Reading on Purpose

(I began this blog post in June of 2009 and I've decided to finish it now. Below picture from Dorothy Dehner, her "Blind Machine") 

June 2009

Lately I’ve been drawn to reading books that are incredibly depressing and brutal. I do this in stages, usually when I tire of too beautifully crafted, hopeful books that leave me wanting. It amuses me how insatiable I am for these books recently. As artists, I wonder why we continue to seek instability during moments of calm. For me, while I deeply enjoy emotional contentment in small doses, I find that if my personal life is fulfilling, I must throw my artistic life a few rough winds. This can happen in terms of what I am writing about, whether I completely abandon a form that has become a bit rote or by using a topic that I find maddening to negotiate.

I began my book escapade with Eros the Bittersweet by Anne Carson. A heady, wonderful book that, like much of Anne Carson, befuddles and enlightens at the same time. Then I read The Slave by Isaac Bashevis Singer an incredibly fanciful, depressing work in which no culture, religion, or character escapes a painful ending. Then, W by Georges Perec, quite possibly one of the most brutal, shocking books I’ve ever read about the Holocaust. He sneaks up on you, plying you with seemingly inane statistics and memories and then bashes you over the head with a mountain. It was amazing I could get out of bed the next day. Then, The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx. Don’t see the movie, read the book, I was revolted and riveted. Now, I’m tackling the book Stoner by John Williams. Another quiet, painful illuminator.

February 2013

All this makes me believe that part of being an artist means diving into the mess and seeing what happens to us, as a result, on the other side. In June 2009, when I started this blog post, my life was relatively stable, but, today, with an infant and two close loved ones dying, my emotional terrain is a mild earthquake on good days, a raging hurricane on others. Writing has definitely been incredibly difficult due to time constraints and energy. However, my reading seems to be going full force, similar to where I was in June 2009. These past few months the tone has definitely changed. The past few weeks I've read Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams and A God in the House--a series of essays about the writing life in relation to the divine. I've also been catching up on my Paris Reviews.

From a reading perspective, if reading is part of the writing process (compost, if you will, for the writing-to-be vegetable garden), then what is the benefit of constantly seeking to use reading to balance our emotional states? Unhinging us when we are calm, as I was in June 2009, or providing succor when we are stressed, as I have needed lately?  I am constantly amazed by writers who lean towards one end of the scale or the other emotionally. Writers who are always seeking to read things that are incredibly charged politically, angry, demanding response, causing them to rant and drink too much coffee (or whiskey). Or, writers who never want to read anything that stirs them. Who seek a constant state of calm, go for the "happiest" of stories, a soporific stupor to go with their chamomile tea. Doing this doesn't account for our responsibility as artists, in my opinion, to be emotional weathervanes while also helping steer the weather. What this means is that to produce deep, complicated, heart-bursting work, we need to allow the difficult and the soft in. We can't fill ourselves only with awful imagery and expect to produce anything resembling redemption. And, we can't sleep through our job either.

 

Maybe I'm the weird one, seeking always to stir things up when I feel too complacent. What can I say, I get itchy when everything is too calm. But, my current state of sadness and chaos doesn't allow much room for creation either, so I seek solace and attempt to persuade the wind in my head to slow. Audre Lorde once brilliantly said, "Shall I unlearn that tongue in which my curse is written," obviously referring to Eve, but I would say it is a prescription for all artists. We are a somewhat cursed lot if we take our job seriously. Our charge in life is to speak what we shouldn't, to write what causes distress in others, and to illumine the shadows. Doing that doesn't mean only eating bitterness or spewing light. It means holding both in our mouths, adding honey when we only have bile, and seeking tannin when we are filled with too much sun.

In the end effective art-making is opening others to all the facets of life and to do that we must unlearn, relearn, be conduits to it all once more and again.

Abundance

This word is thrown around a lot in America. We have it, yes, despite the economic woes currently creeping in. But I want to talk about cultivating abundance in terms of artistic process. Some may call it inspiration, others the "groove," still others call it mania. In my little circle of writer/painter/musician friends it seems there is always someone who has it and someone who is desperate to get it back. A poet friend of mine is overwhelmed with ideas at the moment. She can't go to bed at night because she is beseiged by lines pouring out. She has four books going at the same time. She's writing a screenplay. She goes to work figeting, desperate to get back to the notebook. Her fingers can't scribble fast enough. "This is the most productive time of my life," she gushes to me on the phone.

