Conscious interactions or why writing is important

A Ritual to Read Each Other
William Stafford

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.



This is one of my favorite poems. I find it's concepts beautiful, fascinating, and potent. It is incredibly smart and telling about how and why humans communicate with each others. It captures so well the feeling of soft urgency and real social importance of using language with others; exposing the shared nature of the human experience.

Near the end my mind draws a correlation between the act of making language and scientific inquiry. The darkness is deep and the dark will always be bigger than our tools and theories but our conscious involvement in them are vital as our existence.

I also think this poem harbors something important in particular for Americans who so often shy away from forging new or deeper contacts with other people. This has I'm sure a lot to do with the general xenophobia that is ingrained in our culture. When he talks about "the pattern of others that may prevail" I hear that stories of hate and ostracism and unknowing risk being our own stories if we don't talk to each other. If we don't acknowledge the wrongnesses of our past interactions we lose each other in the dark.

In this poem I find a deep deep reasoning for why I write and why I feel so compelled to encourage others to write or at least to work consciously on how they share and express themselves with others.

Grrrrrrr

I have been all up and down based on weird sickness lately. Also poor. The poems built up in my chest like left-over breaths. I think I have decided to take it easy until the new year come shining in.

Letters for bread, also I've got to run

Writing group commitment has stalled. Which is gross. I will soon redouble my efforts in that venture.

Also I think I am pretty close to getting a job in which I would write letters to servicemen and incarcerated folks for pay. The business is just getting off the ground but if it succeeds I am looking at a paid writing gig. Which would be badass.

Would like to say more, but I don't want this post to be an excuse for not going running before work!

Yuck.

Stuff has been tough lately. Been somewhat ill and filled with disgusting ennui.

Writing Group!

It's happening Today!
And (procrastinator that I am) I still don't know what I am going to bring for food.
Still feeling generally excited about the whole endeavor.

Two things. In less detail than I would like.

First about the writing group:
As excited as I am to whiz away with a list of ideas for what to do, i am actually thinking I should hold off somewhat and let that process happen organically at the first meeting. I don't want to dictate the purpose/activities of the group as a whole and have realized that the first meeting should merely be a compiling of potential purposes/activities writing folks would like to have folk around for.

My list includes:
Basic sharing of texts generated for second opinions;
Brainstorming activities and the like;
Resource sharing;
(related that) Talk about publicity, promotion, and publication efforts;
Conversations about the politics of writing and being a writer;
Support-type get-togethers of different types (depending on demand);
and finally
Events planned specifically for generating new text.

I hope this list will grow. And I think for the first while or so I will step up to orchestrate events which have particularly sizable amounts of interest (meaning I might plan events I don't want/need to attend but hope others do).
I need to be attentive to cataloging all objectives suggested.


Second:
I think I want to look/dig into better promoting/publicizing my work in real world print. Having my poetry blog take off some (even a little bit), while making me insanely happy, has also made me realize that I could probably accomplish the same thing in print (with effort of course). At this point most of the folks who have bought me chapbooks have been friends/family/coworker etc. And I think I might be able to change that.

I am nervous about that. Hopefully I can step up and be as proud as I feel in front of those I don't know.

More on this point later.

Not much time before work...

Just enough to feel absolutely giddy about the fact that follow-ship of my poetry blog has doubled in the last week!

Also I am giddy about riding my bike up a monster hill last night.

I am ankles deep Lone Ranger and Tonto (Alexie) and hope to soon start Blue Dusk (DeFrees).

Just posted my poem for the day

And boy does it smack of Poe.
Really unexpectedly so.
And unintentional (slant) rhyme.

As promised: (books!)

A short preface: I have been a pretty serious student for the past five academic years (4 years undergrad L.A. studies graduating with 40+ extra credits and the past year spent DEEP in grad school). This meant having fewer opportunities than I would've liked to read exactly what I wanted. And now for the first time in about 4 years I have a giant stack of books on my nightstand that I got to choose! This makes me gratuitously happy. It's kind of ridiculous.

I just re-established and updated my goodreads account with my summer and fall reads so I have a good reference for the books I want to talk about.

Yesterday I finished reading The Eyre Affair. It was deliciously childish. The action never dipped too far into overbearing. I was surprised every time I put it down that the amount of "action" type stuff that had happened (as the snooty reader in me finds such things in most cases to be fluffy overkill). It reminded me of both Harry Potter (in it's complexity level and attention to detail) and Roald Dahl (in it's clearly playful and unashamedly ridiculous moments). It brought canon literature (perhaps a bit too classically wesatern/euro loaded) into a blissfully public and hilariously diluted cultural pastime. I thought the protagonist was a pleasantly strong female character although I could definitely feel that the book was not written by a woman. The world itself and the problems it presented are the true gems of this book (and hopefully the series!). It was dynamic and playful. Stylistic to the point of being unpleasant to some I am sure, but totally up my alley. And worth trying out if you want a ludicrous escape from academic ideas and conversations about literature.

