Drew Myron's Blog, page 8

In Darkness, In Light

Pearls on the Neckar River by Jakob Montrasio - courtesy of Creative Commons

TILT 

Winter solstice is the exact moment
when a hemisphere is tilted as far
away from the sun as possible.

— Old Farmer's Almanac

 

Let there be light

in the slats of dawn

in doors opening

on floors warm

 

Let there be light

on dreams cloaked in sleep

and the slow fogged return

 

Let there be light

on dark threaded earth

on early frost and graveled path

 

Let there be light

in the creak of a knee

in the space between ribs

in the lung's hungry cave

in the narrow passage

of breath and life

 

Let there be light

in our hands gripped

in hope, in cheer

in our tears.

 

Let the face shine

in love and loss.

Let there be light

in the letting go.

 

— Drew Myron

This Is Not A Holiday Message

Is this a holiday poem? — by drew myron

For weeks I’ve been trying to write a holiday poem.

Something short, not sweet, not too sappy but not too spare. A small poem tucked in a card. Heartwarming but not Hallmark.

This year I choked. It’s an impossible task.

And yet, I’ve completed this self-appointed “assignment” many times. Poem-on-demand was once my jam.* This year, I can barely produce a grocery list. My mind is dull while my inner critic is living her best life.

As usual, I turn to my “guides” for a spark. I scroll through horoscopes, feel the pull of magnetic poetry, mine my dreams, re-read Christmas classics, and more.

I even tried to think of this elusive poem as a work assignment from my (actual) editor. Every month I send her completed magazine features that are not nearly as difficult as this ridiculous poem assignment.

Give me words, I beg. Give me a message! Lift me, sift me, shower me with light.

I get a bunch of half-lines and thudding starts. So desperate I am that recipe instructions are starting to sound poetic and junk mail a bit inspired. My attempts at Christmas cheer are heavy coal nuggets with no jingle or jolly.

This pursuit for the poetic may be getting a bit obsessive, if not depressing. At this point, I’m running out of time and have surrendered to the seasonal shorthand of wishing everyone the same old blather: Happy Holidays, etc, etc, etc.

Hand me the Hallmark card, I’m happy to sign it.

On this Thankful Thursday, and I am grasping for gratitude. Because attention attracts gratitude and gratitude expands joy, each week I pause to express appreciation for people, places, things & more.

Today, I’m (a little bit) thankful for the struggle to write. I’m exercising the writing muscle, and practice and patience can only strengthen the process, right?

What are you thankful for today?

* * *

* Get the editor! who says jam anymore? I’ve never used the word jam, nor have I said: that’s how we roll. However, I am guilty of saying to my husband in a sarcastically peppy tone: teamwork makes the dream work.

Come to think of it, I’m a little bit thankful for these tired phrases that now give me a smile when used ironically.

* * *

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I always enjoy hearing from you. Send light, write to me.

On Sunday: Make Something

Winter arrived and the blues, too.

This week, I am eating, sleeping, slothing.

Make something is my usual prescription against gloom. In making something — soup, a cup of coffee, a to-do list, any small act — I’m engaging mind and shifting mood.

In my writing life, too.

I can usually find poetry in the everyday. But in my dreary state, creativity plummets. That’s when I know it’s time to turn to my trusty trick: Cut & Shuffle.

Searching for a spark, I hunt through newspapers, magazines, junk mail . . . I sort, shuffle, cut, collage, embellish and erase. Poetry is often the invention of reinvention. Somewhere between found poem and collage poem, I make something new.

Today’s poem is comprised of phrases and lines borrowed from Pheasants Forever, a magazine I found in the local library’s stack of free stuff. I’m not a hunter — except for words — but this publication’s beautiful photographs, coupled with writing by editor Tom Carpenter, could make me appreciate the beauty of the sport (well, aside from the killing). In art, the literal becomes the figurative.

Sometimes it takes just a small spark — and the art of rearrangement — to lift and shift.

How about you: What are you making?

* * *

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The world turns on words.
Thank you for reading & writing.

I don’t like poetry

I slip them into letters, post them in public, and sprinkle them into everything from congratulations to condolences. I'm always sharing poems.

But my enthusiasm is sometimes dimmed. It happened again last week.

I don't like poetry, a writer-friend told me.

I gathered my indignation and began my poetry pep talk.

And stopped.

She was right. I sometimes don't like poetry, too. I get frustrated by clever phrasing, put off by evasive “meaning,” and annoyed with ponderous puff. All that suffering. All that longing. So much inner gaze. Some days I want nothing to do with poets or poetry.

And then, I find a stellar poem. I climb into the poem like a kid in a tree, reaching higher and higher for the best view and the perfect perch. And then, because I've tasted how words can bend and sing, I clamber down to earth to write my own.

So I say to my friend, Yes, yes, I know. But poems aren't secrets or tests. You don't need to analyze. You just need to feel. 

She listens for a moment that is followed by standoff silence. I stop waving the poetry flag and we turn to fiction instead.

Still, I can’t shake her insistence against poetry and my mighty pull for it.

Everything is poem, I say in an argument I keep to myself.

