Tag Archives: writing

Through the open window…

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A coyote yips and howls. I don’t know what time it is, still dark. The Siamese jumps onto the sill, presses her body against the screen, hackles raised.  She emits a low moan. In the distance an owl hoots and the dog rumbles a half-hearted growl. J still sleeps, so I get up to close the window and notice a pinking sky over the mountains.  The cat and dog settle back down, tightly tucking into furry curls against the January chill. But for me, the night is over.

Today, this not-the-first-of-the-year, but this ordinary-Thursday-when-the-holiday-rush-has-finally-faded is my annual Life Visioning day.  It begins when I light a candle against the dawn.

Candle

Actually I begin every day by lighting a candle and spending moments deep in reflection.

What am I grateful for from the previous day?

Gratitude Journal

a little dancing after dinner
candles on the hearth
neighbors who share homegrown oranges

With a smile and fortitude from recalling all that’s good, I next invite my sacred heart space to be bathed by a divine floodlight where I cannot hide, not even from myself.  I think back to the day before, and remember ways I did and didn’t act in alignment with my values and intentions.  Can I repeat what went right? Can I correct the imbalances that caused failure?

I set me intentions for this day, write my to-do list within this womb of new dawn freshness.  Then, I pray. I trace the presence of my family and friends upon my hands, using one index finger I begin at each fingertip recalling a name, a need, until the faces and the names of all those who are close to me are joined in the center of my heart-side palm.

Hands

I leave this meditation time by rejoining the entire human chain with an invocation for peace and love, “For those who will be born today, and those who will die.”  Each month I also add a special intention.  My January focus is, “For those who struggle with addiction or mental illness and for those who care for and try to love them.” I join my hands together, press them to my heart, bow to the sunrise and begin my “real” day.

Oh my goodness, telling you all this was difficult.

I’m an intensely private person by nature. There were years and years and when I didn’t even tell my own husband that I prayed, let alone that I meditated and lit candles in the dark and drew his name upon my palm.

Why change?

Maybe I’ve decided that being myself is something I should do publicly.

Maybe I wrote, be yourself out loud on my to-do list this morning and it’s too early in the year to break promises to myself.

It is, in fact, right in the middle of the month the Backyard Sisters have dedicated to focus and while Susan will tell you how to focus your camera, I am relegated to suggesting ways to focus your writing life.

I learn today that the word focus comes from the Latin focus, meaning “hearth, fireplace.

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focus (n.) 1640s, from L. focus “hearth, fireplace” (also, figuratively, “home, family”), of unknown origin, used in post-classical times for “fire” itself, taken by Kepler (1604) in a mathematical sense for “point of convergence,” perhaps on analogy of the burning point of a lens (the purely optical sense of the word may have existed before Kepler, but it is not recorded). Introduced into English 1650s by Hobbes. Sense transfer to “center of activity or energy” is first recorded 1796.

Inspired by the connectivity to the word focus and home, as nurturing my family ties always rises to the top of any priority list, I reread my last year’s life vision and adjust paragraphs or sections that no longer seem important.  I focus on the lines that have followed me from year to year to year.

Write a book. Write a book. Write a book.

I realize I am. I have. Written the book(s). I just haven’t pushed hard enough for publication.  I cross out the line. Write a book. I revise: Send out book.  We are only in control of our own actions, I realize. And now is the time to act with focus, with fire, with the kind of fierceness you would use to advocate for someone that you love.

With light and love
~Catherine

Précis: (This is a lovely new word I discover today. It means a summary.)
When you sit in peace, quiet self-truth speaks loudly. Pay attention to what you’re trying to tell yourself.

Practice:  
Can you create a vision for your life?  Nothing fancy, just write about the life you want to live.  I live in a house small enough to vacuum in an hour.  Date it.  Remember to include all the elements of nature: Air-spirit.  Fire-ambition.  Water-refreshment.  Earth-body.  Space-mind.  Focus on one action for each element that you can accomplish within the next month or so.  Write that down too.

