"Leafing and Leaving" (An Original Poem)

I discovered an old notebook the other day, full of poem drafts I wrote during the spring seven years ago. (Half the sweet girl's life ago!) A lot of the drafts are still incomplete and need work, but one poem, filled with word play, felt ready...and made me smile. And I think after being stuffed away in a notebook for seven years, it's definitely time for its debut.

Leafing and Leaving

Leaves aren't leaving
in the spring.
They've only just arrived.
They do their leafing
fresh and green
when all is new outside.
They do their leaving
in the fall
dressed to the nines
in red and gold.
They only whisper their goodbyes
when the year is growing old.

EMP, 4/2010

Poem Modeling on Blake's "The Lamb"

I'm sorting through a journal I just finished writing in (started writing in a new journal at Hillman on Thursday). Sorting through a completed journal is, for me, a interesting exercise, partly because I'm looking at old to-do lists to see if there are things on those lists I still need to do, as inevitably there are, and partly because I'm looking through things like poem drafts and story snippets to see if I want to rework any of the creative things. And inevitably I do!

One of the things I saw this morning was an exercise I did a while back which I meant to share here on the blog. It was an exercise in poem modeling: that is, looking at an already written (sometimes classic) poem, and modeling my own poem off it. I don't do these kinds of creative riffs often enough. While they don't always lead to the most fluid of poems for me, I still find the exercises mentally and creatively helpful. And sometimes they do lead to fun results.

In this case, I decided to riff on William Blake's famous poem "The Lamb." Here is the well-known gem, in case you haven't read it in a while...

Little lamb, who made thee?

Dost thou know who made thee,

Gave thee life, and bid thee feed

By the stream and o’er the mead;

Gave thee clothing of delight,

Softest clothing, woolly, bright;

Gave thee such a tender voice,

Making all the vales rejoice?

    Little lamb, who made thee?

    Dost thou know who made thee?

    Little lamb, I’ll tell thee;

    Little lamb, I’ll tell thee:

He is called by thy name,

For He calls Himself a Lamb.

He is meek, and He is mild,

He became a little child.
I a child, and thou a lamb,

We are called by His name.

    Little lamb, God bless thee!

    Little lamb, God bless thee!

-- William Blake (1789)

And here's my modeling off of it. The trickiest part of this exercise may have been choosing what my central theme would be: it had to be a creature or part of creation that would lend itself easily to a comparison with Jesus and with humanity. I chose a rose.

I also chose to change the "thee" to "you," both to show that I am writing in a different century than Blake, and also just to vary the sounds of the poem (note that in conjunction with "thee" he uses words like "feed" and "mead" and "meek" that draw on the long "e" sound). Whereas I took the "oo" sound in "you" and played off it with words like "bloom" and "room" and "too" and "new." 

Lovely rose, who made you?

Do you know who made you,

Made you bud, brought you to bloom

Into a vibrant silken room;

Gave you colors warm and bright,

Some dark velvet, others light;

Gave you such a sweet, fresh scent,

That wafts up to the firmament?

       Lovely rose, who made you?

       Do you know who made you?

Lovely rose, I’ll tell you;

Lovely rose, I’ll tell you;

He himself was once a bloom,

Sheltered in a tiny room,

Brought to fruitful, flowering birth,

Here upon the barren earth.

I’m a flower, like you too,

Born to bloom and become new.

       Lovely rose, God love you!

       Lovely rose, God love you! 

(EMP, 2017)

Modeling exercises really are fun. Choose a poem you love that is written by someone else (well-known or not) and hold it up like a diamond, admiring all its facets. Then try to carve your own gemstone in words. It's a good creative challenge! 

Priortizing Writing Projects for the New Year

As the new year has gotten underway, I've been struggling a lot with fatigue again, due to the new chemo trial I'm on. It's been hard to feel this way as it's reminiscent (though thankfully not nearly as severe) as the last time I went through chemo. I am thankful that this time it's not medicine by infusion, but oral medication, but I am still feeling frustrated with the amount of sleep I need, the various aches and pains including some connected to my worsening neuropathy, the struggles I have to sleep well at night, and the many appointments I'm having to do at the cancer center. At the same time, I'm finding plenty to be grateful for including the fact that the fatigue is still nowhere near the worst I've felt, the hope that this trial drug will work to bring about more needed healing, my excellent doctors, and the love and prayers of family and friends.

Turning into the new year felt very different for me this year. I've now gone through an entire calendar year without my dear mother. I'm approaching the one year mark since my diagnosis. I face a year filled with much to think about and do (including continued schooling of our sweet girl) but with no work deadlines. I officially went on disability in December. We also finally finished our move into our new rental home in December, which means lots of boxes to unpack and things to organize when I am not feeling well. And yes, feeling homesick.

Faced with limited energy and time, I find myself trying to prioritize my writing goals. It's been harder than expected because it turns out that I have done a lot more writing in the past twenty years than I realized. It's all been in cracks and crevices, but it's yielded a lot of creativity -- it's just that none of it is done. I have so many interrupted and unfinished projects! With some I have gotten a pretty far distance in, while others are barely out of idea stage. Some have yielded mostly outlines while others have yielded pages and pages of work. In addition to those twenty years, our move meant I was digging through boxes and files I had completely forgotten about, and those included work that goes back more like twenty-five and thirty years. A whole younger writer-me peeked out of those pages, but some of them were better than I recalled once I remembered they existed!

