5 writing tips from my cat

May 16, 2012 in Writing poetry | No comments

What can our pets teach us? Compassion. Certainly patience. Generosity. And unconditional love (with cats, as long as the food arrives on time). I know, because I’ve seen it in the movies.

In our house, Gilbert the cat swings between extremes–the sweet, cuddly cat purring near my ear and the ever-rebellious teenager (If they don’t see me it’s okay, and if I don’t get caught, it’s okay).

But what can his cat shenanigans tell me about writing? Here’s the short list:

1. Eat everything

Gilbert the cat devours the world. This has been hard on his digestive tract–including those four surgeries to remove inedible items, like rubber bands and watch bands, from his intestines.

Maybe not such a good idea.

But the lesson: Embrace life–all of it. Gobble it up. All the world’s experiences are food for writing.

I confess I’m still working on this one. I’m better at scarfing food than new adventures.

2. Jump on the counter

Also known as “Do whatever you want.” It’s easier to beg forgiveness than ask for permission. Gilbert the cat has a lot of practice at this.

And in writing? Write the poems and the kinds of poems that you want to write–right now. Follow rules only when they’re working for you. Otherwise, they’re rules for someone else.

Again, for me this is a lesson in progress. After a lifetime of trying to be good and fit in and make the right shapes, I’m trying to let go and listen for what’s really inside me.

3. Chase the catnip mouse

Bat it around. Pounce! Pick it up in your teeth and carry it around a while.

Play around with your writing a while–see what it does, how fast it skitters across the kitchen floor. Take some time to experiment with it, stretch the lines, shorten them up, kill an adjective or two, find the trapdoors and go through them. Enjoy the fun. Your writing won’t get away–too far.

4. Claws help

Sharpen your tools! I’m not talking about the catty scratches that draw blood. But Gilbert the cat will curl his claws to pick up that catnip mouse.

Keep your writing tools honed–your cutting verbs and your connections for metaphors, your quickest road into the zone. Use them.

5. That square of sunlight has your name on it

Warm up to chill out. All that good time stretched out in the middle of the afternoon helps you relax into your next best metaphor, your next knock-out poem.

I know a lot of times I think I should be working as hard as I can–but look at that cat sprawled out across the carpet! Consider it your invitation.

Where do you find writing reminders? Can you keep your cat off the kitchen counter?

Tags: cat love, poetry, writing

Thanks to my Mom, thanks for the day

May 14, 2012 in Gratitude journal | No comments

Thanks to my Dad for the Mother's Day bouquet, which Gilbert the cat immediately started to eat so we had to lock them in the bathroom.

Thanks to my Mom for giving me her moral support and understanding for more than five decades.

And thanks to my kids for fixing a really delicious brunch for the whole family. I wish I had pictures, but they made frittatas and homemade biscuits and potatoes with sausage and caramelized onions and fruit salad and green salad. That’s a lot of cooking (and cleaning up). And thanks to Tom for helping to get everyone organized and invited.

I’m grateful for these ongoing sunny days. Some solid weeding time and a hedge-trimming (okay, I’m not thankful for the hedge–but I am for the opportunity to hack it back into submission). Time sitting on the deck talking with my daughter this afternoon.

I’m thankful for a couple of nights of good sleep. I still have a lot of wakefulness and worrying–but every good night feels golden.

Retroactively, I’m thankful for my poem “Self-Portrait with Crows” being featured back in April as Poem of the Week on One Poet’s Notes.

And looking ahead, I’m thankful for Mondays. Really, I am. I like a fresh start, and I feel like I get one every week. Onward!

Open the door. Open my heart.

Tags: gratitude

To do: Laundry and poetry

May 9, 2012 in Writing poetry | No comments

Clean laundry waiting to be folded

Last week, I mentioned Robert Lee Brewer’s suggestion to make a list of daily activities to do in May. So far my list has a few gaps in it, but it’s mostly filled in.

But when I took another look at my list, I realized that a lot of the activities focus on to-do items–kind of my poetry version of laundry and grocery shopping. It includes things like sending out poems and picking a poem to go take to my poetry group and reading Smoking Poet submissions and writing this blog post.

Those activities help me get things done–but maybe I need a second list. I want to get things done, but I also want to focus on craft–how you open yourself up to new ideas, how you generate work, how you stretch and cut push and pull and gently nudge that work into focus, into the kind of poem you want to write.

What kind of poem do I want to write? One that grips me and leaves a note in the air–one with music and a story and knock-out imagery. One that the reader can’t put down. One that an editor wants right away!

I think about image and metaphor. The startling. The unexpected. I guess those two mean the same things.

Lately, I think about the poems that tie a personal experience to a universal experience–sometimes a personal experience of a big and terrible event, like Katrina or 9/11 or the Hanford nuclear program. I haven’t had those personal experiences–and I’m very grateful for that, as grateful as I am to the people who have and who have written those poems. So how do I write the kind of poem I want to write?

