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Excerpts from Another River: New and Selected Poems
YOUR BIRTHDAY
For my son Paul, born 9/11/62
This day dawns as it has always dawned
from the beginning of time.
Oceans carry the songs of whales
and tumble onto every shore
the shells of precious little lives.
We who wander here
in leaf-fall, acorn-fall September,
remember, but cannot understand
the singing, or the loss of lives.
You came bloody into this bloody world,
this singing world, this world
where war and peace forever
hold each other in a lovers' knot.
Whatever we are, we are not made for war.
War is a wound that forces us to see
ourselves: hungry for peace, delicate
in our fragile shells, and beautiful.
So are you, born on this day, beautiful.
In the deep, could you hear the singing?
Its meaning is beyond what can be spoken.
Perhaps, like peace, it is a mystery
that springs unbidden out of what is broken.
ABOUT (AMONG OTHER THINGS) GOD
Come.
The primrose blooms in the garden.
The mourning dove calls in the sycamore tree.
Rain on the sill of the window,
Sounds of every kind of weather
are sweet in this old house.
Come.
In the pantry, jars of beans,
lentils, sunflower seeds. Sesame. Jars
of preserves, small cans
of spices stand in rows.
It is here.
A woman stands in the doorway
and calls. Her apron bleached from washings
and from hanging in the sun. Behind her,
through the doorway, the house
is dark and cool, and the word
that she calls into the late afternoon,
into the shadows gathering under the lilacs,
into the long, long shadow of the sycamore tree
is come.
Come home.
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Peter Elbow's Foreword to Writing Alone and With Others
It's a privilege to be able to write a foreword for Pat Schneider's book. She seems to me the wisest teacher of writing I know. For writers and would-be writers, she provides a lovely mixture of concrete advice and subtle insights about attitude and feeling. It's as though a tennis coach could tell you not only exactly how to stand and move your body--but also how to feel and think and imagine yourself so that the practical concrete advice bears fruit.
Schneider has a strong presence on the page. I feel confident that she will win your trust--as she does mine--and make you willing to take the kinds of risks that are needed for real progress in writing. Her approach is all about trust--trust in the inherent talent in people and trust in the power of writing as a process. Her book is about three realms that inevitably intertwine for anyone who cares about writing: writing, art, and our personal experience of life.
I can give a sense of the roots of this important book by quoting the "Five Essential Affirmations" that guide her whole approach to writing and the "Five Essential Practices" that guide her in leading workshops for writers:
The Five Essential Affirmations
- Everyone has a strong, unique voice.
- Everyone is born with creative genius.
- Writing as an art form belongs to all people, regardless of economic class or educational level.
- The teaching of craft can be done without damage to a writer's original voice or artistic self-esteem.
- A writer is someone who writes.
The Five Essential Practices
- A non-hierarchical spirit (how we treat writing) in the workshop is maintained while at the same time an appropriate discipline (how we interact as a group) keeps writers safe.
- Confidentiality about what is written in the workshop is maintained, and the privacy of the writer is protected. All writing is treated as fiction unless the writer requests that it be treated as autobiography. At all times writers are free to refrain from reading their work aloud.
- Absolutely no criticism, suggestion or question is directed toward the writer in response to first-draft, just-written work. A thorough critique is offered only when the writer asks for it and distributes work in manuscript form. Critique is balanced; there is as much affirmation as suggestion for change.
- The teaching of craft is taken seriously and is conducted through exercises that invite experimentation and growth as well as through response to manuscripts and in private conferences.
- The leader writes along with the participants and reads that work aloud at least once in each writing session. This practice is absolutely necessary, for only in this way is there equality of risk-taking and mutuality of trust.
If you have trouble believing these principles, you might think the book is not for you. But I'd disagree and call that a reason for reading. For I think she will convince skeptics--not by arguing for the principles but by showing what those principles look like in the flesh: in concrete writing activities, personal exploration, and stories of how people can function in workshop groups.
Schneider keeps her focus on the main thing: writing; taking the writer seriously as artist; insisting on the bottom line--good work. But in harvesting the wisdom of a long career of brave work, she does justice to the complex ways in which working on writing is more than just trying to judge quality. Vexing questions always arise for anyone who wants to work seriously on writing:
- Is writing private or public? So much comes out that seems private--yet the medium seems essentially public. She does justice to the two conflicting dimensions by exploring the essential need that most writers have for privacy in order to do their best work; yet also exploring the equally essential need for audience and work with others.
