Grateful for poetry that takes my breath away and then returns it, blessed and more alive than before. Grateful for your many reading suggestions. Our local library didn't have Eduardo Galeano's Mirrors: stories of almost everyone but found it for me through interlibrary loan.
"But one might well ask: Weren't we able to survive, when survival was all but impossible, because we learned to share our food and band together for defense?"
It's that weird double whammy of endorphins you get when you express gratitude to no one but yourself. Gratitude for some event or experience, and then the additional sense of gratitude for actually recognizing what just happened. The grateful appreciation for the awareness in the first place.
Grateful for this newsletter & for all the comments beneath it too - little signposts to other pockets of magic, online and off. Interesting how 'gratitude' is such a delicate endeavour - to allow for the reality of fear and grief, instead of dampening down/crowding out, and seeking a cause for gratitude precisely in that tangled mess. Trying to be grateful for the capacity to feel - as it's when that goes awol that shit has definitively gone awry for me - so reiterating my thanks for your writing, which is always an invitation to tap into that well.
Grateful to receive your words in the week, and gifts of poetry. The deep rain of lilacs is a line I won't soon forget--stunning. Have been reading Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of Space this last couple of weeks on and off, and came across this quote and it seems just right: "At certain hours poetry gives out waves of calm. From being imagined, calm becomes an emergence of being. It is like a value that dominates, in spite of minor states of being, in spite of a disturbed world." Gratitude for the waves of calm that your writing and shared poetry brings.
(Also, am always delighted when I run into that internal gratitude that I have no desire to write poetry. It's seriously an active, welcome gratitude thing, because it's one of the genres of writing I can enjoy reading without wanting to do it myself!)
Gratitude: I’m a big fan of Ross Gay’s “The Book of Delights” which, for me, is a kind of guidebook about how to inhabit gratitude daily. Not easy to do!
Thank you for dedicating the Wildsam book to my friend. I’m silly excited to give it to him in a few months. I’m actually grateful for the waiting! This is not a usual thing for me, but for some reason the anticipation is delicious.
Also grateful for the chance to support Fact & Fiction. Thank you.
Grateful for poetry that takes my breath away and then returns it, blessed and more alive than before. Grateful for your many reading suggestions. Our local library didn't have Eduardo Galeano's Mirrors: stories of almost everyone but found it for me through interlibrary loan.
"But one might well ask: Weren't we able to survive, when survival was all but impossible, because we learned to share our food and band together for defense?"
(Eduardo Galeano, excerpted from "How Could We?")
"... impelled as if by a need to cup the palms
and drink from a river,
the words, 'Thanks.
Thanks for this day, a day of my life.'"
(Denise Levertov, excerpted from "Human Being")
You know what's cool?
It's that weird double whammy of endorphins you get when you express gratitude to no one but yourself. Gratitude for some event or experience, and then the additional sense of gratitude for actually recognizing what just happened. The grateful appreciation for the awareness in the first place.
Grateful for this newsletter & for all the comments beneath it too - little signposts to other pockets of magic, online and off. Interesting how 'gratitude' is such a delicate endeavour - to allow for the reality of fear and grief, instead of dampening down/crowding out, and seeking a cause for gratitude precisely in that tangled mess. Trying to be grateful for the capacity to feel - as it's when that goes awol that shit has definitively gone awry for me - so reiterating my thanks for your writing, which is always an invitation to tap into that well.
Grateful to receive your words in the week, and gifts of poetry. The deep rain of lilacs is a line I won't soon forget--stunning. Have been reading Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of Space this last couple of weeks on and off, and came across this quote and it seems just right: "At certain hours poetry gives out waves of calm. From being imagined, calm becomes an emergence of being. It is like a value that dominates, in spite of minor states of being, in spite of a disturbed world." Gratitude for the waves of calm that your writing and shared poetry brings.
Grateful for Chris La Tray and also poetry!
(Also, am always delighted when I run into that internal gratitude that I have no desire to write poetry. It's seriously an active, welcome gratitude thing, because it's one of the genres of writing I can enjoy reading without wanting to do it myself!)
Looking forward to the workshop, Chris. (And I might have convinced a friend to join with me, we’ll see ...)
Gratitude: I’m a big fan of Ross Gay’s “The Book of Delights” which, for me, is a kind of guidebook about how to inhabit gratitude daily. Not easy to do!
Oh! I'm glad I got to this today because I got signed up! Excited about it.
Prairie Thunder was an appropriate pairing!
Thank you for dedicating the Wildsam book to my friend. I’m silly excited to give it to him in a few months. I’m actually grateful for the waiting! This is not a usual thing for me, but for some reason the anticipation is delicious.
Also grateful for the chance to support Fact & Fiction. Thank you.
Is that a super bassman? Those fuckin rip
You’re doing the good work, friend. Enjoy the workshops!
Hi Chris!
I am grateful for you!
In the Deep Rain of Lilacs. Wow. Exquisite, Janisse.
Sincerely,
Melissa