On Sunday: Between Breaths

Between breaths, a postcard poem by Drew Myron

Everything is a long pause between breaths

Everything is a long pause between breaths
as you navigate the final    months    weeks    days    

The hours twist ever tighter in spirals of complication
and you hang waiting at every door

You sleep longer     deeper     and need all
kinds of light         

                        At the end      discomfort is
disease filtered through leaves as you

move toward the much loved
                             places and patterns of life                 

You are a tree reaching for sun     surprised
to find a tapestry of dark and light

— Drew Myron

More Postcard Poems:
Wintering
Questionable

The world turns on words, please read & write. 

If you like this blog, please subscribe here for delivery directly to your email. And please share on your social network of choice or forward to a friend. 

---

Thankful Thursday: Trust

Where you’re needed, a postcard collage by drew myron

1.
Sometimes someone will trust me with their story.

As a reporter-writer, the exchange has always been a careful balance. I trust that you are forthright and honest. You trust that I will get it right.

Now, more than ever, the trust feels shaky. We are dubious and doubting. We are not seen, accepted, or understood. In this increasing mood of distrust, I accept every telling as tender faith that I will hear, hold, and understand.  

2.
The sharing, both professional and personal, feels more vulnerable now.

Three years of keeping distance has turned me deeper inside myself. I've forgotten how to play with others.  

The last few years have been difficult in myriad ways. The pandemic has walloped our physical, emotional, and mental worlds, and I'm not sure we've fully acknowledged its impact. I'm encouraged that we now have more and better tools to handle the sickness —vaccines, medicines, experience — but I'm still not confident enough to return to life as it was lived before. And even sharing this sentiment is fraught with the potential for division and misunderstanding.

3.
I'm reading and writing with kids again, small groups of youngsters in an afterschool program.

Like children across the country, the students are struggling. For many, Zoom was their first and only classroom. Catching up to learn the foundations that will serve them for life is a tremendous challenge.

How to help? Read with a child!

The most basic act is still the most useful.

“There's really solid research saying that if kids know there's an adult that cares about them as a person, they will feel connected,” notes Robert Balfanz, a researcher at Johns Hopkins School of Education. “And if we give them good instruction and good learning opportunities, many of them will be able to accelerate their learning. And then, for those that had the biggest losses, we know that there's really nothing better than high dosage tutoring.”

My small group of readers and writers begin each session talking about our favorite words. Then we write a bit about ourselves, starting with I am . . . and I am not . . . One girl always eagerly shares her work (there's always one, bless her) and soon the others clamor to take part, too. We laugh and joke, read and write.

But the other day, Anna hunched over her journal and shook her head. Time moved quickly and we were soon done. The kids left their journals and skittered off. I opened Anna's book, and her small cramped writing broke my heart: 

I am 10 years old. 

I am not happy. 

I am very tired. 

I love my dog. 

I miss my bed.

And all night and into today I keep thinking of her.

So, that's a heavy story. But also a light one. Because there are words on her page, I think there is hope. 

4.
The light is frail this morning, the temperature cold.

The winter sun strains to hold steady in the sky.

February carries a certain trust — that winter will end, that trees will bloom, that everything has its time and place.  

It's Thankful Thursday. Joy expands and contracts in direct relation to our sense of gratitude. What are you thankful for today? A person, a place, a thing? A story, a song, a poem? What makes your world, your heart, expand?

Note: Names have been changed to protect privacy.

If you like this blog, please subscribe here for delivery directly to your email. And please share on your social network of choice or forward to a friend. 

The world turns on words, please read & write. 

---

Good Views

So, what are you watching?

I often write about good books but in the cold season good viewing consumes my time, too. Because there are so many “television shows” (a term to describe the many screen options we now have) it can feel like there’s everything — and absolutely nothing — to watch.

The masterful blend of a good script and great acting is a rare gem. I’m happy to share some of my latest favorites.

* Note that streaming platforms change frequently, check for availability.

Chicken People
A funny and uplifting look at the world of show chickens and the people who love them. Both humorous and heartfelt, at first glance Chicken People feels like a mockumentary (Best in Show is my all-time favorite of the genre) but this documentary is all real. It’s a quirky charmer.

Available to rent on Amazon Prime

Other People
This 2016 “dramedy” stars Jesse Plemons and Molly Shannon in a story about a son who returns home to care for his dying mother. Yes, the premise is tired but the insight and performances are fresh and endearing. For anyone who has cared for a loved one (and by now who hasn’t?), this movie is heartbreaking, funny, tender, and true.

Available on Netflix

All the Wild Horses
A riveting documentary about the Mongol Derby, the longest and toughest horse race in the world. The course traverses more than 600 miles of remote Mongolian steppe, desert, and mountain ranges. 

I discovered this adventure movie while writing a story about two Oregon women who competed in 2022.

On the same theme, Rough Magic: Riding the World’s Loneliest Horse Race is one of my favorite books.

