Drew Myron's Blog, page 21

In Restlessness & Rush

Dear D, 

My mind is skittish, racing from one unfinished idea to the next. Unsettled, flighty, fractured. 

It's not that I don't have Things To Do. Even in this uncertainty, there are things to make, produce, achieve. As always, structure and order get me through, but when endlessness is at the top of every day what does one do? 

I can't stop seeking the last iteration, of every news story, email, and social media post. I am  searching, scrolling, seeking: what happened? what happened?  

I am hungry to know, but dulled with the knowing.  

___

Good grief, why is everyone Zooming? 

For years I've lived away from the people I most know and love, and carried each one in letters and my heart — letters, that beautiful and enigmatic exchange. I don't need to see you, especially in bad lighting and distorted angles. Let’s keep those distortions hidden, private, perfectly intact.  

___

 The other day I laughed, hard and unexpected.  

As good laughs tend to go, this one was brought on by nothing especially funny. One of those throw-away remarks that hit at just the right time and right place so that the laugh travels through the body and fills the room with relief. 

___

I'm writing more than ever. It's a welcome compulsion, this drive to record, though I imagine the poems are mostly process. 

Purists insist poetry is not therapy. They get huffy, as if insulted to both write and feel. Yes, poetry is discipline, study and craft, but it's also therapeutic in the way that a walk restores physical and emotional health.  

Do we have to argue everything? 

Anyway, I'm writing a lot, mostly pandemic poems. They likely won't hold up over time. In three months, six months, a year . . . when we have put the pandemic on a shelf and looked away (as we tend to do), we'll not want to revisit these difficult days.  

And yet, there is a restlessness and a rush, a desire to notice and note. In all this, writing is lifting me up and carrying me through.

Well, writing, tortilla chips — and you.

With love,
Drew

 

Postscript:

• An excellent book of letters is Dear Mr. You by Mary-Louise Parker.

• Letters have souls, is not from the Hints from Heloise homemaker but rather the French love-torn nun.

• An anonymous writer keeps a beautiful blog of letters, here.

• Are you writing through this, too? Write to me.

 

Write Through This

Doctors Say, by Drew Myron

Oh, these heavy days.

Daily death counts. Isolation. Vigilance against every cough, sneeze, touch. And today, John Prine died.

The gloom hangs. I don’t need to tell you, of course. We’re all in this. Together, apart, staying home, hanging on.

And yet, I can’t stop telling. It’s both bliss and grief, this rush of words. Balm and barricade. And I’m not alone (well, I am, but y’know, not lonely). Writers are rising up and writing through.

Here a few of my latest favorites:

• Sarah Sloat has built a ship of solitude.

• Instagram, the sorta less evil social media site, offers a trove of pretty pictures and unobtainable aspirations and it’s a great forum for poets.

• Artist Jason Kartez is on Instagram, sharing a compelling account of working at a Los Angeles homeless shelter during the pandemic. The bite-size from-the-field missives are made more powerful with his simple and stark handwritten descriptions.

• Kelli Agodon and Melissa Studdard are collaborating on pandemic poems that you can find on Instagram at #dailywave.

• Rob Walker produces The Art of Noticing, an excellent weekly newsletter — free — packed with suggestions and inspiration “for building your attention muscles.” And, really, isn’t noticing the top requirement for our job as writers? I mean, other than curiosity and coffee? Sign up here.

• And lastly, to celebrate National Poetry Month, I’ll leave you with this gem:

Bliss and Grief

No one

is here

right now.

— Marie Ponsot

Thankful Thursday: Because, Despite, Still

Resolutions for the Day, an erasure poem by Drew Myron.

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 peace and joy.

