1. While I walked Snug I turned thought after thought over and over in my mind regarding Robert Grudin's insights into the art of liberty, especially how the free mind pursues freedom from the self, not of the self. Free from my self: I am much freer as a reader, teacher, listener, friend, writer, and citizen as I free my mind of my own predispositions, even of my own convictions, as I confront what others have to say or as I try to understand a subject more fully. Freedom from the self.
2. It was as if Mike Tyson were in the ring with Laverne De Fazio: that's how lopsided the Celtics domination of the Magic was this evening.
3. I had my first high maintenance moment at Market of Choice ever: I brought distilled water to the checkout stand, but I wanted spring water and the kid helping the checker went back and got what I wanted and I held up the line and everything. I'm not used to this. I'm not sure I liked it.
Showing posts with label Robert Grudin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robert Grudin. Show all posts
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Northwest Inland Writing Project Summer Writing Retreat: Day 3
Day 2
Interlude
Days 4-5
Our third workshop opened splendidly with several members of our group reading their experiments with being lenient.Deep wishes, strong dreams, and wistful tinges of regret surfaced. Our retreat’s inner beauty took shape: those sharing their writing were unconstrained as was the atmosphere of support and respect.
From my perspective, the retreat was moving into a realm of experience deeper than simply getting some writing done. The retreat was becoming spiritual. Not only the spirit of trust, but the spirit of creativity, innovation, experimentation, and exploration pervaded the room. Writers reading freed up other writers to write more bravely. Our retreat’s inner beauty was taking shape.
When, as a teacher, I lay out principles of writing, I know they are also principles of teaching. I have to be authentic. I must be awake and receptive. I’ve got to let it rip. My instruction cannot just be cerebral: it must be located in the body.
In positing the idea of leniency as a central ethic of writing, I was also, implicitly, establishing an ethic central to my work as a teacher (or a visiting writer). In all my years of studying and acting Shakespeare, again and again and again what impresses me most deeply is his generosity. Shakespeare endows character after character after character with a full range of human traits and in all of them, no matter how unlikeable, Shakespeare creates at least a teaspoon of humaneness or at least a sliver of something that moves us to feel some sympathy or empathy with them all.
So, on Day 3, I felt an obligation to deepen our collective understanding of and experience with leniency and, above all, generosity.
When Robert Grudin, in his book On Dialogue, digs deeply into the idea of copia, he opens to door, to those who will enter, into the joy and generosity of thinking and writing about a subject as fully as possible.
The most helpful image in Grudin’s reflections upon copia is when he suggest that the mind is like a prism and when a single thought or idea or image comes, like a single beam of light, into the prism of the mind, the thought or idea or image refracts into countless other ideas or images or thoughts. If, for example, I put the single idea of my newly born granddaughter Olivia through the prism of copia, the idea of Olivia breaks into everything that she stands for in our family’s life: joy, new life, obligations, hospital fees, unprecedented responsibilities, crib, diapers, high chair, nourishment, nurture, beauty, anxiety, clothes, unity, exhaustion, vulnerability, strength, and on and on. One cannot exhaust an idea as full of life as Olivia and to even begin to arrive at the truth of her new life requires a form of thinking that is generous, full of vitality, and at ease with infinitude: such a mode of thought is copia.
In other words, Day 3 of our retreat focused on expanding. Expanding possibilities. Expanding thinking. Expanding feeling. Expanding consciousness. It was about mindfully becoming more generous as a writer.
Together we looked at a poem by George Bilgere. It’s “The Table” and in it you can see how he copiously and generously explores the man dimensions of a family dining table, even as helps to destroy it:
The Table
I’m helping my brother-in-law
Knock apart an old table
By the tool shed, a table they’ve loaded
With planting pots and fertilizer bags
For years, until a decade outside
In wind and rain has done it in,
And suddenly, as in a myth
Or fairytale when the son
Recognizes his lost father under the rags
Of an old beggar, I realize
It’s the kitchen table of our childhood,
Where my mother and my two sisters and I
Regathered and regrouped inside
A new house in a new state
After the divorce, where at the end
Of every day
We talked about our day,
Practicing our first fictions
Over pork chops and mashed potatoes
When mom had a job, or fish sticks
Or fried Spam, or chicken pot pies
When she didn’t.
