Category Archives: Creativity

Day 57

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"Clutter," by Felicia Chernesky

“Vision,” by Felicia Chernesky

Here’s the funny thing about clutter and creativity. I feel like I need a lot of stuff inside my lens to get motivated But then, as I’m rolling along, I begin to pluck out what isn’t pertinent to what I’m writing. Sometimes I think of it as editing-on-the-move, a constant sifting and winnowing that helps me streamline my ideas as well as my lines—of prose and verse, although the process  is even more intense when it comes to verse.

This occurs literally as well. The deeper I dig into what I’m doing the more I need to empty off my desk. Papers and books and all the household items that always seem to end up there must GO.

In my dream life I have two writing rooms, one as crammed and exotic as Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory office, the other empty—and I mean empty—of everything but my desk and my imagination. I’ll fill the rest of the space with effort.

There’s that old saying, I can’t remember who said it first or how, that if I had more time, I’d have written less. This is what I mean. To carve and whittle away to what’s essential is, I believe, the key to polished writing and a more satisfying existence.

Too much static and stuff still gets in the way. Or I am still letting it. Or still learning how to let go.

Does it matter? Not really. I’ve been an editor for twenty-five years and have learned that to do the job well, you have be able to set expectations aside and listen to the heartbeat, to what the writing and the writer are trying to say.

"Color," by Felicia Chernesky

“Re-Vision,” by Felicia Chernesky

Writers don’t always listen to editors either. I’m guilt of that, too. And sometimes we need to hear what we mistake as criticism but is really an issue of clarity many, many, many times over before it moves us to revise: to rewrite so that what we are trying to say can be understood.

I don’t think it’s any more complicated than that. The rest is ego or sloth or unpreparedness. The first two need a different kind of address, but unpreparedness can always be answered with education, whether it’s independent scholarship or skills acquired in a classroom environment.

I like also like learning as I go. The “results” take longer but it keeps life interesting, like asymmetry. Some days it just feels off-kilter, but on other days it creates the kind of perspective visual artists do so well, and I can hone in on the object of my attention and affection.

My frame?  That brief band of longed-for bliss.

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    Day 17

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    Anton von Werner [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons


    A bit of this and that.

    I returned to my pottery class yesterday, and while I’d like to state, with an accompanying surge of uplifting music, that I’ve been transported to a new level of clay awareness, the reality is that it’s going to take a lot of time.

    I did consider not going back to class, and I wish it were bravery and stick-to-itiveness that set me straight, but it was the tuition paid that put an end to the idea of quitting. There was a delayed school opening due to icy roads, so I was a half-hour late, but into the studio I marched, jaw set, apron in hand.

    I see that part of my problem is that I need to let go and relax and focus solely on my current actions. I had moments of that. And the potter must be queried often for assistance, so I have to get over too my longstanding and residual reluctance to ask questions in a classroom setting. Those issues are mine and do not belong to the clay.

    That being said, I got over myself, asked questions about next steps and hand positions, etc., and above all allowed myself to slow down. It started to sink in that however I touched the clay the clay would respond in a way that reminded me of Newton’s Third Law of Motion: “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

    Now, I have no idea if this is correct, but this is different from my first concept of the clay as dough, because when you stick a finger in dough the dough rises back up. When you dent clay, like the dent in the bathroom wall I discussed a few days ago, it stays dented. But that’s not quite true either, for when the wheel is in motion and your hands are cupping the clay there’s a sense of molecular movement, of elasticity that I am just beginning to experience and therefore cannot articulate well yet.

    Practically speaking, so far I’ve thrown four pots: one looks like an embarrassed flowerpot, another a small, sorry candy dish, the third a food bowl for a pet guinea pig named Corky, and the fourth a cup to hold chewed, half-used pencils.

    I will say that the fourth pot surprised the potter, who I am convinced was secretly hoping I would not return to class. I asked, him, “Why does it look like this?” And he answered, “Because you are starting to hold your hands the right way.”

    Ah.

    Moving to another kind of art, I also begin my spring semester MFA coursework this week, an advanced forms class on verse satire and verse drama. J-O-Y. My classmates are fellow poetry MFA students in the same fiction class I took last semester, and we are hoping to continue the momentum.

    During week one we are reading translations of the Satires of Horace. I am particularly enjoying reading the translations published in 2008 by A.M. Juster, who made the engaging and provocative decision to fashion the Roman lyric poet  Horace’s dactylic hexameter as rhymed lines of iambic pentameter (heroic couplets), which seems to me to underscore their wit and urbane, conversational quality.

    I remember translating and scanning passages of Horace in college Latin class, but this is a different experience altogether. I’m not worried here (much) about grammar, but learning how to add satire to my writer/poet toolbox. That makes it sound mundane and practical, which this process is, partly.

