Hello Friend,
This is just to say hello & hold on.
With love,
Drew
Stretched & Choosing
An art-poem by Tracy Weil and Drew Myron — made with love for a friend who loves lichen & life.
A friend is sick.
A mother ill.
A funeral today, another tomorrow.
Business lags.
Is this cold or flu or worse?
Where’s my ballot?
I have a litany of worries (don’t we all)? When I tell a friend, she is warm and wise in her response:
The heart stretches and stretches and stretches.
And I think of Maria Popova, the force behind Brain Pickings. Each year she distills one thing she’s learned about living while reading and writing her way through life. This year, she says, the challenge has been “colossal.”
“Depression,” she says, “has lowered its leaden cloudscape over me again and again since I was fifteen, but no other year has lidded life more ominously, as the staggering collective grief we are living through together densified the black fog of private loss.
In such seasons of life, one is pressed against the limits of one’s being, pressed eventually against the understanding — no, more than understanding and less than understanding: the blind elemental fact — that no matter the outer atmosphere of circumstance, one must lift the inner cloudscape by one’s own efforts, or perish under it.”
What did she learn this year? To choose joy — not as sappy platitude, but as intellectual and emotional survival:
“Choose joy. Choose it like a child chooses the shoe to put on the right foot, the crayon to paint a sky. Choose it at first consciously, effortfully, pressing against the weight of a world heavy with reasons for sorrow, restless with need for action. Feel the sorrow, take the action, but keep pressing the weight of joy against it all, until it becomes mindless, automated, like gravity pulling the stream down its course; until it becomes an inner law of nature. . . . “
Read the whole beautiful, essential passage here.
And so we keep weighing and stretching.
Please, dear reader, keep on choosing.
So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.
— Jane Hirshfield
from The Weighing
How does it feel to be able to breathe?
Hello Reader.
I’m weary. Are you too? I want to burrow in, head down, until this ugly season passes. But though I’m tired, I’m even more tired of feeling powerless. I’m sharing this video with you because words have power, music moves, and art transforms.
Please keep on.
With love,
Drew
Commander in Chief
Were you ever taught when you were young
If you mess with things selfishly, they're bound to come undone?
I'm not the only one
That's been affected and resented every story you've spun
And I'm a lucky one
'Cause there are people worse off that have suffered enough
Haven't they suffered enough?
But you can't get enough of
Shuttin' down systеms for personal gain
Fightin' fires with flyers and prayin' for rain
Do you gеt off on pain?
We're not pawns in your game
Commander in Chief, honestly
If I did the things you do
I couldn't sleep, seriously
Do you even know the truth?
We're in a state of crisis, people are dyin'
While you line your pockets deep
Commander in Chief, how does it feel to still
Be able to breathe?
We were taught when we were young
If we fight for what's right, there won't be justice for just some
Won't give up, stand our ground
We'll be in the streets while you're bunkering down
Loud and proud, best believe
We'll still take a knee while you're
Commander in Chief, honestly
If I did the things you do
I couldn't sleep, seriously
Do you even know the truth?
We're in a state of crisis, people are dyin'
While you line your pockets deep
Commander in Chief, how does it feel to still
Be able to breathe, breathe?
Be able to breathe
Won't give up, stand our ground
We'll be in the streets while you're bunkering down
Won't give up, stand our ground
We'll be in the streets while you're
Commander in Chief, honestly
If I did the things you do
I couldn't sleep, seriously
Do you even know the truth?
We're in a state of crisis, people are dyin'
While you line your pockets deep
Commander in Chief, how does it feel to still
Be able to breathe?
Able to breathe
— Demi Lovato
Commander in Chief
Fortune Found (by mistake)
Sometimes you stumble upon a book and the discovery is delight.
Rotten Perfect Mouth is a wonderful surprise.
I was watching I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Netflix) — a fantastic mindbender of a movie, based on a book, that deserves more attention — that includes a stellar performance of the poem, Bonedog.
