Poems Are Alive

"When I plan what I'm going to say, often the words are strained no matter how brilliant they seemed when I came up with them. They're no longer fresh. It's why I write in the car. If I don't flip that poem onto the page the moment it wants to come out, it can drift away like a dream or go lifeless. Talk is alive. Moments are alive. Poems are made of talk and moments." - Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge, poemcrazy: freeing your life with words


Sometimes, I watch my friends' houses and pets while they go on vacation. It's a nice way to make a little extra money, or at least, since most of them live minutes from work instead of an hour, save some money on gas. But there's another thing I realized at my last housesitting gig: in a way, it's good for me as a writer.

There's something about being in an unfamiliar setting, and just for a weekend or so, stepping into another's life and treating it as my own, with someone else's dishes and furniture and windows. I can acclimate. I don't mind living in someone else's world for a while. And something about the unfamiliar makes me want to try new things.

Last weekend, while a friend's condo was in my care, I bought a bag of California mandarins, tiny, sweet fruits wrapped in deep orange, something I'd never thought to buy before. On Saturday morning, I added one to my breakfast. I dug my finger into the thick, soft rind, and peeled it effortlessly, letting the bright orange skin drop into my cereal bowl, a strong ceramic piece. Bright blue.

I sort of wish I'd snapped a picture of that orange and blue. The color caught my eye in its raw, bright audacity, and I thought how I might have never chosen these colors for myself. I thought about the box of dishes I have waiting in my closet for a home of their own. Simple white. Maybe I should buy some colorful bowls.

So I didn't snap a picture. Instead, I scribbled a poem.

Orange peel, blue bowl,


Black mug (Darth Vader),


Open balcony, clean breeze,


Riding on the morning.


Two dogs. None mine.



I make my home anywhere.


Anywhere there are


poems and sunlight


to capture them by.

Poems are alive. A photo can freeze time, capture color and a moment, and it can hint at feelings and story. But a poem holds moment after moment, and a well of feelings and a net of stories in just a few words. Lately, as my life changes, as I weigh decisions and feel for a change in the wind, I need poetry more than ever. When it comes to writing, I have no advice or helpful lists to dispense. I only have time and breath and little stories and lots of words.

But the thing about poetry is this: it doesn't have to resolve. Just as an excellent photo can catch a moment and maybe tell a story, a poem can frame a thing, a person, an idea, or a dream. In a sense, it goes deeper, beyond the surface of what we see.

I've heard that people don't like poetry because at some point some high school teacher forced them to reckon with great literary works and figure out what it means. Maybe instead of explaining and translating, learning to listen and experience them as the living things they are is a better way. Poems don't have to be lofty, heroic, or obscure either. The best of them put a frame around something ordinary and draw out all of its glory.

So what do I write about? A bowl, and orange rind. And home. And displacement and comfort.

It doesn't resolve or explain much. It doesn't have to.


A semi-belated contribution to TS Poetry's Book Club discussion of Poemcrazy this month. (I think this section was two weeks ago. Well then.) Find out more here!

Percolating and Such

The Dry Salvages (aka: gray line on the horizon)

Some months ago, I wrote about burnout. It was part self-corrective, part re-admission of something I've known for a while. I thought maybe, as it usually goes when I hit this kind of wall, talking about it might bring a little clarity and then I'd be able to write again. Admit the failure, and the windows open.

But then my friend Janna left some wisdom in the comment box that's been sticking around for months...

"The problem with easy, immediate publishing, via the internet, is that it tricks us into thinking that writing is somehow immediate, and should be shared everyday. This is simply not true. Percolating is good."

So... this is it. The work of writing is work. It's showing up, butt in chair, like it's your job, something I all too frequently fail to do, yes. But it's also the work of not quite writing... scribbling in the dark, reading, living, loving. It happens in far off places and in the lamplight in my own room. It happens in commuting and at concerts and in the kitchen, watching how the angle light hits drifting detergent bubbles just so.


I said in that same blog post that my new mantra was "never turn down an adventure." I never dreamed that 2013 would put so many in my path. I traveled to New England in the middle of winter, climbed ocean rocks in the cold to catch a glimpse of Eliot's inspiration, learned about obedience and craft at a writer's retreat, fell in love in a Harvard bookstore, and said yes to one of my life's scariest, most beautiful adventures.

