“Writers and Their Notebooks” ~ Diana M. Raab, editor. Phillip Lopate, foreward. University of South Carolina Press. 2010. Paperback. 203 pages.

Most of us have kept notebooks over the years. In them, we sharpen our outlook, log scraps of the discontinuous stops and starts of our minds. We find ways to say whatever we want to say. Years later we might find a journal item with magic allure. I think of the power of Marcel Proust‘s madeleine: “The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it….”

We might be delighted, experience an epiphany we needed, be fired up by our attempts to capture a moment. These miscellaneous reaches for …. something — we’ll know it when we discover it — this freedom is at the heart of “Writers and Their Notebooks.”

I am reminded of my best writing teacher, Winston Fuller, who has had a lot to say about journals. He said telling the story of our lives is a lifelong process. When we are stuck or in pain, we grow, move on, only when we are able to change the story we’re telling ourselves about ourselves.  Writing things down, we somehow hold them still.

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Poet Crystal Good will perform her spoken word artistry at a Haiti relief benefit, 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 24, 2010, at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation, 520 Kanawha Blvd. W.     Also included in the entertainment are musicians including Ron Sowell, Kate Long, The Clementines, The Peruvian Trio, Heidi Muller and Bob Webb.

Donations are $5 to $100, or whatever you are able to give.  I heard CNN’s Dr. Gupta say last night some medicines that are needed cost very little, maybe a nickel, dose by dose, application by application, to stop infections and other suffering.  Doing something is better than doing nothing, so come out and hear these gifted people deliver their expressions of hope and healing.

This just in, word for word, from widely published poet Norman Jordan:

Poetry for Port au Prince

Hey Everyone
 
The Griot Collective of West Tennesse presents:  Poetry for Port au Prince, at 6 pm Saturday, Jan. 30, 2010, at the Green Frog Coffee Company.  Poets both published and unpublished, are asked to read their original poems or works by their favorite poets.  A $10 donation is requested for each poem that is read.  All proceeds will be donated to Unicef for the victims of the Haitian earthquake.  The Griot Collective is a 501 (c) (3) literary arts organization that sponsors a poetry workshop every third Saturday from September through May.  The Green Frog Coffee Company is located at 112 E. Baltimore St in downtown Jackson, Tennessee.
 
Here is a poem that I wrote for the reading.
 
BY CHANCE
 
From out of destruction
A tiny voice cries
Babies with no mothers
Brings tears to my eyes
 
Day after day
Dead Haitian bodies fill trucks
Who lives and who dies
Is determined by luck
 
For the living
No roof over head
No water no food
Sleep is hard on a concrete bed
 
Sitting in comfort
In front of my big screen TV
I text a donation
Because it could be me.
 
 
       Norman Jordan
       1-23-2010
 

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A short poem by Paul Curry Steele, read for MountainWord poetry blog by Vic Burkhammer, 3 pm EST on 01/23/2010, recorded on Sanyo Xacti

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Poets sometimes pass away almost without notice. Paul Curry Steele was a non-conformist with the demeanor of a genius. When he’d quietly walk through town, he stood out as having an air of dignity. Here’s his obituary which ran in the Logan Banner just before Christmas last year:

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Poems by Langston Hughes remain very popular with W.Va. readers. Thus, in making note of MLK Day:

I, TOO, SING AMERICA

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed–

I, too, am America.

–Langston Hughes
(February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967)

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Click here to visit Amazon.com‘s Langston Hughes Page.

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An article by Langston Hughes called “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” appeared in the June 23, 1926 edition of The Nation. Click here to read it.

Please write a short, original poem in the comment box.  Just click on the word  comments  below.  Leave your name too. Thanks.

Welcome to 2010. I haven’t posted for a while…. difficulties I won’t spell out right now. Secrets.

Correspondent Jeffrey Brown recently talked with poet Philip Levine, and the conversation airs this evening on PBS NewsHour (check local listings). My favorite book of Levine’s, “The Simple Truth,” won the Pulitzer Prize in 1995.

If you have time later on, you could probably watch the show on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/pbsnewshour.

Meanwhile, listen to Levine read a poem at this PBS link: http://ow.ly/16jyV1.
Really fine poetry. Good, especially, for West Virginians to hear some poems that spring from elsewhere, far from here, not just California, where Levine has lived for so long, but haunting poems from crumbling Detroit, where Levine was born in 1928.