Inglorious

INGLORIOUS

The glitter on the creche

Seduces me from how inglorious His comings and goings were.

His feet filthy from offal paths until someone thought to wash them,

His hands unwashed, as the Pharisees noted.

No beauty to behold except in a peek on a peak.

Mostly,

His sandal soles dragging up dirt and fronds, muleback,

A towel around His waist in a shanghaied room,

A lone figure squatting over a breakfast fire.

Loaned food, found tax, borrowed burial.

Inglorious, yes, His going:

The Savior on a stake;

Bookends His coming:

A God in a trough.

copyright Latayne C. Scott

Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

Story is Our Wailing Wall

Robin Williams died and I can't take in that truth. I've been thinking about all the stuff of life that people can't talk about. 

There are shards of my life that I can't talk about it.

There are things that happened in my past that I cannot even utter. Still. After I'd already grown impatient with myself.

Times when I've been little more than raked earth, half returned to the ash I came from. When I looked with eyes blind to the wonder all around me, but saw it anyway. 

There are things beyond language. I know this because I've been there.

This is where story plays its most fantastic role. It's where we all go to find ourselves tucked between the words. Story is our 

dear diary, 

ebenezer,

wailing wall.

I've done real soul-baring in my writing, but not in a way that would be easy for the reader to locate. Not theme, or subject matter. Not plot. My soul shards are tucked between the words, present, but hidden from plain view. This is the way it must be for me. Every writer is different. For some, it must be front and centre, painful as that is. Why? Because it must.

For me, I must tuck it away. Will that change? Maybe. I don't pursue it, instead I let it pursue me. A writer never travels to the place she intended to go.

I'm good at the road I never wanted to walk. Sometimes I didn't get my way because my dreams were too small. Sometimes . . . well. Here's a poem I wrote a while ago.

With Thanks to Bill Holm

by Bonnie Grove

Words lined up in particular form

bring the mirror to your face,

except

it isn't your reflection as much as it is

the face you thought you'd already forgotten.

I've been taken up by my hapless collar and

pulled through the rake of divorce;

tendons separating from bone.

Bone and marrow finely defined.

Later, I leapt

foolish footing from a cliff's edge I hadn't

noticed, or pretended not to see. I didn't think, only

felt the fall and blessed its decent. The

ragged bits of me weightless in the movement;

fantom limbs.

I forgot

the sensible thing, the priority of self

preservation and gave it up

for a guy with blue eyes, his hapless collar tented at the

back. His raked form lovely to my missing eyes.

All these years

for the sake of the heat of the hand in the middle of the night.

The one that has been there for years. Will be.

             The heat that could melt a stone. 

Tender writer, all raw-souled and roiling, how do you put yourself in your work? Are you front and centre? Tucked between the words? A shadow falling across the page, or a charge of light illuminating the ink?

10 Steps to Success as a Novelist--Summer Rerun, sort of

Note: Yep, this is a summer rerun, too, but I've done some tweaking. Are we not all editors at heart?

One perk of being a published writer is gaining credibility whether I deserve it or not. I'm frequently asked to speak to church groups, book clubs, service groups, and writer groups. I love it! I'm a teacher, first and foremost, and a bit of a ham.

I spoke at my first writers conference not long ago. They asked me to speak on what it takes to be successful in publishing. (Don't worry, I'm doing research!) These are my notes on 10 steps to success (I know, there are more than 10. I'll have an addendum in my handout):

1. Determine if you're a dabbler or a writer (This is from Sharon).

A writer will trouble over the perfect word, insist upon writing draft after draft until the manuscript sings, dream about her characters, forget to eat, listen to critique and make changes as needed, and never, never, never give up even in the face of repeated rejection. A dabbler is easily discouraged.

2. Read poetry.

We've all heard to read the best fiction the world has to offer. Let me add poetry to your reading list. No other writing form can train you on the power of word economy. And poetry makes the ordinary extraordinary. I've learned to see my world more fully through a poet's eyes. Above all, a novelist must be an observer. It's the details that bring authenticity to our stories.

