A Writer's Moment: Those 'Accidental' Poems

A Writer's Moment: Those 'Accidental' Poems: “A lot happens by accident in poetry.” – Howard Nemerov Born in New York City on this date in 1920, Nemerov start...

Those 'Accidental' Poems

“A lot happens by accident in poetry.” – Howard Nemerov

Born in New York City on this date in 1920, Nemerov started writing poetry in high school and had his first works published while studying at Harvard.  After serving as a pilot in WWII, he embarked on a long and distinguished writing and teaching career, capped by 21 years as Poet-in-Residence at Washington University in St. Louis.  He was twice named Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress.

His many collections of poetry, fiction, and prose, as well as his work as an editor made him a major figure in mid-20^th century American poetry. About him, Joyce Carol Oates once wrote, “Romantic, realist, comedian, satirist, relentless and indefatigable brooder upon the most ancient mysteries—Nemerov is not to be classified.”     For Saturday’s Poem, here is Nemerov’s,

           Fugue

You see them vanish in their speeding cars,
The many people hastening through the world,
And wonder what they would have done before
This time of time speed distance, random streams
Of molecules hastened by what rising heat?
Was there never a world where people just sat still?

Yet they might be all of them contemplatives
Of a timeless now, drivers and passengers
In the moving cars all facing to the front
Which is the future, which is destiny,
Which is desire and desire's end -
What are they doing but just sitting still?

And still at speed they fly away, as still
As the road paid out beneath them as it flows
Moment by moment into the mirrored past;
They spread in their wake the parading fields of food,
The windowless works where who is making what,
The grey towns where the wishes and the fears are done.

Share A Writer’s Moment with a friend at http://writersmoment.blogspot.com

A Writer's Moment: Setting A Style That Works

A Writer's Moment: Setting A Style That Works: “No writer need feel sorry for himself if he writes and enjoys it, even if he doesn't get paid.” – Irwin Shaw ...

Setting A Style That Works

“No writer need feel sorry for himself if he writes and enjoys it, even if he doesn't get paid.” – Irwin Shaw

Born in New York City on this date in 1913, Shaw grew up in Brooklyn where he studied writing at Brooklyn College, wrote his first successful stage play at age 21, and went on to become one of America’s most popular writers.  Over his long successful career he wrote 10 novels, 10 works for the stage, 15 screenplays, and a dozen short story collections.  He was twice honored with the prestigious O. Henry Award for his short story writing.  He also did a number of nonfiction works and had several of his stories made into successful movies, led by The Young Lions and Rich Man, Poor Man.

The Young Lions, which starred Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift, was based on Shaw’s own experiences serving as an Army Warrant Officer in Europe during WWII.    Blacklisted after standing up to the infamous McCarthy Commission in the mid-1950s, he moved to Europe and lived there for 25 years.  He was in Davos, Switzerland at the time of his death in 1984. 

“The last paragraph, in which you tell what the story is about, is almost always best left out,” Shaw once said.  “A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much.”

“I haven't stuck to any formula. Most great writers stick to the same style, but I wanted to be more various in what I did.”

Share A Writer’s Moment with a friend at http://writersmoment.blogspot.com

A Writer's Moment: Writing That 'Touches The Reader'

A Writer's Moment: Writing That 'Touches The Reader': It is the job of the novelist to touch the reader.” – Elizabeth George Susan “Elizabeth” George, a native of Warr...

Writing That 'Touches The Reader'

It is the job of the novelist to touch the reader.” – Elizabeth George

Susan “Elizabeth” George, a native of Warren, Ohio, made her claim to fame by writing about “ordinary and extraordinary” days in the life of a detective 6,000 miles away from her home – Great Britain’s Inspector Thomas Lynley.      

George, born on this date in 1949, didn’t start her stellar writing career until middle age, first making her mark as an award-winning writing teacher.   During her 14-year teaching career, she was twice named Teacher of the Year for California’s largest county. 

An avid “journaler,” she started her own creative writing by using bits and pieces from her journals, including travels to England.  She created the intriguing Lynley book series, most of which have been adapted by the BBC as The Inspector Lynley Mysteries.  Her creations have now been translated into 3 dozen languages and earned her honorary degrees from California State University Fullerton, and the Northwest Institute of Language Arts (Whidbey Island MFA Program).

Recognition of the detail in her works – a hallmark of her writing thanks in no small part to her journaling skills – also has earned her Britain’s Anthony and Agatha Awards and France’s LeGrand Prix de Literature Policiere, a writing version of an Academy Award. 

“I wish that I had known back then that a mastery of process would lead to a product,” she said of her writing.  “Then I probably wouldn't have found it so frightening to write.”

Share A Writer’s Moment with a friend at http://writersmoment.blogspot.com

A Writer's Moment: Inspiring Writers To Reach Deeper

A Writer's Moment: Inspiring Writers To Reach Deeper: “Writing is really a way of thinking--not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, myste...