On this Thankful Thursday, I am grateful for postal workers, books, magazines, movies, scientists, food banks, sunshine, that one magnolia tree in full and glorious bloom, wine, sunshine, strong legs, strong arms, naps, email, bike rides, my husband’s shoulders, empathy, grocery store workers, sleep, tortilla chips, apples, a good cry, gin, sunshine, walking, quiet, my journal, the dog that stopped barking, the neighbor who waves, youtube, text messages from faraway friends, family, volunteers, work, genuine smiles, fried chicken, health insurance, good cheer, poems, poets, social media, journalists, online newspapers that don’t charge, news worth paying for, doctors, nurses, nursing assistants, kitchen crews, people who clean, hairdressers who help you believe you’re a natural blonde, artists, musicians, writers, vision, hope, my lungs, my lungs, my lungs.

What are you thankful for today?

Five Good Books + suggestions

Always and again, books come to the rescue and reading is getting me through. In these trying days, reading is comfort and companion.

And because the slog* has lifted, I’m (finally!) enjoying a rush of really good books.

Here are a few of my recent favorites:

Say Say Say
by Lila Savage

A beautiful and evocative novel on the largely unexplored topic of caregivers.

Love this line:

For a moment, she would be fully present in this sadness, porous in her empathy. It was almost unbearable, but at the same time, it seemed like a gift, to feel so much.

Brontosaurus
by Leanne Grabel

Subtitled as a “memoir of a sex life,” this straightforward book takes on rape, telling the story and holding the fallout with clarity, heart, and humor.

If you like this, try:

• Telling: A Memoir of Rape and Recovery by Patricia Weaver Francisco

• Speak, a novel by Laurie Halse Anderson

• Bastard Out of Carolina, a novel by Dorothy Allison

Uncanny Valley
by Anna Wiener

A surprisingly gripping page-turner of a memoir about working in Silicon Valley. With an outsider perspective, Wiener is an excellent writer producing page after page of killer lines, like these:

He wore jeans so tight I felt as if I already knew him.

. . . the patron saint of mislaid sympathies.

He seemed like someone who would have opinions about fonts.

What was it like to be fun, I wondered — what was it like to feel you’d earned this?

If you like this, try:

• Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble by Dan Lyons

Writers & Lovers
by Lily King

A tale of small triumphs for an aspriring writer. This novel will likely appeal to a unique niche of women-writers-who-waitress-while-waiting-for-life-to-make-sense (yes, I saw myself in nearly every page).

Love this line:

I don’t write because I think I have something to say. I write because if I don’t, everything feels even worse.

If you like this, try:

• Father of the Rain, a novel by Lily King

• The Anthologist, a novel by Nicholson Baker

• Bird by Bird, a memoir-guidebook by Anne Lamott

My Dark Vanessa
by Kate Elizabeth Russell

This sometimes claustrophobic novel is dark, disturbing and compelling, and offers a refreshingly nuanced perspective on sexual abuse.

Love this line:

Sometimes I feel like that’s what he’s doing to me —

breaking me apart, putting me back together as someone new.

If you like this, try:

• My Education, a novel by Susan Choi

• Blue Angel, a novel by Francine Prose

• You Deserve Nothing, a novel by Alexander Maksik

* BOOK SLOG is that dreadful trudge through a swamp of so-so books that make you question your self, your choices, your ability to enjoy a rich and full literary life. Thank god, my slog is over!

Notes on a pandemic

1. 
How are you doing?

We call from windows and sidewalks, from half-closed doors. From three feet, five feet, six, and more. From phone and email, from laptop and letter. From every distance, we reach out.

How are you is greeting and worry, is wish and prayer. 

2.
Curled in and against, I nearly miss spring, arriving fresh-faced and eager with sunshine, blue sky and sparrow glee. Beyond my inward self, the world breaks open with dogwood, magnolia, and cherries in bloom. 

Dogs are barking, lawn mowers revving, a car rumbles to a start. 

Even in this global crisis, life goes abundantly on and on.  

3.
Remember when people died of natural causes? 

What, really, is natural? 

