Aline Soules

Poet and Fiction Writer

Writing

Writing and the "G" Word

Recently, I became a Granny for the first time and apart from thinking he’s the cutest grandson in the world (doesn’t every granny think that?), I’ve also wondered about how the beginning of any life affects the many people around that life and how that life is recorded and shared.  The obvious answers include parents who get insufficient sleep, grandparents and uncles and aunts and friends and a host of others who are thrilled, and a baby who is “recorded” from birth mostly in photos and videos.  But where do reading and writing come in?

David Strathairn, the actor, once said that “television and film are our libraries now, our history books,” but more of us than ever are writing—memoirs, fiction, poetry, and “morphed” forms of digital texts and blended media.  Our children and grandchildren will be recorded—eventually—in those forms, but the beginning is photo, photo, photo.  I admit my bias in this matter: I’ve worked in libraries all my life, watching us de-accession physical books, while acquiring more and more electronic books, journals, and other formats.

What writing will this child see?  What will he read?  More to the point, will he read?  Knowing his parents, I can safely say “of course,” but I suspect what he’ll read will be very different from the reading I enjoyed growing up—more fact, less fiction, and certainly less poetry (I read a lot of that).  The thought of this saddens me.  I believe in fiction and poetry, and I worry that there’s too little in our children’s lives.  My grandson has been born into a family that is highly skilled in the computer industry, which makes me confident that, if he is as skilled in math and science as his parents, he’ll have as secure a future as it’s possible for one human being to have.  I just want him to have other forms of imaginative life.  As long as I’m on the planet, I’m going to try to make sure he has stories and fiction and poetry to read.

Writing and the Big T

A week into our new presidency and I’m inundated by writing about our new president–on Facebook, on blogs, in poems, in short prose pieces–in other words, just what our new president wants:  attention.
I have purposely not written about our new presidency, although I have written about some of the events that have occurred, but I have purposely avoided using the “T” word and I’m going to go on avoiding using it as soon as I’ve finished this blog post.

I believe our new president wants attention more than he wants anything else and I’ve decided we need to stop giving it to him.  We need to protest unlawful and bad behaviors, we need to march in solidarity, we need to contact our congresspersons and tell them what we want.  What we also need to do is minimize and/or eliminate any attention on the president himself.

Success in reality TV has nothing to do with reality.  It has to do with saying or doing anything that will grab headlines and get attention–real, alternate fact, or something else equally outlandish.  The more attention provided, the more unreality, alternate facts, and sensationalism are provided.
I suggest we rebel.  Fight the behavior; refuse to give attention to the perpetrator.  And focus on your congresspersons who are in a position—maybe—to halt or deter actions that we deem unacceptable.
Now, for me, it’s back to writing poetry about life and reality, not alternate facts.

Singing One’s Way to Creativity

I may be a writer, but I’m also a singer, both as part of choirs and as a soloist.  My choral singing “career” (if one can call it that) has been going strong since I was three years old.  Currently, I belong to the Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra, which performed last weekend on the University of California, Berkeley campus.   We sang two requiems, one by Cherubini (lesser known) and one by Mozart (well known).

The choir is large, around 200 singers, and when you add an orchestra to the mix, you become a very small cog in a very large wheel.  Regardless, your voice is important and the outcome of the choir’s performance requires your presence.  This is invaluable to me on a number of fronts, not the least of which is its effect on my writing.

Choir singing is both similar to and also different from writing.  The similarities lie in the importance of your voice, regardless of how many voices are also present and shared with the world.  Another similarity is the uniqueness of you and what you contribute.  No voice is alike (sound familiar?).

The differences lie in the community aspect of choir singing.  Writing can be solitary, although networking and meet-ups and critique groups can make it less so, but, in the end, it is you yourself who must sit down and put words on paper.  No one else can do it for you.  Singing is the opposite.  You may practice at home, but rehearsals and performance are in group.  The advantage of that is having the community as a form of “antidote” to the solitary aspects of writing.

