life and write

I recently saw a friend of mine in the coffee shop and after catching up on life, he mentioned he was headed to Kenya to write this summer. He is working on a book and put himself on a carefully timed writing schedule. And while he admits that this schedule is ambitious and that interesting distractions by such things as the internet is everywhere, flying off to another part of the world will allow him to leave some things behind (his family will be in another part of Africa for summer) for several intense weeks of writing. Some of us can not do such a thing, but I thought it was interesting to think about how a change of scenery might be useful when completing a project, a deadline, or just carving out time to write. Taking ourselves out of our familiar, sometimes emotionally or physically cluttered environments offers a writer refuge, and physical and psychological space.

Imagine yourself here.

We often hear that consistency in a writing schedule will help a writer stay on track for a project or deadline, but I find it interesting that a change of pace or place allows a writer a window of opportunity. I’ve always done well when I go off to a writing retreat to focus and work on craft. There is something about less disruption physically and mentally. However, I suppose that can backfire if while away you’re worried about things (family, work projects, schedule) back at home.

Some of us won’t be in Kenya this summer writing but I wonder, where will you be? Will you have a chance to get away (and I mean that with all the flexibility that implies) this summer to write? Where do you plan to write this summer?

Words do not simply lie themselves crooked or straight, curved and crossed on a blank page. A writer crafts each word intentional, as if dressing in front of that page, like a figure in a mirror, pulling at stitch, turning lines, and layering images, sound, and rhythm.

There might be magic in children’s books as they have a way to settle down wiggly awkward boy bodies, commanding stares and stillness. Even the busiest little people find time to take in words, images, and meaning. I love how without prompting my eight year old will read to his three year old brother. There is literacy between them, huddled on the bed together, leaning over a book, my eight year old acting out the character voices with such fervor. For a few minutes there are no arguments, no rolling around on the floor, no jumping on the bed. There is only two brothers, finding their way word by word, sentence by sentence, together.

This found poem is from the colorful spines on the bookshelf in my sons’ room. Children’s books are a wonder, and covered and filled with poetry.

Tiny
reflections
color
my steps.

First thing this morning I yawned, drew in his burly snore, wiped the remnants of dreams from my brow and wrote everything down.

What will you write this morning?

“I don’t think chocolate and blueberries would be good, I think YOU and chocolate would be better.” -Oscar Torres

Blending, shifting, and mixing. I’m no DJ, just a writer reading, re-reading, and revising. Here is a recap, remix of posts from this week. Hope you’re enjoying your weekend.

Click on images to read posts.

Mix + Match Palette

Collide

Wonder and Scribe

Inspiration

On Love…

To Know Poetry

Quatrain

Quatrain

A terrific literary resource, The Poetry Dictionary, by John Drury

Quatrain: A four-line stanza

“For a long time, I couldn’t understand how people could write in quatrains and still look themselves in the mirror. And now, for some reason, they just feel calm and right.”—Samuel Amadon

“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?” -Emily Dickinson

Click on links below to check out this past week’s posts slightly revised and remixed.

I should begin with a poem

Spring and Sunrise

Ok let’s write: First Drafts

Mix + Match Palette

Speak Slow: A Found Poem

Opus

[...] in her Bic-blue bikini swimming the last of her morning laps, Afro bejeweled with droplets, rising dripping from the water like Aphrodite from waves…

—excerpt from Ghana Must Go, by Taiye Selasi

The whole word
speaks slow
like the stale drip
of his promises

On the spines of books stacked and shelved lie poems, sayings, notions that might elude us. We need only pay attention.

What is poetry? And why has it been around so long? … When you really feel it, a new part of you happens, or an old part is renewed, with surprise and delight at being what it is….You will come to understand the world as it interacts with words, as it can be re-created by words, by rhythms and by images. You’ll understand that this condition is one charged with vital possibilities. You will pick up meaning more quickly – and you will create meaning, too, for yourself and others.—James Dickey

When I’m teaching, I remind students, remind myself, words are just words, jagged lines, dark etchings, curls and turns, if we don’t have context or meaning. Most texts whether it is visual, word-based, or sound, is communicating something: a message, a narrative. As our ears take in sound, or our eyes move across images, written text, a symbol, or even moving text on our devices, we should slow down ask ourselves, are we reading for meaning, or just rolling our eyes over text?

photo credit: morguefile

All those drafts that had failed to come together, all those cul-de-sacs and passages that ended badly—over the past two months I’d ruthlessly cut them out and thrown them away. I am sure that the prose is at last taut and well organized, and it flows.—Orhan Pamuk

“At first, all is black and white. Black on white. That’s where I’m walking, through pages. These pages. Sometimes it gets so that I have one foot in the pages and the words, and the other in what they speak of.”—Markus Zusak

Weekends, the reminder to relax, revise, to take a moment to rethink, rewrite, and remix life, writing, time. Here are a few posts from this week slightly revised and remixed. Now on to relaxing. Enjoy your Sunday!

DIY Creative: Rainbow Slice (link)

Part of the Celebration (link)

The Company We Keep (link)

Weekend Forecast: 50 Degrees, Wide Open Sky, Sun (link)

“That’s the magic of revisions – every cut is necessary, and every cut hurts, but something new always grows.”—Kelly Barnhill

The library is a regular outing for my eight-year-old and I. Yesterday, while I glanced at titles, slipped off my shoes after a long day on my feet, and stood while skimming inside front jackets and back covers for summaries and reviews, my son followed me around the tables and shelves patiently exploring titles and asking questions.

As usual, I picked a bit of nonfiction, a heavy work on the complexities of our prison and judicial systems by Michelle Alexander, coupled with a douse of culture and feminism in a collection of essays by Patricia Hill Collins, the thick paperback conspicuous among the featured titles on the Women’s History Month table.

“Is there a Man’s History Month mom?” my son asked. But before I could answer, he proceeded to explain that he remembered in school he learned [a long time ago] women weren’t treated equal, and that’s why this month was important. I commended him on his youthful insight, and went further to explain to him that even today, women aren’t always treated equal, but Women’s History Month is not only a reminder of balance and equality, but also a celebration of women in general. “Are you a part of that celebration?” he asked.

What women to do you celebrate today, everyday?

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.—Thomas Merton

Education is not black and white, but more sketches of charcoal and gray…

“We cannot know the consequences of suppressing a child’s spontaneity when he is just beginning to be active. We may even suffocate life itself. That humanity which is revealed in all its intellectual splendor during the sweet and tender age of childhood should be respected with a kind of religious veneration. It is like the sun which appears at dawn or a flower just beginning to bloom. Education cannot be effective unless it helps a child to open up himself to life.”—Maria Montessori

“Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with the reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”—Paulo Freire

Our Montessori Experience: Equitable, Learner-Driven, Experiential

photo credit: The Third Teacher

Mix + Match Palette

Tension

Go Ahead, Journal…

Each year we gift 200+ Moleskine journals to young writers we work with in our PAGES program. I am often amazed at what students write, create inside their journals, and equally inspired by how they adorn the outside.

What do you journal?

She is reading this, I am reading that. A friend of mine is reading When You’re Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris, short stories peppered with well-crafted humor and a bit of odd magic. I am reading The Evidence of Things Not Seen by James Baldwin, a thoughtful essay, a bit of literary reporting wrapped in darkness with a few surprising glints of hope. We talked about how each writer was different, how each work was disparate in tone. But we also noticed both books eerily shaded in camel and gray.

Like a relationship, in literature, poetry, writing, there are days of tension, short blustery fuses of words and stance, two characters, objects, settings teetering toward resolve, the rush of water and sand against the backs of stones.

The other day in a creative writing class of high school juniors and seniors, we talked about literary tension and how sometimes when we write we want to color tension as riddled only with angst and fury. We went further to discuss how tension can color essay, narrative, lyric, be interesting and beautiful, push and pull words, rhythm, sound, and line, be so much more than a fight.  

Where do you find, create, tension in your writing, art, photography?

Is it Sunday already? This week’s posts, slightly rewritten, remixed, and republished… Hope you’re having a good day.

Recipe. Poetry. Slow Simmered Cabbage.

If You Build, It Might Topple Over

Out of “The Big Box”