The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
March 8, 2011
Hope and Despair. Transformation and Chaos.
These are the words I’m supposed to be typing into forms describing a writing workshop this summer.
It’s cold and gray outside, still bleak.
Winter appears still to be winning. So does despair.
Why is it, I wonder, that I’ve often found my way back to hope in reading poems that should take me anywhere but back to hope, poems that show a world entirely without hope or direction or purpose?
Having spent more time in the woods and at Friday night football games than with poetry prior to college, I was introduced to T.S. Eliot for the first time by Stanley Crowe, a Romantics specialist in the English Department of Furman. And though Eliot became a person of faith later on in his adult life, my favorite of his poems is his earlier “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” with its haunting insecurity and desperation.
Here’s the beginning. No doubt you’re already familiar with it, but I hope it helps jump-start your own writing or composing or painting or creating today….
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
by T. S. Eliot
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the windowpanes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the windowpanes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap….
Read the rest of the poem here.
And let us know if T. S. Eliot helped spur YOUR creative process….
Hats Off to Songwriters: So Much To Learn From Great Lyrics
March 7, 2011
Ever wondered…
What makes a good song
so incredibly moving
or catchy
or memorable?
“It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.” ~Joan Baez
What is it about the words, for example, of “Bless the Broken Road” (lyrics by Marcus Hummon, Bobby Boyd and Jeff Hanna) that gives us no choice but to pull the car over and have a good sob?
For those of us in Nashville, it’s THE topic of discussion. The guy who serves you your pizza on weekends spends his midnights with his guitar trying to crack the code. The Target cashier who seems a little spaced out has just jotted down on a napkin the lyrics she is sure will be her big break. It’s all around us. The question, that is; the answers…they’re more elusive.
Particularly since moving here six years ago, I’ve been far more aware of what lyrics catch my attention and the All 
Important WHY–as well as the gifted songwriters behind them, quietly strumming at the Bluebird Cafe while Rascal Flatts and Faith Hill make their words famous.
Unlike those of us (non-song) writers of us who have whole books to fill with our words–a luxury that can lead us into temptation of being long-winded and slow to get rolling–songwriters operate with a tight limit to their number of lines –and must make every word count. Images have to be painted in a handful of words; stories must run their full arc in a matter of three minutes.
Whether you’re a songwriter or song-lover-listener, tell us what you think ALL writers could learn from your favorite lyrics about storytelling or capturing and holding someone’s attention or….
Please feel free to comment with video or audio links to singer/songwriters whose lyrics have something to teach other writers about the craft of a story arc:
Here, for example, is singer/ songwriter Kyle Matthews‘ powerful “Been Through the Water,” put with visuals by an unnamed individual:
And here’s a peek into one of Nashville’s legendary songwriting watering holes, The Bluebird Cafe, with “Let’s Go to Vegas” (lyrics by the funny and always insightful Karen Staley and made famous by Faith Hill) being performed:
For an ongoing discussion of great lyrics (as well as books, food, faith and friends, be sure to see Milton Brasher-Cunningham’s wonderful blog Don’t Eat Alone.
What insights do YOU have?
What can good songwriters teach every writer?
Stuck for Words? Me, Too. Poet-Priest Hopkins to the Rescue
February 23, 2011
If you’re wrestling words today like I am–on deadline to write a song, maybe, or feeling crazed to get that story keyed out, or compelled to come up with something new and insightful to say to a classroom or congregation of faces–here’s help for you. And for me, too.
Meet–if you’re not already intimate friends– poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889).
This was the Victorian era, of course, a time when conventional poetry kept to precise, predictable rhythms and rhymes (think of big, bush-bearded Alfred, Lord Tennyson and his galloping “Charge of the Light Brigade”:
Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death....
Hopkins would have none of it.
Instead, he played with what’s known as “sprung rhythm,” which was both a throwback to early Anglo-Saxon poetry and also allowed for all kinds of new and original acoustic sensations.
And there’s what he does with imagery, too, taking two objects that seem to have nothing in common and comparing them, or grafting them into one word. Inscape, he called his way of examining all the complex characteristics that makes a thing unique, and seeing straight into its heart.