When I googled the poem, everyone says Bonedog appears in the book Rotten Perfect Mouth. It doesn’t. But that’s okay because I now have a new-to-me book of poems by a poet I’m digging, and I’ll continue my search for the elusive poem that kicked off a hunt that led to the discovery.
(In the meantime, Eva, are you out there? Send me a note, will you?).
Almost everything about this book appeals: the title, cover photo, poems, the indie edge, the mystery of the author’s name — H.D.? What’s she hiding or knowing or keeping close? Is this challenge or game, rubik or ruse? Oh poets, how we love the artful dodge.
Every page bursts with rough beauty:
Nothing is as long or as hard as one hopes.
— from One Night On The River
All winter I
have been barrelling along
the highway, slim with
mediocrity. Winter changes
its name and nothing else
— from Modern Science
I am thinking one thing and saying another.
I am spinning a prayer out of manic luck.
— from The Minotaur
And then this:
Racing It
The sky never touches the ground but races it, forever and ever.
Amen.
I am driving us home from the church,
away from the last of summer, through the
funeral dusk. There is no bend in the road.
She is riding shotgun, exhausted, curling away
from awful truths. Blowing smoke from a crack
in the window, eyes closed.
We are surrounded by wheat and corn,
just like people always say.
I can feel the farness in my muscles.
I can feel the love in my teeth, humming.
When we get home, we can have a drink,
uncoil, not talk about it. This is what we
do best.
I want to stop the car, walk out into the fields,
and lie down on the ground, flat on my back.
I want to lie flat out, not feeling it,
until forever lets me on for the ride.
— Eva H.D.
Your Turn: What’s your latest great find?
Proclamations
Something of Myself 403 — an erasure poem by Drew Myron
1.
Make something.
Make up, make do, make coffee, make love, make art, make the bed — make something.
2.
Lonely seeps.
Some days, even the bright ones, the soccer net sags, the sun leans into the grass with a sigh, even the trashcan stands askew.
I am loping along an abandoned track when the cool morning air turns my watering eyes to full sob for a brief moment for no real reason. Isn’t there so much loneliness to these days of getting through?
We’re all doing the best we can. Of course, of course, of course.
Make do, re-do, getting through. We’re all doing doing doing.
It’s the endlessness that wears.
3.
Poetry is medicine.
“I’ve been thinking about how poetry can sustain us,” says doctor-poet Rafael Campo, who treated patients during the height of the AIDS crisis and is now treating Covid-19.
“We need poetry now as we did then to make sense of our experience of suffering.”
4.
Write through.
What to do? Write through.
“It’s like often nothing happens when you stay still. I always feel like I write something out of a transition of some sort,” says writer Eileen Myles.
“You know, like, coming into my apartment thinking: Another day in which I haven’t done any writing. And then that thought fills me with anxiety and I walk in and I write something. . . . I mean, a poem is just a list. It’s a kind of sharing. It’s just an exploration of the filing system of your brain as it moves through space and time.”
5.
From now on . . .
Today is the day, I say.
I often make these sort of statements. I think I’m making conversation but my husband calls them “proclamations,” then asks, “Are you telling me or telling yourself?”
I’m almost always telling myself.
Like this blog, equal parts confession and cheer. So here’s my proclamation to the world (and mostly myself):
Let’s make something!
But let’s not go alone. Please join me. What are you making?
Share your words, art, poems & proclamations with me: dcm@drewmyron.com
Fast Five with Robert Jackman
"The perspective we take has the potential to expand us into love, or contract us into fear.”
— Robert Jackman
Welcome to Fast Five, in which I ask my favorite writers five questions as a way to open the door to know more.
Robert Jackman is a psychotherapist who combines principles of mindfulness, hypnotherapy and spirituality as paths to healing. He has a private practice in Chicago, Illinois, restores his spirit in the coastal village of Yachats, Oregon, and is the author of Healing Your Lost Inner Child.
If ever we’ve needed a voice of calm reassurance and authentic peace of mind, the time is now. Please welcome Robert ‘Jake’ Jackman:
1.
