Poetry Saves Lives

The 2014 Dodge Poetry Festival reminded me that firmness and certainty are antithetical to truly magical writing--or at least to the type of writing I enjoy. I encountered none of this at Dodge.

Everyone I met and listened to at readings and panels seemed curious and generous. Perhaps the only certainty embraced was this: poetry should be an act of love.

Three magical moments for me: receiving a page of haiku from a stranger, listening to Dan Vera read, and receiving a handmade chapbook from a guy who admitted that poetry helps him cope with depression. While the first dozen or so pages are full of his poems, the back pages of the book are full of hotlines and numbers people can call for help if they are struggling with depression or suicidal thoughts.

While this Festival clearly addressed the engines of war and imprisonment that our country too often relies upon, I hope future festivals will address how our country still stigmatizes those grappling with mental illness.

If you're interested in seeing some of my tweets from Dodge (I tried to tweet about every event I attended) you can find me on twitter: @yesthatwarfield

The importance of being edited

If you've been a fan of Doctor Who for as long as I have, you understand that it is, at its core, a children's television show. That was how it was designed. Tom Baker knew this--he admitted as much in interviews on special edition DVDs. The writers know this. The actors know this. There has always been a certain amount of sloppiness that I think the show and its audience have tolerated--a certain gap between what's expected and what gets accomplished. The gigantic imaginations of the young (and young at heart) will seep into those gaps and make each episode seem smooth and magical.

However, this season, the gaps or sloppiness seem too large or ill-timed. It began with the writing of a practically gerontophobic Clara in episode 1, and smaller, hard-to-pin-down missteps in other episodes. One in particular grabbed me two weeks ago: Capaldi and Coleman are impressive actors, but even their talents cannot hold me in the scene below where a talented actor seems to be ill-placed by the director or forgotten by an editor. I took some screen shots and designed the following graphic to illustrate my point. What is supposed to be an emotional scene between the Doctor and Clara, becomes a film school lesson taught by Capaldi and Coleman.

Part of the fun of Doctor Who has been the acknowledgment of its fantasy elements:  a mysterious mad man in a magical blue chariot that's bigger on the inside, his screwdriver magic wand, the adventures he undertakes, and the oppressed he saves or empowers. The special effects have only recently gotten better, but I never tuned in for that. It was the fun.

As a kid, the fun didn't end when I considered how the mountains in my sandbox weren't real mountains. The fun ended when the adults distracted me. This my point about editing.

Editing is not simply the tidying up of mistakes. Good editing works to create a world that holds the audience, to let the audience feel embraced by the world of the text--whether it be viewer, listener, or reader.

Forest Moon of Endor is near Columbus, Ohio?

Can someone explain this to me?

It happened like this: I'm focused intensely on writing another poem about the Pine Barrens and my brain screams, "HEY! MARSHALL! DO YOU REMEMBER CALVIN AND HOBBES? WHAT DO YOU THINK IS GOING ON WITH BILL WATTERSON?!"

Well, this poem is sunk. Time to use the internet. So, it turns out Watterson has been in the news a bunch over the past few years (a Pearls Before Swine collaboration, the documentary Stripped, and other things). Also, the Thrill, the blogging arm of the Kenyon college newspaper, has been publishing some of his old college cartoons. WHERE IS KENYON COLLEGE, MARSHALL?!?! WHY DON'T YOU GOOGLE MAPS THAT?!?!?!

Thanks, brain. I can hear you just fine without--

CLICK IT!

Wait. What's that in the lower left corner?

Can someone explain this to me? I gotta get back to work.

Star Wars Screensaver Returns to My Desktop!

If you don't agree with me that this is the best screen saver ever, I will fight you--and legions of Star Wars nerds will be on my side. Okay, while I'm not that nuts, recent Star Wars Episode VII news has made me nostalgic for this old screensaver.

Computers come and computers go, but software on old 3.5 inch diskettes doesn't always make the move from 1994 computers to 2014 computers. But that's why there's Ebay, right?

Here are some screen shots of Jawas dismantling my desktop for scrap as part of the "Jawas" screen saver in Star Wars Screen Entertainment. The program includes other cool screensavers (listed for you over at the Wookieepedia here), but "Jawas" amuses me with its chaos. Not only do they scrap my desktop for parts, droids missing restraining bolts cause a bit of havoc. Banthas stomp onto the screen. Desert troopers double march firing blasters that blow "holes" in the desktop, womprats hop by, and--well I could go on listing the mess for at least another paragraph.

