Sympathy vs Pity and Dustin in the Middle!

Over at Steve Fellner's blog, Pansy Poetics, there is discussion on sympathy vs pity. I've put in my two cents, and I'm really interested as to what you think.

The blog post that started it all: Self-Pity Can Be a Good Thing!: The Poems of James Schuyler (Part One)

The follow-up blog post: On Poetry, Self-Pity, and Sympathy: In Response to Dustin Brookshire's Comment on My Last Post

Visit Steve's blog. He enjoys intellectual debates, so play nice and leave a comment.

Why Do I Write ~ Barbara Crooker

WHY DO I WRITE ~ Barbara Crooker



WHY WRITE?

Because I'm here, this late in the century,
looking at the ink-filled sky,
seeing the April comet, a luminous exclamation,
not believing, with the alternatives
of nuclear char or unchecked epidemic,
that anything from our time will last.
But still, I was here, on this rock,
this shaley hillside, violets blooming
in the grass, for a short time. I suffered,
I lived, I loved in the face of everything,
and I have to write it down.

“Because the world is round it turns me on.” (John Lennon)

Because, as Stephen King says, “What makes you think I have a choice?”

Because I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.

Because “love calls us to the things of the world.” (Richard Wilbur)

Because “the Blues is truth” (Buddy Guy) and so is poetry.

Because in poetry, “Nothing is lost, everything is transformed” (Antoine Lavoisier, father of modern chemistry.”

Because “all sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story” (Isak Dinensen) or a poem.

Because there is no other language for joy.

Because “grapes want to turn to wine.” (Rumi)

Because, to quote myself again, there’s “one small / life, and it's never enough.” (“How the Trees on Summer Nights Turn Into a Dark River”)

How I Discovered Poetry: Denise Duhamel

How I Discovered Poetry ~ Denise Duhamel




SUCH A THING

I started writing
poetry
when I found out
that there was such a thing
as contemporary poetry,
that I didn’t have to
have a plot and minor characters
and a setting
and it could be all me,
like a channel
of all-Denise-all-the-time.
When I wrote stories
in my undergraduate fiction class,
the teachers asked,
“Might this instead be a poem?”
or “Don’t your characters
ever do anything but sit
at kitchen tables remembering the past?"
I started writing poetry
because there were things I couldn’t tell
anyone, but I could write them down.
I started writing poetry before I knew
it was poetry
by way of my journal and diaries.
I started writing poetry
because when the dishes flew
or my mother sobbed on the couch
my journal fell open, each page
a wing. I started writing
poetry when I had my first crush
and I couldn’t tell anyone
about it. I started writing
poetry so I myself wouldn’t
throw dishes or sob. Sometimes
I sobbed anyway and more than once
I’ve smudged my own writing
with a tear, but I wrote
right through it. I started
writing poetry because I was a misfit—
sickly, allergic. I wrote poetry
in the children’s hospital
in fourth grade when I fell in love
with a bald boy with cancer.
He was in sixth grade
with eyes that grew larger
and more stunning every day.
He wore away but not his eyes.
I wish now that I’d read him
my poems. I remember feeling
like a ten-year-old widow.
I started writing poetry
even though I found it embarrassing
to be so naked, so embarrassing
to think anyone would be interested
in what I felt.
I still find it embarrassing.
I started writing poetry
in secret. I started showing
my poems, much later, tentatively,
I guess to say, Hi,
I see you.
I’m here.

forthcoming in Limp Wrist

Queens of Poetry

I am putting together an anthology-- Queens of Poetry: A Tribute to Bosselaar, Duhamel, Laux & Wier. I launched the site on April 1, and I have received almost ten submissions as well as a handful of queries.

Check out the submission guidelines. Submit.

Share the link to Queens of Poetry with your writing group, students, friends, on your blog, via Facebook.... whatever you can do to spread the word.

4/2/09-- Lisa Borders Announces

Lisa Borders is back in the race for mayor of Atlanta. I give Lisa Borders gave points for the use of the song at the end of the second video. I'm not saying which song she used... be a cool kid and watch the video to find out.

Georgia Peeps-- Add Lisa Borders as a friend on Facebook.


Announcement Speech: Part 1



Announcement Speech: Part 2

How I Discovered Poetry Series!

If I compiled a list of my top ten favorite poems of all time, it is easy for me to say Marilyn Nelson's "How I Discovered Poetry" would be one of the first poems I would write down. (There would be no second guessing myself.) Chills creep over my body every time I read Nelson's "How I Discovered Poetry." Every time I read Nelson's poem, I feel the passion I felt the first time I read it. People, this is what good poetry does to its reader.

I use "How I Discovered Poetry" every chance I can when leading a workshop. I love to see the looks on the faces of writers after they finish Nelson's poem--the sound of the gasp as they finish the last line. I've also found it is a great exercise to have people use the first line of the poem as a writing prompt.

Marilyn Nelson is a powerful and talented poet whose words will make you bow to her work. Marilyn is a delightful, kind-hearted poet. Every time I've seen her she wears a smile that reaches out and hugs you. Marilyn Nelson is a poet who has not been polluted by her success. She is a delight.