Every song and psalm, every phrase and page. The world is full of words that tilt and spin, that clarify and calm. All the world is a poem!

Then I stop channeling Walt Whitman and sink back into myself.

The world is full of battles that I’m tired of fighting. Does poetry really warrant (another) dividing line?

* * *

Hello, and thanks for showing up.

I’ve recently cut the cord to social media. While the departure has been good for my head it may be poor for readership. Many readers have found this blog on facebook and instagram.

• If you are here, reading this now — thank you!

• If you know someone who might enjoy this blog post — please share.

• If you want to read more — subscribe for free.

The world turns on words. Thank you for reading & writing.

Thank Full

Hello Readers & Friends,

Here we are — the biggest Thankful Thursday of the year!

What appreciations gather in your mind?
What gifts do you hold dear?

This isn’t a test. I will not collect your papers. Instead, how about this — sometime between the feast of food and the late hungry heart, let us quiet the mind so our thankfulness may gather and multiply with time.

With appreciation for you,
Drew

small things

the world is full of glass

unpack slowly

shake petals

serve tea

give wide starts

live among psalms

pull thin light

stand tall

give thanks

 

— Drew Myron

Thankful Thursday: Light & Art

Sometimes it’s the light.

Always, it’s the light.

Outside my office window, the maple tree glows in late autumn sun. And along the riverbank, tall grasses bend to waning light. Even the asphalt street sparkles in the after-rain.

How eager we are to absorb, to shine.

The world is a weight and our hearts cannot bear it all. And so we have art and words, friends and light. This is what carries us on and through.

Yesterday, my writing group — a mix of ages and interests, voice and form — met at the local art center. Surrounded by creativity, the assignment was wide — write about mood — and we dived in, each finding a wave, swimming out far, then making our way back to listen and share.

Like light, writing is a mystery. How it comes quickly, or not at all. How it streams in steady or dims too soon.

“Art is a wound turned into light,” said painter Georges Braque.

In the quietude of powerful paintings, I was moved — sudden as sun. How quickly light can change a mood. How quickly mood can change the light.

Incantation

inspired by the art of Carmen R Sonnes
on display at the Columbia Center for the Arts

Take this cross, this sun, a dawning start.

Take this bread, for life. This water, for heart.

Because patience is a mirror with

paths to places you do not yet know

carry the tangled roots of your dream.  

This is a mark of hope for the lost.

Scatter stones, bead, seed, and sand.

Turn your want to turquoise, your wish to earth.

Whisper to night, bow to dawn,

to all the burials before you,

all the births ahead.

Safe travels, we say.

Safe crossings, we bid.  

In this migration, may you find home.

— Drew Myron

It's Thankful Thursday.

Because attention attracts gratitude and gratitude expands joy, it's time to slice through the ugly and get to the good.

What are you thankful for today?

* * *

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I always enjoy hearing from you. Send light, write to me.

Three Good Things

want less, by drew myron

Hello Reader,

Thanks for showing up — and for reading, writing, and keeping on.

Some weeks shine, your energy bright and your hopes high. Others are rough and tumble, and you escape the shaker feeling tattered and small.

Let’s meet in the middle.

Here are a few things I’ve enjoyed lately, and think you might, too:

1.
No Answers

Last night I cried myself to sleep

again; I surrendered to the impossible

helplessness of having no good answers

for the problems of the world. No, not the world—

but not even my own. I don't know what the wind

is threading through the reeds, or what the river

might be thinking about territory. Across the stump

of an old oak hewn down five years ago, a screen

mixed of holly and ivy has begun to emerge.

Nothing is intimate or everything is intimate

and we are all climbing a trellis thin as spider

silk, more opaque than ordinary light. 

— Luisa A. Igloria

2.
That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour by Sunita Puri

This may be the best book of 2023!

Yes, I said the same thing earlier this year but, really, this is another best book. Because our health care system is broken and our actions toward life and death so warped, I want to give this book to everyone I know.

Published in 2019, this literary memoir explores a doctor’s practice of palliative medicine. Blending science with spirituality, Dr. Puri offers a thoughtful and compassionate perspective that helps patients and families redefine what it means to live and die in the face of serious illness.

This book stands strong among my other health-related favorites:

The People’s Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine by Ricardo Nuila

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gwande

God’s Hotel: A Doctor, A Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine by Victoria Sweet

Knocking on Heaven’s Door: The Path to a Better Way to Death by Katy Butler

My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story by Abraham Verghese

Note: Yes, I keep pushing the value of these medically-themed books — not because I am a Sad Sally or a Gruesome Gus but because I continue to feel frustrated with our traditional medical system, with public perception toward end-of-life, and because of my personal conviction that living fully means to meet the end with awareness, honesty, and grace.

3.
The Billion Dollar Code, a four-part movie series that tells the story of two young German developers — an artist and a programmer nerd — who team up to create a groundbreaking way to see the world, and later sue Google for stealing their work.

Based on true events, this good-versus-evil story is both illuminating and heartbreaking, and will likely cause you to question Google’s “don’t be evil” practices.

