And now, a bit of Monday morning encouragement:
You're not a Pisces? You don't believe in horoscopes?
So what! This is universal advice — for free!
Read it, know it, live it.
Thankful Thursday (on Friday): Blooms
Photo by Jayne Guertin, Suburban Sililoquy
Star Magnolia.* Camellia. Crocus.
Lithodora. Narcissus. Hyacinth.
Bradford Pear. Crabapple. Cherry.
Everything is opening.
I'm strolling into spring with wide smile and dropped jaw. Blue skies. Sunny days. I'm practically skipping. Flowers bloom, days shine, and I'm one with Walt Whitman singing in spring. I embrace e.e. cumming's puddle wonderful world.
On this Thankful Thursday, I rejoice in these first blooms on this first day of spring.
It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for all things, big and small. What are you thankful for today?
* Speaking of magnolia, don't you love that movie? Magnolia is one of my Top 10 Favorite Films.
On the Art of Being
Even now, as my life is
winding itself to a close,
I am learning and teaching and
loving life. Every. Single. Day.
- Currie Silver
When we read, creativity stirs.
And when we create, our lives expand.
That's why I ask writers and artists
to share with me books that have
informed their work and life.
The latest edition of 3 Good Books
features Currie Silver, a visual artist
with lung cancer who embodies the
the art of being.
Try This: Read, then Write
In late-winter, when the holiday glow is long gone and the promise of summer is impossible to hold, monotony can dull the senses.
We're in the middle of things, and my writing mind feels lazy. You too?
I'm doing my best to embrace practices that get me in the groove.
Lately I've started each writing session by reading the work of another poet. This allows me to slip into a new language and pace, which then informs my own writing. Many times the exercise yields blah blah blah, but I'm still exercising the writing muscle. Writing, even "bad writing," is never wasted.
I choose readings at random, paging through an anthology, and have been happy to discover new-to-me poems, some of which have led to "keeper" lines and poems of my own. Song by Adrienne Rich, and The Night, the Porch by Mark Strand have been especially inspiring.
Try this: Read someone else's work, then write something, anything, of your own.
Don't think, just write. Let the pen explore phrases, ideas and connections. See where the words take you. Don't try to make sense. Or do. Let go.
Reading other works sets a fresh tone and pace. You slip into a new cadence, and that allows the mind to explore new ground.
Try it, and let me know where this writing practice takes you.
Try these others too:
Try This: Month by Month
Try This: Postcard Poems
Try This: Alphabet Poem
Try This: Morning Read & Write
Try This: Book Spine Poetry
Try This: Poetry Poker
Both deep and oblique
The effect of landscape,
homescape, on me
is both deep and oblique . . .
It teaches me inclusiveness
and gratitude.
- Paulann Petersen
When we read, creativity stirs.
And when we create, our lives expand.
That's why I ask writers and artists
to share their favorite books.
The latest edition of 3 Good Books
features Paulann Petersen, who served
as Oregon Poet Laureate from 2010 to 2014.
Please join me.
Thankful Thursday: Are you in?
Everyone in!
From pebble to peak, from profound to profane, it's time again for Thankful Thursday.
Because attention attracts gratitude and gratitude expands joy, it's time to slice through the ugly and get to the good.
What you need now isn't the work
Of regret but the work of gratitude.
And all it takes to be grateful is to feel grateful.
Go back to the beginning and embrace its bounty.
Beneath the story of cause and consequence
Another story is pointing another way.
— Carl Dennis
excerpt from Not the End
Let's make a new story, start a new song. Are you in?
Another story
Morning sun. A distant view. Your voice.
After a season of doubt, a small certainty.
The crocus return, as they do, each late winter.
The sky clears, as it does.
A bluebird sails before me, catches my step.
This is not metaphor. This is Monday.
I know the ache of reaching to meet spring.
The beautiful ache.
- Drew Myron
It's Thankful Thursday. Please join me.
What are you thankful for today?
The words that weren’t
The mind reads and races, and sees what it wants to see.
Proof in this week's misreads:
• Cheapskate contends CEO stole data
should have been . . . Chesapeake contends CEO stole data
• Get ready for this weekend’s Supermom
was actually . . . Get ready for this weekend’s Supermoon
• Is it worth all the sweat and fears?
was actually . . . Is it worth all the sweat and tears?