    The rest involves history. Maybe call it reenactment. If you want to know something study its origins. If you want to be a good writer, read good writing. I know I’m geek-oriented (i.e., a geek), but starting with a thorough and ongoing study, independently or otherwise—there are so many options available today—of what you desire to learn seems to me to be the best way of getting good at what you want to do.

    Bravery and stick-to-itiveness help. As does patience, humanity, and a bit of satirical, self-deprecating reflection, like this, from Satire 1.3 of Horace, as translated by Juster:

    He may feel ridiculed when people say
    he cuts his hair the way that bumpkins do,
    his toga drags, and an ill-fitting shoe
    keeps slipping off, but he’s a decent guy—
    you won’t find someone better if you try,
    and vast capacities may hide within
    that fellow’s unsophisticated skin.
    Once finished, shake yourself to check if seeds
    of evil in your nature or bad deeds
    are sown within you; in neglected fields
    we need to burn away the weedy yields.

    This lively text doesn’t jive with the somewhat stern portrait of Horace by nineteen-century German painter Anton von Werner posted above, does it? But I like it.

    To me, the great Quintus Horatius Flaccus looks like he is wearing a short-sleeved turtleneck à la Papa Hemingway and sensible shoes—Rockports perhaps? I often find ancient writers disarmingly modern, which is refreshing, and a reminder that just when you think you’ve seen it all, somebody smarter saw, and commented upon it, thousands of years before you were born.

    p.s. I went hypertext happy in this post. A little clay goes a long way.

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      Day 10

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      By Raja1111 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons


      A complete amateur, I have taken a variety of art courses since childhood, but never in pottery. It’s something I’ve longed to learn more about for many years, but always set aside for “when there’s more time.”

      In early December, while Christmas shopping in town, we discovered that a pottery studio had recently set up shop only a few minutes from where we live. I couldn’t believe the beauty and the skill of the pottery on display, and when I discovered that it was student work I was stunned. I mentioned to my husband that I would love to take a class someday.

      On Christmas Eve he handed me an envelope with a certificate inside, good for an eight-week course. I was over the moon about it. No time like the present, right?

      But then life returned to its crazy-busy quotidian, and in the bustle of school and work and family business I nearly forgot to sign up for a class. When I made the call, it was with a burdened heart, because I immediately thought, “I really don’t have time for this right now.”

      Nonetheless I went to class yesterday, plastic bucket and old towel in hand, rushing over, anxious to throw my cares aside for a few hours and learn how to throw pottery instead.

      I am sad to report that it didn’t work.

      It wasn’t the potter or the studio. It wasn’t the clay or my classmates. It was me. I couldn’t leave my life at the door.

      I tried to remain attentive, but family cares and journal deadlines kept creeping into my thoughts. I followed the instructions but felt nothing but cold, wet clay in my hands. I fretted over the cost of the class and how I wasn’t making good use of funds that could have gone to bills or tuition. And I found myself counting the minutes until class was over so I could get back home, back to the mountain of work on my desk.

      Several times the potter said to me, “Relax, don’t rush,” or “Remember, it’s not about the performance, it’s about the process”—you know, deep and earthy-crunchy platitudes that are perfectly true but won’t sink in and do any good when you are locked down tight.

      So I was all thumbs and made a mess. I came home cast down and covered in clay. I thought, maybe I shouldn’t go back. It’s just not the right time.

      One remark the potter made keeps sticking in my brain. Early in the class, as he was showing us how to cut and first handle the clay—to prepare it for shaping on the potter’s wheel—he said, “Wake the potter, wake the clay.”

      Simple. Gorgeous.

      It’s funny that a single phrase touched me more than any tactile moment during those three hours. It burned a hole in my brain to the place where poetry lives. I wanted to tell the potter at some point during class, “Look, it’s not performance anxiety or perfectionism (in this instance); I’ve just got a mountain of dirt that’s standing in my way,” but instead I joked, “I work with words. I’m not used to using my hands in this manner.”

      Of course that fell on deaf ears, but who cares? To get to the clay pit I can move mountains with my mind, if I want.

      The question is, what do I really want?

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        Day 9

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        "Dude!" by Jeff Chernesky

        “Dude!” by Jeff Chernesky

        Excerpt from
        Shakespeare’s Hamlet
        Act 5, Scene 1

        First Clown
        A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! a’ poured a
        flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This same skull,
        sir, was Yorick’s skull, the king’s jester.

        HAMLET
        This?

        First Clown
        E’en that.

        HAMLET
        Let me see.

        Takes the skull

        Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow
        of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
        borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
        abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at
        it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know
        not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your
        gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment,
        that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one
        now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?
        Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let
        her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must
        come; make her laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio, tell
        me one thing.

        HORATIO
        What’s that, my lord?

        HAMLET
        Dost thou think Alexander looked o’ this fashion i’
        the earth?

        HORATIO
        E’en so.