Where we dyed
Our Easter eggs, and played through
Rainy days of Scrabble.
Where I sweated over algebra
And German verbs, and our mother
Would drink a bottle of wine
And lay her head down and weep
Over everything, terrifying us
Into fits of good behavior,
Of cleaning and vacuuming, until
She snapped out of it,
As if nothing had happened
And made it up to us
By doing something crazy,
Like making pancakes for supper.
The table where my uncle
Got me drunk for the first time
And where I sat down for dinner
For the last time with my grandmother.
The table where my sister
Announced she was pregnant.
Where I said that, on the whole, Canada
Looked a lot better than Vietnam.
Where the four of us warmed ourselves
At the fire of family talk.
Plain brown table of a thousand meals.
I’m starting to sweat now, the hammer
Overmatched by iron-grained walnut
Bolted at the joists. It takes a wrench
And crowbar to finally break it down
To a splintered skeleton, to the wreckage
Of an old table, built
When things were meant to last,
Like a hardcover book, or a cathedral,
Or a family. We stack up what’s left
For firewood, and call it a day.
George Bilgere
The prompt that grew out of this poem was simple, but would inspire beautiful work: it was to look at a family table or some other item and copiously explore that item’s (or that place’s) many aspects, its copious dimensions.
On Day 4, the workshop opened with another beautifully copious poem, Joy Harjo’s “She Had Some Horses”:
She Had Some Horses
byJoy Harjo
She had some horses.
She had horses who were bodies of sand.
She had horses who were maps drawn of blood.
She had horses who were skins of ocean water.
She had horses who were the blue air of sky.
She had horses who were fur and teeth.
She had horses who were clay and would break.
She had horses who were splintered red cliff.
She had some horses.
She had horses with long, pointed breasts.
She had horses with full, brown thighs.
She had horses who laughed too much.
She had horses who threw rocks at glass houses.
She had horses who licked razor blades.
She had some horses.
She had horses who danced in their mothers' arms.
She had horses who thought they were the sun and their bodies shone and burned like stars.
She had horses who waltzed nightly on the moon.
She had horses who were much too shy, and kept quiet in stalls of their own making.
She had some horses.
She had horses who liked Creek Stomp Dance songs.
She had horses who cried in their beer.
She had horses who spit at male queens who made them afraid of themselves.
She had horses who said they weren't afraid.
She had horses who lied.
She had horses who told the truth, who were stripped bare of their tongues.
She had some horses.
She had horses who called themselves, "horse."
She had horses who called themselves, "spirit." and kept their voices secret and to themselves.
She had horses who had no names.
She had horses who had books of names.
She had some horses.
She had horses who whispered in the dark, who were afraid to speak.
She had horses who screamed out of fear of the silence, who carried knives to protect themselves from ghosts.
She had horses who waited for destruction.
She had horses who waited for resurrection.
She had some horses.
She had horses who got down on their knees for any savior.
She had horses who thought their high price had saved them.
She had horses who tried to save her, who climbed in her bed at night and prayed as they raped her.
She had some horses.
She had some horses she loved.
She had some horses she hated.
These were the same horses.
Northwest Inland Writing Project Summer Writing Retreat: Interlude
I have done a little bit of reading about what I can do to encourage readers to come to my blog.
Surely one of the cardinal rules is to post once a day so that a reader doesn't have to go beyond the post at the top of the blog to read my most recent pieces.
To hell with that. If you are reading this Interlude, and if you are wondering what I've been up to, just go here to read about what I presented at Day 1 of the writing retreat and go here for Day 2.
Okay. Now. I have a few things I'd like to write and reflect upon regarding my role and preparation as the Inland Northwest Writing Project's Summer Writing Retreat's Visiting Writer.
First of all, in the field of writing, I'm not a big shot. I haven't published a book; I have published a couple of essays and a few poems. I told at least one person at the retreat that when I got hired to lead workshops, the Inland Northwest Writing Project hired a little shot.