Yes, I have a lotta love for this topic — and I don’t even like animals! (Don’t send me hate mail; I’m allergic to everything and can appreciate animals from a distance).

Available to rent on Amazon Prime

All Creatures Great & Small
The latest adaptation of the book series by James Herriot about an earnest young veterinarian in the 1930s is now playing on PBS. I like a bit of grit and initially the show seemed too wholesome to keep my interest. But this tale of life in the beautiful English countryside is, well, soothing and delightful. Now in Season 3, and I can’t wait for each episode.

Available on your local PBS station, or with a Masterpiece subscription available through Amazon Prime.

The Wire
Treme
The Deuce

All praises for David Simon, the best writer of television tales. I recently revisited my two favorites: The Wire, about the drug trade and its reverberations in every aspect of urban life; and Treme, exploring the emotional, physical, financial, and cultural aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

I never tire of these gems. Stellar writing, combined with excellent acting, make these shows shine. Twenty years after they first appeared, these hold up with unmatched depth and relevance.

The Deuce is one of the newer David Simon treasures. The 2017 series takes place in 1970s and 80s New York when porn and prostition ran rampant. Yes, the subject is gritty but the nuanced storyline and complex characters (James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal!) make this a must-see. 

The thing about these shows is I never really want to watch them — at first. The topics are dense, heavy, uncomfortable. But the writing, acting, and camera work is so tight that after the first or second episode I am hooked — every time.

Available to rent on Amazon Prime, HBO Max, Hulu.

Your turn: What has you hooked? Tell me what you’re watching.

---

Assembly Required

Coping is eventually a terminal illness, from Lungs, a series of collage poems by Drew Myron.

1.
Like a hungry squirrel searching for the last nut, I’m racing around the internet for medical clarity. Again.

But first: I’m fine.

2.
I’m hunting for answers. There are too many words and nothing I can touch. There is a distance in the language. Like a hug that touches only upper arms. A smile that does not reach the eyes.

After excessive searching, the words blur into meaninglessness:
you may feel . . . symptoms include . . . final stage . . . end stage.

Nobody says death. Dying is happening but also very much not happening.

3.
Ten years ago a friend and I explored death through poems and paintings.

Death is not a crisis, we agreed, then laughed and cried and shared a period of intense creativity through grief.

I like to think that period prepared me for the many people who died in the decade that followed —  parents, family, and many close friends — but I don't know that it ever gets easier, or, really, that it should.

4.
I’ve lost language, the ability to write my own feelings, to say what is. I am trying to feel and not feel.

Remaking can give me words, rearrange reality.

5.
Cut, paste, create.

I call it a scramble. Some call it a cut-up or collage.

The form emerged from the Dadaists, an avant-garde art movement of the 1920s. There are many variations but the foundation of a cut-up is created by taking a finished text and cutting it in pieces with a few or single words on each piece. The pieces are then rearranged into a new text.

Over 100 years later, the cut-up technique has been used by scores of writers, musicians, and artists, from T.S. Eliot to David Bowie. Learn more here.

End Stage, from Lungs: a series of collage poems by Drew Myron

6.
Poet Rosmarie Waldrop refers to collage as “the splice of life,” as recounted in this excellent piece by artist Heidi Reszies that appeared in The Volta:

“I turned to collage early, to get away from writing poems about my overwhelming mother. I felt I needed to do something ‘objective’ that would get me out of myself. I took books off the shelf, selected maybe one word from every page or a phrase every tenth page, and tried to work these into structures. Some worked, some didn’t. But when I looked at them a while later: they were still about my mother.”

The poem will resemble you, said early Dadaist Tristan Tzara. What the mind has assembled—subconsciously and at any given time—will surface in your poems. 

7.
There’s a freedom in the process. A joyful spark of distance and recognition. The words are not mine and yet, I remake them mine.

8.
For these poems, I printed pages of medical text from webmd.com and copd.net, then cut the pages into lines of text, scrambled the order, rearranged into ‘sense.’ In this series I worked to keep key phrases intact. I did not add additional words.

I’m in each line while also standing outside each line.

The image is from Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository. The 1882 drawing, depicting bronchi and lungs of a male, appeared in Popular Science Monthly.

9.
Do these technical details matter?

Does poetry matter?

Is this exercise or art?

I have no satisfying answer. But I have the pull to create order from everything that swirls and screams, that wonders and whispers, that calls me gently to make sense, to make something.

“The mind is assembling stuff all the time,” writes poet Ralph Angel.“Poems, stories, paintings—art objects are like mirrors. No matter what we think we’re up to when we make them, they reflect precisely who we are at the time.”

_____

If you like this blog, please subscribe here for delivery directly to your email. Or can follow this blog at Feedly.

As always, thanks for reading & writing.

---

Wintering

Oh January, you are a difficult teacher.

We’re slogging through rain and gray.

In the western U.S., we’re deep into a damp season. In California, floods and storms batter entire towns. In Oregon, where I live, rain is nothing unusual but this year we’ve seen an especially cold and soaking gloom. It seems weeks since we’ve seen the sun, though I know that can’t be true. We search the sky for pinholes of light, patches of blue that surely exist beyond the steady gray.

