NaPoWriMo 2017, Day 3

The Ultimate Confessional Poem, Take One

 “Grief is a world you walk through skinned, unshelled”
 --Ariel Levy

I hear the noise of my own voice:

Prince, you’re a prince. A dog a man

in the commonplaces of the asylum. 

All’s misalliance.

Far-fetched, tenacious, captious: fan
in that narrow diary of my mind,
The ultimate American,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot

Yet why not say what happened?

There is enough here to please a nation. 

As sure as God made Granny Smith.
The trees have more than I to spare.

Strange, not to wish one's wishes onward. Strange,
and fasten a new skin around it.

Let me study the cardiovascular tissue, 

Ich, ich, ich, ich

My dear, it was a moment

I have to nudge myself to stare. 

The garden's garter snake

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.  

Outside of us the village cars followed

Then told my parents, analyst,   

If it's been good, be glad it's been.

Neither you there, nor coming. Heavy change!

collage/crowdsourced from John Berryman, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Ann Sexton, W.D. Snodgrass, and George Starbuck

Another Saturday Night

Here's a poem I drafted with my Tuesday morning Poetry Writing class after the September 17 explosion on 23rd Street (and unexploded device found on 27th Street). Dan Shefelman heard me read it at FIT's Academic Open Mic, and we ended up having some of our words included in the ChalkFIT exhibit.

Another Saturday Night

and I got nobody never

never no how no way

no day do I wake up 

in the green of a Sunday

next to a body that is not me.

No, sirree, I'm F-R-E-E

and blowin' in the wind

no sin    no ramifications

of our stepping out, stepping in

with someone who may or may not

have our best interests at heart

no tart horning in, no spin

no twisting to look thin

no morning-breath grin

and gee-willikers it's been

a mighty long time since

the lane was clear for me to pass,

keep sass, and break the fast

in the L-A-S-T gasp of a blast--

Ahem. That was it, the time we had

no alternative but had to walk past

the site, the fright of shrapnel, and we might

glaze over it's been so long

since we felt safe—

we are never safe, never safe 

never safe wind up for the throw

and place your javelin dart,

arrow, expert archery will

get you nowhere, whether or no

and I solemnly swear I will    I will

I will    I will    I will care

every time I see another news

report of the dead, stripping us bare

and elemental it’s elementary

welcome to the Twenty-First

Century where everything happens twice—

in real time and online and over

and over and over and over

it rhymes these men    these men

and boys these guns used like toys

these cries not tears of joy and when was

the last time you heard a politician

who was not a ploy? The brazen brazier

of the plain plaisir another Saturday night

and the ladies are feeling right,

the car gave us an awful fright,

the first responders are outta sight

and that is what and where and when we

must begin and end

the ever-loving better-living fight.

We Don't String Popcorn Necklaces, but We Do Have Creativity Resources!

On Saturday, April 2nd, at 9am,  I'll be presenting on a panel at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference, "We Don’t String Popcorn Necklaces Here: Brain Science and Assessment Beyond Craft." 

The panel moderator, Laura Valeri, has created a Google doc with a list of resources about creativity, brain science, and more, gathered by Laura, Brendan Constantine, and me. Go here to view the document!

It's National Poetry Month--and NaPoWriMo Starts Today!

Image from http://www.wildviolet.net/

Today for the first time I'm participating in NaPoWriMo, a month-long challenge for poets to write a poem every day for the month of April (National Poetry Month). I'll be posting my daily poem here, then probably deleting it, so keep checking back if you want to see what I'm up to!

Also check out the Bloof Books blog, where Shanna Compton is posting a selection of NaPoWriMo work.

Join me, and wish me luck!

The Cave of Making and Making the Most of Time

I haven't been much of a blogger for a very long while, so when Superstition Review asked me to write a guest post on their blog leading up to the AWP Conference in Los Angeles, I jumped at the chance to force myself to write prose. And force myself I did, pushing past all levels of procrastination and distraction to send the post to the editor, only a few days after I had originally promised.

Cueva de las Manos, Argentina

The title comes from the phrase that started rolling around in my head while I was working on poems, and poems were working on/in me. I ended up talking a bit about my writing process and the image of the cave for creativity (borrowed, I discovered, from dear Uncle Wystan--I am on sabbatical, so I am actually writing for the first time in a very long time--and also about the panel I'm on with Laura Valeri, Brendan Constantine, D. Gilson, and Zohra Saed.
Go here to read it!

I love the image at left, which I found by Googling "cave" and "creativity." According to this article in the Smithsonian, experts now believe that most cave art was made by women, based on the measurements of the handprints and stencils like these.

"I CAN'T!" Notes on resistance in life and writing...

Resisting the paparazzi. July 4, 2014

My darling daughter, Stella, is twelve and a half now, prone to the vagaries of tween moods and whims, with a little extra spice from the "typical" stubbornness commonly exhibited by people (especially adolescents) with Down syndrome. When she is asked to do something and doesn't want to, which happens with alarming frequency, she has taken to protesting, "I CAN'T!" in a voice harsh with impatience.

