Drew Myron's Blog, page 66

Do you know what this is?

In this digital age, I'm an antique — and not in that retro, vintage, hipster-chick-cool kind of way. Case in point: I don't text, don't like cell phones, and prefer to write with that old-fashioned apparatus called a hand.

The image you see here is a datebook, also known as a day planner. Remember those? It's a portable calendar, on paper, with spaces to write your appointments, deadlines and important events (my birthday, for instance). This datebook is especially nice because it features art and poems by over 30 women, and includes a poem by me.

The 2013 Women Artists Datebook is published by the Syracuse Cultural Workers, a progressive publisher committed to peace, sustainability, social justice, feminism and multiculturalism (or, more simply, they dig peace, love & understanding), and can be purchased here.

And because I am perhaps one of the few people left hoarding paper, the Women Artists Datebook may now be a rare (and collectible?) gem. Due to declining sales, the publisher has reduced the print run, and is reconsidering future versions.

This seems an excellent time to celebrate the old ways with a new datebook. Support the arts, write by hand!

 

Thankful Thursday: Late November Light

It's Thankful Thursday! Gratitude. Appreciation. Praise. Please join me in a weekly pause to appreciate the people, places & things that bring joy.

After food, feasting and family, I study light. The way sun dodges and glows, the way the season calls for new illumination. Days shorten, light hangs at a heavy tilt. Just a bit more, I plead. Praise what little there's left, writes Barbara Crooker. And I do.

Praise Song

Praise the light of late November,

the thin sunlight that goes deep in the bones.

Praise the crows chattering in the oak trees;

though they are clothed in night, they do not

despair. Praise what little there's left:

the small boats of milkweed pods, husks, hulls,

shells, the architecture of trees. Praise the meadow

of dried weeds: yarrow, goldenrod, chicory,

the remains of summer. Praise the blue sky

that hasn't cracked yet. Praise the sun slipping down

behind the beechnuts, praise the quilt of leaves

that covers the grass: Scarlet Oak, Sweet Gum,

Sugar Maple. Though darkness gathers, praise our crazy

fallen world; it's all we have, and it's never enough.

— Barbara Crooker
from Radiance

 

It's Thankful Thursday. What are you thankful for today?

Love that Line!

 

He was
somewhere
in his forties,
closing fast
on chubby.

 

— The Typist
by Michael Knight

 

 

Feast of Words: Dessert!

The Feast of Words continues. Today we move into dessert, and the fullness of reflection. Like a good meal, gratitude fills and slows to show us all we have, hold, love.

Today's poem is from Allyson Whipple.

"I wrote this poem," she explains, "after a friend brought me some mangoes and taught me how to remove the pits in a way that would not damage them, so that they could be planted. I spent much of 2012 dealing with the loss of a good friend, and the simple act of paring a mango and then preparing the seed for planting was a sort of lightbulb moment, realizing the way good things endured. From the destruction of a piece of fruit came nourishment for myself, as well as the potential for a new mango tree. . . the poem comes from a grateful spirit — grateful for a friend, for fruit, for the reminder of what endures."

You bring me mangoes

and you bring me mango pits

you never make promises,
but in your smooth hands,
there is potential for sustenance,
nourishment,
for roots –

there is a reminder
that life goes on after
skin is cut
flesh is eaten,

that a future exists;
that something beautiful
endures after loss

— Allyson Whipple

 

Our annual Feast of Words celebrates the power of gratitude through words. Thank you — friends, family, readers & writers, for offering your heart, your words. Thank you for taking the time to savor and share.

With gratitude,

Drew

 

 

 

Let's Eat!

Yowza! It's a Thanks Giving Feast of Words.

When I called for thankful-themed writing, I had no idea the response would be so rich. I'm delighted with the offerings, and happy to be surrounded by friends old and new, near and far. Let's feast!

We'll start with a piece by singer-songwriter Jo Jo Russell Krajick, who explains that Ryan Road "is a private dirt lane traversing a farm near Rhinebeck, NY."

Walking Private Ryan

I never walk alone down this quiet road lined with ivy choked oaks,
Some hollowed out apartment houses for squirrelly creatures
Who dart and peak and stare and hide and live
And remind me whose neighborhood this road traverses.  

I never walk alone as the road is crowded with other friends and acquaintances
Who fly overhead and swoop thru branches or creep thru the grasses
Or cluster for warmth in the rolling fields with their tagged ears,
Some thousand pounds of stately flesh and hooves posing blankly in the breeze.  

I never walk alone for I am kept company by my ever-present thoughts
Though moments before confounded, disturbed and annoyed,
Now tagging along serenely and full of youth and vitality
Like an innocent child of the world skipping along clueless, happy.  

I never walk alone over the intimately familiar winding pathway,
A thread whose length is long enough to mend the small tears in my daily fabric,
Whose width and breadth and panorama open my eyes to the skies,
The landscape, the earth and the endless possibilities of my life before me.    

