The Master's Artist

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How can you know what you don't know?

Ebarrassingly, a few people in this world have handed over their hard-earned cash for unfinished paintings. Some have paintings with unfinished sides and some have paintings that are unprotected with the clear coat I've now learned to use. And how I'd like to track those people down, knock on their doors and make things right. It's not possible though, most of them I don't know.

Could I ever know everything, though?

Selling the paintings without the finishing details wasn't my intent. There was no secret motive in my heart to cheat people. Selling paintings was never part of my plan. People saw them and asked to buy them. I didn't know what to charge, so I guessed and they paid and they kept paying and they're still paying.  Somewhere along the line, as more orders came in, I decided I needed to know something about selling art. I noticed by visiting with other artists that finishing the edges and clear coating was expected.

 

So now, I've learned.

And isn't that like the lesson James tries to teach? 

Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don't try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.

If you don't know what you're doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You'll get his help, and won't be condescended to when you ask for it. Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought. People who "worry their prayers" are like wind-whipped waves. Don't think you're going to get anything from the Master that way, adrift at sea, keeping all your options open.

 

Through these tests and challenges of life, we are matured, made into well-developed believers. Ask the Father. He loves to help. 


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michelle pendergrass asks often and receives grace every single time. 

Thomas On Glynn On Berry On Williams On Place

Two days ago Glynn wrote about how place is of significance to poetry, and Wendell Berry's elaboration on the subject in his latest book The Poetry of William Carlos Williams of Rutherford.

I happen to live near Rutherford. It is 4.6 miles away. It would take me 1 hr. 32 mins. to walk to downtown Rutherford, but I usually glide through Rutherford on the train into New York City.

I haven't been to Rutherford in a while. It's only one stop away on the train. I see the downtown shops as the train slows and hear the conductor announce, "Ruth-er-ferd" on the PA system. The people queue off and then queue on. It's a place where many commuters to the city get on and off. Sometimes they jam pack the train. At night, especially after Rangers or Knicks games, the business people are brown bagging beers and half drunk. I have had Coors Light spilled onto my shoes. It's not exactly William Carlos Williams' Rutherford. Who knows?

I don't really know Rutherford that well. I have frequented the Western store in Rutherford upon occasion. I went and watched Fourth of July fireworks there seven or eight years ago. But I haven't actually stepped foot on Rutherford soil in at least four years. I just glide right through it on the train, at least 30 times a year. I have visited it's sister city East Rutherford, where MetLife Stadium is, home of the Super Bowl bound Giants (I was there for the Giants vs. Jets game---that was an exercise in the identity of place if there ever was one: two home teams?). I haven't set foot in Rutherford proper in a while.

I suppose this is the long way of saying place is a tricky thing. I've seen shops close and open in Rutherford, seen the trees change color and the snow pile up. But this has always been through the window on a train. I know about popular restaurants that have opened, but that's just from the newspaper. I know a whole lot about Rutherford without actually setting foot there. Do I really know Rutherford then?

I would say yes. But place is on a spectrum.

I would say I know Rutherford less than William Carlos Williams, but more than Wendell Berry of Kentucky. He hasn't seen the latest bars pop up or the fancy condo complex they put next to the train station. Berry knows only of Williams' Rutherford, not the Rutherford I see once a week.

But I wouldn't say I know Rutherford. It's not my place. It's not the dust that cakes my shoes.

My place is 4.6 miles away on foot. A good distance, but not insurmountable. It's close. Maybe too close. There's no sense of adventure. It's closeness makes Rutherford just a place I pass to get to another place.

But I do want a couple new pearl snap shirts. Maybe I'll go check out the Western store soon. Then I can get some Rutherford dirt on my heels, and breath the lingering atoms of oxygen that may have once passed through Williams' lungs.

Thomas Turner is the Senior Editor & Publisher of GENERATE Magazine and an adjunct lecturer at Nyack College. He is most certain that William Carlos Williams would be a Giants fan. Go Big Blue!

