I went to the pharmacy. There was a sign noting that I
did not have to wait for my prescription. They would text me when it was ready.
Apparently the pharmacy is trying to create writer’s
block. Writers should not go off willy-nilly and wait for pharmacy texts. We
should wander the aisles as we wait. Otherwise, we would not, like Billy
Collins, discover “Bathtub Families,” those collections of cows and pigs and
other families to keep you company in the bath, and if we do not make those
discoveries, we cannot write marvelous poems about them.
Why is it that Billy Collins always discovers things like
Bathtub Families before I do? No wonder I have nothing to poeticize about.
Billy has already jumped on all the good trampolines for poems.
Billy and Michelangelo see with the same eyes.
Michelangelo said he saw David trying to get out of that block of marble. All
he had to do was chip away the parts of the block that were not David and put
him into a museum in Florence. [Italy, not WI. Florence, WI, has a statue of an
ice cream cone.] Billy sees a poem trying to get out of a bunch of bathtub
animals. Anything he looks at, Billy sees a poem trying to get out.
Good writers see the stories trying to be told, in
anything and everything. If you have eyes to see and ears to hear, there is no
such thing as writer’s block.
But Billy Collins,
In your fecundity,
Can’t you leave a little something
For my profundity?
John Robert McFarland
Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be
published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2015.
My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in 2015. It tells of
four homeless and handicapped Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a
VA doctor.
I tweet as yooper1721.
I also write, once in a great while, Christ in Winter:
Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/
MY OTHER BOOKS:
NOW THAT I HAVE
CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and
Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and
Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount,
called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”
AN ORDINARY MAN
[HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent
with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for
killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full
circle…
THE STRANGE
CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a
preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really
a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know,
I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of
questioning the call.
WHEN FATHER RODE
THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0
If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty &
the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml
All too often we miss the small for the grandiose, when there is more beauty in the small. That out of the way oh YES it just irks me for someone to see what I bypassed! Waiting waiting waiting for your book!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Monica.
ReplyDelete