What is unearthed in the toil of water, the push and pull of the waves? Bits of stone, broken branch, remnants from yesterday’s brush with a storm. All of it lifted by the undercurrent and transported. Transformed. Renewal in the flow of water.
#AmReading Ted Kooser: poems, nonfiction, craft
The Poetry Home Repair Manual (2005)
Poems that change our perception are everywhere you look, and one of the definitions of poetry might be that a poem freshens the world.
. . . .
But how do you come up with ideas?
You sit with your notebook, and after a while something begins to interest you. The poet William Stafford described it as being like fishing: you throw out your line and wait for a little tug. Maybe all you get is a minnow, three or four words that seem to have a little magic, but even that can be enough to get the writing started. And a minnow can be pretty good bait for bigger fish.
Official Entry Blank (1969)*
From “Man Opening a Book of Poems”
Turning a page as if it were a rock, / he bends and peers beneath it cautiously, / Waving its wet antennae to the light, / a poem in its narrow, ambling track / stops dead and lifts its mossy mouth to him.
(* This one’s out of print, so check your library.)
The Wheeling Year (2014)
From “January”
Part of my morning ritual is to put on my shoes without sitting down, and by this demonstrating to myself that I am not so old as to topple over into a steaming heap when trying to balance on one leg.
What are you reading these days?
Through stories we transcend.
“It’s very important to transcend the places that hold us.”
~ Rubin Carter in “The Hurricane”
The air is weighted with disappointment, fear, anger. You walk around in a daze, watch ridiculous shows on TV, flare up in anger at the slightest setback. You could stay in that corner, grow silent, be polite. (But you have been polite long enough.) What holds you back from speaking your mind? What stops you from telling your story? It’s one thing, it’s a million. It’s the pounding of your heart in the face of a stranger, your arms frozen at your side. It’s the pull at the back of your head and the voice inside that says, whatever you write down will not be enough. It’s the fear of being vulnerable. Will they listen? Does it matter?
Yes. You are not alone. Our stories connect us. Those connections carry us forward. Speak up, in person or on the page. How else will we transcend?