For a while, I've been living on the edge of change. I feel seismic shifts happening in my soul. Only love and trust of the highest order can handle such a thing.

And then I catch myself overwhelmed to the point of not writing. What can I possibly write in the face of such immensity?

No. How can I not write?

So I've simmered these past few months. I've felt something of my old self being refined and yet still the same, still me, still here. Perhaps I will finally be able to put words to it and come back with a little something.


In the meantime, I have been writing, though not here. When times are emotional and my thoughts are too jumbled for linear prose, I write poems. I've written lots of them, because they don't have to resolve or come to a tidy conclusion or even make sense. What other form of writing can be so alive in the moment? Because of that, my poetry Tumblr is still very much alive.

Also, it's National Poetry Month, so expect more musings on poetry to come. And I've been reading too, so much I have maybe five books in progress now. More on those later, perhaps.

That's a lot of "maybe later." Maybe blog posts don't have to resolve either. Maybe that's okay.

All that to say.... to anyone still lingering out there, welcome. Diving back in to reclaim this space. Pardon the splashing and flailing around.

Teach Us (Guest Blogging Again!)

It's a little bit embarrassing to notice how long it's been since I posted here... hello world! I have been living, writing, working, reading, and changing in the past month. I don't even really know where to begin. BUT! Once again, I am guest posting over at Julie's blog Greener Trees for our awesome little reading group. Check out "Teach Us," some thoughts on Helen Gardner's The Art of T.S. Eliot, Eliot's poem Ash Wednesday, and Lent. (Appropriate, right?) Grateful for this little group and the opportunity to dig a little deeper into great poetry with them...

It started as a nudge, a notion, and I couldn’t shake it. “Give up coffee.” One small gesture of no spiritual or physical importance, but enough to shift a little something in a soul too used to believing grace in theory.

It was the first year an Evangelical-raised, still-wandering believer tasted the bitter wine of Lent.

Growing up, my understanding of the season was limited at best, ignorant at worst. The way I saw it, Lent was “a Catholic thing”: binge on Tuesday, wear ashes on Wednesday, and give something up until Easter -- diet Coke, coffee, meat, swearing -- whatever spurred you on to some sort of implied holiness. Until a friend of mine explained why he practiced this mystery, that his fasting was not about the giving up, but about the awareness of his limits and a tiny sacrifice to prepare his heart for Easter, I couldn’t understand why anybody would want to do this other than old-fashioned church guilting.

I have practiced Lent in my own small, somewhat private fashion for the past several years. I wish I could tell glowing stories of how I conquered my fleshly desires and inspired others to greatness, but truth be told, I mostly spent those 40 days a year failing and rationalizing and restarting and failing some more.

Lent begins again this week. I’m going to give something up. I’m probably going to fail too. And yet, I still want to come, ash marked, to lay my own tiny sacrifice on the altar of grace.

This is the tension. Teach me to care and not to care.

(Read the rest at Greener Trees)

The Rhythm of All Things

You could say I rediscovered T.S. Eliot last year, with emphasis on "re." Fragments of his writing have haunted me since my high school literature days...

"This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper." 
"Do I dare disturb the universe?" 
"Let us go then, you and I..." 

Even when I was just exploring the edges of the world of poetry, those were the kind of phrases that I simply couldn't forget.

Last year, I read The Waste Land and Other Poems and Four Quartets and knew it was only scratching the surface, so I'm super grateful that my friend Julie at Greener Trees selected The Art of T.S. Eliot by Helen Gardner for our reading group's next book. (It's not too late to join us!) It's a smallish book. It's also dense and nerdy, and I'm exercising brain muscles that have atrophied since college literature classes. This is a very, very good thing.

This week was Chapter 1. I honestly don't remember much of it, other than I wished I'd been taking notes around the halfway point. But I did jot down this quote:

"If we can discover a poetic rhythm in the most commonplace speech, this rhythm may then be capable of refinement and elevation so that it may accommodate the greatest thoughts without losing naturalness." (p 25)

Some wonder, "Why poetry? Why not just say what you mean instead of using fancy words?" Poetry is Shakespeare and metaphors and rhyming. Or maybe it's the modern writers who seem to make a pretentious alphabet soup on paper, or yell dramatic things in the corner of a dimly lit hipster coffee shop.

But poetry begins with a love of language, not just the beautiful speeches in old movies or the carefully constructed meter of the oldest poems, but the words of the street too, the easy dance of a quiet conversation between old friends, the way we inflect when we tell stories (often slightly embellished) about both the exciting and mundane moments of life.