Play:
Create a scene of dialogue between two characters, one whose inner and outer life is aligned – think Atticus Finch from To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee – and another who projects a false outward image – think Fermina Daza from Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez. Now what would happen if they end up in a story together?

“Get up! Get up!”

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I dream last night of my grandmother, my mother’s mother, the one my sisters and I call Gammy.  She was one of the original Backyard Sisters, the youngest of four girls born in an  Illinois small town.  She always wore high heels and a silk petticoat, carried a patent leather pocket book, and never pierced her ears.

leonard girls

Gammy, far left

No one laughed like Gammy, or danced like Gammy, and lord knows no one loved or was loved quite like Gammy. Our mother, an only child, and we, her four granddaughters, were the sun around which she revolved. She was the kind of grandmother who, with each hello or goodbye, would clasp her hands around both your cheeks, pull you within inches of her own face, and with her eyes drink you in like whiskey the first night Prohibition was lifted.  Not that Gammy ever drank. She was a confirmed teetotaler.  Her giddiness bubbled purely from joy at being alive, surrounded by family.

We girls loved her back with reckless abandon.

Gammy has been dead now for almost 12 years.  But last night, when she leaned over me, right there in the moonlight, white lacy dress fluttering as she circled her hands over my head and cajoled, “Get up! Get up! Get up” I was only slightly surprised.  See, even though I use the term “dream,” to name these occasional encounters, it feels like a much more substantial spirit than my subconscious.  The other sisters will tell you their own stories about Gammy visits.  It’s like she was right there, right there in the room… The only difference between our stories is what she tells us.

“Get up! Get up!”  Oh my Gammy knows I’m struggling with rising out of the holiday stupor of too much food and too much fireside reading and too much nothing-to-do.  It’s January 4 and I haven’t yet set my intentions for the new year, haven’t decided yet what to focus on.

_MG_8208 focus

And focus I must. Why?

Because, like the holidays, my to-do list is rich with too many good things and I’ve been acting like that squirrel in the headlights, unwilling to say yes to anything because I’ll have to say no to so many others.

There is one sacred rock.  Family. There are 22 of us now, our parents, we four sisters and mates, our own children and in-laws. We gather at least once a month to celebrate birthdays, or graduations, or holidays.  We bake Gammy’s cake recipes and roast chicken like she did and never say we’re too busy to sing and dance in the kitchen.

But work projects are essential.  Our writing, teaching and photography sustain us and pay our bills.  And then what is life without trying to leave the world a little better for someone else?  Nothing! Gammy would say.

So in honor of what would have been Gammy’s centennial year, the Backyard Sisters decided to challenge ourselves.

We’ve selected 12 photographic terms, one to concentrate on each month.  These words convey a message, or capture a moment, a mood.  We’ve picked expressions that easily become inspiration and metaphor for family, for creative projects, for our place in the human collective.  They’re essential to saving life’s ordinary moments from the brink of oblivion; without these intentions meaningful art and life become difficult.

Our theme for January is focus. Works for photography.  Works for poetry.

it is out of focus

“It Is Out Of Focus” by Joel Lipman, (Poetry Foundation)

Ansel Adams once said, “When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.” (LensWork, Issue 55, page 33.)

The Backyard Sisters welcome you to 2013 with words, with photographs, and yes sometimes silence, just to remember.

Each day we all travel one step closer to the inevitable endless silence of death.  The challenge then is to leave behind the words, images and memories that when recalled will reflect our best efforts.

Are you with us?  Then “Get up! Get up!”  The program begins on Tuesday. Until then, think about what deserves your attention this year.

With focus,
~Catherine and Sue

“It is difficult not to write satire.”

