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Why an ebook of One Year of Writing and Healing?

Posted by Diane Morrow on April 2, 2023 in Blog, Book, Writing Ideas

I am delighted to announce that One Year of Writing and Healing is now an ebook! I’ve completed a project which I’ve been intending to complete for a while: an ebook of the book I self-published back in 2016: One Year of Writing and Healing. It’s revised a bit—I couldn’t resist—but it is not fundamentally different from the 2016 book and thus I am not labeling it as a new edition. One way to think about the book is as a kind of extended workshop on writing and healing with the support of research and the good company of poets, along with—of course—a plethora of writing prompts. One could spend a year going through it—or a month—or one could dip in and out of it over a period of years at your leisure. Order the book...

The Cure by Andrea Barrett

Posted by Diane Morrow on January 16, 2022 in Blog, Healing Places, Uncategorized

I have found a cure cottage come to life in a piece of fiction. Everything, thinks Elizabeth, is in order. Ms. Barrett continues: Everything is as it should be, exactly as she would wish it: nine o’clock, on this December day in 1905, and already breakfast has been cooked and served and cleared, Livvie and Rosellen are at the dishes, and all nine of her boarders are resting, wrapped in blankets and robes, on the lower veranda or the private porches of the upstairs rooms. In the light, airy dining room, the new napkins look well in their rings and the cloth is crisp on the table. In the kitchen—the girls look up as she walks by, smiling without interrupting the dance of dishes passing from basin to basin and hand to hand—and also in the mudroom, the woodshed, the smaller shed where the laundry is stored in enormous lidded crates until the boilers are fired up twice each week, everything is as it should be for this hour and minute of the day. There’s a sense of healing place. A sense of order. And a sense that Andrea Barrett has all the time in the world in which to tell us about it. Because of the sensory detail, the rhythm of the prose, I feel my mind slowing down as I read. I feel myself drawn into this world, imagining it. Beginning in the Adirondacks, the story moves back and forth in place, and time, tracing the lives of two women as they come together to run this boardinghouse. Elizabeth, the housekeeper. Nora, the nurse. Nora begins her training in Detroit with a root-and-herb healer Fannie, first living in Fannie’s spare room, going out with her to collect herbs and roots, drying the herbs and roots in her kitchen, making house calls to the sick, then working for a time in a Soldier’s Home with civil war veterans, before making her way to the Adirondacks, her brother’s inn, and beginning to “doctor” the consumptives who have come there to stay. She tries to explain to her brother about this work she’s found: ‘This is what I’m meant to do,” she said—although the swiftness with which it came about had taken her by surprise. ‘It’s what I learned while we were apart, it’s how I make use of myself.’ Elizabeth, the younger of the two women, first makes her way to the Adirondacks with her mother, Clara, arriving that first summer at the inn where Nora lives with her brother. Over time, Elizabeth, still a young woman, attaches herself to Nora, and the two women create together the cure cottage, working together for seven years before Nora dies and Elizabeth continues to carry on the work in her absence. The story opens with the cottage. It also closes with it. There’s a nice sense of symmetry—and of culmination. Elizabeth’s point of view. Elizabeth’s discovery. A wonderful play on the word cure-cottage. What the house itself has come to mean for her. Here is her house. Not a duty, but her living self. It is as if, she thinks, as she moves toward Martin and Andrew and all the others up the walk and the clean brick steps, her hand reaching of its own accord for the polished brass knob in the four-paneled...