The other difference is in the oxygenation of the body.   Normally, I’m a sleepyhead by 9 or 10 pm at night; however, when I performed last Friday, I was fully oxygenated from deep breathing and when we ended around 10:30 or 11 pm, I was wide awake.  I went out with choir friends to a restaurant and didn’t get home until 12:30 am or to sleep until close to 2pm.

Ever sit and write at your computer until your bum is numb?  Trust me, your brain is probably numb, too.  My choir experience has changed how I write physically.  I get up and move around.  I sit at my computer as much as the next person, but when I need to think, I get up and pace around.  I also make sure that I go for a walk at least two or three times a day, unless my writing time is only an hour or so that day.  I work full-time as a library faculty member, so it’s more likely to be a weekend day when I spend hours writing.

The point of this post is that most of us need other activities to inform our writing.  For me, choir singing has proved a wonderful foil for writing–giving me community I don’t have as a writer, but reminding me of the importance of voice and the importance of moving around to keep my lungs oxygenated (which also feeds my brain).

For each of us, that alternate activity may be different.  Maybe you golf.  Maybe you run.  Maybe you quilt.  Maybe you volunteer in a shelter.  It doesn’t matter.  What does matter is that you have something else to enhance your writing.  And don’t forget:  your writing enhances your other activities as well.  It’s an important exchange that enriches our lives.

When Will My Poem Be Finished? How Will I Know?

Sometimes, I think writing poetry is both a blessing and a curse.  Only poets would spend hours wrestling over a word or a supposedly simple sentence.  We must be crazy.

After agonizing for days, weeks, maybe even months, are we satisfied?  No, because we’re not sure we’re finished.  We’re not even sure that the poems we get published are finished.  We look at them after they come out or, maybe, a year or two later, and see something we want to change.

Even the “greats” experience this.  I once read a poem by Eavan Boland in the New Yorker and, later, in her latest collection of poems.  I’d saved the New Yorker version and even knew where I’d put it.  When I compared it to the version in the book, I saw that she’d made changes.  So reassuring.  If Eavan Boland isn’t satisfied with a version of her poem in the New Yorker, then the rest of us have permission to tinker forever.

At some point, however, poets have to say “enough,” bite the bullet, and send out some version of their work.  If it’s accepted, it’s fixed in that moment in time.  Happily, with Eavan Boland as our inspiration, we can always change it later.

1913: The Year Before the Storm

Friends who give you great books are priceless.  I have savored and just completed 1913: The Year Before the Storm, by Florian Illies.  Sadly, my German language skills are nil, but I read an excellent translation, thanks to the skills of Shaun Whiteside and Jamie Lee Searle.  This amazing book offers a month-by-month description of selected events that took place before “the war to end all wars.”  Henry Ford put a conveyer belt in his car factory, Louis Armstrong picked up a trumpet, Chaplin signed his first movie contract, Proust began his opus, Stravinsky wrote The Rite of Spring—the list goes on.  Some quotes:

from Thomas Mann:  “And how greatly and severely war is felt as a crisis of moral cleansing, as a grandiose stride of life’s seriousness beyond all sentimental confusions.”  His reference was the war of 1870-71.

from Thomas Mann (again):  “Give us today our daily sheet of paper.”  All writers should relate to that comment. On the same subject:  “I need white, smooth paper, fluid ink and a new, softly gliding pen nib. To prevent myself making a mess of it, I put a sheet of lined paper underneath.  I can work anywhere; all I need is a roof over my head.  The open sky is good for unbridled dreams and outlines, but precise work requires the shelter of a roof.”

Illies shares a story from June 20, 1913, when an unemployed thirty-year old teacher, Ernst Friedrich Schmidt walked into a school “draped in weapons.”  He went on a shooting rampage with loaded revolvers.  Five girls, aged 7-8, died; eighteen children and five adults were severely injured.  A passer-by overpowered him.  His rationale?  He was protesting not finding a teaching position.  It seems that mass shootings are not as new as we think.

And from Illies, talking about Thomas Mann:  “…but only by the sea does one have an uninterrupted view of the soul—and of the mountains before it.”

May we all write with such grace.