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Dear Family and Friends,

Christmas Angels

It’s seems almost impossible that one whole year has passed without a call, letter, e-mail, or text from you.  I’m sure you’ve been as busy as we have.  Let me tell you all about our wonderful year.

santa man

Ed captured the Western Hemisphere Sales Director VP and Marketing Consultant, Business Generator title at First Corporation Corp.  He’s catapulting into position to be the First Second Man!  He flies between Hong Kong, Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, Beijing, Boston, Fargo, and home on a regular route. He always appreciates the tender touches of clean underwear, socks, love notes, and credit card bills I slip into his carry-on.  Our 20th wedding anniversary was special.  We rented the Anniversary Suite at Punta Pacifica in Costa Rica. It’s a beautiful country with gorgeous beaches and many English-speaking people.  It was perfectly romantic and the two days, one night just flew by.

The blessing behind that little February interlude was Edward Jonathan III.  He’s beautiful. He’s a boy! He looks just like me even though I know he’s squinting in the picture.  He was, after all, just 12 hours old. I wrote this while nursing in the hospital since we wanted you all to get the fresh, fresh news immediately!

fuzzy angel

Elizabeth turns 3 tomorrow.  Her favorite activities are singing at Sunday School and playing nicely with other children.  She was chosen to be preschool helper at the So Good Academy twice already!  By the way, please don’t ask for any more references for your children’s applications to So Good. The Director requested that even though we are the largest donors it might be nice to let other families on the west side have a chance at the 12 spots for the ’13 and ’14 admission classes.

Grace is now 4. She’s very sweet and social.   She has many girlfriends and is invited to birthday parties often.  This trait, (guess who she takes after?) coupled with the gymnastics classes she’ll begin in January, should make her the undisputed Captain of Cheer when she begins Old Fashioned Fancy Crest as a freshman in 2021!

girl

Lauren turned 8 on the fourth of July.  Her lemonade stand on the holiday parade route brought in more sales than any other child’s! Our little firecracker still wins all the spelling bees, geography quizzes, and mathematics derbies in her classroom.  The biggest blessing about her new age is that she can finally compete outside of the Good Academy for city, region and state honors.  You’ll probably see her name in the paper just after the first of the year.  Please don’t call and congratulate her.  We’re trying to keep her humble.

Anna Mary turned 10. Her hair is finally growing out after the great candle and scissor debacle in art class so she once again looks like she belongs in the family, Ed’s side, of course.

Edwina began Old Fashioned Fancy Crest in September.  She took her first SAT exam and earned a near-perfect score of 2150, so she has three years to get even better!  Her greatest achievement was acceptance into the Big East Coast Ballet Summer Intensive Workshop.  Can you believe I sent my child across the country to spend six weeks in the company of prima ballerinas?  She was placed in second level which is incredible for someone her age! I made it to the gala extravaganza finale so I could clap and throw roses from the front row.  It was magical.

My work is really quite wonderful and exciting. I love it! I’ve been working full time on the same deal – worth $300 million! – since I started in May;  I work 80-90 hours a week, but I find out next week if the contract goes through, so, I’m hoping I’ll have a nice Christmas bonus. I spent my birthday in Toronto, Canada, on business. Last month I went from there, to Plano, TX, to Seattle, to Philadelphia, to San Francisco, Atlanta and Chicago, but now I’m on maternity leave through the holidays so I can be well rested when it’s time to ramp up again on January 2.

Anyway, do keep in touch.  We’re too busy to reply, but we count our long Christmas card list as one of life’s greatest gifts.

Air kisses!
~The Naughty Alter-Egos of Nice Catherine and Sweet Sue

Christmas Card

p.s.  Juvenal, the Roman poet whose quote titles this post, is one of history’s great satirists.   To find a fine discourse, written by Roger Kimball in The New Criterion, on Juvenal’s style, perspective and the nuances of his enduring legacy, click here.

Here a word, there a word…

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“Did I forget to look at the sky this morning / 
when I first woke up?”