In this wintering, I turn inward again. Make something of this season, I say, and nudge myself into words and books, pen and page.

Postcard poems feel like a comforting container right now — small enough to manage and not large enough to daunt. Rendering just a few lines matches the season, and my mood, too.

These are my spare days: monochromatic sky, the outline of trees, a stencil of thought.

What gets you through these darker days? Have you a trick or tease, a form you fancy, something to nudge you forward when the (real or metaphorical) weather pulls you back?

In this wintering, what are you making?

If you like this blog, please subscribe here for delivery directly to your email. And please share on your social network of choice or forward to a friend. 

The world turns on words, please read & write. 

---

Questionable

Who loved you into place?
Postcard collage by Drew Myron

But why?

And how?

Even before Google trained us all in the dogged pursuit of immediate answer, I asked a lot of questions.

I’m curious. Big and small questions natter in my head. It’s natural for me to pepper each interaction — no matter how brief — with who, what, when, where, how, and most pressingly, why?

Too many questions, I’ve been told. I don’t intend to be rude. It’s a thirst, or just instinct, for deeper, wider, more.

This week I turned my questions into collage. There’s something satisfying in turning incessant inner chatter into paper curiosity. The ether of wonder is now ephemera.

Is it true that the world will show you where you’re needed?
Postcard collage by Drew Myron

Possible or impossible — is it yours to say?
Postcard collage by Drew Myron

The world turns on words, please read & write. 

If you like this blog, please subscribe here for delivery directly to your email. And please share on your social network of choice or forward to a friend. 

---

Best Books of 2022

Are you in the liminal space — the time between Christmas and New Year that lingers at a languid inbetween pace? I feel neither here nor there. It’s not a bad feeling, really, but there is a quality of un-presence that feels a distant cousin to uncertainty.

Where are you? Can you hear me calling into the void?

The end of year is traditionally a time of reflection. We wrap up, weigh, evaluate — just before diving headstrong and determined to do things differently. Uggh, no resolutions for me. I’ll stick to my time-worn commitment: read, sleep, eat.

On that note, let’s wrap up the year with books. Here’s a list of favorite books enjoyed in the past year.

NON-FICTION

Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race
by Lara Prior-Palmer

I'm not a horse-person and I loved this book. An unexpected story that ventures well beyond the typical sports-story drama. The writing is drifting, descriptive, poetic, and oddly wonderful. The story unfurls in thought-full pondering with a fallible narrator who tenders unexpected realness. 

I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death
by Maggie O'Farrell

A story of health challenges beautifully and deftly told. This kind of creative and intense literary skill is what turns readers into writers; we long to write with such beauty and weight.

Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
by Adrienne Brodeur

An emotionally complex and extremely addictive memoir that reads like a captivating novel.

FICTION

Notes on Your Sudden Disapearance
by Alison Espach

Stunning! This novel is a sad and heavy story but so, so, good. Masterfully rendered and alive with characters written with depth, perception and tenderness.  (Also recommend her earlier novel: The Adults)

The Five Wounds
by Kirstin Valdez Quade

A tender and redemptive novel spanning one year in a family of five generations. This novel is an unexpected gem, rich with characters who are beautifully flawed. I quickly grew attached to this complicated family and I'm eager for the next novel from this author.

I Married You For Happiness
by Lily Tuck

This is a love story that is tragic, ordinary, and extraordinary — all at the same time. Beautifully told in elegant stops and starts that mimic memory and grief.

POETRY (AND DICTIONARIES)

Bough Down
by Karen Green

Lovely, unusual, beautiful and sad. This evocative 'story' is told in spare but full language that makes you both slow and rush, all at once — combined with small images of text-based art.

Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief

The Trees Witness Everything by Victoria Chang

This was the year I found Victoria Chang (she's written nearly a dozen books, what took me so long?!). In Trees, Chang constrains language and by distilling thought she masterfully enlarges emotion. In Memory, she weaves letter, poetry, and memory to create a moving story of family, past and present.

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
by John Koenig

I read the dictionary.
I thought it was a poem
about everything.
— Steven Wright

This unusual reference book is a "compendium of new words for emotions" — and from the first passage I'm hooked. Page after page, word after word, this is an evocative and utterly original exploration. It's not a poetry book, or a traditional reference book. It's a door, an entry, a delight for thinkers, writers, readers, feelers. 

All the Words
by Magda Kapa

Poet and photographer Magda Kapa created an innovative "private dictionary of aphorisms, epigrams and "naked verses."  Each entry is no more than 140 characters, creating an economy of essential thought and feeling.

Mistake: mostly done again and again until it has a name.

Light: the idea of a tomorrow.

Dream: memory fast forward.

Age: our body's cage


* * *

What are you reading? Any favorites from 2022?

The world turns on words, please read & write. 

