Dan Jorgensen's Blog, page 33

A Writer's Moment: 'Filled with things for our enjoyment'

A Writer's Moment: 'Filled with things for our enjoyment':   “Your attitude is like a box of crayons that color your world. Constantly color your picture gray, and your picture will always be bleak. ...

'An itch that MUST be scratched'

 

“I've been to a lot of places anddone a lot of things, but writing was always first. It's a kind of pain I can'tdo without.” – Robert Penn Warren

 

Born in Kentucky on thisdate in 1905, Penn Warren had the remarkable ability to put his reader bothinto a place and inside the lives of those about whom he was writing, whetherit was in works of fiction or in his remarkable poetry.

 

Founder of the influential literaryjournal The Southern Review, he is the only person to win thePulitzer Prize for both fiction and poetry, winning the latter awardtwice.  His first Pulitzer came for All The King’s Men,the 1947 novel about ruthless Louisiana politician WillieStark.  It’s one of the few books to also be made into both a movieand an opera, with the movie version earning a Best Picture and BestActor (Broderick Crawford) Academy Awards.

 

Penn Warren’s Pulitzers for poetry wereawarded for Promises: Poems 1954-1956, which also won the NationalBook Award, and Now and Then.  In 1986 he was named America’sfirst. Poet Laureate.  Among his many other honors were ThePresidential Medal of Freedom and The National Medal of Arts. 

 

 “How do poems grow?” PennWarren wrote.  “They grow out of your life.   The urgeto write poetry is like having an itch.  When the itch becomesannoying enough, you scratch it.”

A Writer's Moment: 'An itch that MUST be scratched'

A Writer's Moment: 'An itch that MUST be scratched':   “I've been to a lot of places and done a lot of things, but writing was always first. It's a kind of pain I can't do without.”...

A Writer's Moment: 'Finding purities in the confusion'

A Writer's Moment: 'Finding purities out of confusion':   “I'll tell you why I like writing: it's just jumping into a pool. I get myself into a kind of trance. I engage the world, but it...

A Writer's Moment: 'Finding purities out of confusion'

A Writer's Moment: 'Finding purities out of confusion':   “I'll tell you why I like writing: it's just jumping into a pool. I get myself into a kind of trance. I engage the world, but it...

'Finding purities in the confusion'

 

“I'll tell you why I like writing:it's just jumping into a pool. I get myself into a kind of trance. I engage theworld, but it's also wonderful to just escape. I try to find the purities outof the confusion. It's pretty old-fashioned, but it's fun.” –Barry Hannah

 

Born on this date in 1942 (he diedin 2010), Hannah was a novelist, short story writer and professor of writing atthe University of Mississippi.   A “mostly” lifelongMississippian, he was born in Meridian and died in Oxford, which is both thelocation of the University and the home of Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner.    

 

A two-time winner of the MississippiInstitute of Arts & Letters’ “Fiction Prize” and the Governor’s Award forhis representation of Mississippi in artistic and cultural matters, Hannahwrote 12 books – 5 of which were highly lauded short story collections.  Among his many other awards were thePEN/Malamud prize for “Excellence in the Art of the Short Story;” a GuggenheimFellowship; and the Robert Penn Warren Lifetime Achievement Award.  

 

Hannah said that music always playeda role in his writing, both on the pages of his works and filling the airaround him as he did his writing.  

 

“Some writers are curiouslyunmusical. I don't get it. I don't get them,” he said.  “For me,music is essential. I always have music on when I'm doing well.  Musical phrases can give you sentences thatyou didn't think you ever had.”

 

'Finding purities out of confusion'

 

“I'll tell you why I like writing:it's just jumping into a pool. I get myself into a kind of trance. I engage theworld, but it's also wonderful to just escape. I try to find the purities outof the confusion. It's pretty old-fashioned, but it's fun.” –Barry Hannah

 

Born on this date in 1942 (he diedin 2010), Hannah was a novelist, short story writer and professor of writing atthe University of Mississippi.   A “mostly” lifelongMississippian, he was born in Meridian and died in Oxford, which is both thelocation of the University and the home of Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner.    

 

A two-time winner of the MississippiInstitute of Arts & Letters’ “Fiction Prize” and the Governor’s Award forhis representation of Mississippi in artistic and cultural matters, Hannahwrote 12 books – 5 of which were highly lauded short story collections.  Among his many other awards were thePEN/Malamud prize for “Excellence in the Art of the Short Story;” a GuggenheimFellowship; and the Robert Penn Warren Lifetime Achievement Award.  

 

Hannah said that music always playeda role in his writing, both on the pages of his works and filling the airaround him as he did his writing.  

 

“Some writers are curiouslyunmusical. I don't get it. I don't get them,” he said.  “For me,music is essential. I always have music on when I'm doing well.  Musical phrases can give you sentences thatyou didn't think you ever had.”

 

Cherishing the Earth

 

It’s the 55th annualEarth Day and on its occasion I thought it appropriate to share just a fewwriters’ words reflective of the subject. Happy Earth Day everyone!   

  

“We are only as much alive as we ourselveskeep the earth alive.” – Chief Dan George

 

“There are places which exist inthis world beyond the reach of imagination . . . Outside is the only place wecan truly be inside the world.” – Daniel J. Rice, This Side of aWilderness

 

“It seems to me nothing man has doneor built on this land is an improvement over what was here before.”– Kent Haruf, West of Last Chance

 

And this take on “The Golden Rule”by author, farmer and conservationist Wendell Berry: “Do unto those downstreamas you would have those upstream do unto you.”

 

Take a few minutes today to do eventhe simplest things for the earth.  Pick up a few scraps ofpaper.  Drive a few miles less. Preserve a single glass of water. Share deeds and words on behalf of our earth.  She is, after all, the only place we have onwhich to reside.

A Writer's Moment: Cherishing the Earth

A Writer's Moment: Cherishing the Earth:   It’s the 55 th annual Earth Day and on its occasion I thought it appropriate to share just a few writers’ words reflective of the subject...

'Let my efforts be known by their results'

 

“I'm just going to write because Icannot help it.” – Charlotte Bronte

 

Bronte, who lived to just age 39before dying of typhus, was born on this date in 1816.  The oldest of3 Bronte sisters who survived into adulthood (2 other sisters died oftuberculosis), she wrote novels that are still considered classics of Englishliterature. 

 

Bronte gave us such statements as“The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter - often an unconscious, but still atruthful interpreter - in the eye.”  And “The human heart has hiddentreasures, in secret kept, in silence sealed; the thoughts, the hopes, thedreams, the pleasures, whose charms were broken if revealed.”  She plowed new writing ground by combiningnaturalism with gothic melodrama.

 

 

A surrogate “mother” to 3 youngersiblings (after their mother died following the birth of sister Anne) she beganwriting with sisters Emily and Anne, co-publishing a book of poetry under thepseudonym Bell – Charlotte as Currer; Emily as Ellis; and Anne as Acton.

 

While their poems did not succeed,the three women’s subsequent novels – Jane Eyre from Charlotte; WutheringHeights from Emily; and Agnes Grey from Anne – werewildly successful and led to their revealing their real names to the writingworld. 

 

Happy to just “produce” and notworry about being recognized for it, she noted, “If I could I would always workin silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known by their results.”