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          Day 6

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          "Crsytalline Kiss," by Jess Chernesky

          “Crsytalline Kiss,” by Jess Chernesky

          I spent over an hour today reviewing  the study guide with my youngest child for tomorrow’s unit math test. He is in his grade school’s gifted and talented math program and I, to be honest, am reliving some of my worst academic nightmares.

          Math takes up a great deal of daily homework time, which leaped from about fifteen minutes last year to (sometimes many) multiples of that this past fall. It was a shock and adjustment all around.

          And lately, my son and I have locked horns a number of times over mathematical calculating—battles resulting in frustrated referral to his Everyday Mathematics Student’s Reference Book  in which I have been the consistent and decided loser. After a few heated, “Mom, I told you…” I have accepted that I am already out-manned. I now keep and consult the reference book on my desk before opening my mouth to argue numbers with that kid.

          Actually, I had no issue with math until around tenth grade when the concepts began to outpace me; thereafter I was never able to keep up. And because I had also discovered poetry and adored French and English I was happy to turn my full attention to those more fulfilling studies. But I still have the occasional nightmare in which I neglect to attend the one math class I need to fulfill a requirement and am on the verge of not graduating from college. I always wake up gasping for air.

          But it’s funny that whenever math appears in different forms I have no gripe. Bookkeeping comes easily, so I’ve wondered if the dollar sign in front of the digits transforms household finances into a challenging puzzle to solve rather than mathematical formulas to face with ropes of garlic and a troubled soul.

          When I began MFA work my first class was Scansion Boot Camp. In it we learned to scan metrical lines of verse. I remember my professor commented that poetry “is all about the numbers.” I was stunned. It took me about six months to accept and understand, or begin to understand, what he meant. It was easiest for me to compare it to reading and playing lines of music, which concerns counting. However, it’s counting that involves multitasking; when you play a piece of music, you count while you are reaching for the correct notes. The notes must be played for a defined length, but also at a particular volume and in a proscribed manner, smoothly, say, or staccato.

          When scanning and explicating lines of metrical verse, you pay attention to stressed and unstressed syllables, rhyme schemes, and a wealth of poetic devices, not to mention meaning and intent. The process is layered, nuanced; it takes considerable mental and physical juggling to make sense of it all. But it all begins with simple counting.

          Way back when I was in third grade I remember standing before the class at the multiplication wheel chalked on the blackboard. The teacher used a pointer as we took turns giving her the right or, horrifically, the wrong answers to the various times tables. Those sessions filled me with dread. I was so terrified at the thought of making a fool of myself before my classmates I learned my times tables quickly and well.

          I guess my rather rambling point is that like most other things, math shows up in sometimes unexpected places in our lives, and the experience can vary from pretty awful to miraculous—like when you use precision calculations to bake a heavenly batch of snickerdoodles.

          Along with my son I am learning new mathematical terminology. I am also relearning long forgotten concepts. But just like when you encounter a new or dust-covered word and suddenly meet it everywhere you go, it’s funny how the world gets a little more fascinating with that fact or formula in it.  So why fight the numbers?

          p.s. So what does the accompanying image have to do with today’s captain’s log?

          Nothing. Zero. (But isn’t it lovely? Thanks, Fran.)

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            Day Three

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            Pickaxe

            Wikimedia Commons, File:Pickaxe.jpg

            Sumptuous.

            A gorgeous word I came across yesterday while editing a book review for the spring issue of the journal for which I am managing editor. It’s not a word often encountered during these lean times (at least by me), but I had to stop and say it aloud, over and over.

            Articulating “sumptuous” is a magnificent mouthful. Three syllables, stressed-unstressed-stressed—a Cretic prosodical foot, to be precise—the pronunciation of sumptuous leads one to linger long over its enunciation.

            Saying sumptuous is a sensuous experience, akin to onomatopoeia, though it “tastes” rather than sounds like what the word means: extremely costly, rich, luxurious, or magnificent.

            Two etymological reference works I checked place its origins in the fifteenth century, one with Middle English and the other with Old French, but of course ultimately from Latin. Sumptuosus, “costly, expensive,” from sumptus  “cost, expense,” the past participle of sumere  “spend, consume, take,” a contraction of sub-emere, from sub-  “under” + emere “to take, buy.”

            I include the above paragraph not only for the grammar geek of heart (i.e., Colorado Susan), but to show that the word’s roots—a definition that involves costliness and consumption—bleed into its sound, into the articulation of sumptuous.

            I love how language works like that. Ever since doing etymological work in a linguistics-leaning MFA poetry course I haven’t read, or written, a line of verse (or prose) the same way. I routinely look down into words now, rooting around their history. I’m just a novice, of course, but what I’ve found is fascinating.

