Self portrait: Wild Turkey
In your lumpy brown suit, red necktie dragging,
shuffling, bowing out of sight.
Behind dusty weeds you find a low hill,
under an oak’s broad tent. Stiffly unfold,
slowly turn your full, dark fan—heavy bronzes
fringed with white. Stretch the blue-creped
skeleton of skull and neck to scream out
all you got—one high note gargle—as if to keep
from drowning in that sack of self.
To those that soar, or flit from branch to branch,
I think you’re crying:
Don’t look. See me. Don’t look. Please see.
My something beautiful.
I wrote this poem a few years ago, when I was just beginning to explore writing again. I still feel in captures some of the internal struggle many artists, including myself, go through.
At the time I was leading the creative writers' group at church, and people would approach me with very sincere questions and concerns about the spiritual formation risks of writing done for others to read. I remember one individual sharing with me that the very fact she had a natural talent made her reluctant to begin writing, because, as she explained, it would be so easy to become prideful. Another person questioned the motives, his included, behind writers wanting
their poems or stories to be read by others.
I personally understand all too well their concerns, as the turkey poem tried to express. I can't casually dismiss them. All of us know that love of acceptance, praise or money have snared artists and caused them to lose the core of what made their work unique and beautiful and true. And as Christians, we want to learn to honor God, to live with humility and to pursue his glory and not our own.
A couple years ago I felt compelled to start writing again, and to bit by bit face a bit of the risk of being known in that writing. And so, I've had a chance to explore some of these issues first hand--and I have found that in fact, though my pride and self-absorption and vainglorious heart are raging monsters--they seem to have almost no relationship to my writing. I have found that my writing, usually, is just something small, really, something like a little beautiful leaf or rock I've found or a sunset that I've seen and want to show others. Usually, it feels very disconnected to this broken hearted, greedy dragon I carry around, the one demanding approval and attention.
I recently read something in Dallas Willard's MARVELOUS book The Divine Conspiracy that seemed to explain this, a bit. He makes a distinction between a God-given drive for significance expressed in our creative impulses and an egotistical, pathological self-obsession born of our broken, lost state. I'll quote it at length below. C.S. Lewis' Weight of Glory also speaks of these things with amazing insight.
I have to confess that I actually deeply dislike writing and speaking about spiritual formation issues. I really understand almost nothing about this stuff. But still, I want to encourage those would-be artists afraid of their own pride to take this risk. In my experience, it could, at the very least teach you a lot about yourself, and even better, give the rest of us some beautiful writing, or art, or music to enrich our lives.
Here's the Willard quote.
"The drive to signficance that first appears as a vital need in the tiny child,a nd later as its clamorous desire for attention, is not egotism. Egotistical individuals see everything through themselves. They are always the dominant figures in their own field of vision.
Egotism is pathological self-obsession, a reaction to anxiety about whether one really does count. It is a form of acute self-consciousness and can be prevented and healed only by the experience of being adequately loved. It is indeed, a desperate response to the frustration of the need we all have to count for something and be held to be irreplaceable, without price.
Unlike egotism, the drive to significance is a simple extension of the creative impulse of God that gave us being. It is not filtered through self-consciousness any more than is our lunge to catch a package falling from someone's hand. It is outwardly directed to the good to be done. .....
In the last couple years, I have met my self-obsession and even egotism. I have behaved more foolishly than any turkey. But I have also discovered that this is not the final word on my life, or on anyone's life.
And I have also come to feel that my writing is, like I said, just not a big deal. I hope I do get published and read by others, because I think it's fun. I enjoy letting others know this part of me that brings me such joy.
I don't feel like a turkey singing anymore... (at least, not right now).
But I think it was ok, even very good, to go through that time when I did feel so much like a turkey, hoping people saw me and also fearing them seeing me. Though the experience was horribly painful, I had the chance to know myself and my dragons a little more, and even better, I have learned to believe that God can defeat even this oldest and most tenacious monster in me. (I also suspect there will be plenty of chances for me to feel like a turkey again...but I hope I will trust a little faster and easier next time I feel that way!)
I would so love to hear from any artists--to know if you have struggled with these issues at all, and how you have met God in the struggle.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Some Like Poetry
I recently checked out a book of poetry by the Nobel Prize winning Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska. I'm quite smitten.
Here's a lovely one that speaks deeply to me about what poetry --to say it more broadly-- art-- to say it more broadly again--beauty serves for so many of us.
I also have to say, I just love the simplicity and almost humility inherent in her language. This is the kind of writing my soul wants to clutch on again.
Some like poetry
Some--
that means not all.
Not even the majority of all but the minority.
