Drew Myron's Blog, page 15

Back to School: Writing Books

In this September glow I get that back-to-school feeling that makes me want to grow.

I’m hungry to write and stretch. And I’m reaching for my favorite books, those dog-eared, post-it noted classics that always get me revved up & writing.

Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life With Words
by Susan Wooldridge

Full of joy and encouragement, this lovable book reminds me that good writing is rooted in fun.

“It’s impossible to teach anyone to write a poem. But we can set up circumstances in which poems are likely to happen. We can create a field in and around us that’s fertile territory for poem. Playing with words, we can get to the place where poems come from.”

The Writer’s Portable Mentor
by Priscilla Long

I’ve had this book for 10 years and still haven’t reached the end. It’s a dense manual for advanced writers dedicated to improving their craft. While geared primarily to fiction writers, I’m a firm believer that exercising the writing muscle is a good workout for writers of all forms. This book’s guidance is valuable across genres, and I enjoy dipping in and out.

Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
by Mary Ruefle

Wise and wry, Mary Ruefle is poet, guide, and smart-sharp professor in the din of a cocktail party lobbing sly observations:

“There is a world that poets cannot seem to enter. It is the world everyone else lives in. And the only thing poets seem to have in common is their yearning to enter this world.”

and this:

“The greatest lesson in writing I ever had was given to me in an art class. The drawing instructor took a sheet of paper and held up a pencil. She very lightly put the pencil on the piece of paper and applied a little pressure; by bringing her hand a little in one direction, she left a mark upon the paper. ‘That’s all there is to it,’ she said, ‘but it’s a miracle. Once there was nothing, and now there’s a mark.’ ”

Tell me: What gets you revved up to write?

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The world turns on words, please read, write & share.

Dear,

1.
It took just one letter to hook me on a lifelong appreciation of correspondence.

At six years old, I wrote my first letter. My grandparents had given a gift and my mother insisted I write a thank you note. Her method was simple: I told her what I wanted to write, she wrote the words, then I copied her words to compose my own letter.

With each letter received, I eagerly wrote back. Back and forth. Soon, I was writing on my own. For over 30 years, my grandma and I exchanged letters.

Do other mothers do this? It seems a brilliant way to bring personal expression to life, while also instilling a love of writing. Decades letter, writing and receiving letters is among my favorite things (thanks Mom).

2.
Letter

Today I did almost nothing.
Read a little, tried to write a sentence
to make another sentence seem necessary.

I wasn't unhappy. Everything
I could will myself to do I'd done,
so I said I'd done enough.

Now I'm looking out my window:
white pine, ash, a single birch,
the leanings and crossings

of branches. And then the sky:
pale, undecided. Years ago
you wrote to me about a matter

that worried you, and you said
at the end, "That's probably the best,
and most true, way to think about it."

I kept your sentence in my notebook.
I liked its shape. I admired the way,
young as you were, you could feel

one kind of thinking
adjusting into another, one truth
becoming a better truth.

Now you're far off, and alone, and I
have no advice you haven't already
given yourself. What can I tell you?

That I'm here? That today, when I saw
how tenderly the light was moving
among those trees, I thought of you?

—Lawrence Raab

3.
Does anyone write letters anymore?

I get a few, on occasion. I savor the delivery. How a letter arrives unexpectedly, with a messy scrawl or loopy letters. How a hand on paper can make a mark on the heart, even before the envelope is broken. How the greeting sets a tone, ushers me in or holds me back.

“To say what letters contain is impossible,” writes Anne Carson in The Beauty of the Husband. “In a letter both reader and writer discover an ideal image of themselves, short blinding passages are all it takes.”

I have written letters laying bare all I am or am not, all I wish to be. And I have felt an exhilarated exhaustion.

4.
In a letter we are hungry for connection, for compassion. Are you, too, restless, reaching for a clarity, seeking to both know another and understand yourself? And really, is it not the same quest?

5.
“We’re all lonely for something we don’t know we’re lonely for,” said David Foster Wallace in This Is Water, a commencement speech. “How else to explain the curious feeling that goes around feeling like missing somebody we’ve never even met?”

Yes, yes, more than just a form of communication, a letter is bridge.

A letter is a call across miles, a plea for presence.

6.
Elegy for the Personal Letter

I miss the rumpled corners of correspondence,
the ink blots and crossouts that show
someone lives on the other end, a person
whose hands make errors, leave traces.
I miss fine stationary, its raised elegant
lettering prominent on creamy shades of ivory
or pearl grey. I even miss hasty notes
dashed off on notebook paper, edges
ragged as their scribbled messages—
can't much write now—thinking of you.
When letters come now, they are formatted
by some distant computer, addressed
to Occupant or To the family living at—
meager greetings at best,
salutations made by committee.
Among the glossy catalogs
and one time only offers
the bills and invoices,
letters arrive so rarely now that I drop
all other mail to the floor when
an envelope arrives and the handwriting
is actual handwriting, the return address
somewhere I can locate on any map.
So seldom is it that letters come
That I stop everything else
to identify the scrawl that has come this far—
the twist and the whirl of the letters,
the loops of the numerals. I open
those envelopes first, forgetting
the claim of any other mail,
hoping for news I could not read
in any other way but this.

