of course, every child does not rebel. Some children become adults created out of the same dough as their parents are made of, they are replicas of their parents as far as their values, opinions, and beliefs go. This happens, but, I doubt if it is ever total. Children become adults who look at their parents and wonder how they managed to survive their quaint and pitiful views, and senseless choices.

The same maturation takes place in one’s theological life. As one matures one questions the authority and the rationale of those tenets that have been inculcated into us.

There are reasons for doubt, as well as consequences that come from our beliefs and doubts. At this point in my life I consider myself a doubter. Here is my rationale regarding my doubts:

1. The god I was raised to accept (and now doubt) is a personification: God was described to me as being in the image of a human (better, perfect, but human –like) with a mind, a will, intelligence, purposes and desires. My god (pun intended) the Bible calls him a jealous god.

2 The god I was raised to accept (and now doubt) was suppose to possess supreme power or omnipotence. Omnipotence meant to me that god was all powerful, that there was nothing he could want to do that he could not do. I remember once, as a budding teenage jerk asking my Sunday School Teacher if god could make a rock that was bigger than he could lift. The Sunday School Teacher said, “You can go to hell for asking questions like that!” What an excellent answer. Scare the doubt out of that smart-ass kid is an effective way of instilling a profoundly devout blind faith.

Whenever you look at stuff that seems really bad you might be tempted to question god, but then you remember:

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. ~Isaiah 55:9

3. The god I was raised to accept (and now doubt) was perfect. The perfection of God is one of the more generally accepted tenets of fundamentalist faith for Christians, Jews, and Muslims. I’m not sure if Ron Hubbard-ites fall in with this crowd or not. This is a very convenient trait. because it makes it useless and sinful to question his decisions. You can’t blame God for anything because God is perfect.

4. The god I was raised to accept (and now doubt) is omniscient, the fancy word for All Knowing. God knows everything. If God exists, then he is supposed to know everything, and there is absolutely nothing, not one fact of which God is ignorant. Think back to the scripture about God knowing when a bird falls and the exact count of the hairs you have on your head.

5. The god I was raised to accept (and now doubt) is all loving. God is the essence of perfect love. God is supposed to care about and be interested in human affairs. God loves us, and wants what is best for us. This seems to contradict his inflexible position on sending sinners into the outer most regions of the nether stygian darkness. I love you so much that if you doubt me, or disobey me, in even very small ways, I will destroy you with pain, but make sure that pain never stops, ever.

I wanted to believe in god, because to reject god is to risk losing the love of my family, and friends, and potential friends. According to a Fox News poll 92 percent of Americans say they believe in God, 85 percent believe in heave, and 82 percent believe in miracles. If I reject these beliefs I fear I am cutting myself off from between 82 and 92 percent of the people around me. If faith is actually fear of loneliness then it is really like building your house upon the sand. When the rains of life test your faith that house will come tumbling down (or so goes the Sunday School Song).

But one of the main reasons I have tried to believe in God, and why most people do believe in God is because it explains why we exist, why the earth exists, and how everything that is came to be. Trace every theory back and you get to a point where stuff doesn’t make sense. Even if we accept the Big Bang Theory we still end with, yeah, but if this tiny super condensed stuff exploded and the star stuff scatters and eventually, over billions of years becomes stars, planets, puppies, and people, you still have to ask, “Yeah, but where did that super condensed stuff come from? Who made that tiny stuff that, once exploded becomes the entire universe?”

My problem with all this is that just because there is something instead of nothing is not a reason to believe in God. If there is nothing, well, there is nothing. Obviously there is not NOTHING or else we couldn’t be struggling with the question.

If there is something then how many potential explanations might exist to explain how there is something? In the words of Carl Sagan, “Buhillions and Buhllions” God is one explanation. Since matter can be neither created nor destroyed only changed, one answer is that what is exists because it has always existed, and its existence only became an issue after evolution developed a life form aware of itself.

One of my problems with God is that IF God exists, and IF it is important to know God’s will (because not pleasing God has eternally negative consequences), then how am I going to know God’s will? How does anyone know God?

There would only be two ways I can think of for someone to KNOW that God exists:

1. God comes directly to them and tells them He or She exists (convinces them), like YHWH did with Moses and that burning bush. There problem here is that most folk that would claim direct contact with god get locked up in a rubber room and their systems are flooded with anti-delusional drugs. OR

2. You believe in God, not because of direct contact, but because you accept the testimony of other people who claim they had direct contact with God. Those accepting the Bible are among this second group. They believe because the Bible tells them so.