3. Care about people.

Be fully engaged with the people around you and take every opportunity to broaden your circle of friends. LISTEN to people. Hear their stories. Become part of their stories. As a novelist, you write about people. And since I believe you have to love your characters--the good, the bad, and the incorrigible--you should practice loving the people around you. The result will be more fully developed characters and a broader variety of personalities.

4. Duct tape yourself to the chair! (From Latayne)

A writer writes purposefully. Some writing teachers will say you have to write every day. That works well for some people. It's impossible for others. I say, find what works for you. Come up with an achievable goal, even if it's a paragraph a day while sitting at soccer practice. And do it. My goal is to write 1,000 words per day. I find that is about my limit for creating slop in one day. Apply duct tape as needed.

5. Learn the publishing biz.

Oh my. The publishing biz is really changing with eReaders and self-publishing and the economy upending the publishing houses. Go to a writers conference and make a gracious pest of yourself by asking every editor and agent what is going on in publishing. Be a student of the industry. Read professional journals like Publisher's Weekly, The Writer, and Writers Digest. There are many more!

6. Don't stagnate.

Take classes. Read books. Grow as a storyteller and write the very best story you can. By the way, this is the strongest element of your marketing plan. 

7. Ask your prospective agent these questions:

• Will you read my story?
• Will you offer editorial comments? (This is becoming more typical as the publishing houses are looking for manuscripts that are ready to go. Also, sadly many publishing houses are letting editors go to save money. And we LOVE our editors!)
• Do you LOVE my story?

8. Fall in love with your craft.

Genius is highly overrated and possibly nonexistent. On the other hand, you can't quench the passion of loving your art. You will do anything to perfect your technique. You will gladly--almost without notice--invest the 10,000 hours it takes to master a skill.

9. Be patient.

It just so happens that all of us are learning this at the moment, and we aren't exactly happy about it. You have to be patient with people who have promised to be beta readers but have gone AWOL, an endorser who eats your manuscript for breakfast, your agent may seem to be sitting on your manuscript, a critique partner keeps rescheduling, and/or agents aren't as much in love with your story as you are...and they're dead wrong. It only took God six days to create the earth, but publishing moves much slower. I hope you're the one exception to this, but that's not what I'm hearing.

10. Define success for yourself

Let me ask you a few questions: Are you a born storyteller? Is entertaining people one of your gift areas? And here's the tough question: Can you be happy with a small audience? Is connecting with your reader the reward you crave, or are you hoping for a rancho in Napa Valley? We hear get-rich stories about big-time writers all the time, but the reality is quite far from that. If you're going to pour your life into a story, you must love what you're doing and define success for yourself. For me, telling a redemptive story that entertains is a huge challenge. The payoff is hearing that people connect with the characters and say that they look at the world and eternity a little bit differently. 

Mediating the Duelling Poets.

April is National Poetry Month and we've been celebrating at my house by talking about poetry, reading poems aloud to one another, and even trying our hand at writing one or two. My children have long loved Edward Lear (Who doesn't? He was Shel Silverstein before being him was cool) and loved my reading of The Jumblies so much I had to read it twice before they agreed to go to bed.

Later this month my husband and I will read poetry to a group of grade 4 and 5 students. Guess how much fun we're having as we assemble a reading list.

In the midst of the jamble of reading poetry, I've also been reading about the lives of several poets over the centuries and a few things struck me.

First, the luxury of being able to gaze back in time and line up facts, quotes, and biographies stretching back to the dawn of Western civilization is an unspeakable honour. Let us not waste such a vast opportunity to the cell phone drone of today. Let's teach our children (and reteach ourselves) to look up from our screens and dive deep into history, thinking long about anything at all.

