Blog

Writing and Healing Prompt: Opening the Door of Mercy

Posted by Diane Morrow on April 9, 2012 in Blog, Healing Poetry, Writing and Healing Prompts

Last week I shared and analyzed an essay with my sophomores: “Opening the Door of Mercy,” an essay by Karen Round published as part of the “This I Believe” series on NPR. I couldn’t resist discovering the vivid language in her essay and rearranging it into a found poem, something I’ve discovered is helping me read more closely—and attend to language and form. So. . . here are her words rearranged on the page, a kind of distillation of the essay. The sky darkening. The silhouette of a woman sagging on our threshold. Our location forces difficult choices. Wisdom advises to act a Good Samaritan is to be naïve, risk terrible consequences. 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? I believe repeatedly rejecting others who need help endangers me. So here where we live on that afternoon one summer when the woman was sinking like the sun on my front porch, I made my choice. I opened the door. We discussed in class how this essay could become a kind of mentor text or catalyst—finding that moment or series of moments in one’s life where a choice had to be made—and then using that choice to begin an essay—and, in so doing, to find ways to bring other readers in, to recognize and write our way towards the notion that we are all often facing similar kinds of choices. Like this choice: when a stranger arrives at our threshold, do we open the door or not? (And how do we balance wisdom and compassion when we’re making such choices?) This essay also puts me in mind (yet once again) of Rumi’s poem about the guest house and the way that outer guests and inner guests can mirror each other and correspond. (I’m beginning to suspect this poem by Rumi can connect to many, many things.) 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. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. This could lead to yet another writing idea: Who or what is waiting at the threshold? Is now the right time—or not—to open the door? What might happen if one did? _________________________________________________ See also: Karin Round’s essay at NPR November Angels The Guest House, at...

Through Corridors of Light: Poems of Consolation during Illness

Posted by Diane Morrow on March 27, 2012 in Blog, Healing Books, Healing Corridor, Healing Poetry, Resources

I have just become aware of a new poetry anthology published in the UK for people who are dealing with illness. The anthology is edited by John Andrew Denny, who writes, at his website: I was ill for more than twenty years with ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. For most of that time I was bedbound, in pain and at times deeply depressed, and I was helped to an extraordinary degree by reading and meditating on poetry that addressed my own thoughts and feelings about my illness. In an email conversation, he also writes about a connection between reading poetry and writing, something I find of particular interest: The initial reason I compiled Through Corridors of Light was that when I was first ill (in 1991) I was so weak that anything longer than a short(ish) poem was beyond my concentration. Now that I am quite a lot stronger, I still find writing very slow, and creative writing is unsatisfying for me unless I can find some relevant model to stimulate my mind – so both of these impulses were what inspired my anthology. What makes it so therapeutic is that in giving voice to one’s hopes, fears, worries, or desires, the poems not only trigger other thoughts and feelings but also show how poems on such themes can be successfully constructed. What makes it so therapeutic is that in giving voice to one’s hopes, fears, worries, or desires, the poems not only trigger other thoughts and feelings but also show how poems on such themes can be successfully constructed. I love this idea–the connection between reading a poem and beginning to write. I think this speaks to what is possible. We read and then we write, and in doing so a healing conversation extends and continues and spreads like a network of healing corridors. I’m waiting for my copy to arrive in the mail. Meanwhile, I can direct you to his beautiful website which contains a detailed table of contents, a visitor page, and ordering information. He’s donating all profits from his book to ME Research UK, a charity in the UK doing research into Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. __________________________________________ See: Through Corridors of Light I Must Go, I Will Go, another piece on John Andrew Denny’s...

“The Promise” by Marie Howe

Posted by Diane Morrow on March 19, 2012 in Blog, Healing Poetry

The book, What the Living Do, was written by Marie Howe in the wake of her brother’s death from AIDS. It’s a book that, perhaps better than any other book I know, walks that delicate balance between making memorial—remembering who and what has been lost—and choosing life in the wake of such loss—figuring out, day by day, what it is that the living do (after). The following is excerpted from her poem, “The Promise.” In the dream I had when he came back not sick but whole, and wearing his winter coat, he looked at me as though he couldn’t speak. . . And I told him: I’m reading all this Buddhist stuff, and listen, we don’t die when we die. Death is an event, a threshold we pass through. We go on and on and into light forever. And he looked down, and then back up at me. It was the look we’d pass across the kitchen table when Dad was drunk again and dangerous, the level look that wants to tell you something, in a crowded room, something important, and can’t. ____________________________________________________________________ ...

Indra’s Net

Posted by Diane Morrow on March 14, 2012 in Blog, Healing Poetry

From The Open Road by Pico Iyer Chapter Four, The Philosopher When the Dalai Lama speaks of interdependence all he is really saying is that we are all a part of a single body. Perhaps it’s not surprising he is famous for his laughter, the sudden eruption of helpless giggles traveling to the point where everything is connected, our fascination with division hilarious. Quarreling over money is like taking a ten-dollar-bill out of your right-hand pocket and then, after a great deal of fanfare and contention, putting it in your left. ____________________________ See also: The Open Road by Pico Iyer, Part One Indra’s net at Wikipedia, the source of the above photo Also the source of this quote by Alan Watts: Imagine a multidimensional spider’s web in the early morning covered with dew drops. And every dew drop contains the reflection of all the other dew drops. And, in each reflected dew drop, the reflections of all the other dew drops in that reflection. And so ad infinitum. That is the Buddhist conception of the universe in an...

The Open Road by Pico Iyer

Posted by Diane Morrow on March 7, 2012 in Blog, Healing Books, Healing Poetry

I am rereading The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. Pico Iyer, a journalist and novelist, has known the Dalai Lama for decades, first meeting him with his father when he was an adolescent. In this impressionistic biography he peels back layers of the Dalai Lama to present him in nine different facets. The first chapter—the first facet—is The Conundrum. In it I found this, a kind of poem: We are not talking about God We are not talking about Nirvana We are only talking about how to become a more compassionate human being. At times he pulls out a piece of tissue and polishes his glasses A metaphor He has taken off his watch with its sturdy stainless-steel band. Know exactly how much time you have he might be saying and use that time for some good. ______________________________ More about The Open Road: A book review at the New York Times The book at...

« Older Entries

Next Entries »