Dan Jorgensen's Blog, page 367
April 26, 2019
A Writer's Moment: Stirring Together Life's Elements
A Writer's Moment: Stirring Together Life's Elements: “A novelist writes a novel, and people read it. But reading is a solitary act. While it may elicit a varied and persona...
Stirring Together Life's Elements
“A novelist writes a novel, and people read it. But reading is a solitary act. While it may elicit a varied and personal response, the communal nature of the audience is like having five hundred people read your novel and respond to it at the same time. I find that thrilling.” – August Wilson
Bornon April 27, 1945, Wilson was an African-American playwright whose work was highlighted by a series of 10 plays called The Pittsburgh or Century Cycle. Among them were Fences, which won both a Pulitzer Prize for Drama and a Tony – and was made into an Academy Award winning movie; and The Piano Lesson, which also won a Pulitzer for Drama and the New York Drama Critics Award. Each play is set in a different decade of the 20th Century, depicting the comic and tragic aspects of the Black experience. Wilson said his aim was to "raise consciousness through theater.” He was fascinated by the power of theater as a medium where a community at large could come together to bear witness to events and the unfolding currents of society. Wilson had the remarkable ability to make everything he said and wrote crackle with enthusiasm and life, and any aspiring writer or actor who listened to his talks would always walk out fired up about writing or acting and ready to get busy trying to emulate what he shared.
“In creating plays," he said, "I often use the image of a stewing pot in which I toss various things that I’m going to make use of—a black cat, a garden, a bicycle, a man with a scar on his face, a pregnant woman, a man with a gun." The results were as tasty as tasty can be.
Share A Writer’s Moment with a friend at http://writersmoment.blogspot.com
Bornon April 27, 1945, Wilson was an African-American playwright whose work was highlighted by a series of 10 plays called The Pittsburgh or Century Cycle. Among them were Fences, which won both a Pulitzer Prize for Drama and a Tony – and was made into an Academy Award winning movie; and The Piano Lesson, which also won a Pulitzer for Drama and the New York Drama Critics Award. Each play is set in a different decade of the 20th Century, depicting the comic and tragic aspects of the Black experience. Wilson said his aim was to "raise consciousness through theater.” He was fascinated by the power of theater as a medium where a community at large could come together to bear witness to events and the unfolding currents of society. Wilson had the remarkable ability to make everything he said and wrote crackle with enthusiasm and life, and any aspiring writer or actor who listened to his talks would always walk out fired up about writing or acting and ready to get busy trying to emulate what he shared.
“In creating plays," he said, "I often use the image of a stewing pot in which I toss various things that I’m going to make use of—a black cat, a garden, a bicycle, a man with a scar on his face, a pregnant woman, a man with a gun." The results were as tasty as tasty can be.
Share A Writer’s Moment with a friend at http://writersmoment.blogspot.com
April 25, 2019
A Writer's Moment: Taking a Chance on Everything
A Writer's Moment: Taking a Chance on Everything: “I've done everything. All of it. You think it, I've done it. All the things you never dared, all the things y...
Taking a Chance on Everything
“I've done everything. All of it. You think it, I've done it. All the things you never dared, all the things you dream about, all the things you were curious about and then forgot because you knew you never would. I did 'em, I did 'em yesterday while you were still in bed. What about you? When's it gonna be your turn?”—Melvin Burgess
Born in England on this date in 1954, Burgess started writing in his mid-30s and had almost instant success as a Children’s and Young Adult fiction writer when his first book, The Cry of the Wolf, was “highly commended” by librarians for the prestigious Carnegie Medal. Then in the mid-1990s his ”lucky 7th” book Junk, about heroin-addicted teenagers on the streets of Bristol, not only won the Carnegie but also the Guardian Book Award and soared to the top of most YA bestseller lists worldwide.
