Drew Myron's Blog, page 46
February 23, 2015
The words that weren’t
The mind reads and races, and sees what it wants to see.
Proof in this week's misreads:
• Cheapskate contends CEO stole data
should have been . . . Chesapeake contends CEO stole data
• Get ready for this weekend’s Supermom
was actually . . . Get ready for this weekend’s Supermoon
• Is it worth all the sweat and fears?
was actually . . . Is it worth all the sweat and tears?
Your turn. What are you (mis)reading?
February 17, 2015
Where are all the working poets?
With the passing this week of Philip Levine the literary world heaves with loss.
A Pulitzer Prize-winner, Levine served as U.S. poet laureate from 2011- 2102, and while his death was not a surprise — he was 87 and in failing health — the greater sadness is that he represented a rapidly disappearing type of writer: the working man's poet.
Levine was an auto-worker turned writer who grew up in Detroit.
“I saw that the people that I was working with . . . were voiceless in a way,” he explained in Detroit Magazine. “In terms of the literature of the United States they weren’t being heard. Nobody was speaking for them. . . I took this foolish vow that I would speak for them and that’s what my life would be."
While many poets work in universities as professors or in literary jobs related to publishing, working class poets seem scant. And their voices, when we stumble upon them, feel fresh and real.
Where are the working poets?
I'm thinking of Mather Schneider, a cab driver in Arizona.
And the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, an annual celebration of rural American West. The event is held every January in Elko, Nevada and for over 30 years has drawn a robust collection of working cowboys and ranching families expressing their culture through poetry, music and storytelling.
And the Fisher Poets Gathering, an annual celebration of commercial fishermen and fisherwomen poets. The event takes place in late February in Astoria, Oregon, and features over 75 fisher poets performing music, poetry and prose. "It's not just old guys looking backward," says founder Jon Broderick. "We hear the voices of people from across the commercial fishing spectrum: deckhands, skippers and cannery workers, young and old, women and men, west coast and east."
What Work Is
We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is—if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it’s someone else’s brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours of wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, “No,
we’re not hiring today,” for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who’s not beside you or behind or
ahead because he’s home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you’re too young or too dumb,
not because you’re jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don’t know what work is.
- Philip Levine
February 12, 2015
Thankful Thursday: How to sleep & write
Step off assuredly into the blank of your mind.
Something will come to you.
- Richard Wilbur
This week I stumbled across these words and took them as encouragement. On this Thankful Thursday, I am thankful for gentle reminders.
The line is from Walking to Sleep, a poem by Richard Wilbur — but I didn't know the lines were from a poem, and didn't even know it was referring to sleep (I found the lines here, in an interview with Anne Tyler). Later, I found the poem and an interview in which Wilbur says "this is a poem about advising someone else on how to get off to sleep."
All week I thought he was offering an insider tip on how to write. But no matter, we take words when and how we need 'em. Maybe my gratitude is for these words, and maybe my gratitude is for the pathways that lead to the people and places that harbor just what I need.
Gratitude. Appreciation. Praise.
It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things, and more.
What are you thankful for today?
February 7, 2015
Love that Line: Charity
Charity isn't about being kind and humane.
It is about seeing without interpretation, as a lens sees.
The neutral lens. The eye looks on others and itself with motives,
games and tricks, and makes things what they are not,
but the neutral lens leaves a thing to be what it is.
— Dear Thief, a novel by Samantha Harvey
February 2, 2015
And yet
To have loved
and to have suffered. To have waited
for nothing, and for nothing to have come.
A teen girl is shot in the street.
A young man dies on a college campus.
A mother throws her son off a bridge.
Within days, inevitably, a vigil. Candles on cue, to a refrain that has played too many times: This community comes together in support.
But what good is it now, our hand-wringing and alarm, this cooing disguised as comfort?
We are urgent with a terrorized sort of sadness. We come together. But every day we are divided, by politics and opinions, by wounds and hurts. It seems only tragedy binds us.
___
It’s easy to feel stricken. Difficult to put love into action day after day.
___
A friend cried through the Super Bowl commercials. Were the ads that touching, she asks, or is that I've been sick all week and my resistance is low?
Some days a slice of light against the wood floor can break me open.
But isn’t that what we all need now, to feel more?
Let us lower our resistance.
___
And yet. The hand-wringing. The calls for change. It’s exhausting.
Because our pleas ring hollow, small. We feel so much but do so little.
___
But what action, really, would be substantial, meaningful, enough?
___
So long I was surrounded by vitality. Now, neighbors, friends, and family are dying. This is not new. But the sting is fresh.
A friend offers what seems simple but sage advice: “Just love them now and for the rest of your days and know that they love you.”
Loving, then, is that easy? And that hard.
___
I get a massage, but what I really want is a spiritual experience. Strong hands to dig through flesh to find gristle and bone, to excise the deep cavities where sadness takes hold. I want to be remade, cleansed, and spare.
___
The night is briny and thick. Somewhere, someone, is sinking. Someone is always dying.
___
Death is sorrowful but not tragic. Let us not turn this into a project.
___
And yet, let us not turn away.
January 30, 2015
January 21, 2015
Thankful Thursday: 50
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Gratitude. Appreciation. Praise.
It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things, and more. Please join me.
The world is big, my gratitudes many:
1.
searchers, seekers, doubters, thinkers
2.
honeycrisp apples
3.
sunny mornings
5.
socks
6.
the concept of "literary citizenship"
7.
daffodils in February
8.
cashmere
9.
kindness
10.
good wine for $10 (or less)
11.
this poem
12.
and this poem
13.
quiet
14.
soup (making, eating)
15.
finding my words in unexpected places (this and this)
16.
attribution (because giving credit is good, and, well, see above)
17.
Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen
18.
nuts, especially sweet
19.
this essay by Heather King
20.
blue skies (as weather and metaphor)
21.
the "good" family genes: wide smile, bright eyes, bleeding heart
22.
teachers who cared: Mrs. Allison, Mrs. Trembath, Stanton Englehart
24.
television with great writing/direction/acting: Treme, The Wire
25.
the films Robin Williams left us: Good Will Hunting, Awakenings, Patch Adams
26.
being useful
27.
moving in water: swimming, kayaking, paddleboarding, soaking, floating, gazing, lazing
28.
writers and artists who tell me their favorite books
29.
poetry in unexpected places: laundromats, hair salons, bars, alleys, telephone poles . . .
30.
a mentor-turned-friend
31.
letters, handwritten
32.
bubble baths
33.
secrets
34.
going to a party/dinner/event I don't want to attend, and having fun
35.
stretches of time to read unfettered
36.
libraries
37.
post office, mailbox, "real" mail
38.
Carnegie Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art
39.
thrift and consignment stores
40.
books that get me energized to write (this, this, and this)
41.
deadlines and structure
42.
a haircut
43.
Powell's Books, because it shelves new and used snug together in a democracy of literature
44.
letting go
45.
long summer days
46.
young writers who grow up, move on, away, and then send me letters, postcards, rocks, cookies, poems . . .
47.
this explanation by Terry Tempest Williams
48.
endurance
49.
people with quick wit and easy laughter
50.
Dr. Teal's Epsom Salt Soaking Solution
What are you thankful for today?
January 19, 2015
Stacked
Happiness is a fresh stack of books. I can't wait to dig into these:
Small Disasters Seen in Sunlight — new poetry by Julia B. Levine, a psychologist working with abused children. Her previous book, Ditch Tender, is one of my favorites
Be Thrifty: How to Live Better with Less — because I'm a minimalist who loves discounts and deals (note: I bought a used copy)
Dear Thief by Samantha Harvey — a novel/letter/love story
Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith — this is my first venture into this revered writer's psychological thrillers
Shadows of the Workhouse by Jennifer Worth — second book in the Call the Midwife series (which the PBS show is based upon)
Euphoria, by Lily King — her newest novel (I liked her last book, Father of the Rain)
Delicious!, by Ruth Reichl — though she's written numerous books, this is the restaurant critic's first work of fiction (Tender at the Bone was a fantastic memoir of her childhood)
What's on your shelf? What are you eager to read?
January 15, 2015
Thankful Thursday: Drive-Thru
Dear Driver of the Car In Front of Me at Starbucks:
When we pulled up for our coffees, the barista said, "Your drinks have been paid for by the car ahead of you."
You were driving away, anonymous and generous. I like your style.
We were stunned and giddy.
"This happens pretty often," she said. "You'd be surprised."
The world, and people, can be so darn nice.
Thanks for reminding me.
xo
Drew
Gratitude. Praise. Appreciation. Please join me for Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things, and more. What are you thankful for today?
January 13, 2015
One line at a time
But for all poets, it’s not their
books that I go back to, that I consider
important, but it’s a few, or maybe many,
poems. I read one poem at a time and
almost one line at a time. The line is the
most important element of a poem,
of poetry, to me.
- Rick Campbell
Please join me at Push Pull Books, where I host 3 Good Books
and ask writers to share their favorite books and influences.
