Category: - Marianne Murphy Zarzana

Robins and Phoebes and Geese, Oh My!

3/21/2011

It's happening! New birds have arrived in our neighborhood--red-breasted robins hopping on the brown patches of grass showing through the melting snow, Phoebes singing their sweet "Phee-bee, Phee-bee" song in the trees, geese flying and honking their hearts out overhead in those lovely, fluid V-formations. Purple crocuses are popping up in the south-facing garden next to our home.

It's been a long, cold, snowy, bully of a winter, and it's not over yet. But we have hope in southwest Minnesota.

"Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience." Ralph Waldo Emerson

A Conversation with Emily Dickinson

3/1/2011

What is going to happen to our work, our writing, our art?

I like how this excerpt from an interview in the Winter 2010-11 issue of Image, "A Conversation with Jeanne Murray Walker," turns over that question we all ask ourselves:

"Since no one can ever be sure what's going to happen to her work, what I need to be happy with--what we all need to be happy with--is having a conversation with one another. We can have a conversation with Aristophanes and Saint John of the Cross and Emily Dickinson, and in some way this conversation will carry forward, and children will receive it. It's part of what Wallace Stevens was saying in "Postcards from the Volcano": we need to be faithful, to pass down information, to modify the discussion, because things happen to us that have never happened before, and every moment in history is important. That is success. That's our project as writers. That's our calling."

Tolstoy on Love and a Shameless Plug for "Happy Hour" Yoga

2/18/2011

"All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love." - Leo Tolstoy

This "quote of the day" from my planner says it all. And simply.

Need a lift at the end of your week? Every Friday from 5:30-6:30 p.m., Kristin Knight, owner of Prairie Yoga in Marshall, hosts "Happy Hour" Yoga--60 minutes of relaxing anusara yoga poses to help you wind down from your week, laugh a little, be silly, and let go of stress. A delicious way to start your weekend.

Happy Birthday, Honest Abe

2/12/2011

I've always been proud to be from "The Land of Lincoln," home state of one of the most beloved US presidents. When I was 10, my father and mother packed us six kids into our station wagon, and we tooled down from the Chicago suburbs to Springfield on an Abraham Lincoln pilgrimage. At Lincoln's New Salem State Historic Site, we toured the reconstructed village where Lincoln spent his early adulthood. When my husband and I lived in Pennsylvania, we drove through the battlegrounds at Gettysburg, site of Lincoln's famous address. It's fitting that Barack Obama, our first African-American President, spent so much of his professional life in Illinois and considers it his adopted state.

Though he's well-known for his honesty and integrity, Lincoln was a gifted writer and wordsmith. The book, The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln: An A-Z Compendium of Quotes from the Most Eloquent of American Presidents, contains many gems, some profound, some funny. Abe on elections: "The ballot is stronger than the bullet." On slavery: "Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally." On hypocrisy: "During a debate, Stephen Douglas accused Lincoln of being two faced. 'I leave it to you, my friends,' Lincoln retorted, turning toward his audience, 'if I had two faces, would I be wearing this one?'"

An Intimate Letter to a Stranger

2/11/2011

Today is the birthday of novelist and travel writer Pico Iyer, according to The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor. Here's one of his quotes included on Keillor's website:

"Writing should ... be as spontaneous and urgent as a letter to a lover, or a message to a friend who has just lost a parent ... and writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger."

Writing a blog really is like writing an intimate letter to a stranger. Some of you reading these postings I already know. Many of you I'll never meet in person. But through technology and the bridge of language we can connect, spark each other's creativity, and support each other on the writing path. Knowing that friends, family and strangers are reading these words has given my writing life a new energy and focus. So thanks for stopping by, for reading, for offering comments on the blog. I need you as readers, and I hope something I offer feeds you as a writer.

"We Are All Egyptians"

2/4/2011

The headline of the fifth most popular article in today's New York Times reads "We Are All Egyptians."

The story, written by journalist Nicholas Kristof, describes the scene yesterday in Tahrir Square, also known as Liberation Square. He interviewed Mahmood, a carpenter, Amr, a double-amputee in a wheelchair, and one of his heroes, Dr. Nawal El Saadawi, "a leading Arab feminist who for decades has fought female genital mutilation." He writes, "Dr. Saadawi, who turns 80 this year, is white-haired and frail and full of fiery passion." She is also a world-renowned writer of more than forty books of fiction and non-fiction (click link to read her biography).

By putting a name and a story to these three people, Kristof gave me a better sense of the incredibly diverse crowd of Egyptian citizens gathered at the square and their determination and guts.

Kristof writes, "The lion-hearted Egyptians I met on Tahrir Square are risking their lives to stand up for democracy and liberty, and they deserve our strongest support--and, frankly, they should inspire us as well. A quick lesson in colloquial Egyptian Arabic: Innaharda, ehna kullina Misryeen! Today, we are all Egyptians!"

Horace Greeley and Common Sense

2/3/2011

I grew up listening to my mother talk about Horace Greeley High School, which she had attended in Chappaqua, New York. Greeley's birthday is Feb. 3, and I learned more about this journalist, editor, publisher and politician on The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor. Here's a good quote they included by Greeley: "Common sense is very uncommon." So true, Horace.

Whitman: "To have great poets, there must be great audiences."

1/29/2011

Derek Walcott's White Egrets was named the winner of the 2011 T.S. Eliot Prize at the Royal Festival Hall, London, on Jan. 23. A recent article in the online UK journal The Literateur titled "Report: 2011 T.S. Eliot Prize" described the event as if it was a rock concert for poets:

"Walt Whitman understood that in order 'to have great poets, there must be great audiences.' There is a sense, then, that when two thousand people fill the Royal Festival Hall for a poetry reading on a Sunday evening in late January, a sort of reverse could also be said to be true: great audiences require great poets. . . . Poetry books may not sell particularly well today, but it would seem from the swelling crowds clutching tickets, that the way back is in performance."

Have you been to an exceptional poetry reading or performance recently? Looking back, do you remember the first reading you attended or the best poetry reading you ever attended?

I love to hear stories about students who are learning to perform poetry. Today at Southwest Minnesota State University, we had a visit day for prospective students, and I met a high school senior interested in creative writing. She had performed several poems by Billy Collins ("Forgetfulness," "Winter Syntax") as part of her speech team last fall and made it to Iowa's state competition.

Another opportunity for high school students interested in performing poetry is the Poetry Out Loud contest sponsored by the National Endowment of the Arts, in which students compete by performing poems by the finest poets on a local, regional and national stage.

These are signs of hope to me, hope that poetry lives, even today, even in our media-saturated American culture. Poetry is a force that brings us together, helps to dissolve the illusion that we are separate. Voices quaking, my students send their words out into the world, read their poems in class, in the Whitman Room, at open mics, at senior portfolio readings. Here in southwest Minnesota at SMSU, lecture halls fill to capacity with audiences hungry for the spoken word, poems that sing with precision, truth, humor and humanity.

An Opener of Doors

1/10/2011

Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee, and do not try to make the universe a blind alley. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today was the first day of classes for the spring semester at Southwest Minnesota State University where I teach in the English Department and the Speech Communication Department. Busy times, so just a short quote, but a strong one.

Running Around the World

1/8/2011

In today's Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor, I could relate to this quote by British novelist Margaret Storm Jameson: "Writing is only my second nature. . . . I would rather run around the world, looking at it, than write."

Jameson traveled extensively, however she also managed to be quite prolific in her 95 and one-half years. She wrote more than 45 novels.

I love to travel too, to run around the world, to read the stories of others who have traveled, and, of course, to write about the discoveries and epiphanies that happen along the way.