Diane Morrow

Because Even the Word Obstacle is an Obstacle by Alison Luterman

Posted by Diane Morrow on April 19, 2015 in Blog, Healing Poetry, Perspective

I appreciate this poem for its first line: Try to love everything that gets in your way. I love that the poem is about swimming laps. Learn to be small and swim through obstacles like a minnow without grudges or memory. I think I recognize the moment this poem might spring from–getting to the pool and wanting nothing more than an empty lane, the smooth glassy surface of the water, and, then, well–obstacles. The poem is so specific about what can get in the way. For instance: the Chinese women in flowered bathing caps murmuring together in Mandarin, doing leg exercises in your lane the teenage girl idly lounging against the ladder, showing off her new tattoo: Cette vie est la mienne, This life is mine, in thick blue-black letters on her ivory instep. an uncle in the lane next to yours who is teaching his nephew how to hold his breath underwater, even though kids aren’t allowed at this hour. The poem continues. It imagines the boy grown up and on a wedding on a boat and suddenly washed overboard—but emerging like a cork from the water—alive. I appreciate the poem’s last line: So your moment of impatience must bow in service to a larger story, because if something is in your way it is going your way, the way of all beings; towards darkness, towards light. So your moment of impatience must bow in service to a larger story. As a person who struggles mightily with impatience, I appreciate the possibility of recasting my moments of impatience in a different way. Considering a larger story. Considering, in light of the poem’s title, how if I could get a glimpse of this larger story then the very words I use to interpret and name things might begin to change. An obstacle might become . . . what? Full text of the poem is at Your Daily Poem. The poem originally appeared in Sun Magazine in 2010. See also: Is Shifting One’s Point of View a Healing Habit? Photo of swimming minnow is captured from video at...

Emotional Baggage Check: Song as Medicine

Posted by Diane Morrow on January 25, 2015 in Blog, Healing Corridor, Healing Poetry, Writing and Healing Prompts

A young woman in my sophomore class shared this website with me–and then with the whole class. She told us how the website had helped her during a difficult time–how she was able to check in some difficult baggage and receive some genuine help–and now she tries to go onto the site on the weekends and carry baggage for someone else–pay it forward. First, it’s a visually attractive site–simple and elegant–with few choices. You can “check it”–that is check in a piece of your own emotional baggage by writing briefly about it–or you can “carry it”–carry someone else’s baggage for a moment. The way to carry someone’s baggage is simply to read what they’ve posted–the problem they’re dealing with–and then send them a link to a song that you think might help them with whatever they’re dealing with. Song as antidote. Song as medicine. Not unlike a poem as medicine. This not a cure-all, of course. But a beautifully simple idea. You can also send along a few encouraging words with the song link if you like. Choosing either path could lead to an opportunity for writing and healing: condensing one’s most pressing problem into a brief description (no more than 1000 characters) or responding to someone else’s baggage–choosing the song–and composing a response (again no more than 1000 characters). What might your emotional baggage look like in 1000 characters or less? What response would you long to hear? What response to someone else’s baggage could itself become a kind of medicine? For me, hearing that this thoughtful young woman in my class had found the website useful–and was now moved to give back–gave the site some credibility. So this morning I decided to try it out. I clicked on “Carry it,” and read a brief and moving story by a young woman in England. There’s a surprising and appealing intimacy about the site. An opportunity for positive, if fleeting, connection–sending a bit of medicine out into the world. The story the young woman checked in is confidential. But here’s the song I sent: “When it Don’t Come Easy.” Emotional Baggage Check is here. A brief article from 2011 about the original history of the site, which was founded by Robyn Overstreet, can be found at Wired. Lyrics to Patty Griffin’s “When It Don’t Come Easy” can be found...

What I Want by Alicia Ostriker

Posted by Diane Morrow on January 11, 2015 in Blog, Healing Places, Healing Poetry

This is a poem about slowing down and it seems like it might be just right for January, for the quiet space that can open up after the flurry of December. And about what can happen in that quiet. It follows nicely on Pablo Neruda’s poem, “Keeping Quiet,” and seems to spring from that same place. It begins: Yes, that’s what I want right now, Just that sensation Of my mind’s gradual Deceleration, as if I Took my foot off the gas And the Buick rolled to a stop. I can feel that—the quiet after the engine ceases its noise. And I love in this poem what she later suggests can emerge out of the quiet: Let’s try to listen to the announcements Of the inner mind And its committee of guides. They require silence, They demand respect, like teachers In a rowdy classroom—the kids Are in the cloakroom throwing galoshes But the teacher wants to introduce A visitor, a foreign child who waits With downcast eyes, lashes like brown feathers On his flushed silk cheeks. What does my inner mind have on its mind? Ah, the inner mind could emerge—but it might be shy at first—and it might need to wait for the kids to quit throwing their galoshes—for them to look up and realize this visitor might have something interesting—and even important—to say. The full poem can be found at Poetry Foundation. (It spreads over two pages so you need to navigate to the second page to see the full poem.) In a note at the end of the poem, it states that it was written at the beginning of a week-long retreat. The photo of a gray cheeked thrush can be found at Audubon. The bird is described on the site this way: “All the brown-backed thrushes can be shy and hard to see, but the Gray-cheek is perhaps the most elusive. During migration it hides in dense woods, slipping away when a birder approaches. On its far northern nesting grounds it may be more easily seen, especially in late evening, when it sings from...

