Julia Found Words for Me

Where do writing ideas come from?

If we are open to the world, we find they are around every corner, inside every ice cream cone (or Popsicle, as the case may be). Writing ideas are often in the words that other people say. Like these from Julia Cameron...

Wherever I am, wherever I can, I write.... Am I balanced? Overreacting? Happy? Sad? My hand moving across the page teaches me my emotional weather. (p.173)

I loved those words. The minute I read them I knew they contained a poem. If I only I would write it. Part of me wanted to move forward and finish her chapter, but I ignored that dutiful self. There had been the slightest beginning of a discovery, the tip of something, and I decided I'd rather spend my time uncovering what Julia had found for me...

Weather Report

My hand across the page
tells me this is a hot
June day— unbearably
hot— and I am not anymore
the kind of woman who
will sit back and take it
without finding a lime green
Popsicle or a lone shaded stone
on which to eat frozen sweetness
down to its round-edged stick.

What words are waiting for you today, maybe next to the lawn mower? You'd better bring a notebook along to catch and keep them.


Sunset photo by Sara. Used with permission.

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Glynn's Practice of Writing
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Excuse Me, I'm WRITE-ing

I have sometimes been a cranky writer.

"I'm writing," I say when my daughter interrupts. I put special emphasis on the word writing, and extra-special emphasis on the first syllable.

I think I do this because when I draw out the wr sound, it's an act of verbal wringing. I want to wring the interruption right out of my day.

Okay, the truth is I was a cranky writer as lately as Saturday, when working on my Barbie poem. My Littlest became very insistent when I was smack in the middle of what felt like my best thoughts. I had to stop in the "boys" section and attend to her. I felt irritated, and I even gave her a mini talk on how it's unkind to interrupt people's creative processes. It can take away their thoughts.

There is a place for drawing boundaries around our moments. Still, I think Julia Cameron is right. Interruptions will not ruin us. They will not wring our thoughts out of us, ruin our poem or chapter. Do we really think our ideas are so superficial as to disappear that easily?

If I'm honest with myself, I know my daughter cannot steal my thoughts; they rise from deep places. So why did I give her the mini-talk? It's because my pleasure had been interrupted, and that felt uncomfortable. That is the more precise reason, and it moves away from blame.

Somehow it seems important to try to be more precise and, instead of blaming, say, "I felt sad to stop writing my poem, because I was having so much fun." It is the real reason for my irritation. After all, as a seasoned writer I've been interrupted over and again, and it never stopped me from finally getting my words on the page.

As it turned out, my Barbie poem went where it needed to go. Even with a 45-minute detour between lines three and four. Maybe even because of the 45-minute detour (special emphasis on the word because :)


Pea Flower photo by L.L. Barkat.

Writing for the Lint Pickers

I am going to tell you about my friend Liza.

Okay, her name isn't really Liza. But if I told you her name, then I wouldn't get to write about her. And I want to write about her, because Liza used to do something deadly to her creative self, and maybe you are still doing what Liza used to do.

She would make these beautiful poems. Truly beautiful.

Then Liza would go to another poet friend who would read her poems quietly and seriously, as if she really cared about these beautiful poems.

It would start small.

You should take out the last three lines.

Liza would feel a little sad. She especially liked the last three lines.

The language here is too wide open.

Liza liked wide open language.

I just don't get the point of this poem.

Liza liked a little mystery.

By the time their "sharing session" was done, Liza felt like the dumbest poet on earth— which, if we listen to Julia Cameron this week, we will understand was exactly what Liza's friend was hoping. Maybe not consciously; she spent the time reading the poems, she took the time to share her critiques.

But, in the end, Liza's friend was like the playwright's friends that Cameron discusses...

The feedback from the playwright's jealous peers? Mainly lint picking. How is the playwright to understand the size of what's been done when the comments all address the creative lint?

I'm not saying that it's bad to have friends who can tell us where we need to cut three lines (or maybe even ten), but if that's the only kind of feedback they ever give, we need to do what Liza finally did. Find a new place to share.


Making the Boat, photo by L.L. Barkat.

How Do You Write?

I write in the dark...

and

I write despite...


Teahouse in Granada Spain, photo by L.L. Barkat.

POETRY FRIDAY:
Glynn’s David, Hillside
Kelly’s eve’s regret
Linda’s Redeemer/Lover
Monica’s Han and Leia On a Date
Bina’s Mrs. DeWinter’s Nighttime Honesty
nAncY’s meeley
Kelly’s tension
Laura’s Fruit
Maureen’s Woman in His Life
A Simple Country Girl’s Autumn Dance
Sojourner’s Adoration
Maureen’s Last Words with Her Executioner
Travelmom's Love
e.l.k.'s surface
Lorrie's Nite Nite at Cricket Creek

The Gift: Unwilling Art

I am writing this for myself. And you. Of course, I always write for you.