The writing group's first meeting is drawing near and my mind is spinning like a beehive with wingfuls of ideas and anxiety. My short list of books/readings to bring looks like this:
Writing Down the Bones--N. Goldberg (my favorite book about writing to date)
(essay) Poetry is Not a Luxury--A. Lorde (she gave beautiful and precise words to what I have long believed about poetry)
Writing Without Teachers--P. Elbow (he uses cooking metaphors to great effect to illustrate writing processes)
(poem) A Ritual to Read Each Other--W. Stafford (I am going to post this poem later and write more about it)
Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women who Write--G. Brandeis
And a copy of the Evergreen State College Writing Center's yearly publication Inkwell (which I co-editor-in-chiefed last spring)
(I'll also be bringing copies of my chapbook but don't intend for them to be a focus of the meeting)

Making this list has actually put me in the mind that maybe this writing group should have a collective library of books about writing/for writers/suggested by other writers. Wouldn't that be amazing?

This list has also made me want to make separate post on a few of the resources listed. I will probably make corresponding posts for Writing Down the Bones (which is a truly phenomenal read), Poetry is not a Luxury, and A Ritual to Read Each Other. Also I think I should design a post around the article I wrote for Inkwell, perhaps feature another as well if it seems appropriate.

For the writing group I still need to hash out what I want the meeting to look like in case things oscillate toward the awkward. I also need to compile a list of games and activities I think writers would like to play/do.

Looks like I've got my work cut out for me! See you next time folks!

To jump right on out of the starting gate:

While mulling over the actual starting of this blog lots of things have accumulated in want of an expressive venue:

First I must give credit to this article which my lovely housemate passed on to me:
which was definitely the straw on my proverbial camel's back. Reading it made me realize that I was being silly by stopping myself from using an additional outlet which is totally available for my using. It helped me push over the final flimsy hemming and hawings.
I liked the article a lot and think it would be especially helpful to writers who feel illegitimate. Essentially the message of "you are not your work" was amazingly succinct powerfully logical, and totally digestible.
My only point of possible divergence would the point about "never-ending edit". I actually do think every piece of writing has endless editing possibilities (not to say that any of them are perfect or even better!). Editing should never be done toward the purpose of perfection but towards appropriate and effective in a particular context (the old diatribe of "keep the audience in mind" is one piece of that). No single edit of a piece of writing can cover ALL the bases. But if you set your sites on a few bases important to your message/cause you have much better chances of effectively covering them.

Second order of business:


I made a giant mess of chapbooks(50) back in September (between applying to 4-5 jobs per day). Pictured (apologies about the quality of the photo better versions to come) above is one example. Some of the covers are different (which I love). It is comprised of 27 poems taken from the April-August sections of my blog. Based on the general feel and progression I chose for the poems I called the chapbook Romantic Breathing. I spent about 6 hours selecting the poems, layout and progression. Each individual book takes about 20 minutes to do the cover art and put together. I'm selling them for $5. I have been trying to carry a few with me everywhere just in case the opportunity arises to show and maybe sell my work to folk. It has been a wonderful experience and I hope to come out with another in February or March. If I continue writing poems at this rate perhaps a chapbook will become a biannual affair (which is almost too exciting to imagine!!!!!)



Two weeks ago I was invited to perform pieces from this book (and some others) as the featured poet at an Everett open mic I have been attending since high school (that's 6 years, whoa). That was really exciting and encouraging. My whole family came and I wasn't nervous at all. The best part was watching my father really enjoy the stuff I was reading. I realized at several points during my performance that I am an incredibly gestural as a poet. Sometimes I would end up rocking as I was reading the words or grabbing little bits of the air as if to shake them into the sensations of a particular personification. It was a joy. I hope to find more performance venues


And lastly (as I recognize that this post is getting overlong) I am so happy/anxious/proud to be the main organizer of a writing group. I moved to Seattle in September and have since been getting more and more involved in my writing. One way this has manifested is through my attempts at getting the writing group started. The first preliminary meeting is this Sunday! I have so many ideas! I don't want to group to be any one thing or have any one writing goal beyond getting writers together. Rather I hope that the meetings and event themselves can be the things which hold goals (like a particular meeting for line edits or an one for idea talk or one for writing games, to share prompts and to trade books etc...). This is a subject I intend to document in the following weeks.

For my next post: books I've been reading

I've been thinking

About starting something like this for some time now. After recently having made a post to my poetry blog in the non-poem format I realized that I just didn't want to have the poem-a-day blog be much more than just that. But I do have other thoughts about writing. Little things I notice about my writing, writing in general, and the writings of others. This forum I suppose will be comprised of more blog-like things than my original blog.
I will probably talk about books I'm reading and writing-type activities I am engaging in. I may plug my other blog and the blogs/projects/books of talented folk I run across too.

Welcome to my more blogalicious correspondence.
I hope you enjoy your stay.
Thanks.