Living the Comma #24

[The Stage is on Fire] is a page-turner in which, much like life, there are no easy answers and yet each step of the journey yields insight and hope. This work of heart must not be missed!

Melanie Faith

Creative Writing Teacher, Essayist & Poet.

Katie Steedly’s first-person piece [The Unspeakable Gift] is a riveting retelling of her participation in a National Institutes of Health study that aided her quest to come to grips with her life of living with a rare genetic disorder. Her writing is superb.

The Society of Professional Journalists

In recognition of receiving the Dateline Award for the Washingtonian Magazine essay, The Unspeakable Gift.

I thank you … It is the authenticity of your “class notes”; and it is the delicacy and skill with which you present the nuances of classroom life and the actuality of your students’ and fellow teachers’ lives.

Maxine Greene

Philosopher and Education Scholar

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Fuchsia funnels. Remembering. Ada Limón.

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out/ of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s/ almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving/ their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate/ sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees/ that really gets to me. When all the shock of white/ and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave/ the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,/ the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin/ growing over whatever winter did to us, a return/ to the strange idea of continuous living despite/ the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,/ I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf/ unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all. — Ada Limón, “Instructions on Not Giving Up”

Dear Writer Friends,

This is National Poetry Month and I want to talk about poetry. I want fuchsia funnels to break out of crabapple trees. I want green skin to grow over whatever winter did. I want to be the slick leaf unfurling like a fist to an open palm. Poetry is attention. Poetry is prayer. Poetry is instruction on how not to give up.

Writing can be a key to the strange idea of continuous living. That is balm. That is healing. That is peace. Continuous living is wearing prayers like shoes. (Thank you, Ruth Forman.) Continuous living is imagination making empathy possible. (Thank you, Maxine Greene.) Continuous living is living the comma. (Thank you, Virginia Highland Church Writing Group.)

Our next in person writing session is this Sunday, April 13 at VHC after snack time from 12:15 to 1:30.

To virtually connect with the group during our meetings, use this link — https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85095318186.

Our weekly Writer’s Hour will now meet on Wednesdays from 3-4. It is a chance to join and simply write for an hour in the afternoon. Join via this link — Writer’s Hour Link. (Thank you for the scheduling feedback I received last week.)

This week, I want to share the “I Remember” prompt I discovered in Jeannine Quellette’s Writing in the Dark writer’s community. It could be considered an introduction to writing a poem. Quellette explains:

Write an ‘I Remember’ piece—either random impressions (focus on specific, concrete, sensory observations as impressions) or one impression leading to another. These impressions do not need to be deep confessions about your life (though they may be if you wish, or, more precisely, if you must: often we are best served by writing what we must write but it can also be wonderful to be playful and see what emerges). The aim here, above all else, is to give vivid details including the names of people (Mrs. Beetroot) without explanation. And above all, remember that there is no need to interpret or philosophize about the memories. Can you share them so precisely that we understand for ourselves what they meant/mean? Can you resist the urge to explain, interpret, or reflect internally? Finally, can you push, pull, and wrestle these impressions into something that (at least loosely) resembles a story in the sense that there is a recognizable “aboutness” that we would be able to recognize and discuss, while still leaving them loose and fragmented?

A few Ada Limón resources — 1. A Poetry Foundation feature on Ada Limón, 2. A Poet Laureate Closing Event with Ada Limón, “Against Breaking: On the Public & Private Power of Poetry,” and 3. An On Being conversation with Ada Limón, “To Be Made Whole.”

As National Poetry Month gets underway, let’s listen to the conversation of trees. Let’s buzz like bees and sing like birds and howl like wolves. Let’s invent cures and create beauty and shatter shape. Let’s climb mountains and whisper secrets and fall in love.

From the heart of the comma,

Katie

Thank you for Living the Comma with me. This community is truly love and light. Subscribe to the Wide-Awakeness Project and share your light. It has never been more important.

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