A Writer's Moment: 'Dreams Larger Than Mountains'

A Writer's Moment: 'Dreams Larger Than Mountains':   “Mountains, according to the angle of view, the season, the time of day, the beholder's frame of mind, or any one thing, can effective...

'Dreams Larger Than Mountains'

 “Mountains, according to the angle of view, the season, the time of day, the beholder's frame of mind, or any one thing, can effectively change their appearance. Thus, it is essential to recognize that we can never know more than one side, one small aspect of a mountain.” ― Haruki Murakami

 

Living in Colorado has many perks, including the beautiful scenery.  Mountain scenes, of course, are not just fun to photograph.  They also provide writers with wonderful inspiration.  To close out June, here are a few more thoughts on that theme.  Enjoy.

  

“All mountain landscapes hold stories: the ones we read, the ones we dream, and the ones we create.” ― George Michael Sinclair Kennedy

“Live your life each day as you would climb a mountain. An occasional glance toward the summit keeps the goal in mind, but many beautiful scenes are to be observed from each new vantage point.” ― Harold B Melchart

“If you are faced with a mountain, you have several options.   You can climb it and cross to the other side.  You can go around it.  You can dig under it.   You can fly over it.    You can blow it up.   You can ignore it and pretend it’s not there.   You can turn around and go back the way you came.    Or you can stay on the mountain and make it your home.” ― Vera Nazarian

“May your dreams be larger than mountains and may you have the courage to scale their summits.” ― Harley King

 

Enjoy your own mountain trails, and happy writing.

 

 

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A Writer's Moment: 'The Zest of Creating Things New'

A Writer's Moment: 'The Zest of Creating Things New':   “True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.” –  Anto...

'The Zest of Creating Things New'

 

“True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.” –  Antoine de Saint- Exupéry

 

Born on this day in 1900, the French writer, poet, aristocrat, journalist, and pioneering aviator Saint- Exupéry became a laureate of several of France's highest literary awards and also won the U.S. National Book Award.   He probably is best remembered for his novella The Little Prince and for his lyrical aviation writings, including Wind, Sand and Stars and Night Flight.

I’ve written about this wonderful writer and great aviator before.  And while he is remembered for his writing, his trailblazing career as a pilot and his heroism on behalf of his country during World War II are equally worthy of attention.  And his journalistic writings played a major role in rallying the French forces and French underground in the battle to reclaim their homeland.

While not precisely autobiographical, much of Saint-Exupéry's      

 writing was inspired by his experiences as a pilot, including of course the incredible Little Prince and the highly intense and descriptive Night Flight.    

Saint- Exupéry died in 1944 while flying a recon mission for the Allies in advance of their invasion of southern France. We can only wonder how much more he would have produced?  But we can be grateful for what he gave to the world.

 

As for his interpretations and explanation of things he wrote about, he noted, “The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves, but in our attitude towards them.”   

 

 

 

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A Writer's Moment: 'Life Is About Not Knowing'

A Writer's Moment: 'Life Is About Not Knowing': “I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a c...

'Life Is About Not Knowing'

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end.” – Gilda Radner

One of the joys in my life has been knowing Joan Licursi, among the longtime leaders of Gilda’s Club in New York City – an institute set up in the name of Gilda Radner to insure that no one has to face the ravages of cancer alone.   Radner was born on this date in 1946 and after her death from cancer in 1989, family and friends founded Gilda’s Club, both in her memory and to help others with the disease. 

The organization took its name from Radner's comment that cancer gave her "membership to an elite club I'd rather not belong to.”  Radner's story can be read in her inspiring, humorous and heart-wrenching book, It's Always Something, written after her diagnosis with the illness.   Gilda’s Club has become a global network serving multi-thousands of victims and their families.

Gilda Radner

“While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die - whether it is our spirit, our creativity or our glorious uniqueness,” Radner once said.   “Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.”

 

 

 

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A Writer's Moment: 'Greening the Landscape of Idea'

A Writer's Moment: 'Greening the Landscape of Idea':   “A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the ...

