Learning to Draw a New Map

My writing has been stagnant for the last 2 years.  When I first moved here I was still trudging down the country road of Rise When the Rooster Crows, a collection of poems about love, hard work, disappointment, hope, resentment, and making new memories out of the tattered remains of the old ones.  There were gaps in the story to imagine and fill, so I had a map by which to continue walking as I write.  That lasted for a year until I felt the collection was complete, edited several times (read: many times).  I packed up my belongings and moved into the place I was currently living.

Now I look around and I see a big city pulsating with buildings, roads that need repair, music in living rooms, craft fairs in the streets, farmers’ markets on nearly every day of the week, restaurants that beg for a lunch date, museum exhibitions whispering to visit before they travel onward, art receptions and wine tastings to meander, and coffee houses to hide in for a few moments to think, write, listen to music, and maybe chat with a new friend.  Oklahoma City is a good place no matter how much I miss what I remember about Berea, Kentucky, a place that is quickly changing and erasing any resemblance of concrete memories I revisit emotionally from time to time.

So for two years I have not felt drawn to a particular writing project or theme.  My hand is lonesome for writing words.  When I first moved to Kentucky I didn’t write much either, until I read an obituary which struck me.  It was about the cholera epidemic of the early 1830s in the Eastern State Hospital, also referred to as an insane asylum to some. I researched other deaths in the area, and began writing poems in the voice of similar people experiencing similar fates, though some poems were historic persons such a Laura Clay.  Thirty poems later — Lexington Lives — and I was done; The collection was largely based on research but it provided a foundation which enabled me to explore a new map for the next collection, resulting in Rise When the Rooster Crows. I had made some friends in the English department at the local college and had a niche for feeling as though I was a writer, a poet, a person of words.  Since moving to Oklahoma I have very slowly found individuals who correspond to these seats in my circle, though I have yet to make it feel as though they are family.  That may take more time.

Over the course of the last six months I have begun paving a new map, also based on researched information for the basis of poetic imagery, themes, voices, and memories, but nonetheless, I may have finally opened the door to Oklahoma.  The new idea, which involves oral histories about centennial farms, may provide an aerial view of the place I am beginning to know and accept.  Through their stories, and through the people I am beginning to know and love, I may begin a new map to draw out by hand in poetic verse, lines that will weave across the printed page to tell stories I hope Oklahomans will recognize, verify, and accept.  I think I have a few friends here who will honestly tell me when I have strayed and when I have revealed a true-to-the-region voice sharing his or her story.

 

Lyric Mimic

I love this song by Iron & Wine, “Walking Far From Home”, which is on the new album Kiss Each Other Clean. Inspired by it, for a couple of weeks now I have been thinking about list poems, which is a tool I think Sam Beam used in writing these song lyrics.

So I decided to use the song as a writing prompt. I started with the first line of the song and a few of its style traits, but the imagery all come from personal experiences, stories, and sights I or my friends have seen. I haven’t worked it into the same syllabic rhythm Sam Beam has for the song, which is mostly 8, 10, 8, 6&4 (10). The last line repeats the last 4 words/syllables of the 6, making the entire line 10. And it’s okay if from time to time the line is 7 instead of 8, or 11 instead of 10, if it still flows right.
For example, a verse from “Walking Far From Home”:
I saw sunlight on the water (8)
Saw a bird fall like a hammer from the sky (11)
An old woman on the speed train (8)
She was closing her eyes, closing her eyes (6, 4 =10)

So here’s my own little writing exercise, rough draft.

I was walking far from home
where streetlights were dim
and evenings breathed wind on my back,
and I saw the moon whisper in Orion’s ear.

I saw on a woman’s face a tear
and a dream written in a book,
pages creased to hide anger and regret.

I saw seagulls shield against lake wind in January
and I saw a sunset fold like red quilts across the sky.

I saw a flame flicker in a coffee house,
two people, four hands, and the wick dies.

I saw a man strum a guitar,
an ache like a thorn in his side,
song of his bottle dreams.

I saw a man drink whiskey,
his father’s voice, his mother’s touch,
and sleepless nights wandering.

I saw a girl hold a man’s hand,
a mother whispered broken promises,
and a forgotten guitar in the back room.