The thing about this person is that I don't think her abundance is by accident. That muse didn't just bite her on the butt because she finally wore tight pants. I have a theory and you may not like it. My poet friend, after moving every 6 months or so, has finally landed in one place for over a year. She has a steady job, all her books are in one place (yes, you other artists, we need all of them!), and she's surrounded by her friends.

We like to think that inspiration/abundance/wild creativity is something that just happens to us. Or, more interestingly, that it is brought on by other excesses--drinking hard, sleeping little, changing locations, jobs, etc. But lately I've been thinking just the opposite. What if a level of stability brings us abundance? I'm not talking about something that stifles. I'm talking about a bit of an artistic routine. Some of the most productive and creative people I know go to bed early. They eat nutritiously and rarely drink. Revolutionary?

We are all fed this idea of the successful artist as incredibly self-destructive. A musician friend of mine actually told me that a teacher once told him, "Wanna be great? Go to New York and get mugged." Why is this myth still proliferating? There are plenty of examples of phenomenal artists who abused themselves and were still filled with artistic abundance, yes. I know this. But let's think about it, seriously. The mind works best when it is fed, rested, and exercised. I've written my share of 2AM poems or vodka-induced reveries, but the true juice came after I had hiked 5 miles, eaten a huge bowl of whole-wheat pasta with spinach, and took my notebook with me.

Come on, you rebels. Create a little artistic abundance. I'll join you. Look for me with the green tea sitting by the brightest window.

Shifting and Sifting

Today on my daily hike I thought about the idea of what it is to shift as an artist. The weather here is extremely brisk (15 degrees) and the wind was fiercely moving across last night’s snow making ripples and dunes and erasing my footsteps almost as soon as I made them. I’ve begun the arduous (and sometimes joyful) task of looking through all the work I’ve done at the residencies I’ve attended this year and I’ve come to a conclusion: sometimes we write the same poem twenty different ways. It feels different when we are producing it, but when in the editing phase we discover, to our creative horror, that the piece has similar language, rhythm, and/or tone.

If we, as artists, are doing our work every day, plugging away at an idea or theme, what prevents this from happening? In other words, how can we shift into new territory without losing our voices? Picasso, of course, did intentional shifts. To me he had both skill and immense faith. And, I’m sure to some degree, he was not as afraid of failure as the rest of us. I don’t mean complete failure either (like no one will ever publish your work or buy your paintings again), I’m talking about leaving that space where we are praised and embraced as artists. A musician friend recently told me that loads of his community come to his gigs when he plays with his old band but hardly anyone shows up for the single and duo performances he does recently—and this is the creative work that thrills him, that he wants to share. His own shift as an artist has taken place, but upon leaving the familiar, he finds no one wants to join him there. And therein lies the fear we all have as artists. The truth is we can be the artist who just churns out the same stuff that we always have, floating along in our happy bubble of comfort (a visual artist friend talks about this often with me because she has a colleague that makes three times the money she does because he keeps cranking out the same landscape paintings that sell well) or we can stretch ourselves creatively. Because if we don’t, if we don’t run to the edge of the cliff and look off with the intention of falling into the swollen river below, what are we doing? Or, rather, what are we missing?

Creative shifts can be terrifying, as I’m discovering with my own work at the moment. But I keep thinking that a few months of floundering around in the rapids is worth the chance to see a new shore. Scientists spend years, sometimes their entire careers, in a place of failure. They are on one path and must radically shift their experiments, thoughts, etc. to get to a new place and a possible answer. If we approach our creative lives in the same way we might stop fearing what will be left behind and instead be awed by what at last has a chance to breathe and grow strong.

Armenian Cucumbers and How to Hypnotize a Chicken

Jentel Presents, the monthly presentation and reading done by the artists in residence, went wonderfully. We had a crowd of about 30 plus people in the local bookstore in Sheridan and the proprietress P. was a delight and set out plushy chairs and a lamp and created a stage for us. My fellow artists did beautifully and my reading went quite well. I read all new poems and they were received with delight. I was nervous because they are all about wildfires and this community really goes though it in the summer (two people died just a few weeks ago from a local fire). But the book sales (12!) told it all.

