Thankful Thursday (on Friday)

Revelation

If a matter of how

falls upon your rocky life,

                               sigh

 

Your sleep is arrested.

Your body swirls in tight circles across

a floodplain once parched.

 

Even so, take this day in a

tight grip and repeat after me:

ripples, wild, lovely         mine

— Drew Myron

 

* * *

It's Thankful Thursday, on Friday. Let’s wrap up the week on a high note.

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 heart expand?

Collect Call

Collect Call, photo by Drew Myron

The dead are never far from us. They're in our hearts and on our minds and in the end all that separates us from them is a single breath, one final puff of air.

― William Kent Krueger, from the novel Ordinary Grace

 
1.

The dead, they call me.
Night after night they die again.
In earth wasted, they turn in graves.

I've tried to be a good survivor.
Still, the dead take stage to relive
last moments to an audience of one.

They lead me through dark streets and
wrecked cars, leaving me bleary and fogged
in the click click click of a flickering film.


2.

I admire their resilience.
I applaud a performance that
tethers me to a repeating past.

In this show, they carry sobs that
make no sound and I claw for words
that will shake us awake.


3.

I cannot find the beginning, just a string
of ends among the ragged sweetpea and
morning chill that glooms the day.

This place of rust and ash, waves and rain,
none of it calls me. Not dim whisper
or urgent whine.

I keep waiting for something to
matter more than a minute, this day,
these long years.


4.

In daylight, when uncertainty burns bright,
we call to you like a god for guidance.
We look for signs and make up meaning.

After a time, we stop waving, stop looking
for our loves, stop seeing you crossing
the street or driving away.


5.

In the dark theater of sleep
I stumble for a seat, look
for you in the life I knew.

Each night your voice
calls me back,
closer, still.

— Drew Myron


* * *

The world turns on words.
Please read & write.

If you like this blog, please 
subscribe here for free
delivery to your email.


 

 

Thankful Thursday: Poems in Public

It’s always a delight to spot poetry in public. Like a whispered secret, I get a shiver of happy recognition.

On a walk through the neighborhood recently I noticed a fresh stretch of concrete, followed by an abrupt end. And then, just where the new sidewalk meets brush and bramble, this poems appears:


Where the Sidewalk Ends

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
and before the street begins,
and there the grass grows soft and white,
and there the sun burns crimson bright,
and there the moon-bird rests from his flight
to cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
and the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
we shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow
and watch where the chalk-white arrows go
to the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
and we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
for the children, they mark, and the children, they know,
the place where the sidewalk ends.

— Shel Silverstein

When I see ridiculous rules take precedence over common sense — like erecting an eyesore sign as a way to minimize liability — it’s refreshing to see a poem rise up in clever response.

In other ridiculousness, the work of Shel Silverstein — author of Where the Sidewalk Ends, The Giving Tree, and other beloved children’s books — is on the list of frequently banned books (source: American Library Association).

To me today, this poem-in-public is a gentle push against power, a reminder to keep reading, writing & walking.


* * *

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, and your heart, expand?

Thankful Thursday: 15

Please join me for Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for things large and small. Because attention attracts gratitude and gratitude expands joy, let’s share our appreciation.

On this Thankful Thursday, I am grateful for this blog — now running for 15 years — and for you, who gives the gift of your time, attention and care.

Thank you!

* * *

Fifteen is deeply, mostly, dare and dive.

Fifteen is gripping the wheel, learning to drive.

Fifteen is on edge, both fierce and afraid.

Fifteen is Noxzema nights and spaghetti-strap days.
Permed hair with Sun-In streaks.
Culture Club, Modern English, The Cure.

Fifteen is forced laughs and clammy hands.

At 15 I was a wedge of crazy, a basket of boastful and bashful in many quick turns.

Established in 2008, this blog is now 15. Happy birthday!

“And so, let’s go,” I wrote on that first day, “not with the thunder of the self-absorbed, but in the same way a single word, spoken softly, carries great weight.”

The more things change, the more they don’t. Like flip phones and facebook, blogs have lost their cool. In the quest for relevance, this format is a relic against substack, tiktok, and a rash of new creative outlets.

Still, I like quiet spaces and steady habits — and sharing the bits, pieces and pursuit of life’s “whispering voices.”

The world turns on words. I'm happy you're here.


15 — on a blog anniversary

Whispering voices call

soft as blossom

love and time

wave.

