Headlined
The chicest people
you've never heard of
wake up with more energy
eat better, sleep longer
feel happier + find
more time for balance.
Some days it feels impossible
to rise, shine, believe
in good and
heartwarm
the world.
— Drew Myron
This is a poem "ripped from the headlines."
Also known as a found poem, a cut-up poem, a warm up poem & an exercise for the writing muscle.
This poem is also a reminder why I should give up fashion/lifestyle magazines.
Tell me, what are you writing?
What's your trick?
To get out of my head and onto the page, I sometimes need to 'trick' my mind with a Cut Up Poem.
Some writers cut words from magazines and arrange them into lines and stanzas. Others gather, scatter & place their own orphan lines (phrases they wrote but haven't yet placed in a piece) to use as a foundation for a new poem.
Whatever your method — cut up, cut down, cut away, cut back — this approach steers the mind into new territory. The best part of this prompt is the bubble of fresh associations and unexpected themes. You may be surprised where the poem takes you, and even a 'bad' poem is good exercise for the writing muscle.
Traveling, Questions While
Was I born this blistered, all cramp and knots?
Did I grow from scrubby plain to bear
every prickle, thistle and thorn?
Even now, after so many years, I still
travel through noise and discord, winded
and drawn across endless landscape.
Is sadness a habit?
I did not calculate the heart
how heavy this muscle
prone to stutter and stall
how tired and worn.
Who knows why you love
why you can’t and why
you keep trying?
Consider how you carry your
own weather, stormy or steady, how
you study the horizon for every change.
What if you lost your self in the distance
spending your silence on the rise and ache
of this long answerless road?
— Drew Myron
The Mill, by Andrew Wyeth, 1959
1.
"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure in the landscape — the loneliness of it — the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show."
— Andrew Wyeth
2.
Opal died today. Unexpected.
It’s always a surprise to me, though we are in a nursing home and nearly everyone is ill and elderly.
There's not much talk, as if it is routine, and of course it is. And yet, even when expected, every passing feels fresh and unexpected. I haven't found words for this startle and weight — something like sadness but with a puncture that lodges in remote crevices of body and mind.
3.
While hanging the memorial announcement, Ada watches my every move, watches me hang the board, watches me straighten the frame. She does not speak, never speaks. But today, her eyes are steady and from her wheelchair, she reaches for my hand. I bend close and talk quietly.
“Your hair looks nice,” I say. She stares at me, eyes soft.
I try again, “You look good in pink.”
She murmurs, her eyes fixed on mine, as if to speak. But we do not talk, just look into eyes, back and forth, with some tender wordless exchange.
I say goodbye, I’ll see her again, because this is what you say. Because I say it again and again to the old and confused, to the dying. We are accustom to goodbyes and yet, and yet, it always jolts. Maybe I’m not alone in this. Maybe Ada is with me, reaching out to mark a moment, saying every death deserves a pause.
4.
I've started a file: Things to say after a death. There's been so many, I've run out of words.
5.
In the writing group, we pen letters to ourselves:
Dear Younger Me, writes Betty, I wish I could go back and appreciate life more.
6.
“Can I get you anything?” I ask Lucy, who is sitting alone, yawning.
We exchange hellos and she smiles wanly, a sign of her decline. Once buoyant and cheery, she now speaks slowly, if at all, and with much effort.
“There’s no getting,” she says with a half smile, and I think she knows, more than any of us, about these ends.
* Names have been changed to protect privacy.
swift — a blackout poem by drew myron
In this new year, let's not make plans, projects or promises.
Let's start here, now, with small measures like this:
Be swift to be kind.
Isn't this everything and enough?
Ahhh, don't you love these languid days between Christmas and New Year?
For readers and writers and those who enjoy soft unstructured time, it's an excuse to sink into books without distraction or guilt. And a chance to look back with gratitude at books that have entertained, elevated and sustained.
Here are some of my favorite books I read this year (not necessarily books published in 2018):
FICTION
The Great Believers
by Rebecca Makkai
I have just a few chapters left in this page-turner and it just may be my favorite novel of 2018. It's a wrenching and real character study of shame and despair of AIDS in the 1980s.
