Living Poetry With My Old Man

NSP Meditations, Poetry , , , , , ,

I sat outside on a deck with my father. He spied an ant on the railing and began reciting a poem about ants, “Departmental,” by Robert Frost. I was cooking us fish for supper and went to the yard to retrieve some rosemary for seasoning. When I returned, he recited the poem “Rosemary” by Marianne Moore. He recited assorted Psalms and Proverbs during dessert. When I remarked how members of the National Therapeutic State think people are sick if they prefer being alone, my father recited a line from Emily Dickinson: The soul chooses her own society and then shuts the door. We then segued into Donald Trump and he recited “Ozymandias,” by Shelley, certainly the best poem ever written about Donald Trump. I mentioned to my father about the dog book I was writing and he picked up an anthology of poetry and read “Dream On, by John Tate. This poem contains the line: The family dog howls all night,/ lonely and starving for more poetry in his life. My father found a collection of Japanese tankas and read a few aloud. We marveled at their beautiful economy and extremely private nature. Somehow we started talking about anti-war films and I said my favorite was Paths of Glory. My father asked me if I knew where the title of that film originated. I said I didn’t know. He then recited a line from “Elegy Written in a Courtyard” by Thomas Gray: The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

In the last year, poetry has become very important in my life. It has directly led me to meet wonderful new people. It has directly led me to finding a unique voice to report the non-poetic story of what I witness in probation meetings. It has directly led me to bond with my father in a way I never imagined.

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Love/Valentine’s Day Writing Workshop

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Below are the prompts (and teaching directions) for a writing workshop I used to teach on Valentine’s Day. It always seemed to generate some interesting and often funny writing from students.

Give all the prompts to students (modify/simplify for your age group when necessary) and have them respond quickly. The teacher should also respond, occasionally providing examples aloud. Picking students to share their “hot” lines as the workshop develops is also an effective idea to encourage involvement. After responding to all the prompts, have students delete, add, edit, rearrange their responses and construct them into a poem or a piece of prose. (Non fiction can be emphasized here.) You can then have students read a part or the entirety of one piece of work. Or you could have all students respond to one or more of the prompts, or offer their best line to construct a class poem or piece of prose. The possibilities here for collaborative writing and editing and sharing are endless.

  1. What is the color of love?
  2. Describe the sounds of love with three words.
  3. Describe the look of love.
  4. Write an equation for love.
  5. Ask a question of love.
  6. I love ____ most in the world.
  7. Why doesn’t love rule the world?
  8. What’s my master secret plan to bring more love to the world?
  9. What undermines/weakens love?
  10. Finish this sentence: Love matters because____
  11. What happens when love disappears?

  12. Thomas Carlyle wrote, “A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge. Respond to this belief.

  1. Finish this simile: Love is like____.
  2. Finish this sentence: The message of love is____.
  3. Write a statement about this declaration: I believe in love at first sight.
  4. You control Cupid for 24 hours. What do you do with him?
  5. Does it matter to you if a Valentine’s Day gift of flowers and/or chocolate is produced by child toiling outside in a distant country?

February Musings Overlooking Youngs’ Bay

Astoria, NSP Meditations , ,

That’s no typo. It’s spelled Youngs’ Bay and I have never learned the reason for the strange possessive. It’s misspelled all the time, usually by a corporate business entity.

Two dogs snooze nearby. I am drinking a glass of single malt scotch to celebrate a very good week in my life. My friend Holt turned me on to good scotch. Bourbon is dead to me forever. Times change. I’ve changed.

Two 70-year old women died while clamming a few days ago. They were clamming at night and got swept away. Their bodies were recovered, unfortunately, I think. I can think of worse ways to die. They probably felt nothing. A wallop, unconscious, and that was it. They never felt the cold, I bet.

Saddle Mountain is calling me. I want to climb it with a new friend.

