Dear Writers: Be a Bird

Need a pep talk to help you get creative? 

Here's a modified version of a message I recently sent to my writing students.



Dear Writers,

Are you frustrated?

Do you want to write - or even feel like you have to write, only you simply can't face a blank page today? 

Have no fear. The beginnings of a new piece might be closer than you think.

Do you keep a journal? 

Do you have a spiral notebook filled with pages of smudged ink and scrawling freewrites? 

How about a description of a dream on a dusty scrap of paper beside your bed?

Or what about a letter or this week's grocery list?

If so, then you may have the seeds of a story or poem or creative essay at your fingertips.

Go ahead. Enjoy a deep breath and get ready to riff, to play with the words you've already written.

Think small. Pretend you're a bird, pecking away at a word or a sentence or a character's name.

Playing with words is a lot like moving the furniture. Try a chair by the window instead of the wall. Turn your couch so it's on a diagonal. Put a plant on a table where it's more of a presence.

Boom! You have a fresh perspective and a new room.

The same could be said of your writing. Maybe you could flip through an old notebook and find 3 images or lines or paragraphs with potential. It might even be just one word that gets you going. Got tomatoes on your grocery list? What do they make you think of? Red? What does red bring to mind? A car, a carnation, a dress?

This is what I've been doing lately with my chapbook-in-progress. Last year I started scribbling any thought I had related to the color green, and now I have 42 pages of rough drafts that are begging me to come out and play. I figure that's plenty of material to keep me occupied for a long time.

When my brain feels overwhelmed by our current situation, I don't say I'll edit my chapbook today. I say I'll chip away at one line, one poem. That's a tiny goal I can meet, and when I can actually meet a goal, I can get some momentum - and endorphins - going.

Maybe I jazz up a verb (say saunter into a room, not walk). Maybe I add more detail. Maybe find a synonym that sounds less predictable.

Here's an example. In one of my older poems, I've imagined what happened the night of my birth. Taking another look at that piece recently, I decided it needed stronger imagery.

I originally said that when my dad first held me he was wearing a cranberry-colored cardigan. I played with that line for a few days until I hit on this:The poem now says my dad reached out for me with a brush of whiskers and a wool sleeve.

I like the new wording because it has alliteration (that rolling rhythm of whiskers and wool - yum!) and also the sensory imagery. I was born in the middle of the night, so my dad would have been a little scratchy...unless he insisted on shaving before driving my mom to the hospital. Also, the new line combines description and action. My dad isn't simply wearing a cardigan. He's reaching for me. A powerful moment, indeed, that expresses how he felt about meeting me.

I think the change makes the poem richer in another way, too. Without coming out and saying so, the whiskers and the scratchy sweater imply that my relationship with my dad wasn't perfect, which is true. Not because he wasn't a wonderful human (he was amazing), but simply because he was wonderfully human, just as we all are. How cool is that - all that information in just one line, and I came to it just by fumbling around.

Yes, writing is a way to communicate. But playing with words, discovering new ways to say something, is also fun - something I bet you could use right now.

Remember, think small. Who knows? Maybe it will help your pandemic writing practice - and your sanity - thrive.

Be - Poetry by Susan Donnelly, Linda Burk & Cameron Bennetts

Inspired by Melanie Green's pre-pandemic poem, "Be Wildflower,"* here are three calming and contemplative pieces for our time by Susan Donnelly, Linda Burk and Cameron Bennetts.



Prevail
by Susan Donnelly


Be quilting thread,
stitch together
fragments not born
as one.

Be the puzzle
corner piece,
anchor promise and progress
on multiple paths.

Be the Great Horned Owl
cut dark times
with sharp eyes
and silent wings.

Be a rainbow,
rare, capricious,
reigning riches and beauty
on stormy days.

Be the unlabeled
bottle of home brew,
strong, heady,
and a little odd tasting.

Be moss on the north side
of shading sycamores,
cling softly
to the bark of life.

Be sun behind clouds,
shine softly, steadily
when no one
notices.

Be food
for the famished,
fill bellies and brains
bloated by fear.

Be content,
now is what
you are.





To Be
by Linda Burk


Be frog: Waiting, waiting patiently for the right fly

Be fox: Listening, listening for the sound which brings food for her young

Be eagle: Gliding, gliding. Watching for opportunity and seeing the world

Be bee: Working, working with others for the good of the hive

Be hummingbird: Flitting, flitting. A symbiotic relationship with the flowers

Be deer: Bounding, bounding for the joy of it

Be cat: Lolling, lolling. Relaxing and absorbing the sun

Be me: practice waiting, listening, gliding, working, flitting, bounding, and lolling





Elemental
by Cameron Bennetts


Be Still
Ferment alone, reconcile.
Settle, mellow,
Sweet nectar

Be Hearth
Tend a log, just turned,
To flame.
Dreaming embers below.

