Oh, sweet serendipity!
So many good things in a single day: Thankful Thursday, Poem in Your Pocket Day, and your last chance to enter the Big Poetry Giveaway.
As part of National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day encourages you to carry a poem and share it with others.
You don't have to ask me twice; I revel in an opportunity to share poetry. On this Thankful Thursday, I sing the praises of poems carried, clutched, and shared.
What's in your pocket?
You, who seek grace from a distracted God.
— Luis Alberto Urrea
from The Tijuana Book of the Dead
For days, this line hangs in my head.
I don’t know why. Timing, I suppose. It’s always timing.
And something about the direct appeal: You, who seek . . .
And my "trigger" words: seek, grace
But it’s the distracted that really gets me: from a distracted God
That’s it, isn’t it?
When we are lost and wandering, when answers seem nowhere, we think God is on vacation, pulled away by bigger problems, bigger people. We are forgotten.
And so these words hang like a necklace, around my neck, close to my heart. Reminder.
Of what, I'm not sure. It's Sunday, and I'm working it out.
"Wild places — open, public lands — are where I gain my bearings, where I hike and run and think," says Erin Block, who lives in the mountains of Colorado.
She's a librarian by day and a writer by night, and her book, The View from Coal Creek, is a passionate reflection on fishing and life.
Join us at 3 Good Books, where Block shares her favorite books about wild places.
I'm making a list in my head, I told her.
Of what?
Things I'm thankful for.
Am I on it?
Are you on it! I said.
She closed her eyes and made her own list.
Can it be something as small as discovering that your bread isn't moldy after all so there'll be toast for the kids for breakfast? she asked.
Yes, I said. My eyes were still closed. Right now I'm thanking God for twist-offs.
Oh, good one, she said.
— All My Puny Sorrows
a novel by Miriam Toews
It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for the joys big, small, and inbetween. What are you thankful for today?
Even in elementary school it troubled me when our teacher, with all good intentions, read a poem to the class, then asked, What does it mean? My problem wasn't with the question, but with the idea that there was an Answer . . . A poem is not a test. Readers of poetry can't fail.
— Laura Kasischke
Yes! Exactly, yes.
Go here to read the full (but brief) glorious truth.
Welcome to the 6th Annual Big Poetry Giveaway!
To celebrate National Poetry Month, poets across the globe are giving away books. Lucky you!
Playing is easy. To enter the drawing, simply leave a comment at the end of this blog post. On May 1st, I'll close my eyes, choose two names, and announce the winners.
I'm giving away two books — my own and one of my favorites:
Thin Skin
by Drew Myron
A blend of black-and-white photos paired with tender, precise poems.
She is the poet laureate of vulnerability!
— Molly Spencer, The Stanza
Thin Skin exposes the reader to life’s harsh elements, but also shows the way to refuge.
— Brian Juenemann
Pacific Northwest
Booksellers Association
What It Is
by Lynda Barry
Lynda Barry is a writer, illustrator and enthusiastic advocate for the arts. "Creativity is there in everybody, in everybody,” she says.
While not technically a poet, Barry embodies the creative, willing spirit that poetry requires. In fact, the Poetry Foundation featured Barry in this friendly and practical chat.
About Your Hostess (Me!)
Who I am: Drew Myron - writer, editor, encourager, poet, wife, daughter, sister
What I do: Write, read, snack & nap. Also, run a marketing communications company in which I give voice to people, places, projects.
What I believe: Gratitude drives joy. With Thankful Thursday, I take a weekly pause to express appreciation for things big and small. Please join in!
Blogs I read: Calm Things by Shawna Lemay, The Stanza by Molly Spencer, Battered Hive by Shawnte Orion, 3 Good Books by Push Pull Books (and me).
To enter the drawing, please leave your name and contact info in the comment section by April 30, 2015. I'll randomly choose and announce the two lucky winners the week of May 1, 2015.
For the chance to win even more books, go here to see a list of participating poets.
Indexed by Jessica Hagy
I met my mentor in the middle of a hostage crisis.
As a SWAT team swarmed a ratty house in a forgotten field, I chatted up a colleague who would become a valuable mentor and, decades later, one of my closest friends.
Twenty years ago, she was a seasoned reporter for the state’s largest newspaper, and I was fresh from college, working as an over-eager, under-prepared reporter for a small town newspaper.
It didn’t seem right to chat and giggle in the middle of a gun-toting, armor-inducing situation, but it was a welcome relief to find an ally in the midst of this backwoods kind of crazy.
Aside from asking questions and taking notes, I didn’t know much. But I knew enough to keep my mouth shut and my eyes open. She’d worked for both small and large papers. She was smart and opinionated. She told stories of grouchy editors and wacky sources. She found life disgusting and delightful, in equal measure, and I aspired to be her.
Over the years, she nudged me toward better jobs and opportunities, and we grew into ourselves and our careers. In our own time, we each moved away from newspapers and into other media and marketing worlds. We shifted from mentor to colleagues to, ultimately, friends.
I've now known my mentor for half my life. And we now show ourselves more fully, not just the professional parts but our personal success and struggle too. We laugh a lot. We read newspapers and grumble. We drink martinis (which she taught me to enjoy: Bombay Saphire, shaken, hint of vermouth, three olives). We sigh.
Years ago when I stood in that field waiting for a man to come to his senses I had no idea I was meeting a person who would mark my life, and my heart.
Recently, I spent time with a young woman I met over a decade ago, when she was a high school student and I was a volunteer for a teen writing group. We’ve kept in touch over the years, through her first job, her first (and second) apartment, her marriage, her move out of state. We’ve shared poems, letters and life-changing decisions.
When we met for lunch, we hadn’t seen each other in several years. And yet we started just where we had left, chatting about books, art, clothes, love . . . I saw that she moved with more poise and spoke with greater assurance. She had grown into herself. This is how it feels, I thought, to witness a person becoming.
Wistful and proud, I was standing now on both sides of mentorship, grateful.
It's Thankful Thursday (on Friday), a weekly pause to express gratitude for people, places, things and more. Our joy contracts and expands in direct relation to our thankfulness. What are you thankful for today?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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 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?
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
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?
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
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.
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?