4. 
Make something, is the inner urge and outer order. And so artists paint, bakers bake, singers sing, and poets write.

Ruth, a respected teacher and poet, lives in a care facility in Oregon, where visitors have been banned to ensure the protection of the vulnerable residents. She keeps writing on, writing through:

Twenty-twenty Vision

These days, weeks, months curl in parentheses

closed off from the whitewater current

even from the peaceful stream. No dailyness

to rely on, no boulders to hop from this to the next—

No next.

And not much then.  Past seems irrelevant,

shifting, unstable . . .

Take my hand.

Today rely on this grip.

We have our now.

Breathe.

— Ruth Harrison 

5. 
Is this the reset? 

Months from now, will we savor a meal at our favorite place, our faces close, hands clasped tight? Will we share dessert, our forks next-to-next, and not think twice about what has touched, with who, and how? 

And at the house, will our friends gather? Will we shake hands, pat backs, and hug hello? Will I embrace my father without fear, and offer more than a distant wave to the kind neighbor passing?

Tell me, will we kiss again with abandon?  

Write through this

In times of crisis, I wish my better self to rise to action, to solution, to do something.

Instead, I can’t stop sifting through news at a battering speed. I can’t stop scrolling facebook and feeling jittered with frustration.

And so it is with great relief I found the first poems of the pandemic:

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is a machine of beautiful work.

Kelli Russell Agodon and Melissa Studdard are sharing daily poems on Instagram under #DailyWave.

“Our goal,” writes Kelli, “is to document through poems these uncertain times, and also to keep our minds off the #coronapocalypse.”

Write on! Uncertain times bring me to my knees, but also to pen, paper, and poems.

What’s going to get you through?

Love in the time of distance

It’s already happened. “An abundance of caution” has replaced “hearts and prayers.”

We don’t know what to say, so we say the same sentiment again and again.

• • • 

As we live in “social distances” — we’ll return, again, to the Letter. In times of sickness and sadness, of grief and uncertainty, pen and paper are revived. A note, a letter, a scratch, a handwritten scrawl.

Wish you were here. Thinking of you. With love.

At the nursing home where I work, visitors have been banned to protect the vulnerable population from catching the coronavirus. Instead of face-to-face visits, we’re encouraging phone calls, text, skype, facetime, and my favorite, old-fashioned mail.

I’m reminded of my grandma, a tireless penpal. When I was a child, in the hospital for months at a time, my grandma sent letters and cards, each in her perfect penmanship, with a stick of gum taped inside.

Write me a letter — it’s infection-free, gluten-free, hypo-allergenic.

Send love with a stamp.

• • • 

We write poems.

We’ll fill this new dark space with fresh words that guide us through the lonely places.

Tucking In My Daughter In The Time of Coronoa Virus

And because she is wise

in the ways the young are,

my daughter, frightened and weeping,

asked between sobs

for a happy story.

There are times when a story

is the best remedy—

not because it takes us away

from the truth but because

it leads us closer in.

I told her the story of her birth,

and we laughed until

it was my turn to cry as I realized

no matter how scary the world,

what a miracle, the birth of a child.

Then, as fear made a sneaky return,

we whispered a list of things we

were grateful for, falling asleep with these

words on our breaths: cats, books, rivers,

home, family, soft blankets, music.

— Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

• • • 

Blogs are back!

Blogs had a heyday, 10 years past, when writers were fast & fevered. Post every week, we were told. Every day! Every hour! Post everything!

Then social media arrived, and the party fizzled. The writers slithered away to facebook and twitter, crafting pithy banter in a 100 words or less. We got cute, clever, clipped. We got snarky and barky. Introvert was out, telling was in. We shared, shared, shared. We took photos, mostly of ourselves. We lost interest in the long read, the slow reveal.

But now, we’re hunkered at home. Time moves slower. The news scroll wears us down. We’ll want more. There, in our need, the lowly blog will emerge, like the high school friend with whom you fell out of touch, then reconnected, and discovered a renewed appreciation. She’s so loyal, you’ll think, so thoughful and kind. So ordinary.