- What about secrets? What is the role of truth in a medium that invites fabrication and fictionalizing? Is writing a kind of therapy? Art is not about "telling our secrets," she writes, "but it does have to be free to go wherever it needs to go, and usually our pain comes out first." "A writing group is not a therapy group--it is concerned with liberating the artist in the person". "Subjects in themselves are not self-indulgent or sentimental. The issue is how fresh, how true, how concrete and vivid is the writing".
- What about the political dimension of writing? For Schneider, "the issue is not whether our writing will be political. If we are silent, our silence is political. If we write, our writing is political." She insists that "the privilege of voice carries with it a responsibility to speak for social justice"--and her passionate commitment to writing has led her to direct writing workshops far and wide: with women from low income communities in a nearby city, with a community of nuns in Ireland, and in a school of theology in Berkeley.
This book is particularly eloquent and helpful about the common--I want to say universal--experience of difficulty or struggle with writing. I particularly admire Schneider's remarkable wisdom here because it was my own writing difficulties that got me interested in writing in the first place. Schneider has valuable insights about the fears that come up for most people not only about writing itself but also about the struggle to find the discipline for a writing life.
But when I praise her book this way, I worry that some readers might say, "But I'm not scared of writing. I write regularly with no difficulty. This book has nothing for me." I would give this book to just such a person--and not just because of Schneider's shrewd practical suggestions for improving the writing, even of confident writers. What's more important is that when she talks about fear and struggle, she focuses on what I'd call the main theme or force of the book: going deep. The book is above all about learning to take the risk of going to the most powerful insights, memories, perceptions, and feelings that one has (or rather, that one mostly doesn't yet quite have)--as a source of one's most powerful words. When people say, "Oh I'm not scared of writing at all and I write regularly with no difficulty," I cannot help suspecting that they might be missing the deeper risks (and the deeper satisfactions) that are central to writing that really matters.
I'm particularly impressed at how much better a job Schneider does than I've ever managed at describing concretely to people how to work together in a workshop where everyone writes, shares writing with each other, and--when appropriate--gives responses to each other. She is brilliant at the difficult job of conveying all this on paper; and I know, from some visits to her workshop in her living room in Amherst, that these insights come from brilliant practice.
She's made an interesting rhetorical decision in her section about writing groups: she presents the material in the form of advice to someone who wants to set up a writing group or lead a writer's workshop. By addressing leaders or potential leaders, she makes palpable a crucial theme: groups for sharing and responding require wisdom and firm leadership. Many people have found to their sorrow that it's no good saying, "Let's get together and share our writing--and we'll just see what happens." There are crucial guidelines and rules of thumb that at least one person needs to make sure are observed. Otherwise people are likely take advantage of each other, give feedback that's not helpful, and abuse each other's privacy. I found myself moved as I read her advice--especially because she gives it so often in mini-stories of workshops and people she's worked with. Her theme here again is anti-elitist: she insists that any dedicated person can lead a writers' group--as long as they are vigilant at enforcing these guidelines of respect. (She distinguishes the role of writing group leader from the role of a workshop leader. A writing group leader is vigilant to keep the group safe for the writing process. A workshop leader does that but also offers experience in writing, editing, and seeking publication.)
Most classroom teachers could do a far better job if they garnered the insights--and above all the respect for writers--that she shows readers how to maintain. And most students in writing classrooms--whether in high school, first year college writing courses, or MFA programs--would have a much better time with their writing if they read this book. Perhaps the essential compliment I can pay is that this book makes you want to sit down and start writing.
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Excerpt from Wake Up Laughing, pages 3-4.
I
When I was thirteen years old, a knock came on my door. My door would open, if I opened it, onto a dark hallway in a tenement house in St. Louis. Behind me would be two small rooms.
The year was 1947; I had been told never, never to open the door when Mama was not at home. But the voice calling to me outside the door was familiar. As if a bolt of lightning had struck my heart, I recognized the voice: my school teacher, Miss Dunn, whom I adored.
It was unthinkable that a seventh grade teacher would visit one of her students. It was unbearable that Miss Dunn had come up the dirty stairs, that she had climbed three flights, that she might see the clutter, the dirt, the shame in the rooms behind me.
The school year was over. It was summer, hot and sticky in that Mississippi river-bottom air. I opened the door just the tiniest crack, with the chain lock still in place. Yes. It was true. Miss Dunn stood in the dim light of the hallway, and she was smiling at me.