I'm definitely a little shot.
I don't think I bring anything special to my role as Visiting Writer because I'm a little shot. I'm happy, however, that the Inland Northwest Writing Project was willing to take a chance on hiring a little shot.
As a community college instructor, I work with little shots. While some of us have presented at national conferences and a few have been published by national publications and one will be publishing an enormously compelling memoir, overall we spend the majority of our time focused on teaching, not building a scholarly resume.
Over the years, I have developed an unusual way of developing pedagogy.
I don't read and haven't (much) read books about teaching writing. I don't read books about teaching strategies. I don't assign my students books explaining how to write. Many excellent poets and fiction writers and memoir writers have written what I hear are wonderful books on writing in these genres. I just haven't read them. Or even looked at them.
When I came to work as a Visiting Writer, a small, but strong voice inside me says I'm a fraud because I haven't read Writing Down the Bones or any of Anne Lamont's books or Julia Cameron's and I've never taken a creative writing course and my reputation as a writer is pretty much limited to those, whom I deeply appreciate, who read my blog.
Oh! And those who have heard me preach. I think some of my best writing happened in the handful of sermons I've given at St. Mary's Episcopal Church.
What I'm getting at here is that much of what I've learned about writing came from sources that weren't dealing with writing at all.
For example, a book that has shaped much of my thinking about writing and has helped me understand my mindset as a writer is Thich Nhat Hanh's Being Peace. His insight into connectedness, non-duality,being awake, and consciousness shapes how I teach writing and how I've tried to discipline my mind as an observer and agent in my life and has greatly expanded my imagination.
Likewise, Robert Grudin's book On Dialogue is not a writing handbook. Grudin's book explores the power of dialogic thought and the copious ways the mind can work in its pursuit of truth. His book encourages us to give our minds over to expansion, to seeing things as many ways as possible, to give ourselves over to the copious ways the mind works and to delight in the fertility of ideas, not to narrow them or reduce them.
As I write, I try to give myself over to the delights of copia. In my writing instruction, I encourage my students toward the freedoms implicit in thinking dialogically, of writing copiously.
Furthermore, when I read poems or stories or memoirs or philosophy or religion or the Bible or any other piece of writing, I always ask this question: what is this piece of writing telling or showing me about the act of writing itself?
For example, when Jesus instructs his disciples to be as wise as serpents and gentle as doves, that's a solid bit of writing instruction, especially when I listen to Martin Luther King, Jr. who said that in these words Jesus was instructing his followers to be tough-minded and tender-hearted.
Again, solid writing instruction.
In the poem, "Her Right Eye Catches the Lavender", found here, the speaker of the poem describes Judy Rock's way of being with the gulls:
A good lot is going on in Stern's poem. A good lot is going on in the ruminations of Robert Grudin. A good lot is going on in the writings of Thicht Nhat Hanh and the teachings of Buddha. A good lot is going on in the teachings of Jesus and the preaching of Martin Luther King. A good lot is going on in the poetry, stories, memoirs, histories, and other genres of writing in the world.
In one way or another, these writings and teachings, at some level, are instructing us in the ways of writing, or at the very least, giving us models for writing.
So far, it's been reading and thinking this way over the years that has informed my ideas about and practice of writing.
As the Inland Northwest Writing Project Summer Writing Retreat's Visiting Writer, I tried to invigorate those who came to the retreat with the inspiration and knowledge I've drawn from such sources.
It's a Buddhist thing: I've learned the most about writing from sources that weren't about writing at all -- at first glance.
Surely one of the cardinal rules is to post once a day so that a reader doesn't have to go beyond the post at the top of the blog to read my most recent pieces.
To hell with that. If you are reading this Interlude, and if you are wondering what I've been up to, just go here to read about what I presented at Day 1 of the writing retreat and go here for Day 2.
Okay. Now. I have a few things I'd like to write and reflect upon regarding my role and preparation as the Inland Northwest Writing Project's Summer Writing Retreat's Visiting Writer.
