Dan Jorgensen's Blog, page 372

A Writer's Moment: Life - 'It Goes On'

A Writer's Moment: Life - 'It Goes On': “ In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life:   it goes on.” – Robert Frost I’ve always loved the poetry of Rober...

Life - 'It Goes On'

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life:  it goes on.” – Robert Frost

I’ve always loved the poetry of Robert Frost and thought about his imagery and attention to the land while recently driving and walking in the rugged countryside of western Nebraska and eastern Wyoming.  I don’t think Frost ever visited there, but I’m sure if he had we would have had another great book of poems about the experience.

Frost was born 145 years ago in California (on March 26) but grew up and spent most of his life in New England. His realistic depictions of rural life, the beauty of the land, and command of American colloquial speech – all while examining complex social and philosophical themes – may never be equaled.   Poetry is a simple process, he liked to say; just an emotion finding a thought and the thought finding its words. 
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Like every writer he hit dry periods, but unlike many he had something to say about that.  “Poets,” he noted, “are like baseball pitchers.  Both have their moments.  It’s the intervals that are the tough things.”

The only poet to win four Pulitzer Prizes, he also was honored with the Congressional Gold Medal and named Poet Laureate of Vermont.  A great teacher, at some of America's greatest colleges, he liked to say that education is hanging around until you’ve caught on.  “I talk in order to understand,” he said.  “But I teach in order to learn.”


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It's 'The Breathings of Your Heart'

“Fill your papers with the breathings of your heart.” – William Wordsworth
 Wise words from the man who helped launch what’s known as “The Romantic Age” in English literature with his share of the renowned Lyrical Ballads in 1798.
His “Lines Written in Early Spring,” one of the ballads, has some of the most beautiful descriptive writing about the season ever penned, and if you want to see a “How it should be done” piece read that one alone – if you find you don’t have time for the entire Lyrical Ballads masterpiece.
Born in 1770, Wordsworth was already writing and drawing admirers in his teens and went on to become Poet Laureate of Great Britain from1843-1850, the year of his death, Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote a string of beautiful in-depth poems over a span of 50 years, including Wordsworth’s The Prelude, considered one of the greatest epic poems of all time.      Wordsworth had a simple formula for writing success.  “To begin, begin,” he said.   As for how to successfully live one’s life, he noted, “The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.”








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A Writer's Moment: It's 'The Breathings of Your Heart'

A Writer's Moment: It's 'The Breathings of Your Heart': “Fill your papers with the breathings of your heart.” – William Wordsworth   Wise words from the man who helped la...

'It All Starts With Writing'

“Whether you are 12 or 70, you should sit down today and start being a writer if that is what you want to do. You might have to write on a notebook while your kids are playing on the swings or write in your car on your coffee break. That's okay. I think we've all 'been there, done that.' Just remember, it all starts with the writing.” – Robin Hobb
Born in March, 1952, Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden, who writes under the pen name of Robin Hobb, took her own advice and started writing for children’s magazines at the age of 18.  While she was successful in that field, she thought she’d be better at science fiction and fantasy and decided to give it a try.                                            Good choice.  Over the past 40 years she’s arguably been the most prolific writer in those fields while capturing most of the genre’s major awards. She has written five series set in the Realm of the Elderlings, which started in 1995 with the publication of Assassin's Apprentice and ended with Assassin's Fate in 2017.  Her books have sold over a million copies.
Hobb has been praised by most critics as “the standard setter for modern serious fantasy.” And no less writer than George R.R. Martin (author of the Game of Thrones series) said she is the best fantasy writer he has ever read.  “In today’s crowded fantasy market,” Martin said, “Robin Hobb’s books are like diamonds in a sea of zircons.”

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A Writer's Moment: 'It All Starts With Writing'

A Writer's Moment: 'It All Starts With Writing': “Whether you are 12 or 70, you should sit down today and start being a writer if that is what you want to do. You migh...

A Writer's Moment: Featuring Poet John Ashbery

A Writer's Moment: Featuring Poet John Ashbery: “ I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places.” – John Ashbery Former Poet La...

Featuring Poet John Ashbery

“I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places.” – John Ashbery
Former Poet Laureate Ashbery was the longer subject of yesterday’s blog post and today is the focal point for Saturday’s Poem.    Here is Ashbery’s,
By Guess and By Gosh
O awaken with me
the inquiring goodbyes.
Ooh what a messy business
a tangle and a muddle
(and made it seem quite interesting).

He ticks them off:
leisure top,
a different ride home,
whispering, in a way,
whispered whiskers,
so many of the things you have to share.

But I was getting on,
and that's what you don't need.
I'm certainly sorry about scaring your king,
if indeed that's what happened to him.
You get Peanuts and War and Peace,
some in rags, some in jags, some in
velvet gown. They want
the other side of the printing plant.

There were concerns.
Say hi to jock itch, leadership principles,
urinary incompetence.
Take that, perfect pitch.
And say a word for the president,
for the scholar magazines, papers, a streaming.
Then you are interested in poetry.

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A Writer's Moment: Looming Large in Writing Circles

A Writer's Moment: Looming Large in Writing Circles: “I write with experiences in mind, but I don't write about them, I write out of them.” – John Ashbery In 2008...

Looming Large in Writing Circles

“I write with experiences in mind, but I don't write about them, I write out of them.” – John Ashbery
In 2008 Langdon Hammer, chair of the English Department at Yale, said "No figure looms so large in American poetry over the past 50 years as John Ashbery" and "No American poet has had a larger, more diverse vocabulary, not Whitman, not Pound.” 
Born in 1928 Ashbery published 29 volumes of poetry over 6 decades, earning every major award for the genre’, including a Pulitzer Prize for Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.   In 2012 he was inducted into the New York Writers Hall of Fame.  His final book, Breezeway, was published shortly before his death in 2017.
One key to his success was his effort to write for everyone and make the work as accessible as possible.  “I don’t want my poems to be a private dialogue with myself.  I don’t look on poetry as closed works,” he said.  “I feel they’re going on all the time in my head and I occasionally snip off a length to share.”
As poet and critic Melanie Rehak wrote in reviewing one of his books, “…reading an Ashbery poem is also a little bit like being let loose inside a house of mirrors —things don’t always make sense on the surface, but on some gut level, you know you’re still looking at yourself, which is about as much as you can hope for.”
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