Still, this week I'm working on a bigger writing project. And I need to remember Hyde's words, "There are at least two phases in the completion of a work of art, one in which the will is suspended and another in which it is active. The suspension is primary. It is when the will is slack that we feel moved or we are struck by an event, intuition, or image."

Sometimes, when I feel pressured, like this week, I want to prematurely move into the "will" stage. I want to force my way onto the page. I begin to feel nervous. (What shall I say to this crowd? Will it be profound, memorable, amusing, interesting... oh, anything worthy at all?)

Right now, I am trying to remind myself of the importance of play. I have the passage I'm speaking on. I have a few words that are calling to me from that passage. I need to scribble them, draw them, dream them, flip them. Play.


Sara on the Beach, photo by L.L. Barkat.

Turning Up Emeralds

The world is filled with poetic jewels. Sometimes it takes a while to find them. That's what happened with me and George Seferis, a Greek poet. I stumbled upon him, and feel enchanted by his every word.

Here are a few of his lines...

A little farther
we will see the almond trees blossoming
the marble gleaming in the sun
the sea breaking into waves...


And here is the poem his lines inspired in me...

Almonds...
I remember the scent
and how you crushed them,
their brown skins
turning to dust
scattering like spilled cinnamon.

Poetry Prompt: Next Friday at HighCallingBlogs, we're going to branch out and do another aspect of "Culture" besides poetry. RAP will resume the following week. In the meantime, you might try writing a brief poem based on the lines of someone else's poem.

POETRY FRIDAY:
High Calling Blogs Habitual Poetry
nAncY’s Holy
Glynn’s Who Were You in My Dream and Early Fall Leaves
Lorrie’s Fear
Monica’s Dream Girl
Kelly’s After Egypt
Jim's Thirty-Five

Jewels photo by Sara B. Used with permission.

Finding Mine in Yours

Art engenders art. Or it can... if it has been deep and true... opened itself, invited, "take me."

Says Lewis Hyde in his chapter on Whitman, "A work of art that enters us to feed the soul offers to initiate in us the process of the gifted self which some antecedent gift initiated in the poet. Reading the work, we feel gifted for a while, and to the degree that we are able, we respond by creating a new work (not art perhaps, but with the artist's work at hand we suddenly find we can make sense of our own experience). The greatest art offers us images by which to imagine our lives."

That is what Ann's art did for me. "Come in," her words invited. I went inside, put my hands against the walls, lay on the floor and stared at the ceiling. Quieted there, I remembered my own discoveries, made while writing God in the Yard...

I stand as a bridge between perceived gaps. I learned this as a young child of divorce, watching dad throw a mop across the kitchen floor, shout at mom and leave... and she fuming... and me standing by, wide-eyed, shaking. Hold on, I learned. Hold on tight. See what happened when you fell asleep? The world as you knew it crumbled. Child, do not sleep. Stand. Stand as a bridge. Hold the world together, even if it breaks you.

This discovery reemerged while I lay there, motionless, in Ann's words. She had said, "this is the reason why you never leave home." And her words worked themselves into a poem, as I sat beside the pool watching my girls. Art engendered art...


"Girl"

Why do we not
leave home?
Is it really for fear
of what lies
beyond, or rather
for fear that the
roof will abscond
with the doors
and the shutters
we've always known.
And who would they
blame if it happened
just so? If the whole
curtained place simply
picked up its stakes,
disappeared on the wind
in our absence. What
are we really afraid
of? Why do we not
leave home?

I think this is a fitting ending for my house poems. You'll be writing about the closet this week, and I look forward to your offerings. I look forward to finding myself in you.

Girl at the Door photo, by L.L. Barkat. Hyde quote is from Chapter 9.

RELATED POST:
High Calling Blogs The Gift: Surprise

POETRY FRIDAY:
Beauty is Way to Play, Not Compete at High Calling Blogs
Divide Wisdom, MT by Dave
Quick Clips from the Slippery Issue of Geez magazine
I Am [color] series at Love Notes to Yahweh
I do in sickness by Fred Sprinkle
The other girl by Fred Sprinkle
On nights like this by Milton Brasher-Cunningham
Psalm 66: Black Water and Crimson by Richard j
Justice Exposed by Cindy Hanson
Magical Realms by Cindy Hanson
Skeletons in the Closet by Laura
Creative Writing Challenge Justice Edition at Bible Dude
Renewed by Nancy Kourmoulis
t h e . c l o s e t by nancy
spring cleaning by kelly
something less than purple by bkmackenzie
routine is good by redorgray
Closet by Yvette Massey
Testimony (in the closet) by Glynn Young
I am a rag doll by Claire
Fragrance by Monica Sharman
Comfort in the Rough by Monica Sharman
A short review of Teaching with Fire: Poetry that Sustains the Courage to Teach by Byron Borger
Eve’s Second Garden by Marcus Goodyear
Superman by John Poch
Thanks for waiting by Jim Schmotzer
Teachable Moments by James C. Schaap
Back Porch Refuge and Basement Closet Pirates by deb

What the Blue Couch Meant

"Does the poem lead?" she asked me, in the comment box.

