Poetry

My interest in writing poetry began in high school and continued into college, although nothing I produced then was particularly worth reading. After college, in the 1970s, I wrote poems with greater intent and even published a few. But after that decade other interests, activities, and life in general made for about a thirty-year hiatus. I didn’t take up writing poems with any real passion again until after I retired in 2006.

Nowadays I write for my own pleasure, and I share my work with family and friends. My poems tend to be either autobiographical or responsive to nature—or both. I don’t consider myself a nature poet, but I have always responded to the passing seasons, flora and fauna, and weather phenomena. Perhaps because I also work in the visual arts, mainly as a painter, I try to create visual images with words. I have persisted in a lifelong fascination with impressionistic and expressionistic free verse, inspired by the likes of Sylvia Plath, Theodore Roethke, and many, many other Modern poets. If there is one thread, however slender, that unites at least some of my poems now, it is reflection on aging, keenly felt in particular since my cancer diagnosis in April 2015.

Is writing poems a form of therapy? Certainly. What artistic expression is not? But writing, at least for me, is always more than that. It is the creation of art, which in itself is intensely fulfilling. I suspect it’s that way for most poets, who, when it comes down to it, seldom write poetry as their livelihood. Many, in fact, never get published or, like Emily Dickenson, are published extensively only after their death. And fame? Most find little within their lifetime, although some achieve it later. Sylvia Plath, for example, became really well known only after her death.

Thanks to the ease, convenience, and low cost of the Nook on-demand publishing platform, I’ve put together a couple of collections of poems in recent months. Published privately and never intended for sale, these volumes are gifts for family and friends. (The cover of the first one is pictured above.) Having worked in publishing and possessing an inclination for writing and design are helpful but not essential to this type of project.

In sum, the advice I’d give to anyone who is curious about writing, whether poems or some other form, is simply to do it. Ultimately, the intended beneficiary is the writer. If readers also benefit in some way, so much the better.

Note: This commentary is cross-posted on two blogs: Arts in View (http://artsinview.blogspot.com) and Living With…A Cancer Journal (http://livingwithcancerjournal.blogspot.com).

Explore Writing on BookRix

Ever wanted to try your hand at writing outside your usual genre or comfort zone? Some time ago I discovered an interesting and easy-to-use website to do just that — and get feedback from readers. The site is called BookRix. It’s hosted in Germany and so you can post stories or poems in English or German. Here’s how the site operators describe it:

BookRix is an internet portal and the first book community where anyone can place their own books, short stories, poems, etc. to be promoted on the web, just like a published piece. The massive Web 2.0 - Projects, which have been hugely popular with music, video and photography fans, now have a sister platform, which will delight literature fans around the world: BookRix.

BookRix provides an online destination where authors can showcase their work. Registered users will get to design their own personal profile page. This gives users the opportunity to create their own books, recommend their favorite literature and promote themselves as authors and/or readers.

To date I’ve posted four short stories: a straight mystery, a gay mystery, a suspense tale, and a gentle comedy of manners. And I’ve read some interesting works in various genres. By the way, I use the site under a longstanding pen name: D.J. Reid. As of this writing the most popular of my stories has been “Corpse in the Kitchen,” about an off-duty police officer who comes home from the grocery to find a dead man lying on his kitchen floor. So far the story has garnered 755 “clicks” (readings) and a potpourri of comments. It can be read at http://www.bookrix.com/_title-en-d-j-reid-corpse-in-the-kitchen.

For interesting reading and fun experimenting with writing, I recommend BookRix.

Multiple Writing Processes

If Howard Gardner’s ideas about multiple intelligences have done nothing more, they have at least pointed up the commonsense notion that everyone learns in his or her own way. It follows, therefore, that those who write also approach that task in a way particularly suited to their own learning/idea-processing styles. About twenty years ago in a small publication titled Model for Teaching Writing: Process and Product, I argued that there is no single “writing process” but many processes, all equally capable of producing successful writing when suited to the individual writer.

Despite my efforts and those of others, the teaching of writing in many classrooms is codified as a linear/logical process. This ignores, in particular, students who are visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learners. Consequently, a couple of years ago I published a book specifically to address the needs of these students. Titled Teaching Writing to Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Learners, this book offers strategies for teaching students who learn best by seeing, hearing, or doing/moving. (More about this book at http://www.corwinpress.com/booksProdDesc.nav?prodId=Book228025&)

William Zinsser, in his classic On Writing Well (2001) said this: “There are all kinds of writers and all kinds of methods, and any method that helps you to say what you want to say is the right method for you. Some people write by day, others by night. Some people need silence, others turn on the radio. Some write by hand, some by word processor, some by talking into a tape recorder. Some people write their first draft in one long burst and then revise; others can’t write the second paragraph until they have fiddled endlessly with the first” (p. 5)

It’s a good idea to keep this sort of diversity in mind in other fields of endeavor as well. A wide range of work and idea-processing styles also can be found among visual artists, from painters to filmmakers; composers; dancers and choreographers; and others who strive for creative expression.

Latest Book Published

Corwin Press this month published my latest book, Writing for Understanding: Strategies to Increase Content Learning. It is intended for upper elementary, middle school, and high school teachers of subjects other than language arts. The goal is to help teachers use writing as a tool to improve their students' acquisition of content knowledge and understanding. Writing often is neglected as a learning tool, even in some English/language arts classes because teachers fear that it will be more work and may demand more expertise than they possess. This book shows teachers how to use writing as a teaching/learning tool, rather than expecting all teachers to become teachers of writing. (More about this book at http://www.corwinpress.com/booksProdDesc.nav?prodId=Book232389&)

From the Introduction: "The goal of effective instruction is more than acquisition of information. We want our students to be able to use the information they gain, to apply it in both familiar and unfamiliar contexts, to manipulate it, to distill it, to roll in it mentally until it becomes part of the fabric of their minds. Until this higher level of understanding is reached, students cannot truly use content knowledge."