Archives | Writing and Healing

from November Angels by Jane Hirshfield

Posted by Diane Morrow on November 22, 2011 in Blog, Healing Poetry

A single, cold blossom tumbles, fledged from the sky’s white branch. And the angels look on, observing what falls: all of it falls . . . Angels as observers. The afternoon lengthens, steepens, flares out— no matter for them. It is assenting that makes them angels, neither increased nor decreased by the clamorous heart: their only work to shine back, however the passing brightness hurts their eyes. Angels watching. Saying yes. Shining back. It is assenting that makes them angels The full text of November Angels used to be available at the Poetry Foundation, but, alas, is no longer. The photo is of a print, Blossoms Falling, by Masha Schweitzer at the Los Angeles Printmaking...

November Angels?

Posted by Diane Morrow on November 16, 2011 in Blog, Healing Poetry

One thing leads to another. Three years ago I wrote about the poem, “My November Guest,” by Robert Frost. This morning I found myself looking at the poem again. It’s a poem in which the speaker becomes aware of sorrow as a guest and begins to understand how deeply sorrow appreciates “the desolate, deserted trees/ the faded earth, the heavy sky.” Since I first came across Frost’s poem I’ve been struck by his notion: feelings as simply guests. Nothing more or less. They come and they go. A particular feeling can be absent for days or weeks or even months and then one afternoon it can simply show up, unexpectedly. The same notion is there in Paul Simon’s lyrics: “Hello darkness, my old friend.” And it’s there in Rumi’s poem: This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Sorrow as unexpected visitor. Sorrow as stranger? This morning I found myself doing a simple search on hospitality toward strangers. I found this, from Hebrews: “Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.” And then I found this: a poem, “November Angels” by Jane Hirshfield. An interesting juxtaposition, I think. Sorrow as stranger. Sorrow as angel? And what is an angel really? Or what could it be? It’s one of those things that a person could write about. Note: Lately, I’ve been placing my links at the bottom of my posts instead of in the middle because of something I read this past summer about the process of reading in Nicholas Carr’s book, The Shallows. He makes a good case for the way links in the middle of things disrupt a process of deep reading and engagement and concentration. One of these days I’ll write a bit about that here. In any case, the links for this post: Rumi’s poem, The Guest House The citation from Hebrews See also: from My November...

Enough: A Poem for a November Morning

Posted by Diane Morrow on November 8, 2011 in Blog, Healing Poetry

I like this poem by Jeffrey Harrison for its apparent simplicity. For its timeliness—a warm cloudless November morning. For its honesty—that surprise toward the end of the first stanza when the speaker of the poem admits to a mind that is not quiet but is instead roiled with personal grievance. It’s a gift, this cloudless November morning warm enough for you to walk without a jacket along your favorite path. The rhythmic shushing of your feet through fallen leaves should be enough to quiet the mind, so it surprises you when you catch yourself telling off your boss for a decade of accumulated injustices, all the things you’ve never said circling inside you. I love the way the wind picks up in this poem—and it shifts and changes everything and it’s as if the whole day is sighing its wise advice. It’s the rising wind that pulls you out of it, and you look up to see a cloud of leaves swirling in sunlight, flickering against the blue and rising above the treetops, as if the whole day were sighing, Let it go, let it go, for this moment at least, let it all go. I love the way the speaker of this poem goes on a walk and how it’s while walking that the thorny problem emerges—an entire decade of problems—but it’s also while walking that the problem is lifted up and carried on the wind. And I love that the poem is entitled “Enough.” Enough of that personal grievance circling around and around in a loop like all our old obsessions. And then there’s that other sense of enough that seems so right for November—that sense of plenty. In this moment—no matter who we are and no matter what we are and no matter what we’re doing—in some very real sense that is enough. A full text of the poem, “Enough” by Jeffrey...

November Update: Writing and Healing

Posted by Diane Morrow on November 2, 2011 in Blog, Book

The project I’m featuring in my Healing Corridor is HODI: Soldiers of Peace. This is an inspiring project a woman has begun in Kenya where young men and women are offered healing alternatives to violence. There’s a moving video about young men from different tribes playing soccer rather than destroying each other. Well worth a look. I also did some close reading of the poem, Kindness, a couple weeks ago. It’s a poem I’m trying to keep in the back of mind–and sometimes the forefront–as I go into the month of November. 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. Wishing for you kindness in this month....

Odysseus in America: A Book for Healing and Writing

Posted by Diane Morrow on November 1, 2011 in Blog, Healing Books

Let me begin with a story about Bear. Bear served one tour in Vietnam as a sergeant in the infantry. During that single tour he was ordered to slit the throat of a wounded enemy soldier. He followed orders. He saw close friends die, including one particularly horrific incident when his platoon, after a night ambush, discovered two headless bodies of their own men; a ways out they came upon the two heads set up on stakes. His platoon went berserk after the incident, cutting off the heads of enemy soldiers, collecting ears. They became known as the headhunters. Back home, a full thirty years out from military discharge, Bear is afraid he’s “losing it”. Bear sleeps on the couch, separate from his wife, with a knife under his pillow. He “walks the perimeter” of his land at night, looking for snipers and ambushes. His job at the post office is in jeopardy because of numerous incidents of violence. He attacks people, sometimes without any provocation. More than once, he’s had to leave work in order to keep himself from killing someone. Jonathan Shay, author of Odysseus in America, looks at this violent man and sees a deep and resonant connection with the Greek hero, Odysseus. I teach high school English now. When I was first starting out, two years ago, I found myself looking for ways to take classic works that are taught in high school—works like The Iliad and The Odyssey and Oedipus Rex—and make them relevant for fifteen and sixteen-year-olds. My search yielded more than I’d hoped for. It led me to the work of Jonathan Shay, a psychiatrist who works with war veterans in Boston and who has won for this work the prestigious MacArthur award. Shay was forty years old and conducting research in neuroscience at Massachusetts General Hospital when he suffered a stroke that left him temporarily paralyzed on his left side. While recovering, he decided to read classic works that he’d never gotten around to. He read, among others, The Iliad and The Odyssey. Following his recovery, and with his research stalled, he took a temporary position filling in for a psychiatrist at an outpatient clinic, counseling troubled vets. Connections became apparent—and then multiplied. Shay began to see Achilles in every soldier who’d ever felt betrayed by a commander. He saw Odysseus in every soldier who was having difficulty returning home. Odysseus, Shay reminds us, is the last soldier to make it home from Troy. It takes him ten full years, and for at least some part of the journey he, like Bear, remains in “combat mode.” His first act following combat is a violent one in which he and his men raid the coastal city of Ismarus. Odysseus subsequently travels to Hades, the underworld, where, walking among the dead, he must confront his sense of loss and guilt. He is forced to maneuver between the twin dangers of Scylla and Charbydis. What Shay came to realize is that this ancient story could make a soldier who was struggling with readjustment to civilian life feel less alone—part of something much larger. Shay speaks to this in an interview. “One of the things they appreciate,” he says, “is the sense that they’re part of a long historical context—that they are not personally deficient...