A person of passionate faith, Hopkins was no stranger to doubt or depression–suffered, in fact, from both. But if you’re like me, his poetry will leave you changed and re-charged. Will make you see a fallen leaf or a bird’s flight or a trout differently from now on. Will loosen your own seized-up frustration for words.
“The Windhover”
| To Christ our Lord |
Inventiveness, surprises in its patterning, sounds that mimic the sweep of the falcon, alliteration, vivid imagery… it’s all there.
May you write today–compose, teach, type and tell stories–with originality and passion.
And keep in touch
1 Hour + 2 Pages Per Day (+Coffee) = Kate DiCamillo
February 19, 2011
If you have children in your house, or if you’re a godparent, grandparent, aunt, uncle or mentor who invests time reading to a child (and therefore invests in the future), you’re surely familiar already with children’s writer Kate DiCamillo.
Her splendid books, including The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane (my personal favorite), The Magician’s Elephant, Tiger Rising, Because of Winn Dixie deal beautifully with love and loss and human growth in ways that children can understand, but that also take the breath away of any adult with pulse. If not, there’s no time to waste. Jump in the car this moment, pajamas still on or not, or stumble to your laptop and track down her books. Without ever being pedantic or preachy, her books explore forgiveness and mercy in ways that will have you not only reading the stories again and again (with tissue box nearby), but also wanting to own them in hard back so you can pass them down.
If you’re a writer yourself, or someone still trying to carve out the time to begin, you’ll find encouraging the interview below in which Kate discusses her schedule: stumbling out of bed at 5 o’clock for coffee, then writing just one hour a day, stopping after two pages, no matter what kind of roll she’s on.
One hour.
Even that’s a challenge for most of us, sure, to capture an hour all to ourselves. But it does shoot down the excuse for many of us that we’d produce heart-warming stories, too–if only we could quit that job, hire that staff of household servants and pay someone to dress like us and show up at our meetings.
One hour. Two pages. Coffee.
And an alarm clock that will deride, ridicule and beat us over the head–whatever it takes.
It’s possible…. Don’t you think?
Enjoy the interviews with Kate DiCamillo below. The first is an amateurish quality, but it’s worthwhile: brief and to the point about her writing schedule, self-discipline…. The second is about 20 minutes and focuses more on her themes and development as a writer from, in her words, an arrogant, disdainful writer wannabe to the humbled, listening, “better self” who tells these beautiful tales.
Phyllis Tickle and Donald Miller on the Need to “Story” Ourselves
February 10, 2011
Memoir-Writing, Anyone? Or…Everyone
Phyllis Tickle (author and founding religion editor of Publishers Weekly) and Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz and A Million Miles in a Thousand Years) discuss the risks of telling our stories and why we MUST tell them–that to “story” oneself is to be truly human.
Storytelling and Sermons: Wordsmithing Tips from the Pulpit
February 9, 2011
I’m wondering today… What can novelists and songwriters and scriptwriters and memoirists learn from the process of writing a sermon?
I’m musing over some fine, floor-shaking sermons I’ve been privileged to hear (and also some real sleepers, but we won’t go there). And I’m wondering what good preachers know about images that stay with us, about stories that hold their listeners’ interest, about how to flesh out big, radical, counter-cultural concepts (wait…the last shall be WHAT?) for a roomful of people too jaded and despairing and distracted to see past next Tuesday.
Granted, some of us reading this work with words in ways that can’t often cross the line into, well, “preachiness.” But the best preachers are careful crafters of words. They’re close observers of life in all its pain and suffering and joy. They pay attention to sounds and metaphors. They understand that we’re drawn into stories–and that we learn the hard stuff best when we don’t know we’re being taught.
So I’m hoping some of you who are clergy yourselves, as well as those of you who’ve heard enough sermons that you qualify as experts on what works hermeneutically speaking (and what doesn’t) will tell us what you’ve learned—and maybe are still learning.
What do YOU think?
What CAN novelists and songwriters and scriptwriters learn from an excellent sermon?
And what can preachers learn from novels and lyrics and film?
