Drew Myron's Blog, page 82
August 8, 2011
In the thick of books
In the thick of books, I linger.
Something about summer allows me to slip easily in and out of new authors and ideas. Sure, I've slogged through a few duds but I've also found some wonderfully absorbing reads this season. Here's a few of my latest, favorite books:
I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl
by Kelle Groom
Just when I think I can't stomach another memoir, along comes this engrossing, sad, and ultimately, beautifully poetic story.
The Adults
by Alice Espach
A wry, perceptive, funny novel told in the voice of a smart and snarky teenage girl as she observes life and death and adulthood fall apart around her.
Room
by Emma Donoghue
This is the ultimate I can't-put-it-down book. Told from the perspective of a five-year-old boy held captive with his mother. A brutal story beautifully told, and original, too.
Have you slipped into any good books lately? What are you reading?
August 4, 2011
Thankful Thursday: Again, already
I am giddy with gratitude (and alliteration) this week.
A few reasons why:
- A good run, thanks to a free podcast.
- Cake Pops. My new favorite indulgence.
- The first (ever!) Denver County Fair was a great success, and serving as Director of Poetry was a kick. Congratulations to the winning poets: Meghan Howes, Carol Samson and Kathryn T.S. Bass.
- Time with family in sunny Colorado. Highlights: Playing Scrabble with my niece and nephew, a jog with my sister, seeing a bad movie in the good company of my parents, and great Mexican food at every turn. Oh Mile High City, you have your charms.
- Returning home to a pile of mail that included two -- yes two! -- handwritten and heart-full letters.
- It's Happiness Happens Month! That's cause for celebration, and song. Sing along with Macy and me, won't you?
Stop and smell the flowers
And lose it, the sweet music, and dance with me
There is beauty in the world
So much beauty in the world
Always beauty in the world
There is beauty in the world
Shake your booty boys and girls for the beauty in the world
Pick your diamond, pick your pearl, there is beauty in the world
It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to appreciate people, places and things. What are you thankful for today?
July 28, 2011
Thankful Thursday: Rabbits don't fly
Gratitude. Appreciation. Praise.
Please join me in a weekly pause to appreciate people, places & things.
On this Thankful Thursday, I am grateful for things found:
A Quote (just when needed)
"Cultivate your own capabilities, your own style. Rabbits don't fly. Eagles don't swim. Ducks look funny trying to climb. Squirrels don't have feathers. Stop comparing. There's plenty of room in the forest."
— Chuck Swindoll
A Literary Project (that's meaningful and unique)
StreetBooks, the work of artist and writer Laura Moulton, is a bicycle-powered mobile library offering books to the homeless. No questions, no money, no pressure. Read the news story here.
A Blog (that makes sense, and has fun)
Blurb is a Verb, by author Sarah Pinneo, explores adventures in book publicity.
Fresh Food (and not just zukes)
This week I am munching through strawberries, cucumbers, tomatoes and beans, courtesy of Gathering Together Farm. The system of CSA — Community Supported Agriculture — was pioneered in the 1970s, and re-energized in the 1990s (by Denver Urban Gardens' DeLaney Community Farm and others). After so many years, thank goodness, fresh, organic, community-driven food distribution is now mainstream.
Sunshine (hooray!)
While the rest of the nation swelters in triple-digit heat, the central Oregon Coast has endured another unseasonably cool, gray, damp summer. Now, at the end-of-July, I'm wearing summer skirts in a 70-degree heat wave.
It's Thankful Thursday! What's on your list?
July 22, 2011
Immersed
Laundromat
Waiting for me to finish folding, she
read Southern Living, spun her cane.
If she wanted help she would ask, I supposed,
but I told her anyway out of the goodness
of my guilt,
Ma'am these dryers are empty,
pointing to the top row. She looked up from her
magazine. I could see the starburst of blue
spider-webbed across her forehead.
She stopped spinning and spoke, I can't reach
those, she said, I've got a problem
with my equilibrium.