If you like this blog, please subscribe here for delivery directly to your email. And please share on your social network of choice or forward to a friend. 

---

Thankful Thursday: Library

Isn’t a library a sort of heaven?

The library is my church: a place of peaceful reflection, sanctuary and retreat, a quiet pull of possible worlds.

The best libraries have natural light and nooks where you can comfortably tuck into your thoughts. There is a hush of concentration and discovery, with a quietude that carries tender clarity.

When I am urged to “think of your happy place” I do not imagine a tropical beach. It’s always a library I see.

On this Thankful Thursday I am grateful for the public library. Let us hail these places of refuge and discovery! And now, as censorship is at an all time high, public libraries are working harder than ever to provide equity, diversity, and inclusion in their communities.

The pandemic hit hard and low-income families and people of color struggled more than most. Across the nation, libraries stepped up to meet the need. My local library, for example, has a dedicated bilingual outreach librarian who has spent the last two years going door-to-door, park-to-park, giving free books to children. She’s encouraging youngsters to read and thrive.

During the early days of the pandemic — when we all stayed home — I began borrowing digital books, thanks to the free service offered by my library.

This free service, along with online book holds, allows me to access library books at a distance and at absolutely no cost. It still amazes me that we have this enduring system across the nation: free books!

I’m especially thankful for my library because I have been away for over two years. In my world, the pandemic is not over. Covid cases are ticking up once again, and for the elderly and those with chronic health conditions, these numbers demonstrate that vigilance is still required. This week I visited the library and when I saw librarians wearing masks, I sighed with relief.

This may sound silly to you. Most have moved on, tossed the mask, and forgotten about the old and sick among us. Still, nearly 9 out of 10 deaths are now in people 65 or older, the highest rate since the pandemic began, according to the Washington Post and other sources.

It’s true we now have better tools to address the virus, such as vaccines and medicine. And while most covid cases are now more mild, long-covid still racks many and for the medically fragile catching covid introduces a swarm of complications.

When I was just five and learning to read, I spent six months in the hospital for the treatment of severe asthma. Unable to run or spend much time outdoors, I found my life in letters and books.

When I was 25 and a tumor took my lung, I recovered in the company of books.

It’s been years since I’ve suffered a severe asthma attack. While I still have days of wheezing and tightness, with a steady regime of twice daily medications I’m able to bike and ski and live a ‘normal’ life. But I’m always aware of a sniffle or stumble that can upset the balance.

I share this (or perhaps overshare) not for sympathy but for understanding. There are scores of people in similar situations; they are healthy and vigorous individuals who are held in place with medicine, science and trust. These last few years have left many of us feeling battered and left behind.

We can’t live isolated forever, I know. Like you, I want to attend parties and eat in crowded restaurants. I want to fly without fear. But I remain cautious. And maybe this is why I find profound comfort in libraries and books. In a story, I am transported. I am here and not here. I am not alone.

PRAISE SONG

Praise the light of late November,

the thin sunlight that goes deep in the bones.

Praise the crows chattering in the oak trees;

though they are clothed in night, they do not

despair. Praise what little there's left:

the small boats of milkweed pods, husks, hulls,

shells, the architecture of trees. Praise the meadow

of dried weeds: yarrow, goldenrod, chicory,

the remains of summer. Praise the blue sky

that hasn't cracked yet. Praise the sun slipping down

behind the beechnuts, praise the quilt of leaves

that covers the grass: Scarlet Oak, Sweet Gum,

Sugar Maple. Though darkness gathers, praise our crazy

fallen world; it's all we have, and it's never enough.

— Barbara Crooker

Please join me for Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for things small and large, from the puny to the profound. Joy expands and contracts in direct relation to our sense of gratitude. What are you thankful for today?

Cozy Companions: 5 Good Books!

Brrr!

Here’s a mystery: Why does winter come so quick and last so long?

I crave sun and love summer. The best thing about winter — aside from cashmere sweaters and skiing — is the chance to spend hours tucked in a blanket, reading good books. Really, this is my ideal winter weekend.

Just as the weather has turned suddenly cold, my reading tastes have made a turnaround, too. Instead of my usual diet of sad novels, I’ve been tearing through mystery/thrillers. And surprise, it’s been easy, breezy and fun! Sure, I’ve read a few duds, but overall this genre has me completely hooked.

Here are a few of my latest favorites:

Who Is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews
When an assistant steals a famous author’s life, a complicated web unravels. This smart mystery, written by a first-time novelist, will hold special appeal to writers (and voracious readers).

The Mutual Friend by Carter Bays
Sharp, sad, kooky, telling, touching and original — this of-the-moment novel is a masterful mystery of engaging, and surprising, humanity.

The Lies I Tell by Julie Clark
An accomplished con artist reinvents herself with strategic precision. I couldn’t put down this compelling mystery.

The Golden Couple by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
In this easy-to-read thriller, a ‘perfect’ couple is far from ideal. The authors are former journalists who have co-authored numerous best-selling mystery novels.

