Thankful Thursday on Friday

gratitude's mixed bag

• the word marvelous • the first gin & tonic • national poetry month (next week!) • hanging on, letting go, knowing when and how and why • fresh air • reading the first page of a fresh book and thinking yes, this will be good • restaurants in which I don't have to shout or strain to talk and hear • sore muscles as proof that something is moving and working and alive • receiving a kind note • tears • shoes that slow me down but pick me up • a knowing laugh • a quick wit • guacamole • the hand that reaches across fog and rain and sadness to find mine • the ordinary duck, the fancy flamingo •

 

Please join me for Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to appreciate people, places, things & more. Why? Because gratitude shifts your perspective, and expands your heart. Also, thankfulness is just good manners. What are you thankful for today?

 

Thankful Thursday: Spring!

Spring, spectacular spring! No matter where you live, winter is a long season. But spring, spring is fresh and daffodil-simple. The sun shines a wide and welcome yes. Fresh earth stirs. In this, hope, and hope again. Today I am thankful for the first day of spring.

Cue the cummings, who does spring so well. Those line breaks, the punctuation, the clear right phrase — all so seemingly random but so determined and just-yes in place.


Spring is like a perhaps hand

Spring is like a perhaps hand
 (which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
 a window,into which people look(while
 people stare
 arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and
without breaking anything.

— e.e. cummings

 

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?

 

Spring is like a perhaps hand (which comes carefully out of Nowhere)arranging a window,into which people look(while people stare arranging and changing placing carefully there a strange thing and a known thing here)and changing everything carefully spring is like a perhaps Hand in a window (carefully to and fro moving New and Old things,while people stare carefully moving a perhaps fraction of flower here placing an inch of air there)and without breaking anything. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15407#sthash.2EKQJN9r.dpuf
Spring is like a perhaps hand (which comes carefully out of Nowhere)arranging a window,into which people look(while people stare arranging and changing placing carefully there a strange thing and a known thing here)and changing everything carefully spring is like a perhaps Hand in a window (carefully to and fro moving New and Old things,while people stare carefully moving a perhaps fraction of flower here placing an inch of air there)and without breaking anything. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15407#sthash.2EKQJN9r.dpuf

Bookish & Curious

photo by ginnyI'm curious. You might say nosy. But, really, I'm just unusually interested.

Forget the medicine cabinet. Your big bottle of valium doesn't bat my eye. If I really want to know you, I'll sift through your bookshelf.

Jane Austen. Edward Abbey. Emily Post. Danielle Steele. Glenn Beck. Rachel Carson. Ayn Rand. Homer. Stephen King. Kama Sutra.

I'm not judging, just looking. No, really.

Thanks to a new feature at Push Pull Books my reading list is growing. At 3 Good Books I invite writers and artists to share their favorite books on a given topic.

It's been illuminating and fun, and akin to nosing around private closets and cabinets — but with permission. Here, take a peek:  

• Hannah Stephenson (poet) on Artists

• Allyson Whipple (poet/playwright) on Roadtrips & Realizations

• Penelope Scambly Schott (poet) on Strong Women

• Tracy Weil (painter) on Play


Have you read any of their favorites?

 

Thankful Thursday: To cheer the heart

It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express gratitude for people, places, and more. Please join me. What are you thankful for today?

Books sometimes arrive just when you need them. This week, two books cheered my heart:

A Simple Act of Gratitude: How Learning to Say Thank You Changed My Life

by John Kralik

You might, as I did, glance at this book and roll your eyes. Oh, how sweet, how charming. But don't let a cranky heart keep you from enjoying this small book with a big message. This honest story, simply told, will draw you in. By the last page — and it's a quick and engaging read— you'll begin to see gratitude in every person, place and situation.

Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Little Golden Book

by Diane E. Muldrow

The ongtime editor of the iconic Little Golden Books culled the pages of the sturdy, gold-spined classics to offer a humorous "guide to life" for grown-ups. Drawn from the Poky Little Puppy, The Saggy Baggy Elephant and other stories, she pairs the images with sage advice: "Be a hugger" and "Don't forget to enjoy your wedding" — and my favorite: "Sweatpants are bad for morale."

On this Thankful Thursday, I'm thankful for books, and those who give love in the form of a book (thanks Mom! thanks Sis!).

What are you thankful for today?


Practice: A Secret You Keep


Because the blank page is just so, well, blank.

Because writers — like lawyers and doctors — are keen to practice their craft, I offer this practice poem. Please note: Layering new atop old frees the mind. Don't think, just write.

With inspiration from, and thanks to, Ex Libris Anonymous, recycling old books to create new, one-of-a-kind journals.

