Volume XI, Issue 38 September 21, 2022
Dear , I could have written the first sentence of this "time machine" Word-zine from January 12, 2015 today. And I have not yet honored the life of Barry Lopez, who left this
world on December 25, 2020. This is a perfect opportunity. So, here you go, and I hope you enjoy both Lopez's sample writing (and a "time machine photo with my teacher, mentor, and friend Irene Blair Honeycutt): Sometimes what we need to forge ahead is to narrow our attention and focus on what is straight ahead of us. And we just may find our narrow path suffused with light and possibility. At least that's what this photo (and life) is saying to me right now. What's it saying to you?
You'll get a chance to play with it in this week's prompt. So scroll on down, and be sure to check out National Book Award winner Barry Lopez's short short story "The Trail" on the way. The narrow path his character walks is nothing like the one depicted in the photo above. Or does it share some similarities? What do you think? What can you learn from the word "narrow" this week?
Love and light, Maureen When Barry Lopez,
National Book Award winner, was the Irene Blair Honeycutt Distinguished Lecturer at CPCC's Sensoria Arts Fest several years ago, he posed with my friend and mentor Irene after reading the audience, among other pieces, "The Trail", a story about a man walking a narrow path in the Sierra Madre. I was so glad to be there to hear this remarkable writer! And so glad to find an online video of him reading this story to share with you.
This beautiful, thought-provoking, very short short story appears in Orion's January/February 2010 issue.
Originally written for 350.org, co-founded by Bill McKibben, this piece about restraint is precisely 350 words, 350 parts per million carbon dioxide in our atmosphere being the upper limit beyond which, scientists say, the
damage the Earth is sustaining will accelerate. (The load of CO2 in the atmosphere first passed 400 ppm in May 2013.) Dave Eggers selected "The Trail" for Best American Nonrequired Reading 2010. Paul Moxon of Fameorshame press designed, printed, and assembled a limited edition broadside of "The Trail" while he and Barry Lopez were at the Penland School for Crafts in November 2011. WordPlay Now! Writing Prompt This is WordPlay—so why not revel in the power and potential of one good word after another? This week, it's "narrow." PROMPT: Select a visual image. I suggest the image below, or the one at the top of the zine, but anything will work—a painting, a post card, a magazine illustration, a photograph.
Study it for a few moments. Let the image speak to you. As you gaze at your image, write down words or phrases, at least one for each of the categories below, that this image
brings to mind for you. These should be words that are beautiful to you for sound and meaning (meaningful to you personally in some way). Be specific (sassafras, not tree). I've listed some examples for you, some of them pulled from Barry Lopez's "The Trail": - One or more “who" words (characters): (man, daughter, Steven)
- One or more "when" (timeline, chronology) words: (winter afternoon, 1948, yesterday, April)
- One or more "where" words: (a trail in the Sierra Madre, thicket, Schenectady, home)
- One or more “what” words: (volcano, coral, cat's fur)
- One or more color words: (obsidian, lapis lazuli, blue)
- One or more “sound” words or phrases: (“the molten interior of the earth,” Niagara Falls, whistle,
lullaby)
- One or more “smell” words: (dust, garlic, honeysuckle, moldy)
- One or more “taste” words: (sharp, raspberry, sweet)
- One or more “touch” words or phrase: (palm, prickly, leaf, fossil)
- One
or more verbs of motion: (turned, bend, glisten, glide, canter, lope)
- One or more ways a person can be: (deeply imperfect, bold, happy, lonely)
- One or more abstractions (things that cannot be experienced through the senses): (obligation, forgiveness, hope)
Now, create a piece of writing, any genre, any subject, using as many as the words you listed as you
care to. MAUREEN RYAN GRIFFIN, an award-winning poetry and nonfiction writer, is the author of Spinning Words into Gold, a Hands-On Guide to the Craft of Writing, a grief workbook entitled I Will Never Forget You, and two collections of poetry, This Scatter of Blossoms and When the Leaves Are in the Water. She believes, as author Julia Cameron says, "We are meant to midwife dreams for one another."
Maureen also believes that serious "word work" requires serious WordPlay, as play is how we humans best learn -- and perform. What she loves best is witnessing all the other dreams that come true for her clients along the way. Language, when used with intentionality and focus, is, after all, serious fuel for joy. Here's to yours! |
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