Share my nostalgia, won't you?

Hey, Poetry! What gives?

This past Saturday I had the honor of being on a panel designed to discuss the anxiety readers of poetry often feel. The day was lovely, and the light streaming through the large windows of the college library warmed the audience and my co-panelists Courtney Bambrick and Liz Abrams Morley. Anne Kaier moderated the session, at one point encouraging the audience to write down their anxieties about reading poetry. Courtney, Liz, and I responded to the anxieties.

I kept returning to the body, to breath, to performance. I described the feeling I get listening to poetry, and my experiences at the 2002 Dodge Poetry festival, where I finally learned that poetry didn't have to be such a polite and heady art--that it had to be felt. And sometimes, we don't "feel" a poem. I admitted that readers of poetry treat poetry too politely, that sometimes it's okay to treat it like music, to change the album, switch stations, or walk out.

The 2002 festival at Duke Farms, almost exactly a year after the attacks of September 11th, was a charged event; and it was impossible not to feel it in my body. I heard a tent full of people jeer some lines of Amiri Baraka's "Who Blew Up America?" I watched others leave a tent where the poet was reading boring poetry, and I heard Robert Bly read poems by Tomas Tranströmer (almost ten years before Tranströmer wins his Nobel). Bly reads with an enthusiasm and love. Three lines into his reading of Tranströmer's "Scattered Congregation," he stopped.

Bly asked us if he we could hear how great those opening opening lines were, how beautiful they were; and he told the audience that he was going to read them again because he liked them. Wow. I had never heard a poet do that before. His enthusiasm for the work shook me out of stuffy notions of how poetry should be read and listened to. It reminded me that poetry is to be experienced.

As I told these stories to the Rosemont crowd, I saw some nods in the audience. I continued. I read Billy Collins's poem "Introduction to Poetry" and Mark Strand's "Eating Poetry." I closed by reading part of the opening to Molly Peacock's How to Read a Poem and Start a Poetry Circle, where she discusses poems for their talismanic properties. She has some poems that she carried with her for years (memorized, yes, but also in paper form). A talisman is not an object that is precious or cherished per se. Its power doesn't come from its being coveted. No, it has deep symbolic power because of the sacrifices made for its construction.

A talisman seems to involve sacrifices of time, energy--perhaps more--and of course intention and devotion. Power is imbued into the object. On Saturday, I felt the power of the poems I read. The audience fell to laughter and silence.

I am now asking myself, "Am I showing sacrifice and devotion?" I have always had intention, but sacrifice? Devotion? Am I constructing an object that could serve as a talisman?

I consider two lines  I saw on Poetry Daily this morning:

...charcoal, the wood already burnt,
a sacrifice. 

These lines come from Marianne Boruch's "Pencil" in her book Cadaver Speak. I love these two lines for what they remind me about art.

Busy days ahead. I need the focus. I need the reminder.

Drexel Week of Writing 2014

I've been working on assembling two cool panel discussions for this year's Week of Writing at Drexel University, May 12-16. The guests are accomplished writers and professionals, and the topics are exciting. Details to be posted soon.

Last year, Nicole Kline helped to organize and participate in a fun and insightful panel where video game designers and video game writers talked about the craft of making video games. Amanda Lange (Tap-Repeatedly), William Stallwood (Cipher Prime), and Chris Grant (Polygon) joined us.

This year? Just you wait.

On the heels of the Mütter Museum. . .

. . .comes The National Kidney Museum.

I wonder what the museum's cafeteria serves?

Okay, okay, I know. I can hear the Onion headline now: English Professor Improves World by Mocking Typo in Local Newspaper.

It's still a funny typo.

To donate to the National Kidney FOUNDATION go to www.kidney.org/

I'm reading HEArt. Why, you ask?

I read HEArt because it is brilliant and tries to make a difference in the struggle for social justice. HEArt (Human Equity through Art) had its first incarnation back at the end of the twentieth century in Pittsburgh. Editor-in-chief, Leslie Anne McIlroy put together a solid little journal full of poetry, essays, interviews, and more--all aimed at contributing to a conversation promoting justice across lines of race, class, gender, and more. As a student in Pittsburgh at the time, I picked up the journal at readings. Each issue exposed me to marginalized writers and perspectives (and some more well-known writers, too), and I loved the blend of art, intellectualism, and activism. I also bought the journal to show support for McIlroy as a professional writer. I found her first book of poetry Rare Space to be straightforward in its look at where relationships can go right, where they can go wrong, and how we must move between spaces that we are forced into and spaces that we craft for ourselves. HEArt is the space for the artist as activist. HEArt took a few years off, and now it's back in an online form. The latest issue is chock-full-of poets, readings, essays, and interviews that don't simply shout into the wind.