—  Allison Joseph

7.
Today a six-year old writes me a letter, full of loops and curves, butterflies and hearts. Did her mother help her form the words, sound out each spelling? Did she labor and love? In the receiving, I am both excited child and calm adult, both writer and reader. I am hopeful and heartened.

A few words on paper, that’s all it takes.

Thankful Thursday (on Tuesday): You

Sometimes you have to hear it.

The way words shine with sound. The way a poem calls you in, holds you close, moves and shapes before letting you go.

Hearing this poem changed my day (and maybe me).

Listen here.
(No, really, it’s worth the effort).

You Are Who I Love
by Aracelis Girmay

You, selling roses out of a silver grocery cart

You, in the park, feeding the pigeons
You cheering for the bees

You with cats in your voice in the morning, feeding cats

You protecting the river You are who I love
delivering babies, nursing the sick

You with henna on your feet and a gold star in your nose

You taking your medicine, reading the magazines

You looking into the faces of young people as they pass, smiling and saying, Alright! which, they know it, means I see you, Family. I love you. Keep on.

You dancing in the kitchen, on the sidewalk, in the subway waiting for the train because Stevie Wonder, Héctor Lavoe, La Lupe

You stirring the pot of beans, you, washing your father’s feet

You are who I love, you
reciting Darwish, then June

Feeding your heart, teaching your parents how to do The Dougie, counting to 10, reading your patients’ charts

You are who I love, changing policies, standing in line for water, stocking the food pantries, making a meal

You are who I love, writing letters, calling the senators, you who, with the seconds of your body (with your time here), arrive on buses, on trains, in cars, by foot to stand in the January streets against the cool and brutal offices, saying: YOUR CRUELTY DOES NOT SPEAK FOR ME

You are who I love, you struggling to see

You struggling to love or find a question

You better than me, you kinder and so blistering with anger, you are who I love, standing in the wind, salvaging the umbrellas, graduating from school, wearing holes in your shoes

You are who I love
weeping or touching the faces of the weeping

You, Violeta Parra, grateful for the alphabet, for sound, singing toward us in the dream

You carrying your brother home
You noticing the butterflies
Sharing your water, sharing your potatoes and greens

You who did and did not survive
You who cleaned the kitchens
You who built the railroad tracks and roads
You who replanted the trees, listening to the work of squirrels and birds, you are who I love
You whose blood was taken, whose hands and lives were taken, with or without your saying
Yes, I mean to give. You are who I love.

You who the borders crossed
You whose fires
You decent with rage, so in love with the earth
You writing poems alongside children

You cactus, water, sparrow, crow You, my elder
You are who I love,
summoning the courage, making the cobbler,

getting the blood drawn, sharing the difficult news, you always planting the marigolds, learning to walk wherever you are, learning to read wherever you are, you baking the bread, you come to me in dreams, you kissing the faces of your dead wherever you are, speaking to your children in your mother’s languages, tootsing the birds

You are who I love, behind the library desk, leaving who might kill you, crying with the love songs, polishing your shoes, lighting the candles, getting through the first day despite the whisperers sniping fail fail fail

You are who I love, you who beat and did not beat the odds, you who knows that any good thing you have is the result of someone else’s sacrifice, work, you who fights for reparations

You are who I love, you who stands at the courthouse with the sign that reads NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE

You are who I love, singing Leonard Cohen to the snow, you with glitter on your face, wearing a kilt and violet lipstick

You are who I love, sighing in your sleep

You, playing drums in the procession, you feeding the chickens and humming as you hem the skirt, you sharpening the pencil, you writing the poem about the loneliness of the astronaut

You wanting to listen, you trying to be so still

You are who I love, mothering the dogs, standing with horses

You in brightness and in darkness, throwing your head back as you laugh, kissing your hand

You carrying the berbere from the mill, and the jug of oil pressed from the olives of the trees you belong to

You studying stars, you are who I love
braiding your child’s hair

You are who I love, crossing the desert and trying to cross the desert

You are who I love, working the shifts to buy books, rice, tomatoes,

bathing your children as you listen to the lecture, heating the kitchen with the oven, up early, up late

You are who I love, learning English, learning Spanish, drawing flowers on your hand with a ballpoint pen, taking the bus home