After working for years as a psychotherapist, what prompted you to now write Healing Your Lost Inner Child?
I wanted to write the book for years but a part of me was apprehensive and my latent inner child wounds of not feeling good enough kept creeping in to stop the process. Then in December of 2019 I heard an interior voice say very emphatically, it's time to write the book now! Once I started to write, the flood gates opened and the manuscript developed very quickly. Gone were any of the apprehensions and now I couldn't wait to see my book in print. The material kept coming and after I sent my manuscript to my editor I still had more content that wanted to come through and that's how the Companion Workbook was born.
2.
I really appreciate your "homework" approach as a way to utilize practical tools for inner work. What key advice would you offer those working on personal growth?
For anyone considering looking at themselves introspectively remember that it takes a great deal of courage to be vulnerable. The most important advice I give people going on a journey of self-exploration and therapy is to know that they will get as much out of the process as they put into the process. The secret is to begin to listen and not be afraid of the voice coming from the shadow world of the subconscious. So much is stored within and many people push this away thinking that their own truth will swallow them whole. The other piece of advice is to trust in yourself and the wisdom you carry. Therapists are just mirrors reflecting back a person's wisdom. Too often we doubt our greatness and make ourselves smaller. You are stronger than you think.
3.
What books — or people — have influenced your professional life, and how?
Carl Jung and his lifetime of work specifically his wisdom regarding the subconscious and archetypes.
Louise Hay, author of You Can Heal Your Life. She was such a bright soul and her kind and gentle presence lives on in her words. Through her work I learned how to transform trauma wounding experiences from diminishment and sorrow to loving messages of healing and encouragement.
Michael Newton, author of Journey of Souls. His books have helped to expand my understanding of energy and life. Reading his books greatly influenced my understanding of metaphysics and helps me to rise above the fray and not be mired in the fear-based illusions that always seem to be presented to us. His work and my study of metaphysics in general have helped me gain a larger perspective in which to see the world.
4.
In these difficult days, what keeps you going?
Knowing and trusting at a deep level that this too shall pass. To deeply understand that the perspective we take, that which we are in control of, has the potential to expand us into love, or contract us into fear. When I'm inspired and have a quiet moment, I will make an intention of beaming love to everyone on the planet who may be at that time in some state of fear. My intentional meditation and trust in the unfolding events centers and calms me. And, having survived a near-death experience where I experienced waves of undulating infinite love and the resonance of a serenely deep calm with no knowledge of time, instantly calms me when I connect to this part of my memory.
5.
I'm a word collector, and keep a running list of favorite words. What are your favorite words?
erudite, magical, ephemeral, and magnanimous
Bonus Question:
What are some common things that most people do that create a great deal of stress in their lives?
Number One: Making up Stories
This is a fear based projection most people use when they haven't gotten the answer they want or they have not heard back from someone for example. We all do this and too often we make up the wrong story and then we start to believe our made up story as a fact. This pattern tends to create a lot of stress within people and is avoidable.
Number Two: Giving Power Away
When we give power away to others we lose agency within ourselves. Making others greater than, and ourselves less than, perpetuates the false illusion that we are not worthy which then creates a cycle of victimhood. This perpetuates the idea that for some reason we are not deserving of love.
Number Three: Having Unrealistic Expectations
When we project an expectation into our future we are setting ourselves up for a potential disappointment. It's almost impossible to not have expecatations and the trick is to transform the expectation into a hope or intention. We still may not get what we want, but the sting won't be as bad.
To know that we all screw up, but remember whatever decision you made that you now regret, at that moment in time it was the best decision to make based on everything you knew about yourself and life at the time. Be gentle with yourself, earth school is hard enough.
Paint + Poem = POW!
I got CRUSHED and I’m thrilled about it!
Artist Tracy Weil and I teamed up for a painting + poetry collaboration now splashed across a tall office building in Denver, Colorado.
