A Writer's Moment: Thinking along divergent lines

A Writer's Moment: Thinking along divergent lines:   “When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do.” – Howard   Nemerov...

Thinking along divergent lines

 

“When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do.” – Howard  Nemerov

Nemerov, born in March 1920, twice served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress and was thrice-honored for The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov, winning the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and Bollingen Prize.

 

A teacher first, he said he always enjoyed talking to kids.  “I liked the kid who wrote me that he had to do a term paper on a modern poet and was doing me because, ‘though they say you have to read poems twice, he found he could handle mine in one try’.”    For Saturday’s Poem, here is Nemerov’s,

 

Found Poem (After information received in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1986)

The population center of the USA
Has shifted to Potosi, in Missouri.

The calculation employed by authorities
In arriving at this dislocation assumes

That the country is a geometric plane,
Perfectly flat, and that every citizen,

Including those in Alaska and Hawaii
And the District of Columbia, weighs the same;

So that, given these simple presuppositions,
The entire bulk and spread of all the people

Should theoretically balance on the point
Of a needle under Potosi in Missouri

Where no one is residing nowadays
But the watchman over an abandoned mine

Whence the company got the lead out and left.
'It gets pretty lonely here,' he says, 'at night.'

A Writer's Moment: 'Artistic expression for its own time'

A Writer's Moment: 'Artistic expression for its own time':   “A theatre, a literature, an artistic expression that does not speak for its own time has no relevance.” – Dario Fo Born on this dat...

'Artistic expression for its own time'

 

“A theatre, a literature, an artistic expression that does not speak for its own time has no relevance.” – Dario Fo

Born on this date in 1926,  Fo often said he was “an idiot” who just happened to win the Nobel Prize.  But “brilliant” would be a more fitting description.   An Italian actor, playwright, director, songwriter, and political campaigner he was “arguably the most widely performed contemporary playwright in world theatre” during his lifetime.

A master of satire and irony, he grew up the son of a self-educated writing mother and day-laborer father who also was a traveling actor in the ancient Italian tradition of regional performance, lampooning local politicos and religious figures. “When I was a boy, unconsciously, spontaneously I learned the art of telling ironic stories,” he said.

Whether as an actor, writer or director, Fo found religion and politics to be “fertile ground” for his works.   “Every artistic expression is either influenced          

 by or adds something to politics,” he once wrote. 

Fo’s writings – translated into 30 languages – address issues ranging from dictatorial brutality to AIDS, religion, organized crime, and “military actions.”    His satire, he said, can be adapted to unjust situations throughout the world.    “Satire can always be found everywhere.  A people without love for satire is a dead people.” 

A Writer's Moment: 'Believeably involved, emotionally invested'

A Writer's Moment: 'Believeably involved, emotionally invested':   “In a mystery, the sleuth must be believably involved and emotionally invested in solving the crime.” – Diane Mott Davidson Mystery ...

'Believeably involved, emotionally invested'

 

“In a mystery, the sleuth must be believably involved and emotionally invested in solving the crime.” – Diane Mott Davidson

Mystery writer Davidson, born March 22, 1949, took a page (so to speak) out of author Robert B. Parker’s writing guide and decided to develop her ideas for mysteries around her two great loves – writing and recipes.  Thus, her novels use the theme of food and include several food or drink recipes within their pages.  On top of that, her clever titles are a play on food or drink words, like Dying for Chocolate, The Grilling Season, Killer Pancake and The Whole Enchilada (my personal fave).

Her protagonist, Goldy Schulz, is a small town caterer based in Colorado (also where Davidson resides) who solves mysteries on the side.

A native of Virginia who started writing while she was a student at Wellesley, Mott Davidson said she actually tried catering for a while and found it “exhausting.”  She honed her cooking skills after transferring from Wellesley to Stanford.  “If you don’t have much money, you have to learn to cook.”

 

Her advice to new writers is first write for the love of it.  “If you make best-sellerdom your goal, you're going to be in trouble.  It's a very nice thing to have happen, but if one makes that a goal like, say, a literary writer has the goal of getting the Pulitzer Prize, that's so unpredictable.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Putting brains to work'

A Writer's Moment: 'Putting brains to work':   “One of the nice things about books as opposed to television and movies … is people really do get involved, and they do create, and they d...