It’s Christmas/ Hanukkah/ Solstice time, and you know what that means: LISTS! To-Do Lists, Santa Lists, Shopping Lists, New Year’s Resolution Lists, Best of 2013 Lists. . .
Where is poetry on your list? Where is your novel? Your revisions? The stack of submissions you’ve been meaning to get to?
Are you putting your writing at the top, or the bottom of your list? The other day, I violated one of my own holiest of rules – the No-Lists-in-the-Writing-Journal Rule. But I was blocked, paralyzed really, unable to focus, distracted by all the other obligations I felt I needed to tend to. So I wrote them down, bullet-style, right there on a fresh, new page.
After I had reviewed the 49 things I “had” to do that were clouding my mind, it hit me that I had not allotted any time for writing. So I wrote a new bullet item, more in the form of a question to myself: Where is my writing on this list? And in that moment of recognition and acknowledgement, something shifted. I realized that my writing is no less important than “Christmas gifts – teachers”, “Change ortho appt.”, “Upload photos”, “Dad’s birthday”, and it deserves a slot at the top of the list.
Put yourSELF and your WRITING at the top of your list today.
And in the spirit of List-Making, I have put together a short list of my favorite lines from Poetry is Insurgent Art a “r-evolutionary” little manifesto by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
- If you would be a poet, invent a new language anyone can understand.
- If you would be a poet, speak new truths that the world can’t deny.
- Read between the lives and write between the lines.
- Don’t let it be said of you that sluggish imagination drowned out the slush of your heart.
- Dance with wolves and count the stars, including the ones whose light hasn’t got here yet.
- The sunshine of poetry casts shadows. Paint them too.
- Make uncommon words common. Say the unsayable, make the invisible visible.
- Write an endless poem about your life on earth, a poetry larger than life. Your life is your poetry.
