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What I’m learning this week

I am having an extraordinary week, taking an online intensive poetry workshop with Gail Mazur through the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. There are six of us studying together in our cyber meeting space, sitting at our desks in Maine and Georgia and California, getting to know each other through poems and commentary. There is Gail, with her generous daily offering of instruction and encouragement. And there are assignments which we are told to do “before breakfast.”
I. Do. Nothing. Before. Breakfast. Within minutes of rising I am at the table, paper spread out, coffee and a hearty high-protein breakfast at hand. Not this week. And the first thing I have learned is that I thrive on the immediate turning to the task of writing. It seems to be the energizing equivalent of many grams of protein and much caffeine.
Gail says (and I have a feeling those are words I’ll be using a lot with myself) that to change the work, you must change the habit. I think there is wisdom in that but I think this particular change of habit changes more than the work: writing before breakfast–even a fast first draft–is a way of telling my mind and body that this is what I do, what I value, how I spend my most important time. This is the next thing I’ve learned.
And it occurs to me that this works for more than writing. Who we are, at our most basic, is who we are from the first moment we start our day. What is important to us, what we want to accomplish, what we dream of doing, what we value doing most–those are the things we need to make time for first, aren’t they? And then whatever tiny accomplishment we have from those minutes reverberates through our day, tells us who we are and what we do. Maybe it sets the course for the rest of the day. Maybe it whispers to us while we are doing other things: this is what counts, this is what I do.
Of course we are rushed from the minute we leave our beds. There are multiple claims on our time and our energies. But they make it too easy for us to slip back into our beds at night not having done what we think or say we most want to do. My dear aunt Alice, whose wise sayings I often rely on and quote to others, used to say, “All you can do is all you can do.” Now I am thinking of another version of that: what you can do is what you can do.
Yes. Thank you, Alice. Thank you, Gail. Thank you, poets who have shared this week with me.
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Where the poem comes from: Marion Brown

I realize that, despite the name of my blog, I haven’t posted an “occasional recipe” in quite a while.  But today I offer a poem about food. It’s from Marion Brown’s new chapbook called “tasted.” The book’s cover shows an apple that’s been devoured down to the core and the book is filled with poems with titles like “Self-Portrait as Red Delicious” and “Eating with Fingers.” One, “Turns in the Kitchen,” is written in two stanzas: his, in which the “he” is meticulously following recipes in “the cooking torah” while in the “hers” stanza, the cook is improvising wildly and with gusto.
Marion, whom I know through my friend Carol, is a lifelong New Yorker who comes from a family of cooks and is a former Cornell Cooperative Extension Master Gardener. Her poems and reviews have appeared in Barrow Street, Big City Lit, Kestrel, Poetry International, and DIAGRAM, among others.  Her poem “In the Dock Fagin Reflects” recently won first prize from the Portico Library
in Manchester, England.
“Stone Fruit,” a poem from her chapbook, came about this way, she explains:
“On Poem-A-Day, the daily email from the Academy of American Poets, I came upon John Taggart’s “Magdalene Poem.” Its repetitions and elliptical diction, leaving much more unsaid than said, seduced me. Repeating words or phrases are powerful; I don’t use them enough. “Magdalene Poem” made me want to read more Taggart and also to write a poem, a poem with short lines and echoes though no religious context. 
“The day before, I had crossed the country from my home on the East Coast to visit my daughter in Seattle. After she went off to work, I took myself to Café Vitta, one of her favorite coffee shops, and composed a first draft of “Stone-Fruit” on my iPhone. It is the only complete draft I have written on my phone, a terse poem with short lines.  Afterwards, rewritten on my computer, “Stone-Fruit” grew taller and gained a hyphen. Without it, the two words of the title would mean fruit carved from stone, not peaches, apricots, and their kin.”
Stone-Fruit
Have you seen an apricot
hang on its twig, bound
to blush 
in sunshine, hard 
under golden skin—
blush like remorse, chagrin
or flush of passion—
passion the current
that roils a stream
current that takes you
drags under to drown you
deep
deep
down?
Unhinged, an apricot
falls
and wrinkles,
tongued by time
where it lies on the ground,
in the air
a sharp twinge
when it opens, unasked, 
unasked, 
unbound—
stone still closed,
a nub like a wrist 
bone stretching 
the skin— 
loose on the ground.
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In the aftermath….