Inspiring Writers To Reach Deeper

“Writing is really a way of thinking--not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet.”—Toni Morrison

Black History is much more than a month and is reflective of us all each and every day.  None tell this story better than Morrison, born in February 1931.  As a novelist, editor and professor she helped shaped literature with the power of her epic themes, vivid dialogue and richly detailed characters.

 

We will forever be in her debt for giving us such wonderful books as The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved.  

When she was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 the award capped a basketful of major achievement awards, begun with a Pulitzer Prize and American Book Award, both for Beloved, and then the Nobel Prize for her life’s body of written work.  Morrison, who died this past August, gave us a craftsmanship that inspires all writers to reach deeper within themselves.

“If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet,” she said, “you must be the one to write it.”

Share A Writer’s Moment with a friend at http://writersmoment.blogspot.com

A Writer's Moment: The Hardest Thing You Love To Do

A Writer's Moment: The Hardest Thing You Love To Do: “Writing is the hardest thing I know, but it was the only thing I wanted to do. I wrote for 20 years and published not...

The Hardest Thing You Love To Do

“Writing is the hardest thing I know, but it was the only thing I wanted to do. I wrote for 20 years and published nothing before my first book.” – Kent Haruf

Born in Pueblo, CO, on this date in 1943, Haruf finally broke through the barrier in 1984 with The Tie That Binds, not only establishing his writing credentials but also earning him both a Whiting Award and a Hemingway Foundation/PEN citation for excellence.  His novel, Plainsong, a huge bestseller published in 1999, is considered one of the best ever written about Western U.S. small town life.  And his last novel, Our Souls at Night, completed just before his death in 2014, was adapted into a popular film starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda.

The son of a Methodist minister, Haruf first started writing in high school and further studied writing at Nebraska Wesleyan University and at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he earned his MFA.    All of his novels are set in the fictional town of Holt, CO, based on the small Western plains’ town of Yuma, where he resided in the early 1980s.

“I write in a journal first, briefly,” he said of his writing process.  “Then (I) read something I've read many times before, for about half an hour, then rework what I wrote the day before.”   “You have to believe in yourself, despite the evidence.”

Share A Writer’s Moment with a friend at http://writersmoment.blogspot.com

A Writer's Moment: A Poetic Presence on a Global Scale

A Writer's Moment: A Poetic Presence on a Global Scale: “You can't work in a steel mill and think small. Giant converters hundreds of feet high. Every night, the sky look...

A Poetic Presence on a Global Scale

“You can't work in a steel mill and think small. Giant converters hundreds of feet high. Every night, the sky looked enormous. It was a torrent of flames - of fire. The place that Pittsburgh used to be had such scale.” – Jack Gilbert

Gilbert was born (Feb. 18, 1925) and raised in Pittsburgh.  His first book of poems Views of Jeopardy not only was a major bestseller but also earned him a Guggenheim Fellowship that started him on a path to both studying and speaking about poetry on a global scale.     Twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, he became a well-known international speaker, won a prestigious Lannan Literary Award for Poetry and became a Poet In Residence at several colleges and universities.  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Gilbert’s,

                  The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not laguage but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.

A Writer's Moment: Just 'Sleeping In'

A Writer's Moment: Just 'Sleeping In': I’ve always liked this poem by Englishman Roger McGough, who recently celebrated his 82nd birthday.   I thought of it again yesterday when ...

Just 'Sleeping In'

I’ve always liked this poem by Englishman Roger McGough, who recently celebrated his 82nd birthday.   I thought of it again yesterday when the new-fallen snow covered our streets, sidewalks and yards – unblemished but just waiting for the tread of neighborhood kids’ feet and tire tracks.

 

               Sleeping In  

 

Our street is dead lazy 

Especially in winter. 

Some mornings you wake up

And it’s still lying there   

Saying nothing.  Huddled
under its white counterpane.

But soon the lorries arrive
Like angry Mums,
Pull back the blankets
And send it shivering
Off to work.

    McGough, by the way, grew up in Liverpool, home to another rather well-known group of lads who made their way in the performance industry under the name The Beatles.  In the 1960s, McGough started making a name in his own right with the publication of his best-selling poetry book The Mersey Sound.    

 

Since then he’s led a highly successful writing career as a performance poet, children’s author and playwright.  A broadcaster, too, he hosts the BBC’s “Poetry Please” show and still makes his home in the Mersey area of Liverpool.

A Writer's Moment: Writing for 'Goodness' Sake

A Writer's Moment: Writing for 'Goodness' Sake: “Let us forget such words, and all they mean, as Hatred, Bitterness and Rancor, Greed, Intolerance, Bigotry; let us renew our faith and pl...

Writing for 'Goodness' Sake

“Let us forget such words, and all they mean, as Hatred, Bitterness and Rancor, Greed, Intolerance, Bigotry; let us renew our faith and pledge to Man, his right to be Himself, and free.” – Edna St. Vincent Millay.

