July | 2023 | pull up a chair

we call it “the kitchen table writing school,” and every once in a while someone i love, someone who’s eager to put words to a page with more oomph or less ouch, wanders over and we plunk our bums down on the chairs, pull out pads of paper and pens, and have at it. might be muscular verbs, the lesson of the day. might be fluid lines of poetry. might be all about one-of-a-kind telling details, not a profligate slop of as many descriptives as can fit in a breath, but that one singular––and immediate––detail that telescopes layers of meaning and knowing into a single keen––and immediate––observation. (while i was poking around for a good example, i came across this, and can’t say it one iota better, so here’s this from the gotham writers’ workshop):

A telling detail does what it says: it tells the essence of what it’s describing. Telling details are the scotch tape holding up Susie’s hemline in the back, the tiny piece of ice that never seemed to melt in the bottom of Mom’s martini, the street sign on the corner that still says, to this day, SCHOOL CROSSING, though the school is long gone. A telling detail can speak volumes in a very short amount of time. They help you achieve a golden mean–enough description to paint the picture, but not so much as to weigh it down.
Chris Lombardi

so whilst i’m puttering about in my so-called quiet summery time, i gathered up a few fine thoughts on the subject of writing, a thread that draws together many of us here at the old maple table. so pull out your pens––or your pencils––and follow along…

first up, this delicious bit from rainer maria rilke, from his Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge:

“For the sake of a few lines one must see many cities, men and things. One must know the animals, one must feel how the birds fly and know the gesture with which the small flowers open in the morning. One must be able to think back to roads in unknown regions, to unexpected meetings and to partings which one has long seen coming; to days of childhood that are still unexplained, to parents that one had to hurt when they brought one some joy and one did not grasp it (it was a joy for someone else); to childhood illness that so strangely began with a number of profound and grave transformations, to days in rooms withdrawn and quiet and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along on high and flew with all the stars — and it is not yet enough if one may think of all of this. One must have memories of many nights of love, none of which was like the others, of the screams of women in labor, and of light, white, sleeping women in childbed, closing again. But one must also have been beside the dying, one must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window and the fitful noises.”

so luscious is this instruction, i might scribble it onto a square of paper, fold it, and tuck it into my pocket, to pull out and read at regular intervals.

and, in keeping with pens and pencils, naomi shihab nye, one of my favorite poets, plays right along…

ALWAYS BRING A PENCIL
by Naomi Shihab Nye

There will not be a test.
It does not have to be
a Number 2 pencil.

But there will be certain things —
the quiet flush of waves,
ripe scent of fish,
smooth ripple of the wind’s second name —
that prefer to be written about
in pencil.

It gives them more room
to move around.

no less than the great david bowie has this to say about writing:

“Never play to the gallery… Always remember that the reason that you initially started working is that there was something inside yourself that you felt that if you could manifest in some way, you would understand more about yourself and how you coexist with the rest of society. I think it’s terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfill other people’s expectations — they generally produce their worst work when they do that.

“…If you feel safe in the area that you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth, and when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.”

go a little bit out of your depth…maybe in writing, and in this thing called living…

and finally there’s nick cave who is something of a mystic, a mystic who happens to be in the business of making music, and lifting words from the soul and onto the page…

“There is more going on than we can see or understand, and we need to find a way to lean into the mystery of things…. and recognise the evident value in doing that, and summon the courage it requires to not always shrink back into the known mind.

“…The luminous and shocking beauty of the everyday is something I try to remain alert to, if only as an antidote to the chronic cynicism and disenchantment that seems to surround everything, these days. It tells me that, despite how debased or corrupt we are told humanity is and how degraded the world has become, it just keeps on being beautiful.”

on the lookout for the luminous as i step into this day, one that began with the rumbling of distant thunder and broke into a light show of celestial proportion, luring me leapingly from under my bedsheets…

and which of these thoughts spark deeper rumblings in you? might it be bowie’s “go a little bit out of your depth? or nick cave’s remaining alert to “the luminous and shocking beauty of the everyday”? or is there a telling detail you stumbled upon this week that won’t let you go? do tell…

(a few gremlins seem to have put my font through the wash, and shrunk it, and while i try to bring it back to size, apologies for the wee wee words here…)

8 Comments

July 21, 2023

peachy

this crate of delectable, a fireworks of flavor that bursts on our tongues, plopped onto the front stoop not long ago (courtesy of a long-distance angel/saint/and holy mensch), and after parceling into brown paper sacks for a few of our favorite neighbors, the whole block has unanimously declared them the most delicious peaches that ever there were. in honor of their magical appearance out of the summer fog, a few morsels from the “peach” file.