Not counting the schools, where one must,
and the poets themselves, there will be perhaps two in a thousand.
Like--
but one also likes chicken noodle soup,
one likes compliments and the color blue, one likes an old scarf,
one likes to prove one's point,
one likes to pet a dog.
Poetry--
but what sort of thing is poetry?
More than one shaky answer
has been given to this question.
But I do not know and do not know and clutch on to it,
as to a saving bannister.
Here's a lovely one that speaks deeply to me about what poetry --to say it more broadly-- art-- to say it more broadly again--beauty serves for so many of us.
I also have to say, I just love the simplicity and almost humility inherent in her language. This is the kind of writing my soul wants to clutch on again.
Some like poetry
Some--
that means not all.
Not even the majority of all but the minority.
Not counting the schools, where one must,
and the poets themselves, there will be perhaps two in a thousand.
Like--
but one also likes chicken noodle soup,
one likes compliments and the color blue, one likes an old scarf,
one likes to prove one's point,
one likes to pet a dog.
Poetry--
but what sort of thing is poetry?
More than one shaky answer
has been given to this question.
But I do not know and do not know and clutch on to it,
as to a saving bannister.
Friday, August 15, 2008
More about "THE DANCING"
I didn't want to just leave that poem, "The Dancing," by Gerald Stern without any more comments. So I thought I'd say a bit of what I find so powerful in that poem...
It starts us out in some kind of nostagalic reminscing--the way people get in flea markets and antique shops--"look at this old pickle fork just like the one Grandpa sent flying at that picnic in '59" -- but then the nostalgia turns so precise--"Ravel's Bolero," and every word has so much precise, powerful intent. We are suddenly in a "tiny living room," we are cramped in there and now a family is dancing, which is unusual and evocative as it is, but then, this kind of dancing: with "knives all flashing, my hair all streaming." It's a passion we rarely witness, maybe can never speak about except with distance and by sneaking up on it. The mother is red with her laughter and the father is making that farting noise in his delight, and then these lines:
"the world at last a meadow//the three of us whirling and singing, the three of us//screaming and falling, as if were were dying."
There's this incredible tension in the rhythym of the lines, they have a momentum to them when you say them.
We're here in Pittsburgh and it's 1945, and we're a little immigrant family in a tiny living room. It's nothing too beautiful, by any standards, except these. That it's 1945, and 5,000 miles away our people have been rescued. So we've been rescued. This world has become a meadow again.
Then this last line-- it just makes me tremble.
Think about this history. About the utter unexplainable horror of the Holocaust, and then to know it's over. Somehow this last line perfectly, to me, captures what it is to live in a world where the evil is desperate and yet, finally the evil is conquered. This kind of evil can't be defeated simply by the military power. The God who has seemed so distant and hidden while evil occurred has now said it will end.
So they dance. I love this dancing. I think Miriam and the other Israelites danced like this when they found they were at last free of Egypt... and the people of the Exile danced like this when they were at last home--This wild dancing that is a prayer and a cry:
"oh God of mercy, oh wild God."
It starts us out in some kind of nostagalic reminscing--the way people get in flea markets and antique shops--"look at this old pickle fork just like the one Grandpa sent flying at that picnic in '59" -- but then the nostalgia turns so precise--"Ravel's Bolero," and every word has so much precise, powerful intent. We are suddenly in a "tiny living room," we are cramped in there and now a family is dancing, which is unusual and evocative as it is, but then, this kind of dancing: with "knives all flashing, my hair all streaming." It's a passion we rarely witness, maybe can never speak about except with distance and by sneaking up on it. The mother is red with her laughter and the father is making that farting noise in his delight, and then these lines:
"the world at last a meadow//the three of us whirling and singing, the three of us//screaming and falling, as if were were dying."
There's this incredible tension in the rhythym of the lines, they have a momentum to them when you say them.
We're here in Pittsburgh and it's 1945, and we're a little immigrant family in a tiny living room. It's nothing too beautiful, by any standards, except these. That it's 1945, and 5,000 miles away our people have been rescued. So we've been rescued. This world has become a meadow again.
Then this last line-- it just makes me tremble.
Think about this history. About the utter unexplainable horror of the Holocaust, and then to know it's over. Somehow this last line perfectly, to me, captures what it is to live in a world where the evil is desperate and yet, finally the evil is conquered. This kind of evil can't be defeated simply by the military power. The God who has seemed so distant and hidden while evil occurred has now said it will end.
So they dance. I love this dancing. I think Miriam and the other Israelites danced like this when they found they were at last free of Egypt... and the people of the Exile danced like this when they were at last home--This wild dancing that is a prayer and a cry:
"oh God of mercy, oh wild God."
