The One-Inch Window

Today’s writing prompt asks you to cultivate a sense of stillness and focus by focusing on very small details. This prompt has its origins in Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird, where, in giving advice to those with writer’s block, she counsels writers that they need not be overwhelmed by the responsibility of the “whole picture” – the whole story – but only for the part of the story they see through a one-inch window.

If you are an instructor, this assignment works really well in addition to teaching the essay “Seeing” by Annie Dillard.

First make a one-inch window by cutting or tearing a small square in the center of a note card or small piece of paper. This is a window you can carry in your pocket, in your writer’s notebook, or in your wallet to remind yourself of the need to focus. It is not only a tool you can literally apply to the world around you by holding it up to objects, but it is also a philosophy of seeing in a focused, minute sort of way.

Practice putting your one-inch window on various surfaces and objects. What you will always see is part of the whole, and that part in amazing detail. At this point, a writer could go on and simply create a written one-inch window by focusing on and recording literally what is in the window – part of an eyelash and furry face of a dog, one petal and part of the stem of a tulip, the deep red-bronze knot in a plank of wood.

There IS TOO enough in the one-inch window to to write about. Be careful of striking into bigger territory or into metaphor. You want to stick ONLY with what you actually see in the window.  It is not necessary to turn it into a riddle, either. Describe as concretely as you can what you see in the window. Be very literal: what does it look like, what color is it, what texture is it, what does it smell like, feel like, taste like, etc. Focus on what is really there.

This exercise is to get you focused on the small details, the concrete, rather than branching out immediately into the bigger picture. This is how I like to start a poem – with something very small and concrete, an image that strikes me as having a possibility of more meaning. It is through the small, the minute, the individual that you can create something universal. This means that your big picture, the meaning, the story you wish to tell, comes out of what you can find in the smallest of windows.

You should be able to take some of your notes and descriptions and turn them into something more in a poem or a short prose piece. After you have described it, then you can let yourself look out into the bigger picture. But remember – it’s important to start small, concrete, saving the figurative language for later.

Writing prompt courtesy of Gretchen Legler

Go Write Something

If you don’t see me out, attending readings, birthday parties, art shows, etc, there are usually two reasons: 1) I am broke and 2) I am working.

My family says that I am a workaholic. I work work work. They actually call what I do “homework” since I have been in school since I was 23, and they don’t see something as work unless you are getting paid for it. My family also thinks that if you stay inside too long, you will wilt and dry up and become a zombie that doesn’t know how to act in social situations and that vaguely resembles a person at all. Writing, to my family, is simply “play” time. Should be done on the side. Should not be a top priority. Should only be done when everything else is done, when it’s raining, when my dog is asleep at my feet and everyone has been fed.

Luckily, my family lives two hours away and only knows that I call rarely because I have lots of “homework.”

When I was 18, I graduated high school and basically lived out of my car off and on for a year or so. All I had were my journals, and they meant everything. I would go to the high school at night, sit on the front steps in the lights and write for hours. I didn’t really write about anything in particular, but at the same time I wrote about everything. I forced myself to write every day, not because it “felt good” to get it out, because I wanted to be a real writer, and I had read somewhere that to do that, you had to write every day.

Oh the discipline of my 18-year old self. Then came the alcohol, the men, the big life choices. Things changed.

When I was in the army, writing came back to me. I hadn’t stopped writing in the five years since I graduated high school, but I hadn’t written with that sense of urgency, every day, writing till I thought I might explode. When I got injured during basic training, I ended up carrying a journal around with me for seven months, writing in it every day, filling up one and starting a new one. I wrote, and I loved it.

This discipline has served me well since deciding to go to school for creative writing. Years ago I slowly came to the realization that a poem doesn’t simply “happen” in a moment on a sidewalk, or while you are driving your car and trying to write it on a napkin. A poem doesn’t just “come” to us. We have to practice writing it, and that’s what journaling did for me – it gave me practice and discipline. When I read somewhere that you should, as a writer, write for three hours a day six days a week, it didn’t hit me as a crazy idea – no, writing, for writing’s sake, for writing practice, to get yourself in the groove, seems like the only way a writer can survive.

What I am trying to say is that writing cannot simply happen once a week at a restaurant table. Writing cannot simply happen twice a month in three hour spurts. That’s part time writing, or writing on the side. That’s writing for play. If you want to dig into your crazy mind, you need to write every day – at least an hour – spent with fingers clicking a keyboard or pen directly on paper, writing, not necessarily writing a form of anything but at least writing in a journal – character development, poetry images that may someday connect, memories you want to flesh out and make free.