CRUSH is a week-long celebration of graffiti and street art in Denver, Colorado. Every September, nearly 100 artists take over a 30-block area in the RiNo Art District, creating larger-than-life murals for all to enjoy.
Founded in 2010, the event offers a platform for artists to create vibrant and lively works for a free-to-the-public outdoor gallery. This year organizers received over 700 artist applications.
"The essence of Crush is to create a censor-free platform for artists, and for them to get paid for their work while doing it," says artist Tracy Weil, co-founder and head of the RiNo Art District.
There is great power in partnership. In collaboration, perspective shifts. A painting deepens, a poem grows. Meanings merge and boundaries enlarge to create a work broader than the initial singular start.
Uncertainty is the New Certainty is located at 2700 Walnut Street in Denver, and will be available to view for the next year.
See More Tracy & Drew Collaborations:
Where Art Is Made - RiNo Art District - Video Poem
Forecast - painting & poetry exhibition and book
The Making of Dust - art & poetry exhibition
Why Bother?
Is this a turning point, which is to say a breaking?
Nearly everyone I know is slogging through a bog of exhaustion, mind and body weighted with worry, wondering: how to live in pandemic, in propaganda, in deceit and hate, in flames and flood, in hurricane and heat?
I wish this were metaphor.
There's a lot of why bother because to be bothered is to be worn away. Aren't we all just so tired?
What’s your strategy, what keeps you going? I keep doing the things I know best: eat, sleep, read, write, soak. Bath as balm. Book as solace. Food as drug. Writing as necessity.
We are the secretaries of the heart, writes Susanne Dubroff.
And so we write — letters, lists, poems and dreams. Writing against clamor, out of sludge, into silence. I keep writing, to you, to the gone and going, to no one and every one. Hear me, hear me, here in the corner huddled, here in the door waving, here in the car moving forward in the only way I can.
Words are paths to emotional sovereignty, writes David Harris.
I keep reading. Looking for wisdom and path, for distraction and delight, for you in the galley, in the gutter, in the page’s last dash. There is a tap-tap-tapping in my head: keep on, keep on.
Eyes blur, pen drags, night arrives early. And yet we write on and on. Like breath, we cling and clutch and reach for more. Words hang on necks, creak through hearts, slip through hands. These words, these words, blanket and balm, heat and life, rest and renewal.
These words — all we have & everything we need.
Why Bother?
Because right now there is someone
Out there with
a wound in the exact shape
of your words.
Fast Five with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
"The poem is not the point; the poem is simply the byproduct of showing up to be wrestled by the world and by language.”
— Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Welcome to Fast Five, in which I ask my favorite writers five questions as a way to open the door to know more.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is the author of 12 poetry collections and her work has appeared in O Magazine, on A Prairie Home Companion, on fences, in back alleys, and on river rocks she leaves around the banks of the San Miguel River near her home in southwest Colorado.
She served as San Miguel County’s first poet laureate from 2007 to 2011 and as Western Slope Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, and teaches and performs poetry for addiction recovery programs, hospice, mindfulness retreats and more.
An advocate of the power of practice, Rosemerry has written a poem every day since 2006.
1.
For nearly 15 years, you've written a poem a day, and shared it on your blog. Can you tell us about your process?
I write at night, usually, after everyone has gone off to their own quiet space in our house. And I sit with a blank page and I wait to see what happens. If it stays blank a long time, I start to sift for ideas. I might look around the room and let my eyes land on an object. Or think about an interaction from the day. Or I might read poems and find something in them that thrills me and then give myself a prompt based on a line or an idea. Or I might read the news. Or look at an image. Or think of someone I want to write a letter . . . so many ways to begin a poem!
I don't feel pressure to produce, but I do feel the ever present invitation to practice — which feels fundamentally different to me as a motivation. The poem, ironically, is not the point — the poem is simply the byproduct of showing up to be wrestled by the world and by language. The point is the showing up and, as Rilke said, the “being defeated decisively by constantly greater beings.” That’s why I write every day. It changes everything about who I am and how I meet the world.