But why do we assume that it is the Christian Bible that is true? Are there not other Bibles? There are Holy Books everywhere. If God exists, and you know God from scripture, shouldn’t you consider all the scriptures before you pick one? Even the, on what bases would one pick one holy scripture over another? I was raised to believe in the Christian Bible, but I never even read the other religious texts that pass for holy scriptures. Have you? How many Christians have read the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, the Zoroastrian Avesta, the Qur’an, Dianetics, The Book of Mormon, Kojiki or Furukotofumi, Tao Te Ching or Dao De Jing, Yasna, Arzhang (the holy book of Manichaeism).

I am left with doubt. To me the existence of God is unknowable. But what is more important is that belief in God messes up my life. If you believe there is God, and an afterlife, you are tempted and urged to use this life in preparation for that other eternal life.

What I think happens when you die is that the forces within your body that resist death are overcome, you stop living, and the atoms go on doing what atoms do. There is no me left. There is no consciousness. There is no continued existence. So is life important since it is such a brief evolutionary curiosity, an odd and interesting spectacle? In the macro sense, I suppose life does not matter. But I don’t live in the macro. We live. It is a rare, interesting phenomena and as an organism I feel pleasure and pain, and my mind has thoughts that entertain me. Why not consider this one of the rarest of rare events and enjoy it while I have it. Use life. Enjoy life.

To pin your hopes upon the future is to consign those hopes to a hypothesis, which is to say, a nothingness. Here and now is what we must contend with. ~Angela Carter

Nowhere To Turn

"You know what really gets me? I mean, here I am, I have to live in this stinking town and I gotta read in the newspapers about some hotshot kid, new star of the college team. Every year it's going to be a new one. And every year it's never going to be me. (Pause) I'm just going to be Mike. Twenty-year-old Mike. Thirty-year-old Mike. Old mean old man, Mike. These college kids out here are never going to get old or out of shape. Because new ones come along every year. And they're going to keep calling us Cutters. To them it's just a dirty word. To me it's just something else I never got a chance to be." from the movie Breaking Away.

One of my favorite movies is Breaking Away, a coming of age movie about four friends, with a focus on one who wants the acceptance of his father, the love of a woman, and to be a great cycles. In the scene where this quotes is taken, the friends are down at the quarry where deep holes were carved out of the rock, and stone was taken for construction use, and those holes eventually filled with water and are now used by young people as semi-private swimming pools. Mike, the former high school quarterback, played by a young Dennis Quaid, finds that his high school years have turned out to be the high point of his life (or so he thinks) and that the rest of his life is down hill all the way.

A similar sentiment is conveyed by John Updikes wonderful poem, The Ex-Basketball Player. (Read the poem at: ( http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1437753 )

In this poem there is a guy called Flick (because of the way he could flick the ball during high school Wizard B-ball games), and Flick was a faboulous high school basketball player. After graduation Flick failed to go on to greater and greater levels of success. As the poem opens, Flick is working at Berth’s Garage, pumping gas, changing tires, and every so often, when people came by who remembered his glory days, “. . . as a gag, he dribbles an inner tube,. . . ”

Such quotations and poems have a powerful impact on me, because I too feel age creeping up, and the older I get the more doors are closed to me. I’m two weeks I’ll be 58 years old. I have two knee replacements, and only so-so health, so running the Boston Marathon is not going to happen. I’m not going back to school to be a nurse, or a physical therapist, or a psychologist, or an art teacher. I'm not going to get my MFA at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Oh, yes, I read about people in their 70s, or 80s, and I think once I read about someone in their 90s who went back to college and earned that life long yearned for degree, so as long as one lives the options are technically there, but such an outcome is not likely, not for me.

It is a truth that time is running out.

In the long run, we’re all dead. ~John Maynard Keynes


I found a website that advertises itself as a place where people can go who are out of options. The Header reads as follows:

I Am Running Out of Options

Options do run out, so maybe if you tell us about your options we can help you weigh them out.....the good the not so good options

http://www.experienceproject.com/groups/Am-Running-Out-Of-Options/128756

.

