Prompt 27: A Woman Calls 9-1-1

A remote aimed at a TV.

Recently, I gave my students news headlines or phrases from news stories, and asked them to complete the story any way that made sense to them. One student, Alicia Fritz, began with a ridiculously amusing news story (the first sentence is in italics below) and wrote with great imagination and detail until she found the center…

A woman calls 9-1-1 to report that her television remote control is missing. She realized it when she reached her hand into the pocket of her plaid blue and orange recliner.  The recliner smelled like smoke and old ashes. Her hands were stained a nicotine shade of yellow. The lost remote should not have bothered her; after all, she had lost many things in her life:  a set of emerald earrings, a crucifix, a son lost in the war, a pair of beige slacks, and eventually a husband.  But losing this remote meant something. It meant she’d have to walk across the brown linoleum floor and break her train of thought. It meant breaking into the world again, pushing aside the red velvet curtain to let in the light of spring, when she had forgotten the winter was over.

In the pink corridor on the way to her bathroom, she could get lost and for a moment forget where she was going, but the urgency reminded her. The remote should have been in the front pocket of her homemade polyester blouse with matching capri pants, or perhaps she had laid it down next to the piano. She runs her hand across the top level of blond wood. Her four wrinkled fingers brushed away the dust.  She reminded herself that she may have placed it next to the stove while making her coffee in the morning. She could sit in that kitchen for hours – a string of endless cigarettes pooled in the bottom of a glass blue ashtray. Most days she slept in that chair – snoring away as her dentures slid down a little – or if she did not feel like it, she didn’t need to wear them at all.

She didn’t want to call 9-1-1 at first; she had seen too much. Things like this did not warrant an emergency, but today she believed the stranger’s voice was her son’s.  He asked her if she as okay and what was her emergency. “I—I lost my remote…” but then her voice stopped and she was immobile. Her mind raced with memories. She could see him and remember how it felt to seem small beside him.  Across the street, she could see the light on in her sister’s kitchen. Next to the lilac bush –ripening with buds, she was washing dishes – the foam climbing up her arms like ocean waves.

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Writing The Desert: Terry Tempest Williams

The mesas of Monument Valley, Utah

The mesas of Monument Valley, Utah

One day this landscape will take the language out of me.
— Terry Tempest Williams

The ethical, eloquent Williams is, at her very core, a part of the desert. In an interview with The Progressive, she explained how the landscape influences when and where she writes:

“I live in a very, very quiet place. I have a sequence to my creative life. In spring and fall, I am above ground and commit to community. In the summer, I’m outside. It is a time for family. And in the winter, I am underground. Home. This is when I do my work as a writer – in hibernation. I write with the bears.”

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Ways to Revise: #36 – Be someone else.

How else can you change your poem? Try writing from a different perspective. Change “I” to “she,” or (maybe) change “she” to “you.”

Why do I suggest this? Such a powerful, but small, change offers opportunities for you, the writer, to step outside of yourself. Perhaps now that you can witness yourself from a more distant shore, you will find more honesty and power to bring more to the piece.

Another advantage of turning away from the all-potent “I” is that the reader now has more of a chance to see herself in what you’ve written. Your piece talks, not only to the reader, but perhaps… it talks specifically about her now, also.

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Take Another Ride on the Blog Carnival

Third Sunday Blog Carnival is up again, twirling around the Internet neighborhood with poems and writing thoughts. Whether you trot through a few ideas or spend all afternoon spinning out of control, you’ll find some magic and reassurance in these posts.

The Carnival is divided into poetry, fiction, and the writing life (where you’ll find my tried-and-true post about rejection).

The ups and downs of submitting work continue to intrigue me. Anyone who puts work out in the market knows disappointment, but recently, I’ve had a nice string of acceptances, paired with editor raves. It’s wonderful, for a short time, to see the jaunty other side of the picture.

Do check out the Carnival. Right now, I’m reveling in Jessica Davis’#141, a 6-line poem I found there, that captures the spongy fluff of sky .

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“Audio Saucepan: The Getting On and Off Episode”

On tomorrow’s radio show, the music is tinged with classical, edged with rock-and-roll. But we’ll travel, too, into routes of bluegrass, and through tonal fields from Philip Glass and Evelyn Glennie.

All of this means that, as usual, the show is gearing up to offer you a ride. Within the one small hour that is “Audio Saucepan,” you’ll also get the chance to cozy up to three  poems. After a heart-wrenching version of “Moonlight in Vermont” by masterful saxophonist Ben Webster, listen for June Jordan’s “These Poems,” which is filled with the long distance of the written word. Continue reading

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The Example of Brevity: Mark Strand and Sung Po-Jen

It was my good luck to read some words from Mark Strand today. Immediately, because of the brevity and philosophical reasonings of it, I wanted to go back to Eastern writings – also short on words, long on thought. Let me share these two meditations with you, not so much to analyze as to experience.

Mark Strand
in an excerpt from Keeping Things Whole

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

There’s an intriguing assessment of Strand’s style here.

This second piece I selected is drawn from a new book that redraws and rewrites a very special 13th century text. Guide to Capturing a Plum Blossom (Copper Canyon Press) collects the masterful, and witty, translations of contemporary Eastern scholar Red Pine.

Sung Po-Jen
Pondering the Next Step

perilous are all worldly paths
advancing think of turning back
with every step a look behind
no more careless stumbles

An interesting comparison — both pieces are brief, and both create a feeling of separation — distinguished by several centuries’ span and different continents.

 

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Students ask: What makes a good query letter?

Tigger obsessing over a letter

Tigger obsesses over a letter

The answer is the same no matter what you’re submitting — and, at the same time, entirely dependent on what you’re submitting.

All publishers want to know two things:

First, why are you the right person to write the thing you have written (whether it’s nonfiction, memoir, poetry, etc)? Answer this question briefly in your letter, then make sure your enclosed sample supports this.

And second, why are they the right publisher to publish this thing you have written or are writing? Again, you can only tell them briefly.

Continue reading

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