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty
This is an easy-to-read, not-quite-light but not-too-breezy mystery with great attention to detail and tone. Moriarty, a best-selling author, is an expert at weaving taut, addictive tales.

YOUR TURN: What’s on your good books list? What should I read next? I love your suggestions. Winter is long, keep ‘em coming!

* * *

If you like this blog, please subscribe here to get it delivered to your email.

The world turns on words, please read & write. 

Let Yourself Maybe

Start small. Write a line, draw a circle, paint a moment, carve a minute. It doesn’t matter how or when or why. Don’t think or blink. Move the hand, move the mind. Make something.

Why?

Because expression expands head and heart.
Because something is stirring that longs to stretch.
Because your something is different than my something.
Because it feels good.

Start small.

Don’t try for “Art” — find instead the tiny seed of a thing that may (or may not) lead to another thing, better thing, bigger thing. Maybe not. Let yourself maybe.

Set aside self-awareness. Let the hand glide and collide. Let go.

The act is the art.

This week I quickly made these “Hurry Up Horoscopes.”

Because I was exercising the writing muscle.
Because my journal writing was stagnant and stale.
Because I was tired of my own words.

I like these acts that have no point or purpose or intentional ‘art-ness’ — just fun. Remember when making was fun, with no pressure to perform?
Remember when making would take you to places deep and hidden, rich and full, all inside just waiting for your attention?

I want to feel that surprise again, to know the suspension of expectation.

And you — do you open hands & heart and leap across the divide of

here and there / stuck and struck?

What are you making?

* * *

If you like this blog, please subscribe here to get it delivered to your email.

The world turns on words, please read & write. 

You can't imagine a stillness that's not

The pine branches, bent sideways by wind, suggest I shut my eyes.

Shut your eyes and you shall see better.

Are you sad? You look so sad, I tell the trees.

We only look sad because you can't imagine a stillness that's not.

 
— from Rough Magic, by Lara Prior-Palmer

1.
What did we once say — that silence swallows and grows?

I'm still chasing both. The light, the light, streams through window, inching across bare floor, slipping through cracks and under doors. Turning gray to gold.

And then, the hunt for silence in which the light can grow. The plant you gave me one year ago is just now blooming, first flowers from a long suffering.

Don't you, too, hold your breath when the light arrives, fearful sound will shutter the calm, dim the glow? It's why we step outside in exclamation — what a beautiful day, we say, naming what we can't control.

2.
We travel to a big landscape with a dry, austere beauty. The days are pinecone quiet and we listen for birds and search for sheep along steep basalt cliffs. The nights are starry and immense. We see so much and nothing at all. Darkness turns everything meaningful and meaningless. 

In a small cabin, we dance to a song we've pressed through time. Of course, I cry — not a sob but a few silent tears. Of course I feel too much, more than the moment, a thousand days collected in this one. Maybe it’s relief, or shadow, or light, or a stillness that is not sad.

3.
The world whispers. We swallow light. Our stillness grows.

Surfacing

So much depends upon

morning light,

            its quiet presence

its pressing withdrawal.

So much depends upon

suppose and repose

how we stretch or

                        slow    

the angle of action,

the shine of almost.

— Drew Myron

* with a nod to Williams Carlos Williams
for the borrowed line, “so much depends.”

* * *

If you like these words, please subscribe here to get them delivered directly to your email.

The world turns on words, please read & write. 

What Does It Take?

PROCESS

Everything is change.
We find our voices in making.
Discovery can feel like a tightrope,
the essence of faith.

— Drew Myron

A room, a pen, a slice of light? Coffee, cocktail, tepid tea? A mood, a mindset, a muse? What does it take to move you to make?

Do you stretch limbs long and lean, or curl in a huddle of hangover and hope? A prayer, a poem, a bit of prose? Potato chips, cigarette, a rush of gumption, a grove of trees? What do you need to hum and thrum, to hive and thrive, to step into and out of your self?

Tell me, what’s your process?

* * *

If you like this blog, please subscribe here to get it delivered to your email.

The world turns on words, please read & write. 

Old Tricks

The Art of Dying Well

First you try everything —

memory, gratitude, light.

The trees witness everything

and your braided heart

beats with advice:

let the world

surprise you.

I’m up to my old tricks — collecting words and lines from the nearest thing: cereal box, junk mail, horoscope and bookshelf. This poem is composed of titles from a stack staring at me while I drink my morning coffee.

For writers, readers and word believers, challenge is found at every turn: Write a poem with just six words! Write a letter that includes items from your grocery list! Rearrange these words and make new sense!

Toss me a word, a line, an idea — I’ll make a poem, a ponder, a piece. It’s all taunts and tricks, and these teasers stretch my writing mind and muscle. But mostly they usher me in to possibility.

Poetry is everywhere, says James Tate, it just needs editing.

My book title poem is created from these books: Dear Memory, First You Try Everything, Advice for Future Corpses, The Art of Dying Well, The Trees Witness Everything, A Braided Heart, Gratitude — and a line from horoscope author Holiday Mathis who recently urged Pisces to let the world surprise you.