So what to do with all of this? I'm still not sure. I have ten to twelve projects I could be working on in turn, but I have a feeling the best use of my limited resources would be to choose one or two and work as steadily on them as I can. Doing anything steadily is difficult right now, but I am feeling sure I need to be writing as much as possible.

At the moment, one project seems to have chosen me. It's my most recent one: an attempt at a memoir that focuses on my healing journey and my experiences with cancer, all written through the lens of reflections on hair. Yes, hair. It sounds strange, I know, but it's coming along well. I started it last year and got through a prologue and a long first chapter. I also had jotted ideas for several more chapters. This week I suddenly got the yen to go back to it, and I'm now well into the next chapter, which is moving in some unexpected directions that have me excited. I just wish I was feeling better.

So we'll see where all of these go this year. I will keep moving forward and hope that I can get at least one project, if not more than one, completed. And oh yes, organize these writing files so they make some sort of sense. Prayers appreciated!

Creativity Comes Knocking

I've always thought that creativity comes knocking at the most unusual times. I've written about this on my blog before (although where and when my tired mind doesn't remember at the moment!) and I stand by it. When you're a writer, it doesn't always seem to matter what's going on in your life, how busy or sick you are, or how you're feeling. Sometimes creativity just waltzes up to the front door, rings the bell zestfully, and slides right in as soon as you open the door even a tiny crack.

That's what happened to me in the wee small hours of the morning last night. Yes, another night when, exhausted as I was, I still woke up and couldn't get back to sleep. Not even quiet music or soporific reading can get me back to sleep right now once I'm up, probably because some part of me is usually aching or hurting. So I give into the wakefulness for a while and see where it leads before I finally begin to nod off again.

Last night it led me to an unexpected place: a children's book idea I had quite a while ago. I should say it was a book idea that the sweet girl and I had together. I came up with it first, but she and I talked about it one morning. It was quite a long while ago, before I got sick -- I would say at least a year and a half ago? Maybe two? Who knows. But here it was again.

I'm not going to share the idea right now because it's in that brimming, simmering, almost vaporous stage where I feel like if I share too much about it, it could pop like a bubble and disappear. Well, okay, I shared about it with my dear husband at lunch (in between my final radiation appointment and our next visit with Erin in the hospital). He liked it, and being the creative guy he is (one reason I married him was because I knew he would forever be my writing partner!) bounced some ideas around about it with me, which made me even more interested in pursuing it. I feel like I'm in that stage where I sit up like an attentive puppy with my ears cocked and my head turned sideways, eyes on whatever might happen next so I can jump.

Part of the reason I brought it up with him at lunch is because the ideas, which started coming between one and two a.m. last night, started falling like a gentle rain again during the first part of my radiation treatment. In some ways, that didn't surprise me. I always try to arm myself with things to think about before those start, so I can begin to meditate as soon as the treatment starts. I have a small piece of oval foam I have to hold onto while I am lying on the table and the treatment goes on (to keep my arms and shoulders in place). My legs are bent over another piece of foam. The mask goes on over my face, and my head is bent back on a sort of neck brace. My kind radiologist brings a blanket to cover me. (They didn't stock them today becase it was Sunday, but he knew I'd want one and nabbed me the last one!)

Once I am in position, I stay in that position for about forty-five minutes, listening to meditative music. If I choose to keep my eyes open, then I am looking at an image of green trees against a blue sky (which they keep on the ceiling). Most of the time, however, I choose to keep them closed, especially because there are times when the arm of the radiation machine (what I have referred to as the "robot" all week) zooms over right in front of my face, and it's a little alarming to have it so close. I tend to breathe better and relax more with my eyes closed. And then I begin to think about whatever I've chosen to fix my mind on, often a verse.

I did that today, pondering my morning devotions from Jeremiah 16 and 17, but then I let my mind wheel to the idea for the children's book. And sure enough, the ideas began to flow. And I really, really like these ideas! They are coming together in ways that just make creative and beautiful sense.

Although there have been many times in my life when I have been surprised by creativity's visits, I think this may take the top spot. I am exhausted right now on every level, particularly physically and emotionally. I don't know if I have the strength to do much with these ideas as they come, but I confess I've begun doing a bit of jotting in my journal, and that some of the actual possible writing is starting to flow through my mind. I am also discovering that the ideas are feeling a bit like crepe paper streamers -- you know the ones you get and twist together to decorate a wall or ceiling for a child's party? You unroll them and weave them together and there is just something very satisfying about it when they start to come together and look the way you want them to.

Maybe it's time to throw a party -- even if it needs to be a small, quiet one for a while -- for creativity, my unexpected but still very welcome guest.

When My Name Was Keoko (A Literary Guide)

One of my summer writing projects has turned out to be more fun than I expected. I decided to write my own literary guide for Linda Sue Park's novel When My Name was Keoko.