Second, I found it thrilling to read about the diverse--even polemic--attitudes the poets themselves held about the art of poetry. As I've been skidding across time like a teenager at a sock-hop I've hit upon these bulwark positions about what sort of subject matter makes for great poetry:

"I think it will be found that grand style arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject." Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)

Dover Beach

by Matthew Arnold (1887)

         The sea is calm tonight, 
         The tide is full, the moon lies fair 

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night air!

Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Agean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Arnold believed that great poetry comes when it's aimed at a worthy, grand subject. His poetry examines faith, politics, self inside of society, loss of faith, and the question of how best to live. His most famous poem, likely, is the one above, a gloomy piece about losing faith. 

Now, race ahead in time and set Arnold's opinion beside that of Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) who wrote poems and was described by John Ashbery as "a writer's writer's writer." She once told Robert Lowell, "I'm not interested in big-scale work as such. Something needn't be large to be good."

Filling Station

          by Elizabeth Bishop

Oh, but it is dirty!—this little filling station,oil-soaked, oil-permeatedto a disturbing, over-allblack translucency.Be careful with that match!

Father wears a dirty,oil-soaked monkey suitthat cuts him under the arms,and several quick and saucyand greasy sons assist him(it’s a family filling station),all quite thoroughly dirty.

Do they live in the station?It has a cement porchbehind the pumps, and on ita set of crushed and grease-impregnated wickerwork;on the wicker sofaa dirty dog, quite comfy.

Some comic books providethe only note of color—of certain color. They lieupon a big dim doilydraping a taboret(part of the set), besidea big hirsute begonia.

Why the extraneous plant?Why the taboret?Why, oh why, the doily?(Embroidered in daisy stitchwith marguerites, I think,and heavy with gray crochet.)

Somebody embroidered the doily. Somebody waters the plant,or oils it, maybe. Somebody arranges the rows of cans so that they softly say: esso—so—so—so

to high-strung automobiles. Somebody loves us all.  

“Filling Station” from The Complete Poems, 1927-1979 by Elizabeth Bishop. © 1979, 1983 by Alice Helen Methfessel. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved. www.fsgbooks.comSource: The Complete Poems (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1983) 

It's interesting that, while Bishop uses the "small" subject of a filling station, she alights on a vast one: Love. And Arnold, giving full attention to the vast night and sea, manages to sulk his way to the very same subject. Maybe that's the trick to all poetry, all writing, all art? That we're all reaching for the great subject of love. That all things lead us there, even when we thought we were going in the opposite (or smaller) direction.

What do you think? Grand subjects, or small things? What are you doing to celebrate National Poetry Month? We love hearing from you.

Why the Novel Matters: Guest Article by John Blase- editor/poet/writer/cowboy

We want you to meet John Blase. We think he's one of those writer/thinker/poet people that needs encountering, and we've invited him to share a word with us on our question for 2012, Why does the Novel Matter? He's an editor at David C. Cook, and a brilliant writer in his own right.
He's too humble to point it out, so let us urge you to go to his site (after you've read and commented here, let's not be in too much of a hurry), subscribe, comment, and enjoy his insight, poetry, and wisdom. John will be joining us in the comment section of the blog as well. 


John Blase (rhymes with maize) is a husband of one, father of three, poet, writer, editor, and part-time saint. He lives along Colorado’s Front Range with his family. His recent work includes two co-writing projects - All Is Grace: A Ragamuffin Memoir with Brennan Manning, and No Matter the Cost: Igniting a Life of Strength and Honor with Vance Brown. His own name graces the cover of Touching Wonder: Recapturing the Awe of Christmas. He enjoys dark coffee, red wine, faded denim, and red wine. 
~
Novels. Why do some of us keep writing them and some of us keep reading them? Its quite late really in the life of the genre, so why? Drumroll, por favor. I believe the novel makes you more human. And of all the plows you’d want to put your hand to in this life, like becoming a professional bull rider or a sommelier or a poet, the plow of becoming more human may very well be the best one.