What I might have said was Don't we all,
but instead I nodded, looked at the floor, helped
haul her wet sweat-suits to the dryers, apologizing
for not doing so earlier, whole time thinking
how lucky I was
that I never saw my mother reach
that age, how she would do laundry downstairs
in the room with the window that looked out
onto my childhood,
the lake that would freeze
past the docks during winter, and I'd walk
to the brink, lie down on the ice and dip
my hand in the water, feel the cold
on my stomach, flat and solid, but shifting.
— Luke Johnson
from After the Ark
Photo by Cathy Love MurphyI'm still a bit tipsy, climbing out of the Fishtrap fog. While I've been to several writing workshops, I've never spent a week with so many good people producing so much good work.
It wasn't just the headliners — such as Pico Iyer and Gary Ferguson — sharing strong, inspired work. It wasn't just the faculty — poets Henry Hughes and Myrlin Hepworth, novelists Karen Fisher and Rosanne Parry, for example. Or the Fellows, Patricia Bailey, Nicole Cullen, Angela Penaredondo and Luke Johnson (the poem above is from his just-published book).
Strangely and wonderfully, a large portion of the Fishtrap "students" were accomplished, published authors, too — Bette Lynch Husted, Roberta Ulrich, M.e. Hope, to name a few.
The beauty of the Fishtrap experience, the magic it's often called (yes, I too, once rolled my eyes at this blissed-out description), was that for one absorbed, saturated week all of us generated fresh work together.
Immersion in reading, writing and words, without distraction or interruption, is a rare thing. And though the experience can be a bit exhausting, as I re-enter the "real world" of laundry, bills and everyday obligations, I increasingly value the people, words, ideas, books — and yes, magic — that was enjoyed, gathered, and carried home.
Do you attend writing workshops?
What workshops have you enjoyed, and why?
July 19, 2011
Fishtrapped
I've just returned from Fishtrap, a writing workshop held in the far reaches of eastern Oregon.
The Fishtrap mission is to "promote clear thinking and good writing in and about the West" and for one full week an accomplished (yet approachable) faculty of poets, essayists, novelists, historians and publishers led and encouraged a group of more than 100 writers through an exploration of Migrations & Passages.
What does it mean to move, to travel, to grow up, to be displaced?
Situated at the base of the dramatic Wallowa mountains, getting to Fishtrap is a migration itself. From my western home on the Oregon Coast to the state's eastern edge town of Joseph, Oregon is a nine-hour drive. Passage, indeed, as I drove through temperate rainforest, passed idyllic farms, along carved river gorge, across dry ranch land, and into remote small towns. Remote is understatement, and I say this as one who lives in a town of 650 people and no stoplights.
The displacement was refreshing. I gently pulled from routine and leaned into a roadtrip hum that allowed my mind to wander and wonder.
How do our journeys — of body and soul and pen — awaken us to the new, the foreign, the familiar?
Through writing classes, planned and spontaneous readings, and lively mealtime conversations, Fishtrap provided time, space and opportunity to make creative leaps. Situated at 4,000 feet in forested wilderness, and stripped of cell phone service and internet connection, quietude prevailed as new poems brewed.
And how can staying in a place also change who we are?
Writer Pico Iyer served as guest speaker and visiting thinker. Born in England, to parents from India, Iyer lives in both Japan and California and works as a travel writer (in the sense that outward travel stirs inward introspection). He is the author of two novels and seven nonfiction books exploring globalism, migration, crossing cultures and literature, including The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home.
Iyer crystallized the week's theme by sharing his amusing but profound perspective on what it means to be at home in the world. Always an outsider, he spoke of "the dance between the need to belong and the need to stand apart."
It's a dance, like migrations and passages, that may take me a lifetime to learn, to fully live.
July 9, 2011
Allons! the road is before us!
I spent the week with a lively group of 11, 12 and 13-year old girls.
As the Summer Camp Adventure Writers (a program of Seashore Family Literacy), we made each day an exploration of the world around us. We journeyed across the historic Alsea Bay Bridge, hiked the temperate rainforest of Cape Perpetua, took the city bus to Newport to wander the working bayfront, and kayaked Eckman Lake, where we paddled against a steady wind that made us feel strong and accomplished when we returned to shore.
As our call to action, we adopted Walt Whitman's Song of the Open Road:
Allons! the road is before us!
