Thankful Thursday: Lighten up, Francis

It's been a bit heavy around here, no?

I like dark, and appreciate morose, but sheesh, enough already. Bring on the dancing horses!

On this Thankful Thursday (Light Edition), I am thankful for:

•  Jellybeans. My latest favorite sweet treat, replacing butter toffee peanuts, which replaced tapioca pudding, which will soon be benched for candy corn — 'tis the season.

•  Scrubbing the floor. Sometimes it feels good to get on hands and knees and rub at stubborn stains, focused on an actual mess instead of the generalized worries cluttering my head.

•  bedraggled - an adjective meaning dirty and disheveled. I love the sound and shape my mouth makes when saying this word.

•  a beautiful line:

Who am I, if not one who listens
for words to stir from the silences they keep.

- from Aubade in Autumn, by Peter Everwine  

 ( and did you catch that name? is it for real? it's so swoony-poetic! )

 
It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to appreciate people, places, poems (and more), for which we are grateful. What are you thankful for today?

 

A locus through which intensities pass

Hey Writer,
What forms you?

Lidia Yuknavitch, author The Chronology of Water — a fierce, poetic and painful memoir — has some very clear ideas:

1.
I think gender and sexuality are territories of possibility. Nevermind what we've been told or what the choices appear to be. Inside artistic practice the possibilities open back up.

2.
I think narrative is quantum.

3.
I think the writer is a locus through which intensities pass.

4.
I think literature is that which fights back against the oppressive scripts of socialization and good citizenship.

5.
I think the space of making art is freedom of being.

6.
I think things that happen to us are true. Writing is a whole other body.

7.
I believe in art the way other people believe in god.

 

 — from Lidia Yuknavitch's website

 

Thankful Thursday (on Friday): Carry

A friend carries a sobriety chip.
A son keeps an old, worn watch.
A sister wears a cross.

We carry reminders. To encourage and soothe, to calm and comfort. For several weeks I've been carrying a "poem" in my pocket, a prayer really. This is not sermon. I'm not preaching, converting or condemning.

A friend gave me the prayer, and the more I read it the more I appreciate the simple language, the alliteration, and the just plain kindness. Here, an excerpt:

Keep watch with those who work,
or watch, or weep this night . . .
give rest to the weary, bless the dying,
soothe the suffering . . . shield the joyous.

Shield the joyous? See, like a good poem, that's got me thinking.

I don't presume my god is your god. Maybe nature is your higher power, or goddess, or a doorknob. What we share is that at some point in our lives, we are each weepers and workers and watchers.

Today I am thankful for thoughtful friends, and the things we carry that comfort and calm.

 

It's Thankful Thursday. Joy expands and contracts in direct relation to our sense of gratitude. What are you thankful for today? A person, a place, a possession? A story, a song, a poem? What makes your world expand?

 

 

Too Many Annies (and other confusions)


Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty
laid bare, life heightened
and its deepest mystery probed?
. . . We still and always want waking.

― Annie Dillard
The Writing Life

 

I'm late to the party, again.

I just now read The Writing Life by Annie Dillard. It's a stellar collection of essays, and is considered a sort of writer's manifesto. When writers gather, it is this book they quote, or worse — for the uninitiated like me — they give a subtle nod, a slight gesture to suggest their knowing is so deep as to not require enthusiasm. The seminal work was published in 1989, and I just now read it.

And you want to know why?

I resist hype. If everyone is raving about something, I usually walk away. Examples: maxi skirts, mainstream movies. Exceptions: Fifty Shades of Grey (don't judge, I was curious), and the sale rack at Anthropologie.

But more honestly, I confused Annie Dillard with Annie Proulx.

When writers trilled over Dillard, my mind hit ignore. I recalled the long slog through The Shipping News, and couldn't bear another grey and dismal tale set in some grey and dismal hinterland. When the book won the Pulitzer, I abandoned my "don't be a sheep" mantra, and embarked on the longest, most laborious, read of my life.

