Drew Myron's Blog, page 16

Be Dazzled

Dazzled, by Drew Myron

It’s June. Summer opens and I walk in, triumphant & dazzled.

It’s a wonder, isn’t it? That the world is wide, the heart opens and expands, the sun still shines? Forgive me the Walt Whitman moment; I feel a door of darkness has closed and beyond the threshold life is bright and alive.

It’s the summer season. Bare feet and watermelon heat. Bicycle rides and river swims, my limbs moving and lungs working. Poppies, petunias, tiny wild daisies. No thing unnoticed, or unthanked.

It’s a long dark year and now, suddenly, bright sun and hot days. Excuse the exalt; like weather, my mood won’t last — even now the wind is picking up, fires will start, the virus still boils — I know this, I do. But oh, what a relief, for just a day or two or god-grant-me-a-week, to know delight, to slip into ease.

Picture a sky, a star, a universe of time

I remember how
we would listen
for the almost dark

Night always
soft and vast
a velvet voice
of lingering

By morning
eternity is broken
You wake dazzled

— Drew Myron

The world turns on words, please read & write. 

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Good Books Find You

Lately, I'm interested not just in good books but the finding.

Libraries are closed, friends are far, and buying books can be an expensive habit. Often the best books are by chance, not the ones languishing on my long books-to-read list but the novel abandoned at the airport bar, the poetry tossed aside in the hospital lobby, or the memoir discovered down the block in the little free library with the squeaky hinges and odd assortment.

Like love, good books arrive when you've given up. Across a crowded world, a good book finds you.  

Here are some of my recent keepers:

Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabbie Rivera

How found: Mailed to me by a friend with a note that said, I wish I could send you a library.  

This is my favorite book of the year (so far). In fact, I liked it so much I had to force myself to stop racing through and instead slow down and savor. Smart writing, strong characters, and a fantastic "voice" of growing, yearning, and learning. Set in Portland, the Rose City is a character itself. Love this passage, referring to Powell's Books: 

 “It looked like the Salvation Army of bookstores, and who doesn’t

love a little dig through salvation?”

The Magical Language of Others by E.J. Koh

How found: From the Little Free Library down the street, during a week without internet service when I had run out of books, both digital and print. (Thank you, neighbor!).

This is a beautifully spare memoir written with a powerful level of poetic detachment that provides space to breathe and hold.

"What're we doing? 

"We're arguing?" 

"We're paying attention," Joe said. 

Whenever he spoke, his words were sets of clothes that we tried on for ourselves. Sometimes they fit, and other times they were old and baggy." 

Things I Do At Pennsylvania Rest Stops by Ashly Kim 

How found: Ordered from Rinky Dink Press, a micro-press offering palm-sized books, after watching their zoom poetry readings that felt more like backyard barbecues than stiff online lectures. 

ask strangers where i am and consider

how i got there in the first place.

auto-pilot down the weekend turnpike.

eighty-miles-per-hour-almost-ghost

with the navigation turned off.

— Ashly Kim 

See Also: 

The Golden Age of Diners by Tara Roeder

Roto: A Mex-Tape by Oscar Mancinas

Dialogues with Rising Tides by Kelli Russell Agodon

How found: Purchased at my local bookstore, a place in which I had not lingered (because of pandemic) for over a year.  

Agodon's fourth book is my new favorite. Always a strong writer, this poetry collection sounds the alarm, piercing daily life and gathering us together in the ache.   

Magpies Recognize Themselves In The Mirror

The evening sounds like a murder
of magpies and we're replacing our cabinet knobs
because we can't change the world but we can 
change our hardware. America breaks my heart
some days and some days it breaks itself in two. 
I watched a women having a breakdown 
in the mall today, and when the security guard
tried to help her, what I felt was all of us 
peeking from her purse as she threw it 
across the floor into Forever 21. And yes, 
the walls felt like another way to hold us
and when she finally stopped crying
I heard her say to the fluorescent lighting
Some days the sky is too bright. And like that
we were her flock in our black coats
and white sweaters, some of us reaching 
our wings to her and some of us flying away. 