Second growth

Make the forest
a secret you keep.
Hemlock, fir, sitka, cedar —
grow tall in damp days, forge
hill and sky in a tower of tough skin
and bristle, an endlessness
we envy.

In this terrain, sun is memory,
light a wish. This is the myth
of patience: if you are
calm and still, if you wait,
something will arrive,
change, rearrange your
fear, your flee.

To pause in the wanting,
in the day, in the wish
and want and hope. To stop
helping, knowing, nodding,
to retreat, rewind, release.

This is the hush of understory:
the firmness between elbow and wrist,
tender rust in a knuckle,
the softness of lobe —
a forest's slow growth.

- Drew Myron

 

But Why?

Why do you write?

Do we ask painters why they paint, or chefs why they cook? We never ask bankers why they count money, but we ask teachers why they teach.

Still, it's mostly writers we probe, and who are probing. Dig, that's a job requirement, then dig deeper.

I used to think I wrote because there was something I wanted to say," says Mary Ruefle in Madness, Rack, and Honey, a collection of lectures on writing. "Then I thought, 'I will continue to write because I have not yet said what I wanted to say,' but I know now I continue to write because I have not yet heard what I have been listening to."

We write, wonder, and maybe brood. And write some more. We can't stop and we can't start. We seek explanation. Like a stomach ache — food poisoning or flu? — we want to pinpoint a reason. We want to know why we suffer, or celebrate. Why we keep on.

My work is to explain my heart even though I cannot explain my heart. My work is to find the right word even though there is no right word," explains Ayşe Papatya Bucak in An Address to My Fellow Faculty Who Have Asked Me to Speak About My Work.

Bucak tenderly touches the beautiful contradiction that writing yields. In this piece, work is a dressed-up word for write. To provide ballast, we sometimes say work instead of poems or stories. We remind ourselves that writing is not simply hobby, but calling and profession.

Terry Tempest Williams offers a two-page manifesto, Why I Write.  It's striking, clear, and every I write is  a nod and salute to the mystery of how language makes meaning.

Why write? And why do we feel so drawn to the question? Could it be that we are looking for words — our best tools — to explain what we can't? We have the religion but lack the faith. We want to prove our words hold value. But we know, too, that the stomach ache is sometimes heartache, sometimes fatigue. Or just bad milk.

I like Mary Ruefle's approach to writing, and to life: "I would rather wonder than know."

 

Thankful Thursday: Resist and List

A heavily edited manuscript by John Dickinson, known as "Penman of the Revolution."
Oh, hello, it's Thankful Thursday. Again, already. Please join me in a weekly pause to appreciate life — from the petty to the profound.

On this Thankful Thursday, I am thankful for:

1.
The first clutch of daffodils

2.
Strong coffee & real conversation

3.
Soothing classical music that plays while I'm on (terminal) hold with the insurance company

4.
Skiing under a bluebird sky

5.
Brave, a lipstick, and a critical tool in the fake-it-til-you-make-it approach to life

6.
An editor who returns my work with pages of red-ink revisions

7.
Online shopping, and the miracle of purchased items actually fitting

8.
Pisces. Perceptive, creative, sensitive. Thankful I have so many good Fish in my life.

9.
This practice of pausing for gratitude. At my most resistant, when I'm gloomy and frayed with the effort it takes to find a thread of thanks, it really is true that when I sit down and focus, gratitude gains speed and power. Inevitably, I find myself genuinely thankful.

 

3 Good Books

So this is fun.

What It Is, by Lynda Barry — a 3 Good Books pick from Hannah StephensonOver at Push Pull Books, I'm peeking into private lives, nosing around writers and artists to discover the books that fuel their work.

3 Good Books invites writers & artists to share their favorite books on a given topic. Why? Because books stir creativity, and creating expands life.

Want some bookish inspiration? Go here to see suggestions from writer Hannah Stephenson.

 

Thankful Thursday: Letters

Richard Scarry

In this short month of longish days, I'm drawn to pen and paper, to the sound of thought as it crosses the page, to the intimate quiet of letters.

The other day I wrote a letter to myself, urged me to Get a grip.

Last week, I wrote a letter to my younger self, said You are good.

I write letters in my head. For days, we correspond, though you never know.

Some days I look forward to just one thing: opening the mailbox to find a version of you. I rip the envelope, holding my breath.

It's a wonder, really, how I can write from the heart, from the head, from miles away, and just a few days later, I am in your hands. There is miracle in this exchange.