Little Fires Everywhere
by Celeste Ng
A slow-burning story about a small town thrown into disarray by a court dispute, with a simmering plot on the complicated angst of family love.
Nutshell
by Ian McEwan
A classic tale of murder and betrayal, and such an odd, delightful, unexpected novel.
The Italian Teacher
by Tom Rachman
A novel with a slow start but phenomenal build, with unexpected twists and a nicely wistful conclusion. (My favorite of his novels is The Imperfectionists).
MEMOIR
Calypso
by David Sedaris
Here's my new discovery: David Sedaris is best enjoyed by audiobook. An animated performer, Sedaris tells a story with vivid voice and comedic timing that leaves me laughing out loud. I'll never "read" him again. (My favorite of his audiobooks is Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls)
My Misspent Youth: Essays
by Megan Daum
I'm late to the party on this one but glad I caught up. I lived briefly in New York, and while not usually nostalgic, this collection of sharp and honest essays brought back the wonder and ache of those Manhattan days.
ESSAY
Notes from a No Man's Land: American Essays
by Eula Bliss
I'm still not sure if I like this book but months later I keep thinking about it so it definitely stirred me — and isn't that the best kind of reading experience? Reviewer Robert Polito sums my sentiment: " . . . a mix of insistence and quandary, as though she is despairing and pressing on simultaneously."
Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give
by Ada Calhoun
On our first date I told my now-husband that I didn't believe in the institution of marriage. And so, this collection, both sharp and tender, hits me where I live and love. "By staying married, we give something to ourselves and to others: hope. Hope that in steadfastly loving someone, we ourselves, for all our faults, will be loved; that the broken world will be made whole," she writes. "To hitch your rickety wagon to the flickering star of another fallible human being — what an insane thing to do. What a burden, and what a gift."
NON-FICTION
The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use if for Life
by Twyla Tharp
From the renowned choreographer, an excellent, practical guide to fostering creativity.
A Bittersweet Season: Caring for Our Aging Parents — and Ourselves
by Jane Gross
A daunting but valuable first-person account from a New York Times columnist navigating the labyrinth of health care and housing choices for her mother. "Wherever I was, I wasn’t where I was supposed to be, and I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing . . . The car was my sanctuary. Before heading home from the Meadowview, with my mother snug in bed, I slumped over the steering wheel, sobbing. Across America, in parking lots like this one, middle-aged daughters do this all the time. I never noticed until I became one of them."
SHORT STORIES
You Think It, I'll Say It
by Curtis Sittenfeld
Months after tearing through this collection, I'm still pierced by the sharp and poignant ways we love and hurt one another. With echoes of Ann Beattie and Lorrie Moore, Sittenfeld, known primarily as a novelist, shines in the short form too.
POETRY
Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting
by Kevin Powers
I wasn't looking for poetry when I stumbled across this book, and that makes the discovery all the better. Iraq war veteran Kevin Powers has created a deeply affecting portrait of a life shaped by war — and, frankly, it's a voice of experience I haven't read nearly enough. Read the title poem here.
Believing is Not the Same as Being Saved
by Lisa Martin
It's not a perfect book of poetry, uneven in spots and needing an editor to tighten the gems. But there are stunners in this collection that make my heart lurch with recognition.
Remind me, is this how it always goes?
There’s a way of speaking as if the difference
matters, as if the road home is finite—everything
begins and ends somewhere, like your hand
in mine . . . The mind
seeks a place where it can learn to lie down.
— from Map For the Road Home
Your Turn: What books stirred and stayed with you this year?
sometimes when, by drew myron
Because attention attracts gratitude and gratitude expands joy, it's time for Thankful Thursday.
From the small to the immense, from the puny to the profound, what are you thankful for today?
Sometimes when
the light is just right
like today, I come to
a quiet place and sit
at a wood table where
the slant of sun shines
and for a moment, or
even minutes, I am
exactly where I should
be, doing exactly what
is good and true:
with gratitude,
thinking of you.
— Drew Myron
Art by Susannah Liguori
1.