You might also wonder, as I do, why this spectacular 2021 movie received little to no attention or promotion.

Currently showing on Netflix.

On Sunday: Alter Me

To Thrive, photo by Drew Myron

1.

Is this what

it means

to thrive —

when the eyes

are weary and

the heart heaves

when the light is

just right —

an ordinary green

against a concrete

end shines

with life?

2.

Study the sky, the slant of light.

Weigh the world, the words, the low laugh, the long sigh.

Look for signs of life. Measure, measure, proof.

Always the reach between said and unsaid, I am grasping for lasts.

3.

Words wander from me, looking for better, more receptive, homes.
I wear these ones instead:

I do not want us to be immortal or unlucky.
To listen for our own death in the distance.
Take my hand. Stand by the window.

I want to show you what is hidden in
this ordinary . . .

 — excerpt from Once, a poem by Eavan Boland

4.

This morning the blueberry bush is a glow of holy auburn.

It’s just light, I know, that aching autumn trick of

time that turns me inward, turns me in.

5.

In this season of letting go I can’t determine

despite prodding, pushing, pulling, willing, waiting:

Is this life or death, and what’s the difference?

6.

Walk toward the light.

Isn’t that a faithful saying, or at least a poem

(and again, what’s the difference)?

By miracle or chance I found this poem today.

And now I have a plan, a path:

The Light Continues

Every evening, an hour before 
the sun goes down, I walk toward
its light, wanting to be altered.
Always in quiet, the air still.
Walking up the straight empty road
and then back. When the sun
is gone, the light continues
high up in the sky for a while.
When I return, the moon is there. 
Like a changing of the guard.
I don’t expect the light 
to save me, but I do believe
in the ritual. I believe
I am being born a second time
in this very plain way.

— Linda Gregg

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Good Books Lately

The world is full of books. The days are full of hours. There is never enough time to enjoy all the words but we read what we can, when we can.

Here are a few good books I’ve savored lately:

ESSAYS

Wandering Time: Western Notebooks by Luis Alberto Urrea

I considered it my duty to see what was going on. I wasn't after Art, really. I was generally praying. Every page of my notebook tried to say, Thank you . . . It seems to me that a good writer must excel at two things: poking around and paying attention.

This intimate journal — by an award-winning writer of novels, nonfiction, poetry and plays — is a poetic accounting of a yearlong roadtrip through the West: Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, and Arizona. Slow and watchful, this gem of a book pays close attention and invites introspection. As the writer peers inward, the reader does, too. I quickly raced through this slim beauty, then started again, savoring more slowly what I had already loved.

ESSAYS

My Trade Is Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing by Carl Phillips

To make art is also, like handwriting, a form of insistence. A form, too, of resistance. To write is to resist invisibility. By having spoken, I’ve resisted silence before again returning to it.

Carl Phillips is the author of 16 books of poetry and was awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Published in 2022, this collection of essays covers themes on the writing life: ambition, stamina, silence, politics, practice, audience, and community. At just 94 pages, it’s a slim book that is dense with ideas. Phillips is a thinker and he calls upon a rich variety of writers to convey a poetic perspective that is deep, wide, and accessible.

FICTION

We Came Here to Forget by Andrea Dunlop

The thing about tragedy is that it isn't about just getting through it, it's about getting on with your life when the dust has settled but the landscape is bombed out, smoke in the air, charred remains at your feet.

Published in 2019, this contemporary novel is an unusual mix of literary fiction and mysterious understory. Here’s my advice: Dive in. Don’t read the inside flap or the backside blurbs. The less you know, the sweeter the surprise. A great unexpected novel!

NON-FICTION

The Art Thief: A True Story of Passion, Obsession, and a Monumental Crime Spree by Michael Finkel

When you wear your heart on your sleeve, it's exposed to the elements.

An astounding true story that reads like fiction. Researched with great detail and written with smooth clarity, this is the compelling tale of a young man who completed over 200 heists — stealing $2 billion dollars worth of artwork— in less than 10 years.

Your Turn: What are you reading?
I’m always looking for a good book.
Please share your finds!

* * *

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On Sunday: Shadow Shift

Framed In Fog by Drew Myron

Sometimes I open the small chamber of wonder

 

Sometimes I take my place in the order of things but

there is already an altar for secrets with knots and teeth.

 

I used to make sure to include in my life

people desperate with wonder:

yes or no: are you singing to the dogwoods?

do your dandelions shimmer in the ocher afternoon?

 

Now I collect people with oozing wounds:

yes or no: is your skin clammy and grey,

your pulse thready, your voice now a nod?

 

We are a club with no name

and a password that fogs

through empty rooms

 

I am not on fire. This is not a crisis.

This is just the ordinary hazard

of a window, like a mind, open.

 

Now the shadows are shifting.

Sitting quietly has signaled the sparrows

trying to fly. In this opening, a wing

 

lifts with a leash of light and

we study the glistening

with envy and awe.

 

— Drew Myron

* * *

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Please subscribe here to get each
post delivered to your email.

I always enjoy hearing from you.
Want to send light? Write to me.