It is safe—I have tried it—my own feet have tried it well—be not detain'd!
Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen'd!
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn'd!
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge expound the law.
Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?
Every day we viewed the world with fresh eyes, remembered to taste the air, smell the earth, touch the quiet world within.
One blink is all it takes to see a whole new world.
— Hannah, age 11
Each reflection sparked another so that our pens moved as quick as our feet and words flowed as easily as our laughter.
I search through my mind to find I have seen the small stuff. I have asked why and I know that when you explore yourself you will always find new things.
— Lexi, age 12
Next week, I will attend another sort of summer camp; I've been granted a fellowship to attend Fishtrap, a weeklong writing workshop in eastern Oregon. I imagine it as a summer camp for adults — with the same delicious influence on travel, both inward and outward. In fact, this year's theme is Migrations & Passages. The featured guest is renowned travel writer Pico Iyer, who wrote, "We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves."
For children and adults, I'm happy to say the same message applies:
Allons! the road is before us!
July 6, 2011
Read. Floss. Write.
Oh, I have lots
of little morsels of advice:
Read often and a lot. Floss.
Invest in a good pair of shoes
and write letters more often.
Listen to the paper take the ink
when you sign your name.
Check out Poetic Asides, a Writer's Digest blog by Robert Lee Brewer, who has gathered writing advice from an impressive collection of contemporary poets, including two of my (Pacific Northwest) faves -- Dorianne Laux and Susan Rich.
How about you: What's the best writing advice you've received, or given?
Thanks to Erika Dreifus for sharing this link on her blog.
July 1, 2011
Thankful Thursday Night
I slip them into letters, serve them with dinner and sprinkle them into everything from congratulations to condolences. I'm always sharing poems.
But sometimes my enthusiasm can be a bit much.
I don't really like poetry, a young writer recently admitted. I don't get it.
I gathered myself, rose to full posture and began my poetry pep talk.
And stopped.
She was right. I sometimes don't like poetry either. I get frustrated by clever phrasing, put off by evasive "meaning," and annoyed with lofty voice. Some days I want nothing to do with poets or poetry. All that suffering. All that longing. Too much whining. Let's get a Slurpee instead!
And then, a few days later, I find a killer 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, experience and perspective can blend, bend and sing, I clamber down to earth to write my own.
So I say to my young friend, Yes, yes, I know. But poems aren't secrets or tests. You don't need to analyze, you just need to feel.
She nods, and I can't tell if she agrees or is ready to bolt. I stop waving the poetry flag. We talk fiction instead.
And then, weeks later, she sends me a poem.
I found this and thought you might like it, she writes. And, of course, I do. I love the poem, the discovery of the poem, and the young woman finding her way with words.
Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt — marvelous error! —
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.
- Antonio Machado
It's Thankful Thursday. Joy expands and contracts in direct relation to our sense of gratitude. What are you thankful for today? A person, a place, a thing? A story, a song, a poem? What makes your world, your heart, expand?
June 27, 2011
Join me?
Off the Page, On the Coast
A one-day writing workshop in Yachats, Oregon
Saturday, August 6, 2011 from 10am to 4pm
A workshop for writers of all levels, experience & interests. From poetry to prose, fact to fiction, the focus is on fresh writing with prompts and practices designed to inspire and energize. Led by Drew Myron, participants will generate new work in an encouraging atmosphere and serene coastal setting.
The workshop takes place at the Overleaf Lodge Event Center, a warm and inviting spot nestled steps from crashing ocean waves, minutes from a shoreline trail, and in the beauty of Yachats, a tranquil beach town of just 650 people on the central Oregon Coast.
Cost is $65, and includes lunch.
To maintain a supportive, intimate experience, workshop is limited to 12 writers.
Register Now
- Register online
- Register by mail
Send check, and contact info (name, address, phone, email) to:
Drew Myron
Off the Page, On the Coast
Box 914, Yachats, Oregon 97498
Questions? Call 541-547-3757, or email dcm@drewmyron.com
June 21, 2011
Summer
in this kiss
all our other kisses—
summer solstice
— Ce Rosenow
from Pacific
a Haiku Society of America Book Award Finalist