I just finished reading a manuscript of a novel about high school teaching written by a former high school English teacher. He died from cancer in 2011 and his brother has contracted with me to bring this book to the attention of the reading public, in some form or another. It’s easily the best book about teaching high school I’ve ever read and it’s set in Astoria in 1996. As I read this novel, it was as if this teacher was speaking directly to me from the grave in his attempt to resurrect me as an Oregon man of letters. I am listening Neil.

Walmart rises in Warrenton. It’s another nail in the coffin in Astoria’s future as a gritty place.

I read the NY Times today, oh boy. It was a disembodied reading.

It always intrigues me when the media finds a new old world and every writer starts using it. The latest example is “riven.”

Why do people line up to drink stout beer? Conversation about stout beer is the most boring thing I’ve ever overhead.

A recent obituary said that the man who died was finally released from the “surly bounds of earth.” The earth isn’t surly; the earth is the earth. The people on earth construct imaginary surly bounds and create their own destructive surliness. I’m glad I never met this man before he died. He was probably beyond surly, a real asshole.

I want to cook a vegetarian goulash in the crock pot. I have a recipe.

The Bonnie and Clyde book is about ready to launch. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever written, which is about right, because I am a new person.

I’m glad I didn’t live in the era when parents accompanied their offspring to every junior high sporting event and put their lives on hold watching the offspring perform. Kids typically never learn an interesting damn thing about life on overnight outings unless their parents aren’t around.

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Good Fortune and Its Possible Origins

NSP Meditations

In the space of 48 hours, good fortune came hurtling my way in the form of quality paid work on behalf of other writers, dead and alive, a close friend, and senior dogs. It feels good to be busy again with purposeful writing and reflecting on writing that seeks purpose.

Up until these developments, life appeared bleak, penury loomed. And then opportunities arose, mostly unexpected, and I embraced them all because people had embraced me with their trust and utter lack of fear and judgment.

I attribute much of my recent good fortune to asking the ocean (loudly) for help. There I was walking with my close friend Glen, at the ocean’s edge, 60 mph gusts of wind battering us, and he told me to put that question out there, and perhaps had some profanity for emphasis. Why not? I’ve put quality thought and action into the ocean and my world of distressed humans and distressed dogs the last year, and why not a little reciprocity! I needed help. Glen warmed me up with a request of his own. I followed.

Who is to say this asking the ocean (loudly) did anything in the cosmos that led to my good fortune. I ask those kind of questions these days, but never bother answering them. The posing is enough. Then you let your heart and mind and the hearts and minds of other people and dogs go to work.

I like to believe other factors contributed to my good fortune, seen and unseen connections, heard and unheard music, poetry, curiosity, good work, kindness, gratitude, reaching out, and so much more.

For example:

Throwing Rilke to the wind

Luminous deer

Meeting a hungry poet

Conversations with Glen

A caring neighbor who told me to open my curtains and rearrange the furnishings in my house

Meeting a writer

Working with a writer

Reading Bukowski on writing

Extending rapprochement and getting utterly rebuffed, but extending nonetheless

Teaching a kindness writing workshop

Reuniting with my great collaborator

Collaborating with my ex wife on the cover for the new book

Bonnie and Clyde

A phone call from the past

Meeting a dead writer’s unpublished novels

Hearing rock and roll even when rock and roll wasn’t playing and I thought rock and roll had dies (see forthcoming probation poem)

New publication initiatives

In celebration of my good fortune, I built a driftwood fort, went to see Bonnie and Clyde, and had dinner with friends and dogs.

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Thank You Godfather’s Books

Astoria, NSP Meditations , , , , , , , ,

Godfather’s Books in Astoria put in another big order for A Nice Piece of Astoria. That makes just over 500 copies sold there in less than three years, which has got to be some kind of record for one book for a bookstore in a small town. In my mind, it is. I truly appreciate their loyalty to me and keeping all my titles on a shelf right inside the front door. That placement has been the key. Below is an abbreviated version of the essay about Godfather’s that appeared in the Astoria book. Thank you again, Godfather’s. I will never forget your generosity toward me and hope we can collaborate again like we did on The Gigging Life and the magazine for the alternative school. I miss hanging out in there.

