Prose poems and the yellow leaves
Greetings from the north!
A most satisfactory feeling, when you kick out a draft of a new poem. A prose poem, this time--I'm a bit addicted to the form--have you read Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present (ed. David Lehman)? I just encountered it this weekend, and there's stuff in there like you wouldn't believe. Topping the list are the Mark Strand entries, one of which is a sestina. Ever tried a sestina? Beastly hard, those, and I don't think I could write one if my life depended on it, but I intend to try soon.
The yellow leaves are nearly glowing in the gray day. I drove through South Dakota yesterday, endless cornfields in every direction, and the sparse stands of trees along the road were mostly bare. It stays dark late these late-fall mornings, and it will be winter soon. I'm working on the spirituality book, a good thing for the long winter ahead. Articulating a subject like this is most confounding, but the effort sharpens the brain.
Note: if you have not heard singer/songwriter Chris Pureka, give her a listen. I'm completely consumed by her two albums. They are perfect driving music, and her voice is a smokey drawly lovely thing.
I'm looking forward to seeing those of you who will attend the New Paltz, NY lecture on the 4th and the Skaneateles, NY reading on the 5th. This fall has been a mad dash of lectures, and it's delightful to get a chance to meet readers. As many of you are quite aware, writing is a pretty solitary business, and being out in the world is essential from time to time. I am always having a debate with a poet friend of mind about whether the generative, creative energy one feels and uses to work finds its source in the self or in relationship with others; I'm of the latter bent, and find the people around me to be a constant wellspring of new ways of seeing and being in the world. So a chance to interact with people at lectures and readings is a chance to wake up and see new things, and I'm looking forward to New York.
The year is winding down, and it's been quite something. It seems essential to me that I keep time from passing too quickly. I can't speak for anyone, really, but it seems to me we spend an awful lot of time letting time whip past without really living. Too much effort spent on getting somewhere and not enough on being in a place or a day or a moment. So I am on a mission to spend the next year savoring. There is so much to savor, so much to love about being alive. As I write this spirituality book, I'm casting about for words that describe the sense of awe we tend to forget we have. But there are no words, I think, and I'll just have to mumble and sing.
Have a lovely end of autumn and beginning of winter!
Peace,
Marya
A most satisfactory feeling, when you kick out a draft of a new poem. A prose poem, this time--I'm a bit addicted to the form--have you read Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present (ed. David Lehman)? I just encountered it this weekend, and there's stuff in there like you wouldn't believe. Topping the list are the Mark Strand entries, one of which is a sestina. Ever tried a sestina? Beastly hard, those, and I don't think I could write one if my life depended on it, but I intend to try soon.
The yellow leaves are nearly glowing in the gray day. I drove through South Dakota yesterday, endless cornfields in every direction, and the sparse stands of trees along the road were mostly bare. It stays dark late these late-fall mornings, and it will be winter soon. I'm working on the spirituality book, a good thing for the long winter ahead. Articulating a subject like this is most confounding, but the effort sharpens the brain.
Note: if you have not heard singer/songwriter Chris Pureka, give her a listen. I'm completely consumed by her two albums. They are perfect driving music, and her voice is a smokey drawly lovely thing.
I'm looking forward to seeing those of you who will attend the New Paltz, NY lecture on the 4th and the Skaneateles, NY reading on the 5th. This fall has been a mad dash of lectures, and it's delightful to get a chance to meet readers. As many of you are quite aware, writing is a pretty solitary business, and being out in the world is essential from time to time. I am always having a debate with a poet friend of mind about whether the generative, creative energy one feels and uses to work finds its source in the self or in relationship with others; I'm of the latter bent, and find the people around me to be a constant wellspring of new ways of seeing and being in the world. So a chance to interact with people at lectures and readings is a chance to wake up and see new things, and I'm looking forward to New York.
The year is winding down, and it's been quite something. It seems essential to me that I keep time from passing too quickly. I can't speak for anyone, really, but it seems to me we spend an awful lot of time letting time whip past without really living. Too much effort spent on getting somewhere and not enough on being in a place or a day or a moment. So I am on a mission to spend the next year savoring. There is so much to savor, so much to love about being alive. As I write this spirituality book, I'm casting about for words that describe the sense of awe we tend to forget we have. But there are no words, I think, and I'll just have to mumble and sing.
Have a lovely end of autumn and beginning of winter!
Peace,
Marya
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