“The dance of poetry and the dance of life obey the same laws and disclose the same truth.” (p 9)

Really, I could linger on this idea for an entire book. Where is the poetry, the music in our everyday words and actions? After a discussion about meter and a bit of scansion, Gardner mentions how once when asked to select some favorite poems for a BBC broadcast -- "not his favourite poems, but poems that stayed in his head and came to his mind at moments when he was thinking of nothing much else" -- Eliot chose highly rhythmic "thumpers," the kind of lilting, emphatic poetry that first introduced most people to the music of words. And this is what comes to mind for most people at the mention of poetry. Rhyme and rhythm. Poetic language with a heft and weight that isn't so obvious in our daily exchanges.

Which brings me back to some of the Eliot lines I never could shake.... "Let us go then, you and I / When the evening is spread out against the sky..." Perfectly ordinary, unpretentious words, only polished and naturally musical together.

I wonder if maybe it's not that language has gotten uglier or lazier in a world of sound bytes and txt speak, but that maybe we just find it hard to really, truly listen. Eliot reminds me to do that. There is a poetry to everything if we pause to see and hear it.

***

And speaking of poetry in all things.... how about poetry and comics?! I had the pleasure of collaborating with artist and Rabbit Room friend Jonny Jimison on a comic called "Winter White." I wrote some poetry and he worked some illustrative magic. Hop on over to his website and check it out. He says in a few drawings what I'm trying to get at with this post.

Awesome of 2012: The Music

Hi, New Year! Starting ahead by looking back... yes, it's time for the best of 2012 lists! I make no promises to get past the music list (I didn't last year), but at least for now, here are my top 12 albums of 2012. The first few are pretty much in order, and the rest are records I returned to multiple times and loved throughout 2012. It's by no means a definitive "OMG BEST!" list (because really, who can write that?), but it is the soundtrack to my year...

Andrew Peterson - Light for the Lost Boy: Sure, I'm inclined to like anything AP releases. Sure, this record pushes musical boundaries, is lyrically cohesive and deep, and contains lots of nerdy literary references while sounding incredibly pretty. But it also has an emotional resonance that is impossible to define in words and a spirit that haunts long after the final notes fade. Also, it made me ugly cry in my car once. This album defined 2012 in so many ways. (Highlights: Come Back Soon, Carry the Fire, You'll Find Your Way, Don't You Want to Thank Someone)

Matthew Perryman Jones - Land of the Living: Discovered on Noisetrade, and oh, is it glorious. A spacious, gritty, anthemic, earthy, spiritual desert valley of a record, the kind that gets in your soul and doesn't let go. I still can't get enough of it. (Highlights: O Theo, Waking Up the Dead, Cancion de la Noche, Land of the Living)

Audrey Assad - Heart: I was a fan of Audrey's debut, but I always felt like it was only scratching the surface of what she could do. I'm pretty sure Heart is the album she was born to make. Gently passionate piano pop with a 70's songwriter flair. Beautiful. (Highlights: Even the Winter, O My Soul, Lament, Slow)

Mumford & Sons - Babel: At first, I wasn't sure it could hold up against Sigh No More for me, but Babel very became an oft-played favorite of mine. Their songs have passion, grit, and soul, the kind that you want to play a little loud, get a little angry, and shout along with. Here's to making banjos cool again. (Highlights: Whispers in the Dark, Holland Road, Lover of the Light, Hopeless Wanderer, Not with Haste)

fun. - Some Nights: It's kind of embarrassing how much I love this record. It's weird, brash, anthemic, simultaneously hipster and Top 40, happy and melancholy with the right mix of swagger and nostalgia. Kind of reminds me of attempting to describe Arcade Fire's The Suburbs, though it's probably not that serious. Also, I will forever associate it with the time I got a flat tire on the Turnpike. It made the drive bearable. (Highlights: Some Nights, We Are Young, Carry On, All Alone)

Derek Webb - Ctrl / Sola-Mi - Nexus: No album made me think half as much as I did while puzzling out the mysteries of Ctrl, but when Derek Webb confirmed that his side project Sola-Mi was a companion piece designed to seamlessly blend into the story, my brain exploded. An inseparable duo, these two albums combined tell a disturbing sort of love story about the places humanity and technology meet. (Highlights: Blocks, Attonitos Gloria, Crowd of Silent Strangers, Trust Falling)