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Modern Song of Triumph
As we've started reading and preaching through the Old Testament this summer, I've enjoyed very much the poetry of the Triumph songs sung by Miriam and by Deborah. On the one hand, like almost all ancient poetry, they are hard to access. On the other hand, it helps me so much to understand the joy of deliverance when I realize people had to sing. They had to dance. And this is what they sang.
Recently I encountered another poem, by the poet Gerald Stern, that seemed to me a powerful contemporary Song of Triumph. When I enter into the moment sung in this poem, I realize a little bit more what it means to be desperate for deliverance...and then delivered.
Here's the poem--http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15437 Enjoy. And I'd LOVE to hear any responses.
Maybe you have your own Song of Triumph to write.
--Jenny
Recently I encountered another poem, by the poet Gerald Stern, that seemed to me a powerful contemporary Song of Triumph. When I enter into the moment sung in this poem, I realize a little bit more what it means to be desperate for deliverance...and then delivered.
Here's the poem--http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15437 Enjoy. And I'd LOVE to hear any responses.
Maybe you have your own Song of Triumph to write.
--Jenny
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Writing From Empathy
Perhaps the best known writing advice is to "write what you know." And it's wonderful advice. Often beginning writers produce flat, lifeless writing because they haven't found the courage or felt permission to write out of their own feelings and life experience and point of view.
But like most good advice and almost all truisms, this one also has its limits. The poet Nikki Giovanni challenges this dictum:
"I resent people who say writers write from experience. Writers don't write from experience, though many are hesitant to admit that they don't. I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy."
I loved this statement. Write from empathy. You don't have to have lived everything you write about. But you do have to care. You have to have your emotions and spirit and person involved. And that's absolutely necessary for all good art and all good work.
As writers, we aren't limited by our life experience, but only by our willingness to enter into life--and the fullness, the messiness and pain and joy that encapsulate almost every experience.
I would like to learn how to write more stories and poems "from empathy." I want to learn how to enter into the lives of other people enough to tell a bit of their story in a way that helps me make sense of this world and bring out a bit of the beauty I see in their lives.
But, like all art, this is a tall order. In the following poem, I tried it, and (like all my poems) I'm not entirely satisfied with what I made.
After They Found His Brother’s Body
He said that every time he heard an airplane, he’d look up.
For sixty years one boy hung in an island tree,
wrapped in a crumple of steel and rust—
the other watched the Iowa sky.
He filled his gas tank, mowed the lawn, pulled weeds, shoveled snow,
learned daily how light rushes
to each row of corn and bank of willows.
Waiting for that waving arm, the shout—
and how his name would sound.
--Jenny Jiang 11/07
This was a poem about a man I grew up knowing as a thin, balding grocer in his apron at our tiny town's one grocery store. A few years ago, the local news reported that this man's brother's body had been found in an airplane, on an island in the Pacific. He'd been a fighter pilot in World War II and MIA since then. And when they interviewed this unassuming grocer, he said he'd spent the last 60 years half-expecting to see his brother land in a field near him every time he heard an air plane.
This story, naturally, moved me. I wanted to write abou t it... in part to honor his story, but also, because there was something beyond empathy in my feelings. I felt like I could almost identify with this deep longing that was a mixture of hope and grief. It felt so universal--the raw hunger we all have that keeps us each, in our own ways, with an ear half-cocked, our eye on the horizon--the long wait for that unsettled grief and loneliness to finally be comforted.
I wonder if you have any stories or poems waiting to be written "from empathy." Is there something in another's experience or story that tugs at you in a way that can't be easily summed up and explained? Is there another's grief or joy or adventure that you can enter into enough to write about it as well?
Take ten minutes and free write (write without stopping or editing yourself in any way). Write from empathy.
And then, shoot me a line if any poems or stories or essays emerge.
Jenny
But like most good advice and almost all truisms, this one also has its limits. The poet Nikki Giovanni challenges this dictum:
"I resent people who say writers write from experience. Writers don't write from experience, though many are hesitant to admit that they don't. I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy."
I loved this statement. Write from empathy. You don't have to have lived everything you write about. But you do have to care. You have to have your emotions and spirit and person involved. And that's absolutely necessary for all good art and all good work.
As writers, we aren't limited by our life experience, but only by our willingness to enter into life--and the fullness, the messiness and pain and joy that encapsulate almost every experience.
I would like to learn how to write more stories and poems "from empathy." I want to learn how to enter into the lives of other people enough to tell a bit of their story in a way that helps me make sense of this world and bring out a bit of the beauty I see in their lives.