Your turn. What are you (mis)reading?
Where are all the working poets?
With the passing this week of Philip Levine the literary world heaves with loss.
A Pulitzer Prize-winner, Levine served as U.S. poet laureate from 2011- 2102, and while his death was not a surprise — he was 87 and in failing health — the greater sadness is that he represented a rapidly disappearing type of writer: the working man's poet.
Levine was an auto-worker turned writer who grew up in Detroit.
“I saw that the people that I was working with . . . were voiceless in a way,” he explained in Detroit Magazine. “In terms of the literature of the United States they weren’t being heard. Nobody was speaking for them. . . I took this foolish vow that I would speak for them and that’s what my life would be."
While many poets work in universities as professors or in literary jobs related to publishing, working class poets seem scant. And their voices, when we stumble upon them, feel fresh and real.
Where are the working poets?
I'm thinking of Mather Schneider, a cab driver in Arizona.
And the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, an annual celebration of rural American West. The event is held every January in Elko, Nevada and for over 30 years has drawn a robust collection of working cowboys and ranching families expressing their culture through poetry, music and storytelling.
And the Fisher Poets Gathering, an annual celebration of commercial fishermen and fisherwomen poets. The event takes place in late February in Astoria, Oregon, and features over 75 fisher poets performing music, poetry and prose. "It's not just old guys looking backward," says founder Jon Broderick. "We hear the voices of people from across the commercial fishing spectrum: deckhands, skippers and cannery workers, young and old, women and men, west coast and east."
What Work Is
We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is—if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it’s someone else’s brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours of wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, “No,
we’re not hiring today,” for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who’s not beside you or behind or
ahead because he’s home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you’re too young or too dumb,
not because you’re jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don’t know what work is.
- Philip Levine
Thankful Thursday: How to sleep & write
Step off assuredly into the blank of your mind.
Something will come to you.
- Richard Wilbur
This week I stumbled across these words and took them as encouragement. On this Thankful Thursday, I am thankful for gentle reminders.
The line is from Walking to Sleep, a poem by Richard Wilbur — but I didn't know the lines were from a poem, and didn't even know it was referring to sleep (I found the lines here, in an interview with Anne Tyler). Later, I found the poem and an interview in which Wilbur says "this is a poem about advising someone else on how to get off to sleep."
All week I thought he was offering an insider tip on how to write. But no matter, we take words when and how we need 'em. Maybe my gratitude is for these words, and maybe my gratitude is for the pathways that lead to the people and places that harbor just what I need.
Gratitude. Appreciation. Praise.
It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things, and more.
What are you thankful for today?
Love that Line: Charity
Charity isn't about being kind and humane.
It is about seeing without interpretation, as a lens sees.
The neutral lens. The eye looks on others and itself with motives,
games and tricks, and makes things what they are not,
but the neutral lens leaves a thing to be what it is.
— Dear Thief, a novel by Samantha Harvey
And yet
To have loved
and to have suffered. To have waited
for nothing, and for nothing to have come.
A teen girl is shot in the street.
A young man dies on a college campus.
A mother throws her son off a bridge.
Within days, inevitably, a vigil. Candles on cue, to a refrain that has played too many times: This community comes together in support.
But what good is it now, our hand-wringing and alarm, this cooing disguised as comfort?
We are urgent with a terrorized sort of sadness. We come together. But every day we are divided, by politics and opinions, by wounds and hurts. It seems only tragedy binds us.
___
It’s easy to feel stricken. Difficult to put love into action day after day.
___
A friend cried through the Super Bowl commercials. Were the ads that touching, she asks, or is that I've been sick all week and my resistance is low?
Some days a slice of light against the wood floor can break me open.
But isn’t that what we all need now, to feel more?
Let us lower our resistance.
___
And yet. The hand-wringing. The calls for change. It’s exhausting.
Because our pleas ring hollow, small. We feel so much but do so little.
___
But what action, really, would be substantial, meaningful, enough?
___
So long I was surrounded by vitality. Now, neighbors, friends, and family are dying. This is not new. But the sting is fresh.
