Archives | Writing and Healing

When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron

Posted by Diane Morrow on September 27, 2015 in Blog, Healing Books, Perspective

In When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun, tells this story—a story that came to mind as I was thinking about “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop. It’s another take on this idea of practicing loss by looking at it differently. By considering that what looks and feels like loss might be something other than disaster. Pema Chodron writes: I read somewhere about a family who had only one son. They were very poor. This son was extremely precious to them, and the only thing that mattered to the family was that he bring them some financial support and prestige. Then he was thrown from a horse and crippled. It seemed like the end of their lives. Two weeks after that, the army came into the village and took away all the healthy strong men to fight in the war, and this young man was allowed to stay behind and take care of his family. Life is like that. We don’t know anything. We call something bad; we call it good. But really we just don’t know. I don’t think this means that we don’t grieve. Not that. Sorrow is sorrow. But I think it means holding with at least some tiny part of our mind the possibility that the way things seem might not be the full story. There might be a larger story that we can’t yet see. And it seems like writing can be a way to consider and imagine this larger story. What if the way things seem is not the way things really...

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

Posted by Diane Morrow on September 6, 2015 in Healing Grief, Healing Poetry, Writing and Healing Prompts

There’s something about this poem, “One Art.” A haunting kind of repetition. It’s a poem about loss and trying to wrap one’s mind around it—trying to master it. It’s about considering loss as an art, which suggests that somehow the loss can be transformed. Can become something of value? Something beautiful? And how exactly? The poem begins with a loss as ordinary as the loss of keys and then begins to expand outward from there—the loss of hours, cities, rivers, an entire continent. It’s a poem, perhaps, best heard because the sound of the poem is so important to its meaning. A reading of the poem begins at 1:50 here: I appreciate this reading. I appreciate the shift and sigh in the reader’s voice when she reads about the loss of the mother’s watch–and how her voice sustains that shift through the remainder of the poem. If you listen to the full 6-minute video, you’ll learn that Elizabeth Bishop lost both her parents before the age of five. Knowing an author’s story doesn’t always change the experience of a poem, but for me, this piece of history does seem crucial. The tone of the poem seems important. The seriousness and the lack of seriousness. Both. It seems just the kind of poem that could inspire writing. What has been lost? One could make a list. It could begin with keys and socks. And it could go on from there. And the list could lead to the question: Does the practice of loss carry us anywhere? Does the practice of loss make it become any more bearable? Any less of a disaster? And what might the practice of loss look like? I keep thinking that this poem is titled “The Art of Losing,” but it’s actually called “One Art” which for me is a kind of reminder that she’s talking about one art among many. A full text of the poem can be found at Poetry Foundation Image is of Paul Cezanne’s “Study of An Apple” from...