Berry on Williams on Place

I’ve been on a personal study of poetry and place. Two weeks ago, I talked here about This London by Patrick Hicks, a collection of poems about London. Hicks is not a native of London, nor a resident; he’s simply in love with the city. His poems reflect that love that comes from appreciation and understanding of a particular place like a city, even if you don’t live there. 

But there’s another kind of place, the kind that comes from living and being rooted in a particular area or region or town or city, as if your DNA shares traits with the DNA of the place itself. William Faulkner used the fictitious town of Jefferson in the fictitious Yoknapatawpha County in northern Mississippi, based on his hometown of Oxford, and created a body of work that eventually became universal in its appeal and meaning. 

If there is a contemporary writer who has done much the same as Faulkner, it is poet, novelist and essayist Wendell Berry, who has based the fictitious Port William on his particular region of Kentucky. Berry has gone far beyond Faulkner, however, is developing a body of literary, philosophical and economic work that is rooted in his concept of place. 

Berry’s latest work is a collections of essays and reflections on another poet of place – The Poetry of William Carlos Williams of Rutherford. Including “of Rutherford” in the title implies more than is seen at first glance – Berry sees Wiliams as the poet of Rutherford, his hometown in New Jersey where he lived and practiced as a doctor, but he also places that “Rutherford-ness” in a much larger context. 

The generation of American writers that included William Carlos Williams largely transplanted itself to Europe, and specifically Paris, because that is where American writers coming of age in the early 20^th century went to write and hobnob with each other. Williams stayed where he was born and raised, and yet his influence was as great if not greater. 

In his reflections, Berry firmly positions Williams as a kind of counterculture influence, then as well as now (today, American literary writers tend to congregate on the coasts, and generally around universities; Berry is a definite oddity to live and write near the Ohio River in Kentucky, but much like Faulkner eventually did in Oxford, after stays in New Orleans, Hollywood and a few other places. 

The volume that established Williams as a major poet was Spring and All, published in 1923 by the same publisher in France who had published Ulysses by James Joyce. The volume, containing both prose and 27 poems, firmly established Williams in the mainstream of modernism, but there was that little quirkiness of place. 

In late 2011, New Directions Books published a facsimile edition of Spring and All, and it is a rather plain little volume, with a blue-gray cover printed on a matte paper. I read the facsimile before I read Berry’s book, and I reread it afterward. It was a good way to meet Williams and his poetry, and then read an interpretation of his work by a major writer and poet like Berry. Unsurprisingly, Berry compares him to Faulkner. Surprisingly, he also argues that Williams had much in common with T.S. Eliot, even though Williams maintained a kind of argument against Eliot and his poetry during their lifetimes. 

Much of Spring and All is indeed like reading Faulkner – sometimes simple, often complex, but well worth the effort to understand. Here is Poem XI from the collection: 

In passing with my mind
on nothing in the world 

but the right of way
I enjoy on the road by 

virtue of the law
I saw 

an elderly man who
smiled and looked away

to the north past a house –
a woman in blue 

who was laughing and
leaning forward to look up 

into the man’s half
averted face 

and a boy of eight who was
looking at the middle of 

the man’s belly
at a watchchain – 

The supreme importance
of this nameless spectacle 

sped me by them
without a word – 

Why bother where I went ?
for I went spinning on the 

four wheels of my car
along the wet road until 

I saw a girl with one leg
over the rail of a balcony

Three Tips to make Creativity Playful

For Christmas this year we tried to stock up on artistic toys for our little one. Now she can venture around our living room, shaking maracas, playing a drum, thumping on my djembe, banging on her new xylophone, pretending she's cooking with her pots and pans or drawing in crayon on her big easel. We want her to be able to learn how to make music, draw and cook through exploration, not us sitting her down and trying to drill her in the proper ways to do things. That can wait another ten years.

For now we give her the freedom to explore her creativity in her own ways, and to her heart's content.

Which gets me thinking: do I allow myself to explore and just be creative for creativity's sake?

Or do I get bogged down in the proper way to write a poem, the proper way to write an essay, the proper way to blog?

I think I fall more into the latter.

I have three tips that I use to make my creativity playful. These are by no means original, but it helps to be reminded (and remind myself!) of ways to be playful.

