Fast Five with Ce Rosenow

gratitude

a bit of sea foam

in my open hands

Because a few direct questions can lead to endless insight, I'm happy to present Fast Five — short interviews with my favorite writers.  Sure, life is short but who doesn't have time for five questions — and a chance to win a great book? (To win, simply post your name and contact info in the comments section below. Your name will be entered in a random drawing to win Pacific by Ce Rosenow). 

Our first Fast Five is with Ce Rosenow, president of the Haiku Society of America and the publisher of Mountains and Rivers Press. She lives in Eugene, Oregon where she teaches writing and literature at Lane Community College and the University of Oregon. Pacific is her fifth poetry collection.  

In the introduction to Pacific, Michael Dylan Welch says, “The greatness of the ocean is at once calming and frightening, repelling and attractive, and these poems dwell in such tensions.” What influences or inspirations led you to poetry?

I think the primary reason I was drawn to poetry was a combined love of language and realization that some kinds of knowledge and understanding are beyond the scope of language. Poetry not only accommodates those two responses to language but embraces them.

Why haiku?  What is it about this form that interests you?

Reading and writing haiku has the potential to become a life philosophy or a life practice. Haiku focus on a single moment and draw our attention to very specific happenings within that moment. So much of my work outside of haiku involves analysis. Recognizing haiku moments and writing haiku to convey them offer a balance to my analytical work by encouraging me to stay present and attentive to the individual moments I experience. 

so many stars

so much I don't know —

winter night

When we met at the Poets’ Concord in Newport, Oregon, we briefly discussed the haiku. Modern haiku is not constrained to the traditional 5-7-5 syllable format. Would you share more about what makes a poem a haiku?

There are so many different approaches to writing haiku in English. Personally, I am drawn to haiku that use images of two simultaneously-occurring events and suggest the interconnectedness of things. At least one of the images is of nature. The internal comparison, or the relationship between the two events, is also central for me in haiku. The poems can either follow a fixed syllable count or, more commonly, no syllable count at all, and I appreciate haiku that effectively utilize a pivot line so that there is some sense of surprise at the end of the poem. There are several books that explain in varying degrees of detail the different approaches to haiku, but I’ll just mention two: The Haiku Handbook by William J. Higginson (now available in the 20th anniversary edition) and Haiku: A Poet’s Guide by Lee Gurga.

What poets and writers would you like to emulate? 

I’m afraid I could produce an endless list of writers whose work includes things I admire. I do know that I am particularly drawn to writers who combine their interests in writing, editing, and translating, as well as in publishing the work of other poets. Cid Corman is a wonderful example of someone who dedicated his life to poetry. He wrote poems on a daily basis and engaged for decades in editing, translating, and publishing, as well.

arguing 

on the windy beach . . .

sand in my teeth

You are an accomplished poet, teacher and publisher, and have taken part in numerous readings and interviews. What question hasn’t been asked that you’d like to answer?

What a great question! My answer relates to my previous comments about writers I would like to emulate. I think it would be interesting to be asked about the relationship between writing, researching, teaching, editing, translating, and publishing. All of these things are in conversation with one another. They allow me to come at ideas and the expression of ideas through language from so many different perspectives, and those perspectives inform the ways in which I make poems.

To win Pacific, poems by Ce Rosenow, add your name and contact info in the comments section below. Feeling shy? Email me!:  dcm@drewmyron.com

Your name will be entered in a random drawing. The winner will be announced on Wednesday, June 23rd.  

 

Thankful Thursday

 

"There’s always something to be thankful for," says writer Leah Dieterich, who expresses her daily gratitude at thxthxthx.com. 

Like Leah, I love the thank you note.

At a young age, my mother taught me the value of expressing gratitude. 

As an adult, the thank you notes expanded beyond appreciation for birthday or holiday gifts to include gratitude for a slice of sunshine, a good book, or a smile from a stranger.

I often send thank you notes as letters to those I love:  As the sky hangs heavy, I'm thinking of you, how you stand bright against this gray . .  

And just as often, I write to myself — in appreciation for all the people, places and feelings that make life deeper, kinder, brighter. 