first up, this perfection of a poem from a poet i only recently discovered, a chicago poet in fact, a longtime warehouse worker who penned beauties once he clocked off the job, and who before that made jewelry from soda bottle tops and wound up in the pages of vogue. his name is li-young lee, born in indonesia to chinese parents, and settled in chicago in 1964. he’s now described as a world-renowned poet, one who’s won the lannan literary award, a paterson poetry prize, and an american book award, among many. after reading “from blossoms,” i ran to the library and scarfed up all his books from the shelf. and then i read a few interviews. and now i sit and inhale his poetries as if to fill my lungs with the numinous.

his is an abiding belief that all the cosmos is imbued with a spark of the sacred, an idea i’ve spent a long time believing.

From Blossoms

BY LI-YOUNG LEE

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

in a conversation at a literary fest a few years ago, one i found in the los angeles review of books, lee says this, and you’ll see why i’m swooning:

If the person is a vessel then what would poetry be?

The mind of God. I think poetry is the mind of God. All the great poems that I love seem to me to all have that little ingredient. You feel like you’re in the presence of the mind of God. You can’t even account for the level of wisdom in certain poems. Take Rilke, I mean, you can’t just live and come to the conclusions he came to. I think his mission was to learn to get out of the way so that something bigger could speak through him.

Emily Dickinson, my God, she’s full of the mind of God. You can just feel God shining through those poems, darkly. So it was her, but it wasn’t. It’s unaccountable. In other words, if you wanted to be Emily Dickinson you couldn’t just have been born on the East coast, done the things she did. That wouldn’t guarantee that you could write anything. There’s something unaccountable that happened to her. And it’s that unaccountable thing that I love.

elsewhere lee has said that he considers every poem to be “a descendent of God.” and when asked about flawed poems by poets and writers, he explained: “There are great poems that have flaws. There are failures of perception, failures of understanding, but those flaws become a part of the poem’s integrity, so I still feel that those poems are descendants of God. But if a poem isn’t even good enough to be a poem, I don’t think it’s descended from God: [If] there is no “I” [as in Martin Buber’s I and Thou], there is no God. The ‘Me’ talking about ‘Me’—that’s not enough.”

and in a lineup of descendants of God, surely here’s a preacher: wendell berry, kentucky farmer, field plower, poet. it doesn’t take long for some to pack an almighty wallop; here’s wendell in a single stanza:

A Spiritual Journey

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,
no matter how long,
but only by a spiritual journey,
a journey of one inch,
very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,
and learn to be at home.

~ Wendell Berry ~
(Collected Poems)

and here’s one that especially melted me, because it came to me from the budding philosopher in this house. a recent college grad who has an eye for these things, and whose curiosities in this department are as delicious to me as the juiciest peach that ever there was….

Confucius, the renowned Chinese philosopher, once said, “A seed grows with no sound, but a tree falls with a tremendous noise. Destruction has noise, but creation is quiet. This is the power of silence. Grow silently.”

and finally, in honor of said budding philosopher and the juiciest peaches that ever there were, here is a long-ago-concocted rendition of peach-blueberry bread pudding, though truly the only way to eat these (or any plucked-straight-from-the-tree) peaches is bent over the sink, ready to swipe the dribble as it runs down your chin and wherever else it tries to escape.

teddy’s bread pudding, the peachy summer edition*

3 cups milk (or cream)
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, more for greasing pan
1-1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 cup sugar, plus 1 tablespoon
Pinch salt
½ loaf sweet egg bread like challah or brioche, torn into 2-inch cubes (about 5 to 6 cups)
3 eggs, beaten
3 peaches, sliced
3 to 4 tablespoons brown sugar
1 cup blueberries

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Over low heat in a small saucepan, warm milk, butter, 1/2-cup sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, and salt. Continue cooking just until butter melts. Meanwhile, butter a 4-to-6-cup baking dish and tear the bread into bite-sized bits. Place the bread in baking dish.
Slice peaches into separate medium-sized mixing bowl; stir in brown sugar. Set aside (wherein magic ensues, and syrup emerges). Rinse blueberries, and allow to drain.
Once peaches are bathing in their brown-sugary juices (anywhere from five to 10 to even 15 minutes should do it), dump fruits atop bread chunks. Stir gently.
Pour hot milk over bread, peaches, and blueberries. Let it sit for a few minutes, poking down the occasional chunk of bread that rises to the top. Beat the eggs briefly, and stir them into bread and fruit mixture. Mix together remaining cinnamon and sugar, and sprinkle over the top. Set the baking dish in a larger baking pan, and pour hot water into the pan, to within about an inch of the top of the baking dish, effectively making a bath for your bake.
Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until custard is set but still a little wobbly and edges of bread have browned. Serve warm or at room temperature.

inhale the endless comfort vapors….