Tip #1: Stretch Yourself - you can make your creative activities playful by stretching yourself. Make creativity a game by stretching your art into a genre or sphere you have zero experience or knowledge in. I do this by drawing illustrations or illuminating some of my poetry. I have zero drawing skills, yet it helps me see the themes in my poetry that I don't see myself at first glance, and it adds a color palette that I can use in my editing that I would have never noticed without drawing.

Tip #2: Freewriting (or free-painting, or free-drama, etc.) - I tell my students to do this every semester in College Writing 1, yet I so often fail to do it myself. Just giving yourself ten minutes to do stream of consciousness art will open up new avenues of art to explore. And it's a great cure for writer's block!

Tip #3: Make Art a Game - learn how to make the tasks of creativity a game. The poets who venture into TweetSpeak's Twitter Parties for Poetry (fellow The Master's Artist writer Glynn Young is involved in this) are especially good at this. They have fun by tweeting poetry lines to each other and then editing the whole group's content into a single poem. You can replicate this type of game with painting (have four people with four canvases and each paint one quadrant then pass it along) or drama (improv!) or writing (Mad Libs!). You can always make up your own game. You're creative, remember?

Over the weekend, set aside a few moments to try some of these out. I would love to hear about your experiences with these suggestions in the comments.

Thomas Turner is the Senior Editor & Publisher of GENERATE Magazine and an adjunct lecturer at Nyack College.

The Poetry of Place

Sunday night my wife and I watched the special two-hour premiere of the second season of the PBS series, Downton Abbey. To say we’re hooked on the show is not an overstatement, although I’m behaving more like a normal fan while my wife is scouring web sites, blog sites and social media for any reference she can find. 

The first season of this “Upstairs, Downstairs” type of production ended with the start of World War I; the second season starts in 1916. While there are all sorts of plots and sub-plots (it’s a big, complicated story), the story always centers on the house, which, as the house of an earl should be, is huge. The idea of place is important in this story, because the place is changing, as are the people and the times they live in. The old order is giving way to the new, although the new is still largely unknown. 

Poet Patrick Hicks, who teaches creative writing at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, knows about the importance of place. He has an entire book of poem about place, and the place is London. This London is a collection of 47 poems, almost all about London (the handful that aren’t directly about the city are inspired by London). Hicks loves the city, but it’s not a heedless, careless kind of love. It’s a love that sees all of what the city is, what it has been, and where it might be going. 

The collection is not chronological but the poems do travel in time. We stand with Boudicca as she revenges her people with the sack of Londinium; we’re with Shakespeare at the Globe Theater and the crowd at a hanging at Tyburn; we experience the fire of 1666 and we see the boys off for France at Charing Cross Station, and I’m reminded of scenes from Downton Abbey: 

Seeing the Great War at Charing Cross Station 

It is 2007 today, but it feels more like 1917.
Squinting through a kaleidoscope of history,
an army is here, rifles slung over their knapsacks,
they are spun toward no-man’s land. 

These soldiers walk on healthy legs,
they have yet to be baptized by the oil of war.
Women cheer them off into a termite existence,
where they will become little wasps
caught in pus, and mud, and bones. 

Kisses are blown,
like from that blonde over there,
the one next to Delice de France–a pastry shop
that sells croissants dripping with the blood of jam. 

I watch her boyfriend, dressed in a trenchcoat,
step into a train, waving.

His hand is swallowed from view
and he is gone,
simply gone. 

This sense of beauty and harsh reality pervades the poems. Hicks wanders the streets above the bones of the plague victims; he sees the grave of the unknown soldier at Westminster Abbey; he experiences the great stink of 11858 when the odor of the Thames nearly emptied the city. He sees the tawdriness of the strip shops in Soho, and stands with the Ripper in a Whitechapel alley. 

He knows this city, and knows it well, but loves it almost in spite of itself. It’s a city that speaks at some deeper level, and he knows he finds himself there. 

The Same is Different Every Day 

A fisherman in Galway once told me
the sea is different every day,
and this truth baptizes me
whenever I navigate London. 