— Kelli Russell Agodon

Your Turn: What are your favorites lately? How do books find you?

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The world turns on words, please read & write.

Oh, the mother load!

The Mom Spot, we all have one.

It’s a gape, a wound, a wanting. It’s tender or torn, full or faltering, powerful or perilous. The place where a mother is, or was, or should be.

As we approach the occasion that seems to stir sentiment and sadness in equal measure — Mother’s Day — the maternal role is a touchy issue, especially if you’re a daughter. The mother-daughter dynamic is fraught. Something about ties that bind, choke, reflect and reframe.

But, wait, you don’t have mother issues? You live among sunshine and rainbows? Good for you (but I don’t believe it). I love my mother, of course, but motherly love is rarely uncomplicated.

Years ago, in a writing workshop we were assigned a routine writing prompt. I don’t recall the assignment but I remember the results; in a room full of 10 women of various ages and backgrounds, every one of us had written about our mother! The instructor rolled her eyes, sighed, and said, “Oh, the mother load.”

Pity the mothers, their wishes and wounds. Pity the daughters, the deep love and festering frustration. We are born and formed by our mothers — the presence of, the absence of. Even three years after my mother’s death, I’m still weighing who she was and who I am as a result. Every passing year, I see her with fresh eyes (and sometimes with a more generous heart).

The mother-daughter tangle can last a moment, a day, a lifetime. And yet, we love, deeply and fiercely. Still, again, and anyway.

A Few of My Favorite Mom Poems:

When I Am Asked by Lisel Mueller

Just Before Death Comes by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

The Persistence of Scent by Cindy Williams Gutierrez

This Is Not A Small Voice by Sonia Sanchez

Mothers by Nikki Giovanni

Back to Basics: An Updated List

Yes, good books make me jump with joy. You too?

As we wind down to the final days of National Poetry Month, I’m still shouting from the rooftops and blasting your mailbox and screen with poem confetti. You know, of course, that April, not Christmas, is the most wonderful time of the year (less shopping, more reading).

Years ago when a local librarian was celebrating National Poetry Month she asked what books had shaped my writing life (isn’t that great, celebrating poetry as a job? I’m both grateful and jealous). The other day I found my list and was happy to see the choices still hold. Like a good black dress and thank you notes, the classics keep their value.

Today, in encouragement of poem reading, writing & appreciating, let’s revisit (with a few updates):

Books That Shaped My Poetry Life

1.
Complete Poems by e.e. cummings

This lower-case poet showed me what language could do, what a poem could be.

love is more thicker than forget

more thinner than recall

more seldom than a wave is wet

more frequent than to fail 

2.
The Dream of a Common Language by Adrienne Rich

With a close command of language and line, Rich masterfully unspools story, feeling, fact.

A conversation begins
with a lie. And each

speaker of the so-called common language feels
the ice-floe split, the drift apart

3.
Live or Die by Anne Sexton
Through Sexton I realized sadness can be full of velocity and ferocity.

But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools. 
The never ask why build.

4.
What Narcissism Means to Me by Tony Hoagland
This book made me realize that a poem could be funny, witty, sarcastic, sad, tell a story, and all at once!

The sparrows are a kind of people
Who lost a war a thousand years ago;
As punishment all their color was taken away. 

5.
The Way It Is by William Stafford
A poet of the everyday and a model of productivity, Stafford wrote over 50 books — and his first was not published until age 46!

What can anyone give you greater than now, 
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

6.
The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson
Carson lifts lines from Keats and blends them with her own poem-prose mix. Is it a very long poem, or a short story? She calls it “a fictional essay.” I call it brilliant. 

A wound gives off its own light
surgeons say.
If all the lamps in the house were turned out
you could dress this wound
by what shines from it.

7.
The Book of Questions by Pablo Neruda
Yes, poems can be silly, surreal, and stirring.

And what is the name of the month
that falls between December and January?

Why didn’t they give us longer
months that last all year?