But, like all art, this is a tall order. In the following poem, I tried it, and (like all my poems) I'm not entirely satisfied with what I made.
After They Found His Brother’s Body
He said that every time he heard an airplane, he’d look up.
For sixty years one boy hung in an island tree,
wrapped in a crumple of steel and rust—
the other watched the Iowa sky.
He filled his gas tank, mowed the lawn, pulled weeds, shoveled snow,
learned daily how light rushes
to each row of corn and bank of willows.
Waiting for that waving arm, the shout—
and how his name would sound.
--Jenny Jiang 11/07
This was a poem about a man I grew up knowing as a thin, balding grocer in his apron at our tiny town's one grocery store. A few years ago, the local news reported that this man's brother's body had been found in an airplane, on an island in the Pacific. He'd been a fighter pilot in World War II and MIA since then. And when they interviewed this unassuming grocer, he said he'd spent the last 60 years half-expecting to see his brother land in a field near him every time he heard an air plane.
This story, naturally, moved me. I wanted to write abou t it... in part to honor his story, but also, because there was something beyond empathy in my feelings. I felt like I could almost identify with this deep longing that was a mixture of hope and grief. It felt so universal--the raw hunger we all have that keeps us each, in our own ways, with an ear half-cocked, our eye on the horizon--the long wait for that unsettled grief and loneliness to finally be comforted.
I wonder if you have any stories or poems waiting to be written "from empathy." Is there something in another's experience or story that tugs at you in a way that can't be easily summed up and explained? Is there another's grief or joy or adventure that you can enter into enough to write about it as well?
Take ten minutes and free write (write without stopping or editing yourself in any way). Write from empathy.
And then, shoot me a line if any poems or stories or essays emerge.
Jenny
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Raining Against My Much-Thick and Marsh Air
This weekend at Oak Hills, Pastor Kent preached about becoming awake to the sacredness of others. It was a great sermon, which you can listen to online soon. He referenced the sermon "The Weight of Glory," by C.S. Lewis, which you can also find online. The sermon also reminded me of a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, who is probably my favorite poet. The poem, "The Lantern out of Doors," compares the beautiful, wavering light of a lantern to the radiance of another person. I especially love the hope at the end. Tell me what you think.
--Jenny
The Lantern out of Doors
SOMETIMES a lantern moves along the night,
That interests our eyes. And who goes there?
I think; where from and bound, I wonder, where,
With, all down darkness wide, his wading light?
Men go by me whom either beauty bright
In mould or mind or what not else makes rare:
They rain against our much-thick and marsh air
Rich beams, till death or distance buys them quite.
Death or distance soon consumes them: wind
What most I may eye after, be in at the end
I cannot, and out of sight is out of mind.
Christ minds: Christ’s interest, what to avow or amend
There, éyes them, heart wánts, care haúnts, foot fóllows kínd,
Their ránsom, théir rescue, ánd first, fást, last friénd.
--Jenny
The Lantern out of Doors
SOMETIMES a lantern moves along the night,
That interests our eyes. And who goes there?
I think; where from and bound, I wonder, where,
With, all down darkness wide, his wading light?
Men go by me whom either beauty bright
In mould or mind or what not else makes rare:
They rain against our much-thick and marsh air
Rich beams, till death or distance buys them quite.
Death or distance soon consumes them: wind
What most I may eye after, be in at the end
I cannot, and out of sight is out of mind.
Christ minds: Christ’s interest, what to avow or amend
There, éyes them, heart wánts, care haúnts, foot fóllows kínd,
Their ránsom, théir rescue, ánd first, fást, last friénd.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
A Christian-Enough Artist?
Recently (actually, this afternoon) I found myself in a rather quick mental panic about how to be a Christian writer. Mostly I was panicking about whether I was up to the job, if I was performing well-enough on the job.
I was having a formal lunch with a group of poets, and as an orthodox believer in anything, I was in the distinct minority. None of my friends I sat with, nor any of the other poets I knew there, professed allegiance to any form of Christianity. Actually, at different times they have spoken quite candidly in opposition to what they perceive as a Christian influence in politics, science, and education. They almost all profess a form of new age or eastern religion or label themselves as simply secular and agnostic.
During the dinner, a guest speaker, who is both a scientist and a poet, spoke about the usefullness of poetry in the cause of science. She made some interesting points, but throughout her speech, I kept hearing a subtext ridiculing religious faith.