I first met Charlie Holboke, owner and proprietor of Godfather’s Books and Espresso on Commercial Street, in the fall of 2003. I had self-published my debut book, a collection of essays about Oregon’s unique legacy of publicly-owned beaches, and was hawking them in person to virtually every independent bookstore in the state. It was brutal, unfamiliar marketing work for me back then and occasionally I was rudely rebuffed by the owner of an Oregon independent bookstore who refused to buy a book directly from an Oregon independent publisher standing right in front of them, instead demanding that I use an out-of-state corporate distributor, ship the book out of Oregon to later be sold in Oregon, thereby consigning my publishing business to losing an additional and unacceptable five percent on the sale. The naked hypocrisy of it all was pretty bracing, but then again, it was merely the beginning of my education into the naked hypocrisy of the world of so-called progressive publishing.

Charlie was incredibly kind to me that day, bought five copies, and cut me a check on the spot. We’ve since become friends and I hope one day to help him publish his short stories.

Really, though, Godfather’s is exponentially more than a bookstore in roughly the same proportion as a book printed in Oregon and distributed exclusively through Oregon independent bookstores (and out the back of the author’s truck) is exponentially more than a book printed in China and distributed through Costco.

I liken Godfather’s to a literary curiosity shop, not for the literary curiosities mind you, but for the human ones. If ever there was a perfect mise-en-scene for a reality show or situation comedy about an indie bookstore in rural America in the throes of the dying rural indie bookstore, Godfather’s is it. There is no competition. None. Film it on location. Hire the employees (they’ll barter for food and drink and trinkets). No script. No producer egging anyone on. Everyone just does what they already do. Naturally, I’d play myself, the eccentric local author obsessed with Oregon historical minutia who

visits every day to face his books, position his stock at eye level five feet inside the front entrance, and surreptitiously relegate titles from the famous, non-self-published, progressive authors to the dark recesses of Christian or vampire fiction.

I once asked Charlie his philosophy for running Godfather’s, which opened in 1993. Over the years, I hadn’t seen any rational management strategy at work and the store weathered on anyway.

“I let it run itself,” he said. “I let it go where it wants to take me.”

One time, I also commented to Charlie that the existential dynamic of Godfather’s cast and crew very much reminded me of High Fidelity, the novel and movie.

He laughed. “I’ve read the book and seen the film. I can relate to it.”

(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.)

God Sent Me

NSP Meditations , , ,

I walked into a Christian thrift store in the city. I had books containing subtle smatterings of druidic beliefs to donate to raise funds for Christian youth to attend Christian colleges. I handed them to a large woman seated at a table near the back. She thanked me. Something resting on the table caught my eye.

“Could I see those?” I said, pointing to the items.

She handed me the items. They were two 11” by 14,” black and white, plastic, team photos of the 1977 Portland Trail Blazers NBA Championship squad. On the reverse of the photo was a red and yellow tartan design with the number 77 emblazoned in the center. It was obviously some kind of collectible issued after the championship but its color and composition baffled me. Plastic? There was no accompanying text or logo. What the hell was this?

I wrote a bestselling book about the ’77 Blazers called Red Hot and Rollin’ and am the acknowledged expert on everything connected to this unique Oregon story. In all my research and memorabilia collecting, I had never seen this plastic team photo item.

I filled the woman in on my credentials, referencing the book, and told her these items were totally unknown to me. She remembered the ’77 team fondly and asked to see the items. I gave them to her.

“They’re placements,” she said almost instantly.

Of course! She even showed me the food stains on one of them. Probably chili!

I asked the provenance of the place mats and she said another volunteer had accepted them from someone only yesterday.

They weren’t priced.

I told her they should conduct an e-bay search but I thought they might be worth $100 each on the memorabilia market, perhaps more. I said I wouldn’t offer them in the store for less than 50 bucks each.

“Thank you!” she said.

She added, “God sent you in here today.”

I thought about that immortal Blues Brothers movie line about God.

Yes, why not? I had been sent. I’d take it. It felt damn good.

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