How I Write

I write what is on my mind.  And what is on my mind: most everything learned by the experience of living, by father, mother, family near and far, friends chosen, friends who have chosen me, lately and those through history with whom I converse, silently, consistently, incessantly, and though these conversations, in words composed for good, I write to you.

 

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  • Poetry: Verse

    The high art of language, most pure, most beautiful, best remembered and best loved, quoted often and written upon the ethereal granite of the mind.

  • History

    Our family portrait, the amusing stories of our foibles, the whispered rumors of misdeed, indiscretion, the grave mistakes which bring shame, and the virtues by which we are redeemed: honor, kindness, love.

  • Philosophy

    The loving pursuit of wisdom, becoming better by learning of the best that has been thought, done, said, and of these, knowledge of the divine, the Word everywhere present.

Tools of the Trade

Most Important Tools

Harmony and Disonance

Listen

When in the woods with winged and four-legged souls, those of fur and fin who speak emotion, experience hypo-human; when in the polis, the street crowded with words mechanic and organic, honking, talking, telling, speaking sense and nonsense; when artistically silent, attentive to souls who live in thoughts, open to songs epi-human.

 

Between Words

Hear

There is space alike light which projects into a place before writing, and from this space we find each word voiced by our fellows: do you hear?  There!  The echo of Echo, Greek, "yes", Ovid, "yes", through the Grand Canyon, "yes"; each word I hear carries a genealogy, a pedigree, the taxonomy of all that is by God: listen, you too will hear and understand.

 

The Golden Thread

Speak Light

Of Theseus there is much to know: of how by a long thread he navigated Minos' deep, twisting labyrinth to find his way into the light, and from light, back to home.  Theseus was small, not Herakles proportioned, yet he was hero-made to accomplish Theseus-sized deeds.

 

Alike Theseus, each writer follows the thread of stories, back to where the story began, forward into the light, that when in the light, our fellows might find their way home.

The Rules

Discipline

Tradition

There is wisdom in tradition, wisdom of a million failures, a million-and-one successes; there is in tradition a DNA which forms each of us; look around, everywhere see what tradition has made, watch how tradition moves: the best writers watch the tradition moving and step into the line of dance.

Innovation

Out-of-step, a writer will trample-on-toes, elbow backs, trip, throw all readers into confusion, ending the party and the dance; innovation is best in those flourishes which are pleasurably emulated, those graceful movements which grow in beauty, harmonically mind-to-mind, to mind.

Obligation

We might say that, "Each of us is a new civilization"; and yet, not a one of us is singular, we all are carried by those who in blood and word came before, and we each carry all who will come after: in this, each writer is obliged to be good in the deeds of thought, by words.