Dan Jorgensen's Blog, page 136

A Writer's Moment: Strictly from the imagination

A Writer's Moment: Strictly from the imagination:   “Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, a...

Strictly from the imagination

 

“Writingis a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemiesof the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is tosustain and complete an undertaking.”— Jessamyn West

Mary“Jessamyn” West, born on this date in 1902, was an American author of both shortstories and novels.   Although shaped by herimagination, her works are loosely based on tales told to her by her mother andgrandmother about a Quaker farm life that she herself never experienced. 
 Two of her popular 21 novels -- The Friendly Persuasion and its sequel Except forMe and Thee -- also were made into very successful movies.
                          West set nearly all of her stories in Indiana, a state in whichshe did not live and seldom visited, spending her own adult life in California.   
 "I write about Indiana because knowing littleabout it, I can create it from the images I’ve learned from my grandmother’s (and mother's) stories," she noted.   "The past is really almost asmuch a work of the imagination as is the future.”

It's that 'Rainbow Connection'

 

It was in this month in 1978 that the wonderful song “Rainbow Connection” was written by the awardwinning songwriters Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher.
Many people know, ofcourse, that the song originally was performed by muppet Kermit the Frog(voiced by the late, great Jim Henson) in the 1979 hit The Muppet Movie(if you haven’t seen that movie, it’s another one of those“Not to be missed” things to put on your list).
Williams and Ascher,both in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, earned Oscar nominations for themovie’s score and this terrific song, which often has been compared with “OverThe Rainbow” in The Wizard of Oz exactly 40 years earlier.  Both songs are beautiful, make up the opening scene of their respective movies, and reflect each singer's urgeto find something more in life.
"Rainbow Connection" has been recorded by hundreds of artists around the world – everyonefrom Jason Mraz to Willie Nelson and Sarah McLaughlin to the Yale UniversityWhiffenpoofs and the Cast of “Glee.”  The American Film Institute rated it the 74th greatest movie song of all time –not bad for being sung by a frog.
Here's a version by the late Karen Carpenter, whose voice truly took every songto its highest level.  May you find your own rainbow connection in life and in your writers' moments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYuE2...

A Writer's Moment: It's that 'Rainbow Connection'

A Writer's Moment: It's that 'Rainbow Connection':   It was in this month in 1978 that the wonderful song “Rainbow Connection” was written by the award winning songwriters Paul Williams and ...

A Writer's Moment: 'This is who we are and what we must do'

A Writer's Moment: 'This is who we are and what we must do':   “I try for a poetic language that says, This is who we are, where we have been, where we are. This is where we must go. And this is what ...

'This is who we are and what we must do'

 

“I tryfor a poetic language that says, This is who we are, where we have been, wherewe are. This is where we must go. And this is what we must do” – MariEvans Evans, born on July 16, 1919  not only authored poetry but also children’sliterature and plays.  And perhaps her biggest mark was made through editing countlessworks of others and serving as editor of theaward-winning Black Women Writers (1950–1980): A Critical Evaluation.
Herfirst poetry collection, Where Is All the Music? established her as aserious poetic writer, and her second, I Am a Black Woman gained herworldwide acclaim. Her definitive poem “Who Can Be Born Black” has often been anthologized.   [image error]    Evans also wrote and produced a 6-year weekly award-winning televisionprogram, “The Black Experience" in her adopted hometown of Indianapolis, where she lived for 70 years until her death in 2017.
 I Am A Black Woman resonated with thepower and beauty of Black women and set the bar for many of her fellow femaleBlack writers in the latter part of the 20th century.  
  “I am a black woman,”Evans wrote, “tall as a cypress, strong beyond all definition, still defyingplace and time and circumstance, assailed, impervious, indestructible.”   

A Writer's Moment: It's 'for the people'

A Writer's Moment: It's 'for the people':   “Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.” –   June Jordan Born on this date in 1936, Jorda...

It's 'for the people'

 

“Poetryis a political act because it involves telling the truth.”–  June Jordan

Born on this date in 1936, Jordan was the daughter of Jamaican immigrants who earned dozens of writing honors, amongthem a Rockefeller grant for creative writing, a National Endowment for theArts poetry fellowship, and an Achievement Award for International Reporting.

 

She founded the "Poetry for the People" program at UC-Berkeley in 1991, it’s aim to inspire and empower students to use poetry asa means of artistic expression.  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Jordan's,

ThesePoems

These poems
they are things that I do
in the dark
reaching for you
whoever you are
and
are you ready?

These words
they are stones in the water
running away

These skeletal lines
they are desperate arms for my longing and love.

I am a stranger
learning to worship the strangers
around me

whoever you are
whoever I may become.

 

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A Writer's Moment: Telling the surprising tale of life

A Writer's Moment: Telling the surprising tale of life:   “A story to me means a plot where there must be some surprise, because that is how life is, after all, full of surprises.” – Isaac Bashe...

Telling the surprising tale of life

 
“A story to me means a plot where there must be some surprise, becausethat is how life is, after all, full of surprises.” – Isaac Bashevis Singer

 

Singer, born outside of Warsaw,Poland on this date in 1902, started out wanting to be a journalist but keptgetting drawn toward the creative side instead.

 

He was first groomed to be a rabbi,but that too proved a fruitless endeavor and he gravitated quickly into thewriting life.  After emigrating to theU.S. where he lived, worked and wrote for newspapers and journals in New YorkCity, he debuted as a fiction writer in 1925 with the short story "In OldAge." In 1935, his first novel, Satan in Goray, was published.

 

Singer wrote short stories thatreflected his daily life and times, among them the acclaimed "Gimple theFool."   But it was his novel, TheFamily Moskat, about a family living in the ghettos of pre–World War IIPoland, that brought him worldwide recognition.

 

One of his most recognized worksfrom his later years was Enemies: A Love Story, about the emotionalstruggle of a Holocaust survivor.   In1978, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his life’s body of work.

 

Commenting at the time, Singer said,“A good writer, I’ve discovered, is basically a storyteller, not a scholar or aredeemer of mankind.”

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