WRITERS WHO READ POETRY

Writing Practice and The Muse Who is Always There

Writing Leap #40  Writers Who Read Poetry

Hi Writers,

Take a moment away from your writing time, find a comfy place to sit, open a poetry collection and read a poem at random. Breathe in the poetic lushness of the phrases, the evocative images and the essence of the words that open up to a larger universe. Close your eyes for a moment and let it all swirl around inside.  Then read it once more, to be enchanted all over again with what words can do.

The poet is the writer’s muse, no matter your genre. A poem can show us how to cluster words together so they say what we mean, a lightning bolt from writer to reader.

I read this poem from time to time. It kind of haunts me. The perfect word in a perfect phrase is a lovely thing.

Picking Blueberries, by Mary Oliver     New and Selected Poems, 1992

Once, in summer

   in the blueberries

      I fell asleep, and woke

         when a deer stumbled against me.

I guess

   she was so busy with her own happiness

      she had grown careless

         and was just wandering along

listening

   to the wind as she leaned down

      to lip up the sweetness.

         So, there we were

with nothing between us

   but a few leaves, and the wind’s

      glossy voice

         shouting instructions.

The deer

   backed away finally

      and flung up her white tail

         and went floating off toward the trees—

but the moment before she did that

   was so wide and deep

      it has lasted to this day.

I’m stopping at these last three lines (there is more to the poem) because they are the ones that linger for me and the ones that have often affected my thought processes as I’m writing.

Happy Writing  all you Wonderful Writers out there!

LINKING THE ARTS

A Visual of the deer/blueberry experience

A Good Phrase:

the expanded moment

A Story Poem for children, grown-ups and writers:  Words with Wings by Nikki Grimes, 2013.  For me the story shines behind and beyond the words.