In the writing groups we compose Feel Good Pages. I think of it as an expansion of thankfulness, a chronicle of the parts of life that make us happy and grateful. Students sometimes groan a bit. They've been in school all day. They are tired, depleted and want to whine. And frankly, I do, too. I'm no Pollyanna. But the state of malaise is exactly why we need our Feel Good Pages — to elevate us from daily wear and tear, to remind us of our better selves. 

So we write. And like a weak sun made bright with the parting of clouds, the mood in the room shifts and lifts. The more we recall and appreciate the feel good-ness of life, the more we really do feel good. After 10 to 15 minutes of writing, the children are bursting to share their pages.  We are all smiles and giggles and light. 

And really, isn't that the beauty of gratitude? 

 

Book Launch Party — Tonight!

The truth?  I wasn’t crazy about kids. 

Teenagers were daunting. Youngsters were alien. And I had no maternal instinct. But that was before I became immersed and attached to the children in the Seashore Family Literacy writing programs. Now I can’t stop thinking about the stories taking shape, the poems that sing, and the earnest efforts of youngsters with hearts wide and willing. 

In each of the writing groups we talk about the importance of being wide awake to the world, and to the power of words — to soothe and heal, to hearten and encourage, to open doors and close wounds. Combining the physical act of writing with the mental and emotional experience of imagination can produce profound results. At Seashore, writing is not just a skill but a powerful vehicle for change. 

I’ve been a part of Seashore Family Literacy for nearly six years and I’ve seen change, both in the students and myself. Within this brood of spirited youngsters, plucky tweens, sullen teens and loving volunteers, I have found my place — along with an unexpected tenderness for our young writers. 

— Drew Myron
from the Introduction to Find Your Place: Poetry & Prose from Seashore Family Literacy, Volume 4 


Tonight is the Book Launch Party for Find Your Place, the annual anthology from Seashore Family Literacy. Students will share their words and sign books. Please join the celebration and help us encourage young writers! 

Can't make it to the party? You can still purchase books. Only $12 — and all proceeds benefit the Seashore Writing Programs. You can buy now, or send a check to Seashore Family Literacy, PO Box 266, Waldport Oregon 97394. Thanks for your support! 

Finding my place, again and again

 

Sometimes you just want to write because it allows you to talk about it. You are not judged. 

 

The annual anthology from Seashore Family Literacy is fresh from the press. This year the book features work from all the Seashore writers — 40 students/volunteers/mentors, from ages 9 to 75.

The fourth volume of Find Your Place reflects our growing programs. We started with a teen writing group, and in the last few years have expanded to include grade school and middle school writing groups, along with summer writing camps. We recently added a writing group for adults, too.

I get a bit tender at this time of year, a mixture of exhaustion and achievement. Is this what parents feel? A bittersweet blend of "Thank God this year is over!" and "My God, they are growing up fast!"

Rather than jubilant, I feel a bit wrung-out. Rather than accomplished, I'm writing a mental list of all the things I should have done, shared, been. I fear I'm falling short of giving students what they need. 

Last night I pried for feedback. Why do you come to writers group? I asked the teens and volunteers. What do you like best? What needs work? In a haze of end-of-year fatigue, the unspoken question was Does this matter?  

This morning I read the student comments, and felt the gentle tug of Yes. 

Writing is about finding who you are, about getting the words on paper before your brain bursts from an overload of stories.This is an escape place for me. Writing is like therapy on paper. I have learned a lot. It feels amazing being in a book! 

 

Luck runs in

April brought a bounty of good books and good luck my way. May has been unusually charmed, too.

Because my good fortune involves absolutely no skill, I'm not boasting. I wrote my name and hit 'send.' I like my wins without fret, frazzle or fear.   

In honor of National Poetry Month, several blogs hosted Poetry Book Giveaways (thanks to mastermind & poet Kelli Agodon). I was happy to give away books, and even happier to win one.  

