Feast of Words!

In the spirit of thanks giving, please join me for the second annual Feast of Words!

I've set the table and I'm ready to eat. Please share with me your poems, prayers, paragraphs & praise.

Send me your words — small starts, lines of hope, your stories, your flash, your fiction, your long list or one true thing.

I'll collect and gather, and post your works here. Got a blog or a book? Send a link, and pass the potatoes.

To take part, simply post your thankful-themed word-works in the comment section below, or email me at dcm@drewmyron.com.

It's the season of gratitude. Let us savor and share.

On Sunday: Bandaging the Words

A page from Melody: The Story of A Child, an erasure poem by Mary Ruefle.

"I use white-out, buff-out, blue-out, paper, ink pencil, gouache, carbon, and marker," Ruefle explained in Gulf Coast journal. "Sometimes I press postage stamps onto the page and pull them off–that literally takes the text right off the page! Once, while working on an all-white erasure, I had the sense I was somehow blinding the words–blindfolding the ones I whited-out, and those that were left had to become, I don’t know, extra-sensory or something. Then I thought no, I am bandaging the words, and the one left were those that seeped out."

To see more of Melody, go here (provided by Gwarlingo).

To learn more about Ruefle, and her erasures, go here.

Thankful Thursday: From the Shallow End

I've got the giggles.

During this month of official thanks giving, many people are posting daily gratitudes on Facebook. But instead of joining in their earnest efforts I feel like the kid in church, doubled over and snorting with inappropriate laughter.

I just wanna have fun.

On this Thankful Thursday, I am splashing in the shallow end. I'll be back to laps and diligence shortly but for now, please join me in gratitude for the light side. It's a large pool, there's room for all sorts of thankful.

Shallow, Light Delights

1.
Poems inspired by the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
This show is a screeching wreck. I can't stand these people, and I can't turn away. Poet Leigh Stein is making art of the camp — or is it camp of the "art" ?

2.
Lipstick
My new favorite is Just Bitten Kissable Balm Stain
(yes, the name is ridiculous).

3.
Magazine Binge
Vogue, Elle, More, Vanity Fair, O  . . .
About twice a year, I indulge in a magazine marathon. I've got more, ummm, literary choices stacked up around the house, but like overloading on junk food, returning to good-for-me reading is so much better after all that easy, nutrition-less munching. 

And speaking of munching . . .

4.
Mixed Nuts —  my everymeal!
It's a salt fix, a party mix, a salad topping, and when you add a few raisins, it's a sweet.

It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express gratitude for the people, places and things that bring joy. What are you thankful for today?

On Sunday: Less Lonely

But of course, poetry has its balms.

It makes us less lonely by one.

It makes us have more room

inside ourselves.

- Kay Ryan
from The Paris Review
The Art of Poetry: No. 94

What ignited you?

Recognize this book? This 1966 gem — written by Joan and Roger Bradfield, and illustrated by Winnie Fitch — set my career path. From the first page I knew where I was headed:

Who are you? What's your name?
Would you like to play a game?
Let's pretend we haven't met.
I'll ask you questions, now get set.

As a child this book urged and encouraged my natural curiosity. I peppered everyone with questions, and years later, became a newspaper reporter (and later, writer / editor / poet, etc). I'm still asking questions. Intrigued by path, process and personality, always I wonder: Who are you? What shaped your life?

I like this response, from Frederick Buechner in Listening to Your Life:

By the time I was sixteen, I knew as surely as I knew anything that the work I wanted to spend my life doing was the work of words. I did not yet know what I wanted to say with them. I did not yet know in what form I wanted to say it or to what purpose. But if a vocation is as much the work that chooses you as the work you choose, then I knew from that time on that my vocation was, for better or worse, to involve that searching for, and treasuring, and telling of secrets which is what the real business of words is all about.

And in this excerpt from the poem, When I Am Asked, Lisel Mueller poignantly reveals what led her to write:

It was soon after my mother died . . .

I sat on a gray stone bench
ringed with the ingenue faces
of pink and white impatiens
and placed my grief
in the mouth of language,
the only thing that would grieve with me.

Now it's your turn:  

Who are you? Tell me, please, what ignited your writing life?