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Immigrants, Centos, and Celebrations

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Last night I read at the annual 30 Poems in November reading, an annual event where each writer who participated in the fundraiser is asked to read one poem. Meanwhile, I’ve been overwhelmed by my writing/book-marketing to-do list, at the top of which is wrestling these poems to have something to send to donors by the end of the month, and continuing to spread the word about Immigrants through my web of connected networks while taking the first dips into investigating blogs, podcasts, social media sites, etc. where I don’t have a personal connection. (NOTE: Any suggestions are welcome!!!)

Most moving at last night’s reading was hearing from three of the students at the Center for New Americans who shared heart-felt writing in both English and their native languages, as well as their deep gratitude for the hard-working teachers at CNA who are helping them build their new lives.

As the negative rhetoric around immigrants starts to build again, with Republicans in Congress demanding changes in immigration policy in exchange for aid to the Ukraine that would make it even harder for people threatened by violence to escape to the safety of our country, I’m remembering a writing workshop I co-led for women in the border camp. We introduced the beautiful picture book, Somos Como Los Nubes (We Are Like the Clouds) by Salvadoran poet, Jose Argueta, which talks about the hopes and dreams of Central American children walking thousands of miles in search of safety.

Then we asked the women to write or draw their response to the book. One woman sat and started to cry. “I can’t write,” she told me. Having heard this many times from leading writing workshops for most of my adult life, I mustered up my Spanish to give her a pep talk on writers’ block. But she wasn’t talking about writers’ block. She was talking about illiteracy. I felt so embarrassed as I asked a more fluent Spanish speaker to act as her scribe, but recognized that my embarrassment was nothing compared to hers. And when it was time for her to share, her story, like every story we heard that day about kidnapping, lost livelihoods, rape, threatened or dead children broke our hearts.

While only one of the stories in Immigrants is about the border, I wrote the book to showcase all the ways that immigrants interface in our lives. While some of the stories are more political than others, in all of them, the human story takes center stage. As I worry about all the ways the U.S. is becoming less safe, it feels like an impossible nightmare to think about leaving my home to go somewhere strange and potentially unwelcoming, especially today as the winter sun is slicing a comforting wedge of light through my large porch windows. Yet, that’s what the immigrants coming to this country did–an act of incredible bravery to leave everything you know. And that’s what people displaced in wars have to do, with no opportunity for choice.

But I didn’t read a poem about politics last night. My poem, a cento, was about loving the world despite its difficulties. A cento, which is a collage of lines from other poems, might be a bit of a cheat, but hey, when you have to write 30 poems in a month, sometimes you need to take some shortcuts. And the fun thing about this one was that I only used poems for source material from the prompts that were sent out every day to participating writers.

So next time you’re stuck, leaf through some poems and write down lines that strike you (best if you’re not sure why) and then try to meld them together. I guarantee, this will be fun, even if you’re just tasting other people’s words, whether or not you come up with a poem of your own. Here are the first few lines of my cento. Poetic sources are from Mary Oliver, Dean Young, Mahmoud Darwish, Winnie Lewis Gravitt and Richard Fox.

VOCATION

My work is loving the world.
Because of you, I’m talking to crickets, clouds.
I have a saturated meadow,
where, like plants sprouting where they don’t belong,
sorrow, grief and trouble sit like blackbirds on the fence
scanning the topography of prayer

Showing Up

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Last night I participated in an on-line reading organized by Colossus Press to celebrate their newest anthology of writing about the body. I was happy to be one of eight featured readers sharing deeply personal and compelling material. Tonight, I’m heading to our local monthly reading, Writers Night Out, to see my friend Carolyn Cushing, the poet laureate of Easthampton. Tomorrow night, if I didn’t have another meeting, I’d be hanging out on Zoom with my poetry gals extraordinaire, an invaluable support and critique group that someone I met at Writers Night Out invited me to join. Had I not come that night, I never would have found these folks. Yet, as usual, I had to ignore my introvert leanings and force myself to go.

Showing up pays off–nearly all of the time. As much as I might not be able to totally void myself of the notion that the ideal writer lives alone in a cabin in the woods and doesn’t speak to anyone for days in order not to interrupt the precious chantings of the muse, I’m happiest in my writing when I know there are others on my team who are all rooting for each other–supporting each other through challenges and celebrating successes.

