Can You Haiku?

The far reach of AROHO lives on, this time with the inspiration of Nicole Galland, one of the wonderful writers I met in New Mexico last August at Ghost Ranch.  Nicole had a friend who had written one haiku each day for an entire year.  Not being a poet herself, Nicole still thought the challenge of trying to write in this very tight form every day sounded interesting.  So she put out the call on Facebook.  Like myself, many of the people who responded were AROHO alumnae, but the circle widened with friends of friends of friends joining in.  Nicole created a group called The Haiku Room, and the fun began on January 1, 2014.

Since that time, I have written a haiku every day and received copious haiku from other people. I read each and every one although I find it difficult to "like" or comment on each.  But I love the fact that my inbox is filled with poetry instead of just advertisements or pleas for money from the Democratic Party.

I will admit that many of my haiku have been written out of desperation; the end the day is looming and I haven't found the time or subject to write.  Even so, I post those as well as the ones I'm proud of.  It's the discipline of writing them that I am finding so valuable.

That was a result I expected from the start.  After all, I'm still reaping the results of my early morning writing ritual (it's 6:10 as I write this on the 161st day).  What I didn't expect is how writing poems with such constraints would effect my writing.  I found an article about writing haiku which said many modern haiku in English no longer stick to the 5-7-5 syllable format.  However, I decided that I would keep my poems within that constraint.

And that has made a real difference in my writing.  I have had to hone and pare every unnecessary word while trying to convey as much with those words as possible.  I've had to struggle to actually make the poems say something worth reading with only those 17 syllables as well. And I've found that struggle to crystallize imagery to be spilling into my other poetry writing as well. I'm surprised I didn't think that would happen when I started, but am glad just the same.

In my post Last Post of 2013: Inspired by David Hockney I wrote about wanting to look more carefully at the world around me, to record what I see in vivid detail like Hockney did in his paintings.  That is another result of writing these haiku: looking at the smallest moment as a source of inspiration.  I find what I have come to call haiku mind to be a wonderful form of meditation for me.

I have now written a total of 27 haiku having yet to compose my poem for today.  Here are a few of my favorites so far:

1/1/14
winter city view
sun splash on dirty windows
watch the plum tree dance

1/4/14
gulls white-ride windward
over mist-mountains bay to ocean
winging stories home

1/8/14
after-school walk home
behind chain-link sharp-eared growl
thrill of near peril

1/9/14
night glow through curtains
pursue Artemis moon dreams
not human-lit streets

1/12/14
flock of daffodils
golden feathers bob and sway
winter's flown awry

1/14/14
moon, softly rounding
train whistle pulls my heart - wild
and just beginning

1/20/14
dun dried hills riven
by drought my tongue swollen
with dreams of water

1/27/14
Queen Anne's Lace, she wrote
pansies, fireflies awoke
childhood prairie fields
--for Tania

So I ask you again, can you haiku?  I highly recommend it.

Happy New Year to Me!

I'm very excited to see that A Room of Her Own Foundation (AROHO) posted my #radbrief that I submitted to them last year:

Post by A Room of Her Own Foundation (AROHO).

Last Post of 2013: Inspired by David Hockney

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I can think of no better way to spend a lovely San Francisco afternoon than to go to the museum. Two days ago I went to see the David Hockney exhibition at the De Young Museum in San Francisco.  This is one of the largest current exhibitions of his work in the United States.  Of course it has been wildly popular, so I had the bright idea of joining the hordes of people flowing into the museum on a holiday weekend to view it.  My friend Charlotte had told me it was life changing, which made me both eager to see the work and a little skeptical. I didn’t know much about Hockney other than that he painted a lot of pretty blue swimming pools in L.A. back in the 1970’s.

At first it was difficult to enjoy the art, especially since I kept stumbling over people with audio guides glued to their ears. I was cranky, not happy to be trapped with all those strangers, but as I started to weave my way through the crowds, the art did what art always does: it took hold of me.

What was it that grabbed me, that shook something loose in me?  Partly it was the color and scale of the work. I loved having to put my head back to gaze up at his huge canvases full of vibrant color as well as individual works mounted in groups high up to the ceiling.   

Partly it was his use of technology. I was mesmerized by the drawings he had done on his iPad and iPhone. I loved the fact that this man in his 70’s continues to embrace new media to accomplish his art. The quality of those drawings is different, soft and with a rather mysterious air about them, as if the world they depict was misty, with a haze in the air that put everything into soft focus.

However, it wasn’t just the vibrant color that enthralled me. I found out that recently Hockney has been working in charcoal to record the same views of his native Yorkshire countryside at different times of the day and season.  I’ve always been such a sucker for color that I’ve never been much interested in drawings.  But those series of charcoal drawings stunned me.  Running up and down the walls, they made me stop and look slowly at each one. I thought about how I have forgotten to do this very thing – sit and reflect and record the passing of the day and what is happening around me.  I’ve been too busy worrying about the twists and turns of my own mind to sit and observe what is going on around me.

I did that last summer at Ghost Ranch – every morning going outside and gazing at the sky, trying to experience what each day brought. But recently, after the initial euphoria of establishing my writing routine, I’d forgotten to lift my eyes from the page to look at the stripe of sun that falling across the page of my journal. Or watch how I  make shadows dance with my pen as I carry it along the pages. I have forgotten to notice the sweet, spicy scent of the candle that burns among my jumble of rocks and flotsam that I’ve gathered to remind me of the person I want to become. 