St. Vincent Millay, who was born in Maine on this day in 1892, won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1923 – only the third woman to win the award in that category.  And just to show that she wasn’t a “one hit wonder,” she won the Frost Medal for her lifetime contribution to American poetry 20 years later.  In between, she wrote many, many great poems and earned the accolade from fellow poet Richard Wilbur that “She wrote some of the best sonnets of the century.”

      While she grew up in Maine, she was educated at Vassar and spent her writing life in New York City, Europe, and during WWII in Washington, DC, where she was active in creating writing supporting the U.S. war efforts. 

Millay also wrote plays and prose and once said, “A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down.  If it is a good book nothing can hurt him.  If it is a bad book nothing can help him.” 

Share A Writer’s Moment with a friend at http://writersmoment.blogspot.com

A Writer's Moment: A Song Unfinished

A Writer's Moment: A Song Unfinished: “There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old a...

A Song Unfinished

“There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book.” – Carson McCullers

Born Lula Carson Smith on this date in 1917 (in Columbus, GA, a place I “hung out” in for a time during my Army days at nearby Ft. Benning), McCullers was an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, essayist, and poet whose stories not only were successful in print but also successfully adapted into stage or film versions.

Among her biggest sellers were The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, The Member of the Wedding and Reflections In A Golden Eye, all adapted into highly popular stage or screen productions.   While writing was her ultimate passion, she had planned to be a professional musician and was accepted to study at the prestigious Julliard School of Music in New York City.  But en route to enroll, she lost her tuition money and decided instead to work in New York.  After meeting and marrying a young soldier named Reeves McCullers, she decided to try her hand at writing using her middle name and new last name as a pseudonymn.   Her first effort was the wildly successful "Heart," and the rest, as they say . . .  

                         McCullers, who suffered from a number of illnesses and died at age 50, is often described as a “Southern Gothic” writer, indicative of both the settings and style of her stories and her tendency toward depression and loneliness despite her popularity as a writer.  

“But,” she said, “I live with the people I create and that has always made my essential loneliness less keen.”

Share A Writer’s Moment with a friend at http://writersmoment.blogspot.com

A Writer's Moment: Taking An Impactful 'Journey'

A Writer's Moment: Taking An Impactful 'Journey': “I have to entertain, because if I don't entertain you, you're not going to continue reading. But if I'm not out to enlighten,...

Taking An Impactful 'Journey'

“I have to entertain, because if I don't entertain you, you're not going to continue reading. But if I'm not out to enlighten, or change your mind about something, or change your behavior, then I really don't want to take the journey.” – Bebe Moore Campbell

Born in Philadelphia on this date in 1950 (she died of cancer in 2006), Campbell was an author, journalist and teacher who wrote 3 New York Times bestsellers: Brothers and Sisters, Singing in the Comeback Choir, and What You Owe Me.  The latter also won the Los Angeles Times "Best Book of 2001" award. 

Campbell, whose essays, articles, and excerpts appeared in many anthologies as well as in many of the nation’s leading magazines and newspapers, also authored Your Blues Ain't Like Mine.  The book was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and winner of the NAACP Image Award for Literature. 

                                   
Her interest in mental health was the catalyst for her first children's book, Sometimes My Mommy Gets Angry, named for the National Alliance on Mental Illness Outstanding Literature Award of 2003. The book tells the story of how a little girl copes with being reared by her mentally ill mother.

Campbell said she hoped that her writing would serve as a way for readers to not only learn about things but also to begin a dialogue.  “Despite what I said, there’s no point in writing merely to entertain," she said.  “Race, redemption and healing – that’s my thing.”

Share A Writer’s Moment with a friend at http://writersmoment.blogspot.com

A Writer's Moment: Celebrating Presidents Day

A Writer's Moment: Celebrating Presidents Day: Tomorrow is Presidents Day, a celebration held in February because  our two greatest Presidents – Lincoln and Washingto...

Celebrating Presidents Day

Tomorrow is Presidents Day, a celebration held in February because  our two greatest Presidents – Lincoln and Washington – were born in this month, Feb. 12^th and Feb. 22^nd, respectively.   Both gave the nation, and thus each of us, much to be grateful for, not least being the opportunity and freedom to express ourselves through the writing and sharing of our thoughts and ideas.   

It is a freedom not allowed in a wide swath of the world and one we need to cherish and maintain.

I thought it appropriate to share a comment made by Irish actor Daniel Day-Lewis on both the honor and challenge of playing Abraham Lincoln in his Academy Award-winning role a few years ago.   When asked, Day-Lewis said:

“The minute you begin to approach him -- and there are vast corridors that have been carved that lead you to an understanding of that man's life, both through the great riches of his own writing and all the contemporary accounts and biographies -- he feels immediately and surprisingly accessible. He draws you closer to him.”

 

Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln

Happy Presidents Day!