Weekend Assignment #317: Merry Meetings

Weekend Assignment #317: Merry Meetings NOW CLOSED!
People used to socialize with each other on street corners, at cocktail parties, at club meetings, and in a later era, at shopping malls. These days, however, we seem to do most of our socializing online. Where do you go most often for face time with friends and acquaintances?

Extra Credit: Do you ever hang out with co-workers after hours?

To play along with our Weekend Assignment, just write about the above topic in your own blog, and remember to include a link back here. Then leave a link to your entry in the comments below. (We also accept responses posted directly to the comments thread.) Please see our How to Play entry for details. The deadline for this assignment is Wednesday, May 12th at 9 PM EDT. Be sure to check back here on Thursday, May 13th for a roundup of the week's responses, and to see the new Assignment.

Here are excerpts from the responses to last week's assignment,
Weekend Assignment #316: National Poetry Month. Click on each name to read the whole entry:

Anne wrote...

I was thinking of writing something about the smart, snarky, tortured lady poets: Dorothy Parker, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton. But the truth is that I don’t much do poetry. I like character development.

I remember studying Beowulf in high school. That was pretty cool, but I imagine if Mr. David Mullaly taught quantum physics I would have thought it cool. Which is kind of how I ended up reading Paradise Lost a couple of months ago.

New participant Freda wrote...

How could I pass up this assignment, when I write poetry like a mad woman. It's a little thing you may or may not know about me. It is how I deal with almost everything that happens in my life. Whether it is good, bad or indifferent, I channel it all through poem. I change my writing style often too....

Carly wrote...

I love poetry. I always have. I don't know that I have a particular favorite, but I must say, I enjoy the simplicity of a Haiku. I have written some from time to time, mostly as the spirit moved me. At times, something will happen, either in my life, or the world in general, and I will try to put my feelings about it, together with one of my photographs, in a coherent way. The essence of an Haiku is about linking nature to human nature, and that's what I have gone for here. I don't know, I think I am much more of a visual person, than a competent writer of poetry or prose, but sometimes one has to stretch out the creativity muscle.

Kaitlyn wrote...

Here’s a confession: in college, I wrote a paper explaining how “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is a bisexual poem. (That’s not the confession. It’s coming up.) I had written a short piece earlier in the semester complaining that queer criticism, at least as described in our textbook, left no room for bisexuality. My professor agreed and said I should use that idea for one of the major papers. Prufrock seemed the obvious choice. I spent a week and a lot of fun writing the paper, including some biographical details (I’m convinced Eliot and Pound were sleeping together).

Sandrine wrote...

My 10 year old daughter, ever tuned in to my swearing under my breath, asks what's up. I said I have to write a Haiku and will probably have to give up on this week's assignment. "Don't be stupid, she says. It's really easy. All you have to do is think of a subject then express yourself about it in 5-7-5. I open my mouth to scold her for, well, knowing better than me, when a light shines and I ask sweetly: 'Would you write one for me?'. 'Sure. I'll write a few and you can choose one. How about Istanbul and other places?' 'Ok'.

Duane wrote...

When I was a young tyke, my mother went back to school. One of her textbooks treated some of the pop and rock lyrics of the day -- Simon and Garfunkel, the Byrds, Bob Dylan songs -- as poetry. As I leafed through the book and picked out songs I knew, it gave me a deeper appreciation of them -- that they were important enough to be considered "poetry." Even now, I sometimes have the crazy notion that some of our greatest poets are not exactly poets after all -- they're songwriters.

Mike wrote...

You know, I don't have a favorite poet. I'm not really a poetry fan, actually. Not that I'm knocking it, not at all; it's not poetry, it's me. Really. Maybe I've never found a poet that really speaks to me, or maybe it is due to the way was forced into reading poetry in school. You know what I mean, right? It's your sophomore year in school and you come to that point in Lit class where you study poetry and the feeling of dread washes over you. See, the teachers I had never let us enjoy them, or find something we liked. Instead they picked out what they liked, or thought was important, then forced me to read them and figure out the deep, underlying meaning of the poem. It was not fun for me since I was never able to do it right.

Karen wrote...

I only meant to check the magazine rack for the last Doctor Who Magazine issued before my subscription, but some people from a local poetry club had just set up a microphone in the magazine area, and were introducing an open mike poetry reading. Well, I couldn't resist! Shortly after the reading started, I recited an E.E. Cummings poem from memory....

Trevor wrote...

Me and poetry have had a long, storied, and semi-tragic love affair. I took creative writing twice, and both times flunked. Lowest scores? Big heaping vats of iambic pentameter. I could do free verse, but I wasn’t a big fan of most. The first poem to rock my world, truly was called Something as it really is.

Nice range of opinion and personal taste here! I encourage everyone to check out everyone's poetry, original and otherwise, and anti-poetry stories too. Welcome, Freda, and thanks, all!

Happy writing, everyone! Let's meet back here soon!

Karen