Last week I had the privilege of sitting down with three other poets to write over pints (theirs) and chamomile tea (mine.) Diane Tucker, fresh off the plane from NYC, brought with her a number of writing exercises from renowned educator, Kenneth Koch’s Rose, Where did you get that red? 

The challenge: Write a poem addressed to your poem asking it to do something for you.

Here’s my unedited attempt:

 
dear poem

please fling your consonants
your double-meanings

please leap-frog your seed truth
over the form
out the pages
off the screen

please drop-kick my philandering lead strokes
clear over closest range

then

brush yourself off
scale the rock
descend the mountain

climb into waiting lap

and speak
 

::::

Part of Imperfect Prose Thursdays

The other day author Nina Killham typed in the words “fear and writing.” It was one of those days and among her findings was a post by blogger Jennifer Louden who nails a daily fear for most of us:

“I have to know what my thing is and talk about it in very clever ways and be different than everybody else who does my thing or else I will starve /never matter / and be alone for the rest of my life, shut out from the brightness and goodness of life.”

“I know, that’s a powerful, believable, seductive story,” she writes. “I also know it’s a lie.”

The need to name and succeed can paralyze us. It keeps us from picking up the pen, the phone, the racket, the whatever. But as Christians it’s possible to live without fear. In fact, it’s implored of us. We are called into the dark to follow. We are led to new things without name. We are promised hardship, trials, and hard-won rewards. Yet success is seductive. Adoration, alluring. Recognition, rewarded.

I planned to begin this post with a line from J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey: 

“I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.”

I’ve been meditating on these words for the past month. They came to me from a friend in Winnipeg. I haven’t yet met someone who wants to be a nobody. I am no exception. Even as a new mother I find it difficult to say no to opportunity though I have the perfect excuse. 

But we’re not called to success, certainly not to every shiny proposition. It takes courage to blend in the shadows. It takes work. It’s counter-cultural and Biblical.

I know a lot of people that read this blog are ‘somebodys.’ People who lead organizations, professors, and CEOs. I also know some of you are artists, students, freelancers (like me) and everything in between.  

Our culture is masterful at teaching us how to ‘get there’ but where can we learn to leave, to bow out, to persevere in quiet?

Casey Downing tackles some of these questions in his recent article “Notes on Leaving the City.” He is preparing to leave New York, noting Joan Didion’s public exit from the same city in 1967. Her essay Goodbye to All That begins:

“It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends.”

Downing echoes her words:

“Suddenly we weren’t quite so young or quite so entitled. Suddenly the paradise of New York was preparing to cast many of us out. Were we unworthy? Where did we go wrong? This was something that no one had prepared us for.”

Maybe Downing and his friends weren’t being cast out. Certainly a city cannot bestow worthiness. How could he and his friends have been better prepared for the end of their stay in the city of dreams? How can we?

::: 

Originally posted on the Cardus After Hours blog.

The pictures are up. View them here. And more below. 

Brooklyn

In Anthropologie

The UN

Le Statue

Soho

Classic over-stimulated tourist

A great irony

:: Toronto’s proximity to New York ::

Oh yes! This morning Megan and I will jump into her hot red jeep and speed off into the sunset (rush hour, actually) for four days of Big Apple lovin’! Since our Calgary road-tripping days we have dreamed of visiting NYC together. This is trip number seven for me.

Thanks to Amanda’s recommendation we’ll be staying at The Pod, on Friday I’ll be attending the International Arts Movement Encounter and we’ll be hopping the boat to visit the pretty lady above. So excited!

Promise to post updates along the way…