But here's the rub: The Shipping News is a novel by Annie Proulx. Not Annie Dillard.

All these years, in my haste to gather, read, learn and log, I had confused the two Annies.

But wait — the admission deepens.

I also confuse the two Richards: Richard Russo and Richard Ford. Both accomplished contemporary novelists. Both with the same dang name. Too many times to count, I have bought and borrowed a book by Richard Ford thinking it was Richard Russo, and vice versa. Just as I am sinking into the couch with book and enthusiasm, I realize it's not "my" Richard, but the other, less favored, one.

And don't even start about multiple book covers. How many times have I bought a book by Elizabeth Berg, thinking it was one I had somehow managed to never read, then realized just a few pages in that, yes, in fact, I had already read the book.

So, what's the lesson, the message?

1.
If you're a writer, pick a unique pen name.
Too many Richards confuses dimwits like me.

2.
If you're a reader, slow down.
Admittedly, I spend much of my life skimming. I call it getting the gist. This annoys my husband to no end. He's a slow, take-it-all-in-and-remember reader. Conversely, I read quickly and retain little, which explains, well, everything.  

3.
Read The Writing Life.
It's a really good book by Annie somebody.

 

Thankful Thursday: Door

Lexi White photo

Opening one door, a friend tells me, opens another.

All week I see doors.

A friend shares a poem with me. I like it, fold it, carry it in my purse.

Later, I am in a cafe with another friend. Let's write, we say, and I pull out the poem as a prompt. The room buzzes with conversation and our small table is crowded with spent cups, dirty spoons. We lean in, heads bent, to read the poem aloud. Ohh, that line, we say, and this image. We are moved, lifted. We have opened a door. Pens move across pages. We walk new rooms. We feel possible.

If the doors of perception were cleansed, wrote William Blake, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.

The line itself is a door. Jim Morrison's band, The Doors, took its name from Aldous Huxley's book The Doors of Perception, the title of which was a reference to a line in Blake's book, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

All these doors, these openings to more.

What if we saw every moment as a door. Which would we welcome, walk through, wander? And to what would our wonder lead?


It's Thankful Thursday!
Gratitude. Appreciation. Praise.
Please join me in a weekly pause to appreciate the people, places & things that bring joy. What are you thankful for today? 

 

Instead of an MFA: 7 Online Options

We're not all academics.

We're working — in bookstores and banks, in law firms and libraries. We're selling insurance, clothes, coffee, and cars. We're tending children, and parents, and bars. We're writing, whenever and wherever we can.

We thirst to improve. But not every writer has the time, money, or life circumstance to pursue a graduate degree.

Every fall Poets & Writers magazine presents the MFA Index, an exhaustive overview of schools offering Master of Fine Arts degrees in writing. In 1936, University of Iowa offered the first. Now, more than 200 schools have MFA programs.

But what about the rest of us? Is there an alternative to the MFA?

How do we hone our skills? Where do we go to stretch and improve our writing? Let's explore some options. Today we'll start with Online Writing Classes. While a single course is no substitute for a two or three-year degree, several organizations offer sophisticated and valuable writing classes. Here's a round-up of respected organizations offering quality online instruction.

7 Online Writing Classes

Cambridge Writers' Workshop
Offering creative writing courses running six to 10 weeks, in a variety of genres.

Chicago School of Poetics
Offering online classes fostering innovative poetics. Students use visual web conferencing, desktop sharing, and collaborative whiteboards. The school offers "an alternative to, and a community beyond, the Creative Writing MFA."

Gotham Writers' Workshop
With more than 7,000 students annually, this New York-based organization is one of the most popular writing resources. Their interactive classes have been named Best of the Web by Forbes magazine. Six and 10 week workshops available in seemingly every genre.

The Loft Literary Center
Classes for adult and youth, online and on-site, all writing genres. Serves beginning, intermediate and advanced writers.  