Books That Are Not Poetry But Are Poetic:

8.
Dear Diego by Elena Poniatowska
A delicate story of art and unrequited love, told through letters.

9.
Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton
An intimate diary of a year in the life of a creative woman

And it occurs to me that there is a proper balance between not asking enough of oneself and asking or expecting too much. It may be that I set my sights too high and so repeatedly end the day in depression. Not easy to find the balance, for if one does not have wild dreams of achievement there is no spur even to get the dishes washed. One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.

10.
The Lover by Marguerite Duras
Tight, lyrical prose turns this intimate story about sexual awakening into a poetic, searing novel. 

Very early in my life it was too late.

11.
Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott
Humor, heart, wit — Lamott has all the essentials. 

Grief, as I read somewhere once, is a lazy Susan. One day it is heavy and underwater, and the next day it spins and stops at loud and rageful, and the next day at wounded keening, and the next day numbness, silence.

12.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
The novel is both long poem and full sigh. Beautiful and unusual, line after beautiful line.

In Vietnamese, the word for missing someone and remembering them is the same: nhớ. Sometimes, when you ask me over the phone, Con nhớ mẹ không? I flinch, thinking you meant, Do you remember me? I miss you more than I remember you.

My Favorite Writing Resource Books:

13.
Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg
It’s 30 years since I first read this gem and it is the foundation of everything I write.

Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.

14.
poemcrazy by Susan Wooldridge
Beyond prompts, this book offers enthusiasm that moves me to write.

Poems arrive. They hide in feelings and images, in weeds and delivery vans, daring us to notice and give them form with our words. They take us to an invisible world where light and dark, inside and outside meet.

15.
The Art of Noticing by Rob Walker
Great ideas packed in this gem, reminding us that every day offers writing inspiration.

Only 15? Yes, okay, my private list is longer but I don’t want to test your patience. I want you to read — and write!

What’s on your list?

It's Not Over (and other sorrows)

Erased, by Drew Myron

It’s not over. The pandemic rages on. Science, news, first-person accounts . . . it’s so clear the virus is still full of speed. So why do I feel I’m alone in living bad news?

Because it is spring, and we stretch long and healthy beneath a healing sun.

Because we are head-back laughing, drinking in normal, trying to make our mouths move with ease.

Because most of us are healthy and cannot imagine frail bodies, faulty lungs, breathlessness. But I do. Don’t you?

In the meantime, I’m trying for happy. I plant flowers and picnic on the patio. I’m writing but every line is sad and beyond my control. Is this truth or habit? Yes, this song is old, the refrain tired.

Yet, and still  — we’re in National Poetry Month! Much to my surprise, I’m finding pleasure in poetry readings by Zoom. (Shout out to RinkyDink Press and Oregon Poetry Association). And I’m reading and listening to new-to-me poets, and savoring this poem by Lee Herrick, and this poem by Tina Cane.

As always, and again, I’m reading and writing through. How about you?

Erased

Days vanished
without wonder.
Hope seemed a
very long desert.

The worst of it
is mourning for
cheerful decency.

- Drew Myron

Fast Five with January Gill O'Neil

"Nothing fulfills me more than putting pen to paper.”

— January Gill O’Neil

Welcome to Fast Five, in which I ask my favorite writers five questions as a way to open the door to know more.

January Gill O’Neil is the author of three poetry books and is an associate professor of English at Salem State University. She was the 2019-2020 Grisham Writer in Residence at University of Mississippi and has earned fellowships from Cave Canem, and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. She serves on the boards of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), and Montserrat College of Art. January lives in Massachusetts with her two children.

1. 
Why write?

I can’t imagine not writing. Recently, I was asked what are my hobbies, and while I think of writing and, specifically, poetry as a vocation, I couldn’t come up with any. Not really. I’ve tried baking and walking and birding. And while I like all of those activities, nothing fulfills me more than sitting down and putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). 

[ Read In The Company Of Women here]

2.
What do you enjoy about writing and teaching?

Long ago, I decided that writing and family (in that order) would be at the center of my life. So the work I do is an extension of that. To talk about poetry for a living to students, to volunteer my time in the arts community, to mentor other writers — all of that fuels my writing. I may be one of the few who enjoys the business of poetry. 