No one wants to hear about your dream. How vivid and compelling. How it shakes you still, that image, this morning over coffee and conversation. This conversation is over; let's talk about me.
2.
I had a dream of frogs in my house. I told no one, but Google says frogs mean fortune or fear. Just like everything in life.
3.
Confession: In a book or poem, when I come upon a dream sequence I always skip ahead.
4.
Don't tell me your dream. I'll have to feign interest and that wears us both. Well, not you. You look perky, and I just wanna go back to bed.
5.
In the year since my mother died, I've dreamed of her just once. I woke up reassured. But I did not write the dream down and now she's gone again.
6.
Dreams are vague and real, foreboding and foretelling. Dreams mean nothing. And everything.
7.
Yesterday an old man with sad eyes told me his dream:
He and his dying wife return to the island where they honeymooned 60 years ago. They are happy, she is healthy and young. "She is just like she used to be," he says, with a strained smile and tears.
Hushed and slow, like a prayer or a plea, he offers his vision and I accept the gift.
8.
Okay, I say, tell me more.
1.
I'm not certain of much, but this:
There is nothing better than a busy week as it unspools into Sunday evening, in a quiet house, with a good book, and your mind, finally, finally, finds a peaceful ease.
2.
Today's good line:
"One thing I've learned, Father — that in life it's best to keep the then and the now and the what's-to-be as close together in your thoughts as you can. It's when you let gaps creep in, when you separate out the intervals and dwell on them, that you can't bear the sorrow."
— from The All of It, a novel by Jeannette Haien
3.
It's time for a literary lookback.
I'm making stock (turkey bones on the stove) and taking stock (of good books). It's time for round up and review: What have I read? What have I loved?
I can hardly recall last week's novel, let alone of year of books. Was it a bleak year in stories? A crushing season of poems?
Please, help revive my reading memory:
What good books did you read this year?
She had that uncomfortable feeling that one has
when one has not been wholly kind or wholly true.
— Passing, a novel by Nella Larsen
Because the world is heavy, and our hearts too, it's time for redirection. Please join me for Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for things small and large, from the puny to the profound.
I find the best things when not trying. This week I'm thankful for:
• Goodwill Boutique
Yesterday I scored a new-with-tags suede coat, a Coach laptop bag, and Cole Haan wedges. Do you have a Goodwill Boutique near you? No, really, not just a Goodwill but a boutique version in which they sort donations for gently used designer brands. The prices are higher than a traditional thrift store, but the quality is better. And best of all, they sort through the pilled, spilled and spoiled clothing so I don't have to.
• Scooby-Doo Stamps
"Charismatic canine," the United States Postal Service calls the Great Dane character from the 1970s-era cartoon series. I'm loving the fun and inspired stamps lately: Mister Rogers, Oscar de la Renta, Andrew Wyeth . . . even popsicle scratch-n-sniff stamps!
• A Timely Line
Somewhere, someone dies again and I think
there went another piece of me
— Lisa Martin
excerpt from Sonnet for what we resolve into
The best poems are discovered by accident. You're looking for this or that and a poem peers out, calling. I'm ragged with world events (another shooting, another fire, another crisis) when I open this book — where did it come from? did I buy it? was it a gift? — and suddenly the line floods my head, my hands, my heart.
It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things & more. What are you thankful for today?
A static gloom covers the day, hours of gray.
The day is so without event, so without emotion, I know now this is what is called ordinary. I don’t know what to do with ordinary except to call it a suspension between sad and sunny.
I’m having a do-nothing day, I announce to another (but mostly to myself), and then stumble across this:
“The women . . . are interesting because they’re permitted to risk being boring, which feels somehow like a luxury. It’s a relief.”
_____
“Boredom is often dismissed as a lack of imagination — this not true. Boredom is a signal that we are indeed imaginative creatures, and that the existential distress of being in a state of blah is often the mind readying itself for the epiphany," writes Nick Cave.
I’m not bored exactly, but I am not moved. Is this the blah before brilliance? It’s too much to wish because this creative stupor is a gray that has hovered for what feels like forever. Ordinary turns time inside-out, both enlarging its importance and diminishing your ability. In its lack of color and light, ordinary does absolutely nothing.
