Drew Myron's Blog, page 13
July 23, 2022
Writing, Not Writing
Are you doing the work of being a writer?
1.
I let the question simmer, an hour, a day, a week, more. In my head I explain, defend, whine and walk away. Your question is innocent. You know what's important to me and you're offering a gentle encouragement. Not what are you writing, or why aren't you writing but the kindness of a gentle lob that asks:
Is your heart beating, your hand moving?
Do you still move in the world touching everything you want to feel?
2.
I've been numbed into an old exhaustion of caring and not caring. Everything matters so nothing matters. The world is weighty and my words are not able to sustain these winds.
3.
"I remember nodding as if I was fine. I was fine. I had language. And it would be the one thing that would keep returning, like light," writes Victoria Chang in Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief. “Language felt like wanting to drown but being able to experience drowning by standing on a pier."
4.
Years ago, a poet-friend stopped writing, for an entire year, by choice. You can read about her experience here. “This decision came as a relief,” she said. “Immediately a kind of cocoon began to form around my deepest self.”
At the time of her announcement, I was energized with my own world of writing, reading, teaching, and couldn't imagine why anyone would push words away. I’d lived through writing blocks and serious slumps but to willingly cease seemed so forced and unnecessary.
Time, however, may have softened my view.
5.
Swimming, I hear my own ragged breath as a sort of secret language. My arms slice through silence and I kick to shore. It's never easy, the strokes, the breathing. I have to think. But all these years, the still water holds me. Is writing the same — instinct and breath?
6.
Find the light, you say.
But the day is dimming and how can I hold what I cannot see?
7.
Don't try so hard.
Give yourself a break.
(but stop whining)
8.
This is your fallow season, you say. Write anyway.
Nearly every day of his life poet William Stafford rose early and wrote a poem.
“It is like fishing,” he explained. “If I am to keep writing, I cannot bother to insist on high standards . . . I am following a process that leads so wildly and originally into new territory that no judgment can at the moment be made about values, significance, and so on . . . I am headlong to discover.”
9.
Today in the forest, tree roots provide a path.
Thick, tangled, ancient, a staircase and walk, a cragged way forward.
Is paying attention a poem, or just a good first step?
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The world turns on words, please read & write.
July 5, 2022
Sob Stories
Sometimes when the world is heavy and your heart is worn, you need a good, wrenching, cleansing, body-shaking cry.
ca·thar·tic
/kəˈTHärdik/
adjective — providing psychological relief through the open expression of strong emotions; causing catharsis, as in: “crying is a cathartic release.”
— from Whistling in the Dark: A Doubters Dictionary by Frederick Buechner
When it’s time for catharsis, I pull out the proper tools: movies, television, and books.
My top movie for a good cleansing cry is always Magnolia. It’s a potent mix of stellar acting, interlacing storylines, and the alchemy of the Aimee Mann soundtrack (particularly the repeated song Save Me, with the lines: “If you could save me / From the ranks of the freaks / Who suspect they could never love anyone.”
My latest favorite television binge is Six Feet Under. This odd drama series had a devoted following when it debuted 20 years ago and frequently stirs my out-of-nowhere tears.
My favorite tear-inducing novels come unexpectedly. I don’t go looking for catharsis. It just happens, which makes it all the more powerful and cleansing. Years ago, back when I attended church and had more faith in institutions, I had a similar feeling: a sudden rise of emotion that swells in the chest, gathers in the throat, spills over and leaves to leave me both foolish and released. Tears are such a bubbling mystery.
But sometimes you need help finding those feels-good-to-feel-sad kind of books. Please, let me be your guide:
The Good Women of Safe Harbour
by Bobbi French
A life-affirming novel about a woman facing death and mending a friendship.
“Fight. Such a flat, ugly word. Why was everyone forever harping about fighting? I’d taken to reading the obituaries lately, paying close attention to the ones that read ‘lost her courageous battle with cancer’ or some such nonsense. It seemed to me the mortality had somehow been made over as a character defect.”
This beautiful and sometimes funny book is my favorite novel of 2022.
One Heart
by Jane McCafferty
A quiet character study of the simple and conflicting bonds of sisterhood. This is a novel of both despair and hope.