Be Earth
Roots, rocks, treasure
Below sprouts unfurling
Seeding immortal



*Melanie Green's magical poem also appears in her book A Long, Wide Stretch of Calm, which is available from The Poetry Box.

Keep Breathing - Poetry by Liz Samuels

My writing students continue to astound me with their creative range. In her poem "Braids," Liz Samuels skillfully weaves sounds, words, and meaning. Who knew you could get so much mileage out of alliteration?


Braids
by Liz Samuels



Brushing brunette braids

of the barefoot bride

in the Bassilica of St.Benedict



Bending backwards in my B-Cup brassiere,

burgundy blouse

and baggy bottoms



A “bum” with a beer belly

Black and blue bruise on his butt

Blows bubbles



Big belly breath



Blocked borders

Battle of the Bulge

Big Bertha

Buried bones in Bergen Belsen



Blatantly biased

British Broadcasting,

Barclay's Bank borrows billions



Big belly breath



Bible's burning bush

Betty Boop in black and white

Barbara Bush in baby blue



Backyard Bird Shop,

Best Buy

in Boston

Baobao's bark beneath

Breech birth in Benin



Big belly breath



The Berkeley Barb

Birch branches

Buzzing bees



Beach blankets and beach balls

Beanie babies and building blocks

Baby bibs and barking beagles



Bouncing on beanbags

Baby Baluga, Baa Baa Black Sheep

and Billy Boy blaring



Breathe



BB King and Bugles

Blues and Booze

By the bougainvillea



Beet Borscht

Bread and Butter

Bangers and Bratwurst



Bunches of broccoli

Beef broth, bacon bits

Barbecued burgers



Baking Brown Betty

Buckling my belt.

Bracing for a blizzard



Big belly breath



Braided bark of the Baobao

Braided bread, braided belts, braided baskets

Beaded braids of the brunette bride



Breathe Big

Night Walk - Creative Nonfiction by Deborah Lee

                                                                         

                            

Tired of circling the same old streets? Let Deborah Lee take you a tour of her neighborhood.




Night Walk
by Deborah Lee 





Dusk.



The traffic lights turn from green to red on a silent street.

Houses with strings of white or multi-colored lights strike a whimsical mood.

A flag whips against its pole, the clanks louder than normal on this quiet boulevard.



"Oh!" I exclaim, as a bike comes silently from behind. "Sorry," as he pedals on by.



People peeking out from an upper window in a lighted room, a kitchen window in a house, an upstairs apartment.



Some keeping the front curtains open in their gently-lit house as they sit watching the rare sight of a pedestrian passing.



During recent sunny times, more hopscotch games than ever etched on the sidewalks, the chalk remaining for days and days.



Dark now.

Porch lights on.

A crooked mailbox.

A late lawnmower one street over. 

"Happy Birthday!" rings out in multiple voices from a distant house.

Another chalked etching on a sidewalk: "Welcome Home Dad."

A night breeze picks up.

A bamboo wind chime clanks its woody beats.

A Dutch Colonial so brightly lit with spans of large white lights, ala New Orleans. 

At a corner of the house's front yard, the large candytuft rosette emits its own bright white to the surrounding dimness.

A young woman on her phone, the two of us walking parallel across each other's respective sidewalk, her voice echoing words indistinguishable.

A plastic bag scuds and waves back and forth across the street, a beautiful sight just like the man in that movie said. 

Is it because the breeze is gentle and soft and lovely?



The crunch of a pinecone under my foot.

The sweet scent of daphne caresses my nostrils in a whiff.

Night-blooming tulips will be bursting with color tomorrow, yes?



There is a large white dot in the sky.

Is it Venus, Polaris? Couldn't be Arcturus!

Orion's belt is to its left.



Home now, little solar lanterns lighting up the patio with color, our own string of whimsical.

The neighbor's TV is on, actors' voices in low blurry volume. 

The air grows chilly.



Inside the house, I feel the night's rhythms around me still.

Comfort Food - Memoir by L.A.W. Fraser

L.A.W. Fraser's fragrant memory of two gardens takes us to a world of seeds and loam...and a surprise sprouting from the compost bin.


Favorite Gardens
by L.A.W. Fraser   


            Two gardens stand out in my mind. First is the one my dad created when I was a child; it was down the slope from our house on Fox Island. He plowed it with a gentle, old white Clydesdale by the name of Nellie. Above the garden, was an artisan well. After the ground was all plowed and tilled, Dad had me walk behind him to help press the seeds he was sowing down into the sandy loam. The garden area was surrounded by evergreens and madrone trees and I remember the smell of pine and warm soil with a hint of chicken manure mixed with salty seaweed from the bay. We grew beans, peas, carrots, corn, radishes, onions, pumpkins (which is what dad called squash or any pumpkin-like plant), and strawberries. The garden may have held other vegetables but I don’t remember what they might have been. Dad also helped me create my own garden, a smaller version next to his. I planted radishes, peas and nasturtiums.