The element of surprise, combined with attention, stirs the mind and sparks play. Word catching is the start. The rest is add, subtract, hold and release.

Poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,

they are sleeping. They are the shadows

drifting across our ceilings the moment

before we wake up. What we have to do

is live in a way that lets us find them.

— Naomi Shihab Nye, from Valentine for Ernest Mann

* * *

If you like this blog, please subscribe here to get it delivered to your email.

The world turns on words, please read & write. 

Thankful Thursday: Filled

Please join me for Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for things small and large, from the puny to the profound. Because attention attracts gratitude and gratitude expands joy, let us gather thanksgivings.

* * *

Where I live, the land is now flush with fresh food, an abundance of orchards and vineyards. Every field is thick: blueberries, blackberries, apricots, peaches, apples, pears, grapes.

Further on, the fields turn dry in a sepia patchwork of wheat as solitary tractors crawl across hill and slope. A different kind of plenty. A different sort of beauty.

Closer to home, neighbors share their garden bounty, come to me with arms full of tomatoes, cucumbers, and kindness. I am filled.

On morning walks, the sun burns bright. I pass thickets of bachelor buttons and sunflowers with heavy heads. The wind calms and I move into stillness, break through the racket in my head.

At night when windows are wide open, soft air arrives, wraps me in sleep.

Oh this world, this aching beauty.

SEPTEMBER

This far north, the harvest happens late.

Rooks go clattering over the sycamores

whose shadows yawn after them, down to the river.

Uncut wheat staggers under its own weight.

Summer is leaving too, exchanging its gold

for brass and copper. It is not so strange

to feel nostalgia for the present; already

this September evening is as old

as a photograph of itself. The light, the shadows

on the field, are sepia, as if this were

some other evening in September, some other

harvest that went ungathered years ago.

— Dorothy Lawrenson

* * *

If you like this blog, please subscribe here to get it delivered to your email.

The world turns on words, please read & write. 

10(ish) Great Books I Read This Summer

Just like writing, my reading pleasure travels through peaks and valleys. This summer I’m on a ride of really good books.

POETRY

The Trees Witness Everything by Victoria Chang

A brilliant collection of short, powerful poems that are both ethereal brushes and in-the-gut punches.

Passage

Every leaf that falls
never stops falling. I once
thought that leaves were leaves.
Now I think they are feeling,
in search of a place —
someone’s hair, a park bench, a
finger. Isn’t that
like us, going from place to
place, looking to be alive?

Also recommend her other new book: Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief

Bough Down by Karen Green

You really can judge a book by its cover. I chose this book for its great design: a vellum wrap cover with interior pages that feature short blocks of poetic prose and ample white space — places to breathe and rest. The evocative 'story' is told in spare but rich language and combined with small images of text-based art, that makes you slow and rush all at once.

Vintage Sadness by Hanif Willis Abdurraqib

Inspired, influenced, and infused with a wide range of contemporary music — from Kanye to Kirk Franklin and lots more — this poetry collection sings!

My fave: And What Good Will Your Vanity Be When the Rapture Comes.

Download the book (and playlist) for FREE.

FICTION

I Married You For Happiness by Lily Tuck

This is a love story that is tragic, ordinary, and extraordinary — all at the same time. Beautifully told in elegant stops and starts that mimic memory and grief.

Afterlife by Julia Alvarez

A slim, quiet novel with deep reverberations. The story reveals one life jolt after another and asks: What do we owe those in crisis? And how do we live in a broken world without losing faith in one another or ourselves?

NON-FICTION

The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness by Meghan O’Rourke

“Only a few friends realized at the time how much physical suffering I was undergoing. We are bad at recognizing the suffering of others unless we are given clear-cut clues and evidence. And so invisible illnesses often go unacknowledged.”

Brilliant, insightful, scholarly and thorough. Blending the personal and universal, this books provides a sweeping examination of chronic illness —from mysterious symptoms to failed diagnoses, elusive treatments, and the devastating toll disease can take. With clarity, compassion and painstaking research, the author calls for a seismic shift in our approach to disease — and I am cheering her on!

The Art of Dying Well: A Practical Guide to a Good End of Life by Katy Butler

A no-nonsense guide for living, aging, and dying with meaning and joy. Katy Butler offers clear advice with warmth and wisdom, with an emphasis on a life of quality-over-quantity. Also recommend her earlier book: Knocking on Heaven’s Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death.

In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom

Amy Bloom writes with humanity and humor.While heartbreaking, this story of an end-of-life decision is told with such wit and candor that it left me in triumphant tears.

These Precious Days: Essays by Ann Patchett

A surprising and moving meditation on family, friendship, reading and writing.

“The trouble with good fortune is that we tend to equate it with personal goodness, so that if things are going well for us and less well for others, it’s assumed they must have done something to have brought that misfortune on themselves while we must have worked harder to avoid it. We speak of ourselves as being blessed, but what can that mean except that others are not blessed, and that God has picked out a few of us to love more? It is our responsibility to care for one another, to create fairness in the face of unfairness and find equality where none may have existed in the past.”

