Marianne Murphy Zarzana
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Writing That Saves Lives: Prayers for Bobby & It Gets Better

3/31/2011

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Over the Christmas holiday, I read the heartbreaking yet inspiring book, Prayers for Bobby: A Mother's Coming to Terms with the Suicide of her Gay Son by Leroy Aarons. One of my gay students had written about it in an essay, and I knew I had to read this true story, especially in light of gay students who had been bullied and committed suicide last fall. The book made for intense reading with many of Bobby's journal entries and letters from his mother woven into the text. Bobby's dream was to become a writer. Now he is gone, but his words--read by millions--live on to fight ignorance and save lives.

Tonight I watched the DVD of the Lifetime movie, Prayers for Bobby, which recently became available.  In the movie, Bobby's journal excerpts are used effectively as voice-overs. Sigourney Weaver gives an award-winning performance as Bobby's mother, at first unable to accept her son and after his suicide eventually becoming an national activist for PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbian and Gays). I encourage you to read the book, watch the movie, and share both with parents, teachers, and family members. 

On a similar note, last weekend I listened to the National Public Radio show, "Fresh Air" with host Terry Gross, when she interviewed Dan Savage and Terry Miller who created the 
"It Gets Better" campaign. 
 
They have taken some of the 10,000 videos they received, transcribed them and recently published a book titled It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life Worth Living.

Here's an excerpt from one of the reviews posted on amazon.com:

"The obvious benefit of a book like this will be for all of the LGBT kids in schools that don't have Gay-Straight Alliances (most of them), that don't have sympathetic staff, that have students who are all desperately just trying to fit in (most of them)...but it will be really helpful for the straight kids, too. For every straight person who's a bully, there are probably twenty who just don't notice what's going on around them. They aren't purposely ignoring the gay kids who are getting bullied, but they don't notice it either, because they're wrapped up in their own lives. So while this book will no doubt be a lifeline for LGBT kids who don't feel like they have any allies, it could be a powerful eye-opener to all of the straight kids who simply haven't thought about this issue. 

"I've ordered copies to donate to our local middle school and high school, but I'm also going to have my 15 year old son read it. His orientation?...I don't know yet, but either way, it will help him to see another person's point of view more clearly. And when you begin to understand, and to empathize, you begin to end bullying, and you begin to 'grow' children who understand the challenges of those around them, and who will be more likely to stand up for others. Please buy this book!"


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Mistakes

3/30/2011

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Today, just a good short quote by Nikki Giovanni: 

"Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to error that counts."
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Kitchen Scraps

3/29/2011

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 Kitchen Scraps is a newly launched by-invitation online and print publication created by editor Chris Oveson for author’s “leftovers.”  

On the website www.talkingdogpress, Oveson writes, "So often, I am cooking in the kitchen and always making more than I need. Many of the best things don’t fit on the plate and go into the refrigerator only to be forgotten.  These usually end up becoming scraps for the dog." For Kitchen Scraps, "We are looking for works that didn’t quite fit in your other collections for whatever reason.  Once a year, we send out invitations to authors whose work we have been impressed with. The theme of this publication is 'there is nothing too fatty, sweet, hard, or grisly.' If you have pieces that may have been too harsh, or not 'quite right' for other editors, they will find a home here."

Oveson's first issue of Kitchen Scraps includes poems by SMSU professor emeritus Leo Dangel as well as current SMSU writing professors Susan McLean, Adrian C. Louis, David Pichaske, Anthony Neil Smith, and myself.

Many thanks to Chris Oveson, my colleague in the SMSU English Department, for creating Kitchen Scraps and for generously inviting me and other writers to submit our work. 
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A Good Dog Poem

3/28/2011

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We're dog people, and we've been blessed with a good string of lovable, rascally dogs over the years--Sugar, Halley, Mollie, and now Maya, who is a Black Labrador and Bassett mix . I've written my share of dog poems, and I always love to read a good dog poem. Enjoy.

American Life in Poetry: Column 314

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Maybe you have to be a poet to get away with sniffing the paws of a dog, and I have sniffed the paws of all of mine, which almost always smell like hayfields in sunlight. Here Jane Varley, who lives in Ohio, offers us a touching last moment with a dear friend.

Packing the Car for Our Western Camping Trip 
 

What we will remember—we tried to take the dog,
packed around him, making a cozy spot
at the back of the Subaru, blocking out the sun,
resisting the obvious--
he was too old, he would not make it.
And when he died in Minnesota,
we smelled and smelled his paws,
arthritic and untouchable these last many years,
took those marvelous paws up into our faces.
They smelled of dark clay
and sweet flower bloom decay.

   
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Jane Varley, whose most recent book is a memoir, Flood Stage and Rising, University of Nebraska Press, 2005. Poem reprinted from Poems & Plays, No. 16, 2009, by permission of Jane Varley and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.

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NPR Program - This I Believe

3/27/2011

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A colleague emailed me the link to a interesting essay one of her cousins, Marion Wilson Kimber, Iowa City, wrote titled "A Place of Conversation and Community" and which aired on NPR on "This I Believe" on March 25. Here's the info on the program from their web page:


This I Believe, Inc., was founded in 2004 as a not-for-profit organization that engages youth and adults from all walks of life in writing, sharing, and discussing brief essays about the core values that guide their daily lives.