Stanford Continuing Studies
The Writer's Studio offers approximately 20 courses every quarter in the principal genres of creative writing— novel, short story, poetry, creative nonfiction, and screenwriting. All writing levels welcome.

WoodSprings Institute
University-level literary instruction, offering workshops in poetry, short story, novel, creative non-fiction, and memoir. Also: manuscript mentoring and MFA prep courses.

Workshops with Molly Fisk
Poet Molly Fisk pioneered Poetry Bootcamp, a five-day poetry intensive, and also offers A Voice of Your Own, a six-week workshop exploring prose, poetry and more.


Have you taken an online writing class? Have you taken a class with any of these organizations, or others? Tell us about it! 
 

Sunday Prayers

I don't care if it's a doorknob,

my mother said,

You gotta believe in something.

Her voice was angry but I was a petulant teen and it took me years to hear the sadness she felt. I know now that she wanted me to believe in something bigger than myself, to see beyond the smallness of me. 

Today I'm pondering the beauty of doorknobs, knowing that belief is big enough to encompass doubt, and doubt leads to searching, and searching leads to wonder, and wonder leads to . . . anything, everything.

I like how Czeslaw Milosz calls belief, or prayer, a velvet bridge.

On Prayer

You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.
All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the color of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal
Where everything is just the opposite and the word 'is'
Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.
Notice: I say we; there, every one, separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
And knows that if there is no other shore
We will walk that aerial bridge all the same.

- Czeslaw Milosz

 

Still, I am a searcher, questioning my faith even while firmly believing. Jane Mead's poem, Concerning the Prayer I Cannot Make, speaks to this very conundrum, and in a frank tone I appreciate (and that last stanza - wow!):

 

Concerning the Prayer I Cannot Make

Jesus, I am cruelly lonely
and I do not know what I have done
nor do I suspect that you will answer me.

And, what is more, I have spent
these bare months bargaining
with my soul as if I could make her
promise to love me when now it seems
that what I meant when I said "soul"
was that the river reflects
the railway bridge just as the sky
says it should—it speaks that language.

I do not know who you are.

I come here every day
to be beneath this bridge,
to sit beside this river,
so I must have seen the way
the clouds just slide
under the rusty arch—
without snagging on the bolts,
how they are borne along on the dark water—
I must have noticed their fluent speed
and also how that tattered blue T-shirt
remains snagged on the crown
of the mostly sunk dead tree
despite the current's constant pulling.
Yes, somewhere in my mind there must
be the image of a sky blue T-shirt, caught,
and the white islands of ice flying by
and the light clouds flying slowly
under the bridge, though today the river's
fully melted. I must have seen.

But I did not see.

I am not equal to my longing.
Somewhere there should be a place
the exact shape of my emptiness—
there should be a place
responsible for taking one back.
The river, of course, has no mercy—
it just lifts the dead fish
toward the sea.

Of course, of course.

What I meant when I said "soul"
was that there should be a place.

On the far bank the warehouse lights
blink red, then green, and all the yellow
machines with their rusted scoops and lifts
sit under a thin layer of sunny frost.

And look—
my own palm—
there, slowly rocking.
It is my pale palm—
palm where a black pebble
is turning and turning.

Listen—
all you bare trees
burrs
brambles
pile of twigs
red and green lights flashing
muddy bottle shards
shoe half buried—listen
listen, I am holy.

- Jane Mead

 

I found these gems in Poems to Live By in Uncertain Times. Sometimes I need a "sign," and today, stumbling upon these poems, I found proof that poetry really is a form of prayer.

 

 

Thankful Thursday: Said & Saved

On this Thankful Thursday, I am thankful for years and years of things I've heard. Like a catalog, I can call on the wisdoms, cries, flip remarks, these turning points.

We can never know what words will stick, what words will sing or pierce and sting. Is it this unknowing that helps us hold our tongues, or, for better or worse, rush our words?

 

Things Heard

I don't believe in the institution of marriage.