What I got from the exhibit:  the reminder to look up, look up, look forward. And take hold of everything at your disposal to create.To make sure I don't forget (at least for a little while), I bought this print of one of Hockney's watercolors.

100 Days

On August 24th, I wrote about my experiences at the AROHO Writer's Retreat in my post "Open the Door."  In part I wrote:  I want to stay on my writing path, just as I stayed true to the trail up to Chimney Rock.  I opened that door at the AROHO retreat, and so far have been walking my writing path during this first week back at teaching.  And I'm determined to keep going.

Well, here I am on Day 100 of my new writing practice.  In the last 100 days I have gotten up a half hour early to write. When I realized this, I was reminded of how elementary teachers celebrate the 100th day of school with their students by computing all sorts of statistics about school, so here is my list:

• I have gotten up for every morning for 100 days.
• I have written for 50 hours in those mornings (and sometimes more on the weekends).
• I have drunk 100 cups of tea from my thermos.
• I have filled 3 1/2 notebooks (and just started a new one).
• I have written 10 poems.
• I have written 1 essay.
• I have written 2 short memoir pieces.
• I have read 4 books of poetry by fellow AROHO writers Diane Gilliam, Ruth Thompson, Barbara Rockman and Leslie Ullman.
• I have written an estimated 200 words per page (since I am one of those neat freaks who fill the entire surface of every page with writing, I was able to extrapolate this amount by counting the words on a random number of pages).

When I first went to the AROHO retreat in 2011, I bought a stone with an eclipse symbol carved into it:  a moon and sun joined together.  I read that this is a symbol of merging opposites, representing unity and compromise instead of conflict.  I envisioned that stone as a symbol of how I want to join my two sides:  writer and teacher. 

I talked to my new AROHO friend, Tania Pryputniewicz about my dilemma in the Albuquerque Airport.  I made a pact with her that I would write every afternoon after returning from school.  Did I keep it up? Nope.  I found my mind too filled with all the noise of the day to keep myself writing.

Then this year, at the Albuquerque Airport once again, I made another pact with Barbara Yoder. This time I vowed that I would get up early every day.  I had been resisting this idea for years, but had finally faced the fact that early morning was the only time I could reliably call all my own.  Did I think I would be able to do it?  I admit I was skeptical. I still doubted myself.  But here I am 100 days later...

Now that I've finally given myself the gift of time, I feel I've  joined those two sides of myself.  Although there are many times of conflict when the stresses of teaching keep my from writing as much as I wish, I now know I can always find that morning time to sit quietly with the my notebook. 

So on this day before Thanksgiving, I can only say thank you to all the wonderful women writers of AROHO who have helped me find my way.

I finally turned left!

A few weeks ago my sister-in-law Barb came to visit.  She was excited to be the first one in our family to see the new house and to explore our new community.  Luckily there was fine fall weather during her visit, so we were able to take daily walks through the neighborhood. On the last walk, she joked, "Next time I'm here, let's turn left." 

That was when I realized that every time I go for a walk, when I get to the end of the drive leading to the sidewalk, I do indeed turn right.  Even though I have only lived in this house for six months, I'm already in a rut!

Lately I've been trying to shake things up in my creative life. Having made a resolution to get up a half hour earlier every day to write, I have gotten up every single morning since then. I can proudly say it has been 90 days as of today.  I also decided to take a poetry workshop that not only focused on writing, but also memorizing a poem each week.  I thought trying to use my brain differently could help me shake loose even more creativity.

So last weekend, when I took a walk during which I planned to practice memorizing a poem, I thought of Barb's words.  I turned left.  Pacing down the street, I recited Emily Dickinson's poem "Because I could not stop for death..." over and over to myself.  Perhaps it was the new direction or the strangely beautiful words of Dickinson's poem, or a combination of both, but I did seem to see the trees and houses around me differently.  I noticed the details of leave patterns and the sidewalk heaved from tree roots with more clarity.  And I even got an idea for a new poem of my own.

This reminded me of how important mental disequilibrium can be for the creative process. By shaking things up for our brains, we can uncover ideas and images we might never have found otherwise.  What wonderful gifts those become.  If we never break loose from what is comfortable or routine, that gift of creation might be lost to us forever. I'm determined to catch as many of those moments as possible. 

Even though I know all this, sometimes it is too easy to forget.  So, thanks to Barb's wise words, I've added a new resolution to keep turning left, in whatever ways I can. 

What are some ways you have "turned left" in your life? How are you shaking up your life to let your creativity flow?  

 

Another publication

My poem "Pilgrim," which I wrote after my trip walking a very small part of the pilgrim trail to Santiago Compostela has just been published in RiverLit Journal.  If you'd like to read my work and that of other talented writers, check out this beautiful journal.

A Red Woman Was Crying by Don   Mitchell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book totally surprised me!  At first I was unsure if I would enjoy it, but I kept reading. There was something that unsettled me about the voices of the characters I met. And then I realized that what was unsettling me was also bringing me into the world of the novel, a world so different from my own.

My favorite story of the whole collection was "My White Man," partly because it was told by the only woman narrator in the book, partly because that story revealed so much about Eliot, the White Man who was so changed by his time with the Nagovisi. 

This was a good read.



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