I saw boats sailing west by the lighthouse,
and couples huddled on hillsides fading into dusk.

I saw a painter and easel at sunrise,
a weeping willow leaning lakeside,
a canvas and brush in a box.

Saw a flock flying south for the winter,
Saw a child help a fallen bird,
a broken wing and pillow box.

Saw day lilies bloom in the shade,
and then they were gone.
Saw a hiker climb a rocky hill
to watch the last sunset of summer.

I saw a woman’s hair turn white,
her stories the same every day.
Letters and photos carried in a box.

I saw myself in his glasses,
a father’s smile hidden in his beard,
and people were walking to the market.

I saw a man kick a dog at the door,
beaten and huddled in a corner,
whimper and piss at tenderness.

I saw a girl pluck an old banjo song,
daffodils by the road were swaying
and the crickets hummed the chorus.

Saw a man unhook an ax from a tree,
back bent down to carry it over
to the winter’s woodpile.

I saw a musician on a big stage
and the audience clapped so loud.
She said the devil was in her fiddle.

I saw dresses hanging on a wall,
saw scarves draped on lampshades,
saw a girl asleep on the roof,
her dreams written by the moon.

I saw a black dog walk dizzy circles,
saw a cat chase a German Shepherd.
I saw raccoons feast on a porch,
old woman watching at the window.

I saw a curly-headed man paint a woman,
she was holding flowers like chili peppers,
and he loved her in his dreams.

 

Dream Eudora

Way back in high school, when I was a senior and working on a term paper in the library, a guy I had a crush on at the time came up to me and said I reminded him of “Eudora Welty in a spooky way.” I was conflicted with how to accept this comment: as a compliment or as a disguised insult of some kind. I chose compliment as I admired Welty’s writing, her strong will, creativity, observance of Southern manners, culture, and actions. The story of living in the South is written in every word of her novels and stories. And she was a successful author, which would make her a good “mentor” for someone who aspired to be one.

In this dream I was driving along a country road, maybe somewhere in the Mississippi Delta or maybe in an undetermined locale that had southern landscape elements. I saw a car by the road, steam and smoke rising from under the hood, a woman somewhere in her 50s standing by it. She was wearing beige and her hair was styled like it is in this photo. She had a large purse. I pulled over, asked her if she needed a ride, and she thanked me. I helped her get a couple boxes of books from her trunk into my trunk. She’d just published another book. A novel. I don’t recall which one, if ever I knew in the first place. In the dream, I knew who she was but I didn’t let on that I knew. I had several of her books. We talked a little bit but we were mostly quiet, enjoying the countryside. I don’t know what we talked about; I never remember exact phrases and conversations from my dreams, just the idea of it. I woke before we reached our destination, wherever that was according to Ms. Welty.

I’ve never had a dream before about authors, real authors, or authors that I admire. I have not been reading anything by Welty and no one has mentioned her name to me recently. This cameo appearance in my dream is completely unrelated to anything going on in my life right now. That’s interesting to me because it seems that would validate it more as a message from within my psyche or desire or dreams or the collective consciousness. A message I should take seriously. What is the message? From one successful Mississippi author to one unpublished aspiring Mississippi-roots poet:

Get back to your writing, dear. Get back on your path.

 

Dear Me…

You need to change things up now.  How long are you going to sit around wishing your poems would get published in a journal or as a book?  It’s not going to happen if you’re not sending it off someplace, be it by snail mail or electronic.  So start getting some manuscripts ready and send them off.  Pronto.  I give you a week to prepare and a week to mail.  Most of the deadlines you saw last night are end of this month and end of February.  So get to it, girl.

Also, you’ve been thinking about downsizing all the crap you own.  Stop thinking about it and do it.  Go through each room once a week and toss out that junk.  Goodwill will appreciate.  Besides, if you’re still thinking at the end of February that you’ll be moving into a smaller home, you will have less to move.  Less is good.

You need to schedule your hobbies. Prioritize.  Writing is number 1. Photography is number 2.  Video is number 3. Crafting is number 4.   This is how these things are tiered in importance to you.  You’re giving more time to some projects than what you’d like because you’re distracting yourself away from what really gives you pleasure.  Writing is priority number one. Do you need to wake up in the morning earlier to get some of this writing bug done?  Do it.