I met my life partner, Shel at the first poetry reading I dared go to, in Greenwich Village when I was in my early 20s. My inner hermit screamed for mercy as I walked up five floors of smelly stairs in a green-walled brownstone tenement, finally landing in a messy closet kitchen, where poet Emilie Glen, a woman in her 70s with dyed blond hair wearing a frilly pink negligee, greeted me effusively. Welcome! Her accent had a tinge of south in it. Would you like orange juice, lemonade, or passion fruit? 

Shel and me in front of 77 Barrow Street in 2014. We met at a reading in this building in 1978.

Emilie’s reading attracted a quirky crowd, from established New York beat poets to street people, and getting to know them opened the gates of my world. I quickly made a new set of friends, as I did again when I moved to western Massachusetts and got involved with Amherst Writers & Artists and the National Writers Union (where I found my fiction group that’s been meeting for more than 30 years). More recently, I’ve made new relationships from my involvement locally with Straw Dog Writers Guild and the Forbes Library Writing Room, and–more peripherally–with my Lesley MFA alums and people around the country I’ve connected with through offering work to their journals and anthologies. What I love about these communities is that they’re mixed: containing people who’ve accomplished far more than I have as a writer and also people who have not yet been published. Yet, there’s no hierarchy. Everyone’s work is taken seriously.

As shameful as it is to admit, there was a time in my life, shortly after my two YA novels were published in 2006 by “the big guys” (Simon & Schuster and Farrar, Straus, Giroux) that I broke away from many of these community writing groups. I’m a real writer, now. I told myself. I don’t need to hang with the “wannabees” any more.

I could not have been more wrong.

In hindsight, I equate my bad behavior as analogous to suddenly being accepted into the “mean girl clique,” and thinking that to stay there, I, too, had to act like a “mean girl” –better than everyone else. But when the “big guys” didn’t accept any more of my books and I was metaphorically kicked out of the clique, I found myself with much less of a writing community. While my inner hermit enjoyed the reprieve from being “on” so much of the time, the rest of me felt lonely and depressed.

It’s taken years to build back to a place where I have many friendships and mutual support networks with other writers. And I feel so much gratitude that they (along with my other networks of friends and family) are supporting me by buying and spreading the word about my new book, Immigrants, just as I will continue to make the effort to buy and spread the word about their books.

And, whenever I can, I will show up.

 

Poem Wrestling

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Today I completed Poem #30 for the 30 Poems in November fundraiser for the Center for New Americans–a day ahead of schedule, Whew!

Since tomorrow is still November, I may attempt a final poem. Usually, I like to write a cento (a collage poem using lines from other poems) from all the poems offered as prompts over the month. That will enable me to drop a poem that’s not working when I compile my collection of 30, kind of like having the option to eliminate the lowest grade on a series of quizzes!

Of course, at this point, many of these baby poem-drafts aren’t working too well, and getting rid of only one won’t solve that problem. That’s where poem-wrestling comes in. My December writing focus will be on honing these poems into a shape I can share with those who donated to the fundraiser without being too embarrassed about them, even though most of them will still be far from my perfectionist standards.

But perhaps, part of this practice is also about being more comfortable showing my flaws in public–as I did, last weekend when I was asked to be part of the rotation of family musicians and play five minutes of background music on the piano for the appetizer hour of my nephew’s wedding celebration. I NEVER play the piano in front of other people, as those who are familiar my journey back to claiming my piano-playing past (which I wrote about in my not-yet-published memoir, Imperfect Pitch) already know. But I said yes, because I’m loyal to my family and my brother assured me no one would be listening. So, here I was, first on the list of the family players approaching the ivory among the (thank heavens) rising din of chatter. I pretended I was alone and played the pieces I’d prepared, even adding a little klezmer-inspired tune I’d composed on the spot the day before when humming to my grandchild to get him to take a nap.

I actually had fun, because I really was able to play as if I were alone in the room. And I think that’s what I’m going to have to do as I wrestle these 30 poems–pretend I’m alone in the room and see where they want to go without thinking too much about the added pressure of having to share them.

What will poem wrestling entail? Many things, but briefly–zeroing in on what the poem is really about and then thinking about whether each image builds on that or feels like a random aside. Also, looking closely at language and form: how do the words sound on the page. I play a lot with rhythm and repetition of sound patterns. I also look for places I can improve enjambments or use space more strategically.