I won Subject to Change by Matthew Thorburn. He writes in a wonderfully natural voice, while displaying a mind of complex and drifting associations. Thorburn crafts a solid collection of what one writer called post-postmodern poems. Line after line rings with insight and a knowing sort of humor:

. . . What is it with me and this small stuff,

anyway? I staple in quotes anything

you say, so it will stay. "What about those

for-instances?" I count them off

on my fingers. For instance, "Sometimes

things fall into place just so you can hear them

click." For instance, when I say "you"

I mean you. For instance, the dark

taste of fennel on the wet
                  

 little heart of your tongue.  . .  

from Friends Who are Married and Expecting More Babies 

 

But wait, wait, that's not all! This week I won another blog-based drawing (really, really, I never win anything — until this last month). Dawn at She is Too Fond Of Books gave away several copies of Austin Kleon’s Newspaper Blackout. I’m a big fan of Kleon’s work and can’t wait to read more of his unique scratch-out-words poetry.

(Dawn, by the way, is a generous blog hostess, offering numerous book giveways. You can’t win if you don’t enter.)

Is there anything better than unexpected books? I'm feeling grateful and well fed. Thank you book writers, lovers & givers. Your kindness gives and gives. 

 

Book as Gift

Birthday. Mother's Day. Graduation. 

There's nothing better than giving, or receiving, a book. Lately I've been swimming (gratefully) in books. May I share a few of my favorites?

A book I bought for myself and want to give to everyone I know:
A beautiful restraint shines in Ghostbread, by Sonja Livingston. Written in 122 short chapters, Livingston tells the true story of growing up poor, hungry for food and love. Devoid of sentimentality, Ghostbread delivers a piercing combination of vivid detail and emotional control. In her preface, Livingston prepares us for the truth:

As a girl I never talked about how I grew up. It was complicated . . . Mostly I was certain that I was alone in a way that no one would understand. . . 

I began to write. Of seven children who followed a mother as she flew around western New York live a misguided bird. How they flew and flew until they were sick from all the flying then landed flat and broken in the muggy slums of Rochester, New York. I wrote of living in apartments and tents and motel rooms. . . About sleeping in shacks and other people's beds . . . 

A testament to survival, this memoir stands strong (and won the Award For Creative Nonfiction from the Association of Writers and Writing Programs).

I want to give Ghostbread to everyone I know, to those who recognize the pain and shame poverty can bring. And conversely, for those who believe poverty lives in the next town over, on another street, or church, or school, for those who can't see the struggling youngsters in their own backyard. 

As Livingston writes at the book's end: 

"How did you make it through?" people want to know. And I am not being humble or coy when I shake my head and can find no words. 

I am not sure. . .

I celebrate and cry for those who still live in poverty's clutches: beautiful nieces, good-hearted nephews, hardworking siblings. I see with agonizing clarity from where I stand, and though I'd love to point them in new directions, there is not rope strong enough to pull someone from one life to another. And perhaps it is arrogance to try. Ideals and opportunities and social theorizing are just fine, but if you must understand only one thing, it is this: a warm hand and words whispered into the ear are what we want. Paths that can be seen and followed and walked upon are what we most need." 

from Ghostbread


An unexpected gift:
Rick Campbell, of Anhinga Press, is a good friend to Seashore Family Literacy, where I lead writing groups. He sends us boxes of books and we dig in with Christmas-morning joy. A recent shipment contained some goodies, including Me, Them, Us, a novella by Meagan Ciesla. The story — a tight, sharp slice of poverty, choices and getting through — won first place in the Iron Horse Literary Review 2009 Novella Competition.

What I like about this work of fiction is — as with Ghostbread — its restraint. Characters are trying, ugly and mean. But instead of being written in broad strokes of bad, Ciesla writes with nuance to reveal effort, achievement and the gaps in between.

When it's been hard getting to know people your whole life, meeting someone who's easy to be with feels off. You start to wonder where the lies live, where the hurt is hidden. You hold your breath and wait for its end. Take your good luck as a warning sign that this can't last for long, that something's going to go terribly wrong.

from Me, Them, Us

 

How about you? 
What books are you giving? or getting?  Please share!


Bookmark This!

 

The skinny girl walking arm-in-arm

with her little sister

is wearing a shirt that says

TALK NERDY TO ME

and I want to,

I want to put my bag of groceries down

beside the fire hydrant

and whisper something in her ear about long division. . . .

