Unbridled

/0 Comments/in /by

ellens goatWell, it is poetry month. Here’s a poem I wrote several springs ago after visiting my friend Ellen Felsenthal. (She is a photographer, and the photo is from her website.) I’ve always thought this poem could become slightly “bigger” if I worked on it, but it resists me. It wants to be what it is. Premarin is a pharmeceutical made from the urine of pregnant mares. The foals are often destroyed. In my mind, then, this is a poem about redemption.

Unbridled

I visit my friend Ellen’s farm
to meet her rescued Premarin filly
gorgeous paint girl

one of Ellen’s three horses
along with her mare Harmony
and a foster horse that needs training

Ellen has rescued numerous beasts
a pony named Elvis too old to be adopted
several goats including one who bleats like a baby

causing Ellen to say oh Waylon we hear you
also three sheep three dogs
a cat with a litter of kittens

Ellen says we can borrow
the neighbor’s horse we can saddle Harmony
and go riding but we stand talking

until it is too late to ride until
the horses tire of nudging our pockets for peppermints
finish the carrots we carried to them

and walk slowly away
their swaying free bodies unbridled
ungroomed.

Doing the Work

/0 Comments/in /by

bootsThis is something my daughter Pearl and I have been talking about. She loves music and has been in school choirs since she was a little girl. She wants to make a career in music, but hasn’t yet figured out how to get there from here.

It’s a question I dealt with myself some years ago in my writing, but I find that one’s mother is not always the right person to offer advice. So I looked for other mentors for Pearl. I paid for piano lessons for an entire year — with an amazing woman who I hoped would inspire Pearl.

Pearl didn’t practice piano once that year, well, not once during those nine months. Not once. The only glimmer of light I got was in noticing that she was not willing to give up her half hour with Susan each week. So I kept writing the checks, and hoping. Eventually I told her that was it.

A couple of positive things have happened for Pearl this past year. She’s found a terrific choir teacher at Edmonds Community College, and when I thought she was going to drop out of school this past quarter (the Math 80 conundrum) she regathered her forces — because of choir — and registered for spring quarter. Though I don’t necessarily think college is going to be her path, I hated to see her quitting simply because she was discouraged. I wanted her to make conscious choices.

And another thing. In January she and her sister attended a Lady Gaga concert. Inspired, Pearl bought a beautiful leather bound journal (with music engraved on the cover) and she started jotting down lyrics for songs. She also started practicing the piano. She even arranged for it to be tuned! She wrote down this quotation in her journal and shared it with me — it’s from the poet Rainer Maria Rilke and is one of Lady Gaga’s tattoos —

gaga tattoo“In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?”

This is what I’ve learned from practicing my own art. You can’t just look into your heart in the deepest hour of the night, you have to do something. Wanting to be a writer — or a singer —  with your entire being will not make you a writer or a singer. You have to do the work, at least a little bit every day.

Phrasings — this weekend!

/0 Comments/in /by

carlaToday’s Bellingham Herald includes an interview with my friend, poet Carla Shafer and the amazing poetry and dance presentation, “Phrasings in Word + Dance,” now in its seventh year. (April 5-7, tickets available on-line through Brown Paper Tickets.)

In the interview Carla also reveals how the Bellingham poetry series, Chuckanut Sandstone, acquired its name: “One night, the group of writers named the open mic ‘Chuckanut Sandstone,’ because at first, like poetry, it looks tough. It appears to be a rock, but when you dig into it, even a little, it breaks apart into small easy pieces. And sandstone, like poetry, has grit.”

Phrasings in Word + Dance is an amazing collaboration. If you are in Bellingham this weekend, I hope you can take a look.

/0 Comments/in /by

After several weeks off — in theory to ski with my kids on Tuesday evenings — I am back at Writing Lab. Today we talked about publication, a word I can never hear without the palimpsest of Emily Dickinson’s “Publication is the Auction — / Of the Mind of Man…”

garden gateAuctions aside, I believe publication is a necessary step (notice I am not calling it “a necessary evil”) in a writer’s evolution. We write for ourselves, to start with. We gradually begin to write for our teachers, our friends, our families. If we stay on the path long enough, we probably consider sending a poem or an essay or a story to a complete stranger. I had the benefit of a poetry mentor — Professor Nelson Bentley — known to exclaim, “Send this out immediately to some lucky editor!” Even so I found that the mere consideration of such an act challenged me to take my writing to another level. What’s a dull line or two when your friends love you?

Several lab members are new at this, so we started with a modest assignment: Find one website to share. You might begin by Googling a journal or small magazine you sometimes read. If you don’t read journals that publish the sort of work you’d like to publish, now’s a good time to begin. To find them, you could look in a book of poems by someone you admire to find out where that person has been published. They don’t have to be the high-priced ones that the big bookstores carry. Check a smaller newstand or a neighborhood bookstore for local publications.

Of course writing blogs often include links to journals. If you have a favorite, let us know and we’ll check it out. Meanwhile: you might read this advice from The Review Review: “What Editors Want.”