Inspiration: The Poem You Asked For

If you are had a difficult time composing a poem for April's Poetry Month--or if you are having difficulty writing anything these days, Tom Dow offers this: 

The Poem You Asked For

My poem would eat nothing.

I tried giving it water

but it said no,

worrying me.

Day after day,

I held it up to the llight,

turning it over,

but it only pressed its lips

more tightly together.

It grew sullen, like a toad

through with being teased.

I offered it money,

my clothes, my car with a full tank.

But the poem stared at the floor.

Finally I cupped it in

my hands, and carried it gently

out into the soft air, into the

evening traffic, wondering how

to end things between us.

For now it had begun breathing,

putting on more and

more hard rings of flesh.

And the poem demanded the food,

it drank up all the water,

beat me and took my money,

tore the faded clothes

off my back,

said Shit,

and walked slowly away,

slicking its hair down.

Said it was going

over to your place.

                           by Larry Levis

Weekly Inspiration: Write, Write, Write

Inspiration:  Write, Write, Write:  My biggest problem in writing, I think—aside from the whole spelling and grammar thing—is that I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I feel every time I put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, the words I put down must be profound, moving, beautiful at the very start or they don’t deserve to be there. It doesn’t help that I know writers whose rough drafts are awe-inspiring.

My worthiest words come not from my writing prowess but because my muse sends me voices unhindered and demanding I write their story. And receiving such material, I begin revising, rewriting, and revising again. Moving words around, cutting tangents, filling holes. Spending hours, if not days, on a word or a phrase in hopes I give justice to the story given to me.

Every time I sit down, I wait for my muse to take over. When it doesn’t come, I give up, do something else, discouraged that I’ll never again write a decent word.  I do this knowing that those free-writers whom I admire have become admirable because they didn’t give up, they didn’t do something else. They wrote.

Writing this, I realize that if I want to write brilliantly each time I put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, I need to, well, I need to write. I need to encourage my muse, not wait passively for her to show up. 

So, I ask myself, seeing the StoryADay challenge in a recent Writer Unboxed blog, why not now? Seems like this self-isolating, social distancing routine is going to go on for a while. And, I’ll enjoy writing, even if it is crap, more than cleaning my house ~  

Julie Duffy runs the StoryADAy project and offers prompts and encouragement along the way. Happily, she says there are no rules except to try to write 31 stories in the month of May.  Easy-peasy, right? 

Want to join me?  Here’s the rundown on Writer Unboxed

~ carol 

Carol Phillips

Inspiration: Narrative Medicine

Inspiration: Narrative Medicine

 "When we write about what we know and about what we don't know, we encounter mystery."  (Aimee Mepham, 2020)

Ever hear of Narrative Medicine?  I hadn’t until recently.  Narrative medicine combines close reading of literature and reflective writing to help healthcare providers deal with the stress of medicine and develop sympathy for their patients. The writing can be of any genre—fiction, poetry, or creative non-fiction.  

The idea of including a patient’s experience within the scientific practice originated in the 1910 Flexner Report, a book about healthcare in the US and Canada.* In the last part of the twentieth century, the concept morphed into curriculum at medical schools. Columbia University offers a Master of Science Narrative Medicine that broadens the scope of the field to include patients writing their own stories.  

I discovered narrative medicine after taking “Narrative Medicine: Stories of Illness & the Power of Reflective Writing” with Aimee Mepham, a graduate of Columbia’s Masters program, during NCWN’s Cabin Fever Conference this past weekend.

Mepham said reading guidelines when practicing narrative medicine, include

·         Observing: what sensory details are provided?

·         Recognizing the perceptive: doctor, nurse, patient, all three?

·         Identifying the form: fiction, non-fiction, poetry

·         Recognizing the voice: the point of view

·         Identifying the mood: how do you feel after reading the piece?

·         Observing the motion:  To what place does the story take you?

These guidelines are good for close reading, whatever the reason.  And, to keep in mind with our own writing. 

She left us with a couple of prompts: 

    “I felt anchored when…”

    “The hospital corridor was dimly lit…”

Would you like to write about your experience with the pandemic, the self-isolation, or other loss, grief, or illness you have experienced?  If you do, and would like to share it, send it to me (Carol) as a .doc, .docx, or .rft. and I’ll post on the WMO Blog. In line with blog postings, please keep it under 300 words.

by  Carol Phillips

*Published by Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the book had a huge (and, in my opinion from my limited understanding, not all together good) influence on how and by whom medicine is practiced today.  However, Flexner did introduce the notion that not only did a doctor need scientific knowledge but also insight into, and sympathy for, the human condition

Weekly Inspiration: “Le mot juste”

As writers, we are all in danger or in hopes of becoming wordsmiths—the writer who seeks and finds le mot juste, the best, right word. The great French novelist Gustave Flaubert is said to have invented the phrase to describe his endless search for the right word, sometimes spending a day working on a single page of Madame Bovary. Mœurs de province.