2.
Who has influenced your writing life?
So many people! Today the first who comes to mind is Art Goodtimes, a paleo-hippie, fungi obsessed, potato-growing wild man poet. When I first moved to Telluride in 1994, he said, “Give me some poems.” And I shared a few and he said something like, “These are nice. I wonder what would happen if you relaxed?”
Wonderful advice. I was writing such tightly wound, cryptic poems. And it was a revelation, too, to watch him perform—he used his whole body and his whole vocal range of volume and intensity. I remember staring at a picture of him with his arm raised while reading a poem and I thought, “How does he do that?” And so I began to experiment . . .
Perhaps most importantly, Art introduced me to a poetry community—sitting in a circle, passing a talking gourd, listening to each other. It was so different from the red-pen-stained critique circles I’d been in before. This community was intent on listening, really listening to each other. Not to point out what was wrong with each other’s poems, but to hear the humanity inside them. I am so crazy grateful for Art, who has been my partner in teaching and organizing and performing and human-ing for 26 years.
3.
What advice would you offer new or struggling writers?
Something I once heard David Lee say: "Surround yourself by writers who are better than you are."
4.
I'm a word collector, are you? What are your favorite words?
sometimes
(So symmetrical! An s on both ends, then a vowel, then an m, with that slender cross of the t in the center, ah!! Because of my passion for this word, when I was in 8th grade my priest gave me a book of e.e. cummings poetry for confirmation, a gift that opened my eyes to what poems might do.)
perhaps
(I love the softening effect it has on anything that comes after it.)
blossom
(Both the verb and the noun—this word is like a magnet. I have to force myself not to use it all the time, but it always seems like exactly the right word to me.)
yes
(Perhaps I love using this word too much.)
and then a host of single syllable Anglo-Saxon-ish words with punch, such as wretch, flunk, slink, scum, wreck, spook, scram, splat, pluck, plunk, scrap, fluke, snatch . . .
5.
In the difficult days, what keeps you going?
Morsels of beauty & scraps of joy: The scent of the river. Falling off my chair at dinner because I am laughing so hard. Sunflowers in the garden. Erik Satie. Poems by James Crews. Sitting under the stars with friends. Walking alone in the woods. I follow these moments like a crumb trail. Devour them. Sniff for the next crumb.
Bonus Question: What has changed about your process?
My relationship to the blank. A white page used to scare me, stare me down. Now it feels like an encouragement to step into infinite potential. Every time I sit down with a blank, I wonder what might happen. Something!
• Buy Hush, Rosemerry’s latest book here.
• Learn more about Rosemerry:
TEDxPaonia
Rattle Magazine Podcast
No Caterwauling
No Caterwauling
Stiff upper lip,
the very thought
is our current
human existence.
Shock is our
reckoning.
— Drew Myron
cat·er·waul | \ ˈka-tər-ˌwȯl
1 : to make a harsh cry
2 : to protest or complain noisily
In an effort to keep my head bobbing above the crashing waves of doom, I’m writing, rewriting, and crossing out. Make something, I urge. Some days I make only only coffee, or my bed. Other days, I make dinner or a pie. On the very best days, I make a difference.
But mostly I make my hand move across a page.
And you — what are you making?
Summer Always Loves You Back
1.
Are you shoulder-burnt, lips swollen with wine and berries, with a season of satisfaction? Summer knows your story.
2.
Like a geography that grows, summer leaves its shadow — dusty lavender, new moons, slants of patio sun — and always loves you back.
3.
We chase light across every field, never ready for the end.
4.
If we should weep with change, with cool mornings and fading light, if our shoulders should drag and pale, let us remember this time of fortune and bloom, every green thing reaching for more, leaning into the next season with a slow hum of heat, with quiet nights still holy and full.
Frettered? Go Read A Book
Are you in the inbetween?
I’m swinging between wanting to settle and sink into a book, and being unable to settle and sink into anything. Busy, tired, frittered, frettered. Is frettered a word? It is now. New rules for this season of upheaval and unrest!