This I Believe is based on a 1950s radio program of the same name, hosted by acclaimed journalist Edward R. Murrow. Each day, Americans gathered by their radios to hear compelling essays from the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Robinson, Helen Keller, and Harry Truman as well as corporate leaders, cab drivers, scientists, and secretaries—anyone able to distill into a few minutes the guiding principles by which they lived. These essayists’ words brought comfort and inspiration to a country worried about the Cold War, McCarthyism, and racial division. (These essays are now featured in weekly broadcasts on Bob Edwards‘ satellite and public radio shows.)

In reviving This I Believe, executive producer Dan Gediman says, “The goal is not to persuade Americans to agree on the same beliefs. Rather, the hope is to encourage people to begin the much more difficult task of developing respect for beliefs different from their own.”

Selected contemporary This I Believe essays were featured in regular broadcasts on National Public Radio (NPR) in the United States from 2005 to 2009. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) aired essays from Canadians in 2007.  In 2005 and 2006, USA Weekend invited its readers to participate in our project and published selected essays from their readers. And numerous local public radio stations, newspapers, and magazines have featured essays from citizens in their communities.

This I Believe, Inc., in partnership with Henry Holt and Company, has produced two books collecting essays featured in the NPR series. The first book, published in 2006, became a New York Times bestseller in paperback, while the second volume was published in 2008. In addition to collecting these essays for posterity, the books have become popular with “one book, one community” projects.

Teachers around the country—and around the world—have embraced This I Believe as a powerful educational tool. They have downloaded our free educational curricula, posters, and brochures for using This I Believe in middle and high school classrooms and in college courses. These curricula help teachers guide students through exploring their beliefs and then composing personal essays about them. The students learn about themselves and their peers, and experience the delight of realizing their views and voices have value.

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The Moth

3/26/2011

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Want to hear some good stories that might spark stories of your own? Check out this website: The Moth


"The Moth – hailed as 'New York’s hottest and hippest literary ticket' by The Wall Street Journal – is an acclaimed not-for-profit organization dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling. It was founded in 1997 by the novelist George Dawes Green, who wanted to recreate in New York the feeling of sultry summer evenings in his native Georgia, when moths were attracted to the light on the porch where he and his friends would gather to spin spellbinding tales. The first New York Moth event was held in George’s living room and the story events quickly spread to larger venues throughout the city. The Moth has presented more than three thousand stories, told live and without notes, by people from all walks of life to standing-room-only crowds worldwide. Each show features simple, old-fashioned storytelling on thoroughly modern themes by wildly divergent raconteurs who develop and shape their stories with The Moth’s directors."


I watched a video of Michaela Murphy telling a hilarious story titled "Eye Spy" about her Irish Catholic family's connection to the Kennedy's. A great website to fill the writer's well.
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Kindness

3/25/2011

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One of my goals for my writing life: I want to memorize more of my own and other writers' poems so I can carry them on my tongue wherever I go. Speak the words for strength and solace on the journey. Share them around a campfire with family and friends. OK, I'll admit it--it might help to keep the grey matter firing as well. I'm inspired by poets Philip Dacey, Susan McLean and Beth Ann Fennelly who are all masters of memorization.

This poem by Naomi Shihab Nye is on my list of poems I want to "know by heart"--such a wonderful phrase.

Kindness
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho 
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans 
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, 
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.  
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth. 

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and 
     purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.


-Naomi Shihab Nye
 

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Who was your favorite writing teacher?

3/24/2011

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Who was your favorite writing teacher? Was it a teacher in elementary school? High school? College? All of the above? What made them your favorite? Did you already know that you wanted to be a writer or did they somehow draw it out of you? Have you ever told them how much they influenced you? Have you ever tried to get back in touch with them?

Sister Elizabeth Keough, my sixth grade teacher at St. Jude Elementary School in Dolton, Illinois, made learning fun and sparked a passion for writing which had been nurtured early on by my parents. A couple years ago I got her address, wrote her a note, and sent her one of my published poems. She was delighted to hear from me and to read my work.

I can never thank all the teachers and mentors who have helped me with my writing over the years, but I take all of them with me every day as I walk into my writing classrooms at SMSU.
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Philip Dacey in Verse Wisconsin Online

3/23/2011

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In the March 2011 issue of Verse Wisconsin Online, Philip Dacey, poet and beloved SMSU professor emeritus, has:
* three new poems 
* a review of his new book Mosquito Operas: New & Selected Short Poems (Rain Mountain Press, 2010)
* an interview by Karla Huston.

The theme of the issue is "Poems in Form."  Enjoy!
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"Forgetfulness" by Billy Collins

3/22/2011

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On The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor, today's poem is "Forgetfulness" by Billy Collins. Click on the poem's title to watch an innovative video with Collins reading this beautiful poem about the slippery ways of memory. This poem will resonate with anyone who has had a loved one suffering from Alzheimer's or dementia. 
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    I love to play with words. To capture moments on the page. To explore the physical and spiritual geography of what I call "fly-over country." I write from imagination, observation and my own experience of wandering in fly-over country--the literal, physical spaces of my life on the Minnesota prairie and the inner territory of the soul. 

    I teach writing at Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall, Minnesota. I enjoy cooking and traveling with my husband Jim, reading, practicing yoga, playing tennis, biking, hiking and gardening.

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