'Greening the Landscape of Idea'

 “A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea.” – John Ciardi

 

How Does a Poem Mean? asked John Ciardi in 1959 and suddenly opened the door to the wonders of both writing and reading poetry to generations of young people who continue to study his book in classrooms everywhere.   Born on this date in 1916, Ciardi was not only a poet, but also a terrific etymologist, essayist, radio commentator, and translator of one of the most complex writings in history – Dante’s Divine Comedy. 

 

He directed the famed Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont while teaching first at Harvard and then at Middlebury College, where he also directed the poetry program. "The classroom," Ciardi said,  "should be an entrance into the world, not an escape from it.”  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Ciardi’s,

 

Lines

 

I did not have exactly a way of life
but the bee amazed me and the wind's plenty
was almost believable. Hearing a magpie laugh

through a ghost town in Wyoming, saying Hello
in Cambridge, eating cheese by the frothy Rhine,
leaning from plexiglass over Tokyo,

I was not able to make one life of all
the presences I haunted. Still the bee
amazed me, and I did not care to call

accounts from the wind. Once only, at Pompeii,
I fell into a sleep I understood,
and woke to find I had not lost my way.

 

 

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A Writer's Moment: 'Beautiful, Tasteful, Appealing and Important'

A Writer's Moment: 'Beautiful, Tasteful, Appealing and Important': “Let's put it this way: if you are a novelist, I think you start out with a 20 word idea, and you work at it and you...

'Beautiful, Tasteful, Appealing and Important'

“Let's put it this way: if you are a novelist, I think you start out with a 20 word idea, and you work at it and you wind up with a 200,000 word novel. We, picture-book people, or at least I, start out with 200,000 words and I reduce it to 20.” – Eric Carle

Writing as a journalist would be good training for the writer of children’s books, but if I were an editor I’d be asking someone like Carle the best way to write them, because he was an expert at it with the award-winning books he produced.  Of course his wonderful artwork didn’t hurt either.

Carle, who was born on June 25, 1929 and died last month, was the author of the mega-selling best sellers, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?   He said he always attempted to make his books both entertaining and educational – offering readers opportunities to learn something about the world around them.  He also advised writers wanting to work in the childrens’ literature genre’ to “recognize children’s feelings, inquisitiveness and creativity.”

 

 

The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which has very few words but speaks volumes, has been translated into 58 languages and sold over 40 million copies.  Overall, Carle illustrated or wrote 70 books with 125 million copies in print.  In 2003 he won the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for his career contribution to American children’s literature. 

“We have eyes, and we're looking at stuff all the time, all day long,” Carle said. “I just think that whatever our eyes touch should be beautiful, tasteful, appealing, and important.”

 

 

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A Writer's Moment: 'Every Page A Gem'

A Writer's Moment: 'Every Page A Gem': “I like the idea that every page in every book can have a gem on it. It's probably what I love most about writing - ...

'Every Page A Gem'

“I like the idea that every page in every book can have a gem on it. It's probably what I love most about writing - that words can be used in a way that's like a child playing in a sandpit, rearranging things, swapping them around.” –  Markus Zusak

The Book Thief, Zusak's heart-wrenching novel about the awful years in Germany during the late 1930s and through World War II, was written when he was still in 20s.  Published in 2005, the novel followed on the heels of two other award-winning novels I Am the Messenger and When Dogs Cry.   Born in Australia on this date in 1975, Zusak has written half-a-dozen best sellers.  The Book Thief alone was on the New York Times bestseller list for a remarkable 375 weeks.  

 

 His writing career is a testament to perserverance and “knowing that a story is    

worth fighting to get published.”  He wrote When Dogs Cry as a teenager and it took him 7 years to get it accepted.  Since then it’s not only sold continuously but also won many awards around the globe, as has Zusak, who was named for the annual Margaret Edwards Award in 2014 for his contribution to young-adult literature.    “I try hard and aim big,” Zusak said.   “People can hate or love my books but they can never accuse me of not trying.”

“Failure has been my best friend as a writer,” he said after finally getting When Dogs Cry published.  “It tests you, to see if you have what it takes to see it through.” 

