Poem is an ocean stirring
your imagination
and your pen pours rivers of creativity.
Take a deep breath and dive in!
Maja S. Todorovic
Tag: writing
Poetry improves lives: a guest post by Jon Freedman
This is a guest post, a courtesy of a fellow blogger and poet Jon Freedman – another enlightening story on how we can enrich our lives through words.
Hi. I’m Jon Freedman. My blog, middaymidlife.com chronicles the midlife changes I’m going through after my 28 year marriage ended last April.
In addition to writing about my journey, I write about books and music important to me. Though I haven’t written on poetry, my very first blog post concludes with a poem I wrote, Wrecked in Rejkavik
While i rarely write poetry these days, my appreciation for the art form has not waned. Certain poems remain so poignant, so powerful that I am forever awed and and perhaps, even a tad jealous of their existence.
A good poem blends sound and meaning. A good poem is a song without music, meant not to just be read, but read aloud. A good poem has no shelf life.
I’d like to present two poems by Charles Bukowski. The first dark, the second not. Extremely different but connected by the power of the simple words.
I discovered Bukowski late in life. I knew of him but wasn’t at all familiar with his oeuvre. I was somewhat familiar with his fiction, but not his poems.
Bukowski’s personal story is a fascinating study of an artist who finally reaches recognition later in life, enabling him to focus on his art. There are a ton of biographies on the Interweb, if you’re interested.
Reading about Bukowski’s life raises the debate over art appreciation and how critical it is to understand the context of the artist’s life. As an English professor, and writer, Nabokov summarized it best, “does one need to know the spider to appreciate the web?”
In literature I find myself leaning towards “yes”. Though not in music or fine arts for the most part.
What say you? I’d love to hear your perspective on the question of the importance of knowing an artist’s “backstory” for lack of a better term, to appreciate the creation.
Until then,
Stay in touch. Share, comment, connect!
Jon Freeman
The Meek Shall Inherit The Earth
if I suffer at this typewriter think how I’d feel among the lettuce- pickers of Salinas? I think of the men I’ve known in factories with no way to get out- choking while living choking while laughing at Bob Hope or Lucille Ball while 2 or 3 children beat tennis balls against the wall. some suicides are never recorded.
From Love is a Dog From Hell by Charles Bukowski
The Laughing Heart
your life is your life don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. be on the watch. there are ways out. there is light somewhere. it may not be much light but it beats the darkness. be on the watch. the gods will offer you chances. know them. take them. you can’t beat death but you can beat death in life, sometimes. and the more often you learn to do it, the more light there will be. your life is your life. know it while you have it. you are marvelous the gods wait to delight in you.
From Betting On The Muse by Charles Bukowski
Jon Freedman is a Washingtonian whose love for words was inspired while growing up in a household where reading was much more than fundamental. After college, he worked in advertising and marketing. Jon has worked for start-ups, Fortune 500’s as well as marketing in pro sports. Along the way, he married, and has three adult daughters, who are the lights of his life. When he’s not reading, Jon is busy chronicling his own midlife experiences in the latest chapter of his journey. In addition to writing, Jon is an avid cook and lover of music. You can find his writings at middaymidlife.com
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3 reasons why anything you write has value
Probably you have encountered yourself thinking that what you wrote was not good enough, that nobody would like to read it, ext. And as writers we all have that moments. It’s so easy to let that moment overpower us – just let it flood us with self-loathing about our own skills and capabilities. But today I want to offer you a different perspective on your writing and tell that anything, any word you write has value and it’s not your waste of time.
I so immensely believe in the power of written words, our own words we spill on pages that I’m quite confident in the following statements I’m about to make:
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Your writing has value because it’s inevitable part of your own self-exploration and the way to know yourself better.
Each writing session is actually part of something much bigger, a pattern, a recorded reflection of you in particular moment in time. It doesn’t matter do you write a novel, an article, or purely stating your opinion and commenting on someone else’s work – it’s part of you. And anything that is coming from your own sincerity and open heart has value.
What you write at this moment doesn’t have to be perfect. Probably this exact information you are reading can be written in better style, using better words (especially concerning that English is not my mother tongue), but still you can understand the encouragement I want to give you here. And that is what counts, the message and intention behind it.
But this moment me writing this, leads to another writing moment, another blog post, another poem and inevitably we become more comfortable and confident in our writing, which reveals my second reason:
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Your writing has value because it’s part of the process where you improve your writing skill and you ‘calibrate’ your writing voice.
