Dan Jorgensen's Blog, page 116

A 'Cold Moon' looms

Today, snow is falling steadily in Colorado, a precursor to December’s “Cold Moon” and winter's formal arrival.    

Aswe leave Thanksgiving Day and Autumn behind under a blanket of newfallen snow, here for Saturday’s Poem is prolific New England writer May Sarton’s,

                                December Moon
                                    Before going to bed
                                    After a fall of snow
                                    I look out on the field
                                    Shining there in the moonlight
                                    So calm, untouched and white
                                    Snow silence fills my head
                                    After I leave the window.

                                    Hours later near dawn
                                    When I look down again
                                    The whole landscape has changed
                                    The perfect surface gone
                                    Criss-crossed and written on
                                    Where the wild creatures ranged
                                    While the moon rose and shone.

                                    Why did my dog not bark?
                                    Why did I hear no sound
                                    There on the snow-locked ground
                                    In the tumultuous dark?

                                    How much can come, how much can go
                                    When the December moon is bright,
                                    What worlds of play we'll never know
                                    Sleeping away the cold white night
                                    After a fall of snow.

A Writer's Moment: 'It's the best part . . . the creative part'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's the best part . . . the creative part':   “The best part of one’s life is the working part, the creative part.   Believe me, I love to succeed…however, the real spiritual and emot...

'It's the best part . . . the creative part'

 

“Thebest part of one’s life is the working part, the creative part.  Believe me, I love to succeed…however, thereal spiritual and emotional excitement is in the doing.” - Garson Kanin

Kanin, born in Rochester, NY on this date in 1912, was a prolific writer and noted Broadwaydirector.  Among his many hit Broadway shows were TheDiary of Anne Frank, Funny Girl and Born Yesterday, which he started writingwhile serving as a soldier and filmmaker in World War II. As a military filmmaker, he documented Gen. Dwight Eisenhower’s official record of the D-Day and ongoing Allied invasion of Europe.  His resulting film, The True Glory, won him an Academy Award for Documentary Feature.   A novelist, too,he wrote the bestseller Smash, also the basisfor a hit television series. 
Kanin's most famous line from BornYesterday - perhaps his best Broadway show - is enshrined on a New York City Public Library plaque.  It was delivered by character Paul Verrall (a journalist in the play) whosays: "I want everyone to be smart. As smart as they can be. A world ofignorant people is too dangerous to live in."
 [image error] Garson Kanin
“When your work speaks for itself," Kanin said, "don’tinterrupt.” 

'It's never too late to achieve'

 

“It’snever too late to be who you might have been.” –George Eliot
Mary Ann Evans saidthat if she was going to be taken seriously as a novelist she needed to changeher identity.  So, she became – George Eliot.  As George, this English journalist andtranslator became the novelist she longed to be, ultimately regarded as oneof the best of the 19th Century.
Born on this date in 1819, she authored 7 novels –including the terrific Mill on the Flossand Silas Marner – known for theirrealism and psychological insights.
Women did write under their own namesduring her lifetime, but she said she used a male pen name to escape the stereotypeof women only writing lighthearted romances.  And she wished to have herfiction judged separately from her already extensive and widely known work as an editor and critic. 
 [image error]  A self-taught writer, in 1850 she became the first female writer hired by The Westminster Review.   By the time she started writing novels in 1858 shewas pretty much running the prestigious magazine.  Despite the acclaim she earned as a journalist, she wanted to write creatively and in a style rarelytaken by women.   Thus, George Eliot was born.     Alwaysanxious to achieve, she noted: “Theimportant work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfectmen.”    

A Writer's Moment: 'It's never too late to achieve'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's never too late to achieve':   “It’s never too late to be who you might have been.” – George Eliot Mary Ann Evans said that if she was going to be taken seriously ...

A Writer's Moment: 'Words, like fire, the property of all'

A Writer's Moment: 'Words, like fire, the property of all': “The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to ot...

'Words, like fire, the property of all'

“Theinstruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours,kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property ofall.” – Voltaire

 

One ofhistory’s great thinkers and writers, François-Marie Arouet,known simply as Voltaire, was aFrench Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit andhis advocacy of freedom of religion, speech, and the separation of church andstate.  

 

Born in Paris on this date in 1694,he wrote down or espoused many of the ideas that influenced our own nation’sfounding fathers (He was a longtime close friend of Benjamin Franklin, forexample).  Voltaire had a massive writing output with over 2,000 booksand pamphlets, myriad plays, poems, essays, historic and scientific works, and some20,000 letters.

 

An outspoken advocate of civilliberties and individual rights, he is credited with a quote (or variations thereof) that served as inspiration for the United States’ 1st Amendment. 

 

"I may disapprove of what yousay,” Voltaire said, “but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

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A Writer's Moment: 'Capitalize on your treasure house of self-knowledge'

A Writer's Moment: 'Capitalize on your treasure house of self-knowledge':   “One thing that makes art different from life is that in art things have a shape... it allows us to fix our emotions on events at the mom...

'Capitalize on your treasure house of self-knowledge'

 

“Onething that makes art different from life is that in art things have a shape...it allows us to fix our emotions on events at the moment they occur, it permitsa union of heart and mind and tongue and tear.”– Marilyn French

Born in Brooklyn on Nov. 21, 1929French started writing as a journalist while still in college.  She interrupted that career path to start her family before earning Master’s and Doctorate degrees in English and returningto writing as an essayistand sometime short story writer.     Herfirst and best-known novel, The Women's Room, hit the market in 1977 and was a huge bestseller.   The story follows the details andlives of several women in 1950s and 1960s America during the dawning andsubsequent impact of militant radical feminism.  To date it has sold over 20 million copies  and been translated into more than 20 languages.                                             French's advice to beginning writers is simple.   "Capitalize on things that mightseem to get in your way   What are you afraid of and why?  Our fears area treasure house of self-knowledge if only we explore them.”

'It's because you love language'

 

 

“Poemshave a different music from ordinary language, and every poem has a differentkind of music of necessity.  That's, in away, the hardest thing about writing poetry; waiting for that music, andsometimes you never know if it's going to come.”– C.K. Williams

Born in New Jersey in November 1936, poet, critic andtranslator Charles Kenneth “C.K.” Williams won nearly every major poetryaward including the 1987 National Book Critics Circle Award for Flesh andBlood, the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Repair, the 2003 National Book Award for The Singing, andthe Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement. 

 

“Whenyou begin to write poems because you love language, because you love poetry" he said, "the writing of poems becomes incredibly pleasurable and addictive.”  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Williams’,

 

SILENCE

 

The heron methodically pacing like an old-time librariandown the stream through the patch of woods at the end of the field, those greatwings tucked in as neatly as clean sheets, is so intent on keeping her silence,extracting one leg, bending it like a paper clip, placing it back, then bendingthe other, the first again, that her concentration radiates out into thelistening world, and everything obediently hushes, the ragged grasses that risefrom the water, the light-sliced vault of sparkling aspens.

 

Then abruptly a flurry, a flapping, her lifting from thegravitied earth, her swoop out over the field, her banking and settling on alightning-stricken oak, such a gangly, unwieldy contraption up there in thebarkless branches, like a still Adam's-appled adolescent; then the cry, cranky,coarse, and wouldn't the waiting world laugh aloud if it could with glee?

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