A Writer's Moment: 'Poetry always remembers'

A Writer's Moment: 'Poetry always remembers':   “There are still many tribal cultures where poetry and song, there is just one word for them. There are other cultures with literacy where...

'Poetry always remembers'

 

“There are still many tribal cultures where poetry and song, there is just one word for them. There are other cultures with literacy where poetry and song are distinguished. But poetry always remembers that it has its origins in music.” – Edward Hirsch

 

Born in Chicago in January of 1950, Hirsch is a multiple-award winning poet described as “elegant in both his writing and reading of poetry."  Among his many honors are a National Book Critics Circle Award; Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts grants; and a MacArthur “Genius” award.  The author of 10 books of poetry and 9 nonfiction books, he also has edited at least a dozen other volumes.  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Hirsch’s,

 

                                   Early Sunday Morning

                               I used to mock my father and his chums

                               for getting up early on Sunday morning
                               and drinking coffee at a local spot
                               but now I’m one of those chumps.

                              No one cares about my old humiliations
                              but they go on dragging through my sleep
                              like a string of empty tin cans rattling
                              behind an abandoned car.

                             It’s like this: just when you think
                             you have forgotten that red-haired girl
                             who left you stranded in a parking lot
                             forty years ago, you wake up

                             early enough to see her disappearing
                             around the corner of your dream
                             on someone else’s motorcycle
                             roaring onto the highway at sunrise.

                            And so now I’m sitting in a dimly lit
                            café full of early morning risers
                            where the windows are covered with soot
                            and the coffee is warm and bitter.

 

A Writer's Moment: 'Writing what I wanted to read'

A Writer's Moment: 'Writing what I wanted to read': “The great thing about novels is that you can be as un-shy as you want to be.  I'm very polite in person. I don't want to talk about...

'Writing what I wanted to read'

“The great thing about novels is that you can be as un-shy as you want to be.  I'm very polite in person. I don't want to talk about startling or upsetting things with people.” – Nicholson Baker

 

Born in New York City in January of 1957, Baker has written nearly two dozen books (both novels and nonfiction) and dozens of essays.   His writings range from poetry and literature to studies about library systems and time manipulation and he has won numerous writing honors including a National Book Critics Circle Award, the International Hermann Hesse Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

 

Baker studied at both the Eastman School in Rochester, NY and Haverford College in Philadelphia where he began his writing career.  A fervent advocate for libraries’ maintaining “physical copies” of books, manuscripts and old newspapers, he established the American Newspaper Repository to help insure that they would not be destroyed.  For his ongoing efforts, he won the prestigious James Madison Freedom of Information Award.  

                                         

Among Baker’s best-known works are Double-Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, and Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II; The End of Civilization.  His newest book is 2024’s Finding a Likeness:  How I Got Somewhat Better at Art.

 

He said he likes to write what he enjoys reading.   “(Each time) . . .What I wrote,” he said, “was exactly what I wanted to read.”

A Writer's Moment: 'A compass on the map of human geography'

A Writer's Moment: 'A compass on the map of human geography':   “History is not everything, but it is a starting point. History is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of da...

'A compass on the map of human geography'

 

“History is not everything, but it is a starting point. History is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day. It is a compass they use to find themselves on the map of human geography. It tells them where they are but, more importantly, what they must be.”  – John Henrik Clarke

 

Born a Georgia sharecropper’s son on this date in 1915, Clarke was told in 3^rd grade that he should be a writer, and it became a goal he pursued from that point forward.  Ultimately, he would write six scholarly books and hundreds of essays and short stories before his death in 1998.

 

A leading force in the Harlem Writers' Workshop during the 1930s, Clarke served in World War II before returning to writing and then teaching.  He co-founded Harlem Quarterly magazine and taught at Cornell and Columbia Universities before spending several years teaching at major universities in Africa.  After returning to the States, he edited several anthologies by African American writers and of his own short stories.

      

A champion for people to seek out and write about their roots, he noted, “A people's relationship to their heritage is literally the same as the relationship of a child to its mother.”

 

A Writer's Moment: 'Answers to be discovered'

A Writer's Moment: 'Answers to be discovered':          "New Year’s Day.  A fresh start.  A new chapter in life waiting to be written.  New questions to be asked, embraced, and loved...

'Answers to be discovered'

 

       "New Year’s Day.  A fresh start.  A new chapter in life waiting to be written.  New questions to be asked, embraced, and loved.  Answers to be discovered and then lived in this transformative year of delight and self-discovery.  

        "Today, carve out a quiet interlude for yourself in which to dream, pen in hand.   Only dreams give birth to change.”  –  Sarah Ban Breathnach  (Author of Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy)

         Happy New Year!