Volume V, Issue 29 July 18, 2016 Dear ,
I am home from Chautauqua, with a heart full of beautiful memories, including ones of all
the blooming in the multitude of lovely gardens in this special place. Here is one of them that I enjoyed on each of my many walks by the lake.
These gardens may be one of the reasons Bill Moyers was overheard (by a friend of mine who snapped this photo) saying to his wife, "I'm
going to miss this place." Me too.
I'm more excited than I could ever tell you that I got to tell Bill Moyers how much he has
meant to me, along with getting a picture of the two of us together and getting him to autograph my copy of his Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft.
I owe the privilege of knowing of Moyers and his fine work to my dear friend and mentor, Irene Blair Honeycutt, who first introduced me to his fabulous video series "The Power of the Word" a number of years ago. These interviews with poets taught me so much about the art and delight of poetry and
I am forever grateful. You can watch them here:
Moyers was at Chautauqua to speak about "The Soul of Democracy" during Week 2, for which the theme was "Money and Power," and he shared his belief that "The American people stubbornly and slowly
forged a civilization that ... stretches across the passions of the human heart" and that this kind of civilization assumes that "we're all in this together."
He then quoted Walt Whitman: "I contain multitudes. Whoever degrades me degrades others and whoever degrades another degrades me,"
and followed by saying, "Whitman celebrated the vast chorus—'I hear America speaking, I hear America singing.' There was also something Whitman saw in the soul of democracy."
Moyers went on to say that Whitman "loved to see Americans at work using their broad arms as much as their brilliant minds.
The everyday people, the real builders of America. He celebrates the nation where everyone is worthy, not just a few in wealth."
How can you not love a man who references Whitman in a conversation about money, power, and democracy? And has spent his working life sharing so many worthwhile words and ideas
of others?
It seems only fitting, in the spirit of this fine man, to share a bit of his work featuring someone he admires, so you'll find an excerpt of his interview with poet Stanley Kunitz below, along with a poem that—you guessed it—features a garden. I was inspired to share it when I came across it
again in Moyers's Fooling with Words. Enjoy!
Love and light,
Maureen
Upcoming WordPlay DELICIOUS MEMORIES
FREE!
TOMORROW! Food not only nurtures and sustains us, it’s a rich source of metaphor and memory! We’ll explore our connections with food as we write of when, where, what, with whom, how — and even why — we ate! You can use your food writings to create a family cookbook, individual essays, stories, or poems, scenes in fiction or memoir, a food blog,
etc. — or just for your own pleasure.
WHERE: Main Library. 310 North Tryon St. Charlotte, NC 28202
WHEN: July 19th, 2015, from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m.
* A light dinner will be provided from 5:30 – 6:00 pm for
anyone registered for this program.
COST: Free!
TO REGISTER: To register online, please click here.
*Only 4 spaces left *
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SUMMER WRITING
RETREAT
(Writing as Renewal / Creating New Writing / Tools for a Writing Life)
Renew and delight yourself.
The Summer Writing Retreat is an opportunity to create new pieces of writing and/or new possibilities for our lives. Enjoy various seasonal prompts; they elicit beautiful material that can be shaped into essays, poems, stories, or articles. After a communal lunch, you’ll have private time which can be used to collage, work with a piece of writing from the morning, or play with a number of other writing prompts and methods. You’ll take home new ideas, new drafts, and new
possibilities. $97 includes lunch and supplies.
WHERE: South Charlotte area. Details
will be provided upon registration.
WHEN: Saturday, August 6th, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. TO REGISTER: To pay with a check via mail, email info@wordplaynow.com for instructions. To pay online, please click this link to check out using PayPal.
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(Expanding Our Creativity; Learning New Tools for Our Writing and Our Lives; Creating New Writing)
Discover your own genius as you learn to apply seven fascinating approaches of Leonardo da Vinci to your writing. These
techniques enliven non-fiction, poetry and fiction. Expect fun, inspiration and writing galore in your preferred genre, with opportunities to share your work.
$630 for one week-long session (lodging and meals are additional – options can be found on the Folk School website). WHERE: John Campbell Folk School, 1 Folk School Road, Brasstown, NC 28902
WHEN: Sunday, August 7 – Saturday August 13, 2016.
TO REGISTER: To register, please click this John Campbell Folk
School link to register directly from them.
More WordPlay opportunities here. Featured Writer
Bill Moyers Featured Writing
an excerpt from
"Dancing on the Edge of the Road"
A PBS interview with poet Stanley Kunitz
by
Bill Moyers
BILL MOYERS: You think there is special wisdom in dreams?