Need a book suggestion? Who doesn’t — it’s like asking if I need a glass of wine. The answer is always yes. In that spirit, I offer a few good reads:
ON DUFUR HILL
by Penelope Scambly Schott
This award-winning poet is prolific, and this book — her 22nd? — captures the charm of a small north-central Oregon town she’s made the home of her heart. These poems-of-place are both specific and wonderfully universal. Do you have a Mayberry you hold dear? Count yourself lucky, and drive on in. I love the sense of place rendered in these pages, but even more I appreciate the way this small town allows larger reflections to grow, as seen in this poem:
Woman Remembering Her Mother
When you were small, your mother
gazed at you with inexplicable grief.
She wanted to say, For my whole life
I have hoped to be known. But you
were a child so you couldn’t see her.
Such a long darkness between you —
I can’t explain why I weep now.
— Penelope Scambly Schott
FIST STICK KNIFE GUN: A Personal History of Violence
by Geoffrey Canada
An essential read. This first-person account of survival reveals our simplistic attitudes and actions toward crime.
“In poor communities the police simply tend to be more hostile, more aggressive, and racist than in middle-class communities. Many middle-class people in America have a hard time understanding why poor communities don’t necesarily see police as helpful in deterring crime, because in middle-class communities police tend to act differently. The friendly officer who has a citizen’s best interest at heart in one community is the hostile officer who shows nothing but disrespect in the other. When you have a mostly white police force in a community of color, the problem gets ten times worse . . .
The reality is this: we pay more to incarcerate kids across this nation than we do to educate them. Can we afford to lock up even more? America is not number one or even in the top fifteen when it comes to reading, math, and Enlgish. We’re number one in locking up children. Are our streets safer as a result? The answer is no. While we have foolishly invested our precious resources in a criminal justice approach to soliving our crime problem, we have nothing to show for it except poorer schools, poorer services for youth, and more people on the streets unemployable because they have a criminal record. Instead of educating and investing in young people to help them grow up and eventually give back to theis great country we have a crisis of voiolent youth on our streets that we pretend can be solved by a strategy that has already failed.”
ON EARTH WE’RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS
by Ocean Vuong
For months I resisted this book. Everyone loved it but because I cheer for the underdog, I eschewed the hype. But I was wrong, wrong, wrong!
The writing is, well, gorgeous. Vivid and sensory, rich and haunted. The novel is both long poem and full sigh. Beautiful and unusual. Line after beautiful line, passage after page. The mood is dense and rich, the pace slow, lonely and lovely.
“In Vietnamese, the word for missing someone and remembering them is the same: nhớ. Sometimes, when you ask me over the phone, Con nhớ mẹ không? I flinch, thinking you meant, Do you remember me? I miss you more than I remember you.”
THE DEBATE OVER SYSTEMIC RACISM:
Why It Divides and Why It Provides Hope
by Gerald F. Seib, The Wall Street Journal
Trying to make sense of systemic racism?
Take a look at home ownership.
“After World War II, the federal government pumped millions of dollars into programs to build houses to develop the soon-sprawling suburbs — but under policies that denied those benefits to Black Americans. Houses were sold at a very, very cheap rate that allowed for generational wealth to be developed in the white population, and did not in the Black population.”
Read the crystalizing history in this brief piece.
YOUR TURN: How are you doing? And what are you reading?
Objects for Interior Life
Letter in late summer
Dear —
I am thinking of you, on these cool mornings
as I walk, and on the sweltering days as I weed.
I am thinking of you as I write, wondering
what you are making of your days, of this time,
of the heart, how it stretches and too often feels
about to snap but then the smallest thing
— a sunflower's reach, a child calling, or just light
moving across an old wood floor — brings you back
from an edge you nearly crossed, and for a moment
all is well, and for another and another until
it is late and dark and you have tucked
into comfort and you are “breathing just
a little and calling it a life.”