There have been dry months for me. I may go all of December without writing one poem (it’s that month for me – the hard one, the one that brings it all rushing back). And when I try to get back into it, you know that feeling when your brain is all sandy, every word a grit, working itself as if through quicksand. It’s hard to get back on track. It’s hard to find that groove, that emotion when you have been writing for twenty minutes straight and your brain enters a ZONE they call it, and you just know that whatever comes is coming from way deep in there, and without that practice before and after, without the years of writing that lead up to it, you may have never found what you are about to say.

I read somewhere that people who enter this zone actually have the same brain wave lengths that occur while dreaming. This means that when you are in the moment of zen, the zone of writing, you are tapping into a level of unconsciousness that only occurs when we sleep, that we otherwise would never knew existed. You are entering dream-thoughts, dream-state, and that’s why it feels so good, why you look at what you have written and say, “Yes. I have no idea where that came from, but I love it.”

My goal is to write every morning when I wake up. I usually write for about an hour or two. Depends on what the day will bring. Then I come home and write some more. My husband hates it because when I am bored, I pull up pieces that need revised and continue working on them. It’s because the writing pulls me toward it, and because if I stop for too long, it’s so so hard to get back.

Your goal then: Write something every day. Even if it’s just a blog, a long email (make it an awesome email), a short poem. When you are stuck, pull out a journal and write about what you see directly in front of you – always beginning with the concrete, not the abstract. Write until your hand wants to fall off. Write what you have always imagined writing, not going back until later to revise or edit – don’t censor yourself. The more you censor, the less you write. Reward yourself with a martini when you’ve written a poem a day for five days straight. Reward yourself when you’ve finally finished a draft of a story. Then read something beautiful by someone you admire and soak that inspiration up, let them tell you what you feel you may write next. Then go write something.

Tips for Submitting Your Work

Every week, I send out my work to other journals in hopes that someone will pick up a poem or a story and publish it in their journal. On average, I send out to at least ten places a month. When people ask me how I get published, I try to explain to them that sending your work out should be more like a game, like a fun thing you do, letting go of any worry of rejection. Rejection is BOUND to happen, but so is acceptance, as long as you send, send, send. It’s like being a traveling salesman. You go door to door in a neighborhood, asking each person to purchase your vacuum or your magazine subscriptions, and you know that if you make it to at least twenty doors, then one person or two might give you money (and this can go up on those days that are out of character and people are just extra nice). It’s the same with submitting. You have to keep sending your work, your BEST work, and wait till the circumstances are right. The right person WILL read your work at the RIGHT time. Here are some hopefully helpful tips, rules I follow weekly (and when I am really in the mood, daily!).

1). Keep track of your submissions. I don’t care how you do this, but being unorganized can really get you in a lot of trouble. For example, a journal picked up a poem of mine once and I couldn’t find the version I had sent to them. So, I had to send them a newer version, hoping they would accept the revisions. They did – luckily. What I do now is save each submission in one file – and then I save it under the journal name and the date the submission goes out. This is so helpful. As soon as I receive a rejection, I can edit the submission as I please and send to another journal.

2). Don’t just send to any old journal. I think it’s really important to acquaint yourself the best you can with journals that seem to be a good fit for you and your work. How do you find journals that fit you? There are many websites for writers, created just for this purpose.

http://www.duotrope.com/ and http://www.everywritersresource.com/literarymagazines/

These two websites will allow you to browse lists of journals, to head over to the journals’ websites, and read archives of work – so you know for sure if it’s a good place to send your own. Most editors have a particular style and you can only find that out by looking and poking around their websites. If you need to, order older issues. See who has been published in them and what they tend to publish the most of. See if you are a good fit.

3). Go ahead – simultaneous submit.

I know – some people are gritting their teeth right now. So many journals actually ask you to not submit any part of this submission to other journals. Here is what I think – If you only get a few acceptances for every 10-20 places you send your work, then how likely is it REALLY that two places will pick up the same poem? I find it highly unlikely – unless it’s the best poem and you know it and that’s why you want to send it to multiple places until someone picks it up.

Another reason to go ahead and simultaneously submit – it takes forever for editors to respond, understandingly. I have work that has been out for 240+ days. If I wait an entire year for someone to respond, then couldn’t I possibly get it into another journal, possibly faster?

It also depends on if you are sending to a place that’s your number 1 pick – if you only want those poems in that particular journal, then only send to that journal. But I am warning you – you can fall in love with your own work like that, saying to yourself that this journal is the only one good enough for you, that THIS poem ONLY belongs in one place. Think of it this way – tomorrow you are going to write another poem you will love, and the next day you will write another one. Don’t be so choosey that certain poems only belong in certain places. Be picky enough that you get in a journal you find respectable and dependable, but don’t assume all your work belongs in the New Yorker. You are going to grow as a writer and have more opportunities to submit to the awesome journals you imagine being in one day. So strive for them, but don’t get stuck there now, while you are still growing as a writer.