Go play in traffic.

You don't need to be good.

This is temporary.

Standing in the apartment,
a wall of windows and a flush of light,
Here, I gushed, I could be a real writer.

If you're a writer, he said, you'll write.
Stung, I didn't move in.

Across town,
from a darker
cheaper
basement
I began to write.

Sugar, salt, sugar — the recipe for resolution.

Your call is important to us.

Let's play library. We start by being very quiet.

I miss you.

I do.

 

It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to appreciate the people, places and things that bring joy. What are you thankful for today?


Swings between two poles

Instructions, exactly

Take this medicine
on an empty stomach
preferably half to one hour
before breakfast. Take this

medicine with a full glass
of water. Take this medication
at least four hours before
taking antacids, iron

or vitamins
or minerals
or supplements.
Take or use this medicine

exactly as directed. Do not
skip doses or discontinue
unless directed by your
doctor. Take this

medicine exactly
as directed.
Do not skip
doses.

- Drew Myron


This is a found poem. A whole text, lifted from my medicine bottle and reformed — with line breaks providing places to pause — into art.

Some days material is at every turn: in newspapers, dictionaries, speeches, textbooks, manuals. Find poetry in the everyday, I often say.

With this avalanche of words, I usually lift and rearrange (a collage poem is born!), or sometimes I simply erase, but on rare days a poem is whole-cloth and sitting on my bathroom sink.

The found poem, according to the Academy of American Poets, shares traits with Pop Art, such as Andy Warhol's soup cans. Poetry, like art, is the invention of reinvention. In Mornings Like This, a collection of found poems, Annie Dillard says that turning a text into a poem doubles that poem's context. The original meaning remains intact, she writes, but now it swings between two poles.

Swings between two poles.

Yes, poetry holds that sort of magic — the mysterious ability to say one thing while reaching for another. 

 

What I Found

At the intersection of poetry, art & heart, I found treasure.

Healing Stanzas is a collaborative project between Kent State University's Wick Poetry Center and Glyphix design studio. This series combines the creative talents of KSU Visual Communication Design students with student writers (grades 3–12), health care providers, medical students, patients, and veterans to encourage dialogue about the connection between art and medicine, writing and healing.

Things That Have No Name was written by the Psychiatric Intensive Outpatient Therapy Group at Summa Health System in Akron, Ohio. View more of these animated poems, along with posters and notecards, at Traveling Stanzas.

 

Thankful Thursday: In a pause

A friend emails me a poem each week, along with a one-page background on the poet, which she researches and writes. She's not a poet (she says) but she appreciates poetry.

She sends a mixed bag of poets I know and don't. This week a Latino poet. Last month a New Zealander. I'm always learning.

I know there are organizations that provide this same service, but I like thinking of this one person — whom I've met only once and briefly — each week thoughtfully choosing a poem and sharing its story with me and others. I like that one poem, lovingly shared by one person, can tie us all together in a poetic pause. 

Thank you Vicki.

This Week's Poem  (No. 382):

In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes

in a Tex-Mex restaurant. His co-workers,
unable to utter his name, renamed him Jalapeño.

If I ask for a goldfish, he spits a glob of phlegm
into a jar of water. The silver letters

on his black belt spell Sangrón. Once, borracho,
at dinner, he said: Jesus wasn’t a snowman.

Arriba Durango. Arriba Orizaba. Packed
into a car trunk, he was smuggled into the States.

Frijolero. Greaser. In Tucson he branded
cattle. He slept in a stable. The horse blankets

oddly fragrant: wood smoke, lilac. He’s an illegal.
I’m an Illegal-American. Once, in a grove

of saguaro, at dusk, I slept next to him. I woke
with his thumb in my mouth. ¿No qué no

tronabas, pistolita? He learned English
by listening to the radio. The first four words

he memorized: In God We Trust. The fifth:
Percolate. Again and again I borrow his clothes.

