>I returned home from St. John, a U.S. Virgin Island on January 2. Today I awakened to a snowy vista–beautiful clear sky and rim of snow on my mailbox and outside stair rails. I was swimming in the warm water of the Caribbean a week ago–sea turtles moving slowly and abundant fish leaping out of the water. I am grateful for the amazing places that I have visited and now hold inside of me.
I am re-reading Language in Thought and Action by S.I. Hawakawa and Alan Hawakawa. It is a book I’m using in my class in the spring semester. I loved this book when I was twenty-something and returning to college. I hadn’t looked at it in many years, ordered the latest edition, and retreated to couch with a cup of tea and my daughter’s overly affectionate cat. The idea of language as a living, breathing thing used in social interaction, historical context or embedded with prejudices, cultural bias, abstractions, and a kind of magic (as if we sometimes believe the word to be the actual thing–like the word rattlesnake evoking fear though it is not the actual rattlesnake) is endlessly fascinating to me. I hope it will be so for my students. It was a struggle choosing books for this new class I’m teaching on critical and creative thinking. Suggested books had conundrums, math games, right and left brain activities. While I will incorporate some of this (and also some amazing videos that are out there–Silent Beats is one I am thinking of–about our assumptions), I am a language person. It became increasingly evident to me that I needed to find a book that showed the ways in which language impacts who we are and how we live—in advertising they already know this. I remember my father (who made a living in advertising) coming up with slogans or illustrations that showed people looking attractive while they were interacting with a product, implying that the product will do more than its intended use–it may win you the man or woman of your dreams, make you thinner, more successful, prettier or more handsome. It was fun to find that a book that really challenged how I thought in my twenties still has something to offer me now. The newer edition has been updated to include computers and more recent historical events that have changed how we use language. Language is always changing. One of the interesting activities I did in Ireland with Geraldine was to trade sayings/superstitions/cliches. While many are the same, some are different or phrased differently, depending on the culture and context. Language defines a culture but it can also be used to hurt, judge, infer, or slant. I used to do an activity where students shared words they liked and words they didn’t like. My daughter hates the word burger. I love the word juxtapose. We dislike a name because we once knew someone with that name that aroused something negative in us. All of this is fascinating to me. I hope I can make this material come alive for my students.
>Changing Scenery
•January 9, 2011 • Leave a Comment
>Distance and Treasure
•December 29, 2010 • Leave a Comment>Last week I shared a poem in class called “Threshold” by Tony Hoagland. It is an older poem, from the book Sweet Ruin. It begins with a detailed description of an old woman in a grocery store–providing the reader with two easily relatable images. When the poem moves to mortality and a consciousness of time, it becomes a celebration as well as an awareness. I love the idea that reminders tap me on the shoulder, brush up against me in the subway, send me letters in shaky handwriting. How many days and hours pass blindly? When I have time, I realize that life can move at a slower pace. Within that slowdown is the necessary awareness for creativity. I don’t relish returning to the pace I have created for myself. Sometimes I marvel at people who seem overwhelmed doing more than one thing in one day. While I appreciate being able to multi-task, it comes at a price. Staying with an idea until its nuance and potential emerges takes patience. The rewards are many–a fully realized perception or piece of art, the satisfaction of following through, the wonder. All around me, colors merge into a giant panorama. I hear water trickling over rocks, see the play of light changing. It’s all there. Today I am here watching.
>It’s Beginning To Look a Lot Like….
•December 23, 2010 • Leave a Comment>Today’s dusting of snow breathes new life into the landscape. Everything shimmmers and catches the scant sunlight. Grateful, I look outside at trees standing resolutely on the edge of something. Every day is a little longer, adding minutes in that march toward a growing season. I don’t know which window to look out of–the one that overlooks the ordinary asphalt and dead grass or the one that only reflects what can’t be easily seen. I am interested in what is behind the ring of hills, over the stone wall. I have seen wild turkeys, deer, fox, chipmunks, squirrels, and raccoons. What have I missed?
>Sadnesses and Celebrations
•December 6, 2010 • Leave a Comment>The dried flowers in the vase on the linen tablecloth promise nothing. On this short day, I gather in. Late fall mornings are proclamations; startling in their chill and barren beauty. Hills of sharp trees and matted grass slide by me. I cannot change the pain of others which persists even as the time ahead for all of us grows shorter. Language amazes me in its intricacies, always providing a way to render even the tragic, bearable.
My collaborative book of poetry with Geraldine Mills, The Other Side of Longing, is out in Ireland and soon to distributed by Syracuse University Press in the United States. It is a beautiful book, graced by Russ’ photograph of seaweed colors underwater at Tullen Strand in County Donegal. The collaboration is now a permanent work of art and I feel lucky in many ways. I’m humbled by the opportunity to read, to travel, to continue to grow as an artist.
My resolve is strengthened to make writing central to my life. It is all I can do–observe and render those observations vivid. In this way, I begin to make sense of the resolute screen that breaks my view into tiny squares that are the fragments of a world I cannot control.
Literary Imaginings by Lisa C. Taylor 