Populist Pugilist just started a poetry blog. He promises an entry a week with his first being a partial glimpse at a collection titled Grace Poems. Here’s what he has to say about it:

Grace Poems is a cycle of individual pieces unified by the character of Grace. Hopefully each poem can stand on its own, but they also hopefully all compliment one another and form a whole greater than the sum.

Grace herself is partly inspired by certain real people and is my tribute to them and to what (in my mind) they stand for. I also model Grace on poetic figures that may be a bit obvious (Dante’s Beatrice and Yeats’s Cathleen, Crazy Jane, etc.). My intent was to create in Grace a symbol of ideas, values, beliefs, emotions and myths. But I also wanted to give Grace a certain reality and personality.

I’m not saying that these poems have anything to do with me, but let’s face it, I’m nothing if not graceful. Irregardlessivity, this is my blog where everything is about me and therefore I’m telling you I am “certain real people” and also the woman Dante had in mind for Beatrice. What? We were close. Ask Shirley McClain.

Populist knows I am not smart enough for poetry. I hate that because I don’t wish to lend my idiocy to the built-in snobbery of the literary world where novels are marginalized for spelling things out for the women who read them. I do offer my mother and mother-in-law (Yeats is one of her faves) as women who can appreciate and interpret poetry. For my part, I will continue to presume I’m Grace. In fact, I will presume all Populist’s good poetry is about me and all the bad poetry is about my antagonists because they are the way most evil.

Guess what else is also about me? Tracy’s cool new stuff. She’s shared with me her current inspiration. Anyone would be privileged to own one of her fans. Perhaps she won’t hate me forever if I let you in on her current work. I’m very excited about it.

Don’t you just ADORE that pop of teal (blue, turquoise – as with poetry, so am I with color). These here feathers are causing Tracy quite some tortured artist feelings in terms of involuntary bodily tingles, urges, and so forth. I think she enjoys the physical symptoms of longing and waiting while mulling over the possibilities. On the other hand, so much of her is in her craft that she says, “I feel like I am putting children on the orphan train headed west every time I mail a fan off.”

Tracy is just good with words like that. Here’s what Tracy says about this photo, “These are the sticks I use to violate the quills for my fans.” Hee hee. Sometimes I’m overly in touch with my inner 8 YO boy. That may be another reason for my stunted poetic understandings and also why Tracy is the artist and I am the friend.

My cool buddies are doing cool things that the world views as “art” while I muddle away with shrinkey dinks and kids’ paint and this blog. I’ll update you when Tracy’s next fan comes up for sale (if she manages to convince herself to orphan another), but you should really sign up to follow Populist.