First of all, in the field of writing, I'm not a big shot. I haven't published a book; I have published a couple of essays and a few poems. I told at least one person at the retreat that when I got hired to lead workshops, the Inland Northwest Writing Project hired a little shot.
I'm definitely a little shot.
I don't think I bring anything special to my role as Visiting Writer because I'm a little shot. I'm happy, however, that the Inland Northwest Writing Project was willing to take a chance on hiring a little shot.
As a community college instructor, I work with little shots. While some of us have presented at national conferences and a few have been published by national publications and one will be publishing an enormously compelling memoir, overall we spend the majority of our time focused on teaching, not building a scholarly resume.
Over the years, I have developed an unusual way of developing pedagogy.
I don't read and haven't (much) read books about teaching writing. I don't read books about teaching strategies. I don't assign my students books explaining how to write. Many excellent poets and fiction writers and memoir writers have written what I hear are wonderful books on writing in these genres. I just haven't read them. Or even looked at them.
When I came to work as a Visiting Writer, a small, but strong voice inside me says I'm a fraud because I haven't read Writing Down the Bones or any of Anne Lamont's books or Julia Cameron's and I've never taken a creative writing course and my reputation as a writer is pretty much limited to those, whom I deeply appreciate, who read my blog.
Oh! And those who have heard me preach. I think some of my best writing happened in the handful of sermons I've given at St. Mary's Episcopal Church.
What I'm getting at here is that much of what I've learned about writing came from sources that weren't dealing with writing at all.
For example, a book that has shaped much of my thinking about writing and has helped me understand my mindset as a writer is Thich Nhat Hanh's Being Peace. His insight into connectedness, non-duality,being awake, and consciousness shapes how I teach writing and how I've tried to discipline my mind as an observer and agent in my life and has greatly expanded my imagination.
Likewise, Robert Grudin's book On Dialogue is not a writing handbook. Grudin's book explores the power of dialogic thought and the copious ways the mind can work in its pursuit of truth. His book encourages us to give our minds over to expansion, to seeing things as many ways as possible, to give ourselves over to the copious ways the mind works and to delight in the fertility of ideas, not to narrow them or reduce them.
As I write, I try to give myself over to the delights of copia. In my writing instruction, I encourage my students toward the freedoms implicit in thinking dialogically, of writing copiously.
Furthermore, when I read poems or stories or memoirs or philosophy or religion or the Bible or any other piece of writing, I always ask this question: what is this piece of writing telling or showing me about the act of writing itself?
For example, when Jesus instructs his disciples to be as wise as serpents and gentle as doves, that's a solid bit of writing instruction, especially when I listen to Martin Luther King, Jr. who said that in these words Jesus was instructing his followers to be tough-minded and tender-hearted.
Again, solid writing instruction.
In the poem, "Her Right Eye Catches the Lavender", found here, the speaker of the poem describes Judy Rock's way of being with the gulls:
Knowing her as I do
I know she chose one of them and pursued him
relentlessly—her eye is part of her mind –
and though there would be patter she never would lose him
until he was gone.
Here's what writing demands of us: to zero in, pursue, to do it relentlessly, to unite the eye (and the senses) with the mind, and to commit oneself not to lose the subject of the mind's and sense's focus until it is "gone".
A good lot is going on in Stern's poem. A good lot is going on in the ruminations of Robert Grudin. A good lot is going on in the writings of Thicht Nhat Hanh and the teachings of Buddha. A good lot is going on in the teachings of Jesus and the preaching of Martin Luther King. A good lot is going on in the poetry, stories, memoirs, histories, and other genres of writing in the world.
In one way or another, these writings and teachings, at some level, are instructing us in the ways of writing, or at the very least, giving us models for writing.
So far, it's been reading and thinking this way over the years that has informed my ideas about and practice of writing.
As the Inland Northwest Writing Project Summer Writing Retreat's Visiting Writer, I tried to invigorate those who came to the retreat with the inspiration and knowledge I've drawn from such sources.