STANLEY KUNITZ: Yes, because I think that you are
gelling messages from your deepest self, and those messages are for you to interpret. They're telling you something that you need to know.
BILL MOYERS: The body is telling you.
STANLEY KUNITZ: Yes, yeah. But that's where the wisdom of poetry lies, is
in the body.
BILL MOYERS: In what sense?
STANLEY KUNITZ: It's not an intellectual act. It is a wisdom that comes out of experience itself, and out of the images of the life that are embedded in you.
BILL MOYERS: Tell me how to listen to my body.
STANLEY KUNITZ: You can't listen to your body from outside the body. You have to immerse yourself in the body. You have to become part of the whole innerness of yourself, rather than viewing it from outside. When you are down in that well. When
you are at the very beginnings of yourself, in touch with those images that are really in control of your psyche, at that moment one has the perception of one's own self flowing, flowing, distilling itself. Re-distilling. Being reborn. All that action, that act of renewal which is like the way the cells themselves—you know, every seven years you have a completely new set of cells in your body. You are being renewed all the time, but you can't tell it from a vertical position. You have to be part
of the process.
BILL MOYERS: You have to swim in those depths.
STANLEY KUNITZ: And you have to be part of your cellular universe. That's why poetry has this peculiar effect on people who really take it in, who are really immersed in it. It's that
sensation that Emily Dickinson described. About the top of your head coming off, and that Housman referred to, when he said he felt his hairs bristle.
STANLEY KUNITZ: "The Round," so titled because of the configuration of this poem. It has its source in my garden, in Provincetown.
[reading]
Light splashed this morning
on the shell-pink anemones
swaying on their tall stems;
down blue-spiked veronica
light flowed in rivulets
over the humps of the honeybees;
this morning. saw light kiss
the silk of the roses
in their second flowering,
my late bloomers,
flushed with their brandy.
A curious gladness shook me. So I have shut the doors of my house,
so I have trudged downstairs to my cell,
so I am sitting in semi-dark
hunched over my desk
with nothing for a view
to tempt me
but a bloated compost heap,
steamy old stink pile
under my window;
and I pick my notebook up
and, start to read aloud
the still-wet words' scribbled
on the blotted
page:
"Light splashed ... " I can scarcely wait till tomorrow,
when a new light begins for me,
as it does each day,
as it does each day.
BILL MOYERS: {voice-over] Kunitz spends his summers in Provincetown, Massachusetts, at the farthest reach of Cape
Cod. There he writes his poems and tends his garden.
STANLEY KUNITZ: This garden was nothing but a barren hill, a dune, without even a blade of grass growing on it. I brought in seaweed and all sorts of materials to enrich the soil, and gradually the soil became very fertile, and almost anything will grow in it now. It's been really like creating a poem, a long poem. It is
always in need of revision, and each year it's-I make little changes in it, something is wrong and then you-you have to be ruthless to be a gardener. You have to get rid of your failures and try something new, make a new arrangement, a new composition, a newer disposition of colors. That's the same way, really, in any work of art. No mailer how clearly you have in your mind the shape of your poem, for example, the actual writing is a mysterious process, and there's so much inflow from your
unconscious, which is like nature in the garden, that the end product never quite matches the original design. The garden is also there to be seen by others. A wonderful thing about a garden is there's almost nobody who doesn't respond to its beauty, or understand it. And I can share it with friends who stop at the gate, and ooh and ah. And I must say, I get a great deal of pleasure from that, as long as they don't talk to me too long. It's a never-ending task, but it's wonderfully gratifying,
and I think it's what keeps me young, is working at it, and that sense of renewal that comes every year as the garden is reborn. So am I, at the same time, as I work in it.
WordPlay Now! Writing
Prompt This is WordPlay—so why not revel in the power and
potential of one good word after another? This week, it's "garden."
PROMPT:
Write about a garden and/or gardening, in any genre you like, whether it's poetry or prose, fact or fiction.
MAUREEN RYAN GRIFFIN, an award-winning poetry and nonfiction writer, is the author of Spinning Words into Gold, a Hands-On Guide to the Craft of Writing, a grief workbook entitled I Will Never Forget You, and three collections of poetry, Ten Thousand Cicadas Can't Be Wrong, This Scatter of Blossoms and When the Leaves Are in the Water. One of her long-held dreams came true in July of 2015 when Garrison Keillor read one of her poems on The Writer's Almanac. She believes, as author Julia Cameron says, "We are meant to midwife dreams for one another."
Maureen also believes that serious "word work" requires serious WordPlay, as play is how we humans best learn—and perform. What she loves best is witnessing all the other dreams that come true for her clients along the way. Language, when used with
intentionality and focus, is, after all, serious fuel for joy. Here's to yours! |
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