Before this morning’s yoga class a fel­low stu­dent shared that to be inspired is to be “in spirit” and that to feel enthu­si­asm is to be with god (en+theos). This got me think­ing (as a lot of things do) about poetry. For a few years, before I had chil­dren and when time to read and write was plen­ti­ful, poetry was my reli­gion. It was my sun and my moon. I mem­o­rized scores of poems, in the event that I was trapped in a cave I wanted to be the per­son who knew more poems than my cave-trapped friends. (At this time in my life I wasn’t friends with any­one who might know some­thing useful—like how to get out of a cave.) Poetry was my inspi­ra­tion and my enthu­si­asm and, although I am not quite as steeped in it as I used to be, it still is one of my great loves. The first def­i­n­i­tion of inspi­ra­tion in Merriam-Webster is this: A divine influ­ence or action on a per­son believed to qual­ify him or her to receive and com­mu­ni­cate sacred rev­e­la­tion. And what poem, I mean what really good poem, is not a sacred rev­e­la­tion? Whether the poet is play­ing in the Read the Rest…

Don’t wait for inspi­ra­tion.
Show up for it.
Thurs., Feb. 9 | 8:30–9:30 EST

Ah, resis­tance to change. I admit I like my rou­tines and cringe at change, but I’m not the dig-your-heels-in-the-ground sort. I don’t invite the dra­matic change, but even when my first wife said adios and even when light­ning said hello! to my farm­house rooftop, I cried and yelled and stomped my feet, and then I found a way to move on. Okay, both of those events took a long time to move through, but I didn’t resist either because they were both inevitable.     I have a sim­i­lar atti­tude about rewrit­ing of the big kind – re-visioning. Sev­eral years ago when my edi­tor at Pen­guin sent me back the first sub­mit­ted draft of The Jour­ney from the Cen­ter to the Page, I opened the pack­age and found an eleven-page, single-spaced typed let­ter that began some­thing like, “You have some good mate­r­ial here, but we’ve got a long way to go before this is pub­lish­able.” Most of the next eleven pages listed all of the prob­lems and a few pos­si­ble solu­tions. The man­u­script itself had page after page with my editor’s pen marks Xed on them.   My response? I went to bed for two days. After two days, I went to Read the Rest…

In a 2006 issue of TIFERET, I came across an asso­ci­a­tion with mas­sage to writ­ing that res­onated. In an inter­view with writer Brenda Miller, Miller (also a massseuse) says that in mas­sage a masseuse must be intu­itive and lis­ten intently to what is going on. Writ­ing, she says, is sim­i­lar: You have to get into that intu­itive state. She’s spot on. I’ve been writ­ing about this very thing lately. A few weeks ago, I was refin­ing some mate­r­ial for an e-mail Yoga and Writ­ing course I’m teach­ing this month on Yoga, Writ­ing, and Writ­ing Into the True Self, and I thought this group might appre­ci­ate some of it:   A character’s body, its infi­nite parts and end­less his­tory, grounds my writer’s “proces­sor mind.” My proces­sor mind is the mind that strives to explain away, to over-think and ana­lyze, to com­plete the story or poem long before my imag­i­na­tion and hands have even reached the tenth sen­tence or line. It is all sky and mean­ing and fig­ur­ing out; it is lit­tle earth. If I can imag­ine how a character’s hands finesse a ham­mer and even what the fin­gers look like – sausages or drum sticks or bud­ding hick­ory branches in sum­mer – then my Read the Rest…

I would like to answer some fre­quently asked ques­tions related to Yoga As Muse. I wel­come your responses and ques­tions. WHAT IS YOGA? I speak as a writer who came to yoga later but also as a writer who has com­pleted two Yoga Teacher Train­ings, trav­eled to South India to study with his pri­mary teacher, who con­tin­ues to study sem­i­nal yogic texts, and who has taught yoga in dif­fer­ent venues. Yoga is a way to live more fully in this body, in this phys­i­cal world; it is not an escape from nor abne­ga­tion of this world. This way includes a series of tools that when exe­cuted reg­u­larly and appro­pri­ately alter the pat­terns of mind, speech, and action. It hones con­cen­tra­tion, awak­ens com­pas­sion, ignites imag­i­na­tion, builds dis­ci­pline and dis­cern­ment, and expands aware­ness. It is a prac­tice of small lib­er­a­tions in this life­time. WHAT IS YOGA NOT? It is not exer­cise although your body – espe­cially if it’s aging like mine – will ben­e­fit. It is not a reli­gion – although Hin­dus have appro­pri­ated some of its teach­ings and it can awaken that which you might call spir­i­tual. It is not an excuse to feel pious or self-righteous or some­how bet­ter than Read the Rest…

It’s a pre­car­i­ous way of life, this writ­ing from some place where will steps aside and some­thing else alto­gether takes over. I don’t mean to imply that divine agency is afoot or that lit­tle dai­mons in my brain relay sig­nals from my imag­i­na­tion to my hands, mere five-limbed work­ers that peck out the right com­bi­na­tions of key­board keys while “I” just sit back and con­tem­plate my gro­cery list. I won’t blame “inspi­ra­tion” or my hands for any drib­ble I write. Still, on the page, who’s in charge? I don’t know, and in that not-knowing I derive end­less plea­sure from the writ­ing process’s mys­tery. The mind writes its own song, and I hum the tunes and shape the melodies. A stranger in a wait­ing room speaks on her cell phone about her lat­est dat­ing exploits, and three months later that voice becomes a char­ac­ter for a short story. A moment by a wood­stove fire rat­tles some­thing in the mind until the loose bits coa­lesce that night into a poem. But how do I or any writer shape those melodies or rever­ies or sto­ries or poems? Like most writ­ers I know and respect, I have had to find ways to get out of Read the Rest…