D.H. Lawrence talks about the purpose of a novel being to extend the reader's sympathy. I like that. For example, a lower middle class poet (me) can read about a man dying of ALS (Jim Harrison’s Returning to Earth) or about two sisters being raised in Fingerbone, Idaho (Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping) or about the lifelong friendships of two married couples (Wallace Stegner’s Crossing To Safety) and to some extent I become a better person for it because I’ve entered into these lives that I have never lived and might not want to lead but nevertheless it stirs, I think, the sense of possibilities within life. The range of ways to live in part explains a novel's value, seeing how deep and wide humanity truly is. Its like meeting people at a cookout that you’ve never met and you wouldn't have gone out of your way to meet, but there they are passing you the dill pickles and they suddenly become real to you. You understand to some extent their lives, plus your own a little more, and to a greater degree this mystical incarnation we call life. Its quite beautiful, really, this becoming more sympathetic or human. It entails becoming more compassionate and friendly and sensitive. I like that.

As you might guess, the inverse here is true, as in avoiding novels tends to constrict one’s sympathy, or make you less than human. For example, I once knew a man who avoided novels his entire life and he wound up a bitter old ninnyhammer with no one to talk to but a canary and she hung around only because of the cage. The winter of his years could have been vastly different if only he’d been willing to lose himself in Kent Meyer’s The Work of Wolves or Bonnie Grove’s Talking To The Dead. The choice, of course, is up to each of us: more human or less human. But I’d hate to see you end up like that.

I must add that this same phenomenon does frequently occur via poetry, which is somewhat like a sister to the novel, a radically younger sister, you know the one who came along after you were in high school that both intrigues and terrifies you. So I conclude here with a poem of my own to extend your sympathy for me because we’ve probably never met and chances are good you wouldn’t go out of your way to meet me, but voila! here I am passing you the potato salad. Enjoy.

Review for Dad-O

Her third grade spelling list for the week includes

the words dance, wreck, fancy, and tremble.

She already knows how to spell them,

she'll ace Friday's test, 'no prob, Dad-o.'

Still, we review them, just to be sure.

As she reels off d-a-n-c-e

I see a boy who will one day soon

take heart and ask her to inhabit his world.

Maybe he'll grow on me, but I doubt it.

W-r-e-c-k will be the letters soaked in tears

as she explains 'I swerved to miss the dog, Dad-o,

but I'm o.k.'

Thank God and Jesus.

I'm no prophet but my gut tells me

she'll want the f-a-n-c-y wedding dress,

her easy days of hoodies and jeans faded

like weekly spelling lists.

Still, just to be sure, we review these omens.

I try my best not to let her see me t-r-e-m-b-l-e.

Reading as a Writer

Alice Kuipers joined us this week, with an interview about writing, her books, and the process of figuring it all out. She also talked about reading fifty pages a day, and her habit of buying a book a week in her chosen genre.
These are important habits for a writer. The simpatico between reading and writing cannot be overstated. I've noticed over the past year or so, that my reading material has changed in some interesting ways. I'm reading Ibsen's dramas, sixteenth century plays and poetry, literary anthologies (those clonky honker books you were forced to buy for your Introduction to English Literature class), sociology books, history, and short story. I have so many books on order at the library I have my own shelf in the "hold" section.

This is unusual for me. Often, I have two books at a time on the go, a fiction and a non-fiction. I very much like to keep up with current releases, and I follow some of my favourite publisher's releases (yes, I have favourite publishers).  So what's going on with my reading selections? I've made a list of my observations about my reading that I think might be useful to other writers.

1. Reading sometimes takes us where we're going, not where we are right now as writers.
     The unusual assortment of classic literature, plays, and poetry piled by my bedside isn't an attempt to appear cultured (the pile is in my bedroom, the only people who see it is me, my husband, and our kids. And the dog, but she only likes the comics). I'm not trying to be a smartypants, I'm hunting for something. I don't even know what it is I'm looking for, but my brain--which often operates independently of me--knows where I lack as a writer, and has decided that the answers lie in pursuing dense literature. My only hope is that when my brain figures out what it needs, it will tell me and then we'll both know.
     I'm not implying that I intend to write dense literary novels. What I hope is that, one day, I will produce a novel of substance. Something enduring because it hits the right human notes. The more I read diverse, dense literature, the closer my brain gets to figuring out how I might accomplish this.

