A Writer's Moment: Conducting that 'writing symphony'

A Writer's Moment: Conducting that 'writing symphony':     "Increasingly I think of myself as some strange and solitary conductor, introduced to a group of very dynamic musicians wh...

Conducting that 'writing symphony'

 

  "Increasingly I think of myself as some strange and solitary conductor, introduced to a group of very dynamic musicians who happen to be my characters, and I have no idea how they are going to play together, and I have certainly no idea how I am going to put manners on them.” – Colum McCann

 

Born on this date in 1965, McCann is a native Irishman who now makes his home in New York City where he is the Thomas Hunter Writer in Residence at Hunter College. 

  

His work has been published in 40 languages and has appeared in the New Yorker, Esquire, and the Paris Review.  McCann has written 7 novels, including TransAtlantic and the National Book Award-winning Let the Great World Spin.  He also has written 3 collections of short stories, including 2015’s Thirteen Ways of Looking.

McCann said the best writers attempt to become alternative historians.  His own sense of the Great Depression, for example, is guided by the works of E.L. Doctorow  “In a certain way, novelists become unacknowledged historians, because we talk about small, tiny, little anonymous moments that won't necessarily make it into the history books."                    
  

“Every first thing is always a miracle," he said. “The first person you fall in love with. The first letter you receive. The first stone you throw. And in my conception of the novel, the letter becomes important. But what's more important is the fact that we need to continue to tell each other stories.”

A Writer's Moment: Knocking at the gate of success

A Writer's Moment: Knocking at the gate of success:   “What a writer asks of his reader is not so much to like as to listen.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow   Eminently q...

Knocking at the gate of success

 

“What a writer asks of his reader is not so much to like as to listen.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

Eminently quotable, Longfellow was born on this date in 1807 and rose to become a world-renowned poet. 

 

Longfellow wrote many lyric poems not just known for their musicality but also for presenting stories of mythology and legend, including the renowned Song of Hiawatha and the favorite of school children almost from its first day, The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.  

 

He was the most popular American poet – and perhaps writer – of his day, so admired in the U.S. that his poems commanded huge fees.  Young people would turn out to welcome him much like rock stars of today are greeted when they come to town, and his 70^th birthday was celebrated like a national holiday with parades, speeches, and the reading of his poetry. 

 

Despite that rock star status, “overnight success” for Longfellow didn’t come until he’d been writing for more than 20 years and he advised all writers to “stay strong” in their writing efforts.   “Perserverance is a great element of success,” he said.  “If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody eventually.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Flushing out life's experiences'

A Writer's Moment: 'Flushing out life's experiences':   “One reason to write a poem is to flush from the deep thickets of the self some thought, feeling, comprehension, questi...

'Flushing out life's experiences'

 

“One reason to write a poem is to flush from the deep thickets of the self some thought, feeling, comprehension, question, music, you didn't know was in you, or in the world.” Jane Hirshfield

Born on Feb. 24, 1953, Hirshfield has written many books of poetry, received numerous awards, and established herself as a giant among poets in the past half century. Her collection Given Sugar, Given Salt was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and After was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.  She also authored a highly regarded book of essays about poetry, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry.                                               

 

“My job as a human being as well as a writer is to feel as thoroughly as possible the experience that I am part of, and then press it a little further.”   Here, for Saturday’s poem is Hirshfield’s,

 

 

Changing Everything

I was walking again
in the woods,
a yellow light
was sifting all I saw.

Willfully,
with a cold heart,
I took a stick,
lifted it to the opposite side
of the path.

There, I said to myself,
that's done now.
Brushing one hand against the other,
to clean them
of the tiny fragments of bark.

 

A Writer's Moment: 'Books are best'

A Writer's Moment: 'Books are best':   “I still feel, as I did when I was six or seven, that books are simply the best way to experience a story.” – Philip Reeve Reeve, bo...

'Books are best'

 

“I still feel, as I did when I was six or seven, that books are simply the best way to experience a story.” – Philip Reeve

Reeve, born in February of 1966, is the British author/illustrator of many books for kids, including the “Dead Famous” book Horatio Nelson and His Victory, and a number of books in the clever Horrible Histories and Murderous Maths series.  He also wrote the Buster Bayliss books for young readers, which includes Night of the Living Veg, The Big Freeze, Day of the Hamster, and Custardfinger.  

 He also delved into historical fiction with his award-winning book Here Lies Arthur, an alternative look at the King Arthur legend.  

Reeve said he was always fascinated by the illustrations as much as the writing and has strived to make illustrations as palatable as possible for young readers.   

 

“Even tiny children looking at a picture book are using their imaginations, gleaning clues from the images to understand what is happening, and perhaps using the throwaway details which the illustrator includes to add their own elements to the story."

A Writer's Moment: 'Those three things for true happiness'

A Writer's Moment: 'Those three things for true happiness':   “In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson.” – Tom Bodett ...