_____
But what if ordinary is the lull that lets light in?
It happens so often now I don’t even notice. I’m chatting with a woman and in the course of our conversation she tells me of her husband's death. Her eyes soften and we talk slower and lower and time wells between us in a way that seals us in a moment quiet and safe.
“Intimacy is such a hushed and heartbreaking thing that I think it happens between strangers every bit as much as it does between lifelong lovers, sometimes even more so," writes Robert Vivian in The Least Cricket of Evening.
_____
Lately, an elderly man and I exchange hellos and talk of the weather. Each day I learn a little more. He is quiet and proud but his eyes carry heartache. He apologizes — for emotion, for sharing, I do not know — and I will mew words that say nothing that matters. Still, each day we start again with hellos and smiles.
And this is ordinary. These moments of exchange.
I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart), wrote e.e. cummings.
And so we carry secrets and stories, aches and tears — all of it so human and heartbreaking, so beautifully gray and ordinary.
Turning her backon the toneless expanse,
beyond the window,
she contemplated
the room, which
was the colour of
over-cooked veal."
— from Hotel Du Lac
a novel by Anita Brookner
I love that line, but I don't love the book.
In the same way I sometimes love a stanza but not the whole poem.
Or love a friend but not her opinion.
I am large, I contain multitudes, wrote Whitman.
And so we expand, stretching across the thorny contradiction to get to a single beautiful bloom.
On Highway 97 in Oregon
It's Thankful Thursday. Please join me in a weekly pause to appreciate people, places, things & more.
This week I'm thankful for the small things (weather, letters, poems) that help me feel gratitude for the big things (love, learning, sincerity):
1.
A Letter Love Story
A woman tells me she met her husband through writing letters.
The two lived in separate states, had mutual friends, and courted by mail — long, hand-written letters that offered kindness, humor, and truth (I'm fat, she wrote. I don't like bars or church, he wrote). Two months in, they were engaged, having never met or talked on the phone. A month later they married. They've been happily wed for 45 years.
2.
Poem By Chance
The list of books I want to read is long but sometimes a chance encounter jumps to the top. At the library I was looking for a chair and found a book of poems instead: Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting. I thought it was a book of heartbreak though letters (and that combo is sure to reel me in). But this was better: a collection of powerfully restrained poems from Kevin Powers, an Iraq War veteran. Here's an excerpt from the opening poem, Customs:
We passed the welcome sign
five miles ago. Another crossing
missed. On some naked mountainside
a small signal fire is lit. I can tell you exactly
what I mean. It is night again and endless
are the stars. I can tell you exactly
what I mean. The world has been replaced
by our ideas about the world.
3.
The Brilliance of Good TV
All praises for David Simon, the writer of television tales. I've recently revisited my two favorites: The Wire, about the drug trade and its reverberations in every aspect of urban life; and Treme, exploring the emotional, physical, financial, and cultural aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
Both shows make complex issues real with writing and acting that is deep, honest and accurate. With each episode, I laugh, cry, and can't wait to watch another.
4.
Blue Sky, Yellow Leaves, Warm Sun
For days I say the same phrase to everyone I meet: Can you believe this beautiful weather?
Crisp mornings, cool nights, warm days, blue sky, yellow leaves, day after glorious day. It's a script of happiness because sometimes there are not enough words to convey the gratitude of good weather, so I just repeat my mantra like a contented fool.
Your turn: What are you thankful for today?
— Patricia Bailey
author of The Tragically True
Adventures of Kit Donovan
Welcome to Fast Five Interviews, where we ask five questions to
open the door to know more:
Patricia Bailey — Trish — lives in Klamath Falls, Oregon, a small town in southern Oregon. Her debut novel, The Tragically True Adventures of Kit Donovan tells the story of a sharp and spunky 13-year-old girl who defies age and gender expectations to stand up for what’s right.
The young adult novel has earned numerous accolades, including 2018 Oregon Book Award for Children’s Literature, the Oregon Spirit Award from the Oregon Council of Teachers of English, and the 2018 Willy Literary Award from Women Writing the West.
