Week Five

Week Five: The Power of Persistence

In the spirit of Wallace Stevens’s poem “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” we’re going to use this week to find different ways of approaching the same subject. 

Every day this week, you are going to set the timer and do the ten minute free write about the same thing.  Pick an object or an idea or anything. But every day you must set your sights on it afresh and see what comes out. I did this weekly for a whole month once writing about the idea of the month of March (it was, I believe, September when I took on this exercise). It was fascinating where my mind went after its initial sigh of “ugh, March again?”

The purpose here is not only to find a new facet of a familiar thing, as you work each day with the same starting point, but also to, through this distraction, allow to rise to the surface some of your deepest concerns.  Let the object of your consideration take the shape of what's on your mind or lurking in your subconscious or been rumbling around in your bloodstream.

At the end of the week, please post something of your new work, and please provide some comments on others' work where you find interest and energy.

This also concludes our sessions. I hope you have discovered and will zoom onward secure in your use of the power of the ordinary, of cross-pollination, sound, limitations, and persistence.

Wallace Stevens, "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/stevens-13ways.html

Here's my own "Crow's Call: March Song"

Crow’s Call: March Song

One tree shatters

into crow fragments,

peppers the sky.

Some days the unspoken

is like this too.

I meet my own mind

in the unexpected motion.

I think such things

cause rain, but they don’t.

There’s no predicting

why a tree would act this way,

why such explosions

do not kill.  Left behind:

elegant etch of limb,

a raucous cry, then quiet.

Something of loneliness now,

its edgy company,

the way it can hold the lungs just so,

so inhaling is aquatic,

exhaling no relief.

I’ve seen the tar rise in LA’s pits,

recognized its slow bubble as my own.

Watched a stream run wild under

frozen crust, and seen my face,

whitened, seared.

I know something of walking out

into the world cloaked in teeth,

trying to never come home.

Nothing is springing,

rising from its roots, but

unseen things are moving fast in me.

Against my great will

blood runs, the heart

pumps its torqued spasm,

the vessels receive,

membranes allow passage.

Against my will the wind

from the window’s cracks

enters my lungs and mingles

in me.  Against my will,

there is a quickening.  I taste

my inadvertent sap.

Under the flesh,

something runs:

ice falls to crispy moss,

wet rock; mud time pulls

as gravity the moment of momentum. Bodies

remain in motion, nothing’s at rest:

nestlings urgent, mouthy

scattering of embattled starlings,

silent laugh of hawk. It’s all

here now: turtles rise slow

to pierce the dark surface and

skunk cabbage rules the swamp world

in its churlish curl. Shatter me, cracking:

my face a thousand pieces,

hurtling heavenly body, helpless to orbit.

Month of war, fierce desire against

the solid lines of what we know; our days

and hard-drilled concessions.

Once in March I ran a race

in pelting rain. Came up short,

panting, dripping, and walked off

the course to drink beer with some people

I used to know.  That’s what March’s

battles are like: fools’ games of random momentum

and the sudden bottom of a pint.

March away from the thin veils, pale

gyrations and waltz, the beck

and call of blue-ice, snowpack,

naked branch and sky.  March on

toward what’s blowsy and fragrant,

lush and plush with velvets, silk,

the sarabands of spring: crisp step

of the belly to the languid lure

of freeform and winking cakewalk.

March on, drunken reveler,

hat half off, coat sloped from a shoulder,

one glove gone.

Canted night, slide us

to the earlying day. Now

we are hungry for planting.  We fall

to our knees in loosening grass,

damp and rooting.  We crack the crust

to open earth’s egg.  Mud

makes us gods again. We all

turn our heads,

sing out.