He calls me Scarecrow. In Oregon he picked apples.
Braeburn. Jonagold. Cameo. Nightly,

to entertain his cuates, around a campfire,
he strummed a guitarra, sang corridos. Arriba

Durango. Arriba Orizaba. Packed into
a car trunk, he was smuggled into the States.

Greaser. Beaner. Once, borracho, at breakfast,
he said: The heart can only be broken

once, like a window. ¡No mames! His favorite
belt buckle: an águila perched on a nopal.

If he laughs out loud, his hands tremble.
Bugs Bunny wants to deport him. César Chávez

wants to deport him. When I walk through
the desert, I wear his shirt. The gaze of the moon

stitches the buttons of his shirt to my skin.
The snake hisses. The snake is torn.

- Eduardo C. Corral

 

It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to appreciate people, places, things (and poems). Joy contracts and expands in proportion to our gratitude. What makes your world expand?


3 Things That Make a Writing Class Shine

I need more structure in my writing life, I recently admitted to a friend. I'm not getting to the page often enough.

Her suggestion? Take a writing class.

She's right.

After a summer of leading writing workshops -- from a two-hour session to a five-day camp -- it's time I fill my own well. As I've mentioned before, a writing class gives you permission to focus on your creative life, and provides structure, too. Once I've signed up and paid, my lazy habits typically take a back seat to a sense of purpose and a desire to get my money's worth.

As I search for a class in this back-to-school season, I'm mulling just how to avoid the eh and get to the excellent ? Combining my experience as both instructor and student, I offer a few suggestions (and encourage you to share your ideas, too):

Three Things That Make for a Great Writing Class

1.
Size matters.

No less than five students, and no more than 12. That's my preference. I like the intimacy a small group provides. Some writers gravitate to a grander scale, preferring to observe and fade into a larger group. But I like up-close and personal. I want time to write and share. Small classes, I find, allow more in-depth exchange.

2.
Great writers are not necessarily great teachers.

Some of my best teachers are not my favorite writers. They're excellent writers, to be sure, but not necessarily matched to my writing style. While it's important to learn from accomplished, respected, professional writers, don't be wooed by big names and bestsellers. Don't be afraid to step out of your comfort zone. I've gained the most valuable skills from lesser known writers whose writing is least like my own.

3. 
Balance, in all things.

A great teacher offers a balance of personal and professional interaction, along with an equitable blend of writing time to discussion time. Students don't want to endure long monologues. We wanna write! (yes, we're self-centered). A great teacher will also balance warm encouragement with clear direction, and lively discussion with focused lessons and sincere feedback.

 

In a really good workshop, I sometimes feel I've stumbled upon a rare experience, and the class is a beautiful alchemy that no rules can explain. Have you felt this, too? Perhaps it's the mix of personalities, or the timing, or the alignment of planets. There is a mystery, an intriguing combination, that makes a class shine.

What do you think? What's your most memorable writing class, and what made it great?

 

Thankful Thursday: Anticipation

It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to appreciate people, places and things that bring gratitude and joy.

Today, I am thankful for the eager, uneasy wait of good things — around the corner, down the street, at the next bend, even into the next week. Something good is surely ahead.*

What are you thankful for today?

* pssst -- Have I mentioned how much I love letters?
Please, don't be shy:
Post Office Box 914
Yachats, Oregon 97498


Poetry in (Unexpected) Public Places


I spent the weekend with poets — not at a writing workshop, a reading, or a sprawling literary conference, but at the Denver County Fair.

Yes, a county fair. We read poems on the Farm & Garden Stage, surrounded by blue-ribbon pies and clucking chickens (also zombies and drag queens). Now in its second year, the Denver County Fair was created by my favorite artist (Tracy Weil) and event guru (Dana Cain) as a modern interpretation of the traditional fair. It's a super-charged mix of country living and urban crazy.

And the event, I'm happy to note, includes a poetry contest. Ribbons and a cash prize are awarded to poems on the theme of agriculture, food, gardens and farms.

