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>Looking Out
•September 24, 2009 • Leave a Comment>Everything is changing. From startlingly cool nights, we’re back to summer’s moderation. Last night I heard rumbles of thunder. In my poetry class, my students picked an inanimate object and transformed it into something else–from nails to memories, their poems were original and playful. Outside there is a metamorphosis in progress. From green to the wild jewels of autumn, I witness; we all witness.
Last weekend we went to a wedding in Vermont–friends of our children. Behind the bride and groom, the green mountains just beginning to invite color. There was music, all manner of dress, frivolity and cupcakes. Last night an old friend called to share that she is blissfully in love. So change continues to wield power and love moves forward with a purposeful stride, in any weather.
Change is a way we remain fluid and creative. Our fear is the same fear we have climbing to the top of the peak where the best view awaits. We arrive winded and disheveled, heart pounding; perhaps we are thirsty and out of supplies. When we look at the stunning expanse around us, we are glad for eyes and breath and stamina.
Go outside. As Maude says in that wonderful film “Harold and Maude”–“Go out and love some more.” Not just people–trees, shy animals, mushrooms (that one is for Kira), waning wildflowers, receding tides, colors, and your own possibilities.
>Ups and Downs
•September 16, 2009 • Leave a Comment>I remember honoring the light and weather in Ireland and so I took my class outside on this most perfect of September afternoons. It didn’t please everyone and there were distractions like sirens and cars whooshing by. We read Langston Hughes and Tony Hoagland under a spreading maple tree with leaves of polished green. Fall has not yet arrived. Soon it will be dark out in the late afternoon and the ground will be bare and hard. I won’t take them outside again; I will have to bring the outside into the classroom, hum of the air conditioner and stiff wooden desks. Learning can happen anywhere. Distraction can happen anywhere. I remember looking out windows when I was in undergraduate college classes. Probably I could tell you everything I saw from the high window of the English building. In my graduate program, we held class in a fireplaced living room or a stone porch or outside on the lawn. Once we were even in a garage with hints of old gasoline and oil smudges on the floor. By then I had learned to listen. The words carried me away from the physical space so I was quite literally inside the images of the poem. I know I can’t expect that to happen for everyone in an introductory undergraduate class. I keep trying to find an analogy they can relate to–how the movie theater falls away when you are immersed in a film. The truth is: I don’t have the answers. I’m just a poet who teaches, hoping that beyond learning craft and reading good poetry, some of the magic will happen for a few of them. I know that poetry saved my life many times. We all need a lifeline from time to time. Unlikely as it may seem, words can serve that purpose–and they ask nothing in return.
>Screech Owl
•September 12, 2009 • Leave a Comment>A screech owl’s cry permeated the early evening two days ago. It was otherworldly; the cry of a predator and a living being. Yesterday during my early morning walk, I saw a fawn prancing in a field, two snakes by the side of the road and a red-tailed fox on a grassy mound. I’m wondering what meaning there is in all of this. So much of my life is spent going here, doing this. All around me, animals hunt, run, propagate.
The choices that comprise a life are complicated. We choose professions or they choose us. We choose partners or they choose us. There’s a certain amount of unconsciousness that follows as we continue with our choices as if they never again need to be reflected upon or changed. Two people I know recently left long marriages for the promise of something else. A close friend is traveling to try to find his lost daughter–now a young woman he doesn’t know. Hope is like breathing.
In Ireland, there was time to notice the changing light. I liked the wildness of the weather. The sea has always spoken to me, invited me to inhale deeply. It will take time to understand all these messages–the owl, the fox, the choices. I do believe that writing brings me closer to the truth.
>Remembering/Time
•September 5, 2009 • Leave a Comment>It’s easy to become caught up in life and forget to look around. My morning walks have been an essential exercise in observation. The way the light filters through the thick foliage and the glint of sunlight on the river are there each day.
I’m back to teaching and my classes are huge. I want to imbue my students with an excitement about the natural world, with dynamic lessons that will make them want to write. It isn’t easy to remain centered when I’m running here and there. In Ireland, it was easy to have the time to write and to notice how light is different in the morning than it is at dusk. I remember the call of birds and the rabbits scooting across the field. The weather has been spectacular and last night there was a full moon. All of these things matter. In slowing down and really seeing, I will continue to absorb what I learned about myself, what really matters.
>Life and Poetry
•August 24, 2009 • Leave a Comment>It is hot and sticky today–as it has been since I returned from cool and windy Ireland. I am not used to this weather and thus find myself a lot more uncomfortable than I would normally be in August. The sky, however, is a mass of interesting cloud formations. I have also noticed the abundant variety of trees in our area–maple, oak, cherry, dogwood, birch and ash. Everything is flowering; crimson and yellow flowers dot the roadsides and front yard gardens.
I am back to work this week. Meanwhile I’m thinking of how to internalize what I learned this summer so the writing continues. For every day I don’t write, it takes three days to get back to the writing–Geraldine told me this and it is true. I have taken a break since I returned home, concentrating on the mundane and the important–paying bills, cleaning, renewing my contacts with friends and family. Goals were developed this summer. I hope to make them as much a part of my life as work and relationships.
I went to Ikea for the first time today–not a literary experience but certainly an interesting one. It’s rather overwhelming–huge and filled with colors, textures and choices. Probably the best part of the experience was dinner at a random Italian restaurant* where I had the second best Puttanesca sauce of my life–it was subtle and redolent with flavor. Having seen the film Julia and Julie this week, I realize that I am a bit of a “foodie” though French food is way too rich for my tastes. Good food can be like music or poetry–layers of flavor that are revealed slowly. So–I will write Puttanesca this week–tangy, with undertones of saltiness, the texture of whole tomatoes, capers, onions, and Kalamata olives.
*The name of this restaurant will be revealed to anyone who asks.
Literary Imaginings by Lisa C. Taylor 