"I am offering this poem to you, since I have nothing else to give." ~Jimmy Santiago Baca
“Words — so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.” ~Nathaniel Hawthorne
In parallel with Words for the Weekend: Write Every Single Day – Vol. 27
“Writing as an act of optimism? Maybe that’s true. I mean, why bother if you have no hope, even a very small hope, for our species. Maybe, as artists, we think that if we stop and look closely, or if we look closely enough, something good could come of that gaze, something apprehended. O’Keefe seemed actually to do the opposite, bring us close to see the pain in the beauty, or as Rilke would say, the terror of beauty. Kahlo took her physical pain and yes, made it oddly beautiful. Did it take courage for them to do that? I don’t think they had a choice. Artists seem to be compelled to do what they do, obsessed, preternaturally alert to the world, not just to pain and beauty, but as you say, the existence of each within the other. And for some reason, they feel compelled to make something of that, write it down, make a painting of it, a sculpture, a song.
In parallel with Words for the Weekend: Write Every Single Day – Vol. 27
If you want to be a writer, do the writing. Chase the feeling. Follow it faithfully wherever it leads. Don’t write to be admired. Don’t write for fame. Don’t write to get published. Don’t write because you have something to say. Don’t write to become immortal. Don’t write because you think you know the truth. Don’t write because you have an attitude. Don’t write to strike a pose in black clothing. Don’t write to be cool. Don’t write because you have an image of yourself as you see yourself squinting through the heavy burn of smoke motes rising in stage light from Gauloises cigarettes. Don’t write only because you are lonely or because you feel deeply, see clearly, know truly, and are one of those who has paid attention to world and to the inner life. Write for writing’s sake. Write because you write. Becoming a writer begins in the act of writing. Do the writing. All else is peripheral. All else is secondary. Write for the love of words as they appear upon the page. Write for the love of words as they pass your lips. Write for the love of language entering the ear. Write first and foremost for the pure celebration of dictionary music. It has been said that writers are those who have fallen in love with words and the world. And yet, if you would become the best writer that you can be, there is something beyond simply ‘chasing the feeling.’
– John B. Lee, from Building Bicycles in the Dark: a practical guide to writing
Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so that we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking. … We should amass half dressed in long lines like tribesmen and shake gourds at each other, to wake up; instead we watch television and miss the show.
[ … ]
At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it. You search, you break your fists, your back, your brain, and then – and only then -it is handed to you. From the corner of your eye you see motion. Something is moving through the air and headed your way. It is a parcel bound in ribbons and bows; it has two white wings. It flies directly at you; you can read your name on it. If it were a baseball, you would hit it out of the park. It is that one pitch in a thousand you see in slow motion; its wings beat slowly as a hawk’s.
– Annie Dillard from “Write Till You Drop,” a NY Times Books May 1989 article. Also from The Writing Life
Posted in parallel with Weekend Words: The Day the World Went Away – Vol. 16. This weekend’s volume features work by Cayman Thorn and C.K. Hope, who have generously opened their hearts–“beauty laid bare”–just for us. Their grace is anything but unmerited, and I am honored to stand with you in their light.
The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables.
Said if I could get down thirteen turnips a day
I would be grounded, rooted.
Said my head would not keep flying away
to where the darkness lives.
The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight.
Said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do.
I handed her the twenty. She said, “Stop worrying, darling.
You will find a good man soon.”
The first psycho therapist told me to spend
three hours each day sitting in a dark closet
with my eyes closed and ears plugged.
I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking
about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet.
The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth.
Said to focus on the out breath. Said everyone finds happiness
when they care more about what they give
than what they get.
The pharmacist said, “Lexapro, Lamicatl, Lithium, Xanax.”
The doctor said an anti-psychotic might help me
forget what the trauma said.
The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems.
Nobody wants to hear you cry
about the grief inside your bones.”
But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi jumped
from the George Washington Bridge
into the Hudson River convinced
he was entirely alone.”
My bones said, “Write the poems.”
“The Madness Vase” by Andrea Gibson, from The Madness Vase; Follow Andrea on Twitter @AndreaGibson or visit her site: andreagibson.org
Words ... for the Time Being 