My series titled "How I Discovered Poetry," as you probably already assumed, is inspired by Marilyn Nelson's poem, "How I Discovered Poetry." This series will be posted only during April in tribute to National Poetry Month and in honor of Marilyn Nelson. The series will include responses from Denise Duhamel, Ellen Bass, Mark Bibbins, Sandra Beasley, David Trinidad, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, and more. (I'm even going to participate! I am hosting the party after all.) I think I can safely say there will be a little something for everyone. I hope you'll take a moment every so often to visit I Was Born Doing Reference Work In Sin to check out the series.

I begin the series with Marilyn Nelson's poem, and it will end on 4/30/09 with brief commentary from Marilyn on her poem.


Enjoy:

HOW I DISCOVERED POETRY

It was like soul-kissing, the way the words
filled my mouth as Mrs. Purdy read from her desk.
All the other kids zoned an hour ahead to 3:15,
but Mrs. Purdy and I wandered lonely as clouds borne
by a breeze off Mount Parnassus. She must have seen
the darkest eyes in the room brim: The next day
she gave me a poem she’d chosen especially for me
to read to the all except for me white class.
She smiled when she told me to read it, smiled harder,
said oh yes I could. She smiled harder and harder
until I stood and opened my mouth to banjo playing
darkies, pickaninnies, disses and dats. When I finished
my classmates stared at the floor. We walked silent
to the buses, awed by the power of words.

Marilyn Nelson, “How I Discovered Poetry” from The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems.

Why Do I Write ~ Michelle McGrane

WHY DO I WRITE ~ Michelle McGrane


I want to share one of my favourite excerpts on writing with you. It's from an essay by author, naturalist and environmental activist, Terry Tempest Williams, entitled "Why I Write", one of over thirty insightful pieces included in the volume Writing Creative Nonfiction, edited by Carolyn Forché and Philip Gerard (Writer's Digest Books, 2001).

I can't put it better than this:

"I write to make peace with the things I cannot control. I write to create red in a world that often appears black and white. I write to discover. I write to uncover. I write to meet my ghosts. I write to begin a dialogue. I write to imagine things differently and in imagining things differently perhaps the world will change. I write to honor beauty. I write to correspond with my friends. I write as a daily act of improvisation. I write because it creates my composure. I write against power and for democracy. I write myself out of my nightmares and into my dreams. I write in solitude born out of community. I write to the questions that shatter my sleep. I write to the answers that keep me complacent. I write to remember. I write to forget. I write to the music that opens my heart. I write to quell the pain. I write to migrating birds with the hubris of language. I write as a form of translation. I write with the patience of melancholy in winter. I write because it allows me to confront that which I do not know. I write as an act of faith. I write as an act of slowness. I write to record what I love in the face of loss. I write because it makes me less fearful of death. I write as an exercise in pure joy. I write as one who walks on the surface of a frozen river beginning to melt. I write out of anger and into my passion. I write from stillness of night anticipating – always anticipating. I write to listen. I write out of silence. I write to soothe the voices shouting inside me, outside me, all around. I write because of the humor of our condition as humans. I write because I believe in words. I write because I do not believe in words. I write because it is a dance with paradox. I write because you can play on the page like a child left alone in the sand. I write because it belongs to the force of the moon: high tide, low tide. I write because it is the way I take long walks. I write to bow to the wilderness. I write because it can create a path in darkness. I write because as a child I spoke a different language. I write with a knife carving each word through the generosity of trees. I write as ritual. I write because I am not employable. I write out of inconsistencies. I write because then I do not have to speak. I write with the colors of memory. I write as a witness to what I have seen. I write as a witness to what I imagine. I write by grace and grit. I write out of indigestion. I write when I am starving. I write when I am full. I write to the dead. I write out of the body. I write to put food on the table. I write on the other side of procrastination. I write for children we never had. I write for a love of ideas. I write for the surprise of a beautiful sentence. I write with the belief of alchemists. I write knowing I will always fail. I write knowing words will always fall short. I write knowing I can be killed by my own words, stabbed by syntax, crucified by both understanding and misunderstanding. I write out of ignorance. I write by accident. I write past the embarrassment of exposure. I keep writing and suddenly, I am overcome by sheer indulgence, the madness, the meaninglessness, the ridiculousness of this list. I trust nothing, especially myself, and slide headfirst into the familiar abyss of doubt and humiliation and threaten to push the delete button on my way down, or madly erase each line, pick up the paper and rip it to shreds - and then I realize, it doesn't matter, words are always a gamble, words are splinters of cut glass. I write because it is dangerous, a bloody risk, like love, to form the words, to say the words, to touch the source, to be touched, to reveal how vulnerable we are, how transient we are.

I write as though I am whispering in the ear of the one I love."

- Terry Tempest Williams from "Why I Write", Writing Creative Nonfiction: Instruction and insights from the teachers of the Associated Writing Programs, edited by Carolyn Forché and Philip Gerard (Writer's Digest Books, 2001)

Read more about Terry Tempest Williams here.

National Poetry Month Begins!

National Poetry Month officially starts today!

Please leave comments on this blog entry letting me know what you have planned to celebrate National Poetry Month.

In honor of National Poetry Month I am running a series in I Was Born Doing Reference Work in Sin titled How I Discovered Poetry. Get ready for responses from Denise Duhamel, Ellen Bass, Charles Jensen, and more.

I think you will enjoy the How I Discovered Poetry series!