"To say what letters contain is impossible," writes Anne Carson in The Beauty of the Husband. "Did you ever touch your tongue to a metal surface in winter — how it felt not to get a letter is easier to say . . . In a letter both reader and writer discover an ideal image of themselves, short blinding passages are all it takes."

It's a Month of Letters.

Thank you for stamps and envelopes. For postcards and notes. For the scribble, the scrawl, the shaky hand. For an "audience of one." Thank you for sending light when you write.

 

It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to give thanks. What are you thankful for today? A person, a place, a thing? A story, a song, a poem? Tell me, what makes your world expand?


Season the soup

Sometimes I want some sort of magic.

Reading a great book or a stunning poem, I ache for the ability, the luck, the something, to write so well. I get hungry.

Do you feel this too?

We want a recipe. So we scour and scratch and ask, how, how, how, how? We know, and we don't, that there is no one answer. But we're desperate and so we search for suggestions, hints, directions.

I like this approach, from William Stafford in Writing the Australian Crawl: Views on the Writer’s Vocation:

For me, poetry is not like the jeweller’s craft . . . polishing, polishing, always rubbing it more and more. It’s more like the exhilaration of getting somewhere. It’s like running fast and your elbows and knees may not always be exactly right . . but you’re really getting somewhere. That’s the sort of feeling writing a poem has.

I know this feeling. When I'm in the zing of creating it feels both so good and so fleeting that I write faster and faster, chasing words across the page. Like Stafford, my mind is all elbows and knees.

But don't be fooled; Stafford was his own diligent editor. A rush of words, while exhilarating, is just a good start, as he shares here:

I feel revise means ‘more . . . more . . . more.’ The feeling at the time is not that this poem is bad, but that there must be other. And there must be more. So I drift back through the poem with something of the same welcoming feeling I had when I began. I may get different signals and change something, but it’s not changing things with a stern face. Rather, it’s a welcoming one.

I like the idea of approaching revision, an activity often met with dread and uncertainty, with a welcoming spirit. Because we often search for what to cut, it feels refreshing to wonder what can I add? When making soup, we don't take away; we add salt and seasoning. We let it simmer, then enhance.

What's your best recipe for writing and revising? How do you make soup?


Try This: Get Familiar

Familiarity may breed contempt but what if you pushed through contempt to force a fresh perspective?

Routine can make us tune out and fog over. And in mid-winter, when the holiday glow is long gone and the promise of summer is impossible to hold, the monotony can feel overwhelming.

But because the answer to challenge is almost always to work through rather than against, I'm doing my best to embrace the same old, same-old routine of life. In fact, this week I've urged and encouraged the familiar to settle into my writing.

Every day this week I've set aside 15 minutes to write about  marigold garden. I have no attachment to marigolds, and don't enjoy gardening, but this topic has, quite surprisingly, stretched me. With these two words, I've reached back to recall companion planting, salsa, a funeral, hot summer days, and the creation of the Mariposa Community Garden in Denver. These two words have taken me places!

Try this: From the nearest book, randomly choose a short phrase or a string of two to three words. Don't think, just pick.

This is your phrase, and each day you'll write on or about this phrase. Again, don't think, just write. Let the pen explore ideas and connections. See where the phrase takes you. Don't make sense. Or do. Let go.

Tomorrow, write again using the same phrase. And the next day, do the same. Use this phrase for one week. 

You may grow frustrated, or bored, but keep on. When you push through the familiar, when you explore it from all angles and depths, your mind and body grows restless, then fevered, to find fresh ground. You move beyond what you think you know.

Try it, and let me know where this writing practice takes you.

Try these others too:
Try This: Postcard Poems
Try This: Alphabet Poem
Try This: Morning Read & Write
Try This: Book Spine Poetry

Thankful Thursday: Signs

Portland, Oregon - from The Joy Team

1.
On the beach this week, I find a heart-shaped stone, and then another, and another. I feel silly and self-conscious, wondering, Is this love, or am I just desperate for a sign? 

2.
In a quiet room, we meet. We're 10 minutes into talking when I realize nothing I say can change her pain. So we write about one good thing that happened this week. It takes just five minutes for us to settle into a singular memory and ride that joy for an entire hour.

3.
Sometimes I read my horoscope late at night to see if forecast matched reality.

4.
I'm reading aloud when unexpectedly my voice cracks and tears follow. While I don't fully understand what I've read, something registers:

"But there is another class of men," writes Frederick Buechner, "at their very best they are poets, at their worst artful dodgers  — for whom the idea and the experience, the idea and the image, remain inseparable, and it is somewhere in this class that I belong."

5.
In a rush of traffic, I'm anxious. I'm not looking for a sign when I spot a real one, a billboard of just three words: "You are enough."


It's Thankful Thursday. Please join me in a weekly pause to express gratitude for people, places, signs and more. What are you thankful for today?

 

Does the page still bleed?

via Austin Kleon

Let us now travel back in time:

Remember when you wrote on paper, and your teacher/boss/editor would mark up your work with so much red ink you'd go dizzy? "The page is bleeding" you'd say, sigh, and then gather strength to make the changes.

Remember this? 

Recently, I marked up a manuscript and the young writer stared at me with a mix of horror and confusion. I had ruined her work with the ugly marks of a mysterious language.

Is this editing shorthand — long used by reporters and editors — now extinct? Does anyone write on paper anymore?

It's okay, you can tell me: Am I the last one out, and it's time to turn off the lights?

 

Thankful Thursday: What's a typewriter?

People give me things.

This week my husband gave me the thrill of ebay, and I promptly scored a pair of knee-high, leather boots (in camel — my favorite neutral).

Reb gave me the word temperance. Not the Ken Burns Prohibition sort requiring rash abstinence, but a gentler form of the word that suggests that of the middle way, of calm. The minute she presented the word, it fit. I've been wearing this word all week, as mantra, as reminder.

Dee gave me this necklace, and an explanation that made me sigh:

"I was in a small store where these were displayed. A mom was talking to her daughter about how these necklaces looked like typewriter keys. Typewriter keys! the daughter responded. What are typewriter keys? The mother shrugged off the question and went on looking through the store.

I wanted to grab the little girl and tell her that typewriters are where secrets are kept and you have to be very special and very talented to uncover the secrets of the keys . . . The necklace called to you."

On this Thankful Thursday I am grateful for gifts, and the people who give them.

It's Thankful Thursday! Please join me in a weekly pause to express gratitude for people, places, things and more. What are you thankful for today?

 

How I Learned: Books that Teach

Can poetry be taught?

What's the best way to encourage others to write?

And where do I start? 

When I led my first writing workshop nearly 10 years ago, I didn't know much. While equipped with  enthusiasm, I wasn't a teacher. I didn't know how to manage a classroom, or even a handful of youngsters, but I was eager and energetic. So I did what I always do; I looked to books to show me how.

Since that first workshop, with a group of teens, I've worked with writers from age 8 to 80 — in schools, homes, art centers and summer camps. We've written together in classrooms, in parks, in restaurants, on bridges, and on mountain trails, and I'm grateful for books that provided me the confidence and knowledge to teach.

Wondering how to infuse your classroom or community with poetry? Read these!

Books that Teach the Teacher


The Adventures of Dr. Alphabet:
104 Unusual Ways to Write Poetry in the Classroom and the Community
by Dave Morice

This zany, inventive book is an excellent guide on taking poetry to the streets — and everywhere else! It's packed with easy-to-accomplish projects that will ignite writers of all ages, especially children. Want to prove that poetry is lively, accessible and fun? These are my favorite Dr. Alphabet  activities:
BananaVerse — Yes, that’s right, banana as canvas for poetry!
Rock Poetry — Write on a rock, a leaf, a stick, a stone.
Poetry Poker — This is my all-time favorite, and always a hit with kids.

 

Poetry Everwhere
by Jack Collom & Sheryl Noethe

Where Dr. Alphabet is wacky and wild, Poetry Everywhere is more measured and reflective. This bestselling book is a valuable guide for those working with children. It's packed with 65 proven writing exercises, and more than 450 example poem by students, teachers and accomplished poets. As a teacher, this provided me with a solid understanding of writing prompts and tips on how to lead a poetry session. My favorite prompts include: I Remember Poems and Going Inside Poems.

 

Poemcrazy: Freeing your life with words
by Susan G. Wooldridge

My copy of this book is so loved and worn that I can barely make out the words for the post-it notes marking every other page. I've given this book as gift more times than I can count, and when I'm feeling lost in the literary forest of "why bother?" I turn to this gem again and again. Offering a gentle blend of writer's reflection and practical prompts, this guide is, in the words of Anne Lamott, "smart, wide-eyed, joyful, helpful, inspiring." 

Wooldridge's first-hand experience as a poet-in-the-schools provides practical knowledge, but these exercises — and the spirit of this book — extend far beyond any classroom assignment.

 

Awakening the Heart:
Exploring Poetry in Elementary and Middle School
by Georgia Heard

Both inspiring and practical, this how-to guide goes deep. Teaching poetry is more than teaching terms (stanza, iambic, etc) and Heard understands that young writers need to first feel comfortable and safe. She shares tips and tricks to create an environment that encourages self-expression, and then introduces poems and activities that will engage young writers. Equipping the teacher with tools is the first step, and with a heart that can open other hearts is the next.