Get your accounts in order.

Calendar.  It is a good thing. Use it.

Get yourself into a gallery this year for your crafty art-stuff. Make some videos to accompany, maybe.  Storyboard your video and fabric art projects and do them.  Won’t know what they might be like until you do them.

Get energy.  Somehow.  Gym?  Lake walking?  Be healthy about it.

Get a check-up. Find out about thyroid tests, etc, and see if that’s a concern. Lose weight eventually.  Like your shape as it is for now.  Accept.  Maintain.  Smile.

Sincerely,

You

 

submissions

Listening to Ben Sollee’s Daytrotter Session recording for the first time and it is slightly distracting as I came to blog about submissions but my mind keeps wandering into inquisitive mode about his music and lyrics.  I’ll try to stay on track.

I bought the Jan/Feb issue of Poets & Writers with intent to mark and scratch off contest submissions for whole poetry book competitions.  I have two unpublished cohesive collections that stand well as a group but probably not so well as single pieces as people might be curious as to why I’d write what I wrote without knowing the rest of the collection’s intent.  I’ve considered publishing Lexington Lives myself through a print-on-demand site, but I think I could see it drown in a puddle because no one would actually purchase it, and no bookstores would know about it, and it wouldn’t get any publicity whatsoever.  I’d rather like to see a publisher in Kentucky pick it up.

My wish is the same for Rise When the Rooster Crows but by a Mississippi press since I set the story in the Delta primarily.  Wouldn’t it be great if UM Press, my Alma mater’s university press, picked it up?  Daydreaming.

I do have a small selection of poems that stand alone and that I could use to send off for one-poem-at-a-time poetry contests.  Besides, I probably should revise Lexington Lives again before I try submitting it for a competition.  I have sent Rise When the Rooster Crows to Yale Younger Poets, so I will have to wait to hear about that.

 

Warmth

I want to write about warmth, heart, poetry, love, but there’s no limbs and branches to gather to build the fire.

I need a woodpile waiting to burn…

When I sleep I feel the fire flicker brightly in my dreams, and when I wake the day brings with it a smoldering and smokey haze.

 

waiting on weight

I don’t like what has happened. I looked at pictures from 6 years ago, ones I shot of myself in my little apartment in graduate school one autumn. Thin arms, narrow shoulders, slimmer face, a sparkle in the eyes.  The last 3 months in that apartment with only a minimal part-time job, post-graduate, waiting to hear about job applications I had sent, and then finally resolving to move back to Jackson until I found work.  A month and a half later I was in Kentucky.   I didn’t know anyone and at first I was a homebody, cooking a lot, and thus eating more.  And I wasn’t running around town, up and down stairs, etc.  And I was hitting my late twenties.

Now I am in my mid-thirties looking back on photos of myself in my mid-twenties thinking, where did it come from?  But I know where it came from.  Evenings spent watching episodic television and rented movies, hours on the computer chatting with friends, writing whining journal entries, and sitting, sitting, sitting.  For a short while I tried running.  I tried to go to the gym.  I just didn’t stick with either.  I tried intense yoga. Gave it up and opted for the two-hour absorbing movie instead.

2011. I’m going to try a little harder to change a little more of what I have tried before.

 

writing groups

Recently a friend posted about some “promises to the muse” and some items on the list made me yearn for the little pool of creativity and friendship we had for a year or two or three.  I thought I would write about how I feel looking back on those experiences.

— — — — — — — — — — — —

Wednesdays and Saturdays… Towards the end of my time in small town Kentucky I would look forward to those two days with such anticipation that I wished there were no days in between. Wednesdays were never as productive for me as Saturdays, though.  One of us would bring a prompt, oftentimes me.  I’d try to create a structure out of it on paper, a little brick and mortar wall or pedestal.  But whatever blueprints I drew out on those evenings never built anything that withstood stormy weather; The first wind gust knocked it down.  I suppose evenings were not my best time to be a wordsmith.  Those evenings were more about seeing the faces I loved, hearing the voices — in writing and from persons.  Afterward some of us would visit a while longer, talk about what we’d been reading, classwork, music, daily lives.  Going out into the night under a canopy of southern oaks and distant stars, I’d feel giddy with a sense of place that fluttered in my hands and heart.  We’d say our goodbyes and I would wait for Saturday.