What writers or books have most strongly influenced you?
This shifts for me almost day-to-day, depending on what I’m thinking and what I’m currently working on. That said, I think the one book that stands out for me the most is Pam Houston’s Cowboys Are My Weakness. I remember finding it at a bookstore when I was in college and devouring it. It was the first book I read that felt familiar. I knew these people. I’d been to these places. I had stories like this. It was the very first hint that maybe I had things to say that people would read. That my stories might actually matter too.
What’s the best writing advice you’ve received?
I’m a slow writer, so I think the best advice I’ve gotten is to just take the time you need to get the story right. I’d love to be able to write a quick draft and go from there, but it just doesn’t work for me. Remembering that my process is my process and it takes how long it takes is helpful when I’m feeling old and overwhelmed.
Writing — and publishing — can be difficult work. In the face of challenge, what keeps you going?
I think the act of writing does. I feel better on the days I write. Happier. Clearer. I’m unsettled when I’m not writing. So, if I can remember that the act of writing makes me happy - no matter how hard the day is – and focus on just that part, the other worries seem to shrink a bit.
Bonus Question:
I’m a word collector and keep a running list of favorite words. What are your favorite words?
Glimmer, jellyfish, moon, smarmy, moxie, shiver, loaf, and about a million more I can’t recall just know. I really should keep a list.
As one week ends and another begins, what keeps you — and what will you let go?
orphans (noun): in typography, words or phrases that do not fit; in writing, phrases and lines discarded from original text but which the writer hopes will shine in a new work.
[ 1 ]
The morning smelled of fresh laundry.
[ 2 ]
these smooth suede hills
sedge and reed
stubble and stalk
cheat grass and ash
soft winter wheat
[ 3 ]
For years it was winter.
[ 4 ]
Some days, I feel so lucky.
A door opens, a smile widens, I am let into a life.
[ 5 ]
Some days I wake up missing you, counting the days and dreading the markers that will make you more gone. You are here, in my mirror, in my tears, everywhere and nowhere.
[ 6 ]
"Each poem is a miracle that has been invited to happen."
— William Stafford
[ 7 ]
The mind is always editor: sorting, sifting, discarding.
How much energy it takes to write and rewrite a life.
Doubletake in Rawlins, Wyoming. Photo by Andre Myron.
1.
Sometimes when you are driving you begin to know things you can’t see or touch but have always carried: the way a jaw tightens to say nothing, how eyes can dart away a shame, and birds how they form along the telephone wire, each with a secret in a long silence of miles.
On a road for hours, you are sleepy with quiet when a hunger like longing wants the words in your throat to meet the world but knows, like a rain coming, that the feeling will fall and quickly pass. So you hold back and in the suspension the world waits and grows into something similar to illness and you remember the way a fever clarified your life.
Your map is a quilt of lines and dots, and you wear every landscape. You are numb with canyons and hills, with scrub and rock. Every terrain says try me, and so you are haybale and scorched field, broken window and rusted phone. You hold heat and storm, and keep breathing, slow and pronounced, over and over like a prayer or a plea. You are throat and lungs and fear.
Because stillness is a gift, you keep at the wheel, holding tight, holding on.
2.
If you ask, I'll say I'm happy. But I usually add the ish, happyish, wellish, because each moment is singular and subject to change.
3.
Was I born this cramped, all blister and knots? These weeds inside me, prickle and thistle, were they planted or did I emerge from scrubby plain, growing wind-worn and hard all on my own?
4.
These Sunday nights, raising sadness and regret. The solitude of Sundays, the letting go and gearing up. Looking back meets going forward, a loss and weight all at once.
5.
On Sunday, poem as prayer:
A quality of attention has been given to you:
when you turn your head the whole world
leans forward. It waits there thirsting
after its names, and you speak it all out as it
comes to you: you go forward into forest leaves
holding out your hands, trusting all encounters,
telling every mile, "Take me home."
— William Stafford
excerpt from "For People with Problems About How to Believe"
a poem that appears in An Oregon Message: Poems
reminder no. 10 in a series • by drew myron
This is number ten one in a series of reminders that serve as notes to myself (and now you). Consider this a public service announcement, poetic nudge, sticky note, or just idle chatter.