Gate A-4 by Naomi Shihab Nye

Posted by Diane Morrow on September 3, 2016 in Blog, Healing Poetry

This is the world I want to live in. Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement: “If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.” Well—one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there. I’m rereading the beginning of this poem now, and I know how it ends—and I realize this is the moment that sets the story of the poem in motion. The speaker goes against hesitation—against the small fear—the pause—because of the way things are “these days.” It reminds me of that moment in Opening the Door of Mercy—that question that arises: But when someone approaches, I have to decide: Is my own safety always the most important consideration? Must I fear all whom I don’t know? Do I help or not? An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing. “Help,” said the flight agent. “Talk to her. What is her problem? We told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.” I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly. “Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit- se-wee?” The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the next day. I said, “No, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just later, who is picking you up? Let’s call him.” Nye’s father is Palestinian—so there’s a familiarity to the older woman—her dress—her language. But for the flight agent, the difference is more severe—and alienating. And the wailing heightens it. Fear is rising, I suspect. We all do this. I do this. A disturbance in the smooth ordinary hum of things—an interruption—can frighten me—or at least throw me. I once dreamed that I was trying to buy a bus ticket to get home. This went on for a while. Finally, I found a Greyhound counter, but the woman behind the counter seemed disoriented. She was crying. Something had happened. In the dream, I tried to summon patience—to let her talk—draw her out. Regretfully, this only lasted a minute in the dream, if that long. Then I myself was wailing! “Where can I get a bus ticket?” Sometimes safety is not the only issue. Efficiency can be an issue, or just getting what we want—say, the comforts of home. We called her son, I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and ride next to her. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her? This all took up two hours. I would like to become this kind of person: the one who makes the call; who stays as long as it takes; who forgets about trying to get home; who...

Prayer for Joy by Stuart Kestenbaum

Posted by Diane Morrow on July 8, 2016 in Blog, Healing Poetry

I love that Kestenbaum’s poem begins with a question: What was it we wanted to say anyhow? There’s so much we could say, and perhaps there’s something ready to emerge—be spoken—but what was it exactly? What word or string of words out of all the ones we’ve learned? There’s so often some external condition to consider—to remind us—something happening in the world. In the case of this poem, a bowl of alphabet soup! And the letter J floating up to the surface—that letter so often neglected and thus surprising. Kestenbaum writes: The ‘j’, a letter that might be great for Scrabble, but not really used for much else, unless we need to jump for joy, and then all of a sudden it’s there and ready to help us soar and to open up our hearts at the same time . . . Oh, letter J. All of a sudden—there—there you are—ready to help us soar and open up—reminding us—what word was it? Jump? Joy? And the two coming together becoming more than either—soaring and opening—both at the same time. Kestenbaum continues: this simple line with a curved bottom, an upside down cane that helps us walk in a new way into this forest of language . . . A forest of language—and with so many possibilities—so many things we could say to each other. So many words we could write. Beginning with nothing more than such simple lines and curves. Now, what is it we want to say? A full text of the poem can be found at Poetry Foundation The image is from A Apple Pie by Kate Greenway housed at the digital library of U. Penn. A book from my own childhood that I loved, each letter calling forth something...

Writing Prompts at Twitter

Posted by Diane Morrow on July 3, 2016 in Blog, Writing Ideas

So it occurs–and I’m by no means the first to have this thought–that Twitter, with its short format, could be another useful way to offer writing prompts for this whole process and project of writing and healing. With this in mind, here is my first experiment in offering writing prompts on Twitter. New writing prompts will appear twice a day. Writing prompts as a way to create a kind of miniature writing retreat? The writing ideas here are influenced by several writers, including Herman Melville, Andrea Barrett, Tim O’Brien, Wallace Stevens, Naomi Shihab Nye, William Stafford, Paul Simon, and Rumi. Writing Prompts Tweets by _WritingPrompt Thanks to cheapbots done quick for their generous app and tutorial for creating sustainable writing prompts. Photo is from the entrance to Wildacres Retreat. You can learn more about writing retreats at Wildacres here. They used to just have 1 cabin for writers but now they have 3! I’ve done a one-week residency there twice. This is very valuable and quite feasible if you live near North Carolina. See also: A guide to getting lost by Harry Giles. Also created with cheapbots. A Conversation with the Poem, Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye from this site...

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