Dawn

So begins Jim Moore’s,”Twenty Questions,” one of my favorite poems to read as a reminder to live attentively. When I take Moore’s attitude of inquiry into the day, I’m frequently rewarded with a high word count of odd snippets which I hoard like gold to incite new projects. And then I lose my words within the dozens and dozens of journals I’ve kept for years.

I once attended a reading where Charles Simic and Laure-Anne Bosselaar stood in front of a large audience and spun magic from their tattered leather journals, taking rapt listeners from first jot to finished poem like sure-footed adults leading children over stepping stones in a rushing river.

My process is infinitely messier.

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I keep journals everywhere.  Stacks of filled Moleskins pile up in a purple silk-wrapped box on my bookshelf. There are three journals on my bedside table, one in my purse, another in my messenger bag, and a water-spotted, sandy one in my beach backpack. There’s a slim brown journal in my car, a hardback one in my upstairs office, and the smallest journal of all waits downstairs by my muddy shoes.  I slip it into my jeans pocket before every hike.

Writing is the easy part.  Keeping track of my observations is the trick. Yet I find that randomly picking and choosing to read from this year or that, from land observations or seaside ruminations can be weirdly fun.

It’s never a good thing to be a cautious trumpeter, I wrote while listening to music at San Francisco’s now defunct Jazz at Pearl’s club.

Do not ever show an oak a photo of a pine. When you write about the aspen, don’t let the birch read a word about it, came after a late fall walk in the canyon near my house.

I’d rather lose an armpit than a finger, was gleaned at the AFI Film fest while riding the elevator from the parking garage to the ArcLight Theater in Los Angeles.

And then, my most promising:
”                                                         ”

This emptiness  lies within the small leather book, decorated with with a botanical pomegranate image, that I picked up at Charta an exquisite book bindery in Venezia.

DSCN2337

The proprietor, whose name I’ve sadly forgotten, warned me that I’d never write in this book.

“No one ever does,” he said as he wrapped the small book in gold paper.  “But just so you know, I offer free refills.  When you fill this up, you send me a letter and I will send you more pages.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll fill it up. I’m a writer.”

He nodded sagely, patted the package before he handed it to me.

“You’ll be the first.”

I think of this – self-fulfilling prophecies and keeping track of journal notes –  as I bid my students a semester’s-end goodbye.  They tell me they’ve turned into writers now and they want to know how to continue the practice.

Off the top of my head, I offer my own best advice.

* Write frequently, at least 1,000 words a day.
* Save your writing in documents titled by month and year.
* Take a journal with you everywhere. (Shhh, I didn’t tell them the story of what happens to mine.)
* Make a regular practice of transcribing your journal notes once a month. (Now there’s a thought.)
* When a new month rolls around, open a new document and begin again.
* At that time, make a regular practice of reading the previous years’ journal entries for that month. For example, every December I read all the December documents from previous years.
* And lastly, don’t ever let someone tell you that you won’t write.

I always miss my students, for their optimism, their tenacity, their freshness, and finally because without them I’d have no occasion to hear myself say aloud things I know to be true.

“Don’t ever let someone tell you that you won’t write.”

It’s time to face down the Pomegranate journal.

bare feet
low sun
blue in the afternoon

There. In pencil, with eraser marks, a far from perfect entry.  And then I remember my second favorite line from the poem “Twenty Questions.”

“Wouldn’t it be wrong not to mention joy?”

I scribble joy! in Pomegranate journal, just to remind myself.

Joy! I tell my students instead of goodbye.  And then, because a statement offers no possibility for dialogue, I ask a question.

Will you remember to look at the sky at dusk?

DSCN2182

With joy,
~ Catherine

P.S.  Jim Moore is an American poet and recent recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship.

He writes in the his fellowship profile about spending time in prison and learning that his fellow inmates were poetry lovers.