Andrew Osenga - Leonard the Lonely Astronaut: A sci-fi concept record about loneliness, love, and forgiveness…. recorded in a spaceship studio. This was too nerdy and awesome to not support on Kickstarter, but it turns out to be a rather heartbreaking and introspective work of art. Also, the B-sides EP has a song about space pirates. (Highlights: Ever and Always, Hold On Boy, Firstborn Son, It Was Not Good for Man to be Alone)

Paper Route - The Peace of Wild Things: Noisetrade introduced me to Paper Route's fantastic debut Absence, but the follow up release made me love them more. Gloriously hooky, smart electronic pop that sounds a bit like the 80s meets OneRepublic meets a less spacey M83. (Highlights: Two Hearts, Better Life, Glass Heart Hymn, You and I)

Gungor - A Creation Liturgy (Live): Normally, I wouldn't put a live album on one of these lists, but truth be told, this could be the best live record I've ever heard. Rather than a mere rehash of songs already released, this is a stirring experience that captures the heart of a Gungor show. (Highlights: Let There Be, Spotless/You Have Me, We Will Run/He is Here)

Of Monsters and Men - My Head is an Animal: A delightfully quirky Icelandic indie-folk band that I discovered on a friend's recommendation. I'm not really sure how to describe them other than super catchy and fun. (Highlights: King and Lionheart, Mountain Sound, Little Talks)

Anberlin - Vital: Anberlin was a huge part of my college days, and sometimes I think I've outgrown them. It's true. Then a new record comes along and I buy it on principle and suddenly I'm a college kid again. It's different, it pushes and experiments in multi-textured alternative rock, but at the core, it's another fantastically fun, fist-pumping alternative rock record. (Highlights: Little Tyrants, Other Side, Innocent, Modern Age)

Eric Peters - Birds of Relocation: I slowly started getting into Eric Peters last year, starting with Chrome, a haunting, honest, and heartbreaking folk record. Three years later, Birds is the perfect counterpoint, tempering the melancholy with true heartfelt joy. These songs are quietly subversive, getting into your heart before you know it. (Highlights: The Old Year (of Denial), Don't Hold Your Breath, Voices)







Honorable Mentions: As in, I didn't listen to these a ton for whatever reason, but I enjoyed them at some point… um, 2012 was a good year.

Matthew Mayfield - A Banquet for Ghosts, David Crowder Band - Give Us Rest, Andrew Bird - Break it Yourself, Jack White - Blunderbuss, Bebo Norman - Lights of Distant Cities, House of Heroes - Cold Hard Want, Sleigh Bells - Reign of Terror, Regina Spektor - What We Saw from the Cheap Seats, Anchor & Braille - The Quiet Life, The Killers - Battle Born, Kimbra - Vows, Sucre - A Minor Bird, The Avett Brothers - The Carpenter,  Dave Barnes - Stories to Tell, Sigur Ros - Valtari, Norah Jones - Little Broken Hearts

The Old & The New

A pair of poems I wrote for the old and the new year. Happy 2013! Grace and Peace to you in the coming year.

11:59



Sixty seconds of darkness.

Hold it tight,

feel time pulse

like a tiny heartbeat.



It smells of new mown grass,

electric-singed wires,

the smoke of fireworks,

the air of concert halls.



If it were the last

sixty seconds before

I followed the old year

into the dark



how would I let it go?



*** 


Midnight



The newness of a year

screams, explodes

into our world

in firework flash.



Like some alabaster jar

cracked open, poured over

to wash the old away,

perfume the new with promise.


Also, super excited to say my little poem "Suadade" was featured in Every Day Poems newsletter today! Read it here. Consider subscribing. It brings much daily joy to my inbox.

And for those who may be visiting via there, welcome! :)

Christmas Day: Give Us Christ

Father, give us Christ.
Star Igniter,
Crack our darkness.
Send the rain to heal our deadness.
Only you make dry bones rise,
Dim the blinding lights that hide
Our fear, until we're still enough
To feel the thaw of icy hearts.
In stable and by starlight
Overthrow our every expectation.
Our world inverts
Your kingdom comes.

***


Merry Christmas! May your day be bright and beautiful and hope light your way in 2013.

For the rest of the Advent poems.... Hope * Preparation * Joy * Love