It was the first reading I’ve done in a while when I didn’t read a vegetable poem. It felt wonderful to be slowly leaving that part of my poetic life behind and beginning something new. Of course, I’m still a veggie devotee. The next day J., D., and I journeyed to the farmer’s market where I bought the biggest cucumber of my life. Armenian cucumbers are enormous and sweet and juicy. Even the big ones retain their delightful summer lushness. My chicken muse enjoyed riding this one with the help of J. (see picture).

And, since the chicken was out and about, S. graced us with stories of her upbringing in Napa where she and her sisters hypnotized their chickens. "It requires great gentleness, swiftness, and the ability not to laugh." She could, on a good day, before they got wise, line up 5 in a row, on their bellies, beaks pointed in a straight line. (see pictures with the gracious chicken muse, now prop)

Two of the people who came to the reading were the farmers who grew the cucumber. They saw me approaching their booth and said, “It’s the poet!! It’s the poet!!” with such glee I wanted to buy everything they were offering (their tomatoes are some of the best I’ve ever had anyway).

Sheridan, Wyoming: fantastic produce, generous people, cowboys with huge belt buckles that tip their hats when you walk by, cowgirls with sequined belts and tight jeans, bountiful sky, great thrift shops, and a community that digs poetry. What more could an artist want? Thanks, Jentel. Thanks, Sheridan. A girl couldn’t feel more welcome.

When All Pistons Do Not Fire, AKA Creative Funkdom

It has been 3 glorious weeks at Jentel and I've written more poems than I can believe (over 40). In a little more than 21 days many people here have experienced at least one or two days where the work just would not come. In a community environment such as this often those days were the same ones for each artist. The fiction writer, B., that I share my studio with, had a day when nothing was working. I could hear his curses mix with the gurgle of the river. That was the same day when two of the visual artists were stuck as well. And, then, well, I too fell victim to a brief time of drought.

Generally, while I believe it is important to nap, hike, and relax when the work isn't coming, I also believe in forcing the creative process a bit. Or, rather, sneaking up on the muse and pinching her butt. This can be accomplished in many different ways. Here, in Wyoming, I spent one day just hiking with the goal of getting as high as I could on the 1,000 acre wilderness. I recited lines of poems while hiking, shouting them to the wind, re-configuring their cadence and which syllables were stressed when, and whispering them to the grasshoppers. Then, I stripped and swam in the river (check out the river and my studio space with bones, etc. found on hike), letting the cool water have its way with my rigid intentions.

A few days ago was another day of general funkdom. So, I took off with my fellow artists to town and bought a bunch of colored chalk (while they stocked up on paint and rollers and cow figurines). The lovely J. gave me glassine paper (transparent, crinkly paper) that I layered on the mirror in my writing studio and plastered pictures to and wrote all over with markers (see picture). The huge paper gave me the freedom to write large, swirling words at a diagonal, all in caps, etc. The texture of it against the mirror glowed like a fire. Glittering and ready.

The visual artists graciously allowed me to use the big chalkboard in their studio common space and I wrote poems all over it in different colors with the knowledge that I could, and would, erase them shortly. This destruction gave my work a rapidity and intensity that mimicked the fires I was writing about. I wrote with the flat side as well as the pointy side of the chalk. The words themselves seemed to vibrate in the clouds of chalk dust. I added a friend’s musical score (check out picture) to the center of the board and wrote around it, under it, on it. The notes pulsed as the chalkboard bent and thumped against the wall under the pressure of my writing hand. The muse returned through the hills on a wild purple horse whose hooves pounded the rolling hills to crimson dust.

And then we had a glass of wine.

Arriving

Yesterday marked the beginning of my second week at my Jentel Residency in Banner, Wyoming. And, amazingly, it also marked the beginning of what feels like fall coming on here. Morning and evenings so cool I actually close the window to my bedroom. The residency is phenomenal. I feel incredibly thankful to be here.

The woman who runs things around here, L., is particularly wonderful. A real tall, beautiful Western woman with a great dog, Josie, horses and that ability to make you feel like there is nothing she can't handle. The place itself is spectacular, the bedrooms and bathrooms HUGE and full of color and antiques from around the world, the common room and kitchen large and full of light, and I get my own writing cabin (see picture) with woodstove, bookshelves and a recliner and blanket (where I've already taken one blissful nap).

