Making a poem can be a way to get your mind clear when you’re facing a major crisis. My friend (George) Cameron Keys was the featured poet at one of our Maui Live Poets sessions at the Makawao Library. To help him read his work, he asked another friend, Paul Janes-Brown, a noted actor in our local theater. Cameron said he was afraid that if he read his own work he would start crying. Paul’s reading of this poem got…
For a long while now, I’ve been trying to figure out why certain works of art (and poetry) speak so strongly and most others don’t. I am thinking that it could be the ones that shout out loud really are attempts by the artist to actually say something Real. What makes it Real is the courageous, open connection and access to the artist’s heart, it seems. A lot of times we shy away from being that exposed…and maybe that’s why…
I felt silly the first time I tried this. I had to talk myself into it over and over again. I mean …REALLY. You set a plastic mechanical timer (preferably one that is shaped like a tomato because it’s traditional) for 25 minutes, and then you go do a thing you’ve been putting off (like writing a blog or a poem, for instance). When the bell rings, you stop and rest for at least five minutes. Repeat, repeat, repeat. (It’s…
You’ve probably seen this image before. It’s a cartoon of your brain’s hemispheres and the kinds of thoughts each half of your brain handles. Left brain is straight-line, logical, and full of words and numbers and measurements and stuff like that. Right brain meanders around, spiraling in and out, just seeing what-is and mostly having a hard time talking about it. I was reading Leonard Shlain’s book, THE ALPHABET VERSUS THE GODDESS: The Conflict Between Word and Image. In it,…
Everybody says it. It’s probably even true: “Writers write.” They write because they can’t NOT write. The whole not-writing thing is unsatisfactory. They feel unsettled if they don’t capture the thoughts they think somehow…. And the best thing about writing, of course, is having written. Then you can go do other things. So…you want to be a Writer? Write. Every day. Write. You don’t have to use high-falutin’ words. You can make lists. You can make notes to yourself or…
I am one of those poets Life built: I have no “creds” as a poet, but I do know that making a certain type of poem helped me keep my head straight through a number of karmic dust storms that blew away the world as I knew and liked it. I guess you could call it home-grown, dirt-cheap psychotherapy. All you really need to do it is paper, a pencil or a pen, and an awareness of the need to…