Take A
Walk
The
famed poet, Rock musician and memoirist Patti Smith told
a graduating class at Pace University in New York City
that if she had to tell students one thing about the
creative life it would be to get good dental care. She
said in her day ( She is 64), artists were pretty poor
and they let their teeth go. She went on to say that you
want to pace back and forth in your garret because you
are in close contact with your muse, not because you
need a root canal.
One thing I would add that is a necessity for a poet or
writer is walking. I've written about it before. You
know the old slogan "I 'd walk a mile for a Camel."
Well, I'd walk 10 miles for the hell of it. In a recent
article in the American Poetry Journal
poet Ed Hirsch explains very nicely why walking is the
right stimulant to get the creative juices flowing:
"Poetry is a vocation. It is not a career but a
vocation. I have associated that calling with my life's
work, with walking. I love the leisurely pace amplitude,
the spaciousness of taking a walk, of heading anywhere,
somewhere on foot. You cross a threshold, and you're on
your way....Poetry is written from the body and mind,
and the rhythm and the pace of a walk gets you going and
grounded. It's kind of a light meditation.. Day dreaming
is one of the key sources of poetry—a
poem often starts as a daydream that finds it way into
language—and
walking seems to bring a different sort of alertness, an
associative kind of thinking, a drifting state of mind."
If you have one book to read I would try Alfred Kazin's
A Walker in the City. Kazin remembered the
walks he took as a child, and captures his neighborhood
of Brownsville, Brooklyn—the
dark and dank tenements where immigrant Jews from Russia
and Poland lived lives of cramped desperation in the
Depression Era. His walks lead him past the mysterious
Irish and Italian neighborhoods, and even the enigmatic
horizon of Manhattan, a veritable Emerald City for this
provincial boy. By reading this book, and walking
Kazin's walk, you will learn what it takes to be a
writer—a
close observer. You will the read streets like you are
reading a text—with
a discerning eye for details, and for what's behind the
surface of things—a
critical reader, indeed.
Walking through Boston and Somerville is like walking
through different phases of my life. And with each walk
I take I am flooded with images and memories that enter
my writing. Walking down Bay State Rd. through Boston
University I can recall stumbling home to my Brownstone
dorm from some keg party at Shelton Hall across the
street. I was told F. Scott Fitzgerald had a room in
Shelton when it was a hotel. I could imagine the great
writer sleeping off yet another bender in a room that
was now occupied by some kid pulling an all-nighter.
Walking further down into the campus and hitting the
Nickerson Field football stadium I suddenly remember the
streakers who traversed the field in their birthday
suits on a chilly fall day. I never had the body for
that.
I might find myself walking on the streets of Chinatown,
looking for the drooping, fat-sweating ducks in the
window of my favorite long defunct haunt the "Ying-Ying.
All those pungent smells, the chattering Cantonese of
the customers, the mass produced wisdom of the fortune
cookie--all those ghosts that walk by me on my walk.
And if I find myself in Somerville, and I am walking up
Ibbetson Street;I might come across that orange colored
Victorian that first housed my independent press
Ibbetson Street. This was the first apartment my wife
and I lived in when we were married. I remember the day
we took a photograph of 30 poets sitting on our front
porch, old hippies, Hip-Hoppers, graybearded leftists
from the New York City East Village scene, young women
with peasent skirts and long flowing hair blowing in the
fragrant spring breeze. I remember the bemused gaze of
the neighbors when we posed for that shot.
So if you have writer's block, grab your coat, grab your
hat, leave your troubles at the doorstep, just relax
your feet on the sunnyside or even the darkside of the
street, and that pensive pen will hit the blank sheet
yet again.
Advertise with the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry
Scene!
http://tinyurl.com/ddjcal
Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene
http://dougholder.blogspot.com
Doug Holder's CV:
http://dougholderresume.blogspot.com
Ibbetson Street Press
http://ibbetsonpress.com
ISCS PRESS
http://www.iscspress.com
Ibbetson Street Press Online Bookstore
http://www.tinyurl.com/3x6rgv3