Wednesdays were a teaser that satisfied me like a warm cup of coffee on a cool morning until Saturday arrived.  Those mornings we usually met at a coffee shop. The last year I would wake, dress, and eagerly step out bundled up in warm coats into the cold to walk a mile to the coffee shop on one of the main thoroughfares through town.  I’d ponder the neighborhoods and front porches I’d pass, the railroad tracks and iron nails, great oak trees and stone walls, until I stepped on the pea gravel in the back lot and pulled on that door that always required an extra bit of strength to yank it open.  I’d walk around the corner and see the table set, 5 or 6 chairs already pulled into place, and a couple of our group sitting with warm coffee cups in their hands, faces warm with its glow.  There was always a friendly hello, one so warm and welcoming as if they hadn’t seen me in months.  What a way to feel at home!  I’d order my cafe mocha, another his espresso, another her coffee with creamer, another her hot tea with honey, and so on.  Some of us would get a pastry or flapjack.  Sometimes the breakfast lasted into the writing time; It didn’t matter.  Sometimes I brought a prompt I found as quote in a book or as a found object along the path.  Others brought prompts, starters, jumper cables, anything that would break creative monotony.  We’d introduce the prompt and a quiet hush would fall upon us as we rested our minds and let the ideas begin to open doors and point out pathways. Then pens and pencils would begin scratching on worn journal pages, some of us sitting square at the table with cup and plate crowding our space but we wouldn’t notice because the scene was opening and we were writing it down to remember.  Others angled away from the group a little, journal resting on knee and backs arched to over absorb the shock of places and people jotting across the pages.  I’d look up from time to time to see a quiet face staring off into a history that was both real and created with eyes warm and concentrated on thought.   I kept the timer, though I never set it to have a noisy alarm to signal the end of 20 minutes.  I didn’t want to jolt anyone out of a word landscape that was comfortable and welcoming like an alarm clock shakes you out of a dream that you wanted to live in.  The twenty minutes quietly came upon each of us and when we were ready we each began to look to each other, smile, whisper, nod, eat our pastries, and drink coffee, until everyone had resurfaced.  Someone would volunteer to go first.  She’d read aloud an excerpt or all of what she wrote during those twenty minutes.  We’d listen with captivated ears, both listening to her voice, the persona in the story, the rush of air through the door when someone entered the coffee shop, and to our own thoughts continuing about what we’d written.  We’d blink when she read aloud a sentence or phrase that sounded musical and vibrated like a plucked stringed instrument.  We’d remember those moments and recall them back to her when she finished reading, watching her face flicker warmly with the appreciation.  Then another person would read, and another.  Sometimes the moment brought something too personal and private, so a writer would pass on reading; That was okay because the next Saturday they’d find something they could share.  And other times the writer would preface with their own criticism of what they wrote only to find the listeners found pieces in it that glowed like the rising sun.    After everyone had had his or her turn to read their writing, we’d chatter for a few more minutes, then some of us would leave to meet friends for lunch, run errands, continue on with our day.  Others might carry-over the warmth over another cup of coffee, talking about poetry book projects and current reading and philosophies.  And then we’d break away to turn to our own daily tasks and wait for the next Saturday to arrive.

These were the free-writing group days I miss.

 

2010 greats

In saying farewell to 2010, list a few of the things that made 2010 great:

Here’s mine:
Blue Moon House Concerts, falling in love with Oklahoma indie music, making art, getting poetry published in Ain’t Nobody That Can Sing Like Me, making new good friends, getting a new-used car, Lake Hefner sunsets, buying a kayak from a friend, and a few more I’m sure… 

 

Driving thoughts

There were times I could have stolen a kiss and waited to see what that meant to you. It crossed my mind so often I was paralyzed by what I feared. And now I am still pondering my “what if…?” and “why didn’t I?” as I drive to my empty house under the layers of night stretched across a western sky. Sometimes my mental conversations with you feel vivid in emotion as if you, too, converse with me from your solitary place far from here. I imagine… If I had stolen a kiss would this moment be different?