Welcome...
When I was growing up, I was not thrilled with the freckles sprinkled liberally all over my face, my arms and my legs. But somehow, over the years I've learned to accept and even love this skin I'm in. I don't get taunted on the playground any more, I'm not called "Freckle-face Strawberry," but people still comment on my skin out of curiosity. A while back, when I was getting a pedicure from Tina, a beautiful Vietnamese woman with flawless light brown skin, she asked, "Why you have this skin?"
I answered that question for myself a while back by writing a poem. I was at the 2005 Nebraska Summer Writers Conference in a poetry workshop taught by poet Stephen Dunn. He gave us the prompt to write a poem in which we make an outrageous claim then back it up, make it believable. In response, I wrote "A Canticle for the Freckled," which was published in the annual humor issue of Umbrella Journal. http://www.umbrellajournal.com/summer2008/bumbershoot/light_verse/ACanticlefortheFreckled.html
Join me on the writing path...
"No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader." I love this quote by Robert Frost. It resonates with my writing process. Writing allows me to explore the world around me and the world within by putting pen to paper. To surprise myself by the words and stanzas that take shape. To "stay awake."
Some need their daily cup of coffee. I need my mug of tea. I also need time to scribble and play on the page. And although, for me, writing is a spiritual practice or discipline, it's not mystical. It is part of the ordinary, daily cycle--cook the dinner, do the dishes, grade the papers, fold the laundry, walk a dog we are taking care of for friends who are away, read a book, practice yoga, work on a poem. It's how I navigate life. Novelist Marilynne Robinson (click her name to see her interviewed on The Daily Show about her book Absence of Mind) writes, "A mystical experience would be wasted on me. Ordinary things have always seemed numinous to me." I agree. Miracles are everywhere--under my feet, in my backyard, on the bike path, and in my classroom.
I invite you to join me on the writing path, to play, to explore, to be open to grace, surprise and awe, to be alert for miracles, to stay awake together. Join the conversation. Click on "Writing in This Moment" at the top of the page to read the posts and add your comments. Or click on "Poets and Writers I Read," then share your favorite writers--the ones who sustain you in dark times, the ones who make you laugh and think and cry, the ones who are your old friends from childhood, the ones whose writing "takes the top of your head off," as Emily Dickinson wrote.
I answered that question for myself a while back by writing a poem. I was at the 2005 Nebraska Summer Writers Conference in a poetry workshop taught by poet Stephen Dunn. He gave us the prompt to write a poem in which we make an outrageous claim then back it up, make it believable. In response, I wrote "A Canticle for the Freckled," which was published in the annual humor issue of Umbrella Journal. http://www.umbrellajournal.com/summer2008/bumbershoot/light_verse/ACanticlefortheFreckled.html
Join me on the writing path...
"No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader." I love this quote by Robert Frost. It resonates with my writing process. Writing allows me to explore the world around me and the world within by putting pen to paper. To surprise myself by the words and stanzas that take shape. To "stay awake."
Some need their daily cup of coffee. I need my mug of tea. I also need time to scribble and play on the page. And although, for me, writing is a spiritual practice or discipline, it's not mystical. It is part of the ordinary, daily cycle--cook the dinner, do the dishes, grade the papers, fold the laundry, walk a dog we are taking care of for friends who are away, read a book, practice yoga, work on a poem. It's how I navigate life. Novelist Marilynne Robinson (click her name to see her interviewed on The Daily Show about her book Absence of Mind) writes, "A mystical experience would be wasted on me. Ordinary things have always seemed numinous to me." I agree. Miracles are everywhere--under my feet, in my backyard, on the bike path, and in my classroom.
I invite you to join me on the writing path, to play, to explore, to be open to grace, surprise and awe, to be alert for miracles, to stay awake together. Join the conversation. Click on "Writing in This Moment" at the top of the page to read the posts and add your comments. Or click on "Poets and Writers I Read," then share your favorite writers--the ones who sustain you in dark times, the ones who make you laugh and think and cry, the ones who are your old friends from childhood, the ones whose writing "takes the top of your head off," as Emily Dickinson wrote.
Fly-over Country
Beyond your plane window at night,
the glare of urban sprawl surrenders
to darkness, studded at times by diamond
clusters of light marking towns
with names like Vesta, Echo, Cosmos
and Sleepy Eye, places where people
read all the obituaries, know the part
each played in the drama before passing.
What if your pilot made a surprise landing
in Sacred Heart? You might touch down
for once in a place so silent
you’d hear the wind in prairie grass,
insistent as the whisper
of your own strange and unruly truth.
-Marianne Murphy Zarzana (Kitchen Scraps #1, 2011)
the glare of urban sprawl surrenders
to darkness, studded at times by diamond
clusters of light marking towns
with names like Vesta, Echo, Cosmos
and Sleepy Eye, places where people
read all the obituaries, know the part
each played in the drama before passing.
What if your pilot made a surprise landing
in Sacred Heart? You might touch down
for once in a place so silent
you’d hear the wind in prairie grass,
insistent as the whisper
of your own strange and unruly truth.
-Marianne Murphy Zarzana (Kitchen Scraps #1, 2011)