SOME THOUGHTS
There are things you don’t notice until you share your reading choices:

• I’m reading a lot of books about illness and death. (Don’t worry, I’m fine).

• I’m reading a lot of books about marriage. (Don’t worry, I’m happily hitched).

• I’m reading books with tree titles that have little to do with trees:
The Trees Witness Everything and Bough Down

• I’m not trying to read anything. That is, my book choices are random and mostly spontaneous. I keep a running list of books I want to read but an interesting cover or great title can change my course, as does the proliferation of Little Free Libraries.

• Reading is my mental health medicine of choice. What’s yours?

* * *

If you like this blog, please subscribe here to get it delivered to your email.

The world turns on words, please read & write. 

---

Writing, Not Writing

Are you doing the work of being a writer?

1.
I let the question simmer, an hour, a day, a week, more. In my head I explain, defend, whine and walk away. Your question is innocent. You know what's important to me and you're offering a gentle encouragement. Not what are you writing, or why aren't you writing but the kindness of a gentle lob that asks:

Is your heart beating, your hand moving?
Do you still move in the world touching everything you want to feel?

2.
I've been numbed into an old exhaustion of caring and not caring. Everything matters so nothing matters. The world is weighty and my words are not able to sustain these winds.

 3.
"I remember nodding as if I was fine. I was fine. I had language. And it would be the one thing that would keep returning, like light," writes Victoria Chang in Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief. “Language felt like wanting to drown but being able to experience drowning by standing on a pier."

4.
Years ago, a poet-friend stopped writing, for an entire year, by choice. You can read about her experience here. “This decision came as a relief,” she said. “Immediately a kind of cocoon began to form around my deepest self.”

At the time of her announcement, I was energized with my own world of writing, reading, teaching, and couldn't imagine why anyone would push words away. I’d lived through writing blocks and serious slumps but to willingly cease seemed so forced and unnecessary.

Time, however, may have softened my view.  

5.
Swimming, I hear my own ragged breath as a sort of secret language. My arms slice through silence and I kick to shore. It's never easy, the strokes, the breathing. I have to think. But all these years, the still water holds me. Is writing the same — instinct and breath?

6.
Find the light, you say.
But the day is dimming and how can I hold what I cannot see?

7.
Don't try so hard.
Give yourself a break.
(but stop whining)

8.
This is your fallow season, you say. Write anyway.

Nearly every day of his life poet William Stafford rose early and wrote a poem.

“It is like fishing,” he explained. “If I am to keep writing, I cannot bother to insist on high standards . . . I am following a process that leads so wildly and originally into new territory that no judgment can at the moment be made about values, significance, and so on . . . I am headlong to discover.”

9.
Today in the forest, tree roots provide a path.

Thick, tangled, ancient, a staircase and walk, a cragged way forward.

Is paying attention a poem, or just a good first step?

* * *

If you like this blog, please subscribe here to get it delivered to your email.

The world turns on words, please read & write. 

---

Sob Stories

Sometimes when the world is heavy and your heart is worn, you need a good, wrenching, cleansing, body-shaking cry.

ca·thar·tic

/kəˈTHärdik/

adjective — providing psychological relief through the open expression of strong emotions; causing catharsis, as in: “crying is a cathartic release.”

— from Whistling in the Dark: A Doubters Dictionary by Frederick Buechner

When it’s time for catharsis, I pull out the proper tools: movies, television, and books.

My top movie for a good cleansing cry is always Magnolia. It’s a potent mix of stellar acting, interlacing storylines, and the alchemy of the Aimee Mann soundtrack [particularly the repeated song Save Me, with the lines: “If you could save me / From the ranks of the freaks / Who suspect they could never love anyone.”]

My latest favorite television binge is Six Feet Under. This odd drama series had a devoted following when it debuted 20 years ago and frequently stirs my out-of-nowhere tears.

My favorite tear-inducing novels come unexpectedly. I don’t go looking for catharsis. It just happens, which makes it all the more powerful and cleansing. Years ago, back when I attended church and had more faith in institutions, I had a similar feeling: a sudden rise of emotion that swells in the chest, gathers in the throat, spills over and leaves me both foolish and released. Tears are such a bubbling mystery.

But sometimes you need help finding those feels-good-to-feel-sad kind of books. Please, let me be your guide:

The Good Women of Safe Harbour
by Bobbi French

A life-affirming novel about a woman facing death and mending a friendship.

“Fight. Such a flat, ugly word. Why was everyone forever harping about fighting? I’d taken to reading the obituaries lately, paying close attention to the ones that read ‘lost her courageous battle with cancer’ or some such nonsense. It seemed to me the mortality had somehow been made over as a character defect.”

This beautiful and sometimes funny book is my favorite novel of 2022.