But now, like staplers and sneakers, ordinary will feel just right.

I’m ordinary too. Stick with me. Established in 2008, this blog and me — we’re here for the duration.

Thankful Thursday: You

The Seasons, an erasure poem by Drew Myron

The Seasons

When shadows fall

When a big wind blows

I took shelter in

the canopy of

you.

It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things and more. Some weeks are tougher than others, but every week offers some small thing that redeems and heals. 

What are you thankful for today?

Finding Words

Play with words, I urge the writers gathered around the table. Eyes wander and pens hang listless from hands not yet gripped with drive. Attention puddles.

We’ve hit a rough patch at the nursing home. For two years, our motley group of elders has gathered to read, write, laugh and share. Before joining the group, most had not written much beyond shopping lists and infrequent letters, and yet they show up here eager and engaged as they read poems, share memories, and try new things.

But today, we’re not ourselves. We’re stuck in a rut.

It’s inevitable, really. It happens to every writer. You grow tired of your words, your self. You need shaken and stirred.

For many writers, daily life wears too familiar, and so nothing feels fresh. But for this group of seniors in their 70s, 80s, and 90s, who are grappling with various stages of dementia and numerous physical and mental challenges, writing at all is a terrific feat.

I have the words here, Betty says, flustered, all up here in my head, but they won't come out. 

So we ease the pressure. We get crafty. Elbow deep in magazines, markers, scissors, and glue, we create cut-up poems. And collage poems. Found poems and declarations. We’re mining splashy headlines and glossy photos. We’re conjuring mess and meaning, finding the words that escape us. 

Does it make sense? Does it matter? Is this poetry?

Yes, no, and sometimes. When we stop making sense, we allow fresh ideas to emerge and new paths to form. We are finding words beneath words, meaning beyond meaning.

That was fun, says Eve, buoyant after a slow start. I really liked that.

I nod, reminded once again of every writer’s wrangle: we are coaxing the words out of our minds and onto the page. With every jumble and confusion, we are stretching our understanding and expressing ourselves. In playing with words, we are claiming our creative lives.

A few days after our writing session, I find Betty visiting with a friend. She inches slow and deliberate along the hall. This one’s mine, she says, pride swelling as she shows her visitor the poem she made.

* Names and identifiers have been changed to protect privacy.

Love this line!

“How well do you really know your old high school friends?

I’m finding out now my old buddy is a creature of strange habits. Twice a day, Rausch does eighty push-ups and eighty sit-ups. He wears extremely tight, silky t-shirts. He picks his teeth with a pocketknife after meals and cleans his toes while he watches TV. He never seems to fully exhale. I imagine he has oxygen in his lungs from 1990.”

— Jess Walter
We Live in Water, a collection of stories

Has this happened to you — you read an excellent book, then race to find everything the author has written?

It’s a thrill, really, to find a book that you enjoy so much you don’t want it to end but also enjoy it so much you dash through with a fever of appreciation. Several years ago, I sped through Beautiful Ruins, a novel by Jess Walter, then proceeded to read through his others. In my fervor, I somehow missed We Live in Water, a 2013 gem of short stories set mostly in Spokane, Washington (the author’s hometown) and packed with struggling Pacific Northwest characters.

As usual, Walter’s prose shines with authentic people with real voice, giving each moment equal measures of wit, grit, grace and understanding.

I’ve done this with other writers — read one of their books and then promptly raced out to read their whole collection — including Carol Shields, Jean Thompson, Francine Prose, Sue Miller, Gail Godwin, Junot Díaz, Kaui Hart Hemmings, Jeffrey Eugenides . . .

How about you? What writers do you savor and can’t wait to read more?

* Note: Love this line is technically Love this passage, but I lean toward alliteration and rarely let truth get in the way of snap, crackle, pop.