When I think about the kind of poem I want to write, I often come back to “Upon Witnessing My Mother Impossibly Blossom Above My Father’s Deathbed,” by Kevin Stein. I first encountered this poem in 2005, and I keep coming back to it.

This poem tells a very personal story–and a story that moves easily into universal experience. At the same time, to me it’s even more poignant because it’s told by an observer–a son who is at this moment the center of his mother’s and father’s lives and at the same time outside of the bond between them.

So she fluffs his pillow, adjusts the blinds,
and blankets the word no one will say.

The interweaving of old sayings twisted and turned–words that are almost right but not quite–emphasizes both a familiarity and the sense of being in an unknown territory.

… Franklin says a word
to the wise breaks your mother’s back.
No, a needle a day keeps the doctor away.

And the music–and the way it moves from image to image.

Creek creek, the floor says, like water through
oak woods. Creak creak, it says, little strokes
fell great oaks. She leans to him as the red rose

I can think about craft and talk about craft (I like to do both!), but the best way for me to get closer to writing the poem I want to write is to read the kind of poems I want to write–and this is one of them.

What kind of poems do you want to write? How do you get closer to them?

Tags: craft, poetry, writing

Gratitude Journal, with sun & tulips!

May 7, 2012 in Gratitude journal | No comments

Sun!

I’m thankful for sun.

I’m thankful for poetry month, and for a chance to catch my breath now that it’s over.

I’m grateful for the chance to see The Art of Racing in the Rain at Book-It Thursday night. (It was pouring when we left the theatre, so we walked in the rain to the car and got pretty wet and talked about how it could be romantic and really it was.)

I’m thankful for making progress on writing copy for the Cloudlift Cellars website and for the acceptance that this is iterative–I’m not going to nail it on the first draft (I might not even be close), so I just need to write something and know that I’ll have plenty of time to revise or even rewrite it. It helps me to remember this for poetry, too.

And sun?

I’m thankful for friends.

I’m thankful for PLUME, Kathleen Flenniken’s new book–for her unflinching look at the Hanford nuclear program and its aftereffects in these poems that are taut, restrained, and generous all at the same time. (And check out the redactions.)

I’m thankful for ideas–lots of ideas! I’m trying to learn that it’s okay to have ideas that don’t pan out in the end, and that it’s good to find other people who can help you with ideas. My latest idea came out of thinking about the difference between music’s place in our culture and poetry’s place–and I think it has something to do with poetry generally being fenced in by a page or an event. That’s where it exists, and it’s a contained experience. I’m not saying this right. And poetry on the page is kind of a meta experience–poems traffic in images that evoke sensory memories (what this looks like, what this sounds like), but music is hearing, listening, directly engaging that sense. And music becomes a soundtrack. Songs intersect with moments in our lives, interweave with memories, so that hearing a song transcends the immediate and gives us this rich sensory experience. Am I sounding a little crazy yet? So can poetry be a soundtrack? How?

Did I mention sun?

And I’m thankful for my husband’s great idea today to drive up and see the tulips!

Open the door. Open my heart.

Tags: gratitude

What do you want?

May 2, 2012 in Writing poetry | No comments

Monday’s poetry prompt brought me back to this question–specifically, what do I want to be when I grow up? Or maybe I should ask what do I want to do when I grow up? More generally, what do I want? And that leads me to three sets of questions:

What do I want?
What do I want to do?
What can I do now to get me closer?

I’m not good at any of those. I feel like I haven’t figured it out yet–or I have an idea but it isn’t sustainable in the real world (as in, it won’t pay me money for food and rent or health insurance–revisiting The starving artist–fact or myth).

I often think I just want to wake up and read poetry and write poems all day–with a break for eating. (I also want to be able to eat and drink as much of whatever as I want with no repercussions.)

I want to be a better wife and mother and friend (always room for improvement).

I want acceptance and recognition and I want to belong. Very human and pretty boring, right? And not directly under my control.

But what can I control? What I do. So what do I want to do?

Wake up and read poetry and write poems all day. Write kick-ass poems, poems that resonate, poems that leave the reader glad for having read them.

I want to share what I learn with anyone who’s interested.

I want to find more/new ways to get Into the Rumored Spring out into the world.

I want to do good work–work that makes the world better–and what is that?

I want to ask questions, explore answers, and listen to what other people–yes, you–have to say.

I want to fix up the family room (yep, that’s on the list).

I want to speak Italian.

Please note that even with all these wants, I am deeply grateful for what I’ve got. It’s just that I’m 52 years old and I feel like it’s high time or past time for me to start heading in the right direction.

With the exception of the family room and Italian, these are all pretty vague–general statements that don’t provide details. The next step is to dig into those details–with the idea that if I know what I want to do, I have a much better chance of doing it, start to finish.

In my planning a May list of things to do, I need to find things that will help me get closer–and then I need to do them. And I need to ask a lot more questions: What will help me write those kick-ass poems? What’s lacking? What kind of good work do I want to do? What do I need to learn so I can do it? Can I do any of this before I retire?

What do you want? What do you want to do?

Tags: poetry goals, what do you want

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Joannie Stangeland