I traveled on over to her place and said, "Yes, the poem leads." I told her I needed to trust this truth, even as I was facing my self-assigned task of writing a poem about the living room. I didn't have anything to say about the living room. I didn't. At all.

But, as it turned out, the poem did...


"Visit"

The first time
I entered
this living room,
it was
a dying room.

Evan, propped
on the narrow blue
couch, the life
nearly sucked out
of him, turned

to me and smiled,
lifted a trembling
hand to touch
my warmth, my
life. I did not

know I would
buy this house
a mere year later,
nor that I would
sit under the pine

he planted out back,
rescued from up
the street when
the bulldozing
began. I did not

know what it meant
that moment, my hand
touching his, in
this living dying
room, with its

brick hearth, old
ashes, glass doors
closed against the day.

Maybe you have nothing to say about your living room either. But might you trust the poem to lead? If you do, post by August 6th and let me know about it here in the comment box. Links for all at High Calling Blogs.

Barbie Looks Out at Pine, photo by Sara. Used with permission.

STONE CROSSINGS:
Excerpt of Glynn's words about Stone Crossings: It's like you've been lost in a forest looking for water, holding on to the compass you've owned for years but thinking it's not doing you much good, and then suddenly you stumble into a small clearing with a spring-fed pool. Stone Crossings is that pool. The story she tells is searing, honest and vulnerable. At several points, it brought me to tears... continue reading

POETRY FRIDAY:
High Calling Blogs RAP: Message in a Bottle
Erin’s Stir Constantly Until Well Blended
A Simple Country Girl’s Gather Round
Deb’s Tables are for Eating Too
Prairie Chick’s Kitchen Window
Cindy’s Favorites
ELK’s seven thirty
Suzy’s Infused Memory
Jim’s I’m Really Glad
nAncY’s The Counter
Mom2Six's Heritage and Riding
Claire's Souls Reflection
Sara and Sonia's Going for Ice Cream
Monica's Missing
Liz's Home's Heart
Laura's Kitchen Prayer Alter
Joelle's God on Vacation
Lance's Communion

Why Do You Write? (tweet, blog...)

The path meanders upward, embraced in shadow. A red-winged blackbird lights on the underbrush where pearl-orange berries hang. Further on, red berries dangle too, like liquid glass. Poplars and firs give way to bamboo, and through a gap I see fields of roses, pink and wild. The air carries their scent, even as it moves cattails now full with ivory cotton swelling.

A single cardinal punctuates grass, turns his head to the side, just after the pond. Oh, the pond! Brown fish like blunted chopsticks sit motionless, while powder-blue dragonflies whir and dip. A naked branch, dead to the year, becomes a landing dock. Dragonflies, dragonflies, like blue-powdered leaves, clutter the skeleton branch. And here is a cluster of golden brown mushrooms. Or there. Look! Yellow flowers like banana bunches, and lavender too. Banana flowers. That's what we called them as children.

My girls go before me, biking through time, past creeks and swamps. They like the tunnels, shady and cool. I hear them up ahead, whistling in the dark.

-----

Why do I write this for you? Tell of my Sabbath biking? I write because I suffer.

Suffer? you say. What have cardinals and red berries got to do with suffering?

Lewis Hyde, author of The Gift has an interesting observation about gratitude. It is, he says, what we 'suffer' between the time we receive a gift and the time we pass it along.

So, yes, I write of girls on a path, of wild roses and dark tunnels... because I have suffered gratitude. For these Sabbath gifts. And now I find relief, in passing the gifts to you.


Fairy Forest Painting, by Sara B. Used with permission.

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High Calling Blogs The Gift: Generous Elves

I Collect Words

I'm not going to reveal that to you, she said.

My nine-year-old could just have easily replied, I'm not going to *tell* you. But somehow she's become a collector of words, and she isn't shy about using them.

In a marvelous little book called Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words, Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge encourages us to create 'wordpools', collections of words we find here and there, to help 'free us to follow the words and write poems.' This is apt advice not only for the would-be poet but for the writer in general.