Overall, it does really depend on your work and the journal’s aesthetics. Just withdraw a poem if it does, by chance, get picked up somewhere else.

4). Be wary of newer journals who haven’t been around for a very long time. At the same time, don’t send them your sub-par work, either. A problem newer journals have is that some people see it as an opportunity to send anything or everything, not work that has been polished, cleaned, and is top notch. How else will newer journals get up there unless writers offer them their best work?

5). Make your cover letter as SHORT AS POSSIBLE. Your cover letter should include only a few things: Address it to the editor’s first name (if you can find it on the website), include the title(s) of the pieces you are submitting, and include a very short third person bio. Your final line should simply say: Thank you for your time and consideration.

Editors don’t want to know that you wrote your poem because your dog had to be put to sleep, or that you have sent these poems out to many places and are frustrated that no one has picked them up. We don’t want a life story. This isn’t to be mean, but it’s just that a submission should always speak for itself. In your cover letter, be short and compliment the editor on a good job in their last issue, or point out something you read in their issue and liked. Make it about the journal, not about you.

6). If you are submitting poetry follow these rules: Begin each poem on a different page. Use size11-12 font, and Times or Arial or Courier – nothing fancy. Do NOT center your poems. Unless the journal asks you, do NOT put your name on any page except the cover letter. Make sure the title of the poem is the same size and font as the poem itself. Whatever you do, make it as plain as possible. Remember, what we are looking for is a beautiful poem, not one that simply LOOKS pretty.

Think of formatting as though it’s for an English teacher. A teacher has to read about thousands of words a semester, and the main reason for asking for uniformity is so that the teacher can easily read each paper, without the strain on her eyes and without a change in her grading routine. This is pretty much the same reason with journals – uniformity helps in the reading process and it helps when it comes time to creating the journal itself. If the submissions already fit a particular format, it’s that much easier to move over.

This reminds me – read directions on submitting very carefully. Often, if you don’t follow the directions as precisely as they have them, your submission can be deleted without you even knowing about it. This is really important – because if you wait months and months to hear from them, you may think the journal is irresponsible. Following directions can be a deciding factor on if your poems are even read.

7). HAVE FUN why don’t ya? I know so many people who shy away from submitting to journals. Self-esteem issues are a major reason – no one wants rejection. But, is it really rejection? I like to see a letter of decline as saying “Not at this time.” It’s an opening to send my work somewhere else.

I used to open rejections in the bathroom and toss them immediately in the trash. The bathroom trash I saw most fitting because it’s kind of the grimiest place in the house, right? I know people who save every rejection letter. This, to me, is like carrying around a big box of self-hatred. Don’t hold on to such negativity. Save rejection letters that are helpful, humorous, or too weird to toss out. All others, throw away. Keep acceptance letters. Post these to the wall above where you write. Remind yourself why you do this in the first place.

Also, as a writer, you need to have some ego. You need to love your own work just enough to know that someone somewhere will also love your work – you just have to find them. It’s like soul mate searching in a way. You know when a poem is good, when you feel it inside of you and when you read it aloud. Send that poem. Send it because you didn’t write it just so it could sit in a file on your computer. Send it because language is meant to be shared and because you are writing to tell your story. You want to be heard.

If someone says no, then shake it off, realize that person wasn’t “it” and move on to the next one.

Submitting to journals can be a game – I have colleagues who see who can send to the most places in a certain time period, and they even get money involved. Put a boot in a writer friend’s butt and submit things together at the same time – if it makes you feel less alone, less scared. Get together a writing group and set a goal of sending out to three places a month and whoever doesn’t do it has to buy a round of drinks. Make it a game and make it fun. Don’t worry about technology and its effect on the process – it makes it easier in many cases. But there are still some snail mail journals out there, holding on to a great past that is fast moving beyond us. Who knows where we will be in five years.

In the meantime, submit your work so that the world has a chance to read it.

Submissions are Coming In!

I am happy to say that so far, we have received a good number of submissions. And we still have two months left till our last day. This must mean a few different things: 1) This means that the journal made some kind of impact this winter, and prompted other people to wish to be a part of it 2) This also means that there are even more writers than we originally knew about, somehow connected to Lawrence, yet floating out there in the world, and now they have a place to connect and 3) This also means that we, of course, rock. The Blue Island Review prides itself on making others feel at home, at helping people realize that writing doesn’t always have to be a lonely and dreadful experience. BIR is a place to showcase that idea of community – to say, hey look over here! There are writers hiding in the corners of coffee shops and I have never met you. There are others hiding in the sociology department at KU, and I had no idea. There are even more of you, others, wandering away from Lawrence and missing us, and hoping to find a way to connect.