A friend offers what seems simple but sage advice: “Just love them now and for the rest of your days and know that they love you.”
Loving, then, is that easy? And that hard.
___
I get a massage, but what I really want is a spiritual experience. Strong hands to dig through flesh to find gristle and bone, to excise the deep cavities where sadness takes hold. I want to be remade, cleansed, and spare.
___
The night is briny and thick. Somewhere, someone, is sinking. Someone is always dying.
___
Death is sorrowful but not tragic. Let us not turn this into a project.
___
And yet, let us not turn away.
Friday Funny
Thankful Thursday: 50
Gratitude. Appreciation. Praise.
It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things, and more. Please join me.
The world is big, my gratitudes many:
1.
searchers, seekers, doubters, thinkers
2.
honeycrisp apples
3.
sunny mornings
5.
socks
6.
the concept of "literary citizenship"
7.
daffodils in February
8.
cashmere
9.
kindness
10.
good wine for $10 (or less)
11.
this poem
12.
and this poem
13.
quiet
14.
soup (making, eating)
15.
finding my words in unexpected places (this and this)
16.
attribution (because giving credit is good, and, well, see above)
17.
Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen
18.
nuts, especially sweet
19.
this essay by Heather King
20.
blue skies (as weather and metaphor)
21.
the "good" family genes: wide smile, bright eyes, bleeding heart
22.
teachers who cared: Mrs. Allison, Mrs. Trembath, Stanton Englehart
24.
television with great writing/direction/acting: Treme, The Wire
25.
the films Robin Williams left us: Good Will Hunting, Awakenings, Patch Adams
26.
being useful
27.
moving in water: swimming, kayaking, paddleboarding, soaking, floating, gazing, lazing
28.
writers and artists who tell me their favorite books
29.
poetry in unexpected places: laundromats, hair salons, bars, alleys, telephone poles . . .
30.
a mentor-turned-friend
31.
letters, handwritten
32.
bubble baths
33.
secrets
34.
going to a party/dinner/event I don't want to attend, and having fun
35.
stretches of time to read unfettered
36.
libraries
37.
post office, mailbox, "real" mail
38.
Carnegie Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art
39.
thrift and consignment stores
40.
books that get me energized to write (this, this, and this)
41.
deadlines and structure
42.
a haircut
43.
Powell's Books, because it shelves new and used snug together in a democracy of literature
44.
letting go
45.
long summer days
46.
young writers who grow up, move on, away, and then send me letters, postcards, rocks, cookies, poems . . .
47.
this explanation by Terry Tempest Williams
48.
endurance
49.
people with quick wit and easy laughter
50.
Dr. Teal's Epsom Salt Soaking Solution
What are you thankful for today?
Stacked
Happiness is a fresh stack of books. I can't wait to dig into these:
Small Disasters Seen in Sunlight — new poetry by Julia B. Levine, a psychologist working with abused children. Her previous book, Ditch Tender, is one of my favorites
Be Thrifty: How to Live Better with Less — because I'm a minimalist who loves discounts and deals (note: I bought a used copy)
Dear Thief by Samantha Harvey — a novel/letter/love story
Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith — this is my first venture into this revered writer's psychological thrillers
Shadows of the Workhouse by Jennifer Worth — second book in the Call the Midwife series (which the PBS show is based upon)
Euphoria, by Lily King — her newest novel (I liked her last book, Father of the Rain)
Delicious!, by Ruth Reichl — though she's written numerous books, this is the restaurant critic's first work of fiction (Tender at the Bone was a fantastic memoir of her childhood)
What's on your shelf? What are you eager to read?
Thankful Thursday: Drive-Thru
Dear Driver of the Car In Front of Me at Starbucks:
When we pulled up for our coffees, the barista said, "Your drinks have been paid for by the car ahead of you."
You were driving away, anonymous and generous. I like your style.
We were stunned and giddy.
"This happens pretty often," she said. "You'd be surprised."
The world, and people, can be so darn nice.
Thanks for reminding me.
xo
Drew
Gratitude. Praise. Appreciation. Please join me for Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things, and more. What are you thankful for today?