The online journal continues to bring together a wide-range of voices in the struggle for social justice. It's worth listening to. Consider contributing, too. A resource like this takes more than love and kind words.

http://heartjournalonline.com/current-issue/

Another Biting Critical Review of Blackberry. . .

The critic finds a new application for a product with notoriously few.

Nicknaming My Child

For how much longer is it appropriate to call my child Lady Burplesworth III?

For that matter, let's add: Munchie, Munchkin, Munchinator, Munch, and Jelly Bean. Some casual research on the subject leads me to two conclusions.

First, these nicknames add, in a small amount, to my child's "lexical diversity." Why does this matter? According to Janellen Huttenlochera, Heidi Waterfallb, Marina Vasilyevac, Jack Vevead, and Larry V. Hedgese, authors of a study published in Cognitive Psychology in December 2010 entitled, "Sources of variability in children’s language growth," the diversity of my speech "significantly predicts corresponding diversity" in my child's later speech. The study doesn't focus on nicknames, it looks at several aspects of speech between children and caregivers, but the authors do account for nicknames as part of a very young child's lexical diversity. While the authors of the study would quantify all of the variations of "Munch" as adding only "1" to lexical diversity, the terms Jelly Bean, and Lady Burblesworth III, add "5."Knowing this, I may add more nicknames to increase her lexical diversity. Of course they can't all be names for her, so I may add some nicknames that also expand her vocabulary: "Little Apple" or "Little Happy."

Second, nicknames are definitely an aspect of teasing. If I value my child's self-esteem and identity, I must create positive-trait nicknames. Her Majesty Miss Hugs A Lot, Ms. Smiles, and Lady Lost-in-Thought seem cool. And, yes, correct; being lost in thought is a good quality.

Perhaps the question I should care about is not "How much more time do I have to use the nicknames Burplesworth and Jelly Bean? (although this time is precious)," but rather, "Just what the hell am I trying to say with these nicknames?"

Another Snow Day: What am I doing?

I am chuckling to myself as I catch up on missed Weekly Weather Roundup videos from Riah Gouvea.

Gouvea is funny. I am subscribed to the above youtube channel for that reason.

Her page: "give it a gouvea."  Her twitter: @rrrriah

 

 

Making it up as I go

I never realized how much fun I could have singing until I realized how important it is to feel comfortable ad-libbing lyrics. Many a wrong word has been sung by Yours Truly over the years ("burning up the star-crossed herringbone" -- take a guess).  I hated my poor memory. I used to blame some imaginary dial in my head for being "tuned" to the wrong word, now I realize that dial was trying to help me find words I couldn't understand or remember. Now I embrace that dial with both hands and turn it to 11.

With the dial set there, I can write whole new verses:

Hush, little baby, don't say a word,

. . .
And if that diamond ring won't shine,
Daddy's gonna buy you a ball of twine.

And if that ball of twine rolls away,
Daddy's gonna buy you some modelling clay,

And if that modelling clay dries up,
Daddy's gonna buy you a fancy tea cup.

And if that fancy tea cup springs a leak,
Daddy's gonna buy you a babbling creek.

And if that babbling creek lacks fish,
Daddy's gonna buy you whatever you wish.

Other verses include rodeo clowns that aren't funny, castle towers that fall down, currencies that collapse, seeds that won't flower, and baseball bats that only hit fouls.

The best part is, my six month-old audience member provides instant and authentic feedback. Amen and good night.

Twelve Colonies Parking Garage

I love parking at the garage on Penn's campus. Their corner-less parking stubs always make me feel like I'm parking on the planet of Caprica.

Filmmaker David Kessler's work at Due North Exhibit

WHYY FM in Philadelphia reported on the lead-up to the Due North show tomorrow night, but I wanted make one more plug for those of you who might not have heard. The exhibit is at the Ice House project space in Crane Arts, and it features work by Icelandic and American artists. Friend and filmmaker, David Kessler is one of those American artists. A few weeks ago I was flattered when he asked me to help him edit some narration that will appear in his documentary.

It was not your typical narration for a documentary.

That's all I will say.

Come to the opening reception tomorrow night at Crane Arts, Icebox Project Space, 1400 N. American Street, Philadelphia, PA 19122. 6 pm-9 pm.