What is a Blue Island?

To me, it’s like water, but contained. Islands are surrounded by water, but Blue Island is immersed in the changing and moving world of language. Yet, it’s contained because of space, because of shared memories and histories. Blue Island is a gentle place that sits there like a horizon, waiting.

Or that could be too dramatic. Maybe it’s a band. Or the name of your grandma’s dog in 1902. Or maybe it just sounds good, the long “u” and “i” sounds forcing your mouth into new and strange positions. We can only hope to see you mouthing our name from across a crowded room.

Keep the submissions coming. Tell your friends and tell your friends to pass it on. While we have received a lot – we need more, and we want quality work. Blue Island work. The kind of writing that speaks to communities. Language that is surprising and challenging and new. Images that strike like wicked dreams.

Send. This summer, in all its blue skies, waits.

Beneath Every Word is No Word

Often, when I sit down to write, there isn’t enough empty space inside of me to say anything. I write down a sentence and look at myself, at the words, and compare what I have just written to other things I have written or to other things I have read. Or, I realize I don’t know what the sentence I wrote means, and I want to figure it out, analyze it, and tell myself what will come next. I stop and look it over, those words that are separate from me, and how they seem so small on the blank screen in front of me.

When I was young, I said my prayers every night. It was a routine with my family, my father having been raised very Catholic, and bedtime prayers were ingrained, part of the meditation of falling asleep. As we got older, my father trusted us to say our prayers alone in our rooms. I would lie down, starting with the “Our Father” or “The Act of Contrition” and suddenly, ten minutes later, realize I had not finished the prayer. I would suddenly be thinking of a conversation I had with a friend earlier in the day, or I would be remembering a homework assignment I hadn’t finished. Somehow, my brain had went on its own way, its own track, searching out other things, somehow without me even being aware of it, without me being able to stop it.

This is how it should be with writing. At least with writing practice. I shouldn’t have to sit down and immediately exert so much control over what comes next. I shouldn’t censor myself before my brain has opened up to let all of its stuff come rushing out. I should just open the gates, as they say, let it come, rise around me, out of me, onto the page. Stopping after the first sentence and then the next sentence, well, isn’t a kind of self-sabotage? Don’t we owe it to the creative part of us to push against that level of control, even if only for a few moments a day, to allow what hides underneath to finally emerge?

Natalie Goldberg says: “We are aware that the underbelly of writing is nonwriting…At the back of every word is no word. Only because no word exists is there space enough to write some word. So when we write about our feelings and perceptions, it is writing practice when we also touch the place where there are no feelings, no perceptions, there is no you, no person doing any writing. In other words you disappear, you become one with your words, not separate, and when you put your pen down, the you who was writing is gone. This is why I do not call my notebooks journals. They are simply blank pages I fill.”

Try This: Rather than daydreaming about what you’d like to write, sit down for fifteen minutes, keep your hand moving, begin with “I want to write about,” and go. Stay specific and concrete – not “I want to write about truth, democracy, honesty,” but “I want to write about the time my father lied right to my face and I could taste it all through dinner. It tasted like hot gasoline.”

If you are feeling rebellious, go for ten minutes, “I don’t want to write about.” Put the rebellion in your writing rather than against it. It will give your writing punch. Take control of your power.

From Wild Mind, Bantom Books 1990

First Lines

How do we start a poem? Do you begin with an image that’s been haunting you all day? Do you begin with an abstract idea? Starting, it seems, is the hard part. And even when you get that first draft out, you have to ask yourself if that first line is REALLY the first line. Is that where the poem begins, you ask yourself. Is this where it all starts?

And there are first lines that keep you reading or make you stop reading. First lines that fit or don’t. When you read a friend’s poem, you can point out a line further down and say, “This should be the first line.” So how do we know? How do we choose that perfect first line and just know?

I don’t have the answer. Unfortunatley, I go about it in many ways. Sometimes I begin with a line that I KNOW is the first line. Other times I begin with an image. Other times, the last line ends up as the first line. But I do know that first line must be gripping, somehow, and it has to pull the reader into the poem, leading us into complex and interesting ideas.