            When the radishes and green onions were thumb sized, dad would pull them and eat them with lunch putting out two tablespoons, one with vinegar and one with salt. He would dip his radish or onion into the vinegar then dip it into the salt. He savored every sour bite.


            The second garden was the one my own family prepared at the back of our house in Virginia Beach. It wasn’t a large space, about 10’x10’ but Virginia had a long growing season that began in March and ended at the beginning of December. I could plant and harvest two times a year. We lived in a suburban area that had been bulldozed level, leaving the ground without any topsoil. We rented a rototiller and dug up the area, then heavily amended the soil with compost. We began our own compost bin and put grass clippings, weeds and other plant matter in it for mulch later. We planted green seedless grapes along one side while the compost bin was at the other end.

            We tried different crops until we found what grew best and in what order. The first crop would consist of tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, green peppers, beans, radishes, onions and lettuce. Just as the beans were ready to harvest, bean beetles would be eating the foliage like crazy. I would gather the beans, blanch them then freeze them. We would pull up the bean plants and pile grass clippings on top of them in our compost bin to create heat in order to kill the beetles. The tomatoes would bear fruit all summer and I would can a lot of them. We would go out at night to pick cut worms off the plants. After the soil rested from the bean harvest, we would plant peas. We would also reseed more lettuce, carrots and onions as needed. We always had an abundance of zucchini squash and of course, tomatoes. We tried corn but it took up too much space in comparison to its yield but found okra did well. The okra plants had glorious white flowers although the fruit is rather slimy when cooked so the only one who ever ate it was my husband.

            One year we didn’t have time to attend to the weeding and care for our plot. I was out looking for any still edible vegetables to harvest at the end of the season when I tripped over a huge watermelon. The melon vine was coming out of the compost bin and the watermelon was laying under all sorts of old pea vines and weeds. It was the sweetest, best watermelon I had ever eaten. I had tried to grow melons before but failed to get any fruit at all. It took nature, on her own, to grow the juiciest and largest one and our family took two days to eat all of it.

Purifying Wind

What an honor to have my lyric essay "No Place Like It" included in this new anthology published by Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press. Many thanks to editor d. ellis phelps!

You can order a copy by clicking here.

Dusk - Lyric Prose by Marie S. Bates

Photo courtesy of Marie S. Bates.* 

All quarantines are not created equally.

It's one thing to be sheltering in place in the U.S. in my comfortable middle class home and quite another to be in lockdown in Valencia, Spain in an apartment with a small balcony.

Thank you to Marie Bates for sharing her experience with us in this ultimately hopeful piece.





Dusk
by Marie S. Bates

  

On Tuesday evening, - Earth Day eve - I found myself dreaming of long walks in mossy forests, smelling wet soil, of standing beneath towering pines, and passing sparkling green ferns trembling under the weight of a recent rain shower. As I perched on an air conditioning fan box taking up half the standing room on our tiny balcony, I felt about as disconnected from anything Earth-y as one can. I stared out at the concrete apartment walls on each corner of our intersection and thought about the separate lives unfolding in those cubes stacked on top of one another. They remind me of the cardboard dioramas many of us made with our kids; a different scene arranged carefully with Elmer’s glue in each shoe box. An ant farm also comes to mind, its many chambers sandwiched between plastic walls, a transparent community for us all to goggle. Or they can also look like the stratified layers beneath the Earth’s surface, each layer comprised of something different but stuck together to function as a whole. It’s amazing what pops into your head when your life hits the pause button. I sighed deeply and tilted my head up to scan the cerulean sky at dusk. What a beautiful, clear evening. That’s when I saw the bats. BATS! I thought maybe they were swallows going in to roost or pigeons, but these were tiny and I heard them calling out to find their way as they searched for food. Swooping and flittering like tiny pieces of tumbling black paper on the breeze, they darted through the air, solo and in pairs. I heard their squeaks echoing and bouncing off the walls and over rooftops. Two of them dove so closely over my head I nearly ducked. It was surreal, and I loved every magical second. It gave me hope to see this evidence that our planet still has its wild places among us. I got lost in the moment and couldn’t say how long this went on but it was over much too soon. It was exhilarating to watch and part of me wanted to be up there with them. The weather is very mild and the skies are clear tonight, perhaps I’ll get to see them again at dusk. I’ll be looking up.

Photo courtesy of Marie S. Bates.

                              

  

*About the top photograph, Marie says, "There's a police helicopter flying over the rooftops. And that tower (Torres de Quart) at the end of the street was built in the 15th century. The pock marks were from cannon fire sustained in 1801 during the Napoleonic wars."