I discovered that a big notebook was kept secretly (passed from inmate to inmate so the risk was shared)  and at some cost (its discovery would have resulted in the loss of good time, which meant a longer stay in prison) in which inmates kept poems—poems of their own and poems by poets whose work they loved, mostly Black poets, but I remember Neruda was there, Whitman, and Longfellow, of all people.

You can read the entire poem “Twenty Questions” here.

 

View from the lower rungs

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This write a novel in a month promise…
like climbing a twenty foot ladder to the sky.

an excerpt:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rachel
May 2003

Let me not propagate words. It’s not what I do best.

I am, rather, a breeder of children, the keeper of remembrances.

My success is measured in a flip book of time, hinting at a future.  I have raised up five children. Mine don’t die.  The last child, a pudgy boy, starts first grade and rounds the years until now, as a new teenager, we find a hint of hair upon his upper lip.  School pictures, arranged all on one page, are glued, acid free, in a circle like the numbers on a clock. They tick off the moments, the years. This boy still has four blank circles.

The lady in charge of scrapbooking parties insists we do not be afraid to trim.  Snip out the refuse with zigzag scissors! Crop! Discard the unimportant!

That is a blessing. I think it’s why I took to scrapbooking.

I take horrible pictures.

A woman with her eyes half-closed.
A child with her new eyes fixed.
I always catch the mouths agape.

Grimaces. Laughter bubbling over into rapture.

A teenage girl, head tilted back, mouth thrown open so wide it looks as if she’s biting the universe. Only I remember the joke that caught her so overcome.  I snap a moment too early. Maybe too late.

Babies caught in the intake of breath become a tempest. Scowling infants. Toddlers with tears streaking their cheeks. Not cute sadness. Wretched sadness. Sadness with a conical birthday hat to top it all off.

A boy with his eyes half-closed.

So I crop. I save shoes. Food. Hands. Necks. Elbows. Eyes. Mouths. Noses usually turn out fine. Knees are pretty good.

I know who wore brown and black cowboy boots on Christmas Eve 1979. I don’t need to see his face.

It matters a lot, what I can remember. My lawyer tells me this.

So help me God, I’ll try to tell you what really happened.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Writing is the first step. Editing is more like what happens at the top of the ladder where the steps are narrow and far from the ground. The only thing worse than ascending air is having no one to keep your foundation from wobbling.  For now I’m getting strong support from 300,000 others at NaNoWriMo.

With steady gaze,
~ Catherine

Desire, expectation, and surprise

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Autumn Afternoon

A startled flock of coots.
At once a chorus!  Wing beats rise upon the reservoir, soft like a stadium full of children wearing mittens.

I close my eyes. Can you pretend it’s angels clapping? 

(October 29, 2011)

I find this in my journal and decide to return to the reservoir this morning to snap a quick photo to illustrate my words so I can get back to today’s real task of beginning that novel I will write in a month.

An overcast sky creates a muted light, fitting for this day-after-Halloween hush hanging palpable as the clouds. We pass a few smashed pumpkins and I pick up empty Three Musketeers, Peanut M&M and Snickers wrappers that I find littered along the way.  They crinkle now when I reach into my pocket to grab the camera before we crest the ridge to the reservoir overlook.

Chester pulls on his leash. He’s not used to being confined out here but I don’t want him to  dash into the water and scare the coots like last time before I can focus on:

Four unruffled ducks, utterly unconcerned about our arrival.  Aren’t I a lame one. I should have known better than to expect a repeat performance from something as serendipitous as an entire resting flock of coots which flapped away to my poetic enjoyment.

I give myself permission to skip writing a post today and decide to return quickly home when streak of white flashes on the far shore.

A heron! I’ll admit, I thought it was crane until I got home and learned that cranes fly with necks extended, while herons fly with necks held in a crook. Somehow I find great comfort in knowing that nature allows, in her wisdom for diversity, for both those who stretch as far as they are able in every single flight and those who keep their reach a little closer to their hearts each time they glide.

There in the distance are more herons, an egret, and yes, a few coots.

Chester sits on my foot. Is he telling me not to rush away? We pause and watch the herons swoop and drift and soar. There are no angels clapping but if I squint, it’s easy to imagine, on a day so fresh from memorializing death, that here at dawn we can witness angels flying.  Is this enough for one ordinary day?

We pull ourselves away.
There are words to write and “…miles to go before I sleep.” Chester is used to me quoting him lines of poetry when we walk.  For one brief moment he stops tugging on his leash. He looks over his shoulder and I swear he smiles.

With enchantment,
~Catherine

The Weekend Dish

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Write now!

National Novel Writing Month begins in exactly six days and you can get a jump start on outlining, prewriting, researching, and yes, writing your book-length project this weekend.

NaNoWriMo, as its known to those in the know, is an annual event billed on the website as “thirty days and nights of literary abandon” where the challenge is to complete 50,000 words within 30 days. You do the math, that’s a lot of writing.  But a perusal of the list of published NaNoWriMo authors includes titles put out by major houses and may include a few names and novels you’ve read like Sara Gruen and Like Water For Elephants.

The concept is pretty simple. You register on the website.  It’s free.

In return for your public declaration of intent, you receive cyber pep talks and support from NaNoWriMo staff and information about local writing groups and in-person events.

You buckle your seat belt to your writing chair. You write.

I’ve already started writing.

Why I Can’t Write 50,000 Words This November
Thirty people are coming for Thanksgiving dinner and I recently moved and I’m not finished unpacking yet and there’s no mirror in the downstairs bath (and no light either) so how can I host a holiday without also doing a little shopping for the house and the new backyard is still mud and the rainy season is imminent and how can I ignore that November is an ideal month to plant in California and did I mention I have no backyard, (seriously, it’s dirt, just dirt which turns into mud when it rains and you know I have Chester and he needs to go outside because that’s what dogs do) and the new issue of dirtcakes is due out so I’ve got writers to contact and contracts to send and design to oversee and the semester is winding down and I know my students paid for and expect to receive not only teaching but grading which means I’ve got dozens and dozens of papers to read and comment upon and did I tell you me daughter’s in-laws are coming to town and I’d be rude not to plan some time for them and surely I’ve mentioned that I’m also a writer which means that all those family things and foody things and editor things and house things and garden things and teaching things will have to somehow bow to this writing thing but I’m old now and I have to sleep so maybe I just won’t eat and I certainly won’t clean (although I should shower and do laundry so as not to offend those standing nearby) but of course I’ll cook the week of Thanksgiving because I really love all those 30 people who will show up on my front porch that day –

Ack! Stop the chatter and just write.

You’ll find inspiration some where. Mine arrived in my e-mail in-box earlier this year. With permission, I’m excerpting it here:

Hi Professor,
It’s Brian Ducoffe.  I was in your “Composing the Self” class last fall. I don’t know if you remember but I participated in National Novel Writing Month and finished. I ended up spending the next 9 months editing and revising it and the book is now published. I ended up going the self publishing route after a couple conversations with some literary agents just so I could have more control but am hoping I can pick up some attention and possibly make some publishing houses take notice. Anyway I just thought you’d like to check it out since I wrote it during your class! Thanks!

See, the cool thing is that Brian never once missed an assignment or asked for an extension he just kept showing up, doing his school thing while finishing Our Elephant Graveyard.
So here’s to you and here’s to me and here’s to a growing word count.
What are you waiting for?
See you on the bright side of November.
Full details of NaNoWri Mo can be found by clicking here.
With high expectations,
~Catherine

Time to dream

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Dear One,

I see you standing there. I read your back and see the softened slump about your shoulders.

I hear your sigh that carries just above the shush of the Pacific, not quite a keen, but not a thing like laughter.  What is it you look for? Have you been waiting for so very long?

