A Writer's Moment: 'The skeleton architecture of our lives'

A Writer's Moment: 'The skeleton architecture of our lives':   “Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a brid...

'The skeleton architecture of our lives'

 

“Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.” – Audre Lorde

 

Born in New York City in February oif 1934, Lorde was a writer and civil rights activist best known for poetry that dealt with issues related to civil rights, feminism, and the exploration of black female identity.   Among her most powerful and oft-quoted writings are the award-winning book of poetry, Coal, and her book on women’s rights, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches.   She also wrote and spoke eloquently about battling cancer, a disease from which she died at age 58.

 

For Saturday’s Poem here is Lorde’s,

 

                                                            Coping

It has rained for five days
running
the world is
a round puddle
of sunless water
where small islands
are only beginning
to cope
a young boy
in my garden
is bailing out water
from his flower patch
when I ask him why
he tells me
young seeds that have not seen sun
forget
and drown easily.

A Writer's Moment: 'It's what you can't stop thinking about'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's what you can't stop thinking about': “You have your identity when you find out, not what you can keep your mind on, but what you can't keep your mind off.” – A. R. Ammons   ...

'It's what you can't stop thinking about'

“You have your identity when you find out, not what you can keep your mind on, but what you can't keep your mind off.” – A. R. Ammons

 

Born in North Carolina on this date in 1926, Ammons worked as an elementary school principal and a glass company executive before turning his full attention to literature – both teaching and writing.   From 1964 to 1998 he taught creative writing at Cornell University while authoring hundreds, if not thousands, of poems.

 

Ammons wrote about nature and the self, themes that had preoccupied Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman and that remained the central focus of his work.  His Collected Poems, 1951–1971 (a terrific read) won a National Book Award.   And his Selected Poems is an excellent introduction to his works   In his work, Ammons focuses on change, both in nature and in daily life.           

                                                               

 Shortly before his death in 2001 Ammons was asked: “What is poetry?”    

                                                               

 “Poetry," he replied, "is the music of words . . . the linguistic correction of disorder.” 

A Writer's Moment: 'It's not a matter of choice'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's not a matter of choice': “Writing is not a matter of choice. Writers have to write. It is somehow in their temperament, in the blood, in tradition.”  – N. Scott Moma...

'It's not a matter of choice'

“Writing is not a matter of choice. Writers have to write. It is somehow in their temperament, in the blood, in tradition.” – N. Scott Momaday

 

Native American Momaday, a Kiowa was a novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet and winner of both the Pulitzer Prize (for his novel House Made of Dawn) and National Medal of Arts.  While “House” has been called “A Classic,” he is perhaps best known for the novel/memoir/folklore work The Way to Rainy Mountain.

 

Momaday grew up on Reservations in Arizona and New Mexico, and earned degrees from the University of New Mexico Stanford, where he also began his writing career, focusing first on poetry.  

 

Also a renowned teacher and speaker, he was one of the nation’s first Native American academics and created a curriculum based on American Indian literature and mythology.   In addition to his national honors, he was awarded some two dozen honorary degrees and was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  Selected for the Native American Hall of Fame in 2018, Momaday died in 2024.

 

 “I am interested in the way that we look at a given landscape and take possession of it in our blood and brain,” Momaday said.   “None of us lives apart from the land entirely; such an isolation is unimaginable.”

A Writer's Moment: 'That thing humans do'

A Writer's Moment: 'That thing humans do':   “Literature has as one of its principal allures that it tells you something about life that life itself can't tell you. I just thought...