Whether we aspire to that level of perfection we can hone our wordsmithing skills in a lot of ways. I subscribe to the Merriam-Webster Word of the Day service and challenge myself to define the word before I check their definition. Sometimes I’m spot on, and sometimes I’m off base. I recommend reading definitions in all their detail. Again Meriam-Webster offers the most detail online definitions, with etymologies, first date of use, and variants. And hog heaven for a logophile is simply to sit down with the authoritative OED (Oxford Dictionary of English) and devour a few definitions.

 A serious logophile loves old words and new—whether archaic and long abandoned, the most up-to-date slang, even gobbledygook. Words that are emerging to describe our changing world are especially interesting, even creative. The last few decades of computer advances have produced an avalanche of new words and terms to describe new technologies—just think of Twitter with its tweets that you make to your peeps, or of unfriending someone because they’d become a troll on your Facebook page.

 A recent article “How the Coronavirus Has Infected Our Vocabulary” by Karen Russell appears in The New Yorker magazine. It’s not as grim as you might expect, as she explores the language of the pandemic that most of us are now newly encountering. In addition, her own writing is an excellent example of beautifully chosen words. I hope it will inspire you to write a quick poem or paragraph—or go back to something you’ve already written—with a view to finding the best word—verb, noun, adjective—for your writing!

I confess, I wish she’d included the term “sheltering in place” which I find evocative, even haunting. My first thought was that it had a military origin, but it come from civilian quarters and is a warning to stay at home rather than to evacuate in the event of a biological threat or a shooter. I couldn’t find an earliest date of use, but 2003 is the earliest date given in footnotes. Wikipedia discusses the term here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelter_in_place.

I trust you will find Russell’s essay as enlightening as I do! Happy writing.

Judith Stanton 

Weekly Inspiration: Crazy Language

How do you start a story?  Jane Friedman, in a recent post, suggested five ways not to begin ~

    The waking up scene
    The transit scene
    The rocking chair scene
    The crisis scene
    The dream sequences

Read why here. But where does that leave us?  Perhaps Al Manning’s (aka:  Resident Curmudgeon) musings on the English language may provide some inspiration ~

English is a somewhat crazy language. As writers, we work in it constantly, but always need to be aware of what we are really saying. There are numerous cases where the same set of letters are used twice or more in the same sentence, but have entirely different pronunciations and meanings. Here are a few examples:

 The farm was used to produce produce.

 The dump was so full it had to refuse more refuse.

The bandage was wound around the wound.

He would lead if he could get the lead out.

A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

We must polish the Polish furniture.

When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

They were sitting too close to the door to close it.

The buck does funny things when does are present.

To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

The wind was too strong to wind up the sail.

I had to subject the subject to more tests.

How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

And for a couple of wild ones:

The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

The is no time like the present, so it’s time to present the present.

Let’s face—English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant; ham in hamburger, neither apple nor pine in pineapple.  We take it for granted, but if we explore more we find quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Where a slim chance and a fat chance can be the same, but a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? Where your house can burn up as it burns down, and you fill in a form by filling it out?

Weekly Inspiration: Thoughts on Isolation

“Isolation is aloneness that feels forced upon you, like a punishment.  Solitude is aloneness you choose and embrace.  I think great things can come out of solitude, out of going to a place where all is quiet except the beating of your heart.”  Jeanne Marie Laskas

I write this on the first day of Governor Cooper’s stay-in-place order.  It’s really not much different than my previous days. I’ve been self-isolating since the end of January when I got sick. I was beginning to re-connect to the world when COVID-19 arrived. I didn’t want to get sick again, so I continued limiting my contact with others.  

As I said, today is not much different, except:

Now I’m forced to self-isolate by law: If I violate Cooper’s order, I could end up in jail for 60 days and be $1,000 poorer.

It’s not legal consequences that tweak my sense of self, but that choice is now taken from me. Jason Rezaian says, of course, it’s okay to feel angry—he was in 2014 while held in solitary confinement for eighteen months in Iran. He remarked that anger just doesn’t accomplish anything.  Okay.

So, instead I think about the word “Isolate.” Lexico.com defines it as: "Cause (a person or place) to be or remain alone or apart from others.” “Isolate” was first used in the early 1800’s and taken from the word “isolated”: “Far away from other places, buildings, or people; remote”

etymonline.com reports “isolated” is from the French isolé, which came through the Italian isolato, which came from late Latin insulatus ‘made into an island’, and from Latin “insula ‘island’”.

A relatively young English word then, and doesn’t have the rich history of ‘gather’ which has wandered through Germanic languages, possibly stemming from Proto-Indo-European roots.  It’s appropriate, isn’t it, that “isolate” travels were lonelier than ‘gather” travels?  I find that comforting. 