One line at a time
But for all poets, it’s not their
books that I go back to, that I consider
important, but it’s a few, or maybe many,
poems. I read one poem at a time and
almost one line at a time. The line is the
most important element of a poem,
of poetry, to me.
- Rick Campbell
Please join me at Push Pull Books, where I host 3 Good Books
and ask writers to share their favorite books and influences.
Thankful Thursday: Why I Write Letters
1.
It's the gentle gesture that draws me, the curve of letters, the slope of a signature, the cross-out in mid-thought. I like letters, the way they slow time to invite reflection for both writer and reader. Letters are tender reminders that feeling is first, just as e.e cummings says.
2.
To celebrate National Handwriting Day on January 23, a friend who owns a wine shop is giving a free glass of wine to anyone who writes her a letter, postcard or note.
3.
Writer and reader share a special language through letters. In each envelope, we seal a message that says, I look for you in these pages, and see my own reflection too.
4.
"In a letter," writes Anne Carson in The Beauty of the Husband, "both reader and writer discover an ideal image of themselves, short blinding passages are all it takes."
5.
Some of my most satisfying writing is rooted in letters. In these of-the-moment conversations, nothing is planned, prepared or overthought.
6.
"The world is full of paper," says Agha Shahid Ali, "Write to me."
Gratitude. Praise. Appreciation. Please join me in Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things, and more. What are you thankful for today?
Starts
Senitila McKinley
Now
Let's not talk of grief, of weather,
the way darkness gathers.
I have enough ends. Tell me
a story of starts.
- Drew Myron
from Sweet Grief: Paintings & Poems on Love and Loss
by Drew Myron and Senitila McKinley
Why I bristle when you say you're blessed
New Year's Eve
However busy you are, you should still reserve
One evening a year for thinking about your double,
The man who took the curve on Conway Road
Too fast, given the icy patches that night,
But no faster than you did; the man whose car
When it slid through the shoulder
Happened to strike a girl walking alone
From a neighbor's party to her parents' farm,
While your car struck nothing more notable
Than a snowbank.
One evening for recalling how soon you transformed
Your accident into a comic tale
Told first at a body shop, for comparing
That hour of pleasure with his hour of pain
At the house of the stricken parents, and his many
Long afternoons at the Lutheran graveyard.
If nobody blames you for assuming your luck
Has something to do with you character,
Don't blame him for assuming that his misfortune
Is somehow deserved, that justice would be undone
If his extra grief was balanced later
By a portion of extra joy.
Lucky you, whose personal faith has widened
To include an angel assigned to protect you
From the usual outcome of heedless moments.
But this evening consider the angel he lives with,
The stern enforcer who drives the sinners
Out of the Garden with a flaming sword
And locks the gate.
— Carl Dennis
This poem appeared in The New Yorker
and was reprinted in The Best Spiritual Writing 2013.
Great Books of 2014
I like these long lazy days after Christmas and before New Year. It's a quiet lull in which I am suspended in books. Page after page, chapter after chapter, it's read, read, read, and repeat.
As the year comes to a close, I'm looking back at some of my favorites:
6 Great Books I Read This Year
Americanah
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
An insightful novel that deftly wraps love, race, satire, and heart into one strong, sweeping story.
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
by Karen Joy Fowler
This odd novel shines with a narrator that turns a screwball premise into a captivating story of full-hearted love.
Madness, Rack & Honey
by Mary Ruefle
This collection of lectures from writer/poet/artist Mary Ruefle reads more like flashes and insights from your most creative, smart, wise and eccentric friend/professor/aunt.
This is the Story of a Happy Marriage
by Ann Patchett
Long before she wrote the best-selling novel Bel Canto, Patchett wrote for the New York Times, Vogue, Outside, and other magazines. In this collection of articles and essays, she shows unexpected heart, wit, pace and style.
Make Lemonade
by Virginia Euwer Wolff
It's rare to find a book for young teens that's rooted in the grit of reality. Written in free verse, this slim but powerful novel offers an unusually credible view of poverty, struggle and hope.
The Madwoman in the Volvo
by Sandra Tsing Loh
A witty, funny and immensely entertaining gaze into the muck of middle age.
How was your reading year? What's on your list?
More Good Books: