Dear Young Writer,

When I say Write me a letter, I'm asking to see you.

To meet at a place on the page in which we hover above our lives, seeing with clarity who we are and the capacity we carry.

I want to see you. Not How are you, I am fine, but the real version of yourself. Let's have a conversation, slowed and real, in which we talk to each other by talking to ourselves.

How are you? 

It's the first question and the last. It's the start to finding the buried treasure, the buried you, beneath the barrier and disguise, the hurts and worries, all the secrets and shame.

How am I?

All of us are small and uncertain, clouded and confused. You know this, don't you? Each of us struggles and hurts and hides. You feel more than the smooth surface of life, and still you cannot yet grasp how deeply we are each of us knitted together in our aloneness.

My dear, young friend, I am writing you a letter. In every line, I'm looking for you.

With love,

Drew

 

On Tour: What's your writing process?

The blog bus rolled into town and stopped at my front door.  

My Writing Process Blog Tour is a four-question quiz that gives writers the chance to blab about themselves, and readers the chance to meet writers (and peek into some not-so-private writing lives).

Please hop aboard and indulge me as I ask & answer:

1.
What are you working on?

The world is full of words and I'm trying to live — and write — within these tenets:

Is it kind? Is it helpful? Does it add to the silence? 

This is tricky. Answering honestly leaves little room for banter and blather, and a lot of room for crickets. Fortunately, I like the quiet. But, oh, you meant, what are you working on, as in writing? Ummm, the same recipe applies.

2.
How does your work differ from others in its genre?

Every writer carries their own history and approach. In this sense, every writer is unique. And yet, nothing is new. Every story and poem, every painting and product, wears the beauty and scar of everything that came before. Nothing is new, so everything is new.

On a more practical level, I'm a reporter-publicist-poet, which makes for a writer who is deadline-driven, story-focused and tender-hearted. And I favor searchers and seekers, the broken and lost — people with art and grit.

3.
Why do you write?

I write to make sense of the clamor. I crave clarity, the stretch of finding my way from head to heart to hand. The act of writing is compulsion and companion, and almost always sweet relief.

4.
What is your writing process?

Resist, retreat, react, scratch, stir, sift, sort, give up, give thanks, breathe, repeat.


Blog Tour Backstory:  The writing world is so vast, yet so small, and sometimes we're all in this soup together.

I was kindly invited to go "on tour" by poet Jessica Goodfellow, author of The Insomniac's Weather Report, a poetry collection enjoying a recent re-issue. Jessica shares poetic insights and ideas on her blog, Axis of Abraxas.

Now, the tour bus rolls merrily along with stops at the writers I've invited. Go forward. Do not stop, swerve or slow. Drive ahead to meet:

•  Amber Keyser, writer of fiction and nonfiction for tweens, teens and adults

•  Sarah Sloat, sly and wry editor and poet.

 

Thanks for playing!

Poems are written, names are drawn, and National Poetry Month comes to a full, exhausted close. Thanks for playing with me, and thanks for reading, writing & appreciating poetry.

Winners of the 2014 Big Poetry Giveaway are Linda H. and Brian Wong.

And, yes, we're all winners when we express ourselves. Write on!

 

Thankful Thursday: Poem in Your Pocket

Oh, what delight! The convergence of my favorite days: Thankful Thursday and Poem in Your Pocket Day.

Created by the Academy of American Poets as part of National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day encourages you to carry a poem and share it with others.

Call me a sap but I enjoy a designated opportunity to share poetry. On this Thankful Thursday, I sing the praises of poems carried, clutched, and shared.

Here's an old favorite. Over the years, each time I read the poem I appreciate it in a deeper way. I like this about poetry: the words do not change but the experience I bring to a poem changes. Sometimes we grow into, and with, a poem.

Sweetness

       for my mother


Just when it has seemed I couldn't bear

   one more friend

waking with a tumor, one more maniac

 

with a perfect reason, often a sweetness

   has come

and changed nothing in the world

 

except the way I stumbled through it,

   for a while lost

in the ignorance of loving

 

someone or something, the world shrunk

   to mouth-size,

hand-size, and never seeming small.

 

I acknowledge there is no sweetness

   that doesn't leave a stain,

no sweetness that's ever sufficiently sweet . . .

 

Tonight a friend called to say his lover

   was killed in a car

he was driving. His voice was low

 

and guttural, he repeated what he needed

   to repeat, and I repeated

the one or two words we have for such grief

 

until we were speaking only in tones.

   Often a sweetness comes

as if on loan, stays just long enough

 

to make sense of what it means to be alive,

   then returns to its dark

source. As for me, I don't care

 

where it's been, or what bitter road

   it's traveled

to come so far, to taste so good.

 

Stephen Dunn

 

Gratitude. Appreciation. Praise. Please join me for Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to give thanks for people, places, and things in our lives. What are you thankful for today?

 

Fast Five with Gail Waldstein


   I believe in telling
the total

   emotional truth, or as much

   of it as I can clasp.


Because a few questions can lead to endless insight, I'm happy to present Fast Five — interviews with my favorite writers.

Gail Waldstein is author of To Quit This Calling, a memoir of her 35 years as a pediatric pathologist, and Afterimage, a poetry chapbook. Her stories, essays and poems have won numerous awards and have appeared in New Letters, Carve, The Potomac Review and many other journals. An excerpt from Mind Riot, a memoir about her disintegration into schizophrenia, is available to read at Solstice Literary Review. She lives in Denver, Colorado.

As a pediatric pathologist you routinely conducted autopsies on dead children, as well as diagnosing leukemia and brain tumors on very sick children. How did your career choice impact your creative life?

I had always wanted to write and a few years after a grueling internship in pediatrics, ’68-69, when I also gave birth to my first child and worked every-other-night for the rest of that year, I did write about that and was published in the early ‘70s. By then I had two more babies and my marriage was fragmenting. I was divorced in ‘76. I put aside all hopes of writing then, continued in pediatric pathology full time and solo-raised three children for fifteen years.

The truth of what I did daily in the morgue, the operating room, at the surgical bench and microscope, diagnosing tumors in babies and children drained my humanity. Said another way, in order to stay reasonably sane I shut down empathy and worked, wrote medical articles, book chapters and never accepted career advances that would require working evenings, which were dedicated to being home with the children.

“Creative” for me during those super-busy years equaled crocheting, cooking, embroidery. I kept a journal, always have, but didn’t venture into serious writing again until a poem seized me in the early ‘90s, when I pulled over, parked and wrote. By then the children were off at college or into early careers and I was remarried, another adventure that was going to hell. I continued in pathology, but increasingly found that the armor I had to wear to muscle through the surgeries and autopsies was diametrically opposed to my being able to peel my skin off and write from a raw place, which is how I wanted my work to be. I want to move a reader’s heart, to create in them the emotions that sweep us, almost slay us, move us deeply. Eventually, this dichotomy between how I had to present myself, and how I wanted to be caused (or contributed to) several severe diseases. Later, after lots of drugs, surgeries and wrestling with part time work, I quit medicine, primarily because of rheumatoid arthritis. Economically, an insane decision, but personally fulfilling and the right thing for my writing and my body. It took a few years before I noticed my body had begun to unclench, cells were breathing again.

The story of your health is story itself. You’ve survived cancer of the cervix, rheumatoid arthritis, and schizophrenia (for which you were treated in a mental institution). Do you consider writing a form of therapy?

Absolutely NOT.

I have been asked that question many, many times or told that my writing is therapeutic, that it’s so confessional and out-there that it must bring closure or relief or healing. And while writing, the way I approach it is very interior, visceral and (hopefully) deep, it is not therapy.

I was in intense psychotherapy after my hospitalization at age 30 for three years. That experience was painful, self-revealing, transformative. I have been blessed not needing psychiatric drugs afterward, but I remain connected to therapy and assume I will return for “mini-fixes” forever. While it’s easier now, having lived with my disease for decades, and recognizing danger and mental disorder faster than ever, I can say that the worst day of writing, when I’m stalled in front of a legal pad or computer, desolate and dry, the most difficult dark places I visit in my work, the most eviscerating confessions I decide to expose, is like eating a thick slice of chocolate cake compared to those early years of therapy. There is no comparison.

You are a later-in-life writer. How did you come to writing?

I am definitely a late-life writer, but as I said earlier, it was something I always wanted to do. I read poetry and novels in med school, sometimes secreted paperbacks inside medical texts. I would’ve graduated higher in my class had I read more medicine, no doubt, but I majored in both English Lit and Biology in college, and I desperately missed literature in the sterile, memorization-oriented sphere of medical school.

My writing began as my second marriage was crumbling. I saw lovers kissing on a Denver street in a snow storm and it reminded me of my first kiss and I wrote what I saw, what it renewed in my body. That opened some connection with the muse, some daring. I had always wanted to write about my hospitalization and had made weak stabs over the years. In the mid-90s, as more poems, stories and essays arrived, I began work on my book, Mind Riot, which I’m still wrestling.

You write in many forms: essay, poetry, short story, memoir. Which came first, and what does one form offer that another doesn’t?

Poems came first, and still, if I’m lucky enough to feel one bubbling up, I stop whatever I’m doing and write. It’s not automatic writing, but I do want to honor the impetus.

Prose writing is more work, more struggle, more muscular for me. Not that I don’t work hard on my poetry, I do, but the end is always close, the rhythm set, the music compact. For prose I try to remember Ron Carlson’s advice, where in the body does this happen and write toward that. I have a erratic approach to writing (as do most women writers). I may see a shape, a floating color, a locale where I realized something novel, a vision of a loved one in a particular slant of light, an argument, and that starts things. I don’t read for plot and if it shows up in my work, great, but I’m not primarily interested in it. Occasionally I think I know where I’m going, but I don’t outline. I think the delight of “first writes” for me is discovery and planning would ablate that.

As I reread an ugly first draft, I’ll see ten or twenty pages without a single scene. Revision time. It took me many years to learn that revision is not simply editing, but seeing the whole piece anew. I now love revision as much as a fresh start, which I never thought I’d say.

I realize in rereading your question I haven’t answered what form offers what. That’s probably because in pathology I considered myself a “lumper,” not a “splitter.” I saw similarities between tumors; I noted the dance of malignant cells and their relationships, and found that more interesting than individual characteristics that subcategorize and define individual malignancies. I certainly could and did break things into small cubby-holes; that was my job, my career. But I’m not sure I ever subscribed to the concept that such minute distinctions were as important as medical professionals insisted.

I feel the same way about prose. I’m not a strict nonfiction MUST be TRUE kind of woman. I believe in telling the total emotional truth, or as much of it as I can clasp, but I often have no idea whether I’m writing memoir, short story or creative nonfiction. And to add to my personal confused philosophy, many of my pieces, which invariably contain autobiography, have won awards in two or three of these “classifications.”

(I first read this question as to what informs my work, so as a “bonus,” I’ll leave what I wrote to answer this unasked question: My obsessions inform my writing, love and its foibles, observed and experienced, is a theme I come back to often. My long exposure to medicine and my experiences in it as a doctor and then a patient colors my work and infuses my vocabulary. Feminism is also woven deeply in my writing.)

For many years you served as a creative writing mentor for Denver Public Schools (earning teacher of the year in 2003), and also taught at the college level. I have been the beneficiary of your insightful and incisive editing. What do you find turns a piece from ordinary to extraordinary (and how do we do it?!)

If I could answer that, I’d win some prize. There’s something about the strength of truth that hits the reader in the gut. I know it when I see it, the old Supreme Court comment about pornography, applies. You feel it in your cells, you gasp, your nose starts running and you know you’re about to cry. Sometimes pretty prose alone, the music of it, catches my breath, or a strange, mystical image; sometimes it’s a peculiar juxtaposition, two ideas that are unrelated are mashed together and I’m forced to rethink reality. As far as I know there is no simple rule for making writing extraordinary. Except, maybe the old saw, How does one get to Carnegie Hall?  Practice, practice, practice.

I do know though, that without risk there is little but ho-hum. You hear risk easily in humor, people have to go over the edge, insult or offend (and often apologize), but without the courage to try something wild and new, there’s no extraordinary, just rehash.

I encourage that risk-taking in writers all the time. A lot easier if I don’t have to do it myself. But of course, I try and make myself tell the absolute truth, the fullness of what happened and what an idiot I was, or how base and mean and petty I was. I think we all need to tell the full truth as best we can. I believe writers are obligated to show pimples, prejudice, injustice, corruption, at least on the page, and hopefully kindness and perhaps redemption, or at least an inclination to reform.

I still teach and mentor in the public schools, now through a program run at Lighthouse Writers Workshop and when I get something from a student that evokes a visceral reaction I try and let the reaction show. I applaud these young artists who exhibit courage, and am humbled and inspired by their fertile, fervent minds.

Bonus Question: I’m a word collector, and encourage writers to gather words with interesting textures, sounds and significance. What are your favorite words?

 yes, love, hope, simple, laughter, truth, courage, writing, grace, chocolate

 

Thankful Thursday: Cheap Joy

Dear Stranger. Write a letter, get a letter.

It doesn't take much to make me happy. This week I bought joy for two bucks. Not Trader Joe's Two-Buck Chuck but a more sober sort of happiness: a daffodil bunch for just $1.99.

It's Thankful Thursday, let's recount a week of simple, low-cost, high-reward pleasures:

Chopped Salad. Why does salad taste so much better when someone else makes it? And when it's cut into bite-size pieces?

Pentel Sign Pen. They've got good glide, backed with heft. Oh, how I love these black marker-pens.

Affordable Health Insurance. Better coverage, lower price. This self-employed asthmatic is grateful.

Dear Stranger. Oregon Humanities is bringing back the penpal. You write a letter, and get one in return. So old-school and cool. How are you? I am fine.

Sunshine. A slice, a sliver, a sunbreak. I'll take any scrap of light.

Please join me for Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for the big things, the small fries, and all the inbetweens. What are you thankful for today?

 

Are you rain or shelter?

A Matter of Fact, a write-over poem by Drew Myron

We're halfway through National Poetry Month. How are you celebrating?

I've been doing write-overs, sorta like a do-over. I just tear a page from an old thrift store book, gently glaze through the words, and then write my own. No intention, no direction, just wandering — with a solid literary foundation to prop me up.

I just love the line: "The sea will never need you" — from Mary's Son, appearing in The Collected Poems of Rudyard Kipling. Bless his heart, Rudyard Kipling is taking me across hill and dale, sea and sky.

So, where is writing taking you?

 

And then we never meet again

Kala Osborn, writing on the Alsea Bay, at age 13.
This is how it works:

I write with kids — sometimes for a day, or a week, sometimes for years. Hunkered over journals, we share chunks of time in which head, heart and words come together all at once. When we share our poems, stories, and secret thoughts, it's beautiful, scary and almost always exhilarating.

And then we meet again — the next day, or week, or never again.

Families break up, parents lose jobs or houses, and children move on or away. But the kids stick in my mind.  The girl with hard eyes and a fast pen. The sneering boy who wrote love poems. The teen with fancy dresses and scars. The youngster who lived in a car.

I remember every one. Not what they wrote (though sometimes I am struck) but the mood and tone, the want and willing, the resistance and reach.

Last week we lost a young writer forever. Kala, an 18 year old high school senior, was killed when her car went over an embankment and into the Alsea River. 

I knew Kala briefly, for just a week, when she was 13 years old. She was a student in Seashore Family Literacy's 2009 Summer Writing Adventure Camp, and we spent the week together hiking, biking, kayaking, and writing through each exploration.

Any Moment in a Kayak

With each stroke, the kayak surges forward.

When you bottom out all you can do is push with your paddle, or hands, or your mind.

The sound of the birds, mixed with the beautiful beating hot sky, is almost enough to put you to sleep.

When you catch the breeze you feel fresh.

When you stop to take it all in and close your eyes, you feel like it is all a dream and at any moment you could wake up and it would be gone.

—  Kala Osborn, age 13


I live in a remote and in many ways untamed place, and tragedy hits hard and quick. One person knows another and another and we carry the weight of too much knowing.

Loss shakes and shows us. See, here, it says, this is how to enter the lives of each other, even briefly. Death reminds us that we are ever shaped, even slightly, by our interaction with others.

Over the years, I've kept in touch with many of the young writers. We write letters, share texts, emails, phone calls, and get together for meals. I see them get jobs, go to school, find love, move away, get lost, get in trouble. . . There are many struggles, too many to name. And the victories sometimes seem too small.

This morning one of my first students — from nearly 10 years ago — shared with me an update on her life. There was no big event, no shaking news, but that she was happy. And that felt enough. That felt like everything.

 

Create, Or, How to Make a Poet Happy

Focus on light, by Drew Myron

Cue the dancing poets. In April, month of spring showers, the sky breaks opens and rains with poems.

It's National Poetry Month and people are feverishly penning a poem-a-day, carrying poems in their pockets, and chalking poems on sidewalks.

Here's how I'm celebrating:

I'm making poemish things.
Poems, orphan lines, and erasures like the one above, and mailing them in the old-fashioned sealed-and-stamped method. Every day a fresh recipient. Want to get good mail? Send your mailing address to dcm@drewmyron.com. (Don't worry, I won't spam, stalk or creep you out).

I'm giving away poetry books.
To enter the Big Poetry Giveaway, go here.

I'm buying books.
My funds aren't flush, but hey, poets deserve some financial love. Diane Lockward sums it best: "Keep in mind as you juggle pennies that a poetry book is one of the best bargains around. Let's say a book has 40 poems in it and sells for $16. That means you're getting each of those poems for a mere forty cents! The poet labored over each one of those poems, probably spending days, weeks, months on each one. Each one of those poems can be read and enjoyed over and over. So this month treat yourself to some wonderful books and, at the same time, make a poet happy."

This month, as you're pelted with poems, remember that no one dies from alliteration. Life can deliver worse injuries. We're armed but harmless.

 

Win Books! Big Poetry Giveaway 2014

Break out the hats & horns, April is National Poetry Month! To celebrate, please join me in the Big Poetry Giveaway, an annual event in which dozens of writer-bloggers offer you chances to win their favorite poetry books. It's fun, easy & spreads good cheer.

My Big Poetry Giveaway

I'm giving away the following two books. To enter the drawing, leave your name in the comment section of this post.

Thin Skin
by Drew Myron

A book of my poems and black-and-white photos. Published in 2013, this is my first solo collection.

What others say about this book:

"She is the poet laureate of vulnerability!"
— Molly Spencer, The Stanza

"This collection confesses a vulnerability that has fostered a proud strength and authentic voice of empathy in its author. Thin Skin exposes the reader to life’s harsh elements, but also shows the way to refuge."
— Brian Juenemann, Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association

And Her Soul Out of Nothing
by Olena Kalytiak Davis

I can't get enough of this book. In fact, I keep giving it away and buying back-up copies. Olena's poems are sharp, piercing and true. I've highlighted, underlined and analyzed the pages to pieces — but don't worry, you'll get a fresh, new copy. 

What others say about this book:

"A treasury of broken meditations and chipped singing, moments of insight and yearning . . . Olena Kalytiak Davis’s poems find evidence of the spirit everywhere, in laundromats, in parking lots and frozen landscapes, in the panic of birds.”
— Dean Young

Big Poetry Backstory:
Five years ago poet Kelli Russell Agodon created the Big Poetry Giveaway. In doing so, she fostered enthusiasm for poetry while also weaving together a community of kind and generous poets. In that spirit, let me introduce myself.

A bit about me:
I'm a writer, editor and poet — who likes reading, writing letters, and people with quick smiles. When not writing, I encourage others to write. I live on the Oregon Coast, and maintain two blogs: Off the Page, sharing Thankful Thursdays and writing-based topics; and 3 Good Books, a feature at Push Pull Books in which I invite writers and artists to share their favorite books on a given topic.  

How to win a book:
To enter the drawing, please leave your name and email address in the comment section of this post by midnight (Pacific Standard Time) on April 30, 2014. A winner will be randomly chosen from all entries. Books will be mailed (to anywhere on the planet, at no charge) in May.

How to win more books:
It's a poetry extravaganza! Fifty writers are giving away over 100 books. View the list of participants here.

Good luck. Thanks for playing!

 

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.