poemcrazy

I never cut up melon the same way twice.    

If I sat in your kitchen and saw you playing jenga with your watermelon, I’d smile with the hope that I’d found a kindred spirit.  Kindred spirits are people who naturally understand one another’s desires and inclinations.   I love plenty of people who--even after years of study--feel like a lucky guess or tricky surprise.  That’s not bad; it has its own rewards, but in a kindred spirit there is no effort.   You’re simply understood.   What ease, what delight there is in knowing a person because you know yourself.  

Any book lover can tell you a kindred spirit can be found in a writer.   J.D. Salinger, author of the Catcher in the Rye, says it like this:

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”

That’s how I felt after reading Poemcrazy.  Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge would make a terrific friend for me.  I’d walk to her house, discover her playing around with a knife and melon, and I ‘d say, “Tell me more about the summer you lived in that house surrounded by corn fields and winter wheat.”  And then, ”Isn’t 'Buffalo Alice' two words that are meant to be side-by-side on a highway sign?”  She would understand that, and off we’d go on a picnic.  As great as it sounds, Salinger is right; that doesn’t happen much.  So instead, I will be content with the thrill of a good book found.

The world is a sea of words, and Susan teaches us how to dive in and enjoy. Poemcrazy is about noticing beauty, savoring it, and then attempting to put it down on paper.  As Susan writes, "Playing with words, we can get to the place where poems come from.  We can write and make discoveries about who we are and who we might become whether or not we truly commit ourselves to becoming poets."   
Poemcrazy is sixty very short chapters with clear themes.   Each chapter leaves you with an assignment.  Susan's assignments, or my version of them, I will be sharing with you over the next several posts.  But for now, I leave you with this:  

"We walked through night 'till night was a poem."
                                           -Brenda Hillman

Try it. It's one day after a full moon.  The magic will be easy to find.