On Sunday afternoon, a vigorous audience leaned in to hear poets read their work. A few steps away, poems were displayed on pegboards, sharing space with top tomatoes and pretty preserves.

After ribbons were awarded, hands shaked, and applause faded, the stage was cleared and prepped for the next event: a how-to-make compost demonstration. It seemed a fitting follow.

Finding poetry in unexpected places is a great reminder that art lives in the nooks and crannies of our busy, often complicated, lives. Next to chickens, before the compost, and all through the harvest.

The 2012 Denver County Fair First Place, Blue Ribbon Poem:

What We Make
for Frederick H. Stitt

This is a very old recipe.
The kind your hands know
better than your head.

Take the zucchini
from the fridge. Think of your job,
of your husband working late,

of your father
who fell last week,
more than a thousand miles away.

Think of the bruises that blossomed,
black then green, on his forehead,
across the span of his ribs.

Grate the zucchini.
You will need three cups
and one of mozzarella.

Break three glorious
lop-sided, orange-yolked eggs
and think now of your father

as the young man turned from the camera,
modeling suits in a catalogue—
his frame that broad and fine.

Add flour, oil, salt and pepper,
loads of fresh basil, baking powder.
Let the onion do its worst.

Think of your dog,
his sturdy joints
going stiff,

even his wag an ache,
and how he goes to his leash
still, every time, in a lather.

Mix and load into a butter-greased, 
8” pan. Think of the rich flesh and rough stones
of peach season,

which is right now every morning
bursting the day open
in your mouth. This is August.

Bake a while at 350˚.
It will rise. It will fall. It will mingle
with fresh tomatoes and Romano.

Think. It will be delicious.
And then, one bite at a time,
it will be gone.

- Kathryn T.S. Bass

 

Thankful Thursday: Sun is just the start

 

1.
Sun.

2.
Sun on a lake.

3.
Sun on a lake in summer.

4.
Sun on a lake in summer, and swimming.

5.
Sun on a lake in summer, and swimming, immersed in the quiet of water lapping against boat.

6.
Sun on a lake in summer, and swimming, and I am immersed in the quiet of water lapping against boat, and later I turn pages of a good book and feel the need to do nothing more than absorb heat, water, and stillness -- and feel a fullness only gratitude can bring.

 

Gratitude. Appreciation. Praise. It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to appreciate people, places & things.

What are you thankful for today?

 

Thankful Thursday: Instead

Appreciation, my horoscope demands.

Later, this song turns up. I hit Shuffle; my iPod declares Genius. The song plays again.

Everything is sign. So, I give in. On this Thankful Thursday, I share with you my (unofficial and unrelenting) theme song: 

Instead

Madeleine Peyroux

Instead of feelin' bad, be glad you've got somewhere to go
Instead of feelin' sad, be happy you're not all alone
Instead of feelin' low, get high on everything that you love
Instead of wastin' time, feel good 'bout what you're dreamin' of.

Instead of tryin' to win something you never understood
Just play the game you know, eventually you'll love her good
It's silly to pretend that you have something you don't own
Just let her be your woman and you'll be her man.

Instead of feelin' broke, buck up and get yourself in the black
Instead of losin' hope, touch up the things that feel out of whack
Instead of bein' old, be young because you know you are
Instead of feelin' cold, let sunshine into your heart.

Instead of acting crazy chasin' things that make you mad
Keep your heart ahead, it'll lead you back to what you have
With every step you're closer to the place you need to be
It's up to you to let her love you sweetly.

Instead of feelin' bad be glad you've got someone to love
Instead of feelin' sad, be happy there's a god above
Instead of feelin' low, remember you're never on your own
Instead of feelin sad, be happy that she's there at home
She's waitin' for you by the phone
So be glad that she is all your own!

Get happy
She's waitin' for you by the telephone.
So get back home!

 

It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to appreciate the people, places and things that bring gratitude and joy. What are you thankful for today?