One Heart
by Jane McCafferty

A quiet character study of the simple and conflicting bonds of sisterhood. This is a novel of both despair and hope.

A Little Life
by Hanya Yanagihara

A staggering, brutal, poignant novel about a man physically and emotionally broken. (Caution: As with most things, readers are deeply divided on the brilliance — or not — of this book).

“Somewhere, surrendering to what seemed to be your fate had changed from being dignified to being a sign of your own cowardice.”

The Magical Language of Others
by E.J. Koh

A powerful and aching love story in letters, from mother to daughter, that is written with a level of poetic detachment that provides space to hold the pain.

“Neither happiness nor sadness are ever done with us. They are always passing by.”

The Great Believers
by Rebecca Makkai

A sweeping story that weaves numerous storylines, from AIDS to art to friendships lost and found. Written with beautiful economy and precision.

“But when someone’s gone and you’re the primary keeper of his memory—letting go would be a kind of murder, wouldn’t it? I had so much love for him, even if it was a complicated love, and where is all that love supposed to go?”

Crossing to Safety
by Wallace Stegner

A quiet novel of deep compassion and insight into the bonds of friendship and marriage.

“Sally has a smile I would accept as my last view on earth...”

* * *
Your Turn: What’s your vice for a good cathartic cry?

* * *

If you like this blog, subscribe here to get it delivered to your email. And please share on your social network of choice or forward to a friend. 

The world turns on words, please read & write. 

---

You Reading This

Dear S —

This letter has sat in my head, in my heart, for too long.

I think of you often and jot silent notes that I never seem to send.

So this is to say: I’m thinking of you. You hold a place in my heart where time sits still and daily life matters little. I’ve missed that sense of suspension, where worries are placed gently away.

These last few years have been difficult in such varied and complicated ways. The stress and strain of the pandemic, compounded with racial injustice, economic turmoil, international upheaval . . . and that’s not even our personal challenges of sickness and aging, sadness and defeat. More than ever we see the dominoes of our lives tip, collide, fall away.

How do we keep on? How do you?

I’d like to say poetry has helped me float but in this last year my well has gone dry. I’m now facing the fact that poetry is in my past, a person I use to be.

Maybe it is love that gets us through these difficult days. It’s hardly an original thought — but there’s a reason cliches are called just that: there’s truth in the refrain.

Maybe it is the small gratitudes that sustain. This morning the sun bursts through a month of damp days and I am suddenly restored. Hope springs in small ways and I am larger for it. As the sun moves across the room I’m warmed by the memory of a Stafford line — how sunlight creeps along a shining floor.

I am warmed by the memory of you and I drinking coffee and tea in that cozy coffeeshop, playing Bananagrams while the rain and wind thrashed our small town and we, safe inside, laughed and sighed. How simple time seems as it ticks along, how complex the memory of days past.

I am not waiting for time to show some better thoughts. I am here, now, in my head, my heart, and on this page, thankful for you and our friendship.

With love,

Drew

You Reading This, Be Ready

Starting here, what do you want to remember?

How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?

What scent of old wood hovers, what softened

sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world

than the breathing respect that you carry

wherever you go right now? Are you waiting

for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this

new glimpse that you found; carry into evening

all that you want from this day. This interval you spent

reading or hearing this, keep it for life  —

What can anyone give you greater than now,

starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

— William Stafford

On Sunday: Rest

In you the heart

seeks no barrier.

Clouds come and rest.

— Drew Myron

A friend wrote recently:

My poems get shorter because there’s too much to say.

I’m there too. In the throes of steady high alert — health, war, injustice, economy — I’m both paying attention and turning away. I’m holding in and back, holding on, conserving every emotional expense. There’s just so much and I’m both enlarged with frustration and reduced by fatigue.

But the world beyond my head lifts in hope: sun strains to shine, lilacs urge to burst, and everywhere trees bloom in glorious color and scent.

All is now, now, now, this, this, this. All is well.

And all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
— Julian of Norwich

Shall We Drink?

Thought 179, an erasure poem by Drew Myron

Dear You,

The days wear on, and I think of you often. 

Are you healthy, happy, well? 

We are doing the best we can, feeding heart and mind with memories and wine, trying to find light in dark days. You know how it is. You do what you can do. 

We find solace in small things: walks, talks, bike rides, sun and snow. I read and write. We forget more. Quiet lives. 

I don't have much to say these days. It's not sadness I feel, though this letter has taken a tone — but maybe it's a grey day in late winter and a sense of resignation has taken hold. You must know this feeling too, a suspended state that tilts toward acceptance but with a resistance that pulls away.  

We hope to travel again, to see you soon & hold you close. Though the heart strains to contain the world, we have not forgotten how to love.

Love, 
Drew

Thought 179:

Shall we drink? 

My dear friend, 
I have misjudged time!
My friend, I have opened 
my heart, weeping.
Shall we drink? 

— Drew Myron 

* * *

If you like this blog, please subscribe here to get it delivered to your email.

The world turns on words, please read & write.