It is an interesting thing that such a site exists. If you wonder how someone would find this site, they probably typed in RUNNING OUT OF OPTIONS into their search engine search box.

I suppose it is obvious that that is what I did and how I found the site. I feel like I’m running out of time. I feel like doors are closing. I feel as if my options grow fewer day by day.

My biggest worry is I'm running out of time and energy. Thirty years ago I thought 10 years was a really long time. ~Dean Kamen

I did too. It once took two years for Christmas to arrive, and now it comes and goes as if one is connected by a short chain to the other. I feel like I was 17 yesterday, and now I'm 58 and I can't figure out what happened. I feel like I was mugged by time. I've had the crap kicked out of my by life.

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing. ~Marcus Aurelius

Is Aurelius saying that life is a struggle? It is. Aurelius is also saying that life is not a fight, but more of a wrestling match. Wrestling is a struggle based on holds, not on punches or kicks.

Wrestling depends on strength, weight, and skill. In the middle of a match is not the time to develop strength and skill. If you are under weight, and in a struggle with a heavy weight, well, you just struggle until you are pinned and the mat is slapped three times.

Regardless of your age, you make choices, and move on, and it is very, very rare that you can go back and change choices.

One of my favorite poems is Two Roads Diverged

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

and sorry I could not travel both

and be one traveller, long I stood

and looked down one as far as I could

.

to where it bent in the undergrowth;
then took the other, as just as fair,

and having perhaps the better claim

because it was grassy and wanted wear;

.

though as for that, the passing there

had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay

in leaves no feet had trodden black.

.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

.

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

two roads diverged in a wood, and I --

I took the one less travelled by,

and that has made all the difference

In this poem, Mr. Frost implies that the choices of the speaker of this poem have made a difference (all the difference) in his life, or her life. It is a somewhat positive look back on the choices of that speaker’s life, but there is also a question hanging over the speaker’s life, "What if I had done something differently? What if I had made different choices? What would my life be like now if I had done something different then?"

Really, what are the options? Levi's or Wranglers. And you just pick one. It's one of those life choices. ~Harrison Ford

When you are 58 you do not have the options you had at 20, or 30. Am I going to save up a down payment for a house, and get a 30 year loan on the property? Am I going to move into a dorm and take out education loans and get a new degree? When you get close to 60 years of age it is not the time of life to prepare for life. When you approach 60 years of age, you look at time differently. Life is short. Options are fewer.

It is perhaps wise for me to consider this quote:

We are not victims of aging, sickness and death. These are part of scenery, not the seer, who is immune to any form of change. This seer is the spirit, the expression of eternal being. ~Deepak Chopra

Mr. Chopra is saying in a better way that you are only as old as you feel. Or you are only as old as you act. Mr. Chopra is implying that if doors close to you, that you closed them yourself. If your options disappear, you cast that magic spell yourself. Maybe I should consider Chopra’s words carefully.

Depression and the Illogic of Logic

There is an old joke that goes:

If you are not confused you are not thinking clearly.

My best friend is named Scott Barham. In many of our long talks over burnt Starbucks coffee, both of us have said something like this:

I’m depressed because I’m smart enough to see what is really going on. If you are truly aware of what is going on in this world then depression is logical.

I have really believed this lie/truth. It is a sort of arrogance to believe that my depression is evidence of my insightfulness and my skilled, extrapolatory thinking. When I think about how I was believing I can see the silliness of it:

I’m depressed because I’m smart. Ignorance really is bliss.

Yet it is hard, at times, to ignore the logic that seems so logical. Logic is just a mental trick. Logic is a guess based on experience. When these circumstances happened in the past THIS was the result, therefore, when I see similar circumstances I can expect similar results.

The logical problem with logic is that IF it is based upon memory of similar situations then that, in itself, is the flaw in the logic. Memory may seem like the truth, but memory is selective truth.

Memory can change the shape of a room. It can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They are just an interpretation. They are not a record. ~from the movie Momento

Much (no all) that we witness and everything we recall, each and every event we experience is being compared to stuff we recall or have witnessed in our past and this human characteristic of thinking is what makes memory so unreliable.

We Beings tend to not be aware that our memories are low resolution and that our minds are omitting a whole bunch of information. If you ask me to recall an event, my brain is not remembering everything, it is reconstructing everything. Our brain is filling in the blanks, and making everything fit. If there is something missing in what we remember our minds will just fill in the blanks. Now how can we surrender to depression when our logic is based on memory and memory is just a jumble of tweaked and reinvented thinking? Remember, I’m not doing this on purpose, and you are not doing this on purpose, that this is what people do automatically, the brain is on cruise-control, we are filling in the details unconsciously with no intention of deceiving ourselves. That is why we so firmly and unshakably believe the half-truths and lies we tell ourselves.

My depression exists for a lot of reasons, and one of those is that it seems logical to me. In William Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude’s is concerned that Hamlet is seemingly taking the death of his father (the King) in a manner that is, to her , seemingly out of the ordinary, and that his death has caused Hamlet to lose touch with his peers and even himself in a state of deep depression. Hamlet replies to his mother in these words:

Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not “seems”.

‘Tis not alone my inky cloak, good Mother,

Nor customary suits of solemn black,

Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,

No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,

Nor the dejected havior of the visage,

Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,

That can denote me truly.

These indeed seem,

For they are actions that a man might play.

But I have that within which passes show;

These but the trappings and the suits of woe. ~William Shakespeare

Hamlet clearly thinks he is being logical, but he is not. Hamlet is saying this his depression is not just “show” that these are real “trappings,” that his depression is the real thing, “the suits of woe,” he is dressed in sadness.

I guess what I’m trying to tell myself is that I need to stop totally believing my logic, and move forward with tenacity, determination, persistence, doggedness, perseverance, and firm resolve. I need to remember that, Hamlet was smart, he thought things through, but his logic, his trust in flawed memory, and in his hampered reasoning abilities lead to tragedy for many.

Man is not logical and his intellectual history is a record of mental reserves and compromises. He hangs on to what he can in his old beliefs, even when he is compelled to surrender their logical basis. ~John Dewey

Do I want logic so much that I would prefer a tragic ending to a happy one? When logic is hindering me, holding me back, bringing me down, putting me off my game, it is time to just say, “Maybe my logic is flawed. Maybe what I should do is push forward and ignore my misgivings, and fear?”

Yes, I get little twinges of desire to throw up my hands, and just give up, but when I feel like giving up, I need to remember why I held on for so long in the first place.

"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer." ~ Albert Einstein

To make our way, we must have firm resolve, persistence, tenacity. We must gear ourselves to work hard all the way. We can never let up. ~Ralph Bunche

Patience and tenacity of purpose are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness. ~Thomas Huxley

This week, is the anniversary of the Norman invasion of 1066. I suppose I should take some solace from this, and assume (or hope) that this Norman invasion of NW Oklahoma City will end as the one in 1066 ended, with the Norman’s on the winning end of things.

I don’t feel much like a winner right now. I have now interviewed for four jobs, and I have been passed over for three of those jobs, and I won’t hear anything on that fourth job for about a week.

There's nothing like rejection to make you do an inventory of yourself. ~James Lee Burke

I also have an interview in about 5 hours from right now. Then I have two more interviews scheduled for October 13 and 15.

I know I should not feel rejected, just because I was not selected. I did pretty good shaking off the first rejection, and the second, but this third one is bothering me. It is hard to rally after rejection. The thing is I imagine MOST people feel discouraged when they interview several times in close succession and are not hired. Here is what I will try to do:

1. I will recognize that what I am feeling is what most people would feel when they interview and don’t get hired.

A rejection is nothing more than a necessary step in the pursuit of success. ~Bo Bennett

2. I will be on guard against my tendency to talk negatively to myself about myself. I must avoid saying things to me like: “What was it they didn’t like about me? Am I too fat, too stupid, too old, or too something else to be hired?” “Which question did I screw up in my answer?” “Did I fail to say something that I should have said? How could I be that stupid?”

Quit thinking that you must halt before the barrier of inner negativity. You need not. You can crash through... whatever we see a negative state, that is where we can destroy it. ~Vernon Howard

3. I will remember some of the more common reasons that a good candidate is not hired:

a) An internal candidate entered the picture. There may be a policy or law that requires them to post a job opening, and to go through the interview process, but they may have someone already working for them who is wanting to “move up” and they want to “move them up” and unless Jesus shows up for an interview that internal candidate really had the job before the job was even advertised.

b.) The company decided to eliminate the position or put the hiring process on hold. With the current fears of economic collapse of the US economy it is possible that hiring officers may think they should hold off on adding new employees if the bottom is about to fall out for all of us. Sometimes events change after the interview process started, and they may just decide not to hire anyone.

c.) Maybe you were selected by the interview team, but there was someone above them who just didn’t like you for some reason. Maybe you reminded them of a former employee that didn't work out. Maybe they were threatened by your expertise and skill.

4. I will think positively. I will remember that I did not know, and could not know everything that the hiring officer or the interview team was looking for in the person they were hoping to hire. Maybe I was over qualified. Maybe I came in number two in their selection process missing the job because the selected applicant was recommended by the hiring officer’s mother’s best friend.

Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will. ~Zig Ziglar

5. I will keep applying for jobs. I have to re-establish my motivation every single solitary day.

People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily. ~Zig Ziglar

Don't Say YES to a Job where you don't Fit

My job interview, on Monday, was for a job as a Child Support Enforcement I job. This is the job I want. They should make their selection by Tuesday evening (today).

If I drew a line down the center of the page, labeled each column pro or con I would have lots of stuff on the pro side and only one word on the con side. The only con I have right now is that it is something new so it is CHANGE. Surely there are tons of other things that are cons about the job, but I haven’t worked there yet and can’t know what they are, until I know what they are, you know?

I have an interview at 9:30 am this morning, and another tomorrow at 10:30.

I am worried. In Oklahoma we might call it stewin’ in my own juices. Our money is running out. Kathie is a month or two (or three) from being OK enough to even look for work. If I’m going to be responsible, I am going to have to work, and find work soon.

This desperation for a paycheck puts me in a position of wanting a job so badly that I will accept the job I am offered, even if it is a bad choice. You have that ole bird in the hand being worth more than two in a bush thing. If I’m offered a job, what if the good job is not offered. I know, this evening, if it gets past 7 pm and I’ve not gotten a call from yesterday’s hiring officer, that I was not picked. Not picked is rejected.

Another worry is that I will be selected for a Social Services I job, because it is child abuse case manager work and I have done that before. But it is hard, unpleasant work. Child Abuse Case Management puts me on the road constantly, and the roads in Oklahoma City are as congested as a cat owning allergic asthmatic’s lungs. I’ve already had a bad car accident here, so not driving hundreds of miles each week appeals to me. Not working late, dragging my tail in after 9 pm three of four nights a week appeals to me. Not being in high crime neighborhoods after dark appeals to me (an at this latitude, in the winter, it is dark by the time people get off work at 4:30 or 5 pm..)

1. If there is anything that seems off in the interview, do not say YES.

If you don't get along with a potential boss during an interview, why risk a YES and be miserable later, and looking for a job AGAIN?. In some of the job interviews I’ve had the lead attorney (usually the real boss in the room) has seemed a little like they ran out of Bran cereal about a week back, and now they are suffering the consequences. If the boss doesn’t seem to like you, doesn’t mean he won’t see your resume as being the reason to hire you, and later you and he or you and she may just never click. You can end up dreading every day you go to work, and even at the end of the day and weekends you won’t be better because you know you have to go back. So I should and you should use the interview to explore whether the potential boss is really interested in what you have to say and understands your values, what’s important to you.

2. Stop worrying about being hired.

So I say to myself, “That’s easy for you to say, you are not running out of money.”

“I am too running out of money,” I say to me.

The point is that just wanting to get a job makes us talk ourselves into a we know is not right for us, and could admit that the job is not right for us, if we were not obsessing over getting hired. On the drive to the interview I will keep saying to myself, “It doesn’t have to be THIS job. There are lots of jobs available to me. I don’t have to take a job if the vibrations are negative.”

3. Decide what you want first.

Make a list of what's most important to you before going into an interview. "In my case, getting off at 5 or 6 and not driving are big important traits I want in a job. I want a job that uses some of the skills I think I have: typing, writing, interviewing people, assessing risk, speaking. If accounting is not on that list, but it turns up in the job description of a job you have applied for, then don’t take that job.

4. If you feel you have to cave in, then set a timetable as soon as you know it was a pressured choice and a bad fit for you.

In the Great Depression people who were high powered bankers were out digging ditches, or loading trucks for 25 cents a day. There are times when just taking a job, any job offered, is unavoidable – I need a paycheck, and if I am really at that rock-and-a-hard-place place, then yes, I’ll take any job offered, but I can also set myself a time certain when I will move on. I will continue looking for the right job for me. Consider the wrong job to be an interim job, and then stick to that mindset. I really hated teaching school and yet I taught school for 18 years because I just didn’t have the resolve to find something else. So if I set a job changing deadline, or if you have such a time certain, then be ready to start job hunting just as soon as that self imposed time certain gets close. –And THIS TIME, since I’ll have a job, I can afford to look until I find the right job. I can take the time to be picky, methodical, and thorough

5. Be honest.

I don’t mean to not misrepresent your job history, or skills, I mean be who you really are when you go to an interview. Yes, we all want to put that best foot forward when we interview, but if I pretend to be a political conservative, or a tough guy with difficult people, then even if I can sustain that act I am going to be miserable. I’m politically liberal. I don’t like confrontations, and even if I handle them right, it does internal damage to my mind. I once took a job with some religious fanatic that wanted us all to come into his office early, before we were even required to be at work, and spend 45 minutes in prayer.

This boss was just over the top. He would ask, “How are you today?”

I would say, “Fine.”

Then he would shoot back, “Well you ought to be fine because Jesus loves you.”

I can fake being that religious kind of guy, but I’m not that kind of guy, and I was miserable every time we got in that prayer chamber.

In an interview I don’t have to just spill my guts about all my little quirks and flaws, but I need to be comfortable, and if the way I am is not what they want, then I want them to know that and when I don’t get hired, well, I want to think, “I dodged a bullet.”

Preparing for the Interview

I’m heading out for a job interview in a little while, and I’m worried about having that positive attitude that is going to impress the hiring team. Actually I have three interviews scheduled for this week, and my bank balance if falling fast. I need a job, and so I am highly motivated to have one of these interviews to work out for me.



One thing I want to avoid today is being, or appearing to be confused. Obviously, it is important for me to not be confused during my interview. How do I do this? How does anyone avoid confusing during the interview? Like this:



1. Listen to the question carefully. It is OK for there to be a pause between the question and the answer, although not a lengthy pause. Speak up, and focus on your answer.



2. Tell stories. It is always better to give illustrations of what you have done or created during your course. Have some stories in mind before you get to the interview. Anticipate the possible hard questions, and know the stories that fit those hard questions. It is not good driving home from the interview and think, “Why did I tell the story about that mouse in the conference room? I should have told the story about the client that lied to me, and how I figured it out before we had a disaster.”



3. Answer all the questions with details. Avoid generalities. Answer all the questions confidently. [Note: you don’t have to actually be confident, you have to answer confidently. There is a difference.]



4. It is OK to ask if that answered their question, IF you are unsure. It is better to ask for clarification before you start answering if you really didn’t understand the question. This goes back to Number 1. Listen carefully. If you don’t want to look confused, then try to understand the questions the first time, but it is still better to seek clarification to than to fumble around answering something that is totally off the wall from what was asked.



5. be honest. This is the flip side of don’t lie. You don’t have to brag on your flaws and weak areas, but a lie can be grounds for being fired later, it can get you into a job you are not equipped to do. In a recent interview I found out that they had several openings and one of the jobs would be working with spreadsheets, and bookkeeping type things. They asked me which of the areas listed appealed to me. I pointed out that the spreadsheet part was really the only one that I would not feel comfortable doing. For me, it would be better not to be hired than to be hired to do accounting work. I have no training, no natural ability, and no interest in accounting work.

Remember that one of the things a hiring officer or interview team is trying to do is balance out the skills of their staff. If they have three great writers, but no one really good with interviewing clients, or no one good at investigating, or number crunching, then they are looking for that sort of person. This may mean that you are qualified, and would be a great employee, but they already have people who are good at what you are good at, and they need someone good at something else. Not getting a job is not nearly as personal as it feels when you don’t get the nod.



All you can do, and all I can do, is:

• Rehearse the interview with some spouse, associate, or pal
• Dress appropriately for the interview
• Arrive early
• Have enough resumes for the entire interview team
• Listen to their questions
• Answer their questions carefully
• Convey an interest in that particular job
• Indicate your interest in being a long-term employee
• Have a prepared set of questions to ask the interview team