A Little Life
by Hanya Yanagihara
A staggering, brutal, poignant novel about a man physically and emotionally broken. (Caution: As with most things, readers are deeply divided on the brilliance — or not — of this book).
“Somewhere, surrendering to what seemed to be your fate had changed from being dignified to being a sign of your own cowardice.”
The Magical Language of Others
by E.J. Koh
A powerful and aching love story in letters, from mother to daughter, that is written with a level of poetic detachment that provides space to hold the pain.
“Neither happiness nor sadness are ever done with us. They are always passing by.”
The Great Believers
by Rebecca Makkai
A sweeping story that weaves numerous storylines, from AIDS to art to friendships lost and found. Written with beautiful economy and precision.
“But when someone’s gone and you’re the primary keeper of his memory—letting go would be a kind of murder, wouldn’t it? I had so much love for him, even if it was a complicated love, and where is all that love supposed to go?”
Crossing to Safety
by Wallace Stegner
A quiet novel of deep compassion and insight into the bonds of friendship and marriage.
“Sally has a smile I would accept as my last view on earth...”
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Your Turn: What’s your vice for a good cathartic cry?
May 21, 2022
You Reading This
Dear S —
This letter has sat in my head, in my heart, for too long.
I think of you often and jot silent notes that I never seem to send.
So this is to say: I’m thinking of you. You hold a place in my heart where time sits still and daily life matters little. I’ve missed that sense of suspension, where worries are placed gently away.
These last few years have been difficult in such varied and complicated ways. The stress and strain of the pandemic, compounded with racial injustice, economic turmoil, international upheaval . . . and that’s not even our personal challenges of sickness and aging, sadness and defeat. More than ever we see the dominoes of our lives tip, collide, fall away.
How do we keep on? How do you?
I’d like to say poetry has helped me float but in this last year my well has gone dry. I’m now facing the fact that poetry is in my past, a person I use to be.
Maybe it is love that gets us through these difficult days. It’s hardly an original thought — but there’s a reason cliches are called just that: there’s truth in the refrain.
Maybe it is the small gratitudes that sustain. This morning the sun bursts through a month of damp days and I am suddenly restored. Hope springs in small ways and I am larger for it. As the sun moves across the room I’m warmed by the memory of a Stafford line — how sunlight creeps along a shining floor.
I am warmed by the memory of you and I drinking coffee and tea in that cozy coffeeshop, playing Bananagrams while the rain and wind thrashed our small town and we, safe inside, laughed and sighed. How simple time seems as it ticks along, how complex the memory of days past.
I am not waiting for time to show some better thoughts. I am here, now, in my head, my heart, and on this page, thankful for you and our friendship.
With love,
Drew
You Reading This, Be Ready
Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?
Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?
When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life —
What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?
— William Stafford
March 27, 2022
On Sunday: Rest
In you the heart
seeks no barrier.
Clouds come and rest.
— Drew Myron
A friend wrote recently:
My poems get shorter because there’s too much to say.
I’m there too. In the throes of steady high alert — health, war, injustice, econony — I’m both paying attention and turning away. I’m holding in and back, holding on, conserving every emotional expense. There’s just so much and I’m both enlarged with frustration and reduced by fatigue.
But the world beyond my head lifts in hope: sun strains to shine, lilacs urge to burst, and everywhere trees bloom in glorious color and scent.
All is now, now, now, this, this, this. All is well.
And all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
— Julian of Norwich
February 27, 2022
Shall We Drink?
Thought 179, an erasure poem by Drew Myron
Dear You,
The days wear on, and I think of you often.
Are you healthy, happy, well?
We are doing the best we can, feeding heart and mind with memories and wine, trying to find light in dark days. You know how it is. You do what you can do.
We find solace in small things: walks, talks, bike rides, sun and snow. I read and write. We forget more. Quiet lives.
I don't have much to say these days. It's not sadness I feel, though this letter has taken a tone — but maybe it's a grey day in late winter and a sense of resignation has taken hold. You must know this feeling too, a suspended state that tilts toward acceptance but with a resistance that pulls away.