Words, after all, are like faces... they look you in the eye or avoid your gaze, smile or frown, raise eyebrows in surprise or blink back tears. They are distinct, arresting, memorable, except when we use the same ones over and over. Not that we can't tell a good story using common words (and sometimes too many unique words are distracting). But consider the difference between...

sit, perch, settle, sprawl

or

see, observe, spy, peek, glimpse, view, squint

or

red, crimson, vermilion, scarlet, cranberry

This week I invite you to begin a word pool. On your fridge, in a box with note cards, in a journal or even on the sidebar of your blog. Collect words from conversations, the dictionary, street signs; collect words for their sounds, even if they are words you coin (swizzle, swazzle, swittle). If you're feeling adventurous, you might stir those words into a poem or vignette that begins, middles or ends with the phrase 'I am' (choose a sound, a song, an animal, a number, a food, a tree, a piece of furniture, whatever, says Wooldridge) and see what your words reveal.

'Bottled'

I am fizzle
fazzle pizazz,
snap crackle...
slide your hand
past my red belt
take me by the
ribbed neck
set teeth on edge
flick fluted tin
and, pop!

Photo by Gail Nadeau. Used with permission.

Becoming a Blogger

Sick.

I really don't like being...

sick.

But when I'm sick on the Sabbath, there's a secret hurrah that rises up within me. I know I will stay home. All alone. There will be peace. There will be silence. And because I don't blog on Sundays, there will be reading. In between napping and cups of tea.

Two Sabbaths in a row, I've been sick (I'm sure my family suspects a ploy!). Two Sabbaths in a row, I have napped, sipped tea, and read books. And been inspired. Very inspired.

One Sabbath at a time. For today, let's go back to a sleepy afternoon. To Journaling as a Spiritual Practice.

I was supposed to read it slowly and do journaling exercises along the way. Oops, the pages just kept turning until, sigh, there were no more to turn. By nightfall, I was thinking about my first JASP post: this one, dedicated to three new bloggers I recently processed at High Calling Blogs.

Sweet Corn & Cairo. Hope42Day. And The Unknown Contributor.

Because I remember what it was like to be a new blogger. The wide world before me. So much to say and so little ability to say it. Millions of blogs to make my way amongst. Zero comments, zero comments. Then, oh! A surprise comment from some really big blogger who kindly deigned to be the Welcome Wagon of the blogosphere. It was... intimidating.

Just like opening a blank journal for the first time. All that s p a c e.

Helen Cepero offers this to the hesitant journaler. And I offer it to the new bloggers of the world. She says that a journal is a 'place to meet your particular life and befriend it.' She also says, 'Sometimes it is hard for us to claim our own voice with its specific timbre and accent, to walk down the pathway that lies before us, to choose the life that we are given.'

Then she offers a little exercise called 'Reflections on Your Name,' which goes like this...

Write your full name across the top of a blank journal [blog post] page. If you have... a nickname, include that as well. Look carefully at those combinations of letters, those words that somehow identify you. Think about where those names come from and all of the memories, feelings and stories connected to your full name. Begin to write openly and freely... Who named you? Have you ever renamed yourself? How has your name changed as you have gotten older or when you got married? Have your feelings about your name changed over time? How are your parents or grandparents or distant ancestors present in your name? How do you see (or not see) the outlines of your own story in your name?

Becoming a blogger is, in some way, making a name for oneself, as well as bringing one's name to the world just-as-it-is. No small effort, in my opinion.

So, a few things. Maybe today, you who have made your names, shared your names (and continue to share them), might walk on by and leave your own Welcome Wagon gift at the door of these new bloggers. Or maybe you'd like to try Cepero's exercise (let me know if you do and I'll link to you). Or maybe you'd like to leave your own wise thoughts on becoming a blogger, here or on your blog (again, I'll link if you do).

And for our new bloggers, the pathway lies before you. Remember, as Cepero quotes from poet Mary Oliver...

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

RELATED:
Hope42Day's Reflections on My Blogger Name
Billy's What's in a Name

RAP: Found in the Outdoor Journal

I've been culling my outdoor journal, dropping things into chapters as I go.

Every so once in a while I find something unusable that I want to keep. But where to keep it? And how? It seemed perhaps a good idea to keep a few little treasures here, as random acts of poetry. Discovered. Embraced.


I love
the fallen
golden
grasses—
straw reaching
sideways to
escape destiny.

-----


This is
life, this.
Beautiful life.


-----

Hemlocks
bow in turn,
do obeisance
to the house.

-----

White butterfly
barely whispers
against my arm,
hurries away
through quiet
arch of forsythia.

-----

Trees
wrestle
the air.

-----

Sun shines through
leaves— soft green
illumination.

-----

Light plays
upon the pine,
dips her in golden oil.

-----

I hold
three little
blueberries
which I will
hide inside
to ripen.

-----

Miniature
face of the baby
cardinal... tiny
promise of a
crest-to-be,
above his eyes
like a hat.


Snow Storm photo by Gail Nadeau. Used with permission.