Some first lines to try out – Go write something:

There is only darkness, blazing

Before any of this, months before, an echo

We have seen the field in full moon

Here there is light and shadow

In the morning we climbed the volcanoes

I can’t think what made us go

In the house where the stairs spiral up

I love that woman’s fearless mourning

I remember someone else’s prayer and make it my own

Steal one and use it as your own – and it may end up changing, but at least you can use one as a beginning to something. We have to start with a first line, at least.

When A Poem Finds You

The first time I heard this poem, an instructor of mine took my Billy Collins book out of my hand (I had just bought the book and hadn’t read any of the poems yet), turned to this page, and read it out loud. When she was done, I felt as though I had just found my favorite poem (this happens to me a lot, and I think we can all have multiple favorites, right?). The way she could read it, even though it wasn’t her words, and make it her own, moving over the words as though she had written them. She knew how it was meant to be read. It was meant to be funny. To be fun. To be a poem that made you think and say, Yea. Yea, I like that.

Last year, I had the pleasure of seeing Billy Collins read in Manhattan, Kansas. I was thrilled when he read this poem – it being my favorite and all. It didn’t top the first reading I had heard – even though he had written it and knew just how to read it, something about the way my professor loved this poem came out when she read it to me. Still, he did a good job, I just couldn’t help but look back and remember that feeling. What it means when a poem finds you, how it feels.

Litany by Billy Collins

You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine…
-Jacques Crickillon

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general’s head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman’s tea cup.
But don’t worry, I’m not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and–somehow–the wine.

That Whoosh

This poem has been a favorite of mine for a while. The first time I read it, I got that feeling inside, the one where you know you have just read a great poem that will stay with you, the way the end kind of whooshes out and pulls you back to the first line, forcing you to re-read it again, asking you to keep experiencing the poem over and over. That’s what I want in a poem-  the experience of it. I want a poem to be a surprise, a present for the day. To say something in such a way that I feel jealous for not coming up with it first, something I would like to steal and use in my own writing (I always worry you can’t get away with that when it’s really really good, but I do it anyway, as these poems are inspirational, muses).

I think it’s important to find those poems you want to steal from. Komunyakaa also taught me a lot about ending a poem. He always has that whoosh ending, but it’s never “too much” or too perfect. It’s as if he writes the poem and waits for the ending to come at him or out of him as smoothly as possible, and when it comes in the quiet it seems that’s when it is the most powerful. This is a great poem to teach because it’s accessible, yet BIG.

Facing It by Yusef Komunyakaa

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn’t,
dammit: No tears.
I’m stone. I’m flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way–the stone lets me go.
I turn that way–I’m inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap’s white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman’s blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird’s
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet’s image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I’m a window.
He’s lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she’s brushing a boy’s hair

Read more on Komunyakaa

Colorlessness

Colorlessness

Eventually, we all lose the perfumed,

bejeweled world, beyond which lies

silent anarchy. The yellow of burnt grass

evaporates like fumes. Poof! The green

of leeks is gone. You’re robbed of the rich

ripe browns of feces, the ringing inner

pink of grilled beef. The watery gray

of writing and drawing ink fades away

too. Clear-seer, observer of matter’s

never-ending attempt to reduce or augment

itself into just light, does color’s flight

prefigure your coming nothingness: mud to flesh

to thin air, or will some tendril at last

burst from you: saffron, black, or earwax

orange, to scare the pants off both atheists

and verse mongers – a spindly rebellion

germinated for ages, not in follicle or marrow,

but in the maypole of our emotions: fear,

whose multicolored ribbons flutter

and flutter like nerves branching

from a backbone – they twitch and sting

but can never be grasped. Throughout

the pervasive gray of disgrace, the purple

of complaint, despite your alternating caresses

and attempts to shrug me off, I swear

by the reek of the dung heap, by the slip

and slide of white silk, by the feelings

you stupidly unleashed in me, I will never

lose you completely in the gathering tide

of colorlessness, due to love’s stubborn tint.

By Amy Gerstler in Crown of Weeds, Penguin Books, 1997

150 Kansas Poems

Kansas Poet Laureate Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg is posting 150 poems by Kansas poets (or poets somehow connected to Kansas) in honor of Kansas turning 150.

The poems often have to do with Kansas or the Midwest – creating a kind of cohesive farm country, weather pondering website. The poems speak to Kansas in a symbolic way as the images add up and repeat – showing that Kansas is more than just another state in the middle of these other states, that Kansas represents a place of growth, peace and even mystery. Poets like Denise Low, Kevin Rabbas, and Joseph Harrington have been featured on this website, and there are often new and emerging poets showcased right along with these established poets.

150 Kansas Poems

The website is also in the works for becoming an anthology, so be on the lookout.