A question about process and a novel-length story

My latest writing project is a novel. There. I said it. I have been working on it for over a month, and it concerns a topic that's been intriguing me since 2003, that's about all I will say about its content. As for the process of this writing project, I find myself doing something I've never done before: saving drafts as I go

That is, after writing several thousand words, I save the document with a "save point" appended to the filename. I also save the document with its original filename, and then I get back to working in that document. Basically, once every week or so, I go through this:

Open "filename"
Writewritewritewrite.
Me: Okay, Marshall. You've been drafting and futzing around for a week. It's time to make a save point.
Go to File, Choose "Save as"... type "filename--save point 1." 
Go to File, Choose "Save as..." type filename." 
Computer: "You already have a file called "filename." Overwrite?"
Me: YES!
Computer: Ok. Saving. Done.
Back to writing. 
Writewritewritewrite.
Done writing for the day: Save.

The "save point" figuratively preserves the draft in amber, while I keep working on the novel. At this point, I have four "save points" that reveal how the novel has progressed--and changed--over the past month. I have removed portions of the novel, added portions of the novel; and I have also adjusted portions of the novel to better reflect my goals for the project.

Why not use MS Word's "track changes" feature? I thought that it might look kind of messy. In my draft, I have the entire arc of the story roughly puzzled out, but sometimes that puzzle changes dramatically; pieces appear and disappear, or shift from the outside to the inisde or vice-versa. At some point in the future, I would like to see the draft as it unfolded. I would rather scroll through these save points as whole artifacts that were, in their time, a representation of the story as it was.

I guess, in some way, I hope that these drafts might serve as artifacts I can study to learn more about my own process--and perhaps as teaching tools for others. I wonder. I also wonder if I'm alone in doing this.

Honoring the Winter Solstice (Shortest day of the year, NOT the coldest).

I know the winter solstice is almost three weeks behind us, but these continuing cold temperatures and shortened daylight hours reminds me of my brother's enlightening personal essay on how he honors the winter solstice. A blend of the scientific, the artistic, and perhaps the mystic. Love it.  Perhaps, I'll post a link to this again next year.

Did you know that he has an album coming out on January 21st? You can pre-order the digital version or the plant-able version of Songs of Light and Dust from Data Garden.

Songs of Light and Dust (the post where I review some new music by my brother)

My brother's amazingly complex (but also relaxing) album, Songs of Light and Dust, is coming out in just two weeks--I am psyched. One track, "Echoes Down the Corridors of Time"is already out at WXPN's site The Key. Julie Miller put together a nice eighty-word write-up.

I've been listening to the song all day, and I love it. For a piece of ambient music, the straight-forward rhythm surprises me, but the track also contains so many rich colors of sound: sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle. One minute, my brain is getting its groove on; the next, I'm floating in outer space watching the planets glide through the void. The song gets progressively more "spacey" while also referencing melodies, rhythms, and sounds from earlier in the song. Not to impose too much of a narrative onto it, but I liken it to humanity's development. The flow of the song reminds me of the most sensible title I ever heard given to a world history textbook: "World History: Patterns of Change and Continuity." Patterns of change and continuity--those are the two primary conceptual elements of this song, and it makes for both a relaxing and engaging listen. Where have we been? Where are we going? Where are we now? What matters? These are the questions this track asks.

My brother has been at work on this album for months. From time to time, I have listened to him working on other tracks, and I love what he has crafted. Not every track is as narrative or as in-your-ears rhythmic as "Echoes..." but they all reflect my brother's ear for how sound can tell stories, convey moods, and create new ideas. I can recall at least a few occasions listening to tracks-in-progress where I realized that so many of his interests were coming together so beautifully in the album--electronic music, his interest in how light affects the human body, the natural world (recently the Pine Barrens, but also Dark Sky areas), various technologies, space. Weeks ago, as I heard a few tracks here and there--before the album had a title--I told him to title it "music for space ships."

He ignored my idea. I'm glad. After hearing this completed track, I realized, yes, sure, the music is sometimes "spacey," but it's also very much of the body. The body? Yes. There are noticeable regular rhythms in "Echoes...", and at least one track later in the album, if I remember correctly, has human voices. Here's my point: in the void between bodies--be they heavenly bodies or human bodies--there is basically only light and dust and sound. What a gift to have these songs to acknowledge the void, but then to resist it, and ultimately, traverse it.

I think Data Garden is giving this away at six bucks. But, hey. I know. I'm biased.