May I tell you something? Once I saw two boys barehanded fishing for tilapia in Kauai’s Hule’ia River. Frozen still in the shadows of the mangrove, they cupped their hands and waited.  Shhhh, they warned and I froze too, midstep on the hiking path.  All at once, like athletes on a pedestal, they raised their arms victoriously overhead and one wriggling fish flung droplets into the sky.

“Dinner!” they shrieked.

That night I dreamt I stood in the shallows of Hule’ia, hands submerged into murky water. I could not see clearly, unsure exactly what I was trying to catch.  I dreamt a cold plump softness nudging my open palms. One, two – too many sleek and slippery things to count – I grasped and missed, until at dawn I awoke empty-handed, staring blankly at the wall.

Is it like that now for you?

My friend wonders about her mounting “…sense of exhaustion and ambivalence…”

My students say, “This week is awful. It’s limp broccoli.”

It seems everyone around me is feeling…

when we would all so much rather be —

Here’s my Rx.  If you can, take a visit to your girlhood dreaming spot, or one that reminds you copiously of it. Gaze into the lantern of your inner fire. Catch the glow. Reflect the blaze.

Remember who you once were and what you said you would become.  It’s not too late. But hurry. You are waiting.  And so am I.
With vibrancy and gold,
~Catherine

p.s. If your spirits need a boost these days, stumble upon Dearest Creature by poet Amy Gerstler.  (You can read David Kirby’s New York Times review of it here.)

This is not a new book; it was published in 2009. But it’s a new discovery for me and I highly recommend any book that contains poems with titles like, “At the Back of a Closet, Two Dresses Converse” and “Chant of the Hallucinogenic Plants,” especially as an antidote if you’re in your blues period.  There’s no expiration date on golden poetry.

Five lines to challenge chaos

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Is it possible to offset the apparent randomness of the universe?

California Morning Sky.       Photo Credit: James Keefe Photography

Some ladies put up tomatoes, or peaches, or apple jam against the coming winter. I decide to create a stock of writing projects as sustenance against the lengthening darkness.  By spring, I’ll have a larder of poems that adhere to formal patterns found in nature, the sunflower, for example, or the whorl of a seashell, the number of legs on a spider for instance, or the swoop of an orb found glistening in early morning.

The idea takes root as I introduce my students to poetic form and we discuss the state of poetry as a mostly formless country these days, flowing as it does so frequently in free verse.  What is found when form is lost? I prod.  What is gained when form is followed?

I ask this, of course because it’s a good beginning for an Introduction to Creative Writing unit on poetry. But the debatable merits of structured versus unstructured poetry are making headlines these days within the literary community and I want my students to understand the fray. Before you roll your eyes and wonder who cares outside of a classroom or a Paris garret, consider that poets have long considered themselves to be what the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley writes “In Defense of Poetry” as:

“… the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

(You can read Shelley’s essay in its entirety here.)

It’s this role of poets as “mirrors of society,” that most concerns William Childress, a noted poet and National Geographic photojournalist, in a recent letter to the editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, a journal of Literature and Discussion.

“Is free verse killing poetry…A blind person can see that American society is in turmoil…shouldn’t poets be trying to change things instead of writing chaos-poetry or “woe is me” diaries? Who will read poetry when they can’t find a common bond in a poet’s writing? Who likes ruptured grammar, twisted syntax and what my grandpa called flapdoodle? There’s at least a partial consensus that free verse these days consists of a lot of badwriting. I forget who said, “Poets should learn to write before they try to write poetry.”  Many of today’s poets don’t seem to realize that all writing is connected.”

All writing must be connected because all life is braided together in one way or another isn’t it.

As go the poets…
As go the canaries…
So go the humans?

Does nature, I ask my students, follow predictable patterns?

“No,” says the student who arrived late for the semester because Hurricane Isaac interrupted her flight plans from Florida. “It’s random and unpredictable.”

“Of course,” answers the biology major who cites genus and species classifications as one example of nature’s way of behaving according rules.

