This ain’t the Ivy League, there’s no huge endowment here, but there’s no slaveholders either.
Category: Thoughts and Musings
Repetition Exercise
REPETITION EXERCISE
I was at a Springsteen concert recently. One of his most famous songs — Hungry Heart — usually leads to him falling back onto the audience.
Stand Up, Sit Down, Fight Fight Fight
I’ve long thought that the two most difficult parts of writing are sitting down and standing up. The reasons for the difficulty-in-getting-yourself-to-sit-down-to-write part are myriad, as anyone who has ever tried to write can attest. The standing-up part, though, might need some explanation. Most times, standing up from writing—that is, leaving the work behind in… Continue reading Stand Up, Sit Down, Fight Fight Fight
The Arsenal of Beauty
Name: The Institute for the Appreciation of Beauty in Ordinary Things
Founded: 9.24.17
Founder: Elena Georgiou
Mission: To build an Arsenal of Beauty to use in the War on Ugly.
Funded by: Crowdsourced with donations of beauty and power by the General Public*
Question Authority
The link between a sense of purpose, the military, absent fathers, religious fundamentalism, and even prison, seems to me to be a sort of human need for authority…
Ohio, The Election, 2004, The ReMix: How I Came Looking
The ReMix begins: 2004 draft cuts: (in parens)– 2017 adds: IN CAPS:
After the election, I saw and felt a frozenness–I NEEDED (wanted) poetry (to arrive and speak to me–) to convert (a tableau of different shades of) dread to (a weave of) courage and CUT A PATH TO transformation. TO ROAR. I wanted something to take AND SPEAK the pain, (naturally). And poetry can hold IT (every complex yearning).
I Don’t Know Where to Begin…
“I don’t know where to begin because I have nothing to say…”
is the opening line from an essay by the poet, Mary Reufle, called “Madness, Rack, and Honey” which meditates, among other things, on metaphors, an ad for a Coach bag, the correlation between suicide and literacy, and wasting time. It’s a good read.
Letter from London: Reflections on Writers’ Reputations, Graves, Love Affairs, Accents, and a Murder, in No Particular Order
Moving back to London requires minimal adjustment, it’s as easy (as a writer once said about revision, compared to first draft composing) as sliding into a bath of warm oatmeal. No culture shock save for the first instant of wondering why dogs and babies are driving cars; all you have to do is exercise a little preliminary caution crossing the street and you’re done. Or maybe some mild culture shock, over here in the Land of Other People’s Problems, to learn exactly what the tabloid media judges important. “Horror on No. 77!” shrieks the top headline in the Evening Standard, the free newspaper everyone reads on the Tube going home after work.
After Trump After Charlottesville
This week, following the U.S. President’s pro-white nationalist tantrum before the press in the wake of the Charlottesville terrorist attack (remarkably deemed as such by Attorney General Jeff Sessions), it seems that we are witnessing a regression of a whole different order of magnitude.
How Are You, My Fellow Writer?
How are you, my fellow writer? This past spring, at my annual physical exam, I was given a questionnaire I was to fill and hand to the nurse before proceeding to the doctor’s office. I have been with the same practitioners since 2009, and this was the first time they asked about my emotional well-being.
On Survival: Dear John McCain
Dear John McCain:
I think of your tap code late at night when I am lonely. You broken and spent in the Hanoi Hilton tapping out “Are you okay?” to the guy on the other side of the wall.
“My name is Ernie Brace,” the taps from the prison cell next to you kept declaring. “My name is Ernie Brace.” “My name is Ernie Brace.” Then sobs. Ernie Brace so overwhelmed by human contact he could only tap his name.
Literary Traveler
Last night around a campfire, I bonded with our Bedouin guide (عبت) over Arabian Sands. He said the book, which he re-reads often, captures Bedouin culture like a zoom lens (his words) and the changing culture of Arabia like a crystal ball (mine). Thesiger wasn’t the first explorer to cross the Empty Quarter, but he has become arguably the most famous. And he opened up this place for me. Last night I danced in a dishdasha, drank fresh milk from goats, and watched the sunset from towering dunes of powder-like sand.
Notes on Invisible Structure
Aristotle’s Poetics. Horace’s Ars Poetica. Freytag’s diagram. Syd Field’s paradigm. Frank Daniel’s sequence approach. For more than two millennia dramatic theorists have sought to trace, map and/or illustrate the shape and technical elements of a story told in dramatic form. Exposition, rising action, climax, dénouement and resolution are the elements of what I’ll call visible… Continue reading Notes on Invisible Structure
Borderlands
I’ve got a lot to gain by leaving my own borders every now and then. So maybe it’s time for me to read something other than plays. Time to step out of my zone and experience different things for a while. As I’m putting together my summer reading list, I’m going to select some good novels, some collections of short stories and yes, some poetry. And for Diana, a memoir or two.
Dear MFAW,
Dear MFAW people,
I’m guessing that, for the majority of you, your first desire to write was a way to express an emotion that you were having difficulty feeling or understanding.
What’s Wrong with This Photograph?
Goddard College MFAW faculty member Kenny Fries: The editor wanted to crop the photograph so it only showed, close-up, the lower portion of the photograph, which showed my cane and shoes. Next to it would be a similarly cropped version of a photo of South African Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius, taken long before his trial for murdering his girlfriend.
From the Beginner’s Mind and Back Again
I am a self-taught writer. There are many of us out there, though possibly not so many who are teaching creative writing in an MFA program. I wrote my first novel because I had to; it was a story that I had to unravel in order to understand my mother and her family through a… Continue reading From the Beginner’s Mind and Back Again
Name, Rank, Serial Number: Poet
Casey worked as a journalist in the Marines until, in the late l970’s, she attended a writing conference in California where one of the faculty told her she should, be writing poetry instead. Casey took this person and their work and when she returned to base, declared herself resident poet, meaning she would no longer report to duty.
I gave my name
rank an serial number,
said I was a poet. Beyond
that I refused to speak.
Rather than send her to the brig for going AWOL, Casey’s superior officers sent her to the psych ward. Part of her time in the psych ward is a subject of this book.
By Way of the Author’s Voice
I wanted to open the valise of what could not make the trip into English. I wanted to hear Cortázar’s voice, the author speaking the language in which he wrote.
The Word World
I didn’t know how obsessed I was with the world – with the actual word “world” – until I went through my second book of poems and saw that I used the word at least 30 times. Actually, another poet told me I used it 30 times but of course I went back and counted the words myself (because they were my words) to see if this was true. I’d never done anything like that – count how many times a word got used. I wonder if other poets do this?