[Coming soon: Storytelling and Songwriting:
What Can Be Learned From a Good Song;
Anne Lamott on Resurrection;
Phyllis Tickle and Donald Miller on the Human Need to “Story” Ourselves
Hear the Creator of the “Lost” TV Series Speak About Mystery and Suspense
February 8, 2011
J.J. Abrams on “The Mystery Box”
If you’ve not heard of the TV series “Lost,” no doubt you’ve been ice-climbing in Greenland for the past several years, or you swore off TV in order to devote more time to creative pursuits or spiritual disciplines–good for you! But for the rest of us, even if we caught just a few episodes and followed the buzz surrounding the show, we know “Lost” became workplace water-cooler fodder for its ever-unfolding story and backstory. Some found it marvelously addictive and others, just plain maddening.
Whether you were a devoted follower, an addict or just a baffled bystander, you’ll find intriguing J.J. Abrams’ ideas about creating mystery in the stories we tell. Here is his presentation to TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design).
For the last scene of the last episode of “Lost”….
Roald Dahl: Make ‘Em Laugh, Make ‘Em Squirm, Make ‘Em Have to Hear the Story
February 7, 2011
“My main preoccupation when I am writing a story is a constant unholy terror of boring the reader” –Roald Dahl
If you don’t recognize Roald Dahl’s name, be assured you do, at least, know his work: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
(Willy Wonka); Matilda; James and the Giant Peach; The BFG; Fantastic Mr. Fox…. So you’ve at least seen one of the movies, right? And maybe read all the books–as a child yourself, or with a little one curled up and chortling in your lap.
Here are some of Dahl’s best storytelling tips–in his own words:
“A story idea is liable to come flitting into the mind at any moment of the day, and if I don’t make a note of it at once, right then and there, it will be gone forever. So I must find a pencil, a pen, a crayon, a lipstick, anything that will write, and scribble a few words that will later on remind me of the idea. Then, as soon as I get the chance, I go straight to my hut and write the idea down in an old red-coloured school exercise book.
The reason I collect good ideas is because plots themselves are very difficult indeed to come by. Every month they get scarcer and scarcer. Any good story must start with a strong plot that gathers momentum all the way to the end. My main preoccupation when I am writing a story is a constant unholy terror of boring the reader. Consequently, as I write my stories I always try to create situations that will cause my reader to:
!) Laugh (actual loud belly laughs)
2) Squirm
3) Become Entralled
4) Become TENSE and EXCITED and say, “Read on! Please read on! Don’t stop!
All good books have to have a mixture of extremely nasty people–which are always fun–and some nice people. In every book or story there has to be somebody you can loathe. The fouler and more filthy a person is, the more fun it is to watch him getting scrunched.”
So… what’s YOUR favorite Dahl book, and what is it about his storytelling that makes his characters so utterly unforgettable?
Harry Potter, Failure, Imagination and Compassion
February 2, 2011
The Benefits of Failure?
The Role of Imagination in International Affairs?
Any of us who are or have kids who are Harry Potter fans have heard something of J. K. Rowling’s personal story: welfare single mom-to-billionaire. I’m ashamed to say that what I didn’t know–and am hoping that you already do–is the depth of her humor and compassion. In her commencement address to Harvard University, she speaks of the rich benefits of failure, and the role of imagination as a key–perhaps THE key–to human beings who are safe, secure and comfortable being able to picture and and want to take action on behalf of those whose lives are anything but.
Enjoy. And let us hear YOUR stories of Failure, Imagination and Compassion….
(Please note: the YouTube version below is less sharp visually, but the audio is sufficient, or for a sharper image and audio, find the link to Harvard’s Vimeo version at the bottom of the page.)
J.K. Rowling on Failure and Imagination
Never Too Late: 88-year-old author publishes long-planned book
January 29, 2011
Ever wondered if you’ll ever do anything with that idea for a great novel that’s been bouncing around inside your head?
Take a look at this New York Times article about Barnaby Conrad, former secretary to renowned 20th-century novelist Sinclair Lewis
(right), who challenged Conrad to write a novel about John Wilkes Booth, as if the assassin of President Lincoln escaped and went West.
Well, Conrad, now 88, finally got around to doing it–60 years after the initial idea, and Sinclair’s insisting that he write it.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should add that I’ve not read the just-released novel myself.
But I love the idea that unlike some professional goals–being, say, an NFL fullback–88 is not a bad age to follow through on an idea that’s been, well, mulling awhile.
If you’ve started writing later in life–or maybe you’ve been writing, like Conrad, but you’ve only just now gotten around to fleshing out an old idea– let us hear your story!
Connect with Joy