As long as you trust your authenticity your writing is original. The way you select and arrange words – especially in poetic writing which is so sophisticated, each time you write poem you are discovering your specific writing expression. It’s unique just as your finger print – you learn to use the words to best express your nature, personality, opinions, belief system and anything you stand for.
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Your writing has value as it teaches you to be more mindful of your thinking and stay present in the writing moment.
Each poem or paragraph you write doesn’t have to be approved by editors, experts or published in high impact journals in order to be of value. You write what is true and real for you in that exact moment. While we progress with writing, as it changes so do we. At the beginning of my writing practice I used to write long prose-poems, where I needed a lot of space and words to express myself. As mindfulness begins to dominate my writing lines, so my writing becomes simple and clear. You probably also can relate to this: compare your early works with something you recently wrote and you will see how your poems/writing is more coherent, straight to the point and purposeful.
These are my top 3 reasons why you should keep writing, each time you start to doubt and feel discouraged. There is no word, minute or paper wasted.
And probably the 4th and most obvious (and important) reason that I didn’t list above it’s because it simply brings you joy and fulfillment. Yet, I focused on another crucial elements that most people don’t recognize and easily overlook. These are my three reasons giving me that push I sometimes need to write and commit myself to get the words out there.
Trust your yourself – your writing has value.
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved youall your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.Derek Walcott
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Making sense of life: putting your memoir in poetic discourse (writing prompt)
Following this post published few weeks ago, it occurred to me: there is always something we haven’t told yet. A story, an event or memory that we shy from for some reason, that we avoid thinking about, talking about. And I don’t mean talking to others, but to ourselves. That internal conversation (or lack of it), has a subtle impact on our day to day life governing our decisions and choices in ways we are not even aware of. Our subconsciousness is like a vast ocean where we can drown deep with our feelings or we can strive for the surface to enjoy the sun and blue sky.
Each emotion and memory from the past has hidden opportunity for growth and healing. And these are the main reasons why people engage in writing memoirs. It’s a path of self-exploration, where time, the main ingredient offers different perspectives and lays a platform for us to embrace and accept our past. Not simply to remember but to celebrate each moment in life as these moments are the foundation for our future self. It can be painful and cathartic, but most importantly – freeing! In this interesting interview, Samantha M. White the author of Someone to Talk To: Finding Peace, Purpose, and Joy After Tragedy and Loss explains that in your memoir writing – the results can go beyond your initial intention.
Writing my memoir transformed my life. Not only my day-to-day present, and my future, but even the past about which I had written!
Transformation was not my goal. I wrote it because I had a story pent up inside me, pressing to be told – to share what had happened to me, and how I had found my way out of pain. I wanted to assure readers of the universality of suffering, and the reality of healing and finding new joy. I felt driven, and afraid that if I died before publishing the book, an important message wouldn’t be heard”.
So today I want to propose a bit different writing exercise. Think of any event or situation in your life that you would like to understand better, to explore, analyze or that just needs to be ‘poured’ on your paper and write a poem about it. Tell your story using poetry. And you might ask, why just don”t write about it? I think that poetry goes beyond prose writing and it allows you more freedom to express your feelings in different ways. Often we can’t find the right plain, straightforward words to say something but it needs metaphoric guidance that offers us strengths to deeply dive into the ocean of our subconsciousness. Take your time and write your way through it.
Narrative form of poetry and memoir complements each other to open the door of that internal conversation – you might be surprised what ‘s on the other side.
I personally often use this technique to simply sort my feelings and make a sense of life. These confessional poems are often highly emotionally charged and there’s the beauty: being able to feel is for me a proof that I’m alive. Accept every emotion that comes your way, because that’s human – to be vulnerable and celebrate your flaws, mistakes and successes as you navigate through life – the best you can.
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Poetry improves lives: a guest post by Jason J. Michael
This is a guest post, a courtesy of a fellow blogger and poet Jason J. Michael. This essay is a bit longer than usual posts on this blog, but I encourage you to read it through – a touching story on how poetry, particularly haiku has changed his life, literally.