There is a library, complete with ladder and computer, napping space under the main stairs (see picture of pillow insanity), mail area, laundry room, and a recreation room with so many movies it took the crew 30 minutes to pick one the other night. I heard The Scent of Green Papaya's lyric flute score wafting down into the kitchen as I made tea.

The crew consists of: J., a sculptor/painter from Baltimore who has an obsession with food consciousness, corporations, sculpy clay and optics (you peer into her little vial-contained clay-sculptures and discover a whole world), S., an abstract landscape printmaker and sculptor from Oakland who uses everything from ground up rocks and wild grasses outside her studio to pictures of rattlers devouring birds in her work, B., a fiction writer from Florida (who is originally from Alaska) whose work is bittersweet and incredibly funny, K., a painter from Oregon whose work is unbelievably visceral, is working entirely out of yellow and puts "bad" paintings in "time-out" at the edge of her studio, D., a landscape photographer originally from the Wisconsin, now in Louisiana, who specializes in disasters and has work of incredible precision and texture and me, the poet.

They are a wonderful, generous, gentle group of people who all pitch in to do the dishes and make dinner. After this first week we've gotten into a rhythm of knowing who stays up late working (me), who gets up super early (the fiction writer), who makes the best baked eggplant (S.) and who drinks the most wine (darn photographers). We've hiked together to the top of local peaks (see pictures) and spent time searching the bowels of local thrift stores for a pair of perfect cowgirl/boy boots (mine were $15). I am continually delighted to find myself paired with a group of artists who are so knowledgable, kind and darn fun to be around.

Yesterday after lunch we sat around and K. and S. compared stories from the 60s and 70s in New York, most of which are not fit for this blog!! S. told me about meeting Anais Nin at a friend's house, how she sat so proper and French and drank her tea with pinkie raised.

The days are spent working diligently on our projects (I've written about 20 new poems with at least 5-6 worth saving so far), walking the hills, biking on the ridiculous cruisers, wearing our orange vests when we leave the property or to make a cell call a mile up the road, and driving into Sheridan and the surrounding towns for a bit of local life. Sheridan is the closest town, with horse saddle makers, a good steak house (that we'll try out this weekend), a cute little coffee shop and a nice farmer's market, where the tomatoes are luscious and the cabbage bright.

Every morning I make my thermos of tea and work for several hours before emerging for my afternoon hike. Most of the artists take time for a swim in the creek or a nap or both. At night the sky fills itself with silver starlight and the smell of the alfalfa fields rises up all earthy and sweet bidding us to sleep well and dream wildly.

Them Bones or Antlers

Yesterday in my dance class we had a substitute teacher who wanted us to focus on our bones as we danced. We did a lot of jumping and shaking, the general “rattling of bones” kind of thing. And then we did these lovely circular movements with our arms and legs in space where the teacher asked us to still focus on our bones, but as light or liquid, as if they contained the ocean. It was a really enjoyable class, the mixture of rigidity and fluidity manifested in the body.

A few days ago I found a set of antlers outside my house (hence the photo). They were bleached by the sun, Georgia O’Keefe-esque. All of these things together got me thinking about art, in particular poetry and what the “bones” are for a poem. Many poets I know out here rail against form. They place their poems all over the page; they don’t pay attention to meter or line breaks. They don’t have the intentionality I believe that is needed for a poem to have backbone. These things are the poem’s bones.

A good friend of mine, S. Heit, is a master at the combination of these things—both maintaining form and allowing it to breathe a bit. As if her bones were unconstrained by skin. She places poems at the edge of a page, down towards the lower-left corner and they seem to sigh in place there. Land, if you will. She places them all along the left margin, beautifully spaced couplets and you have the sense that the lines are perfectly balanced in space like shelves ready to hold something. I’ve been thinking about form a lot lately in terms of the collaborative work I’ve been doing with several musicians. Their music seems to give me permission to break my usual form. Seems to demand it almost, as if my words reflect their music only when I use all the available space on the page. But, I still want each phrase to have vertebrae, to use all 207 bones of its body. I’m working on this and I’m thankful to have the opportunity to work with music to help me break-free from my previous poetic dance. By the way, S. Heit is a dancer. Perhaps all poets should dance to better see their words and ideas in a space larger than what fits in a printer.