On Sunday: Empty Space

What curious terror

 

If fate pulls our will I could         perhaps

 

imagine a beautiful freedom

but I tie up in storms

 

want to be safe, sure against

a terrible wind not yet behind us.

 

The waves keep coming and

rain wracks our steely calm.

 

Where does the the silence go?

Let the pause linger, you tell me.

 

Find power in the empty              space.

— Drew Myron

* * *

The world turns on words.
Please read & write.

If you like this blog, please 
subscribe here for delivery
to your email.

Five Finds

Hello Readers,

Life is full of dust and delights, and small things often make a mark.

Here are Five Finds I’ve savored lately. Maybe you will, too:

1.
Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier by Kevin Kelly

 A small book packed with short, simple, good advice. Stuff you know but forget to live. Makes an excellent gift for grads, and a gentle reminder for, well, everyone.

2.
The Ground I Stand On by Alejandro Jimenez

Got 12 minutes to be moved?

Watch this short documentary from PBS’s American Masters: In the Making, showing the creative process of Alejandro Jimenez, a performance poet from Colima, Mexico who grew up in Hood River, Oregon as an immigrant farm worker, moved to Colorado and worked with young writers and incarcerated adults, and now lives in New Mexico.

3.
Love grows by what it remembers of love.

This is the last line from a 1959 poem, In the Thriving Season, by Lisel Mueller. Mueller is among my favorite poets (because of When I Am Asked) but I often forget my love. The other day I remembered again the beautiful way in which she gathers solitude and loneliness together.

4.
Margins by Tamara Grosso
This palm-sized book is an innovative delight. Small and smart, it’s a book of poems written in the margins of other works. Each poem is less than 12 lines, and includes the title and author of the original work that inspired the margin poem. And it’s in Spanish and English! And it’s only $5 to $10 on a sliding scale, or you can print your own copy.

The publisher is No Good Home, and this collective is making creative works in fresh & inventive ways.

5.
They’re Going to Love You, a novel by Meg Howrey

Here’s my measure of a good book:
• I can’t stop reading.
• I don’t want it to end, but also want to read as fast as I can.
• I copy especially good lines and then realize I’ve transcribed nearly every page.
• It’s a book I wish I could write.

I filled my journal with passages. Here’s one:

Having to struggle doesn’t necessarily make you interesting, it might just make you tired.

* * *

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

The world turns on words, please read & write. 

A story not yet told

West of Wasco — Oregon fields, farms, roads.
Photo by Drew Myron

1.
So much of my writing life is the drive to the story not yet told.

Backroads and hillsides, wide sky and shifting light. Across highway and gravel, through fields and farms, bends and turns, my mind winding with anticipation.

2.
I arrive and smile.

Tell me your story, I say without saying. I listen and nod, take too many notes. I will tuck your words in my ribs, a small cage of secrets, fears, and sometimes tears.

I see you, I say without saying.

3.
On the drive home, I’ll carry a weight. The landscape is immense, and in this largeness I am suddenly small.

How to contain this beauty and truth?

I will snap photo after photo. But I cannot capture the quiet, the wind through fields, the fresh crop, the collective sigh.

4.
The road is long and the mind races, spools, finally slows.

Everything is brightness and beauty. In the green field beneath the blue sky, I both live in, and stand outside, the moment.

I was always writing.

the poem is a dream telling you its time


is a field 

             as long as the butterflies say 

                                                                       it is a field 

 
with their flight

 
                                         it takes a long time 

to see

                         like light or sound or language

                                                                                      to arrive

and keep 
                         arriving

 
 
                                       we have more

than six sense dialect

                                                                      and i

am still

              adjusting to time

 
                              the distance and its permanence

 
i have found my shortcuts

 
                             and landmarks

                                                          to place

 
where i first took form

                                                                                           in the field

 

— Marwa Helal

Thankful Thursday: Affection

Sometimes


when we've listened deeply

we fall into a hedge of

affection

 

tonight

what do we know of

what we don't say —

 

of a gaze

landing easy

across a distant sea?

 

we hover

in a history of

childhood hurts

 

what curious terror

this fate that pushes

our will against

 

a strong wind

now at our backs

nudging us on

— Drew Myron

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 our thanksgivings.

* * *

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

The world turns on words, please read & write. 

Poem In Your Pocket Day!

Is that a Poem in Your Pocket?

We’re in the last days of National Poetry Month, and I’m celebrating to the very end.

Here’s how:

1.
Share Poems
Poem In Your Pocket Day is on Thursday, April 27, 2023. Pick a poem (or write your own), carry it with you, and share it with others. I like to mail poems to friends & family, combining my favorite things: poetry and the personal letter.