It's a Buddhist thing: I've learned the most about writing from sources that weren't about writing at all -- at first glance.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Three Beautiful Things 04/27/04: Germinal, West and East, Strolling
1. I read and graded essays all day today. They were wonderful papers. My World Lit. students are wrestling with the fatalistic Zola novel, Germinal. It felt risky assigning it. Would my students read a 500+ page novel about coal miners striking in France in the 1860's? Many did. Class discussions have been vibrant and their papers have been right on the mark, many animated by enthusiasm for Zola's close to the bone grittiness, dark as it is.
2. My WR 122 students are learning about how to expand their critical thinking by thinking non-dualistically and copiously. We are looking at how traditional Western thought and Buddhist thought overlap and merge with their commitment to seeing the world as fully as as possible, from as many different perspectives as possible. My students essays reflecting their understanding of this overlapping and their examples of thinking this way themselves were fully of vitality.
3. Snug and I took a leisurely stroll around the neighborhood after I finished grading papers and the fruit blossoms around the neighborhood nearly intoxicated me.
2. My WR 122 students are learning about how to expand their critical thinking by thinking non-dualistically and copiously. We are looking at how traditional Western thought and Buddhist thought overlap and merge with their commitment to seeing the world as fully as as possible, from as many different perspectives as possible. My students essays reflecting their understanding of this overlapping and their examples of thinking this way themselves were fully of vitality.
3. Snug and I took a leisurely stroll around the neighborhood after I finished grading papers and the fruit blossoms around the neighborhood nearly intoxicated me.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Three Beautiful Things 01/24/07: The Boss, Connections, Slurpy DP
1. At the end of the Research Writing/Literature of the American Working Class course two years ago, I dropped Sam a note and offered him my Bruce Springsteen LP's. I never heard from him and forgot I made the offer. I ran into Sam today outside the Blue Door Theater and he asked me if the offer still held. You bet it does. We'll make the transaction soon.
2. I enjoy the way we are seeing how Martin Luther King, Jr., the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh, and the writing and thinking of Robert Grudin and the idea of copia all interrelate in WR 122. I'm hoping my students begin to see that when ideas are profound, there's a way they have deep commonality.
3. I purchased a Diet Pepsi from the machine that sits outside near the theater. The machine is subject to the elements. My Diet Pepsi was slushy and I pretended like I'd bought a slurpy and enjoyed the icy can of soda.
2. I enjoy the way we are seeing how Martin Luther King, Jr., the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh, and the writing and thinking of Robert Grudin and the idea of copia all interrelate in WR 122. I'm hoping my students begin to see that when ideas are profound, there's a way they have deep commonality.
3. I purchased a Diet Pepsi from the machine that sits outside near the theater. The machine is subject to the elements. My Diet Pepsi was slushy and I pretended like I'd bought a slurpy and enjoyed the icy can of soda.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Three Beautiful Things 01/17/07: Hanh, Herman, Copia
1. I hadn't met with my MW Writing 122 class for a week and it was wonderful to see them again. I was surprised how familiar they seemed to me, how many of their names I remembered, and how well we seem to be getting along. They collectively seemed excited about studying a little Buddhism and Thich Nhat Hanh's "Being Peace".
2. Herman told me he won $600 at Luckey's playing video poker. Herman's always proud of the way he takes his occasional video poker winnings straight to the bank and pays bills. Herman is also very proud of a ukelele tape he has. He told me this guy makes the ukelele sound like an opera singer. He promises to let me listen to it.
3. It's been a year since I've introduced students to Robert Grudin's ideas about dialogical thinking and his application of the ancient rhetorical trope "copia" to contemporary practices of critical thinking. I could tell his ideas were stimulating to my class. We are starting to roll.
2. Herman told me he won $600 at Luckey's playing video poker. Herman's always proud of the way he takes his occasional video poker winnings straight to the bank and pays bills. Herman is also very proud of a ukelele tape he has. He told me this guy makes the ukelele sound like an opera singer. He promises to let me listen to it.
3. It's been a year since I've introduced students to Robert Grudin's ideas about dialogical thinking and his application of the ancient rhetorical trope "copia" to contemporary practices of critical thinking. I could tell his ideas were stimulating to my class. We are starting to roll.
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