writing : blog
Oh, my. I was all set to end the National Poetry Month Poemapalooza with my dear sweet Billy (I’ll bet you are surprised); he’s been waiting here, patiently, beside me. But as I prepared that post, an email from Carolyn arrived, bearing this poem, with this note: "I just had to send it out to you for the joy of…
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National Poetry Month is coming to an end. Our Poemapalooza will end tomorrow, the last guests leaving our party, continuing on their journey as are we all. Poet Mary Oliver prepares us for the ongoing journey, the one I’m already on, and you, too. Come, let’s rent a vintage Airstream and go together. The Journey One day you finally knew…
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Sometimes we give the wrong signals, not the ones we intended, or they are misinterpreted, ignored, turned inside out into something else altogether. I’ve had this poem in my head for a long time. Waving or drowning? Waving – or drowning? Too far out? Not Waving but DrowningNobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was…
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I went with my friend Donna to hear Mary Oliver read poetry a few weeks ago. It was the night Donna introduced me to a friend of hers who makes gorgeous felted textiles, the very friend who was wearing a felted scarf she had made, in just the right colors (teal, ochre) and with wild felted holes and spiky edges,…
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Sometimes it is life’s simplest of movements that provide our lessons, our poetry — if we are watching. The Space Heater On the then-below-zero day, it was on, near the patients’ chair, the old heater kept by the analyst’s couch, at the end, like the infant’s headstone that was added near the foot of my father’s grave. And it was…
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Fetch Nothing is ever too hard for a dog,all big dumb happiness and effort.This one keeps swimming out into the icy water for a stick,he’d do it all day and all nightif you’d throw it that long,he’d do it till it killed him, then he’d diedripping and shining, a black waterfall,the soggy broken stick still clenchedin his doggy teeth,and watching…
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It’s been a year – already – since Philip died. It hardly seems possible. In memory of him this week, go out for a nice dinner. Then eat slowly and thank the chef.
Jill posted this and I knew immediately it had to join our Poemapalooza for National Poetry Month. It is a simple poem, it seems, yet there is so much there, around and through the words. The Mower The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found A hedgehog jammed up against the blades, Killed. It had been in the long grass. I…
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How do we write? Not just the physicality of the act, beautiful enough – hands against paper – but more than that: holding the door to ourselves shut and knocking to get in, simultaneously. Lovely. Lovely. Consider the Hands that Write This Letter after Marina Wilson Consider the handsthat write this letter.The left palm pressed flat against…
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The Earth Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth, I believe. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience, to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine that he touches it with…
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Patti Digh is the author of six books, including bestsellers Life is a Verb and Creative is a Verb. She travels the world teaching others about mindfulness: to live fully, love well, let go deeply, and make a difference. Patti's comments have appeared on PBS and in The New York Times, Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, the London Financial Times, and many other international publications. She writes a thank you note every morning.