…of Friday’s devastation, I took a look at the NRA website. Just out of curiosity.  I wondered if they were going to offer some responsible, thoughtful words. Maybe something on the order of, “yes, we’re in favor of guns, but we’re also in favor of laws that make sure they are used in a responsible way.” Maybe something like, “we, too, are outraged that someone has once again used guns to commit an unthinkable, indefensible act.” Maybe something like,” this is not what we’re about.”

Dream on. No mention of Newtown. The most recent posting was dated 11/27/12 and was headlined, “More Guns, Less Crime in VA,” It concluded with these words: “…gun owners and the NRA have been right all along. It’s the criminals, not the law-abiding gun owners, who are the issue.” 
Why aren’t the NRA and all those “law-abiding guns owners” condemning this horrific mis-use of guns? Why aren’t they standing up and shouting, “This is not what we stand for.” Why aren’t THEY calling for some control of lethal weapons that have no use in hunting and no possible purpose but killing people quickly in large numbers? 
The answer is that this IS what they stand for. Guns available to one and all as a right. We and our children and the 6- and 7-year olds and their teachers in Newtown and all the other victims–those whose names are burned into our memories, those we’ve never heard of, and those of us whose world has been diminished by the losses–all the rest of us–we’re all just collateral damage. 

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“The Warmth of Other Suns”

If I didn’t already know it I am declaring it publicly now: I should never ignore a book recommendation from my friend Erica. After all, isn’t she the one who urged “Tinkers” on me before the Pulitzer committee gave its benediction? And “Life of Pi” soon after it came out? And…and.
“It’s about the Great Migration,” she said.   Ummm…okay….something about famine?  Manifest destiny?   Uh…..
So I finally read it. Forget that it’s an astoundingly compelling read. It’s…about the 20th century…the century I just lived through a good chunk of and…it’s news to me. How did I not know this? How did I live through the ‘60s–even, so I thought, working on behalf of civil rights–and not understand this huge and prolonged change going on in my country? How did I not know all this? I am not proud of this embarrassing ignorance, but I am stunned by it. How did I not know?
I would be even more embarrassed if I felt I was alone in my ignorance. But I get the feeling that a lot of (white) people share it. At least I can console myself that the book is referred to frequently as an “untold story.”
The movement of black Americans from South to North was “great” and a “migration,” but don’t picture some mass orchestrated event. There were no long columns of refugees moving along roads, no tents, no offers of relief supplies. This, as Wilkerson shows, was not a single migration except in retrospect. It was, rather, hundreds, thousands, ultimately six million individual migrations undertaken with the possibility of unthinkable danger, unimaginable courage. Wilkerson’s decision to follow the lives of three people who made the decision and the journey makes the book highly readable and the story immediately tangible. How could I not have read this book?
Thank you, Isabel Wilkerson and thank you Erica. And, by the way, Erica, what’s next on your list?

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When I went to vote this morning…

this is what I did: I walked into my polling place and began to cry. It was not mobbed, no long lines, just bustling. And something about seeing everyone there to exercise this precious right made me teary.
It’s easy to take voting for granted or to be cynical, but if events around the world like the Arab Spring teach us anything it is that people are willing to die for this right that has been handed to us by the lucky accident of our birthplace. This morning, like schools and libraries and storefronts across the country, the Graham and Parks School, was filled with people taking their place in the drama of democracy.
Yes, the campaign has been unbearable. Way too long, starting about the time Mitch McConnell declared his party’s primary objective to be replacing Barack Obama with a Republican to be named later. Way too expensive, using a lot of money, including my own, that could have been put to more socially just and useful purposes. Way too heated, making me, for one, dislike the person I found myself turning into. 
But this morning at Graham and Parks School no one was wearing campaign buttons. It felt like a moment of pure civic engagement, as if this wildly divisive campaign had ended in a moment of quiet, sober participation.
I am not so naive that I think we don’t have to worry about the lines in Florida and the voting machines in Ohio and many other et ceteras. Or that we’ll wake up tomorrow in our neighborhoods, shake hands with those on the other side of our political hedges, and seamlessly coalesce into “the American people” or, taking the words of Langston Hughes not entirely out of context, “…let America be America again.” (After all, that poem continues, “The land that never has been yet/And yet, must be.”) 
But when I got back in my car after casting my ballot, I heard a young man, a first-time voter, interviewed after he voted, saying, “Whoever’s elected, that’s my president.” And I cried some more.
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Pleasures of the page

