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Over the Wall of Self: A Found Poem by David Foster Wallace

Posted by Diane Morrow on August 16, 2015 in Blog, Fiction, Healing Poetry

After writing about This is Water by David Foster Wallace a couple weeks ago, I ended up listening to the beginning of a documentary, Endnotes, done by BBC. The opening, in Wallace’s own words, struck me as a kind of poem which I’m including here. These are words that could serve as inspiration for anyone who writes and reads— There’s something magical for me about literature and fiction and I think it can do things not only that pop culture can’t do, but that are urgent now. One is that by creating a character in a piece of fiction you can allow a reader to leap over the wall of self and to imagine himself being not just somewhere else but someone else. In a way that television and movies that no other form can do because people I think are essentially lonely and alone and frightened of being alone. I love his sense of urgency here. And his honesty—his vulnerability. And this image of leaping over the wall of self. A reason to read–and to write. His comments also dovetail well with research that has demonstrated a link between reading literary fiction and developing empathy and emotional intelligence. The BBC documentary, Endnotes is linked at YouTube...

This is Water by David Foster Wallace

Posted by Diane Morrow on July 26, 2015 in Blog, Perspective, Writing and Healing Prompts

I’m thinking of this speech by David Foster Wallace because I’m reading his book, Infinite Jest, this summer, and will be showing the speech again this fall to my students, and because the speech connects so well to the poem by Alison Luterman that I wrote about back in April—Because Even the Word Obstacle Is an Obstacle. The whole speech is well worth listening to and I’m embedding it here. I’m also excerpting a short piece from his speech that connects especially well to the poem. There are so many pieces I could excerpt. But, for now, this one, in which he muses on how a person might consider navigating the ordinary experience of going to the grocery store differently: But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider. If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down. How well that connects to Alison Luterman’s last stanza: 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. I feel like there’s a writing idea in here somewhere. Catching a moment of impatience and spinning it. Catching a moment when the water is not as smooth as we would like. And then imagining the story forward. What if the woman in the grocery store is not who I think she is? What if appearances are entirely deceptive? What if the boy in the next lane learning to hold his breath is practicing to save his life? Or—who knows?—what if he’s practicing to save mine? What if we could begin by imagining just one thing that is not what it appears to be? And then writing about that. See also Alison Luterman’s poem: Because Even the Word Obstacle is an...

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...

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