As I do, also, in the other meanings of ‘isolate’ (“Identify (something) and examine or deal with it separately.”) and ‘isolated’ (“Single; exceptional”)

Isn’t that what we strive to do as writers—identify something, look at it closely, separate out its parts, and then put it back together in a singular, exceptional way that entertains and maybe provokes?   

Rezaian says other things that relate to us as writers now, and really, at all times: use this time of enforced solitude to get to know ourselves better, to embrace the voice inside our heads and use it “as an advantage”, and probably most importantly, to trust ourselves.

If I may add, trust also our process in creating our work, our poetry and prose.   

You can find Rezaian talking about his experience as it relates to this era of COVID-19 and read a summary of his remarks here.

Carol Phillips

Weekly Inspiration: The Persistence of Memory

While we are sequestered in our homes Writers’ Morning Out wants to stay connected with you and support you in any way we can. We’ll be sending out weekly emails that we hope you’ll find inspiring. If you have a thought-provoking idea, please let me know.  I’m trying to figure out how to enable comments on our blog, so we can have conversations about various postings, but  alas, so far, I haven’t.  (Our blog is on the Blogger.com platform—any help will be greatly appreciated!)

I’m also thinking of setting up call-ins through Zoom where we can talk about the progress on our goals (or not), challenges we are facing to write—either on-going or new ones resulting from our new environment, inspirations that are encouraging us, and other writerly topics of interest. Please let me or Rick know if you like this idea.   

Moments

On my walk this morning, as I listened to peepers and bird songs (or as some wit said “Birds screaming for sex”) I saw mayapples beginning to carpet the woods and bluets lining the road. Mixed in were white Slender toothworts and a few blue violets just then opening their nodding buds.  Spotted trillium leaves, appearing like wings above the ground, waited for their golden-yellow flowers, while squirrels scampered up a leafless sweetgum as Billy Joe trotted by. 

Moments of joy linger, don’t you think?  Therra Cathryn Gwyn captures one such moment in her untitled essay, below. Perhaps her story will inspire a piece of prose or maybe a poem for Poem of the Day in April.   

Be Safe, Be Well, Wash Hands ~ carol

The Persistence of Memory  

by Therra Cathryn Gwyn

Mere months after John died, I took a winter trip to Florida with my pal Wendy. We went to swim among the manatees in Crystal River. We left an Atlanta that was covered in ice and headed south. The part of the Sunshine State we went to was having some uncharacteristically cold morning temps so the manatees (they are mammals like us) were gathered by the hundreds in the springs, which is a constant, comfortable, 71 degrees.

The springs proper are roped off in order to give these fat marine sweeties some peace from their celebrity status but they move in and out at will. People swim around outside the ropes in order to observe and hang out with them. Unlike the first time I did this trip, decades before, you’re not allowed to touch the slow-moving rotund critters unless they approach you first.

I’m glad they put that rule into effect.

The morning we ventured out with a small group on a small boat it was barely dawn and the air temp was a biting 31 degrees. The water temps outside the Springs were cold enough that hypothermia was a concern for some of the swimmers.

So, there was your faithful correspondent, suited up in a snorkel gear, clumsily floating in a none-too-flattering wetsuit, with the tour guide keeping an eye on me because I can’t swim. He was more worried than I was. I love being in the water.

At one point a pod of manatees came through at their characteristic leisurely pace and I found myself stuck in the middle of their passing parade.

Manatees are big critters—some are downright huge (I used to joke they were like floating VW Beetles). Conscious of the fact that I wasn’t supposed to impede them in any way, I clutched my hands to my body as they bumped me around gently while they passed. Thrilled to be in their midst, I closed my eyes and felt a joy I hadn’t known in almost two years since John first fell ill. The water was cold but my heart was so warm.

I separated myself from the human tour group a bit because I wanted some space. Occasionally, when my ears were above water, I’d hear the guide call over and ask me how I was. I’d give him the “OK” sign and put my face back under the surface.

I liked being away from the heaviness of land in this different, less-gravity world. At that point in my life I so longed for a different world.

Soon I noticed an oh-so-adorable baby manatee, small and round, looking at me with those innocent eyes that most baby creatures, including humans, have. It swam toward me with the purpose and curiosity of the young. I stayed as still as one can in water. It came right up and “kissed” me, pressing its chubby mouth to my cheek. Baby’s soft whiskers brushed me as it explored my face and then it started nibbling on my hair.  We were thisclose as our eyes met.

I seldom in my life have felt such a sweet peace.

I vividly remember the mellow kaleidoscope of moving colours as morning light filtered through the water and the feeling of tranquility as one of the gentlest animals on this planet connected with me for a moment in time. I didn’t even care that in my unflattering wetsuit, bobbing like a beachball, it might have mistaken me for its mother. I didn’t care. I didn’t care if I got hypothermia. I didn’t even care if I drowned. All I knew fully was for the first time…in a very long time…my heart was at ease.

I realized that life goes on, no matter what.

Please tell me one of your happy memories.

[END]