I recently read Theo Pauline Nestor’s Writing Is My Drink and I am happy to HIGHLY recommend it. Among other things, Nestor reminded me of a very important essay that my friend, Priscilla Long, made me read years ago when I was struggling to write my doctoral dissertation. Here’s a link to the article, from Nestor’s blog: Virginia Valian’s “Learning to Work.” It is an article that all writers–especially writers who are standing in their own way–should read.
I’ve been meaning to share a passage from Ann Tremaine Linthorst’s wonderful book, Mothering as a Spiritual Journey. A conversation with friends–Abby, Carolynne, and Liz–brought it to mind. One doesn’t have to be a literal mother to benefit from it. Think of it as a strategy to be used any time you feel overwhelmed and doubt your own power, your own “place of dominion” (as Ann calls motherhood).
One day when Ann’s sons were small, her husband walked into the room and found her holding the boys and weeping. Not happy tears. Overwhelmed. He said to her, “kindly,” she points out, “but firmly”:
“You’ve got to get happy. I don’t care what it takes, quit work, get a sitter, whatever. But you’ve got to get happy, because the whole family suffers when you cry like this.”
Ann continues, “At that moment, I saw clearly that my first and foremost responsibility was to find resources for myself, to find the foundation for peace and joy.” (26)
Gary Snyder
I am exhausted. I’ve been attending AWP in Seattle, courtesy of Poetry Northwest and my college. My brain is full. I came very, very close to leaving after dinner last night, but this man — Gary Snyder — who I have never seen in person but have read forever — was reading. He is getting up there, and I can’t really imagine that I will have another chance to hear him. So I stayed.
Robert Hass, Eva Saulitis, and Gary Snyder on nature and science. It was wonderful and made me want to get up this morning and work on poems.
Which is, after all, what it’s all about.
How Poetry Comes to Me
It comes blundering over the
Boulders at night, it stays
Frightened outside the
Range of my campfire
I go to meet it at the
Edge of the light
-Gary Snyder
Listing 14 books by women that I’d like to reread, just made me think of more.
“For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of — to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others… and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse