Tag: #DiannePearce

Post-Election Poems & American History

Published on by dianneP1 Comment

The United States has just had an almost 50-50 split on the concept of what our country is, of what our country should be, but, more than that, of who our country should be.

It caused me to take my coffee time this morning to take a read of the Declaration of Independence, because so many Americans like to say that they know the original intent of the Founding Fathers. I do not claim to know their original intent at all, but I did find the Declaration of Independence to be beautifully written, and to me, very clear.

First, I want to share this image of one of my favorite national monuments with you, because, just like when you see it in Washington DC, it is surprising, and takes my breath away:

I want to use part of this post to call on us all to remember what has been given so that we can continue this experiment in democracy, this experiement of liberty and justice for all, this government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and though it is maybe too easy to get behind one man, and too hard, too abstract, to try to get behind 334 million humans, never was this grand experiement to be for only one man.

And so I read the Declaration of Independence today, and of course there is this part that almost all Americans know:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–“

But what I found interesting this morning, in this beautifully-written document, were these sections:

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us

That’s not the entire document, just the parts I found interesting this morning as I think back over the last 100 or so days. Are things so different now than they were then? Have we gone forward to go back?

You can read the whole transcript at the National Archives.

In times like these we can experience anger that can feel overwhelming.

Or we can experience hopelessness that can take all our breath away.
For myself, as my daughter is an immigrant, these times are making me nervous. Many people legally adopted from foreign countries into the United States have been unjustly deported, so you can imagine how a mother would fret when she senses a taste for blood in the crowd.

In times like these we need something unexpected to come along and lift us from our sticky mood, because we have work to do! We have to get back to the business of trying to create a world we’re proud to live in.

So to this I say, “America, I’m with you!”

Because I have my doubts you’ll read the whole thing, here is the third section of the mighty

“Howl” by (the wonderous) Allen Ginsberg:

III

Carl Solomon! I’m with you in Rockland
where you’re madder than I am
I’m with you in Rockland
where you must feel very strange
I’m with you in Rockland
where you imitate the shade of my mother
I’m with you in Rockland
where you’ve murdered your twelve secretaries
I’m with you in Rockland
where you laugh at this invisible humor
I’m with you in Rockland
where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter
I’m with you in Rockland
where your condition has become serious and is reported on the radio
I’m with you in Rockland
where the faculties of the skull no longer admit the worms of the senses
I’m with you in Rockland
where you drink the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
I’m with you in Rockland
where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the harpies of the Bronx
I’m with you in Rockland
where you scream in a straightjacket that you’re losing the game of the actual pingpong of the abyss
I’m with you in Rockland
where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse
I’m with you in Rockland
where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void
I’m with you in Rockland
where you accuse your doctors of insanity and plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the fascist national Golgotha
I’m with you in Rockland
where you will split the heavens of Long Island and resurrect your living human Jesus from the superhuman tomb
I’m with you in Rockland
where there are twentyfive thousand mad comrades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale
I’m with you in Rockland
where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and won’t let us sleep
I’m with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls’ airplanes roaring over the roof they’ve come to drop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself    imaginary walls collapse    O skinny legions run outside    O starry-spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here    O victory forget your underwear we’re free
I’m with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night

My fellow Americans (if I can be so bold to type those words) we will, I believe, endure, as we have for so long. And we will be here for each other, as ever we have been.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers

by Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.

Much love to all~ Dianne

Play a Game With Us and Win a Prize!

Published on by dianneP2 Comments

It’s the spooky season! Let’s play Exquisite Corpse!

“What,” you may ask, “is Exquisite Corpse, and how do I engage in such an outlandishly named game?”

Before we all get the vapors…

Exquisite Corpse is a collaborative poetry game that traces its roots to the Parisian Surrealist Movement. Exquisite Corpse is played by several people, each of whom writes a word on a sheet of paper, folds the paper to conceal it, and passes it on to the next player for his or her contribution.
In order to write a poem, participants should agree on a sentence structure beforehand. For example, each sentence in the poem could be structured “Adjective, Noun, Verb, Adjective, Noun.” Articles and verb tenses may be added later or adjusted after the poem has been written. The game was also adapted to drawing, where one participant would draw thehead of a figure, the next the torso, etc. The name “Exquisite Corpse” comes from a line of poetry created using the technique: “The exquisite corpse will drink the young wine.”
https://poets.org/text/play-exquisite-corpse

While we cannot share a piece of paper, we can, all the same, play the game. Please join us!

The rules for this game are as follows”

SUBMIT: one line of “poetry”

FORM: The line must be arranged to have these elements in THIS ORDER ONLY as the main elements:

Adjective, Noun, Verb, Verb, Adjective or Adverb (one only), Adjective, Noun

Punctuate (or not) as you see fit.

YES! You can add conjunctions, articles, etc., as needed, but the main words must be Adjective, Noun, Verb, Verb, Adjective or Adverb (one only), Adjective, Noun

So, this would work:

Happy frogs jumped and swam quickly, green sparks

Happy(adjective) frogs(noun) jumped(verb) and swam(verb) quickly(adverb), green(adjective) sparks(noun).

And this would not:

Frogs jumped happily and swam quickly making green sparks

Got it?

You do!

Send it to dianne@currentwords.com between now and October 29th at midnight PT, for publication on Halloween!

Make the email subject: Exquisite Corpse.

ONE entry per person!

PRIZES:

SUBMIT and you will be given a free digital copy of the OSP book of your choice!

Three lucky people, chosen at random by Robert Fleming and his random number generator, will be given a print (paperback) copy of the OSP book of his/her/their choice!

One Lucky Person (not publishing with CWP) will win a free 5-page edit from me!

OSP members and other people CWP publishes are welcome to join in, and can claim a free Kindle of their choice from OSP, but are not going to get one of the three free print books or the edit (so sorry! Let’s give those to our guests!).

YES, everyone who enters will be subscribed to OSP news through Current Words newsletter, which is sent out to email addresses one time almost every month. At the bottom of your first newsletter (and all the rest of them) is an unsubscribe button, and if you really don’t want to stay on the list, that will get you right off (Mailchimp don’t play.).Honestly, we’re not trying to bother you; we’re out to have fun!

So, let’s have fun!

Ooooo, you can already start dreaming of the OSP book you’re going to choose for your prize! Take a look at your options:

Catalog

Happy Fall, y’all, and Happy Halloween!

I cannot wait to read your exquisite corpse!

🙂 Dianne

Would Love To Hear From You

Published on by diannePLeave a comment

It’s the “dog days of summer.” Where I live we’ve had only brief periods of respite from the extra hot days, and these sweaty days force me inside, where they, ostensibly, give me more time to write.
And so I am thinking about all of that. And I’m wondering, those of you who write, have you ever considered taking classes, or have you taken classes, in writing? It occurs to me that while my daughter can play a few songs on the piano through trial and error, she is much better when she is actively taking lessons. She doesn’t take lessons because she wishes to be the next piano great, or even play professionally. She takes lessons because she enjoys playing the piano, and would like to be able to play it better. I pay for the lessons gladly, without a thought about it.
Do we do that as writers, with writing?

When I went back to school to get my MA it was because I wanted to get better at writing. Yes, I had the hope of publishing, but mostly I just wanted to be better at writing my stories and poems. I signed on for my MFA primarily because the teachers in my MA program, who were not affiliated with the MFA schools, suggested that I had a spark, and could get it even sparkier with more training. And so I did it, the MFA, for me.

When we had our book marketing webinar a week or so ago speaker Jared Kuritz suggested that if someone wants to be a published author that author must go from hobbyist to professional, and that would involve a dedication of time, and some allocation of funds.

I am curious and would love to hear what you think about this. Have you ever done any “professional” training for writing? Something like lessons? Have you spent money on your development? Do you hope to move from hobbyist to pro? Or, perhaps, consider and reply to this by telling me about lessons that you have taken in something else, or paid for in order that a child or someone else in your life is able to take lessons. I would be very curious to hear what you think makes something a skill that you might need training in versus something you come fully equipped for, without training.

I’m laughing to myself now, sitting here, thinking about “the dog days of summer,” and how I once paid for dog training for my prior delightful pup, an out-of-control terrier who I’d adopted when he was still a puppy. I had named him Chad,

and he came after I lost the dog who preceded him, a very fancy little terrier named BeBe who walked beside me like a queen, and never needed a leash or a single command, from the moment I brought her home. Chad, on the other hand, chewed everything: my toes as I crossed the room, my ears as I sat on the sofa or lay in bed, my boyfriend’s brand new Nikes, huge holes in his blanket, and he pooped blue wool for a week after, half a wooden magazine rack while I was at work one day, scads of toilet paper rolls. He peed everywhere. There was a moment where I listened to him cry from behind the baby gate in the kitchen thinking, “One of us is not going to make it out of this relationship.” I found a dog trainer all right. I could not wait for her to get to my house! And I remember her like it was yesterday, though it was more likely 2001, when she arrived, and I let the beast loose on her, and she said to me, “Okay. I can see he has a lot of energy. Let’s start training you to be a better owner.” 
By the end of the session, several hours later, I admit, for I was a slow learner, I was fully trained, and Chad and I lived harmoniously from that moment on, for sixteen and a half years.

And just now, as I prepared to publish this post, I thought to myself, Maybe throw this post in Word and check the spelling, even though I know my writing does not need it! But I did, and I found four spelling errors, due to poor typing skills, which tells me that it seems that I am still, to this day, a stubborn and slow learner. 😉

So what about you? Do you train at writing at all? Are there other things you will use training for? Do you think of writing as something a person can improve at with training? I am curious to see if it is only me.