We hope to travel again, to see you soon & hold you close. Though the heart strains to contain the world, we have not forgotten how to love.
Love,
Drew
Thought 179:
Shall we drink?
My dear friend,
I have misjudged time!
My friend, I have opened
my heart, weeping.
Shall we drink?
— Drew Myron
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The world turns on words, please read & write.
February 20, 2022
Well Read: Keeping the Mind Fed
Oh winter of our hibernation. Like fields, we go fallow, into deep rest and restoration. I’ve gone deep into books and it’s been a good reading season.
Here are a few of my latest favorites, along with lines and passages that struck a chord.
FICTION
Someone by Alice McDermott
A slim, subtle novel of substantial beauty. The novel, says the author, grew out of the belief that on some level, we more or less all struggle with the same things.
“We turned onto the last landing. Going out with this guy, I thought, would involve a lot of silly laughter, some wit — the buzz of his whispered wisecracks in my ear. But there would be as well his willingness to reveal, or more his inability to conceal, that he had been silently rehearsing my name as he climbed the stairs behind me. There would be his willingness to bestow upon me the power to reassure him. He would trust me with his happiness.”
The Five Wounds by Kirstin Valdez Quade
A tender and redemptive novel spanning one year in a family of five generations.
“What no one appreciates is that it takes courage — and considerable dramatic flair — to show up and insist you belong, to invoke genetic claims and demand food and love and housing.”
The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave
An easy mystery with a quick page-turning pace.
“This is the thing about good and evil. They aren't so far apart, and they often start from the same valiant place of wanting something to be different.”
NONFICTION
Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion by Gregory Boyle
A practical memoir of radical love from a priest who spent 20 years working with Los Angeles gangs.
“Here is what we seek: a compassion that can stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgement at how they carry it.”
Your Turn: Are you in hibernation, too? What books are feeding your mind & soul?
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The world turns on words, please read & write.
February 10, 2022
Thankful Thursday: Bad Advice
Reminder 13: Bad Advice, by Drew Myron
In my early days of poetry, I attended a writing workshop in which the instructor gave a list of don’ts:
Do not write about the moon.
Do not use these words:
muse, moonlight, soul, eternity, thee, thus, lavender
While I agree the world needs less musing, I love lavender. But because I was green and eager-to-please, I did not question authority. It took me years to sneak lavender into a poem. I still shrink from mentions of the moon.
Advice sticks. Good or bad, it tends to hang around in the head.
Growing up my mother warned us to avoid white bread and McDonalds. Good advice that still hounds me today. But she also frequently told me to “Go play in traffic.”
You take the good with the bad, and hope for the best.
It’s Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things and more. Why give thanks? Because joy contracts and expands in proportion to our gratitude, and these difficult days call for more peace and joy. On this Thankful Thursday, I’m grateful for advice — good and bad — that got me here, still alive & writing.
What are you thankful for today?
More Reminders:
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If you like this blog, please subscribe here to get it delivered to your email. The world turns on words, please read & write.
January 30, 2022
Under the Influence
What are you reading, watching, singing?
How are you sleeping? What are you eating?
Who whispers in your ear? What roars?
What’s influencing you?
We know that everything is grist for the mill of the mind. Everything is material. We read, read, read, write, write, write, muddle, miss the mark, toss, turn, and start again.
Who knows how the mind filters and files — what to keep, what to toss, and why?
“Your triggering subjects are those that ignite your need for words,” writes Richard Hugo in the seminal book The Triggering Town. “When you are honest to your feelings, that triggering town chooses you. Your words used your way will generate your meanings. Your obsessions lead you to your vocabulary. Your way of writing locates, even creates, your inner life.”
Ten years ago, I was struck by this poem by Olena Kalytiak Davis.
Two years ago, I snapped this photo while driving across eastern Oregon.
Earlier this month, a storm delivered days and days of heavy snow.
Two weeks ago, our writing group was prompted to write about the new year.
Holiday, weather, postcard, pandemic, darkness and light, pressure and pleasure — one influence after another. Experience forms feeling, words stir, a poem takes shape.