            In childhood, my first career aspirations were to be an animator for Disney. Next, for a long time, I wanted to be an archaeologist. I was and still am entranced with ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. But then, in tenth grade, I met up with Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and poetry lit me on fire. I guess, when I look back, all my first interests remain intact and connected.

            I don’t understand why we disregard history. It’s been crushed underfoot in our schools and universities. We often pretend history—national, cultural, global—doesn’t exist. And personally, we run as hard as possible away from our own individual and family histories and into the arms of whatever will distract or comfort us in order to survive for one more day. We act as if only today matters.

            On the one hand what we have now is what is, and that’s our reality. But that doesn’t mean yesterday and all the days before it did not exist. In fact, they do exist, and that’s what we call history. We carry our history, our histories, with us always—whether we are willing to admit it or not.

            Better to understand, better to look deep down into, I think, than merely to skim across a line, across a pattern, across a way of being and scratch our heads, blundering, plundering blindly forward. Better to know a hard truth than trip over and fall into yet another familiar yet ruinous rut.

            And better still to know the riddled map and take a new and different road altogether.

            Not every look down is painful or a pothole. Sometimes the digging leads to great discoveries. And who can say what is a treasure? Just digging into the history of one word, sumptuous, led me to a few precious moments of delight and wonder during an overburdened day. And words are like rocks, ubiquitous, piled to the mountaintops and buried deep inside the earth.

            Who knew you can derive so much pleasure from a pickax and a dictionary?

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              Day Two

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              All right, I’ll admit it. I made resolutions at the stroke of midnight on December 31, 2012. Some of those resolutions are among the most familiar and frequently made. Others, like “learn to cook the basics the right way” and “make a gentleman of my eight-year-old,” are particular to my interests and family. A private few are so specific they would sound weird in the sharing, but I’ll tell one, because it concerns this blog.

              I long resisted starting a blog because they so often seemed to me nothing more than exercises in vanity. But I was told, over and over, you must do this if you want to be a working writer, so at last I acquiesced. At times, it has served as a wonderful way to connect with fellow writers and readers; at others it has felt like just another heavy obligation.

              I began with so many ideas! Some worked; others haven’t. Once I returned to MFA studies, it became harder to keep posting on a daily basis and I had to make tough choices about how to spend my writing time. For a while, I thought, well, just post what and when you feel, but I am too rooted in the ways of editorial deadlines to have ever felt fully comfortable with that. I need a plan to follow, a schedule.

              Along the way, I also had a horrible experience with someone who helped me with the blog and for a long while the heartache polluted these waters. I even allowed that and a similar deep hurt to lead me to consider shutting down for good.

              But then I made a better decision.

              I decided to let it all be. And then I decided not to shut down, but to persevere, to keep writing—permitting myself to write what and when I felt when time and space allowed and see where things might lead.

              Looking back I think I see something of a slow evolution taking place. Writing seemingly on the fly, responding to images and picking up where I left off yesterday is part of this process. The “pressure” to return requires commitment despite dismay and distraction, and that pressure has helped me to edit out and get to the point. Sometimes what wants to be said is best expressed in a picture, and that’s been enough.

              It reminds me most of my first days as an editor of a very, very, very small local paper back in the 1980s, when deadlines still came in the form of cut-and-paste typesetting. The thrilling rush of fulfillment that came with a byline was short-lived, overwhelmed by a bigger accomplishment: getting the publication into the mailbox on time. I got used to being a cog in the machine, happy in my useful part of the process.

              That sense of fulfillment has never left me. I like keeping my eight arms busy and am all too happy to retreat into the shadows once the job is done. The hardest part of writing blogopus is doing it out here, in plain view and alone.

              But, dude, I’ve learned to deal. I’ll probably always be much happier—and more comfortable—scribbling away in my corner of the abbey with my books and a window for company, but that need for a window view tells me as much about myself as the books do. Even hermits sniff the air and long for an adventure from time to time.

              So here goes.

              I plan to mark the days in 2013, a  kind of captain’s log. In the coming weeks blogopus will undergo a sea change. The tides will sweep away some now familiar and long unused features. Appearances will transform. Hopefully, new treasures will be discovered in the deep. Where will these travels lead? I don’t know. How long will the journey take? I don’t know. Where will it all end? I can’t say.

              I scribbled this on the back cover of the January 2013 issue of Bon Appétit: “The end of 2012 felt like a tearing away. A page of sorrow, dear for what is familiar. We grow accustomed to crisis.”

              I think it’s pretty simple. We make vows big and small. We mark national and cultural anniversaries, but on day one, day two, and forward, we create our own boundaries and establish the patterns (healthy and unhealthy) by which we plan to live. We create, destroy, and recreate our own calendar.

              Again, I’ll admit it. I made resolutions at the stroke of midnight on December 31, 2012. But this time I felt something. A spark. An infinitesimal altering of my course. No more fighting the tide for this crazy creature. I am heading out.

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