The Healing Power of Haiku
4641
Believe in yourself,
And your ability to
Make a difference.On September 3, 2000, when I was twenty-nine, my father died. He smoked himself to death acquiring, in order, blocked arteries, throat cancer, lung cancer, emphysema, and finally congestive heart failure, which in combination with the others claimed his life. His untimely death was fully expected by everyone around him, except for me. A jazz musician, he had quietly sold off his instruments to friends, had delusions of teaching sax quartets in our kitchen, gone to the drugstore in his briefs, and had visions of a mute, glowing boy and girl that accompanied him on errands. All of these I was aware of. None of them I took that seriously. I was living home with my parents temporarily, but consumed by my career goals. I was directing, acting, and composing for a local dinner theatre, I loved the job and it held my full focus. Besides, parents are immortal, right?
I was with him in the hospital, holding his hand, when he passed. In fact, I had been the one to give permission to take him off the machines that were keeping his heart and lungs operational when my mother, in an unexpected wave of grief, refused the honor and responsibility herself, stating “I just can’t do it.” The decision by default fell to me and, sensing no recourse, I ordered him removed from the machines and held his hand till his heartbeat faded. From my point of view, I had just killed my father.
The following year was a blur of work juxtaposed against a backdrop of depression and excessive sleep. One year to the day, on the anniversary of his death, September 3, 2001, I started working as a full-time music teacher at a Catholic boys’ school in Philadelphia. It was exactly the kind of job he would’ve wanted for me, and I felt pushed into it by his overshadowing presence. Everyone there was wonderful, but the pain of his loss coupled with the guilt I had felt over “pulling the plug” was consuming me, and combined with the isolation I felt from having moved away from my family for work, I sank further into depression and almost nightly contemplated suicide.
Then one night in late fall of 2001, while sitting alone in my apartment, I started flipping through channels and stopped on a bald man with a calming presence, wry wit, and warm, gravelly, voice. His name was Dr. Wayne Dyer, the PBS special was There’s a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem, and I found myself drawn to what he was saying. Dyer’s pithy, anecdotal, personal empowerment spirituality resonated and stuck with me long after the special ended, and by the next evening I was reading his book, The Power of intention. Within a few days signature quotes such as “You’ve got to believe it to see it” and “You are a spiritual being having a human experience” started to take up permanent residence in my brain and I was feeling a bit better. One quote, “Don’t die with your music still in you,” held special significance for me.
My degree had been in Music Composition, and my father and I had spent many hours composing together in our basement. When he died the music in my head had gone silent as if it died with him, but I knew instinctively, defiantly, that that wasn’t the case. In my grief I couldn’t access it; my guilt over “killing” him, and my need for his approval had turned my creative volume setting to mute. But I knew it was there, knew that Dr. Dyer’s warning mantra was applicable to my life, and knew that I would have to start slowly if I was to ever rekindle the creative flame inside myself. As a musician I had often been both composer and lyricist. I prided myself on my ability to put words cleverly together. But I would have to start again slowly, with small projects that allowed for a big sense of accomplishment. So, on November 18, a few weeks after watching the special, I sat at a desk over lunch in the center of a crowded school hallway – a reluctant and bored hall monitor – and wrote my first haiku in twenty years.
1
If I ruled the world…
But wait! Life is perception.
Where did I go wrong?I struggled to write four haiku that day, but the next day I wrote more, and more after that. By January 20, 2002 I had written a hundred little poems, and realized I was starting to feel a bit better. I still wasn’t composing, but my creative juices were flowing, and I was amassing a large body of poetry that I could be proud of.
At the time I didn’t realize the full impact that writing haiku was having on my life, or how much I had almost obsessively fallen in love with distilling my daily thoughts down to a 5-7-5 syllabic format. I didn’t realize fully the therapeutic benefit, that by putting my thoughts simply and creatively on paper and “out there” I was releasing the pent up depression, guilt, and grief that had built up inside me over the last year and a half. I just knew I was being creative and felt better, and when something makes you feel good you keep doing it, don’t you?
Sixteen years after my father’s death, practically no week has gone by that I haven’t written at least one haiku. As of this writing, I’ve composed over 4,600 of the little buggers, self-published two books of poetry, plus a third children’s book. My music took years to return to me, but when it finally did it blew in with a vengeance, and I now compose fairly regularly, along with trying to maintain my blog, of course.
Everyone’s pathway to healing is unique, and for all I know had circumstances been different, perhaps something else would have come along to intervene, lift me up, and rehabilitate my spirit. Then again, perhaps nothing would have changed, and in my grief I may have commit suicide. But thankfully, THANKFULLY, that wasn’t to be my fate, and I ran across Dr. Dyer and his life philosophy when my spirit needed him the most. And that led me to fight for my life, a little bit at a time, with seventeen syllables in a crowded hallway, and with props to Frost, “that has made all the difference” for me. So, in case you ever had any doubts that poetry has magical properties or lasting value, I’m here to tell you that I’m living proof that poetry can change or even save a life. And that is the true healing power of haiku.