Sometimes I place poems in random spots: the coffeeshop bulletin board, on a car windshield, beneath a dinner plate. At the library, I slip poems into books as a sort of secret between readers.

2.
Write About You
Almost everyone will say they can’t write — but of course they can! Because almost everyone likes to tell about themselves, the Six Word Memoir is an excellent gateway to poetry. It’s fun, easy, and sorta addictive. Once you start, your mind seems to sort everything into six word increments.

3.
Listen to Poems
Like playing a piano or singing a song, cadence and pace make a poem. Poetry shines with the music of language. When you listen, rather than read, the experience can shift you out of critical mind and into a playful, often more powerful, experience. I get a daily dose here.

4.
Start Now
Writing is free. No license, permit, or permission required. Write a line, read a poem, imagine a story. No rules or regulations, no excuses or explanations. Don’t think you can? Way back when, this book got me started (and keeps me going): Writing Down The Bones: Freeing the Writing Within.

Start now.

Make something.

Need a poem to share on Poem In Your Pocket Day?
Here’s one of my latest favorites: The Cities Inside Us

Thankful Tuesday: Signs of Hope

Because the days are a jumble.
Because the sun is hit and miss and I’m catching light when I can.
It's Thankful Thursday — on Tuesday.

Joy contracts and expands 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 expand?

* * *

A friend asks for signs of hope.

Daffodils, I say, a quick answer. Too easy.

Emily Dickinson, of course, hope is the thing with feathers.

Pussy willows.

Pear blossom.

Smooth hills of fresh green.

A young girl hands me a paper, folded and folded and folded again. Inside, in her loopy scrawl, a poem.

A good sleep.

A light wine.

I write a poem, and another. I can, I can, I can.

His easy laugh.

A good movie.

Jeans that fit.

A reading list.

A clean kitchen.

A baby tugs my hand, my hair, my heart.

A friend dies while listening to a poem.

It’s too easy, this hope. And too difficult, too.

When you look, you see. When you see, you feel.
The heart stretches to make room to grow.

Let me see, I plead, let me see more.

It is the season of fresh starts.

* * *

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. 

This is as glamorous as it gets (and other reminders)

This Is As Glamorous As It Gets - reminder no. 14 - by drew myron

Welcome to April. It’s National Poetry Month!

This monthlong ‘holiday’ is a great reason to read more, write more, and play with your words. I’m especially fond of Poem In Your Pocket Day. This year it falls on Thursday, April 27.

I enjoy stretching poetry beyond the traditional page to create visual poems: postcard poems, collages, cut-ups, pairing paintings with poems, murals, videos, and more.

Ten years ago I wrote my first [reminder] poem — a few lines that kept running through my head. It was internal chatter that wouldn’t stop and the reminder poem took shape. Over time, another would arrive. And then a long silence, followed by a rush of new directions. Today I completed No. 14 in the series.

In the spirit of playing with words, I’m sharing the full collection here today. Enjoy — then go forward and write your own!

Bad Advice - reminder no. 13 - by drew myron

Not Rockets Red Glare - reminder no. 12 - by drew myron

You Don’t Have to Linger - reminder no. 11 - by drew myron

You Belong In Your Life - reminder no. 10 - by drew myron

Five Things - reminder no. 9 - by drew myron

Stop, Go, Stir - reminder no. 8 - by drew myron

To Do - reminder no. 7 - by drew myron

If I Am - reminder no. 6 - by drew myron

The Myth of Patience - reminder no. 5 - by drew myron

What I Don’t Know - reminder no. 4 - by drew myron

Secrets of the Slim - reminder no. 3 - by drew myron

The Trick - reminder no. 2 - by drew myron

In This Constant Lush - reminder no. 1 - by drew myron

YOUR TURN: What are you writing? Drop me a line. I’d love to hear from you.

* * *

If you like what you’re reading,

please subscribe here 

for delivery directly to your email.

On Monday: Order the Impossible

blackout poem made from old book

Order the Impossible - erasure poem by Drew Myron

Chapter VI [a four part poem]

Sorrow began to pace.

What to do?

Order the impossible.

Follow the Quiet, an erasure poem by Drew Myron

Slowly follow the quiet.

Wait, an erasure poem by Drew Myron.

With cheery alacrity, wait.


You are needed, an erasure poem by Drew Myron.

Recognize the command

[as follows]:

You are needed.

