Cindy on January 28th, 2010
Let her have a chair, her shadeless lamp, the table.” — Jane Hirshfield, “The Poet”
The place in which we work — an art studio, a home office, a spare bedroom, or the corner booth at the local diner — is essential to our creative lives.
I often hear would-be writers and artists complain that they can’t practice their craft because they don’t have a studio or a home office. But if we really want to write or paint, sculpt or sew, we’ll find a way to make a space for it. My friend Debbie, for instance, makes no apologies for keeping her sewing machine set up in the living room while she’s working on her projects. And nobody thinks she’s messing up the place. Her visitors are inspired by the cool things she’s creating.
An evocative portrait of an unknown poet’s writing room, this sweet poem, below, always tugs at my heart. It’s a universal image — the writing desk with a single lamp — but Jane Hirshfield makes it intensely personal. She also reminds us that the support of family and loved ones is just as essential as having a room of one’s own. -- CL
The Poet
By Jane Hirshfield
She is working now, in a room
not unlike this one,
the one where I write, or you read.
Her table is covered with paper.
The light of the lamp would be
tempered by a shade, where the bulb’s
single harshness might dissolve,
but it is not, she has taken it off.
Her poems? I will never know them,
though they are the ones I most need.
Even the alphabet she writes in
I cannot decipher. Her chair –
Let us imagine whether it is leather
or canvas, vinyl or wicker. Let her
have a chair, her shadeless lamp,
the table. Let one or two she loves
be in the next room. Let the door
be closed, the sleeping ones healthy.
Let her have time, and silence,
enough paper to make mistakes and go on.
—Reprinted from The Lives of the Heart, by Jane Hirshfield; HarperPerennial; 1997
This post is part of a new weekly series of poetry appreciation. To read more, please click on “Poems to inspire” in the CATEGORIES column at right. As always, I welcome your recommendations, too.
–Top photo “My Desk Chair” (copyrighted) by Cindy La Ferle–
Cindy on June 27th, 2008
Lately I’ve been thinking about Fame and Celebrity — how these two showoffs are misleading many new writers and muddling their aspirations. Another writing instructor told me recently that her students seem more interested in marketing and promotion than in developing their craft. Some have barely written the first chapters of their novels or memoirs — but they know what they’re going to wear on “Oprah.” Holy Toledo.
A burning desire to share your message is a noble-enough reason to become a writer. An insatiable need for attention is not. Along these lines, I stumbled on this tip from journalist and author Po Bronson:
“Don’t romanticize writing or think you’re cooler than other people. Don’t think you get special attention or have needs that are more special than anyone else’s needs. That manner of indulgent thinking inevitably leads to a bonfire, a flameout of selfishness. It borrows from the future in hopes that one can make it all pay off today. It’s unsustainable. Manage your responsibilities, take care of them, don’t borrow from the future.” Be sure to visit Po Bronson’s blog for more excellent writing advice like this. – Cindy La Ferle
Cindy on June 21st, 2008
Yesterday I drove to a local printing press to speak to a Girl Scout troop on a field trip. I was one of several writers who’d been asked to talk to the girls about the writing life, to help fulfill their writing badge requirement. (I love kids and I’ll talk to them about anything.) I’ve spoken to several grade school classes about writing — often enough to know that at least one kid will wave a hand in the air and ask me to name my favorite assignment. Though I have lots of favorites, the time I interviewed Alan Gold, a premier “lion tamer” who was performing at the Shrine Circus, usually tops the list. This story tends to impress young kids more than, say, the time I interviewed Phil Donahue.
So, before the talk, I pulled out my yellowed copy of Gold’s story (published in 1985) and made 30 copies for the Girl Scouts. Re-reading the piece, which detailed how the animal trainer worked with “the big cats,” it suddenly hit me that there are some keen similarities between learning how to tame lions and learning how to deal with editors, agents, and publishers … and rejection letters.
Gold, who told me he enjoyed living on the edge, had been scratched, scarred, and mauled several times. Early in his career, for instance, he was “taken up in a tiger’s mouth.” The accident resulted in 300 stitches and confined him to a wheelchair for six months — but didn’t discourage his career plan.
“You get into this end of the business [working with lions] knowing that eventually you’re going to get hurt. But you realize what the risks are,” Gold said. “You have to be able to look at each cat and judge what its forte will be. If you try to teach an animal a trick that it’s not prone to do, it will take twice as much time to train it — and the animal won’t enjoy it.” Despite the risks, though, Gold said that his work was “a helluva rush.” Sort of like freelance writing. – Cindy La Ferle
Cindy on April 8th, 2008
âHow vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.ââHenry David Thoreau
It’s a little warmer outside, and I’m so ready to get out from behind this desk. After a long winter — endless months spent staring at my computer screen — I feel like a zombie. I get weird and unhappy when I do nothing but write. Or think about writing. I need balance in my life.
Many writing teachers have told me that the only way to become a real writer is to make deadlines and stick to them. This is very good advice. Authors have a reputation for being quirky or unpredictable — but the wildly successful ones aren’t quitters. They persevere. In fact, I’ve met a few who work so hard that they haven’t met their neighbors. Their world is populated only by agents, editors, publishers, and other imaginary characters.
But the solitary creative life â the tortured Poe brooding at his desk — is too one-dimensional for me. I believe you run out of air, not to mention ideas, if you lock yourself in a cabin or a garret and bleed on your keyboard until dinnertime. I don’t believe it’s possible to be an interesting writer (or person) unless you’ve got a real life — a life that offers up a wide variety of experience along with little glimmers of insight.
The happiest people I know lead three-dimensional lives, even if they’re not particularly adventurous. They don’t obsess over their careers, and seem to have gotten over themselves. They volunteer at the hospital, plant tomatoes, straighten their toolboxes, and trek through suburban jungles on the way to the post office. They raise children or Abyssinian cats. Some care for aging parents when they’re not working at the bank. Others rise early to ride mountain bikes or photograph morning glories.
As Rainer Maria Rilke told us in Letters to a Young Poet, even the most ordinary activity shimmers with poetry or story potential. But you have to leave your desk to make that discovery. So take a break from organizing paragraphs. Stop obsessing over plot and punctuation. Turn off the computer, grab your notebook, and tour a different neighborhood. Observe the zoology at a local park. Or if you’ve got the time and the budget, book your dream trip to Ohio Amish Country or Paris, France. Do everything you can to squeeze the juice out of your life, then come home and tell us what you’ve learned. — Cindy La Ferle
The place in which we work — an art studio, a home office, a spare bedroom, or the corner booth at the local diner — is essential to our creative lives.