The last few years have been about navigating my kids through their teenage years, which has been a joy and a pain. More joy than pain, however! It’s bittersweet to think that I am raising my kids to not need me. But I’m very proud of son Alex, 17, and daughter Ella, 15. They are finding their way in this world and I look forward to whatever their futures bring. 

As with many families, we’ve spent a lot of time together during the pandemic. In 2019-2020, we lived in Mississippi while I was on fellowship at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. It was an eye-opening experience, one that still influences our lives in Massachusetts today. 

[ Read On Being Told I Look Like FLOTUS here ]

3. 
Which non-literary piece of culture — film, tv show, painting, song — has influenced you?

Since my time in Mississippi, I have spent a great deal of time learning about the landscape, culture, legacy of slavery in the Deep South. Much of my most recent work has been about Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy who was brutally beaten, lynched, and killed in 1955. His story grows with relevancy with each year. Till’s story is more relevant than ever before, and I believe the work of advancing racial equity through poetry and the arts is urgent and necessary.

I want to create environments of inclusion and equity on the page, in the arts, and in my local community. 

[Musically] David Byrne’s American Utopia got me through the uncertainty of 2020. Now I’m listening to Love & Hate by Michael Kiwanuka, and Cypress Grove by Jimmy “Duck” Holmes.   

4. 
Is there a book you wish you had written?

I don’t really think of books like that. I’m happy those great works are in the world. That being said, we need to decolonize the Canon.

[Note: What does this mean? Start here.]

5.
I'm a word collector — what are your favorite words? 

Let’s see . . . dark, circle, serendipity, pleasure. 

Also, Yo! and OK.  

Notes & Notables

Blessing — an erasure poem by Drew Myron

Hello Reader,

It’s time for a quick spring clean with a few notes:

1. Fun Fact
When you subscribe to this blog, each post is delivered directly to your email. Go here.

2. Find Me
Already a subscriber? Great, and thank you. I've recently changed my email service and some longtime readers may find me in the Junk drawer (the nerve!). Please check your Spam folder and set me free!

If you're still not getting my emails, please send me note and we'll figure it out. Email me: dcm@drewmyron.com

3. Ask More
”Notice when you are about to make a judgment — and ask a question instead.”

I found this nuggest of wisdom in The Art of Noticing newsletter. Like most good advice, this sounds simple but it takes work. But it’s work that is worth the effort.

4. Allow Confusion
Oh Anna, yes: 

"I’ve learned to value failed conversations, missed connections, confusions,” writes Anna Kamienska. “What remains is what’s unsaid, what’s underneath. Understanding on another level of being."

5. Mask More
I’m such a broken record, I’ve worn out my voice. Still, it must be said: the pandemic is not over.

After an encouraging lull, cases of covid are up 10 percent this week, with both hospitalizations and deaths increasing as well.

Please, friends, keep wearing your mask, washing your hands, and keeping your distance. We’re close to the end but it’s too soon to travel, to throw parties, to hug our friends. Almost, almost, not yet.

6. Thank You
Have I mentioned how much I appreciate your time & attention? I do! It brings me great joy to know you are out there in your world while I’m in here in my world, and together we are reading, writing & nodding along.

With appreciation,

Drew

 

Try This: Write A Postcard

Postcard

Lately, I am capable only of small things.

Is it enough
to feel the heart swimming?

Jim is fine. Our first
garden is thick with spinach
and white radish. Strangely,
it is summer

but also winter and fall.

In response to your asking:
I fill the hours
then lick them shut.

Today, not a single word, but the birds
quietly nodding
as if someone had suggested
moving on.

What is that perfect thing
some one who once believed in god said?

Please don’t misunderstand:
We still suffer, but we are
happy.

‑ Olena Kalytiak Davis

The old poems hold power. Postcard appears in And Her Soul Out of Nothing a book published in 1997 and one that I return to repeatedly and appreciate more with each reading.

How timely this poem is, still and again. At the pandemic’s one year mark, I feel small still, again. And lately every action takes great effort.

The antidote? I’m writing through. You, too?

Yes? — good, let’s try something new.