From V, by Matthew Dickman 
from How a Poem Happens: Contemporary Poets Discuss the Making of Poems 

 

My new favorite thing: How a Poem Happens.

Without fanfare or fancy design, Brian Brodeur is a poetry illuminator. How a Poem Happens — the blog he created in 2009 — is an impressive collection of interviews with poets who discuss the making of specific poems.

Brodeur chooses one poem, asks the author to answer ten to fifteen questions about it, and posts the answers on the blog.  The results are simple, significant and rapidly growing. The site features dozens of insightful interviews with heavy hitters such as Tony Hoagland, Donald Hall and Stephen Dunn, and lesser known but equally powerful poets such as Jennifer Chang, Adrian Blevins and Matthew Dickman. 

"The project began in selfishness," Brodeur, the author of two poetry collections, said in an interview with First Person Plural. "I wanted an excuse to contact some of my favorite living poets and ask them how they wrote some of my favorite poems."

Brodeur's curiosity benefits us all. 

 

In unexpected places

I love finding poems in unexpected places. I get a giddy zing when I run across poetry on the bus, my phone, or in the bathroom. In fact, years ago, in an effort to get 'poetry to the people' I randomly chose names from the phone book and anonymously mailed out poems. (Sadly, I had to stop this practice when the anthrax scare created suspicion of unexpected mail).  

All of which explains my joy to share poetry next week in a most unexpected place: a massage studio.

The Gentle Dragon Massage & Healing Hideaway will mark their opening with a two-day celebration of music, speakers, demonstrations, prizes — and poetry.  I'm happy to be included in the festivities, and eager to get poetry out of the books and into the world. What fun! Please join me.

Gentle Dragon Grand Opening
in Yachats, Oregon
Peacefully nestled in the Greenhouse Marketplace, among the Touchstone, Earthworks and Wave art galleries.

• Saturday, May 22, 1 to 6pm
- poetry (at 3:15pm)
- acupuncture
- music
- imagery
- herbalism
- storytelling

• Sunday, May 23, 11am - 4pm
- music
- acupuncture
- art
- prizes

For more information, contact Zeora at the Gentle Dragon Massage & Healing Hideway, 541.547.4721.

 

Prettyful?

 

What's your word of the day?

It's how we start each session of Happy Hour for Young Readers & Writers. If I slip up and race to writing, the youngsters are quick to set me straight: But we haven't done word of the day, they say, alarmed I could forget such an important component of our weekly gatherings. 

Polkadots is a popular word. Coffee comes in week after week (from the same energetic girl) and peanut butter pie was a big hit, too.

Let's stretch ourselves, I say, after bored or depressed is mentioned for the third time. And so our Word Wall became dotted with a new language:  

boomalotice

zipolicious

confuzzled

prettyful

hoper 

I was conflicted at first. That's not a word, I would say in my cranky librarian voice. My old-school ways wanted the kids to appreciate the beauty of existing language, real words. But the more accepting life-is-art part of me giggled at their creativity. Writing is a love of language, the sounds and shapes words can make. These made-up and mixed-up words — fueled with an enthusiasm for invention — are the apex of language appreciation. And, really, zipolicious is just plain fun. 


Errors, Omissions & Headaches

Technical difficulties are working my last nerve. 

Several months ago I switched to a new website format. I've been posting two and three blog entries a week, writing, with great trust, as I  lobbed words into the darkness. Surely, someone was reading, right?

Not much feedback, not many comments. I tried not to be one of those 'sensitive' writers who moan about their lonely lives. There are a zillion writers and even more blogs. Who was I to think I had something unique to offer, or had crafted content worthy of followers, the web's holy grail of affirmation? 

Last week I got my answer. A colleague told me she hadn't been to my site in months because she hadn't received any of the email notifications she signed up for. 

Turns out, none of my subscribers — admittedly not a large number — were getting my posts via email. The blog bookmark feature seems to work just fine, but if you signed up to get postings by email you haven't heard from me since March! 