This beautiful and moving book about the years of Japanese rule in Korea was published in 2002, the same year Park won the Newbery for A Single Shard. Since S. is doing a modern history semester in the fall, I decided to pull on novels from the 20th and 21st century for her to read and analyze as part of her 9th grade English studies. (She's reading Orwell's Animal Farm first; I pulled a study guide together for that too, but I mostly just leaned on the huge amount of resources already out there and rearranged and tweaked them to make it work for us.)

When My Name Was Keoko gets recommended a lot, and it seems to get a good bit of use in middle school and high school classes. But perhaps because of its relative youth, when I went looking, none of the literary guides out there (and there aren't many) pleased me. The free ones didn't have deep enough content, and the few things I could find that weren't free didn't look helpful enough for me to invest money. So I decided to invest some time instead and write up a guide for us to use.

It's been a real joy to read through Park's novel again and to pull together questions (both comprehension questions and more reflective, analytical ones) about the story. I'm finding good resources online that deal with the historic context, but we're mostly looking at this book as literature -- so I'm writing questions for thought and discussion about the structure of the story and the elements that go into making it so well written. We'll discuss point of view, literary symbolism, metaphor, how writers create tension and suspense, and more.

Park is such a solid writer that her work lends itself to discussing important themes. I especially enjoy the way she looks at tensions between the importance of family honor and traditional culture and being true and authentic to yourself and your passions. What it means to maintain cultural values in the face of opposition and oppression, and how one can be quietly and creatively subversive in the face of that kind of oppression are other elements I'm enjoying thinking about and looking forward to discussing with S. in the fall. She's read almost everything Linda Sue Park has ever written, but she's not read this one yet and I'm looking forward to seeing what she makes of it, especially now that she's old enough to be thinking and asking some good questions about her own culture and its values.

Confessions of a Bake Off Watcher

It's been a very busy November with mountains of writing deadlines and plenty of other work and ministry. I feel I've been going at quite a galloping pace! It's not always been easy, especially since I'm continuing to work through some health issues (and just recently finished a round of antibiotics).

In the midst of all this busyness, I've found myself working a lot of very late nights and early mornings. Sometimes those are the best hours right now for writing and thinking, when the house is quiet and I can push through larger sections of work than I can when I'm working in the cracks and crevices of the day. I have discovered that I am becoming more of a morning person all the time -- which just makes me laugh. All those years I dragged out of bed for early commitments, and now I am often awake early and can't get back to sleep. I find my mind is fresher and usually more creative in the morning.

All this work has meant very little down time, especially for reading or any sort of creative writing that isn't immediately work related. When I've needed brain breaks, I've been indulging in bits of episodes of the Great British and Great Irish Bake Offs.

If you haven't caught these shows, they're great fun, especially if you enjoy watching other people bake. I love both the actual baking and the goofiness of the competition. These shows are terrific little opportunities for character studies: it's fun to notice which contestants take themselves and their baking as serious art, which ones bake like it's relaxed therapy, which ones cheerfully deal with mistakes and try to incorporate them into something creative or at least presentable, and which ones completely melt down (like chocolate?) when in crisis. The editing of the shows is intended, of course, to make these bake offs look as competitive and tense as possible, but I find it sort of goofily endearing, especially since they are a lot less over the top about this stuff in the UK than they are on American television.

It's also so much fun to contemplate creativity as you watch them approach their ideas. Some of them have these incredibly cool and creative ideas and can't carry them out at all while others are cautious in their ideas and meticulous in the execution. Some of them are so confident that it borders on cocky and can't get overly deflated even when their stuff falls apart, and some of them are so incredibly insecure that the cameraman tends to focus on their anxious eyes as they work. It's the insecure folks, I'm discovering, who often turn out the best things...and then look delighted and surprised.

The shows are really as much about people and personalities as they are baking, but I'm still learning new baking terms and concepts. I doubt I will ever try many of these things in my own kitchen, but I have found myself thinking a little more creatively about my own baking lately because of it, and I have a feeling I may end up working some of my newfound baking terminology into a story at some point! In fact, I was thinking a murder mystery in a bake off tent just might prove to be an intriguing plot.

An Open Letter to the Story Idea That is Fast Slipping Away

Dear Story Idea,

Please come back.

I know it has been about 36 hours since you first came to me in my Thursday morning shower. I know you really, really wanted to be written down right after that, when you were fresh and when all the creative connections were still firing in my brain.

I know it's not your fault that you chose to come on one of the busiest days of my week. During a season of huge amounts of work deadlines that I am struggling to meet. During a time of real financial stress. In the midst of ongoing weirdness with my health.

I planned to get back to you later yesterday. And again last night. And again this morning. And after I got some of my work done. And housework. And school time. And helped my daughter through a really hard day. And cried for a while.

I didn't know how my tiredness and discouragement would send you into hiding.

I've been feeling pretty lonely, and having you drop in yesterday in the midst of everything that feels so fragile and tiring felt really great. I'm sorry you couldn't stay longer.

It sure would be nice if you'd come back to visit. I promise I will try to be ready with a pen this time.

Love.