If we learn a city well enough,
our ghost lives on every corner,
time becomes a pool,
and we submerge ourselves 

again and again,
pearl-diving for streetsigns.
On might rivers of asphalt,
my restless feet hopscotch through time, 

neither here, nor there.

This London makes me want to go back, to see the British Museum with its all things un-British, and Tennyson’s grave in the Abbey, and the chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula in the Tower, with all the famous bones buried below its floor stones. And I will take these poems with me, and read them aloud.

Maggie

Scriptural Reference: 1 Samuel 17

Happy New Year! It has been a while since I’ve blogged at The Master’s Artist. The main reason for my absence has been fear of moving forward. In the past few months I’ve suffered medical setbacks, family loss, heart break, and been under enormous stress to complete the edits for my next novel (Someone Bad and Something Blue, Kensington, July 201 2.) It felt like one thing after another was pushing me down. As I write, my life is surrounded by road blocks, stumbling blocks, and insecurities. I’m afraid to fail, afraid to disappoint my editor at Kensington, to not do enough for my family, friends, and clients…I’m afraid of it all.  However, I couldn’t wait another two weeks to talk to you. My heart wouldn’t let me sleep until I shared my struggle with you, because I believe I’m not alone and I need you.

I to have a better year than last, yet I’m still trying to dig myself out of the last year. In my mind I’m still in 2011, trying to fix things. For instance, I have a friend who is terminal. She is in her last stages of battling lymphoma. I don’t want to sleep, because I don’t want to miss these last moments of her being in this world with me. I know she will not be able to experience this entire year with us and there’s a selfish part of me wants to hold the future back…make things stop and live in a snow globe where we’re sealed off and time stands still, at least until I fix things. Find a cure…I don’t know.

But I know my friend and I know our God. He didn’t create me to coil into a blue funk because my friend is going Home. She will always live a big, fun and sweet life.  Life is short for those who don’t believe in Jesus Christ. Maggie will not die and I must write and come back to the world.

Dee Stewart is a Christian magazine editor, journalist, owner of Christian Fiction Blog and DeeGospel PR. She is also Miranda Parker, novelist for Kensington Books. Her debut novel “A Good Excuse to be Bad” released July 2011. The sequel SOMEONE BAD and SOMETHING BLUE releases July 2012. To learn more about Lymphoma Awareness visit http://www.lls.org/

caption (Maggie is second on the left side.)

A Time to Heal

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to declare 2012 a year of healing. Does God follow our calendar? (His mercies are new every morning, right?) In the Old Testament, before He led his people out of slavery, God started the calendar anew before it was time for the Israelites to leave captivity.  Rather mind-boggling for a nation of stiff-necked people who begged to go back to their captors rather than follow the living God.

What is it that I keep running back to?

Has He started my life calendar over when I wasn't paying attention? Time doesn't mean squat to the God of the universe. It's me that needs to tick away the minutes, the days, the years.  As much as I'd like to pretend I comprehend timelessness, I don't. I can't. It's just not possible. It's like explaining economy to a nursing newborn.  When God does a new thing, why don't I pay more attention? The first week of January is not God's time for renewal. He is available, willing and ready, every single morning. Every second of every day. And I need only abide. To draw near to Him.

So what if I approach His throne boldly and bow to his feet, humbly and declare that I need to heal? That there have been wounds open and sore and festering for days and months and years and please Jesus, if I could just touch the hem of Your robe...

Would he turn me away?

Was it not Jesus who told me to "Ask, seek, and knock?"  Why do I pretend I have no open wounds? Is it because I don't trust Him? As the Holy Spirit whispers in my ear, "It's ok if you don't fully trust, I will teach you," I turn slow to Him. He coaxes me quiet with more gentle whispers, "I do no require perfection, only your heart. Your bruised and broken heart in My hands will become whole. No hiding."

Once again at His mercy, my prayer repeats, "I believe! Help me in my unbelief."

But this time, I'm willing to tell Him what my heart desires. Healing. Even if that means suffering through complicated extractions to rid my wounds of infection. We rejoice in our suffering because suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope and that hope does not fail because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

He did, indeed, start the calendar over before I knew I would be led out of captivity.


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~michelle pendergrass is humbled by His grace.