*thank you, mark bittman, for your endless guidance and your recipe on much-splattered page 662.

what was peachy ’bout your week?

13 Comments

July 14, 2023

a little bit of wonder. . .

since this is my time of quiet interlude, and my brain is on inhale, i come tiptoeing with just a couple morsels worth leaving on the table, as if notes scribbled in the night to greet you when the morning comes. these are deliciousnesses i plucked during the week, one from hermann hesse on wonder, and a prayer poem from john o’donohue looking at light from every angle….oh, and because it was beloved e.b. white’s birthday this week, a little bit from the obit he once wrote for the new yorker when his dog daisy met her demise on a new york city sidewalk when a taxi cab jumped the curb…

hermann hesse, the great german-swiss poet, novelist, and painter, whom some consider “the eternal patron saint of wonder,” on that very subject itself…

“Wonder is where it starts, and though wonder is also where it ends, this is no futile path. Whether admiring a patch of moss, a crystal, flower, or golden beetle, a sky full of clouds, a sea with the serene, vast sigh of its swells, or a butterfly wing with its arrangement of crystalline ribs, contours, and the vibrant bezel of its edges, the diverse scripts and ornamentations of its markings, and the infinite, sweet, delightfully inspired transitions and shadings of its colors — whenever I experience part of nature, whether with my eyes or another of the five senses, whenever I feel drawn in, enchanted, opening myself momentarily to its existence and epiphanies, that very moment allows me to forget the avaricious, blind world of human need, and rather than thinking or issuing orders, rather than acquiring or exploiting, fighting or organizing, all I do in that moment is “wonder,” like Goethe, and not only does this wonderment establish my brotherhood with him, other poets, and sages, it also makes me a brother to those wondrous things I behold and experience as the living world: butterflies and moths, beetles, clouds, rivers and mountains, because while wandering down the path of wonder, I briefly escape the world of separation and enter the world of unity.

. . . “Our universities fail to guide us down the easiest paths to wisdom… Rather than teaching a sense of awe, they teach the very opposite: counting and measuring over delight, sobriety over enchantment, a rigid hold on scattered individual parts over an affinity for the unified and whole. These are not schools of wisdom, after all, but schools of knowledge, though they take for granted that which they cannot teach — the capacity for experience, the capacity for being moved, the Goethean sense of wonderment.”

“A leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars.”
Hermann Hesse

and from the late great irish poet john o’donohue…

For Light

Light cannot see inside things.
That is what the dark is for:
Minding the interior,
Nurturing the draw of growth
Through places where death
In its own way turns into life.

In the glare of neon times,
Let our eyes not be worn
By surfaces that shine
With hunger made attractive.

That our thoughts may be true light,
Finding their way into words
Which have the weight of shadow
To hold the layers of truth.

That we never place our trust
In minds claimed by empty light,
Where one-sided certainties
Are driven by false desire.

When we look into the heart,
May our eyes have the kindness
And reverence of candlelight.

That the searching of our minds
Be equal to the oblique
Crevices and corners where
The mystery continues to dwell,
Glimmering in fugitive light.

When we are confined inside
The dark house of suffering
That moonlight might find a window.

When we become false and lost
That the severe noon-light
Would cast our shadow clear.

When we love, that dawn-light
Would lighten our feet
Upon the waters.

As we grow old, that twilight
Would illuminate treasure
In the fields of memory.

And when we come to search for God,
Let us first be robed in night,
Put on the mind of morning
To feel the rush of light
Spread slowly inside
The color and stillness
Of a found word.

~ John O’Donohue ~

(from To Bless the Space Between Us)

and, lastly, in blessing for e.b. white, who gave us charlotte’s web, and stuart little, and whose birthday was july 11, 1899, here’s the beginning of the marvelous obit he wrote in the new yorker when his dog, daisy, died. i can’t leave the whole thing here because it’s locked in the new yorker archives and you can only find it with a subscription, but here’s how it begins….

what deliciousness did you find this week??

happy birthday across-the-way….