You are who I love, speaking plainly about your pain, sucking your teeth at the airport terminal television every time the politicians say something that offends your sense of decency, of thought, which is often

You are who I love, throwing your hands up in agony or disbelief, shaking your head, arguing back, out loud or inside of yourself, holding close your incredulity which, yes, too, I love I love

your working heart, how each of its gestures, tiny or big, stand beside my own agony, building a forest there

How “Fuck you” becomes a love song

You are who I love, carrying the signs, packing the lunches, with the rain on your face

You at the edges and shores, in the rooms of quiet, in the rooms of shouting, in the airport terminal, at the bus depot saying “No!” and each of us looking out from the gorgeous unlikelihood of our lives at all, finding ourselves here, witnesses to each other’s tenderness, which, this moment, is fury, is rage, which, this moment, is another way of saying: You are who I love You are who I love You and you and you are who

* This poem appeared on The Slow Down, offering audio poems read by Tracy K. Smith, who served as U.S. Poet Laureate, 2017 - 2019. Sadly, this thoughtful poetry podcast no longer runs.

It’s Thankful Thursday (on Tuesday, because gratitude holds no schedule), a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things and more.

On this Thankful Thursday, I am grateful for this poem, this poet, and the podcast that lifted the words off the page and into my heart.

What are you thankful for today?

On Sunday: In pain, rage and ravages

The angel lives in pain, an erasure collage by Drew Myron

The angel lives in

pain, rage

and ravages

and by choosing

hope and humanity

we emerge from

crisis.

The world turns on creative expression. Please read, write & make.

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The bad do not win

Dear You,

Everything now takes extra effort.

The hits keep coming: pandemic, heat wave, fires, drought, and so many people struggling to survive illness and death. A pressing fatigue makes it difficult to muster energy for the next chore, the next day, the next crisis.

I wish for languor, to unwind the mind and heart with thought and pause. Praise is what I first typed, on accident — or maybe purpose — because isn't pause a slow sort of praise?

We are sticking close to home. Each step I take is small and cautious. The pandemic, combined with a general increase in vitriol, has turned me inward even more. Maybe what I'm feeling is age and defeat. While I haven't given up, I do at times feel resigned, and, really, that is an awful sort of sadness.

I left my job at the nursing home. It's a good decision, but one I struggled for months to make. I loved the work and the residents but I have spent nearly my entire career as a self-employed self-starter and it was difficult to change a system that is, in essence, an institution. It’s a tough time to work in healthcare. Yes, I'm sad and heavy hearted. But it was an excellent part of life that stretched and filled me beyond expectation, and I'm grateful for the good long run.  

All these challenges have offered a new view. All these years, was I hopeful or just naive? I see now that one person may make a difference, but that difference may be small, or short-lived, or too little among the bigger machine of life.

I do wonder if heavyheartedness – surely this is a technical term — is my default setting. I have periods of lifting and short moments of ease, but maybe this is the core of me. I know this street, these turns, I know the route to keep me moving. Even if  I never get home, I'll keep driving. And is that such a bad thing — to know your limits, your self? 

But enough about me.

What I really want to know is, how is your heart? Is it small and clenched, or full and hopeful? Please, tell me where your mind wanders, how your heart stretches. Like a plant reaching for sun, I want to know what light you find. 

With love,
Drew

The Artist in Novels

I love this passage (and the entire novel):

“What I feel is the sense of futility that emerges when the past is laid side by side with the present, like two photographs taken many years apart, when it become clear that there is no more time. . .

I feel something beginning to shift in me, and I am not sure I want it to; it is a reevaluation, a tiny release of the grip I have held on anger and am struggling to maintain against the frail specters I saw tonight.”

 — The Strays, a novel by Emily Bitto

For years I’ve gravitated to novels with art themes. You too? A few favorites come to mind, and I’m always on the hunt for more:

The Great Man by Kate Christensen

The Italian Teacher by Tom Rachman

Take Me Apart by Sara Sligar

The Hare by Melanie Finn

The Goldfinch by Donna Tart

I need more art fiction in my life. Tell me, what art-themed novels have you loved?

I Am Not Weeping

Dear You,*

I am not weeping alone wishing more from above.

I am making a list of compelling words: frowsy, fortitude, dogged, pluck, cheeky . . .

I am absorbing the latest addition to my ‘best horoscopes’ collection:

Ask yourself: "What more can I accept here?" A power surge comes from letting go of that energy drain known as resistance.

I am re-appreciating the crystalline quality of Bluets by Maggie Nelson:

Mostly I have felt myself becoming a servant of sadness. I am still looking for the beauty in that.

I am discarding old journals written by younger me. Life is very much write & repeat. Then, again and still, I worried about my writing, my body, my purpose and place. I was then, and often now, both fevered and frail.