And because I’m a perfectionist, I’m often writing 3 or 4 or 5 versions of each poem, then letting a version sit for a couple of days before reviewing it. Sometimes I’m so bemused by what I’ve done as in that funny Christine Lavin song, What Was I Thinking, I go back to an earlier version.

And as the days of December wane and my deadline for sending the poems to donors looms, like the cat hesitating at the open door, (an image in the poem I wrote today) I’ll just have to go bravely into the headwind.

 

 

The Perils of Publication

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Last Thursday evening, as I was packing frantically to leave the next morning for a week-long trip for family events in Minneapolis, I got an email from my editor that my book, Immigrants, was finally live on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, and Google Books. I still don’t have my author’s copies or any indication of what the final product (post proof corrections) looks like in print, so it felt a bit illusory to suddenly be published in the digital universe with no hard evidence.

Yet, finally here it was–available for any and all to read. And like–or not. And praise–or not.

While publishing is the goal for many writers, it’s also terrifying. Because even when it’s fiction–as this book is, your book is still a process of excavating the deepest things that matter to you and spilling them to the universe. And when you’re published, you no longer get to control who reads your work and what they’ll say about it. In fact, your goal is to get as many people as possible to buy your book in order to make your sales numbers look good.

This is why I always try to buy the books of writer friends I know, even if it might take a few months before I’ve have time to read them. And this year I’ve had some wonderful reads! Highlights were for adult fiction: Gene Luetkemeyer’s, My Year at the Good Bean Cafe, and Katheryn Holzman’s, Granted; for YA: Benjamin Roesch’s, Blowing My Mind Like a Summer Breeze, and Jeannine Atkins’ Hidden Powers; for memoir, Magdalena Gomez’s, Mi’ja and Ani Tuzman’s, Angels on the Clothesline; for creative non fiction, Anne and Christopher Ellinger’s Authentic Fulfillment; for poetry, Rich Michelson’s, Sleeping as Fast as I Can  and Lindsay Rockwell’s Ghost Fires, and for a book on writing, Tzivia Gover’s Dreaming on the Page. (Note: While I mostly used Amazon hyperlinks, because that was easiest to search for, most of these books can also be ordered from a local bookstore, or you can contact the author or publisher if you prefer not to use Amazon.)

And if you have something complimentary to say–whether you know the author or not–it can be very helpful to leave a short review (1 to 2 sentences is generally sufficient). If you’re not an Amazon user, they sometimes won’t let you onto their platform, but Goodreads is also an option, as is simply spreading the word to friends you think might also like the book.

So, here’s my shameless way of pivoting to book marketing–a task I find as appealing is cleaning the toilet. If you feel so moved, I’d be honored if you buy a copy of Immigrants. And if you like it, please do leave a review. Or write to me and let me know what you thought. And while you’re at it, please check out some of the titles above.

 

 

Back to Bach

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On January 6, 2021, as reports from the Capitol insurrection filtered through the news channels and my social media feeds, I sat at the piano and worked through Bach’s Italian Concerto, note by endless note. Playing enabled me to return to breath, lassoing my mind away from the pictures and videos that were plastering the news. And Bach had an order that could be anticipated, a calming hand on my shoulder saying things would be okay.

As my social media feeds heat up again with the war in the Middle East and I find myself holding the pain, fear, and anger of people I love–whose perspectives range from strongly pro-Israel to strongly pro-Palestine–I find myself back at the piano with Bach. This time, I’m trying to learn a fugue. While I can take some pleasure in seeing how far I’ve progressed in my piano skills–especially when I take time off note-learning to play the Italian Concerto and see how smoothly it’s sailing through my fingers–the bigger issue that gnaws at me is how we as human beings can ever pursue paths of peace.

I have no answers to that (even though the ever self-chiding part of me thinks I should) but I keep coming back to Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk, The Dangers of a Single Story. Someone with a pro-Israel perspective is going to tell a very different story of the situation from someone with a pro-Palestine perspective, and each will be influenced by their own experience and values. Since the situation is so complicated, there will be truth in both versions–as well as in the many versions and perspectives that lie somewhere in between.

In fiction writing, a common character development exercise is to switch the point of view. It’s amazing how much you can learn when you suddenly assign the narration to a different character in the action. In the process of deeply inhabiting someone else’s mind, you discover what previous experiences shaped them, and what’s at stake for them as a result. Taking the time to understand your story from another character’s point of view also helps to make sure you don’t develop flat one-sided characters, and that you understand and are able to project the humanity in your chosen “villains.”