No? — that’s okay, let’s use our smallness as a start.

Try This: Write a Postcard
A postcard is an ideal tool because the space is small and the pressure low. You can write a brief and breezy message, a short sassy statement, a quick observation, a poetic plea. There are no rules and you can’t mess up. The best part? Penning a postcard is a simple act that moves the hand and stirs thoughts, and together the action energizes your writing mind.

Step 1
Pick a postcard — find them at the grocery store, on amazon, thrift shops, in the back of your junk drawer. Or make your own, which is fun for you and a treat for the recipient who gets a handwritten note + homemade art!

Step 2
Write a postcard to anyone — a friend or family member, your younger self, your older self, a stranger, a lover, the mailman, your dog . . .

Need a jumpstart? Lift a line from Postcard and keep going:*:

I am capable only of small things

I fill the hours then lick them shut.

Step 3
Mail the card — or don’t. You get to choose.

* When lifting, always provide attribution or place quotation marks around the line to indicate it is not yours. Even better, follow-up your postcard with a letter that includes the full poem (Or, even more grand, purchase the book for your postcard friend).

Keep Writing!

Try This: I Remember

Try This: Word Catching

Try This: Wild Cards

Try This: Make a Scramble

Stationery

The world is full of paper.
Write to me.

— Agha Shahid Ali

One Small Thing

How do you wear your dream? — a cut-up poem by drew myron

Write every day.

Write when you want.

Write when you have something to say.

Write when you don’t.

All these rules and guidelines — who knows what works?

Just as we change with age and experience, surely our creative needs change, too. For a year now, I’ve urged you (and really, myself) to make something, anything. Your bed, coffee, a story, a poem, a painting, a doodle, a grocery list . . .

Make something is my prescription for despair, protection against dread, companion in loneliness. In making something, I’m engaging mind and mood. Without judgement or fix, without fuss. Just make and do. Stay active and awake.

I don’t write poetry when I wish, says Anna Kamienska, I write when I can’t, when my larynx is flooded and my throat is shut.

It’s been a difficult year. And while the days ahead offer hope, the light is faint and my fatigue still heavy. I’m making something every day, but some days this means I make the bed, I make coffee, I make do. And I often, as my mother would say, fake it ‘til I make it.

Today my greatest accomplishment was pulling weeds. Despite my disdain for yard work, this one small act was surprisingly satisfying. I made an improvement. The morning air was crisp, the sun warm, and the small effort pushed away the throb of worries.

I’ve been writing, too, but I’m out of fresh words and out of sync. I’m tired of myself and tired of trying, and so the other day I turned my junk mail into a poem. Cut, cut, snip, snip, insta-poem. And this, too, was surprisingly satisfying. And a good reminder that poems and paintings and stories, are hiding, patiently waiting for us to wake up and make ‘em.

Distractions & Attractions

Oh, the restless mind! For months my focus has darted and dived — yours too? — but I recently stumbled across these excellent distractions and attractions. As usual, books and film lift & move me.

BOOKS:

The Hare by Melanie Finn
A taut and intoxicating tale of bad decisions and precarious moments that make a life, with a claustrophobic Joyce Carol Oates-esque feel.

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
A slow and gentle novel with poignant beauty. (Starts slow — stick with it!) 

Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine
This dense and stirring collection of conversational essays, fragments, poems and images (along with a running litany of fact-checked notes and comments) is a deep dive into the racism, privilege, and prejudice that beats beneath every surface. 

See also: Citizen: An American Lyric and Don't Let Me Be Lonely.

MOVIES / TELEVISION:

Lupin
A French mystery mind-twister, with sharp writing and quick action. The first season, available on Netflix, consists of 10 episodes. A second season is in the works.

Call My Agent!
In this rompy French series (I’ve listed two great French show, by pure coincidence), Parisian talent agents struggle to keep their famous clients happy and their business afloat. Now in its fourth and final season, this drama-comedy is fun relief.  

Imposters
A mad-dash addictive series with millenial humor, mystery & twists. Originally on Bravo, now on Netflix. 

Books, films, poems, art — what’s moving you?