I unlocked the chain, opened the door a fraction more, tried to hide the room behind me with my body. She held out a book. Gray, with blue letters. I felt faint. "Here," she said. "This is my book. I want you to have it."
I took the book, but could not speak. Her book. She was giving me her book. She had told me once, when I handed in a report, "You can be a writer."
I was unable to do anything but cling to the door to keep from falling, and to keep her from seeing inside. I read the words on the cover: DARK WAS THE WILDERNESS. BY DOROTHY DUNN. I looked up at her face. When I did not speak, she said, "I know what will happen to you when you grow up."
"What?" It was my first word, and my last.
"I won't tell you now, but come and find me when you are grown, and I will tell you if I was right."
And she turned, and went back down the stairs.
And she turned, and went back down the stairs.
When I was in my thirties, and had a libretto performed by Phyllis Byrn Julson, Robert Shaw, and the Atlanta Symphony in Carnegie Hall, I wrote to the Saint Louis Board of Education and asked for the address of Dorothy Dunn. They said she died within five years of the day she had knocked on my apartment door.
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Excerpts from Olive Street Transfer
HOW DO YOU TELL A DAUGHTER
How do you tell a daughter
that life moves on from sorrow,
somehow, and the heart, that bruised
sweet plum, is where the seed lies.
How do you tell her that moistened
and fed by rot, the seed
holds tight in its rough fist
a new, green universe
as yet completely unimagined
but clean, clear in its intention
of any contradiction: utterly plum.
THIS IS A RIVER
This is a river underground,
row; row. A sideshow clown
stands immobile on the shore.
Row the riverboat. The door
opening to the vanished fair
must be up ahead somewhere.
Lighted faces behind glass
leer and disappear. We pass
an empty boat. An eye
is painted on the stern. I cry
Where did all the riders go?
No one seems to want to know.
In the morning, was it fair?
Was a sign, a promise there?
Was there a doorway and a clown
or was there only going down?
Row the riverboat. The door
stands immobile on the shore.
Row; row. A sideshow clown.
This is a river underground.
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Excerpt from The Patience of Ordinary Things
THE PATIENCE OF ORDINARY THINGS
It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they're supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?
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Excerpt from Long Way Home
GOING HOME THE LONGEST WAY AROUND,
we tell stories, build
from fragments of our lives
maps to guide us to each other.
We make collages of the way
it might have been
had it been as we remembered,
as we think perhaps it was,
tallying in our middle age
diminishing returns.
Last night the lake was still;
all along the shoreline
bright pencil marks of light, and
children in the dark canoe pleading
"Tell us scary stories."
Fingers trailing in the water,
I said someone I loved who died
told me in a dream
to not be lonely, told me
not to ever be afraid.
And they were silent, the children,
listening to the water
lick the sides of the canoe.
It's what we love the most
can make us most afraid, can make us
for the first time understand
how we are rocking in a dark boat on the water,
taking the long way home.
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Excerpt from White River Junction
YOUR BOAT, YOUR WORDS
Your boat, they will tell you,
cannot leave the harbor
without discipline.
But they will neglect to mention
that discipline has a vanishing point,
an invisible horizon where belief takes over.
They will not whisper to you the secret
that they themselves have not fully understood: that
belief is the only wind with breath enough
to take you past the deadly calms, the stopped motion
toward that place you have imagined,
the existence of which you cannot prove
except by going there.
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Excerpt from In Our Own Voices: Writings By Women in Low-Income Housing
Available only from: Amherst Writers & Artists Press
At the mid-point break in our writing workshop, on a hot evening in a room without air conditioning in Chicopee, Massachusetts, Dorothy Zimmek turned to me and asked the watershed question: "Why do you come here? Because of who we are, or because we live in low income housing?"
Excerpt from the Forward:
Dorothy doesn't mess around. She is one of the most honest women I know. She is brilliant. Her poem, included in this book, which begins, "O crystal ball . . ." is, to me, an essential statement of what life is like for a woman who was caught in motherhood before she, herself, became a woman. Dorothy instinctively knows how to end a poem, how to condense language, how to go straight to the heart of the matter.
In the instant following Dorothy's question . . .
. . . .
Excerpt from "Crystal Ball" by Dorothy Zimmek
Oh crystal ball, please help me. Take me away to some fantasy dream. I work so hard all week taking care of a man who is sometimes sweet. I watch the kids and take care of the house, do the bills, shop, and that junk. For once I would like to get away . . .
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