On a weeklong writing project, I lost my way.
There was an agenda, a map, and destinations designed to inspire writing.
But the days got choked with smoke and my haze turned at first to malaise and then to rebellion: Who needs a vista! Who wants some fancy special event?!
I made plans, rescheduled those plans, then cancelled completely. I did not take the hike, drive to the lookout, or dine with the writers. I went instead to my favorite no-pressure, all quiet, mostly clean and quiet place: the library.
And there I wandered, losing my self on the Oregon Trail, in Walt Whitman, in snarky humor, and origami. I wrote and wrote and wrote, mostly a jumble, but maybe a nugget hides in the rubble.
The best part was the sweet relief, realizing inspiration comes to the willing. It's all here and here and here, all within reach. I know this, I do, but often forget.
On this Thankful Thursday, I am thankful, oddly, for plans that unravel and expectations unmet. In a small way, my frustration allowed another sort of writing to take foot, stumble, then, albeit wobbly, stand.
How to Fold
Find a flat surface.
Start with a single fold.
Fold in half.
Fold to back.
Rotate. Flip.
Fold. Unfold.
Difficulty will increase.
You may feel the chill of not knowing.
Keep steady. Like any trick, it will
take practice and a curious mind.
From luck to wisdom to surprise
you’ll build confidence.
Peel back the petals.
To create wings
fold a loving heart
and hold the center.
— a cut-up poem by Drew Myron, with lines from The Joy of Origami by Margaret Van Sicklen
It's Thankful Thursday.
Gratitude. Appreciation. Praise.
Please join me in a weekly pause
to appreciate people, places & things.
What are you thankful for today?
You have your own oceans
Your mind is quick and sharp and strange.
You don’t have to be afraid of the oceans inside you.
Let the tides do their work. The moon grows
bright then dark, and then bright again.
Do not dwell in too much darkness.
Do not make a home in deep caves of loss.
Tell yourself.
If there’s no way to predict the thing that comes next,
what freedom would it give you to imagine this week and next?
Your ambition doesn’t
have to be greedy to hold its own wild energy.
It doesn’t have to be noisy to change
the world around you. Embrace the messy.
Remember to pay attention to where
sorrow lives inside you, and where in
your body you store love.
You don’t have to think your body into clarity.
You might feel the change roaring in the distance
and the change rumbling under your feet. What urgency
has held you tight and what are the words you want to hear?
You’ve traveled a long way through a world that is not your own.
Push your way back.
You have your own landscape, mountains and forests
and plains full of life. You have your own oceans
uncharted and blue and wild. You know the shape
of the world you move through.
Show up and just be you.
— a mash-up by Drew Myron of horoscope lines
from Madame Clairevoyant and Holiday Mathis
I'm in a quandary: Is this found poetry, a cut-up poem? Is attribution enough? My mind runs and reels. To borrow, to take, to remake — is this moral, correct, kind? If assembly is required, is it art or is it theft?
Dear Reader, is this a poem and can I call it mine?
So, wherever you came from, whichever way you swing,
whatever is standing in your way, just remember:
You’re bigger than that. Like the man said:
You contain multitudes.
— from Lawn Boy
a novel by Jonathan Evison
This semi-autobiographical story is packed with angst, anger, and the ingredients of real life: race, class, snark and smiles.
“What I wanted was a book written by a guy who worked as a landscaper or a cannery grunt or a guy who installed heating vents," says Mike Muñoz, the 22-year-old protagonist who mows lawns and imagines his life as an author. "Something about modern class struggle in the trenches. Something plainspoken, without all the shiver-thin coverlets of snow and all the rest of that luminous prose. Something that didn’t have a pretentious quote at the beginning from some old geezer poet that gave away the whole point of the book. Something that didn’t employ the ‘fishbowl lens’ or a ‘prismatic narrative structure’ or any of that crap they teach rich kids out in the cornfields.”
Thankfully, Lawn Boy cuts a fresh tale, true to life with hints of hope.
