poetically challenged

I feel like I've really missed the boat here. I was asked to review Great Priced Furniture now, right after Chinese New Year has passed. I wish I'd seen the great deals they have there before the holiday season had passed. It would've been a great, affordable way to do Chinese New Year right, getting the house all ready for the New Year season and the guests who come to visit during that time.

If new furniture is on the agenda for you, don't miss the boat like I did. Great Priced Furniture really lives up to its name.

Coming up before the end of this month: Nature Poems. In March: New-Talent Poetry, Rhymed Poetry, and Character Sketches and "Fillers" (prose).

If you'd like to have a closer look at Byline, and perhaps even submit to their contests, the link is

And she wasn't the only one. I was surrounded by friends who used drugs, and yet who regretted it. As an adult, I see less of it amongst my friends, but my uncle recently shared with me a journal he'd written through a stage of depression. He'd been a heavy drug user in his teenage years, and even now when he is in his 50's, it has come back to haunt him with some very difficult complications.

All of this contact I've had with addicts has been a source of inspiration for some of my poetry. It has felt, in my life, that I've struggled through addictions, even though the pills were not in my mouth nore the needle in my own arm. What I found, though, is that addiction doesn't only affect the addict, but everyone around the addict. I suppose that is why there are a number of literary magazines around focuses specifically on the issue of addiction, such as R.KV.R.Y Literary Journal. The writing of addiction seems to have a voice all its own.

My best friend never checked into an adolescent treatment program. In fact, there weren't very many good facilities available for her back in those days. Instead, she had to rely on another teenager who was lost and frightened by it all, just as she was. I only wish we'd had access to the professional medical staff that is available in good programs today, such as the program at Echo Malibu. It is a good work, and one I commend. It is because of places like this that the writing of addiction often includes victorious voices, and not just dark and discouraging texts that end in hopelessness. The victory over addiction brought about through such places is an inspiration to all who hear its sound.

For now, that resource is still available to poets, and it still has very valuable information. But as of next year, when its contract with its service provider expires, it will no longer be available. If you're a poet looking for ways to get your work out, you might want to browse through that site now, while there is still time to do so.

I am very impressed with the various motivational keynote speakers I've seen who can travel about the world and make their messages known, communicated clearly, across cultures.

International Speakers Bureau books excellent international motivational speakers to present their messages at venues all over the world. They've helped arranged for many celebrity speakers to appear and speak across the globe. Some of the famous faces they've helped to place at events include Bill Cosby, Geena Davis, Lance Armstrong, and Goldie Hawn. In 2007, names like Keith Yamashita, Sahar Hashemi, and Joel Barker appear on the list of speakers whose events are quickly booking up. If you'd like to book an effective, well-known and well-respected guest speaker for your event, be sure to get in touch with ISB. Wherever your event is to be held, ISB can find the perfect match for your event.

This has been a sponsored post

A Blessing for the global metropolis is a part of a collection I am currently working on, and it appears in this most recent issue of Bakery of the Poets, a literary e-zine. I wrote about the e-zine in a previous post, including a link to a review of Yong Shu Hoong's work that I've written and that also appears on the magazine's website. I like the look of Bakery of the Poets, and I am very pleased that my own work has found a home there.

At another site where I blog, I wrote a few posts about monetizing your blog. I'm not a great money-maker, and would generally rather talk about other things. But I do want to inform other bloggers about opportunities as they come along.

Pay Per Post is probably my favourite of the blog ad companies I've run across so far, and I've used a fair number of them (as indicated in the posts linked above). I have 5 blogs working with Pay Per Post now, and I like how I can spread the ads out and make a little money from PPP without cluttering up any single blog with a ton of ads.

Pay Per Post has now started a new thing. If you click on this tag , it will take you to a sign-up page for PPP, if you aren't a member yet. When your blog is approved, you'll receive an offer to write a review of my blog, and we'll each receive $7.50 when you've done that. Easy stuff, and kind of fun too. If you're looking for a way to make a little extra pocket money from blogging, this might just be it.

At another blog site that I maintain, every entry I post is an acrostic. And, at my original blog site, the second poetry challenge that I listed there used the acrostic. As I have mentioned elsewhere, I use those challenges as a way of playing with poetry (and other poets) just to keep fresh, and to keep it fun.

Hebrew poetry has a similar structure, also a form of acrostic. In Hebrew poetry, acrostics use successive letters of the alphabet for the first letter of each line. The acrostic has a very elaborate tradition within Hebrew poetry. Psalm 119 is a prime example of the form, with 8 verses each starting with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet before moving to the next letter for the next 8 verses.

visit this site full of writers' resources

I hope it isn't seen as just shameless self-promotion, though "Cursed" is my own poem. It has been accepted into the online collection entitled The Genesis Project. The Genesis Project is being put together by Utmost Christian Writers, and I thought it might be of interest to other Christian poets. It is still open for submissions of poetry by Christian writers from all over the world. The project aims to have the whole book of Genesis illuminated by the poems in the collection. So far, a fair collection of poems have been gathered, and there are plans to flesh it out and see the whole book of Genesis well-covered in verse. I don't think there is a closing date... it is open until the topic seems sufficiently covered to call the project a success.

If you have some poems you'd like to submit to The Genesis Project, the guidelines can be found here. I suggest reading through the poetry collected together so far, and let that guide you in choosing which of your poems might be most suitable for the collection.

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We had a big time of it all at Disney World. We stayed in a pair of big apartments, side-by-side. It was a perfect facility for our big family outing, and we enjoyed the place a great deal. When we left at the end of the week, my nephew was in tears for several hours. This was back before digital cameras were the norm, so we stopped at a 1-hour photo shop and developed his pictures of Disney World, so he could hold them and remember the fun all the way home. And he did just that. From time to time, from the back seat, we would hear kissing sounds, and my nephew would say, "I love you, Goofy!"

Disney World packages can be great for the whole family. Our trip to Disney World was the last long road trip my family took together, but I hope there will be more soon.