I was growing uneasy. I didn't feel uncomfortable because I was the oddball in the group. Being around different world views doesn't trouble me. However, I was growing aware of how vocal and easy it was for my friends and colleagues to express and live out their beliefs. And as I looked at myself, I was aware of my tendency to hide myself, including my faith, when I am around others. At the same time, I was also aware of my own internal struggles with my Christianity. I don't mean that I struggle so much with doubts about the tenets of Orthodoxy, but I do struggle with the flimsiness of my own confidence in those tenets. By which I mean, how much evidence is there that I really truly believe what I say I believe.
My mind started to swarm with worries. Is my poetry Christian? How do I make it Christian, if it isn't? Do I need to start mentioning Jesus or God or at least prayer or something spiritual every time I write a poem? And what about right now? What should I do? Is there something I should be doing or saying to be "Christian enough" in this situation? And really, finally, am I Christian enough?
And then in the midst of my little mental tizzy, I had a breath of peace. I believe it was from God. I realized I didn't have to do or be anything to make this all come out right. I didn't have to strive to be a Christian-enough poet or a convincing enough Christian.
As the poet speaker enjoyed the crowd's responsive tittering to the statistics about all the people who believe in a personal god, I believed. I didn't have to make God exist, in my poetry or otherwise... Rather, I remembered that God actually does exist and that Jesus actually was present, right there, powerful and alive, and I could and did invite him into that moment. I listened and loved and prayed with him. (For at least a few minutes, anyway. Then I got self-absorbed again. That's something we're working on... just wanted to stay honest!)
I believe my best (and I mean my artistically best as well as my "spiritually best") poetry comes out of that same relaxed and joyous freedom and faith. God exists. I don't have to make that true. So I don't have anything to prove in my poetry. Certainly, I don't know God as well as I want to, not as well as I am going to, not as well as I am learning to, but that doesn't change the facts. God exists. And he loves me. And I am his. All my life is a process of opening my hands and mind and heart to this reality. It's not something I have to do well enough or get right--not in my writing nor in my witnessing. It's something God is doing in me, and I am joyfully (if fitfully) cooperating with him.
I was having a formal lunch with a group of poets, and as an orthodox believer in anything, I was in the distinct minority. None of my friends I sat with, nor any of the other poets I knew there, professed allegiance to any form of Christianity. Actually, at different times they have spoken quite candidly in opposition to what they perceive as a Christian influence in politics, science, and education. They almost all profess a form of new age or eastern religion or label themselves as simply secular and agnostic.
During the dinner, a guest speaker, who is both a scientist and a poet, spoke about the usefullness of poetry in the cause of science. She made some interesting points, but throughout her speech, I kept hearing a subtext ridiculing religious faith.
I was growing uneasy. I didn't feel uncomfortable because I was the oddball in the group. Being around different world views doesn't trouble me. However, I was growing aware of how vocal and easy it was for my friends and colleagues to express and live out their beliefs. And as I looked at myself, I was aware of my tendency to hide myself, including my faith, when I am around others. At the same time, I was also aware of my own internal struggles with my Christianity. I don't mean that I struggle so much with doubts about the tenets of Orthodoxy, but I do struggle with the flimsiness of my own confidence in those tenets. By which I mean, how much evidence is there that I really truly believe what I say I believe.
My mind started to swarm with worries. Is my poetry Christian? How do I make it Christian, if it isn't? Do I need to start mentioning Jesus or God or at least prayer or something spiritual every time I write a poem? And what about right now? What should I do? Is there something I should be doing or saying to be "Christian enough" in this situation? And really, finally, am I Christian enough?
And then in the midst of my little mental tizzy, I had a breath of peace. I believe it was from God. I realized I didn't have to do or be anything to make this all come out right. I didn't have to strive to be a Christian-enough poet or a convincing enough Christian.
As the poet speaker enjoyed the crowd's responsive tittering to the statistics about all the people who believe in a personal god, I believed. I didn't have to make God exist, in my poetry or otherwise... Rather, I remembered that God actually does exist and that Jesus actually was present, right there, powerful and alive, and I could and did invite him into that moment. I listened and loved and prayed with him. (For at least a few minutes, anyway. Then I got self-absorbed again. That's something we're working on... just wanted to stay honest!)
I believe my best (and I mean my artistically best as well as my "spiritually best") poetry comes out of that same relaxed and joyous freedom and faith. God exists. I don't have to make that true. So I don't have anything to prove in my poetry. Certainly, I don't know God as well as I want to, not as well as I am going to, not as well as I am learning to, but that doesn't change the facts. God exists. And he loves me. And I am his. All my life is a process of opening my hands and mind and heart to this reality. It's not something I have to do well enough or get right--not in my writing nor in my witnessing. It's something God is doing in me, and I am joyfully (if fitfully) cooperating with him.
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