Writing about Gratitude as an Antidote to the Pain of Receiving Criticism?

Posted by Diane Morrow on December 1, 2014 in Blog, Writing and Healing Prompts

Browsing for research on writing about gratitude, I found this interesting study, written about in the New York Times in 2011. It offers a way to think about gratitude writing as a kind of intervention when a challenge arises. The quoted passages are directly from the New York Times article. 1. The challenge: Criticism arises. (Ouch!) After turning in a piece of writing, some students received praise for it while others got a scathing evaluation: “This is one of the worst essays I’ve ever read!” 2. Retaliation: Loud blasts as a way to respond? Then each student played a computer game against the person who’d done the evaluation. The winner of the game could administer a blast of white noise to the loser. Not surprisingly, the insulted essayists retaliated against their critics by subjecting them to especially loud blasts — much louder than the noise administered by the students who’d gotten positive evaluations. 3. But what if: What if one were to stop and write an essay on gratitude? But there was an exception to this trend among a subgroup of the students: the ones who had been instructed to write essays about things for which they were grateful. After that exercise in counting their blessings, they weren’t bothered by the nasty criticism — or at least they didn’t feel compelled to amp up the noise against their critics. After that exercise in counting their blessings they weren’t bothered by the nasty criticism. This seems potentially important—as if writing might be able to jump-start an entirely different circuit in the brain. One that doesn’t hurt so much. And perhaps there’s something particularly powerful about gratitude writing that can offer this kind of jump-start. It might be difficult to write an entire essay in the moment when a sting arises. But perhaps the introduction? The outline? The first line? It’s an appealing, though I think challenging, alternative to obsessing on the criticism—or on the loud blast that one could retaliate with. I grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and learned just yesterday that they’ve set some kind of record this year by having over 30 inches of snow in November. Thirty inches of snow in November! There is such an abundance to be grateful for, but I think the next time criticism arises, I might just start an essay with that—the fact that I do not have to go outside in the cold and shovel the roof. Along with the fact that I do not own a roof shovel, and do not anticipate needing to own one. The study on gratitude was conducted by Nathan DeWall at the University of Kentucky The New York Times article can be found here The picture is of a woman in Grand Rapids shoveling snow off her roof—with a roof...

Keeping Quiet by Pablo Neruda

Posted by Diane Morrow on November 16, 2014 in Blog, Healing Places, Healing Poetry

I am sharing this poem, “Keeping Quiet,” with my sophomores this week as a writing catalyst. I like the way it has the potential to open up a pool of quiet in the middle of things. It begins: Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still. Not instructions for counting to ten—that common advice for dealing with rising anger before reacting. No, this is longer—just a bit longer—stretching the silence out two beats longer. Now we will count to twelve. The opening reminds of something a teacher might say—a pre-school teacher? Or perhaps something a parent might say to a child before some kind of game. I think that’s what makes the line evocative—as if it holds the echo of something we’ve heard before. Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still. The poem continues: For once on the face of the earth, let’s not speak in any language; let’s stop for one second, and not move our arms so much. No language. No large gestures. What then? Fisherman in the cold sea would not harm whales and the man gathering salt would look at his hurt hands. A pause for not-harming? A pause for looking at our own hands and seeing why they might hurt? A pause to simply look at what we’re doing and ask why we’re doing it? And to ask whether in fact it makes sense? What I want should not be confused with total inactivity. We would not be doing nothing We would be doing something. It’s a bit like meditation what he’s suggesting. Or perhaps writing. Not doing nothing. Doing something. Doing something different. And then, he tells us, this might become possible: perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves Who would not want this? The poem ends: Now I’ll count up to twelve and you keep quiet and I will go. Do you feel it? A sense of a vast space opening up. The poet has left—and we are here—in the quiet. The full text of the poem is here. It is read by Sylvia Boorstein. The poem is from Extravagaria and is translated by Alistair Reed (The photo is from a video of the poem which has since been taken...

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