 — Jo Jo Russell Krajick

Let's continue, with a poem by Senitila McKinley, director of Seashore Family Literacy, and an artist whose latest work is creating colorful paper mache bowls.

making common bowls

delivered flowers today
to the living and the dead
food as well to the hungry
there is no place for me to eat
the table heaps of my own creations
you would call it messy
I am lonely, mess is now my best friend 
I am grateful that I can find joy
in turning old papers into bowls.

 

Please pull up a chair and join in the feast. Share your poems, paragraphs, prayers and praises in the comments section below, or send by email to dcm@drewmyron.com.

In this feast of words, more is the merry. We could be feasting all week!

Feast of Words!

In the spirit of thanks giving, please join me for the second annual Feast of Words!

I've set the table and I'm ready to eat. Please share with me your poems, prayers, paragraphs & praise.

Send me your words — small starts, lines of hope, your stories, your flash, your fiction, your long list or one true thing.

I'll collect and gather, and post your works here. Got a blog or a book? Send a link, and pass the potatoes.

To take part, simply post your thankful-themed word-works in the comment section below, or email me at dcm@drewmyron.com.

It's the season of gratitude. Let us savor and share.

 

On Sunday: Bandaging the Words

A page from Melody: The Story of A Child, an erasure poem by Mary Ruefle.

"I use white-out, buff-out, blue-out, paper, ink pencil, gouache, carbon, and marker," Ruefle explained in Gulf Coast journal. "Sometimes I press postage stamps onto the page and pull them off–that literally takes the text right off the page! Once, while working on an all-white erasure, I had the sense I was somehow blinding the words–blindfolding the ones I whited-out, and those that were left had to become, I don’t know, extra-sensory or something. Then I thought no, I am bandaging the words, and the one left were those that seeped out."

To see more of Melody, go here (provided by Gwarlingo).

To learn more about Ruefle, and her erasures, go here.

 

Thankful Thursday: From the Shallow End

I've got the giggles.

During this month of official thanks giving, many people are posting daily gratitudes on Facebook. But instead of joining in their earnest efforts I feel like the kid in church, doubled over and snorting with inappropriate laughter.

I just wanna have fun.

On this Thankful Thursday, I am splashing in the shallow end. I'll be back to laps and diligence shortly but for now, please join me in gratitude for the light side. It's a large pool, there's room for all sorts of thankful.

Shallow, Light Delights

1.
Poems inspired by the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
This show is a screeching wreck. I can't stand these people, and I can't turn away. Poet Leigh Stein is making art of the camp — or is it camp of the "art" ?

2.
Lipstick
My new favorite is Just Bitten Kissable Balm Stain
(yes, the name is ridiculous).

3.
Magazine Binge
Vogue, Elle, More, Vanity Fair, O  . . .
About twice a year, I indulge in a magazine marathon. I've got more, ummm, literary choices stacked up around the house, but like overloading on junk food, returning to good-for-me reading is so much better after all that easy, nutrition-less munching.

4.
Mixed Nuts —  my everymeal!
It's a salt fix, a party mix, a salad topping, and when you add a few raisins, it's a sweet.

 

It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express gratitude for the people, places and things that bring joy. What are you thankful for today?

 

 

On Sunday: Less Lonely

 

But of course, poetry has its balms.

It makes us less lonely by one.

It makes us have more room

inside ourselves.

- Kay Ryan
from The Paris Review
The Art of Poetry: No. 94

 

 

What ignited you?

Recognize this book? This 1966 gem — written by Joan and Roger Bradfield, and illustrated by Winnie Fitch — set my career path. From the first page I knew where I was headed:

Who are you? What's your name?
Would you like to play a game?
Let's pretend we haven't met.
I'll ask you questions, now get set.

As a child this book urged and encouraged my natural curiosity. I peppered everyone with questions, and years later, became a newspaper reporter (and later, writer / editor / poet, etc). I'm still asking questions. Intrigued by path, process and personality, always I wonder: Who are you? What shaped your life?

I like this response, from Frederick Buechner in Listening to Your Life:

By the time I was sixteen, I knew as surely as I knew anything that the work I wanted to spend my life doing was the work of words. I did not yet know what I wanted to say with them. I did not yet know in what form I wanted to say it or to what purpose. But if a vocation is as much the work that chooses you as the work you choose, then I knew from that time on that my vocation was, for better or worse, to involve that searching for, and treasuring, and telling of secrets which is what the real business of words is all about.

And in this excerpt from the poem, When I Am Asked, Lisel Mueller poignantly reveals what led her to write:

It was soon after my mother died . . .

I sat on a gray stone bench
ringed with the ingenue faces
of pink and white impatiens
and placed my grief
in the mouth of language,
the only thing that would grieve with me.

Now it's your turn:  

Who are you? Tell me, please, what ignited your writing life?