Namaste,
Jason
Jason J. Michael is a freelance actor, director, music director, and composer. He has self-published two books of poetry, True Haiku for You and A Haiku a Day; and one children’s book, Daddy Doesn’t Purr (But I Love Him Anyway), all available on Amazon. He won the Writer’s Journal National Poetry Contest with his poem “The Greatest Treasure” many years ago and has written some 4,600 haiku to date. He lives in King George, VA with his wife, son, and three cats. His blog, Reflections from Shangri-La, can be found at https://reflectionsfromshangrila.wordpress.com/
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Poetic inspiration: Silent messenger
Your writing is a silent messenger
of who you are.
Use it to accept, love and share
your true self,
because sky has an immense space
for another shining star, your star.
Don’t let that corner stay cold and unreached far,
trapped and forgotten in dark.
Maja S. Todorovic
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7 most powerful ways to regain time for writing in the midst of chaos
The more I write and search for inspiration for blog posts, the more I come across analogy of how certain natural laws that govern universe actually can be very well applied to our everyday life. If we fast rewind our memory to a high-school years we might recall the 2nd law of thermodynamics that basically says: the universe tends to go from present order to bigger disorder. And does that apply to your everyday life? Well imagine: you can spend all day cleaning your messy room and within couple of working hours, you are practically at square one – like you didn’t tidied it up at all.
Sounds familiar?
We all live our lives chaotic to some degree. We cannot control every circumstance but we can put some effort and take charge to at least try make some order. And making that order can mean finding more time to write.
My first recommendation is to:
1.Have a clear writing goal
If you write for a blog or a book, have clear mind about what you want to accomplish. For a blog having in advanced prepared editorial calendar with defined frequency of your posting can be handy in overall estimate on what you need to write, does it require research and ext. Pretty much the same comes with a book. That writing goal can be a number of pages, chapters or developing your story concept.
2.Prioritize and reschedule
Squeeze writing in your schedule like you plan other activities: your meals, working out, household chores. Once it becomes that ingrained part of your everyday life, the lesser are chances for you to skip it in favor of some other activity.
That can also mean:
3.Getting up an hour earlier
and writing during that peaceful time where dreams and reality collide.
4. Trading your evening TV hours for some quality writing time
Instead of being hypnotized in front of a glowing screen, indulge in your imagination and focus on your writing.
5.Using your commuting and travel time efficiently
If you travel by bus or train to work, this is an excellent opportunity to use this (almost wasted) time to think about our writing, jot some ideas down or brainstorm new poem/story.
6. Sparing some treasure time during weekends
Organize your weekends in such way that part of your relaxing routine be writing.It could be as simple as sitting down to enjoy cup of coffee or if you go for a walk: use these breaks to elaborate your writing ideas or finish previous writing tasks.
7.Making space for writing
Putting physical order in your everyday environment can be helpful in terms it will motivate you to write instead of dealing with stressful petty things. Having that special, inspiring place you dedicate to your writing can help you in making writing a priority – being that small gesture like clearing out a counter to write down your new idea. Such small acts of generosity towards our passions and creativity can be a triggering point to transform our writing into a regular practice.
How do you deal with chaos and find time for writing?
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Poetic inspiration: Being understood
Not everyone has to “get” your writing.
It takes
(one approving nod,
one enticing smile,
one spark in those eyes)
to touch only one soul
and your story changes the world.
Maja S. Todorovic
Home
No bricks, wooden furniture
or your grandma’s china will make you safe.
You need to travel inside – deep and far,
place yet to find. Your silent breath
is your guide. Break that false imprisonment,
the need to hide. And you will find home
follow, wherever you are.
Maja S. Todorovic
Innocence
Metal bird drums among the clouds,
regularly each morning like broken alarm clock.
Automated, she reached for the bruised pot
the one in which she would usually make coffee.
Instead, she just licks fresh water from her palm.
Warmed up, she searched for silk tights
and fake leather boots.
Instead, she leaves her coarse feet and ingrown
toenails to bloom.
Played in, deceiving softness of her bed
she replaces for ripened hard floor.
Faced to a nameless wall, disarmed void of things
she could finally swell into her own innocence.
Maja S. Todorovic
Business in Rhyme 