Creating in the Midst of Big Change
Emerging Form interviews non-fiction writer Craig Childs and poet Aaron A. Abeyta
If it feels as if things are falling apart, here’s some advice from Toni Morrison: “This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”
Preview: Creativity and COVID-19
In Thursday’s episode, we explore creative process by going into big time with adventurer and non-fiction writer Craig Childs, and in the next week’s episode, we hear about creativity in a very small town with poet Aaron A. Abeyta. Both episodes touch on the benefits of staying in place. In episode 21, Craig Childs helps us set our present chapter into the larger book of the past and future. In episode 22, we learn how in trying to get kicked out of school, Abeyta found his voice in a book and dedicated his life to helping others do the same.
What We’re Reading:
Rosemerry:
· My favorite novel of all time is The Night Circus by Erin Morganstern. Now I am reading her second novel, The Starless Sea, a complex weaving of many, many stories (dozens?). It’s not for everyone—not at all plot driven—but I’m utterly drawn into her fantasy world. I started by not wanting to put the book down. Now I almost don’t want to pick it up because I don’t want to be closer to the end. Rather to stay in the middle of it. A bibliophile’s fantasy.
· I’ve been re-reading poems by Langston Hughes, a poet and playwright known for his contributions to the Harlem Renaissance. This poem in particular, “Let America Be Great Again,” powerfully speaks to this moment.
Christie:
· As the U.S. surpasses 100,000 dead from COVID-19, the New York Times reminds us that these are not just numbers, they’re human lives. Here are some of their names, an incalculable loss.
· Remember, No One Is Coming to Save Us: Roxanne Gay on the pandemic that is disproportionately affecting the black community. “Eventually, doctors will find a coronavirus vaccine, but black people will continue to wait, despite the futility of hope, for a cure for racism. We will live with the knowledge that a hashtag is not a vaccine for white supremacy. We live with the knowledge that, still, no one is coming to save us. The rest of the world yearns to get back to normal. For black people, normal is the very thing from which we yearn to be free.”
· Katie Anthony on Five Racist Anti-Racism Responses “Good” White Women Give to Viral Posts and The Only Kind of Response That’s Acceptable. “Do not say that. Say ‘I'm sorry,’ ‘I see you,’ or ‘that's awful,’ an expression of condolence and connection that isn't about you and your feelings.” “Say something one human says to another human when they see their pain.”
Poem from Our Guest Aaron A. Abeyta:
untitled or breathing in a time of covid
—aaron a. abeyta
dust veils the valley like dust in spring
every day wind
every day this place a personification
of ache aching that is a falling
from this horizon into another
poverty does not create character
this the myth of some false
lying book whose mirrors do not
shine back at us nor for us
in a denver hospital Robert Limon cleaves
at life this breath then another
breath his lonely isolation
the machine a dire metronome
perhaps one day we will
all point back to this isolation
the aloneness that wrought this line
or that line into air and by air
i mean human hearts this is a prayer
for change for life and breath
for loved ones to recover to breathe
without laboring or without thought
i am reading Auden cross of the moment
he does not include in his collected the line
we must love one another or die the poem
absent altogether this wind
isn’t a lie what seems broken is
lies are less expensive
than anything we have saved
here among our hats and buttons
gathered then shelved toward what we
know will always come for us
we survive our ancestors have made it so
their voices you hear them too
they ring of fidelity live
endure be persist return
breathe yes fill your lungs
let the wind breathe may dust
swing from cottonwoods to water
to meadow may we be
lifted from our veils all of them
let too the broken
those walking toward home
in their swollen and inebriated day
may they too here in this isolation
serve as an aspect of truth
why did he write these lines
he wrote them in isolation
in the days where the dead multiplied
beyond the wars of books and story
the dead the dying the swollen
the broken and the barely breathing
they are a form of truth the living
ache of this place yes
the wind too brief breaths
that fluttered then flew
as if being alone was a
breath which formed itself
out of our requisite and stored faith
into song
Two Questions:
(share your answers with us here on Substack)
If you could write a postcard to yourself ten years ago today, what would you say?
Have you had an experience with a book or poem that saved your life?