Now the author of 25 books and a television screenplay, Burgess said that when he was a child he choice of careers was to be “an animal collector,” influenced by zoologist Gerald Durrell, who also was an award-winning writer and founder of the Jersey Zoo. “He had a job collecting animals for zoos, and for a long time that is what I wanted to do.”But after being influenced by an enthusiastic English teacher, he started studying authors and turned his focus toward a writing career. “I read all the time so it's difficult to say who my all-time favorites (authors) are,” he said. “One is George Orwell, because he makes political writing so simple a child could understand it.“
Share A Writer’s Moment with a friend at http://writersmoment.blogspot.com
April 24, 2019
A Writer's Moment: That Pain You Can't Do Without
A Writer's Moment: That Pain You Can't Do Without: “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.”...
That Pain You Can't Do Without
“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.” – Robert Penn Warren
Born in southern Kentucky on this date in 1905, Penn Warren had the remarkable ability to put his reader both into a place and inside the lives of those about whom he was writing, whether it was in works of fiction or in his remarkable poetry.
Founder of the influential literary journal, The Southern Review, he is the only person to win the Pulitzer Prize for both fiction and poetry, winning the latter award twice. His first Pulitzer came for All The King’s Men, the 1947 novel about ruthless Louisiana politician Willie Stark. It’s one of the few books to also be made into both a movie and an opera, with the movie version earning a Best Picture Academy Award featuring Best Actor winner Broderick Crawford.
Penn Warren’s poetry Pulitzer Prizes were awarded for Promises: Poems 1954-1956, which also won the National Book Award, and Now and Then. In the 1940s he served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress and in 1986 he was named the first U.S. Poet Laureate. Among his many other honors were a Jefferson Lectureship, the highest Congressional award for achievement in the humanities; The Presidential Medal of Freedom; and The National Medal of Arts.
“How do poems grow?” Penn Warren asked. “They grow out of your life. The urge to write poetry is like having an itch. When the itch becomes annoying enough, you scratch it.” Share A Writer’s Moment with a friend at http://writersmoment.blogspot.com
April 23, 2019
Living The American Dream
"We have committed the Golden Rule to memory; let us now commit it to life.”– Edwin Markham
Markham’s story is one of those remarkable “American Dream” types. Born on April 23, 1852, to a family of 10 kids, he grew up in a broken home, worked the family farm as a child, and was mostly self-educated.
Against the wishes of his family, he decided to go to college and study literature, earning degrees in the Classics. He fell in love with poetry and began writing in his late 40s, writing many poems and essays for the ages. Among them were his famous “The Man With The Hoe,” inspired Edwin Vincent Millet’s equally famous painting; and "Lincoln, the Man of the People." Selected in 1922 to be read at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial, it has often been called the greatest poem ever written about our 12th President.
An amazing letter writer and book collector, Markham amassed a personal library of over 15,000 books.
He died in 1940 and bequeathed the books and his personal papers and letters, which included years of correspondence with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ambrose Bierce, Carl Sandburg and Amy Lowell, to tiny Wagner College in New York City. Poet Laureate in his native Oregon in the 1930s, he was the first recipient of the American Academy of Poets Award in 1937, and six schools and a World War II ship were named in his honor after his death. Near the end of his long life, he remarked, “Ah, great it is to believe the dream as we stand in youth by the starry stream; but a greater thing is to fight life through and say at the end, the dream is true!”Share A Writer’s Moment with a friend at http://writersmoment.blogspot.com
A Writer's Moment: Living The American Dream
A Writer's Moment: Living The American Dream: "We have committed the Golden Rule to memory; let us now commit it to life.” – Edwin Markham Markham’s story...
April 22, 2019
A Writer's Moment: For The Beauty of Our Earth
A Writer's Moment: For The Beauty of Our Earth: “We are as much alive as we keep the earth alive.” – Chief Dan George I’ve been involved in Earth Day since its founding in 1970, wri...
For The Beauty of Our Earth
“We are as much alive as we keep the earth alive.” – Chief Dan George
I’ve been involved in Earth Day since its founding in 1970, writing that year about the efforts of school children to “do good things for the earth” – the mandate of Earth Day founder, U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson.
On this 49th annual Earth Day, I share this link to John Rutter’s beautiful rendition of “For The Beauty of the Earth.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHIfRLNYUGw
Share A Writer’s Moment with a friend at http://writersmoment.blogspot.com