My hope is that wherever we are, we can take a step back from ourselves and see the very real emotions this conflict has raised for everyone involved in it. And to also take a moment–or many moments–to mourn for everyone, especially the children, who have been hurt or killed, regardless of which side they come from. I’ve felt a glimmer of hope from learning about a group called Standing Together, an Israeli grassroots movement pursuing “peace and independence for Israelis and Palestinians, full equality for all citizens, and true social, economic, and environmental justice,” who warn of the dangers of choosing only “one side” of the story to cling to.

So, as I go back to the fugue, I’m going to try to amplify the different voices as best as I’m able to bring them out. And hope that maybe some time in the future, the voices in Israel/Palestine, while still contrapuntal, will resolve from dissonance into harmony. It’s a dream, I know, but as the people in Standing Together say, “where there is struggle, there is hope.”

Mindfulness and Found Poems

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We’re a week into 30 Poems in November, and I have eight poems. The days leading up to this practice (as I wrote about last week) always feel like the hardest, especially in those moments before I squeeze out the first poem and realize, hey, it isn’t so bad. I can do this. And suddenly something shifts. I enter November, a month that’s always been a downer for me due to the sudden onslaught of afternoon darkness, in a new state of mindfulness that starts to mitigate the pressure to produce. I can’t explain exactly what that is, but the practice of capturing something in a poem every day puts me in a headier zone, and I start to look at things differently. Even today, when I sat down to try to write Poem #9 and came up empty (so I started to write this blog post instead), I found myself intrigued by the leaves’ dance outside my window in that brilliant, but all-too-fleeting  sun.

Knowing that I’m impacted by Seasonal Affective Disorder raises the stakes on my personal to-do list. Not only do I have to write 30 poems in November, I have to get outside every day, targeting the time when the sun is at its strongest. This puts a crimp in my writing schedule since the morning light is the best. There’s nothing more demoralizing than watching the sun beginning to sink over horizon at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. But morning is also when my writing brain is at its best, so something has to give.

Still, outdoors is a great place to be mindful. When I’m out with my 13-month old grandchild, I try to tune in to what he might be noticing: the birds tweeting, the random ding dong of the wind-chimes, the thrill of a spread of cool garden rocks to sift through, and hold, and fling down, listening to the satisfying clink. These were some of the images that made it into my poem yesterday.

And even though I strongly recommend it, you don’t really need to go outside if that doesn’t call to you. Today, one of the prompts I received in my Zoom writing group was to use found words to create a poem. Simply open up a book and circle random words, or pick a passage and erase sections of it, creating a poem out of what’s left. Or, make a poem out of random newspaper headlines (if you can stand writing something that’s likely to be depressing). Or, as I started to do, list what you notice about your surroundings. My cat, who has taken over my yoga mat, is SO content basking in the sun. And those fuzzy empty slippers by the porch door sure look cozy.

I didn’t end up using these images this time, but I did write a found poem from a cookbook I have called Flavors of Jerusalem, which helped me process a lot of the difficult feelings I’ve had about the conflict without the need to be didactic or even mention the war. Metaphors are great in that way. I’d much rather write about cumin and paprika than airstrikes. And mindfulness is a way of thinking about what these spices evoke, and tuning in to which images: spices, cats, slippers, or whatnot, you might need to enhance the flavor of your writing.

Pressure and Practice

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From the Center for New Americans: www.cnam.org

Once again, I’m taking on the challenge of writing 30 Poems in November as a fundraiser to benefit the Center for New Americans, a wonderful organization in our community that provides English classes and other assistance for immigrants. And once again, as the calendar reels toward November 1, I’m feeling the pressure and panic. How will I ever write 30 poems in a month? How will I even write one poem? Will I ever write a poem again? Adding to the pressure, I’ve promised to share the poems with those who’ve contributed to my fundraiser (if they want them) and I feel like I need to reach some minimal standard in order to avoid total embarrassment.

So, in the last few days of October, even though I’ve had more free time than I’ll likely have in November, where I have (on top of my regular commitments) two sets of guests, a week away for a family event, and a book coming out at the end of the month, I’ve been refraining from writing poems–hoping that whatever might be simmering will build up to a boiling overflow of precious words the minute the calendar page turns. If only I weren’t such a “good girl,” I could write today, or cheat and count some of the poems I wrote earlier in October in the mix, but the beauty of this challenge for me is in the practice of sitting down every single day in November and attempting to write something I can wrestle into a “poem” that counts in the total.