'Those three things for true happiness'

 

“In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson.” – Tom Bodett

Author and voice actor Bodett is also well-known for his frequent guest appearances on the NPR staple “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!”  Born in Illinois on this date in 1955, he grew up in the Michigan and then spent many years in Alaska before moving to Vermont.

Since 1986 he has been the spokesman for the Motel 6 hotel chain, ending commercials with the phrase, "We'll leave the light on for you."  

A longtime resident of Homer, Alaska, he authored several books about that area, including a Children’s adventure Williwaw! and the bestselling The End of The Road based on his popular radio show broadcast from there.  Bodett also created The Loose Leaf Book Company, a radio program centered on author and book interviews, discussions, and dramatizations.  

  A “dyed in the wool optimist,” he once noted that the                           

difference between an optimist and a pessimist is that an optimist laughs to forget, but a pessimist forgets to laugh.

“They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world," he said.  "Someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Renewing our faith'

A Writer's Moment: 'Renewing our faith':   “Let us forget such words, and all they mean, as Hatred, Bitterness and Rancor, Greed, Intolerance, Bigotry; let us re...

'Renewing our faith'

 

“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, born on this date in 1892, won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for poetry and 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.”

 

  

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.” 

 

Hers were good, and her poetry even better.

Afternoon on a hill
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

I will be the gladdest thing
   Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
   And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds
   With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
   And the grass rise.

A Writer's Moment: 'The role of a writer'

A Writer's Moment: 'The role of a writer': “The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.” – Anais Nin   Born in Fran...

'The role of a writer'

“The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.” – Anais Nin

 

Born in France on this date in 1903, Nin gravitated to writing at a very early age and started keeping detailed journals at the age of 11.  She didn’t stop until more than 60 years later at the time of her death, and much of what she kept in them became the basis for her long and impressive writing career.

 

Over her lifetime she wrote everything from essays to novels, critical studies and short stories.  But in the judgment of both herself and scholars are those diaries and journals, which provide a deeply explorative insight into her personal life and relationships. “My ideas,” she once said, “usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living.” 

 

And, of course, she wrote down daily about the life that she lived.  

 

Shortly before her 1977 death, she was asked what should be the motivating factor for someone seeking to make a life as a writer.  "If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing," she said, "then don't write because our culture has no use for it."

 

A Writer's Moment: 'Words, to me, were magic'

A Writer's Moment: 'Words, to me, were magic':   “Writing is an extreme privilege, but it’s also a gift. It’s a gift to yourself and it’s a gift of giving a story to s...

'Words, to me, were magic'

 “Writing is an extreme privilege, but it’s also a gift. It’s a gift to yourself and it’s a gift of giving a story to someone.” – Amy Tan

 

Tan, born on Feb. 19, 1952, said that while growing up she didn’t have a lot of books in the house, primarily because her immigrant parents did not read English.   But, she said “Words, to me, were magic.  You could say a word and it could conjure up all kinds of images or feelings or a chilly sensation, or whatever.  It was amazing to me that words had this power.” 

And so she decided to use them as a writer. 

Like many writers before her, Tan did not start out to be a creative writer.  In fact, she wasn’t a writer at all.  She worked as a switchboard operator, carhop, bartender, and pizza maker – all professions that provided grist for her writing mill. 

Then she became a business writer.  But she had this nagging feeling that she ought to tell her own story – if not to share with others, at least to get down for posterity.  So she wrote The Joy Luck Club.  Now translated into 35 languages, it has become, arguably, reflective of every immigrant woman’s experience.  It also was made into a successful movie. 

Since then, Tan has written several other bestselling novels, including The Kitchen God’s Wife and The Bonesetter’s Daughter and become known as a writer of mother-daughter relationship novels. She’s also written a collection of essays, several short stories and two kids’ books. 

 

"I write because I know that one day I will die," she said,  "and thus I should experience as many deliberate observations, careful thoughts, wild ideas, and deep emotions as I can before that day occurs."                              

 

 

A Writer's Moment: February's Sky

A Writer's Moment: February's Sky:   The night sky often can inspire writers and in February we’re treated to some especially inspirational night skies in Colorado.      On c...

February's Sky

 

The night sky often can inspire writers and in February we’re treated to some especially inspirational night skies in Colorado.   On clear cold nights the sweep of stars is truly breathtaking. 

And, even on nights when the stars are partially obscured by high clouds, the pale moon glinting through the trees onto new-fallen snow creates a terrific scene in its own right.  

 

For Saturday's Poem, here is Sara Teasdale's, 

 

        February Twilight

                                            I stood beside a hill
                                            Smooth with new-laid snow,
                                            A single star looked out
                                            From the cold evening glow.
                                            There was not another creature
                                            That saw what I could see,
                                            I stood and watched the evening star
                                            As long as it watched me.