* * *


This erasure poem was created from pages of Trumpeter Fred by Captain Charles King, published in 1895. I purchased it for $3 at a thrift store and chose the book not for the story but for its handy size, generous margins, and toothy paper. The cover is falling off, the binding is loose. The book is about a military bugler and many pages reveal dated language that makes me wince (“savages,” etc).

I’ve never subscribed to the “don’t write in books” rule. I like re-invention. Decaying books get new life with fresh form and ideas. A book is physical and valuable, but rarely precious.

Go ahead: Scratch out! Scribble in! Make something new!

* * *

If you like this blog, please subscribe here for delivery directly to your email.

Best Books of 2023 (so far)

Good news — good books are everywhere!

We’re only three months into 2023 and I’ve already found my favorite books of the year, so far.

Always an avid reader, I’ve been reading more than usual this month as sickness (bronchitis, followed by covid) left me listless and fatigued. Along with countless episodes of Call the Midwife and Grey’s Anatomy, good books are always good company.

Here are my latest favorites books:

NOVEL
Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson

In this sly, suspenseful novel, a man unwinds the tale of his success. An intimate and engaging tone kept me riveted from start to finish.

ESSAY
Violation: Collected Essays by Sallie Tisdale

With a keen eye and boundless curiosity, Tisdale has worked as a nurse and writer for decades and has written books and essays on rich and varied topics, from nursing homes to reality television. Skilled and prolific, it’s a mystery why this Oregon writer hasn’t achieved greater recognition.

Throughout this collection, I've underlined passage after passage, page after page. And her essay on abortion, Fetus Dreams, is the most compelling piece I've read.

The introduction sets the tone, as she looks back at 40 years of published essays:

Certain themes recur; why should this ever surprise us? Life is just following a trail along a mountain. The path loops back to the same view time and again. Sometimes we see all the way across the plain and sometimes we’re lost in the woods, but the perspective is a little higher each time. So I return again and again to questions about the nature of the self, what it means to live in a body, why we are all lonely, how to use language to say what can’t be said. These are questions of intimacy and separation, and the answers are ambiguous at best. Long before I knew how to describe it, I liked ambivalence. Certainty has always seemed a bit dishonest to me.

NON-FICTION
The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine by Ricardo Nuila

Where do you go when you have no (or insufficient) health insurance and are turned away from hospitals, clinics and doctors? With great empathy, Dr. Nuila reveals the roots of our broken healthcare system and a hospital serving as a model that emphasizes people over payment.

See Also: God’s Hotel: A Doctor, A Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine by Victoria Sweet

SELF-HELP
You Are An Artist: Assignments to Spark Creation by Sara Urist Green

From fanciful to practical, this book offers more than 50 ideas and prompts to stir creative juices in both artists and writers. It worked for me; the interviews with artists and the examples opened my mind and got me energized to play with words.

POETRY
Love and Other Poems by Alex Dimitrov

At turns seemingly simple yet pleasingly deep, Dimitrov’s third book of poems shines with language that is direct, themes that are easy to navigate, and a location distinctly New York. Poem Written in the Back of a Cab runs 14 pages but never seems bogged down. The title poem, Love, spans 10 pages with an in-the-moment pace. After reading a great deal of opaque and overworked poetry, Dimitrov’s work feels fresh and unfettered.

* * *
The world turns on words, please read & write. 

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


Dear You,

Dear Faraway Friend,

 I think of you often

and imagine you deep

in your pages, reading

and writing.

 

My poems are

sporadic, coming

in darts and dares,

fits and splits.

 

Winter is slow and

plodding, both

body and mind.

 

As always

I long for sun —

but I'm getting better

at securing the shine

of cold and gray.

 

I suppose every

life has its theme.

What's yours?

 

With love

& goodwill,


Drew


* * *


Salutations

The letter that never arrived. The letter that arrived but after
its intended recipient moved. The letter that you folded in half
and slipped into a book. The letter which let fall a powder
like sugar from its folds. The letter, burned over a candle flame,
which turned its letters into ash. The letter which told me what I
wanted to know, and what I didn't. The letter, being that which I will
never now unsee. The letter which gave you the courage for words
you could never otherwise say. Dear, most letters begin. To whom
it may concern. Being a way to open or break open, break in or down.

Dearly beloved,
our deepest regrets.
Cordially yours.

— Luisa A. Igloria 

* * *

If you like this blog, please 
subscribe here for delivery
directly to your email.

As always, thanks for reading & writing.

 

 

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.