My granddaughter Mia called the other night. She wanted to tell me about the book I had just given her, “Wonder,” by R. J. Palacio. What she said was, “The first sentence was amazing.” She couldn’t put it down, was up past her bedtime reading.
When I gave her the first book in the “Little House” series, she had to be coaxed into it. “Read the first chapter,” I urged her, “I think you‘ll like it.” She gobbled up the whole series. Mia has the gift of being taken up by books. Her brother and cousins, too. If I ask what they are reading, they never fail to have an enthusiastic answer. 
My sister-in-law Susan told me about a book by a friend of hers, Will Schwalbe’s “The End of Your Life Book Club.”  I haven’t read it yet, but it’s one of the next on my list. The book club of the title has just two members, mother and son, who spend the mother’s final months talking about books and life.  What could be better than ending your days in conversation about books with someone you love?
And today as the wind is knocking tree limbs against the windows and we have warnings of storm-caused power outages, I am thinking about the good fortune of being in the world with books. In fact, I am planning to finish this post and then, whether or not the lights are still on, I am going to give myself a day without power except for the power of words on the page.
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We are NOT “all Malala”

Lately I’ve fallen into the blogger doldrums, posting with decreasing frequency. But today, after posting yesterday, I must put up a new post. I just read a Daily Beast story headlined, “Angelina Jolie: We Are All Malala,” and I am afraid I must differ. Not that Ms. Jolie’s heart and sympathies aren’t in the right place, urging concern for Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani girl gunned down by the Taliban for the crime of wanting an education. Not that we all should not be outraged. And not that the “Here’s how you can help” link isn’t well-intentioned, though inevitable.  
But I must confess, at least this one person is not Malala, and I wonder how many of you are either. I am an adult, not a 14-year-old, but I know I would not have had the courage Malala showed. I am sure I would have been tempted to stay inside, shut the door, maybe find a way to study in a less public way. I might not have fearlessly stepped onto that schoolbus or spoken out to urge other girls to do the same. I don’t know if I would have had the courage her parents showed, either, knowing their daughter was certainly in danger and yet knowing that without the freedom to pursue the education she wanted, the kind of life she was destined for was neither what she wanted nor, apparently, what they hoped for for her.
What gives a young girl the strength to defy her society? Where did this thirst for education come from? She began writing a blog for the BBC at the age of 11, detailing her life under the Taliban. She wrote of hiding her books under her scarf, of hiding her school uniform. She titled one of her blog posts, “I am afraid,” But she wasn’t, or at least if she was, she wasn’t afraid enough to stop going to school, to stop learning and to dream that what she learned could ultimately help make her country a better place.
I hope she is able to recover from her injuries, though being shot in the head and neck sounds dire and “stable condition” is far from home free. No matter what her age, she is remarkable, inspiring. She is the epitome of courage. Much as I wish I could be, I am sad to say, I am no Malala. 
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“Some book”

Today is the 60th birthday of “Charlotte’s Web.” Definitely a day to celebrate, but how? First, I think I’ll leave all the spider webs in my house undisturbed, even if they don’t have important messages woven in.
I heard that E.B. White himself considered the book to be about the barn, the atmosphere he described with rich sensory detail–the smells, the warmth, the sounds. But I think most readers would think of the friendships as the book’s central theme. Tonight I’m having dinner with friends, so I will certainly have a chance to celebrate that.  
For writers, of course, the book has a special message–the power of a well-placed word.   Oh to write such a life-changing single word! 
And who among us wouldn’t be satisfied to be remembered as Charlotte was: “It’s not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and also a good writer.”