6 Comments

July 7, 2023

summer’s sabbatical. . .somewhat. . .

it’s time for me to slip into a deep well of quiet. one where a pebble tossed into a pond or a puddle makes barely a ripple.

i’ll still be gathering bitlets and wonders that send heart or soul or imagination soaring, and i’ll quietly slip them here onto the “table” on friday mornings, but i am going to practice stillness with magnified focus — at least for the next few whiles.

my body and soul have been turned on their sides in these last few months. and they’re calling for the blessing of a sabbath’s rest. thus, sabbatical; the ancient invention of a God who toiled six days (creating sky and sea, landmass and creature, blooming thing and someone to till it) and deemed that the seventh be made holy, and blessed, and that rest be the call for the day.

this summer sabbatical is my summer’s seventh day.

i’m gentling it with the “somewhat” because i can’t quell my commonplacing, and i do delight in passing along the treasures and trinkets i find. so expect offerings week by week till i rev up my engines again. and, who knows, there might come a week when i’ve something fulsome to say. but i feel a bit thin right now. thin in the voice, and thin all around.

and as any airline passenger knows, we’re instructed to slip on our own oxygen mask before tending to those in our care. and i suppose i need the oxygen that comes with quiet. the rare gift of time to wander, to let thoughts unspool as they will.

i can’t catch my breath. and quiet might help.

from deep down in my quiet, i promise to send forth edification in the forms i find most fitting for a summer’s gambol. but mostly i’m craving the summer relish of bare toes in the grass or the sand. and the cognitive equivalent thereof.

and the sigh that comes on their heels.

shhhh….

i came upon this morsel this week, a definition of happiness that i knew would have launched me down intricate paths. i shall leave the launching to you. but here’s the line that first stirred me…

willa cather defined happiness as the feeling of being “dissolved into something complete and great.”

(she inscribed it on her gravestone…”that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. the keyword, it seems to be, is “dissolved,” to be dissipated into atoms and ions that meld into the atmosphere. that truly, biochemically become one with the beyond. to lose a sense of one’s boundaries, to float on an innertube of utter vast blessing…)

and while we’re on the subject of happiness, here’s a poem to go with it…(think not that what’s coming is frothy confection…)

THE WORK OF HAPPINESS
by May Sarton

I thought of happiness, how it is woven
Out of the silence in the empty house each day
And how it is not sudden and it is not given
But is creation itself like the growth of a tree.
No one has seen it happen, but inside the bark
Another circle is growing in the expanding ring.
No one has heard the root go deeper in the dark,
But the tree is lifted by this inward work
And its plumes shine, and its leaves are glittering.

So happiness is woven out of the peace of hours
And strikes its roots deep in the house alone:
The old chest in the corner, cool waxed floors,
White curtains softly and continually blown
As the free air moves quietly about the room;
A shelf of books, a table, and the white-washed wall —
These are the dear familiar gods of home,
And here the work of faith can best be done,
The growing tree is green and musical.

For what is happiness but growth in peace,
The timeless sense of time when furniture
Has stood a life’s span in a single place,
And as the air moves, so the old dreams stir
The shining leaves of present happiness?
No one has heard thought or listened to a mind,
But where people have lived in inwardness
The air is charged with blessing and does bless;
Windows look out on mountains and the walls are kind.

here’s a breathtaking definition/description of love (can anyone define love? i think not):

the poet Robert Graves defined love as “a recognition of another person’s integrity and truth in a way that…makes both of you light up when you recognize the quality in the other.”

so beautiful…

and because joy harjo deserves the last best word….here she is…

We heard it.
The racket in every corner of the world. As
the hunger for war rose up in those who would steal to be president
to be king or emperor, to own the trees, stones, and everything
else that moved about the earth, inside the earth
and above it.

We knew it was coming, tasted the winds who gathered intelligence
from each leaf and flower, from every mountain, sea
and desert, from every prayer and song all over this tiny universe
floating in the skies of infinite
being.

And then it was over, this world we had grown to love
for its sweet grasses, for the many-colored horses
and fishes, for the shimmering possibilities
while dreaming.

But then there were the seeds to plant and the babies
who needed milk and comforting, and someone
picked up a guitar or ukulele from the rubble
and began to sing about the light flutter
the kick beneath the skin of the earth
we felt there, beneath us.

—excerpt from When the World as We Knew It Ended
by Joy Harjo

consider this a summer’s potluck, and feel free to bring by your own morsels and delicacies. the cupboard is open…

19 Comments

pull up a chair

Month: July, 2023

July 28, 2023

writing school