PREPARING TO WRITE
a tanka on writing
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Railroad Crossings Are
Places To Become Aware—
STOP! LOOK! And LISTEN!
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If you hear a train of thought
You’ll know you’re on the write track!
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© Ken Chawkin
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Also see Haiku On The Nature of Haiku.
Archive for the ‘Poetry’ Category
WRITING TANKA—Preparing to Write
September 25, 2009William Stafford—Something That Happens Right Now
September 22, 2009Something That Happens Right Now
I haven’t told this before. By our house on the plains before I was born my father planted a maple. At night after bedtime when others were asleep I would go out and stand beside it and know all the way north and all the way south. Air from the fields wandered in. Stars waited with me. All of us ached with a silence, needing the next thing, but quiet. We leaned into midnight and then leaned back. On the rise to the west the radio tower blinked—so many messages pouring by. A great surge came rushing from everywhere and wrapped all the land and sky. Where were we going? How soon would our house break loose and become a little speck lost in the vast night? My father and mother would die. The maple tree would stand right there. With my hand on that smooth bark we would watch it all. Then my feet would come loose from Earth and rise by the power of longing. I wouldn’t let the others know about this, but I would be everywhere, as I am right now, a thin tone like the wind, a sip of blue light—no source, no end, no horizon.
—William Stafford
Poetry—The Art of The Voice
September 12, 2009Poetry—The Art of The Voice
How fine will your breath become
from listening to these words?
How soft will they seem to be
as they settle through the mind
like silent snowflakes falling
from a windless winter sky?
I often marvel at the mystery—
how words can work
on a listener’s heart and mind,
upon hearing a poet’s thoughts,
a poet’s breath, flowing
from an inner voice—
a windless wind, speaking
through a voiceless voice.
—Ken Chawkin
This poem was published in THIS ENDURING GIFT, A Flowering of Fairfield Poetry, 76 Poets Who Found Common Ground in One Small Prairie Town:, and later selected as the POEM OF THE DAY: Poetry – The Art of the Voice, by Ken Chawkin.
William Stafford—You and Art
September 10, 2009You and Art
Your exact errors make a music
that nobody hears.
Your straying feet find the great dance,
walking alone.
And you live on a world where stumbling
always leads home.
Year after year fits over your face—
when there was youth, your talent
was youth;
later, you find your way by touch
where moss redeems the stone;
and you discover where music begins
before it makes any sound,
far in the mountains where canyons go
still as the always-falling, ever-new flakes of snow.
—William Stafford
Also see William Stafford—A Course in Creative Writing
Listen to You and Art performed by Daniel Sperry from his CD: William Stafford: Cutting Loose ~ A Tribute To William Stafford.
I later included the last stanza of this Stafford poem in response to The Poetry Society’s tweet of the last half of Wallace Stevens’s poem, The Snow Man, which they liked. The imagery is similar, and the GIF they used of snow falling also fits perfectly with both poems.
My poem, Poetry—The Art of the Voice, communicates that silent music from nature to poet to audience, where it “begins before it makes any sound” as Stafford wrote at the end of You and Art.
And my poem, Telling the Story of Silence by Ken Chawkin, allows that silence to tell its own story, the “Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is” as Stevens wrote in The Snow Man.
Later found and added: Henry Lyman interviewed William Stafford for NPR’s series, Poems to a Listener, later posted on YouTube. Stafford reads several poems, including You and Art.
I found this quote by James Joyce (Ulysses): “A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.” It seems to reiterate this notion that mistakes lead to discovering something new and unexpected, i.e., thinking out of the box.
William Stafford—The Way It Is
September 5, 2009This is my favorite William Stafford poem, and, much to my surprise, I came across a quote from the Vedic Literature with a similar theme, only it extends it to its ultimate spiritual conclusion. So I call this grouping: uncommon thread … cosmic thread.
THE WAY IT IS
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
—William Stafford
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He who knows the fine-drawn thread of which the creatures that we see are spun, who knows the thread of that same thread—he also knows Brahman, the Ultimate.
—Atharva Veda Samhita 10.8.37
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Listen to The Way It Is performed by Daniel Sperry from his CD: William Stafford: Cutting Loose ~ A Tribute To William Stafford.
See a video of cellist and composer Daniel Sperry perform William Stafford’s poem, “The Way It Is.”
And see William Stafford’s last poem: “Are you Mr. William Stafford?” also performed by Daniel Sperry.
This post sheds additional light on the notion of following a thread: William Stafford’s poetry lightened his life having woven a parachute out of everything broken.
In this post, William Stafford prescribed creative writing to find your own voice and reveal your inner light, I mention that Kim Stafford used the lines of the poem, The Way It Is, as chapter headings in his wonderful biography, Early Morning: Remembering My Father, William Stafford.
Listen to an audio recording of William Stafford reciting The Way It Is.
— Written and compiled (citing sources) by Ken Chawkin for The Uncarved Blog.
Transformed—my first haiku
September 2, 2009Transformed
(my first haiku)
Caterpillars spin
increments of commitment;
Butterflies fly free!
© Ken Chawkin
Published in The Dryland Fish, An Anthology of Contemporary Iowa Poets, 2003, within 13 Ways to Write Haiku: A Poet’s Dozen.
Written around 25 years later, In the Parkview Cave, seems relevant here.
Watch this NOVA documentary: The Incredible Journey of the Butterflies.
See this later post: Japanese culture: poetic aesthetics, artistry, and martial arts, inspired me to write haiku and tanka.
The Uncarved Blog 