 

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A Writer's Moment: Flipping On The Writing Switch

A Writer's Moment: Flipping On The Writing Switch:   “Writing's funny, it's like walking down a hall in the dark looking for the light switch, and suddenly you find it, flip it on, an...

Flipping On The Writing Switch

 “Writing's funny, it's like walking down a hall in the dark looking for the light switch, and suddenly you find it, flip it on, and then you discover the hallway you passed through is papered with the novel you've written.” – Jonathan Safran Foer

Words are capable of making experience more vivid, and also of organizing it. They can scare us, and they can comfort us, Foer says.  Currently a professor in the Writing Program at NYU, Foer was just breaking onto the market when he wrote his critically acclaimed novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close about a young boy dealing with the death of his father on 9/11.

The book was subsequently made into a movie, nominated for Academy Awards in both the Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor categories. While it starred Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock and Max von Sydow ( the Best Supporting Actor nominee), it was Tom Horn as the 9-year-old protagonist who received most of the acclaim for his heart-wrenching interpretation of the words that Foer had written.

 

Foer, born in 1977, also is acclaimed for his non-fiction works, especially 2019’s We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast.

He says he likes to approach writing like a sculptor.  “There are two kinds of sculptures,” he said. “There's the kind that subtracts: Michelangelo starts with a block of marble and chips away. And then there is the kind that adds, building with clay, piling it on. The way I write novels is to keep piling on and piling on and piling on."

 

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A Writer's Moment: 'The Hero of Your Own Story'

A Writer's Moment: 'The Hero of Your Own Story': “We all live in suspense from day to day; in other words, you are the hero of your own story.” –   Mary McCarthy ...

'The Hero of Your Own Story'

“We all live in suspense from day to day; in other words, you are the hero of your own story.” –  Mary McCarthy

Author, critic and political activist, McCarthy was born in Seattle on this date in 1912  and built her reputation as a satirist, primarily with her novel The Group, which remained on the New York Times Best Seller list for almost two years.

Noted for her precise prose and its complex mixture of autobiography and fiction, she also was considered “scandalous” in her younger years, especially with her first novel The Company She Keeps, which “told it like it was” in 1930s New York Society.

Winner of two Guggenheim Fellowships and a number of other major “funding” awards, she was named for the National Medal for Literature and

 the Edward MacDowell Medal, both in 1984   

 on the cusp of learning that she had lung cancer.  During her later years, in recognition of her groundbreaking work, she was presented with 8 honorary degrees from some of America’s leading universities.

Despite being a respected critic, she often feuded with other writers over her frank and often not-so-flattering reactions to their works.  As for her own writing, she said she surprised herself with their outcomes. “The suspense of a novel,” I think, “is not only for the reader, but in the novelist, who is usually intensely curious about what will happen to her hero.”

 

 

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A Writer's Moment: 'Poetry and Music . . . Good Friends'

A Writer's Moment: 'Poetry and Music . . . Good Friends': “Poetry and music are very good friends. Like mommies and daddies and strawberries and cream - they ...

'Poetry and Music . . . Good Friends'

“Poetry and music are very good friends. Like mommies and daddies and strawberries and cream - they go together.” –  Nikki Giovanni

Born in June of 1943, Giovanni is a renowned poet and essayist who has taught at Queens College, Rutgers, and Ohio State and is currently a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech.   Her poetry has ranged from the somber, such as the chant-poem she delivered at the memorial for the Virginia Tech shooting victims, to thoughtful and whimsical, such as today’s short poem. 

 

 For Saturday’s Poem, here is Giovanni’s: 

 

                        

I wrote a good omelet

 

                                          I wrote a good omelet...and ate

a hot poem... after loving you
Buttoned my car...and drove my
coat home...in the rain...
after loving you
I goed on red...and stopped on
green...floating somewhere in between...
being here and being there...
after loving you
I rolled my bed...turned down
my hair...slightly
confused but...I don't care...
Laid out my teeth...and gargled my
gown...then I stood
...and laid me down...
To sleep...
after loving you.

 

 

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