I am struck by a passage in This Is Not For You: An Activist's Journey of Resistance and Resilience by Portland, Oregon black activist Richard Brown:

Every day someone would ask how I kept doing the work without burning out. And I'd tell them it was easy: I only did the things for as long as I wanted to. As long as I was feeling useful and hopeful, I'd keep going, but as soon as something started to feel like a battle I know I wasn't going to win? I'd stop, and I'd move on. 

I am thinking that resistance and resilience is the theme of our time. Not the grit of gripping tight, but the daily dull of keeping on.

But sometimes standing still is also life.

                                                   —  John Ashbery

Dear You and You and You,
I am not weeping, or wishing, or alone.
I am standing still, holding on.

* Read: Dear Mr You by Mary-Louise Parker.

* * *

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The world turns on words, please read & write.

Three Small Starts

Thank you, readers, writers, friends.

I was stuck, and a few small nudges have moved me.

1.
Don’t start with the big idea, says Naomi Shihab Nye. Start with a phrase, a line, a quote. Questions are very helpful. Begin with a few you’re carrying right now.

2.
Let’s consider this visual gem from poet-artist Mark Thalman:

Painters paint over what they don't like on the canvas. Sometimes the paint builds up so much, it has to be sanded down for the next revision. An artist chipping away has a block of stone to work with. Give yourself a block of words, and chip away what you don't need.

3.
Every morning for 14 years, Dave Bonta writes a 140-character observation.

I love this practice because observing leads to gratitude. And gratitude leads to appreciation. And appreciation creates joy. I want more joy in my days — and more writing — and a simple observation is the bite-size approach I need right now (and write now).

Instead of a character count, I’m writing three lines a day. If I write more, good. If not, that’s okay, too. This is a no-pressure assignment.

This week:

Morning winds force the day into

a rush of hurry, worry, wait.

*

Walking past trees laden with fruit,

you pluck a small plum and shine

with summer’s sweetness and ease.

*

I was in love with distance, with what wasn't there,

like wanting to know the exact book that would open 

to the telling page.

*

Through meadow, brook and bear grass fields.

Over talus and scrabble and scree. Oh, this beautiful burn

of legs stretching, lungs pumping, joy bubbling.

Is this happiness?

* * *

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The world turns on words, please read & write. 

Thudding Through

I’m stuck. Dried up, dulled down, depleted. Thudding through creativity’s long drought.

Do you know this state, and how do you get through?

A Note on What Not To Do: A few years ago, during an especially deep well of sadness, a “friend” offered (unsolicited) advice: Find your joy!

I gave a tight smile, snarled inside, and scratched her off my list. Because when you’re deep in the well, pushing a peppy platitude is just another punch to the gut. But I digress. Or do I? A deep sadness, after all, creeps into the mind in the same way a creative block bars the doors of expression. And because they share so many traits, perhaps the remedy is the same: Be gentle, be patient, move your body, and kick the inner critic to the curb.

I like this advice: keep trying.

Each time I write, each time the authentic words break through, I am changed. The older order that I was collapses and dies. I lose control. I do not know exactly what words will appear on the page. I follow language. I follow the sound of words, and I am surprised and transformed by what I record.

— Susan Griffin, from Thoughts on Writing: A Diary, an essay in The Writer on Her Work.

When I’m feeling down and stuck and creativity feels in a rut, I need encouragement and tricks. What gets you going, hand moving, words flowing?

Here’s a favorite writing prompt that I’ve been leaning on lately:

Lift A Line

Getting into the music and pace of a poem you like can help stir your own ideas and leaps of possibility. This exercise is borrowing a line, but also borrowing a rhythm and confidence that nudges you forward in a reminder of your own creative power.

1. Read a poem.
2. Borrow a passage or line as a launch to your own poem.
3. Write. Don’t think, just keep writing.
4. Give attribution to the line.

My poem above borrows the line — it has saved my life — from Mary Oliver’s poem, Loneliness, from Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver.

Your turn: Pick a poem, lift a line, write on!

More Writing Prompts:
Try This: Word Catching
Try This: Where I’m From
Try This: Make A Scramble
Try This: You Know the Gnaw

•••

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The world turns on words, please read & write. 

Days Vanished

There’s not a lot of “good” to come from the pandemic but I can offer one bright spot: art.

Biennial of the Americas has curated the Covid-19 Memorial Virtual Exhibition and I’m happy to share that Days Vanished, an animated poem created with Tracy Weil, is among the Top 200 featured works.

It’s a beautiful show featuring artwork from all over the globe — and you can take part, too!

1.
Go here to view our video poem.

2.
Memorize this art tile image:

3.
View the exhibition here, find our tile, and vote for us.

You can vote once daily through July 18, 2021. The artist with the most votes receives a small cash prize and the happiness of creative affirmation.

_____

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