2. Enduring literature (classics) deserve our adult attention.
     I'm ashamed to admit I don't own a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. That's just wrong. I further admit that I merely skimmed The Grapes of Wrath in high school. The Old Man and the Sea numbed my sixteen year old mind so thoroughly I avoided Hemingway completely until I was over thirty-five. These, and so many other novels, endure because they are important, yes, but also because they are the perfect blend of right-now culture, human struggle, and culturally transcending truth. I need to learn this. I need to erase the prejudice from my youth, and embrace these novels as an adult. Whatever I think about them is wrong. I need to discover them anew.

3. Reading plays sharpens skills for creating plot.
     Ibsen was a complete failure until he was a smash success. Once he ditched the idea that his plays should be written in rhyming couplets, he allowed plot to take the wheel and he produced plays of such shocking humanity certain countries forced him to re-write the endings. Plot revealed completely through dialogue. Mastering such a skill promises boundless possibilities to the novelist. It is my vow to study as least three plays a month.

4. Poetry is nonnegotiable. 
     I was dumb for too long, believing all that smugness about good poetry versus bad poetry. Intimidated, I avoided the question entirely for years. Believed I could live without poetry, that I wasn't missing anything important either as a reader or as a writer. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
     Happily, my brain, which was, once again, acting without first consulting me, caused me to pick up a collection of poetry complied by Garrison Keillor. I began to read. I rummaged in the basement and found old collections, thick with dust. I am converted. I now turn to poetry as I do the Psalms. Writer, read poetry. Period.

Share with us a bit of your reading life. Has it changed recently? What are you learning about how and what you read?
     

Poems for Lovers

I loved Ariel's post on Monday, about risks and dangers. Is it possible to pry into subjects "forbidden" in Christian publishing?

I think so. And I believe that sometimes the less said, the more intriguing.

With that in mind, I offer you what are in my mind four of the most sensuous poems I have ever written.

NILE

Its source:

The hidden trees, the lost lakes

Shrouded in perpetual snows;

Remotest peaks unseen by human eyes

Swathed in cirrus and cumulus

(The distant roar of

A thousand, thousand cataracts)

And as it rushes toward an infinite sea

Just its overflow is gift,

Is life

And am I not

Your Egypt,

The numberless humming chants

Of incense-wreathed priests

The shake of the sistrum, the breath of

Papyrus bloom;

The still-heard echo of those

Thousand, thousand years?

LAST NIGHT THE HORSES

Last night again I saw the horses

Outlined gray against a charcoal sky,

Their manes flying behind them,

Their hooves spark-stricken on black rocks.

When they slowed to drink

At a spring of shimmering water

Their sides heaved and glistened.

I can't say I caught them unawares.

From the corners of their eyes they saw me approach.

But the water was so cool and satisfying

That they drank, and drank, and drank.

Now they are refreshed, and I--

I ride close to them

Bent against the velocity

On a collision course with forever.

JOURNEY

Though I have traveled away from,

My heart turns toward

There remains no name in my soul's lexicon

For this ache;

A hurting that is dulled only by

The constant mining of the

Riches of memory.

The baring of myself continues

And reproduces itself like mindless amoeba.

It cannot exist without

Its own confession of itself

To you, the object of all,

The point of my nakedness.

What I have traveled away from,

My heart turns toward;

I am breaking all the rules of

My childhood's dearly-held autonomy;

Giving you that which could not be

Bought or beaten from me before.

In anguish, I traveled away from.

Now, my heart turns toward

You:

Your eyes, my mecca,

Your touch, my home.

