Friday
Dec. 2, 2005
Creative Writing
FRIDAY, 2 DECEMBER, 2005
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Poem: "Creative Writing," by Michael Van Walleghen from Blue Tango (University of Illinois Press).
Creative Writing
One of my students
has written a story:
It's the end of the world
and an alien spaceship
is circling the planet
trying to make contact.
Hello? Anybody down there?
But it's just as they suspect.
After the atmosphere ignites
nothing. Not a whimper. Even
our germs are dead. Now
they'll have to start over.
What a drag! Other planets
in the galaxy are doing fine
but you and I, the human race,
we just can't get it somehow.
Perhaps reptiles might work
or something underwater…
And so it goes for fifty pages
fifty million years in fact,
one dimwit, evolutionary dud
after another until finally
Homo Erectus! our old friend
back again. Talk about irony!
The best minds in the universe,
eon upon eon of experiment
and here we are, right back
where we started, doomed
perfectly ignorant, oblivious
to art, language, metaphor...
yet hearing voices nonetheless,
the genius of creation itself
mumbling at us from a cloud.
So what can we do after all
but sweat blood, struggle,
learn to write it down
never mind the spelling
the ribbon without ink
the lords of the universe
are circling the planet
like moths around a desk lamp
and the whole dorm is asleep.
Literary and Historical Notes:
It's the birthday of T. Coraghessan Boyle, born in Peekskill, New York (1948), the author of Water Music (1980), World's End (1987) and other books.
It's the birthday of Maria Callas, born Maria Anna Sophia Cecilia Kalogeropoulos, in Brooklyn, New York (1923). Another opera singer said after she died, "Her use of words, the vitality of language in her singing, was amazing. She was hellbent on her own destruction, and broke all the rules of singing. But so what? That's why we're still talking about her."
It's the birthday of Nikos Kazantzakis, born on Crete (1885). He wrote Zorba the Greek (1946), and The Report to Greco (1961), in which he describes himself as a young man arriving at a monastery in the Sinai Desert, and asking the abbot if he can make a retreat in this holy place, where he will be sure to hear the voice of God. The abbot tells him, "All voices can be heard here in the desert. And especially two which are difficult to tell apart: God's and the devil's."
It's the birthday of Ruth Draper, born in New York City (1884). She wrote her own one-woman shows and performed them for forty years. Few people have ever tried reviving any of the monologues she wrote, because no one who has heard her do them thinks they can perform them as well as she did.
It's the birthday of Dr. Joseph Bell, born in Edinburgh (1837), one of the models for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's character, Sherlock Holmes. He said that physicians should be able to diagnose diseases without ever touching the patient.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®