'Be Passionate or Be Silent'

“Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you’ve got to say and say it hot.” – D. H. Lawrence

 

David Herbert Lawrence, novelist, short-story writer, poet, and essayist, was born in England in early September 1885. Though better known as a novelist, Lawrence's first-published works (in 1909) were poems, and his poetry, especially his evocations of the natural world, have since had a significant influence on many poets on both sides of the Atlantic.     For Saturday’s Poem, here is Lawrence’s,

                  Trees in the Garden

                                

                               Ah in the thunder air

                               the trees are! 

 

                               And the lime-tree, lovely and tall, every leaf

                               silent

                               hardly looses even a last breath of perfume. 

 

                               And the ghostly, creamy coloured little tree of

                              leaves

                              white, ivory white among the rambling greens

                               evanescent, variegated elder, she hesitates

                               on the green grass

                               as if, in another moment, she would disappear

                               with all her grace of foam! 

 

                               And the larch that is only a column, it goes up

                               too tall to see:

                               and the balsam-pines that are blue with the grey-

                               blue blueness of     

                                           things from the sea,

                               and the young copper beech, its leaves red-rosy

                               at the ends

                               how still they are together, they stand so still

                               in the thunder air, all strangers to one another

                               as the green grass glows upwards, strangers in

                               the silent garden.

 

 

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Towering Writing Achievements

 “I hope to be remembered for writing books about social justice that also have enough aesthetic value to endure as works of literature.” – Jonathan Kozol

 

Born in Boston on Sept. 5, 1936, Kozol is a writer, educator, and progressive activistist, best known for his books on public education in the United States.

 

Death at an Early Age, his first non-fiction book, is a description of his first year as a teacher in the Boston Public Schools. It was published in 1967 and won the National Book Award in Science, Philosophy and Religion.  It has sold more than two million copies in the United States and Europe. 

    His book Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award and the Conscience-in-Media Award of the American Society of Journalists and Authors.   And those were just two of his many books and essays.

 

“I don't know if anything I write will endure, but I do try to write it as a narrative that will not only challenge but also entice the reader into the lives of children,” he said in the 1980s.  Not only has he Been successful in that hope, but his writing continues to touch the conscience of all Americans yet today.

 

 

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A Writer's Moment: A Social Justice Lion

A Writer's Moment: A Social Justice Lion:   “ I hope to be remembered for writing books about social justice that also have enough aesthetic value to endure as works of literature.” ...

A Writer's Moment: Is It the Right Choice or Wrong?

A Writer's Moment: Is It the Right Choice or Wrong?:   “God would not give us the same talent if what were right for men were wrong for women.” – Sarah Orne Jewett Born in Maine on this da...

Is It the Right Choice or Wrong?

 “God would not give us the same talent if what were right for men were wrong for women.” – Sarah Orne Jewett

Born in Maine on this date in 1849, Jewett was a novelist, short story writer and poet, best known for her local color works set along or near the southern seacoast of Maine.  She is recognized as an important practitioner of what became known as American Literary Regionalism.

 

Educated in Boston, where she met many of New England’s leading writers while still in her teens, Jewett was first published in Atlantic Monthly in 1868 and went on to become one of the most-read short story writers of the 1870s and ‘80s.  Fellow author William Dean Howells said Jewett possessed "an uncommon feeling for talk — I hear your people."

 

Best known among her 20 books (many still in print today) are The Country of the Pointed Firs; A Country Doctor; A White Heron,          a collection of her best short stories; and the children’s book Betty Leicester.  Many of her poems are collected in the book Verses.  

 

Shortly before her death in 1909 she was asked how she chose her wide variety of topics? “The thing that teases the mind over and over for years and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper, is whether – little or great – it belongs to Literature.”

 

 

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A Writer's Moment: 'Writing Is Like A Sport'

A Writer's Moment: 'Writing Is Like A Sport':   “ I come to writing the same way I come to teaching, which is that my goal is always to create life-long readers.” – Rick Riordan   O...

'Writing Is Like A Sport'

 “I come to writing the same way I come to teaching, which is that my goal is always to create life-long readers.” – Rick Riordan

 

One time Middle School teacher Riordan said his Percy Jackson series grew out of bedtime stories he told his kids, but that was only where he formulated the idea.  After that it was a project 10 years in the making.

 

Riordan, who was born in Texas in 1964, said he realized that much more research on his idea of using mythology was needed before he could really “craft” the stories he wanted to tell.  “I think the more you understand myths, the more you understand the roots of our culture and the more things will resonate,” he noted.  “Do you have to know them?  No, but certainly it is nice to recognize how deeply these things are embedded in our literature; our art.”  

    Now, many successful books (and series) later, he said he still doesn’t feel totally comfortable in his chosen craft.  “You have to work hard to get to the top of your game,” he said.  “I think every writer has doubts.  I still do all the time. 

 

“It's not easy. I got lots of rejections when I first started out. But, if you want to write, you have to believe in yourself and not give up.  … Writing is like a sport, it’s like athletics.  If you don’t practice you won’t get better.”

 

 

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