“Does art that most mirrors nature create more of an impact than art which seems more artificial?” I prod, quoting the philosopher Pseudo-Longinus‘ line about finding sublimity.

For art is perfect when it seems to be nature, and nature hits the mark when she contains art hidden within her.”

My students and I decide we’ll compose one sample of as many structured poetic forms as possible before we write any more free verse. We’ll read deeply from poets who follow form and from poets who made their break with form for reasons buried within the poem itself. We begin small, with a tanka, “a thirty-one-syllable poem, traditionally written in a single unbroken line. A form of waka, Japanese song or verse, tanka translates as “short song,” and is better known in its five-line, 5/7/5/7/7 syllable count form.”

Here’s my tanka-in-progress:

What one spider knows
spinning glass in dawn-dark fall —
even leaves let go.
Brilliance against the barren
this alone.  Can I believe?

Wishing you enough chaos to unsettle and enough structure to soothe,
~Catherine

p.s. Care to join our writing challenge? Up next is the cinquain, a five-line poem with 22 syllables broken down, according to lines as:  2, 4, 6, 8,and 2.

A sailor walks into a bar…

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Four hundred and ninety three years ago today (ish) Ferdinand Magellan began his expedition to circumnavigate the globe in search of a western spice trade route between Europe and Asia.

Photo Credit: Public Domain Clip Art

I say “ish” because some sources, like The History Channel, name today as the anniversary but others, notably the Hakluyt Society which publishes “primary records of voyages, travels and other geographical material” offer a different story in The First Voyage Round the World, from a Genoese pilot “who came in the said ship, who wrote all the voyage as it is here.”

According to this sailor’s first-hand account “HE [Magellan] sailed from Seville on the 10th day of August of the said year [1519], and remained at the bar until the 21st day of September, and as soon as he got outside, he steered to the southwest to make the island of Tenerife.”

A sailor walks out of a bar.

I can’t help but think how much writing is like heading into uncharted waters with nothing but a notion.  Sometimes I pursue the end with the diligence of a royal lackey and other times I allow the trade winds of exploration to blow me a bit off course.  When I teach writing, this fluidity between convention and discovery unsettles the students, especially as they try to find their own way, their own voice, to leave their distinct mark in a literary history book.

“Is it good?”
“Should I give up?”
“Do you see any talent in my work?”

I wish students relied less on my coronation and more on the process.

Do you love your journey?
Does your writing reflect your best effort?
Do you trust your boat?

Cinque Terra, Italy. Photo Credit: Catherine Keefe

I wonder if Magellan would have stayed home if he knew he wouldn’t live long enough to receive a hero’s welcome back in Spain. Somehow I doubt it.  If you need fortitude for your literary journey here, to help realign your compass, are two reading recommendations.

If traditional short fiction is your thing, you can’t do any better than getting a subscription to One Story, $21 per year.  From the website:

One Story is a non-profit literary magazine that features one great short story mailed to subscribers every three weeks. Our mission is to save the short story by publishing in a friendly format that allows readers to experience each story as a stand-alone work of art and a simple form of entertainment. One Story is designed to fit into your purse or pocket, and into your life.

If you’re done with tradition and want to experience literature curated to jolt you out of linear, conventional thought, mosey over to Diagram, “a free electronic journal of text and art.  Sure, you can read the fiction and the book reviews there, but the real fun begins when you venture into the schematics link.

from Diagram

From the “Submission Guidelines” page:

WE VALUE the insides of things, vivisection, urgency, risk, elegance, flamboyance, work that moves us, language that does something new, or does something old–well. We like iteration and reiteration. Ruins and ghosts. Mechanical, moving parts, balloons, and frenzy. Buzz us

Here’s wishing you enough squalls to appreciate the peace, enough uncertainty to hone your own beliefs, and plenty of salt spray upon your cheeks.

With delight in discovery,
~Catherine