And so, here I am, tossing words out again. I've tweaked the subscription feature (at right). You can now subscribe to my blog by bookmarking Off the Page in your own browser, and/or choose to receive blog posts by email (simply type in your address).  

Fingers crossed for full and successful operation. And please, please, let me know if I get lost in this labyrinth. It gets so dark and cold without you. 

 

Generate

I'm on a hunt. Can you help me?

I've been to a handful of writing workshops. I've been elated and inspired, and defeated and depressed. The best — and first — writing workshop I attended set the bar high. Offered by the now-defunct Taos Institute of Arts, the one-week workshop with poet Judyth Hill affirmed my desire (and shaky ability) to write poetry. It is not melodramatic to say it was an experience that changed my life. 

There were others that were not-so-good. I don't want to repeat those feelings of dread and defeat. And when I'm paying a good sum for a learning experience, I don't want to walk away feeling a loss of enthusiasm, and hard-earned cash. 

But still, I hunger for workshop invigoration. And I'm on the hunt. At this point, I'm not looking for a critique group or experience. I'm looking for a workshop like those Taos days, in which I generate new work in the company of others. 

Any suggestions?  

Have you been to, or heard of, generative writing workshops or retreats? Please let me know. 

 

Give it away

 

Whenever I read a poem that moves me,
I know I'm not alone in the world.

 

How lucky we are
That you can't sell
A poem, that it has
No value. Might
As well
Give it away.

That poem you love
That saved your life
Wasn't it given to you?  

 

- Gregory Orr
from Concerning The Book That Is The Body Of The Beloved 


Shame the rain

 

Spring is so darn fickle! On the Oregon Coast life is turning a brilliant green but the season teases with dodging sun and a damp chill. I'm eager — and not patiently it turns out — for floaty skirt and strappy sandal weather. 

During a free-write session at last week's Writers Group, Linnea Harper (a mentor-volunteer with me) was spot-on with this poem about my (premature) leap into spring: 

 

Spring Optimist

for Drew


She wears a spring dress

in the April shower that feels like

sweatshirts and fuzzy boots.

 

Sometimes you just have to

strap it on, I say, take what’s at hand

and give it a new shape,

wrap yourself up in it

like a sari or a sheath—

hair and lipstick just so—

dressed to lure a clear day,

prepared to shame the rain.

 

I've written poems to/for/about others, but never had one written 'for' me. What a treat! It feels good to be on the receiving end of words (yet another reason I love Poem in Your Pocket Day, which was when Linnea happened to write this poem). Thanks Linnea! 

 

Gifted

She likes the words coffee and zoom! 

She doesn't want to write poems or read poems or sit still. Last week as the other youngsters wrote and copied their favorite verse, the 10-year-old stood apart, defiant. 

So we wrote together, just the two of us. Simple things: A word for each letter of her name, such as kind, intelligent, energetic . . . She unfolded slowly, said she would share our poem with her father, then asked to take a book of poems home. 

The next day, she raced to me, her face flushed as she rattled through her backpack. "This is for you," she said. In her careful script, on special paper, she had copied a poem we had read together the day before. 

This confirms my love for Poem in Your Pocket Day. You never know what a poem will plant, what seed will grow.

 

 

Winners!

I'm very happy — exuberant even — to announce winners of the first annual Poetry Book Giveaway: 

If you're a winner and you see your name below, please email me at dcm@drewmyron.com with your mailing address so I can ship your book right away.  

Winner of Forecast, a word-art collaboration by Drew Myron and Tracy Weil, is A.M. (also known as Amber McQuillan) of Newfoundland.

Winner of The Real Warnings by Rhett Iseman Trull (one of my favorite poets and poetry collections), is Matthew Thorburn, a poet living in New York City. 

The Poetry Book Giveaway was created by poet Kelli Agodon to celebrate National Poetry Month and promote a love of, and appreciation for, poetry. Over 50 bloggers took part, giving away more than 100 poetry books.

The event has been a wonderful way to explore and discover a mix of new, unknown and established poets. Many thanks to Kelli at Book of Kells for including me as a Giveaway host, and to everyone for stopping by and entering the drawing. See you next year!