[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!
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.
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.
Find a draft that you’re interested in shaking up, and for every verb in the piece make a list of 5-10 alternative verbs. Let most of them be in the synonymy ballpark but let a few wander off. For instance, if your verb is walk, you might try amble, mosey, gallivant, traipse, trespass, maraud, masquerade, mangle. You might even (as I just did) allow your verb choice to be guided as much by sound (maybe alliteration, maybe rhyme, maybe meter) as “meaning.” See where that takes you.
EXERCISE 002: WHISPER IN THE ARCHIVES
Someone is studying
I watch peaches grow in a small orchard in Piedmont Park during the spring and summer near my house. The orchard lives in the heart of the park next to the popular dog park. It holds sacred space for me. Until I started moving through the park, past the orchard, I had no relationship with peaches beyond a summer love affair. I had no idea how long it takes for peaches to become peaches or even if peaches grew on trees. Today, the orchard is refuge. It is dawn and dusk. It is inhale and exhale. It is where I leave noise and fear behind alongside the constancy and confidence of nature.
It seems to me an archive of the 21st century must record that nature is still nature, perfect time is still perfect time, and sweetness is still sweetness. Today, when so much is upside down and sideways — and just plain painful — peaches are still peaches.
EXERCISES 252: REVISE WITH REARRANGEMENT
the order of things
Find a draft that you’re interested in shaking up and change the order of things. Maybe you make what is first last, or what is last first. Maybe it’s several stanzas, and you switch them around a few times to see what happens, to see what it shows you.
EXERCISE 089: SAVE THE SUN
haul the sun up
A 5-Step Plan to Haul Up the Sun In the Morning
Step five in a plan to haul up the sun — fall apart and back together. Falling apart and back together — invoking the work of Pema Chōdrōn — is the heart of the haul. Mornings are series of aparts and back togethers, pushing the boundaries of light and dark to a next level experience of choosing breath and tomorrow and life. Step three in a plan to haul up the sun — decide toward morning again and again and again. Hauling up the sun requires decision muscle exercise. Every. Day. Like working out in the gym. That requires strength, too. Step one in a plan to haul up the sun — breathe again and again and again. There is no strength without breath. Step four in a plan to haul up the sun — celebrate light and dark. Hauling up the sun requires moving between light and dark. Hauling up the sun requires living through light and dark. Hauling up the sun requires thriving in the light and dark. Step two in a plan to haul up the sun — be like plants. Hauling up the sun requires we head to the light like plants growing toward the sun.
EXERCISE 253: REVISE WITH A NEW FORM
never written
Find a draft that you’re interested in shaking up. Put it into (this probably means “revise it into”) a form in which you have never written. Maybe it’s a sonnet or a ghazal or a pantoum or a villanelle or a gigan (Ruth Ellen Kocher) or a duplex (Jericho Brown).
EXERCISE 036: BEGIN WITH THE END
Cirrus whispering
Anadiplosis is the rhetorical and poetic device in which words at the end of a line are in some way taken up at the beginning of the following line./ Write a poem of no more than twenty lines that uses anadiplosis, has four instances of end-rhyme, two birds you know the name of but couldn’t identify if you saw them, and some lyrics from a hymn.
Birds
Like some Exclamatory Paradise-Whydah, I set out to find heaven./ I traveled between oceans and up mountaintops./ Jumped through hoops and pulled out stops./ I waded in water. I measured my steps. I searched for great faithfulness./ I heard the sound of one voice. I felt amazing grace.
Oh, King-of-Saxony Bird-of-Paradise. Oh, Invisible Rail./ Your majesties carry me to heaven./ Your bread knows sacred leaven./ You stitch and soar. You are anchor and oar./
Oh, Tinkling Cisticola. Oh, Sandy Gallito./ Your majesties ground me in heaven on earth./ Precious birds take my hands./ Soar skies and build nests./ Guide dreams and quests.
Oh, Fluffy-backed Tit-Babbler. Oh, Kori Bustard. We will know heaven by our love. By our love./ Love divine./ All loves excelling./ On wings of angels we tell./ Abide we me.
EXERCISE 254: REVISE WITH GARDEN SHEARS
start cutting
Find a draft that you’re interested in shaking up. Take out your scalpel and start cutting. No, let’s say your garden shears. Yeah, take out garden shears or (and!) pruners and start cutting anything that seems extraneous, or, to keep the garden/pruning metaphor going, like it’s interfering with the growth of the tree or shrub or whatever you’re trying to make most beautiful/fruitful/bird-friendly, etc.
EXERCISE 059: HONOR THE ANIMAL
a critter you find
Think of an animal or critter you find off-putting, even repulsive, one that you do not particularly want to look at or touch, or perhaps one you find plain dull. Pay that animal or critter 100 compliments.
Armadillos
Bony plate superheroes. Little armored one. Poor eyesight. Keen smell.
Birth to four identical quadruplets. You are used to study leprosy because you are the only mammal, other the humans, that can contract it. You can hold your breath for up to six minutes.
Bony plate superheroes. Little armored one. Poor eyesight. Keen smell.
Your ancestors, as big as Volkswagen Beetles, once roamed across the Americas beginning around 20 million years ago. Your outer shell is composed of ossified dermal scutes covered by non overlapping, keratinized epidermal scales, which are connected by flexible bands of skin. You possess the teeth typical of all sloths and anteaters.
Bony plate superheroes. Little armored one. Poor eyesight. Keen smell.
A compliment poem woven from Wikipedia, Natural Geographic, and the National Wildlife Federation.
EXERCISE 255: REVISE WITH AN ILLUSTRATION
a curious juxtaposition
Find a draft that you’ve been wanting to revise. Add an image. You can sketch a quick line drawing, pull a meme from the internet, or paste a photo from an old newspaper onto the page. The image may directly illustrate the text, if that is to your liking. Or make it wholly irrelevant for a curious juxtaposition.
EXERCISE 057: HONOR THE BLOOM
you encounter today
Magenta sunshine heart burst blessing blue green sea./ You listen to the music of waves crashing and light house horns singing and children dancing./ You laugh with the wind over jagged ancient rocks that tell the story of the earth before time./ You write tomes about cold winters and early mornings and ship wrecks and vacation yachts./ You tell earth, air, and sea secrets./ You know perfect time. Blooming is perfect time. Beyond pain. Beyond silence. Beyond death./ You know beauty. That beauty grows in the cracks. That beauty heads toward the sun. That beauty that lingers, softens, and survives./ You know breath. Salt air. Deep roots. Petals touch the sky.