Do you teach? What books have you found helpful?

 

Thankful Thursday: Out of Luck?

Jessica Hagy - Indexed

You set up a structure: Be thankful. Be bright. Cheer on. Cheer up.

But some days you're cranky. Luck has left, and your bootstraps are broken. Some days are weeks.

I'm short on gratitude today. Yes, yes, I appreciate what I have but my thankfulness is tired and dull.

Still, the show goes on. Show up. Shine on.

This week, kids, it's up to you.


It's Thankful Thursday. Please join me in a weekly pause to appreciate people, places & things.

What are you thankful for today?



Why I don't write love poems


It’s hard to write love poems because the tendency is to swoon, and it’s hard to swoon in an original way.

— Cecilia Woloch
(who shows great restrain in the poem below )

 

On Faith

How do people stay true to each other?
When I think of my parents all those years
in the unmade bed of their marriage, not ever
longing for anything else—or: no, they must
have longed; there must have been flickerings,
stray desires, nights she turned from him,
sleepless, and wept, nights he rose silently,
smoked in the dark, nights that nest of breath
and tangled limbs must have seemed
not enough. But it was. Or they just
held on. A gift, perhaps, I've tossed out,
having been always too willing to fly
to the next love, the next and the next, certain
nothing was really mine, certain nothing
would ever last. So faith hits me late, if at all;
faith that this latest love won't end, or ends
in the shapeless sleep of death. But faith is hard.
When he turns his back to me now, I think:
disappear. I think: not what I want. I think
of my mother lying awake in those arms
that could crush her. That could have. Did not.

— Cecilia Woloch
from Late

 

Thankful Thursday on Friday


What can I say?

It is better to have loved and lost

Than to put linoleum in your living rooms?

 

LeRoi Jones, aka Amiri Baraka, has died. 

As a white, middle-aged woman living on the West Coast, I have nothing in common with the African-American male, beat poet and political activist, who, after the death of Malcom X changed his name to Amiri Baraka.

But here's where poetry bridges, rather than divides.

When I met Baraka, I was 21, alone, broke and living in New York. Searching for free entertainment between a (unpaid) college internship and a ticket-taker gig at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I spotted a few lines in the Village Voice announcing a poetry reading.

It was one of those early-dark evenings and, not a skilled navigator, I walked in circles until I found the address — which, it turned out, was a tony Upper East side home. A private home! What was I doing here, in an intimate and well-appointed living-room like setting? I didn't know much about poetry, and had been to only one reading (a dim coffeehouse, wrenched in creative desperation).

I don't remember many specifics — what he read, wore or said — just that we sat, audience style, in rows of  upholstered chairs, and he filled the room with a poetic and powerful radiance. No joke. He had presence. And it didn't matter that I was young, white and poetically and politically naive. I was moved; In that room, I felt the power of poetry.

A few months later, my internship concluded, I headed back to college in Colorado. With poster board and magic marker, I copied the lines above, and fastened them, wall-to-wall mural style, to my spare studio apartment. Although I didn't "get" the poem, those words stirred me, made me want to push into that mysterious and lofted space where language, message and emotion so beautifully mesh. 

Thank you, LeRoi/Amiri, for opening the door.

In Memory of Radio 

Who has ever stopped to think of the divinity of Lamont Cranston?
(Only jack Kerouac, that I know of: & me.
The rest of you probably had on WCBS and Kate Smith,
Or something equally unattractive.)

What can I say?
It is better to haved loved and lost
Than to put linoleum in your living rooms?

Am I a sage or something?
Mandrake's hypnotic gesture of the week?
(Remember, I do not have the healing powers of Oral Roberts...
I cannot, like F. J. Sheen, tell you how to get saved & rich!
I cannot even order you to the gaschamber satori like Hitler or Goddy Knight)

& love is an evil word.
Turn it backwards/see, see what I mean?
An evol word. & besides
who understands it?
I certainly wouldn't like to go out on that kind of limb.

Saturday mornings we listened to the Red Lantern & his undersea folk.
At 11, Let's Pretend/&we did/& I, the poet, still do. Thank God!

What was it he used to say (after the transformation when he was safe
& invisible & the unbelievers couldn't throw stones?) "Heh, heh, heh.
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows."

O, yes he does
O, yes he does
An evil word it is,
This Love.

— Amiri Baraka


It's Thankful Thursday (err, Friday), a weekly pause to appreciate the people, places and things in our lives. What are you thankful for today?