Emphasized word here is not “poem” but practice.

Some of us might practice yoga, or meditation, or a musical instrument, or our dance moves. But it’s hard to think of practicing writing. Too many of us (myself included) expect that everything we write needs to have some productive purpose. And while those of us in the wonderfully supportive writing community that’s sprung up around this annual November fundraiser often remind each other that it’s “okay if the poems are bad,” this still implies a judgment of our work, which doesn’t need to be there.

We’re simply practicing.

If this year is similar to past years, it’s likely I’ll write a few poems I’m very happy with, several others that have potential, which I’ll noodle with until I either abandon them or send them out, and others that I’ll immediately file away as inactive. It doesn’t matter, I’ll be writing. And when I send November’s poetry harvest to those donors who’ve requested it, I’ll add the reminder that these are “poems-in-progress,” not finished masterpieces. A rehearsal, not a performance.

And like in music, or dance, or yoga, practicing does pay off. I’ve done this practice for seven years, which means I’ve drafted 210 poems. 47 of them, more than 20 percent, have been published, often years after I wrote them and in versions that were quite different from my initial November drafts.

If you’d like to contribute to my fundraiser, you can do so here. Or, you can sign up and do your own 30 poems this November. It’s not too late! As bonus, you get a prompt by email every day from the marvelous 30 Poems Coordinator, Sarah Sullivan–and as I stated in an earlier post, prompts can be your golden ticket to creativity. I’ve found that doing this practice in November is a great way to keep my spirits up in the encroaching late-afternoon darkness. And I promise you, your poems don’t have to be good–or bad–or anything that carries a label of judgment. They just have to be.

The Power of Witness

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Earlier this week I published an op-ed in our local newspaper the Daily Hampshire Gazette, that had left me feeling pretty raw when I wrote it. So I found myself waiting hungrily for reactions–emails from people who might have seen it, or likes and comments when I shared it on Facebook. At the same time, I was disparaging myself from being too caught up in my ego, as I kept drifting away from what I was doing to check my email and for Facebook reactions. I’m not one of those people who needs constant ego stroking, I reminded myself. I write things, I put them out, and then, there they are. It’s not about me, it’s about the work. 

Yet, even though I never stopped owning that last statement as the truth, I kept on checking–until the likes and comments started whooshing in. At that point, I could finally let it go. Not because my ego had been mollified, but because I’d been heard. In fact, one of the most valuable comments I received that day was one word–heard. No judgment given on whether the reader liked the piece, whether she agreed, whether she thought I was “good” or “talented” (whatever those two words mean). Just that she’d heard what I needed to say.

This is the power of witness, of reading one’s words out loud to an audience, or publishing them somewhere so others can read them. I believe that those of us who are driven to write do so because there are some things that are really important to us that we need to say. And when we share our words with others, we’re often asking them not to critique our structure or language choices, or comment on our writing worthiness. We simply want them to listen.

Of course, I’m touched when people tell me they like my writing. And I’m not immune to negative judgment–especially from the gatekeepers of the writing world: teachers, editors of literary journals, writers with higher celebrity status than I have.  Nor am I immune to to glowing when I receive praise–especially from writers I respect who know how hard all of this is, or from those same literary gatekeepers.

But ultimately what I want to know when I share a piece is that you feel me!

This doesn’t mean it’s okay to sacrifice artfulness or craft just to let go of a cathartic mess. Although there are times when that’s what we need to do to make peace with some aspect of our own life, if we choose to take the next step and make our writing public, we owe our witnesses a writer’s ear for precise and evocative language and an editor’s careful eye for clarity. Though this issue is up for debate in the literary world, I believe that writing can be “sentimental,” but, as this article in Ploughshares explains, it needs to earn the emotions it evokes. But by being brutally honest with yourself, a goal I’ve set that I’m continuing to get closer toward, you can get to the emotional heart of something more easily than you think.

And if you can use your art to touch the emotion in yourself, then it’s likely, your readers will also feel those emotions resonating within themselves.

And hopefully, they’ll take the time to tell you, I feel you. You’ve been heard.

 

 

 

 

I was trying to hold pain–my own, which was fairly inconsequential when compared with the larger pain of people in Israel and Gaza, whose lives have been upended by the recent violence. I framed the op-ed around my day-to-day life, much of which involves caring for a one-year-old