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Where the poem comes from: Elisavietta Ritchie

What turns a creative impulse into a finished poem? What inspires? What becomes the jumping-off point?  The poem here is called “Tradecraft in Iambic Pentameters” and the poet, Elisavietta Ritchie, has given it this subtitle: For a child who doubts I can keep secrets. 
Elisavietta is another of my fellow poets with books out from Word Tech. Her book, “Cormorant Beyond the Compost,” was published in 2011 under Word Tech’s Cherry Grove imprint, which will also publish her next book, “Tiger Upstairs on Connecticut Avenue” next year. She lives in Washington, D. C., where, in addition to writing, she edits, translates, mentors other high school seniors, and leads a workshop, “Re-Write Your Life: Creative Memoir Writing.” Her credits are extensive enough so that, rather than listing them here, I direct you to two web sites about her, where you can get a more complete picture of her range of publications and many accomplishments. 
 Tradecraft in Iambic Pentameters
                   For a child who doubts I can keep secrets
So many secrets you will never know
long hid in lines upon my face and page.
Although my random chatter seems to flow,
true tales remain confined within the cage
of my long skull, while most of those who shared
their riddles and their loves with me have died.
I too have lived adventures, and much dared.
Who’d guess? I do know better than confide.
Whispers through the skin are safe—no need
for megaphones: what if the listener spoke?
I may broadcast my sacks of words and seed:
the small birds twitter and the large ones croak.
For I’m the owl, who flies on unheard wings,
foretells when others die, but never sings.
About this poem, Elisavietta says, 
“ At a Sunday lunch my daughter said in front of her children that I could not keep a secret, gossiped too much, because I was describing some friend to them, I forget who. I was indignant! However, although I seem to talk, there is a great deal I cannot or do not say (and not only because others are talking nonstop!). I hear and hold a number of other people’s secrets.
“Anyway, this poem leads off my last collection, Cormorant Beyond the Compost, and if you follow Kevin Walzer’s http://www.cherry-grove.com/ritchie-cormorant.html
you will see he leads off with it.
“And we seem to have a pair of owls in residence in the nearby woods, and though they twit-twit-twoo back and forth on a rare occasion, when they fly, it is indeed on silent wings.
“And in my collections of poems and stories, no one can be sure what is fact and what is fiction, so I am fairly safe.”
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Making art out of what happens

I just got a chapbook in the mail. It’s called “To the One Who Raped Me” and it’s by a poetry friend, Dustin Brookshire. I’ve known Dustin for several years, though we’ve never met in person.  An earlier poem of his was featured in a “Where the poem comes from” post three years ago.  Dustin let me know about this new chapbook and I asked to read a copy. 
The poems in this book tell the story of the horrific assault Dustin experienced at the hands of a former boyfriend.  I happened to read them on a day when the news is filled with the political fallout from delusional rantings about “legitimate rape,” whatever that may be.  Violence against women is rampant in our society–in many societies–and for a woman to speak up as a survivor takes courage.  I have no doubt that speaking up as a man who has survived rape takes even more.
How to strip yourself bare on the page and yet wrap yourself in dignity and grace? How to take a brutalizing thing and use it to make art? How to take something traumatic that happened to you and create something that could give voice to others?
Dustin’s rage is undeniably personal, but it is also societal. The poems are interleaved with facts from the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, including that sexual assaults occur in the United States at the rate of one every two minutes and that men make up 10 percent of rape victims and are among those least likely to report the crime. 
Telling the people close to you, watching a violent movie, feeling regret for what you think you might have done differently, the images that remain to haunt–all these are the subjects of his poems and they are not easy to read or to think about. But they are important to read, just as they were important to write. Dustin writes about how hard it is to say the word, to say that it happened to you. And yet, “the words open a cage door./ I will never go back in.” His words may give others the courage to open the door, too.
“To the One Who Raped Me” is published by Sibling Rivalry Press. One dollar from each sale of the book will go to the DeKalb Rape Crisis Center