I don’t know how the mind sifts and sorts. I’m not trying to write anything; I’m trying to write something, everything. The mystery of writing keeps me trying.
What’s influencing you?
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The world turns on words, please read & write.
January 19, 2022
Switch & List
Hello Writers, Readers, Thinkers & Feelers,
How are you — I mean, really?
These are the spiral days. The pandemic surges on, nerves fray, winter feels chronically gray, and the mood is a long swirling plummet.
Maybe this is not your story. Maybe you’re meeting up, dining out, and thriving. Your creativity is off the charts, your skin is glowing, your hair bouncing, and your body is leaner and cleaner than ever.
Good for you. I’m not there and I envy your ease.
We’re in fractured worlds, and I’m among those living with health conditions. We tread lightly and with trepidation, while the rest of the world feels healthy and strong, sure they’ll recover from a health bump in an otherwise smooth road.
Because nearly every topic now divides, I no longer share my worries, details or opinions. I’m trying not to sneer at the unmasked and unconcerned. But it’s hard to hold back the fear and frustration. And really, aren’t we all exhausted?
Among writer-friends, I’m seeing a new sort of writer’s block — a creative numb. Externally, the world swirls in a succession of bad events and information while internally the creative world plods along weary and worn.
I feel like I’m living this poem:
The Well
It's not that the well's run dry.
The walk feels too far. It's uphill
in the snow both ways, and
who has the strength to carry
those dangling buckets balanced
on their shoulders now? I'll stay
on this secondhand chair, wrapped
in my mother's holey shawl.
Make another cup of tea, stay quiet.
Grief sits with me by the fire.
Out the window, tiny birds track
hieroglyphics across the icy ground.
This week our writing group-by-email was prompted to write a list poem. The work trickled in slowly and, well, listless. This poem seemed to capture our collective mood:
Nothing Today
No juncos.
No kudos.
No innuendoes.
No Spaghettios.
No crows.
No jokes.
No hope.
No hoboes.
No heroes.
No romance.
No spotted thrushes.
No applesauce.
No asparagus.
No appurtenances.
No tennis shoes.
No aphorisms.
No witticisms.
No chickadees.
No maladies.
No vitamins.
No robins.
No ravens.
No eagles.
No sea gulls.
No guile.
No homilies.
No similes.
No turns.
No terns.
No adverbs.
No apologies.
No advertisements.
No boots.
No coots.
No comment.
No point.
Tell me: How do you keep the pen moving along the page? (Yes, I still prefer pen and paper). How’s your writing, your head, your heart?
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If you like this blog, subscribe here to get it delivered to your email. And please share on your social network of choice or forward to a friend.
The world turns on words, please read & write.
January 9, 2022
What’s In Your Book Stack?
Is there anything better than a stack of books and a comfy couch (except for maybe a stack of books and a warm beach)?
I’m in deep winter mode — snow, ice, cold — and starting the new year burrowed in fiction, poetry, memoir, self-help, and more. Some of the books were gifted to me and many were gifts to myself. Have a book lingering on your want-to-read list? Go ahead, treat yourself.
Here are a few of my latest favorites:
All the Words by Magda Kapa
Poet and photographer Magda Kapa has created a beautifully designed and stunning “poetic dictionary” comprised of aphorisms, epigrams and short “naked verse.”
Mistake: mostly done again and again until it has a name.
Night: sight to the inside.
Sanity: one bank of the river
[image error]Whereas: Poems by Layli Long Soldier
This poetry collection has earned a long list of awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award — and for good reason. Through a variety of poetic forms and styles, Layli Long Solider confronts government responses, treaties, and apologies to Native American peoples and tribes. With astounding restraint and emotional power, this poet offers song and scream with bolts of essential light.
While we’re just over a week into the new year, this book (published in 2017) is now my favorite poetry collection of 2022.
Small Beauties: Poems by Ann Staley
With six books in just ten years, Oregon poet and teacher Ann Staley is a prolific writer, and a master of small moments. She’s an inspiration, a light, and a friend to all.
What saves us is our love for each other
and the moments we recall
at the end of any ordinary day.
What went well? Maybe this poem.
Your turn: What are you reading in this new year?