From this quiet space,
I am planning for happiness
and thinking of you.
With love,
Drew
Thankful Thursday: Leggy Resilience
It’s Thankful Thursday, a pause to express appreciation for people, places, things and more. Why give thanks? Because joy contracts and expands in proportion to our gratitude, and in these difficult days we must rise up, give thanks, and keep on.
Like a confession, I’ll admit my gratitude has been small, tired, and primarily comprised of whispered pleas of get me through this, please, please, please.
Still, I’m reaching for the small joys.
On this Thankful Thursday, I am grateful for:
the smell of bleach
sun-dried sheets
horoscopes
my patio
lavender
long soft evenings
my husband’s worn hands
the satisfaction of ironing
mail carriers
library2go
scientists
strangers who trust me with their stories
sunshine
wine
strong legs, strong arms
my dad’s smile
naps
a crisp cucumber
bike rides
audio poems
listeners
grocery store workers
my sister laughing
hope rooted in knowledge
tortilla chips, peanut butter, apples
quiet
czech national symphony orchestra
health insurance
fledglings
the neighbor who shares her garden harvest
the other neighbor who comes to my door crying
friends who send letters
nursing home housekeepers & nurse assistants
my lungs
the heavy-headed sun-soaked leggy resilience of sunflowers.
What are you thankful for today?
Try This: I Remember
Now, our days move with less activity and more reflection. A swarm of memory nags for attention. When the present slows and stills, who can avoid the lingering past?
I advise against it. Nostalgia is overrated. Sentiment is for saps.
And yet, in these heavy days, memories sneak in, sit down and take up space. Sometimes it’s best to give in to our misty water-colored memories, but with limitations. Let’s not drown ourselves in a glowing past, but instead, mine our memories for creative material.
I recently discovered a real gem of a book (50 years after it was first published; I’m always late to the party): I Remember by Joe Brainard.
It’s 167 pages of random recall. Each line starts with the same refrain, I remember, and it’s simple, funny, banal, and brilliant:
“I remember chalk.
I remember how much I tried to like Van Gogh. And how much, finally, I did like him. And how much, now, I can’t stand him.
I remember how sorry I felt for my father’s sister. I thought that she was always on the verge of crying, when actually, she just had hay fever.”
And that’s just page 28.
Memories are so powerful that we cling to them, and then push them away. And years later, when we forget our memories, we curse the loss of mind, our life, our sense of self.
Try This:
Start with I remember, and write the first thing that comes to mind. Don’t think, just write. Let your mind flow and your hand move. When that memory dries, make room for the next, and the next. . .
Now change perspective. Start with He remembers or You remember or . . . and write your first thought. It doesn’t need to be true or full or kind; this is writing, you get to make it up. Don’t think, just write.
When you finish your freewrite, review your work. Is there a good line or a passage with possibility? Start there. Write a story, a drawing, a play. Make a poem or painting. You now have the essential ingredients. Make something!
Feeling energized? Share your work with me.
Make do, make up, make something
Make up.
Make do.
Makeshift.
Make a cake, a drink, a doozy, a dud.
What I’m saying is, to get in, around and through, you gotta make something. Kick your inner critic. Now is the time to make junk. Get loose, let go.
What are you making?
I’m making lists, letters, meals, memos, poems, pictures, cookies, collage, drawings, darings, delights. I’m playing with words and dreams and fears. I’m staying close, inside, mining the interior of mind and memory. I’m making do with the tools I have: paper, pen, words and glue.
Will you join me? Let’s raise the rate of artful expression. Make something now.
Fissure
You want a show, something worth seeing
but here lights blink, engines stall and
cheat grass takes hold of every chance.
Want is a language of rusted grumble.
You long for the comfort of a crossing,
some magical door, an arch, to meadowlark
and soft rolling slope. But what good is
this ache, this pressing want?
You must find the merits of giving up.
Take a flicker of light, some heat, any
thing to stoke your hope. Let the world
split open. In everything fissure.