LOVER

You are the mellow-muted sounds

Of a deep-throated clarinet

Playing alone

In a resonant hall

My young-girl ears heard the melody

So long ago

I dared not believe in

The coming crescendo

Because the music was so distant

And I,

So unworthy.

And yet

When I heard it again

I knew it

As if time had never passed:

You alone are the concert

That satisfies my soul

Snagged

I was presenting a poetry program last month and the seminar’s organizer asked me to read a list she provided of ways to more effectively promote conversation about poems.

So I read the list. And could go along with all the suggestions. But right in the middle of the list was, “Think about the poet’s big idea: why he or she might have written this poem.” And that’s where I disagreed.

I’ve written and published a good number of poems. But never once did I start out with a “big idea” to write a poem. I never sat down and said, “Today I’ll write about world peace.” Or true love. Or justice. Or any other big idea.

Instead, it was a very little thing that always got me started writing a poem. It may have been an arresting visual image. Or a phrase that got itself twisted into my hair and I couldn’t get it out. Or a word percolating up through my consciousness: a delicious, wonderful word.

Actually, the best image to describe how that happens to me – and I shared this with the teachers, who looked at me out of the sides of their eyes and nodded slowly – is to compare the process to looking at a stream. The stream is like my awareness of my surroundings. It flows around obstacles like rocks, with some considerable amount of spuming and spattering. Once in a while something large and floating bobs down and past me.

But – then—

Something small in the stream snags onto the bank, right in front of me. I look at it and it becomes the only thing in the world. It won’t let go, as if it has barbs, and those barbs reach up the bank and attach themselves to me and –even more wondrous – it begins to accumulate other things. Soon it has dammed the entire stream and even if everything starts piling up behind it, it won’t let go of me until I pull it and all its tendrils up and look at it.

And write it down.

Now, I realize that this is a blog about writing novels, but I wonder: Do you start a novel with a “big idea”? Or with something that snags on to you and won’t let go?

The Yearnings

You know the drill by now -- for our final day of the Twelve Days of NovelMatters Christmas Giveaway: Find a title and/or author in Twelve Lords a-Leaping!

The winner will receive my book, The Shout of the Bridegroom (what? you didn't know I wrote a book by that title? Well, not all by myself--) and will be announced on Monday.

As we begin to think about a new year, and new beginnings, I want to share with you the poem that won me a scholarship to college. Now, years later, it seems, so, youthful. It was written when I was 16 years old, and although I normally don't publicly explain any poems (they should stand on their own, I believe), I will this one.

My mother was a professional musician, and at the time of the writing of the poem, I was dating a young man who played over a dozen musical instruments. Though I love music (and even took clarinet lessons and singing lessons for a while), I am tuneless, toneless, and incompetent in every sense of the word as it pertains to music. Yet as I sat watching my mother and my boyfriend playing one song after another on our piano, I knew that was a world I would never share.

I would never and can never produce music. But my soul yearns for it. In my mind, I can produce melody. It just never comes out. I hear it echoed and perfected in the music of others, and I deeply love it.

I have the feeling that a lot of readers feel this way. They yearn to express some of the deepest and purest emotions within them, but simply cannot --no more than I can reproduce any of the music I feel within me.

What an honor and blessing it is for me -- and I'm sure I speak for Patti, Bonnie, Sharon, Debbie, and Katy -- to be given words to do that for others. What resonates with you is because you've felt something similar. What gives you insight is because you have a God-shaped hole in your heart that He longs to fill, and we get to be the carriers of words to salve that yearning.

Oh blessed, blessed privilege we have! Oh, thank you, readers, for letting us do that!

OPUS ENVY

I watch his fingers

Teasing the piano

As he caresses the ivory teeth

It purrrrrrrs

Harder now – he strikes

A glancing blow off the black fang

An answering roar

ah Rachmaninoff

just because my soul is not in

my fingertips does not

mean I do not have

one