I know how Stella feels. There are so many things I "should" do--or even "want" to do--that provoke serious resistance in me. Whether it's exercise, or eating right, or the proverbial cleaning my room, I feel like I'm twelve and a half and find myself having to be my own parent--or, worse, just giving in to the "can'ts" and not doing anything.

Writing, unfortunately, is one of these things. Although I identify as a "writer" and a "teacher of writing," and there is nothing like the feeling of being lost in language and in the flow of creation, I admit that I do not always see putting words on the page as a fun and exciting activity.

my creative brain ?

Needless to say, when you are recovering from a trauma it messes with your mind. In my honors class, Creative Imagination: Theory and Process, we study some of the research about the brain and how it's used while you're making art, solving a problem or coming up with innovative ideas. Our main text for the past few times I've taught it is Nancy Andreasen's The Creative Brain, which is a readable, manageable little paperback that digests some of the theories of creativity over the centuries, and presents the author's own research in neuroscience. We also look at a number of "case studies" of creative achievers in the arts, sciences, and business--from Michelangelo and Leonardo to Maurice Sendak and Maya Angelou.

I'm so grateful to be teaching this class right now--as usual, I feel that it's benefitting the teacher at least as much as the students. It's been two years since it was offered, and this semester I've been discovering some new publications on the subject. Not only do they give some important information (including new research in the social sciences), but I am finding them helpful to me on a personal level, as I struggle to try to write (always a struggle, but now more than usual).

One of the topics we focus on is what I used to term "Creativity and Mental Illness." Andreasen has a chapter called "Genius and Insanity," and the link between the artistic ability or exceptional intellect and psychiatric disorders has been oft-debated. After reading the introduction to Ruth Richards's Everyday Creativity and New Views of Human Nature, I was very encouraged: Richard and colleagues have found in their research that the exercise of creativity (including writing, art-making, and other activities) can actually alleviate some of the symptoms of disorders like bipolar and depression.

Meanwhile, I was in the middle of Heather Sellers' amazing new memoir, You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know, which is about Heather's recovery of and from a difficult childhood, and the discovery that she has a rare neurological condition called prosopagnosia ("face-blindness"). Heather has been one of my favorite writers for a long time, and her books Page After Page and Chapter After Chapter are lifelines for me when I need to pull myself out of the waters of procrastination and writers' block. In the memoir, Heather describes reading about schizophrenia (which she suspects her mother has been suffering from), and discovers that some of the uses of language that are "symptoms" of the disease sound a lot like things she tries to get her creative writing students to do! It's a fine line....

I was also thrilled to see that interviews with creative people who have been on Studio 360 (one of my favorite radio shows)  have been compiled in Spark: How Creativity Works. When my copy arrived from Amazon I stayed up much later than I should have because I couldn't stop reading it!

By far the most exciting of the new "creativity handbooks," though is Your Creative Brain: Seven Steps to Maximize Imagination, Productivity, and Innovation in Your Life. The author, Shelley Carson, has taken all of the research I've seen here and there and framed it in a usable, practicable, even "fun" way. I'm determined to read it cover to cover ASAP and put it into practice in my life!

everyday creativity: a way of healing

I've been doing some research for the honors course I am teaching this semester, Creative Imagination: Theory and Process. Our main text is The Creative Brain by Nancy Andreasen, and we have a number of handouts and a lot of books on reserve.

When I first started looking into this subject while I was working on the course proposal, I discovered that much of the research of creativity has come from the social sciences--mainly, psychology and education. (This was also at a time when "creativity" was a highly charged buzzword in the business world--every CEO apparently wanted to know how to make employees more "creative.")

paul james vasquez, 1954-2010

Bob's Uncle Paul was a creative inspiration to his family--musician, actor, writer, director. He passed away yesterday after being seriously ill with cancer for about the past year. This photo is a still from Jail City,an independent film by his former student Dan Eberle. Bob's brother Paulie was a co-star, and Bob had a cameo as some hoodlum who gets offed in a mob hit. (He was really good at falling on the floor :)

This week Paul was in the hospital with hospice care--the whole family came to see him--Bob took Bobby on Tuesday--and Bob and his brother Mike played music for him all day Thursday. Bob said he made sure Paul's hand was on his guitar. Pax, Paul.

some links: two very kind mentions

I've had the pleasure of having my work mentioned on a couple of sites recently, and thought I would pass along some links to you-all. On August 4th, WFIU in Bloomington, Indiana, broadcast Jenny Kander reading my poems "Scar" and "Cardinal" on her lovely program "The Poets' Weave." Click here to listen to the podcast.

Also, the fantastically creative, wise, and compassionate Susan O'Doherty (author of Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity, described two readings from Letters to the World, including the one I participated in at Cornelia Street.

Go here to read the post.

strange delightful sweet unspiteful

Stella and I have been having regular "dance time" these days--when something good comes on the radio (and when we're listening to WFUV it happens pretty frequently) I start dancing and she joins in.

Today before work Mike Doughty's "27 Jennifers" came on--it's my current fave pop song and I find I cannot help but start moving when I hear it--and Stella quickly joined me. Next they played Van Morrison's "Into the Mystic." Sweet.

What a great way to start the day before heading off to my Creative Imagination class!