— Drew Myron
Not Rockets
What are you celebrating today?
Not rockets red glare
or bombs bursting in air
Let us celebrate freedom
To make, march, sing & paint.
To learn, gather, grow.
To read, write, speak.
To run, return, remove.
To turn toward and away.
To love. To cry. To try.
To error and erase.
To kneel and pray.
To change.
To breathe.
To breathe.
To breathe.
To be.
— Drew Myron
A Song, A Movie, A Book
Check your influences. You are what you consume. Books, music, movies — how are you feeding your mind?
Yes, I’m still making a meal of Diet Coke and chips, and overindulging on 1990s television, but I’m trying to balance the junk with the gems. Here are a few of my recent (better) influences:
LISTENING: March March
Just last week The Dixie Chicks renamed their band The Chicks and released this driving song and powerful video. (And catch the protest sign: Ditch Your Racist Boyfriend — that’s excellent copywriting).
See Also: Michael Franti - This World is so F*ucked Up (But I Ain’t Never Giving Up On It)
WATCHING: The End of the Tour
I’m not sure how I missed the early 2000s fanfare for David Foster Wallace and Infinite Jest. But this movie, based on an actual weekend between a Rolling Stone reporter and Wallace, is good stuff. It’s talky and insightful, with great acting and touches of humor.
See Also: This is Water - commencement speeech
READING: Astonishments
This is a quiet book of poems by Polish poet Anna Kamienska. The second half of the collection features extracts from The Notebook, in which she shows a profound and lonely struggle with faith. Line after line pierces and shines:
“In this time of anxiety and searching, one should write something, shape something. Whatever it might be, it could lead to proposing some kind of sense and order. Any situation can become a starting point. Knowledge of life doesn’t have specific beginning and an end. It is like the earth: any point on it can become the beginning or the middle.”
TELL ME:
What’s influencing you — what moves your heart & mind?
And what are you shaping?
Try This: Wild Cards
Pick a card, any card.
I had forgotten how much I love Poetry Poker!
The other day while cleaning my office, I found these wild cards and the past rushed back to say hello. I made this deck years ago while leading youngsters to the power and fun of writing — but really, this prompt works for all ages (as is true for nearly every writing exercise).
This game, courtesy of Dr. Alphabet, is a fun way to loosen the mind and play with words. Simply take a deck of cards, add unusual words and phrases, deal a hand, and make a poem, write a song, start a story, or . . . . just have fun with possibilities.
And let’s take a moment to applaud Dr Alphabet, aka Dave Morice. He’s my kind of writer: ireverent, unusual, artful, and a “muse out of the world of Dr. Seuss.” Read all about his inspired, lifelong dedication to word play here.
Your turn: Make a Wild Card piece. Don’t think too much, just let the cards fall and the words flow.
More Writing Prompts:
Try This: Word Catching
Try This: Where I’m From
Try This: Make A Scramble
Try This: You Know the Gnaw
Litany
Three months ago I started a file of Pandemic Poems.
Words rushed in and writing was both compulsion and comfort. I wasn't trying to "say something” but keeping my head above water in the only way I knew, by writing it out.
But now an entire season has passed. How do we call this a phase? We're not only in a pandemic, but in a seismic shift of actions, attitudes, systems. This is mental, emotional, and cultural change.
Now every poem carries the strain.
Things are hard, things are easy. I make them so, or, I make the best. Can these statements be both true and false, and at the same time?
I don’t know what to say or share, how to tell this story. Language fails. And still I keep talking. Language is a secret everyone is keeping, writes Rebecca Lindenberg in Catalogue of Ephemera.
My mind is a crowd gathered too close. All day and into night, the sky is the same static gray. Is this winter or summer? Slumber or resignation? I am not sick and not noticeably sad. Maybe this is surrender.
It's not enough to love and wish and poem and pray.
All over this neighborhood now, nothing happens. Stillness. A few walkers, like me, heads down, crossing before approach.
There's little room left for another sorrow.