Sapphire

With the weather as bad as it’s been lately (I suppose I should have expected snow, ice and cold in Midwestern winters), I’ve had a lot of free time to explore writing communities. The library has been closing early and even when it is open, it isn’t very busy. It seems that most people just aren’t willing to brave the outdoors for a few new books. I’ve spent a lot of time on the blogs that Ron Silliman has links to on his own blog. I really admire Silliman and so feel that work that somehow crosses paths with his is definitely worth checking out. A few of the blogs didn’t catch my interest as I hoped they would, but I did find a few that I think I’m going to begin visiting on a more regular basis. One in particular is a blog titled Naked Superstar Poetry by someone who calls herself Mrs. Universe. (The link on Silliman’s blog was called Sapphire, which is what initially attracted me to the blog. Many other links used the full names of individuals and “Sapphire” really stood out to me as something creative, different and worth exploring.)

Before focusing on the actual postings, I looked into the About Me section of the blog. Right away, I really felt like I could connect with Mrs. Universe, primarily because she is twenty-five years old. She does have a husband, children, and an Internet Marketing career, which aren’t exactly things I can brag about, but I still had a feeling of understanding this blogger; perhaps because I expected so many of the links on Silliman’s blog to be academic and serious and hard to relate to. This is getting difficult to clearly describe. I’m just going to skip ahead to a fact that really caught my attention: Mrs. Universe claims to have been nominated for the Guinness Book of World Records for the highest priced auction ever run on Ebay. This really intrigued me; I’m curious as to what the item auctioned was!

Most of the blog consists of poetry written by Mrs. Universe, which is written with a very simplistic style and tone. She writes about everyday events, such as waking up with a child in the middle of the night and missing sleep. However this lack of sleep and her love for her husband (another topic of the poems) seem to be laced with a lot of emotion and are much more than just routine happenings. Her focus on family and emotions related to them makes the poetry very relatable.

In addition to poetry, Mrs. Universe includes some humor and fun that is separated, to a certain degree, from her personal life and writings. For instance, she has also posted in response to an article on Maxim.com titled, Everything You Know…Is Wrong. She lists common wives tales the article included and her attempt to understand which is true and which is false, such as “I was sure cell phones gave you brain issues…Or was that hair dye?” This really breaks up the poetry and keeps the blog from becoming just another poetry blog with personal writing to sludge through.

I was disappointed to find that Naked Superstar Poetry has not been updated since mid-January. While it seems obvious to me that Mrs. Universe has a lot going on in her life (with children, pregnancy and work) I’m still hoping for more regular updates in the future.