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THE ART of Living Hugely

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We must not forget that only a very few people are artists in life, that the art of life is the most distinguished and rarest of all the arts. Who ever succeeded in draining the whole cup with grace? So for many people all too much unlived life remains over— sometimes potentialities which they could never have lived with the best of wills, so that they approach the threshold of old age with unsatisfied demands which inevitably turn their glances backwards.” Carl G. Jung

Through the past several weeks, I have once-again turned my glances backward over the practical space-saving necessity of shedding and shredding some more of the notebooks and files of one small lifetime. I found that quote of Jung’s written on note almost as if from my younger self to my older self. After some forty or so years, I no longer remember from which of his works it was clipped and I left myself no hint. In those days I always trusted my memory as reliable, something I can no longer do.  I’m guessing the quote might have been from his Stages of Life.

The art of life is surely the superior art, but without art – whatever ours is by interest, vocation or avocation – poetry and literature, music, theater, painting or photography – much more of our lives might be “too much unlived” and the glass drained without the hope of any grace. It is our art or arts that help us to savor beauty and to understand – or at the very least sooth – pain and double joy.

Jung said further that “The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.” We come to a specific art as a lover attracted to what appeals most: words, sound, story, vision. Through these gifts of the spirit our lives are enriched and we practice the art of living hugely.

©2016, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved; Hand-colored photograph of Jung outside Burghölzli in 1910 from the U.S. Library of Congress Commons File and in the U.S. public domain; the signature formatted in vector is by  Screwing and is in the public domain.

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CELEBRATING AMERICAN SHE-POETS (21): Alice Walker, on the way to being daffodils

Writer, Poet and Activist, Alice Walker (b. 1944)
Writer, Poet and Activist, Alice Walker (b. 1944)

Speaking of death
and decay
It hardly matters
Which
Since both are on the
way, maybe –
to being daffodils.

excerpt from Exercises on Themes from Life in Once: Poems (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968)

This celebration is a rain-drop next to the ocean of ongoing world-wide applause for Alice Walker (Alice Walker’s Garden). Her roots are in Putnam Country, Georgia where her family subsisted financially on earnings from sharecropping, dairy-farming and her mother’s part-time employment as a maid.  Ms. Walker seems to come by her spunk and savvy honestly. When a white plantation owner told her mother that black people had “no need for education,” she replied …

“‘You might have some black children somewhere, but they don’t live in this house. Don’t you ever come around here again talking about how my children don’t need to learn how to read and write.’ Her mother enrolled Alice in first grade when the girl was four years old.”  Evelyn C White in Alice Walker: A Life (W.W. Norton, 2004)

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Alice Walker is perhaps most well-known to some for her fiction especially The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar and Possessing the Secret of Joy (Open Road Media, 2012 – Kindle edition).  The Color Purple won her the National Book Award and The Pulitzer Prize. It was adapted for theater, both screen and as a musical stage play. The latter won the 2016 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical and the 2016 Drama League Award for Outstanding Revival of a Musical. Alice Walker was the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer for fiction. (Gwendolyn Brooks was the first African-American woman to win it for poetry.)

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Once:Poems was Alice Walker’s debut poetry collection, written during a 1965 trip to East Africa and her senior year at Sarah Lawrence College. The book established her as an A-list poet and Muriel Rukeyser (among many others) gave it a thumbs-up saying, “Brief slashing poems – Young, and in the sun.”

In Kampala
the young king
goes often to Church
the young girls here
are
so pious.

excerpt from African Images, Glimpses from a Tiger’s Back in Once:Poems

Her other collections include: Hard Times Require Furious Dancing: New Poems (2013); The World Will Follow Joy: Turning Madness into Flowers (2013); Her Blue Body Everything We Know: earthling Poems 1965-1990 (2004); and Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth: New Poems (2004).

With Gloria Steinem on the Fall 2009 Cover of Ms. magazine
With Gloria Steinem on the Fall 2009 Cover of Ms. magazine

No celebration of Alice Walker’s work would be complete without acknowledging her ceaseless efforts on behalf of the poor and marginalized. She is an advocate for peace and understanding. She was initially inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr. and worked in the civil rights movement and by Howard Zin. She dedicated Once:Poems to Mr. Zin. Wherever people are oppressed in this world, you will find Alice Walker fighting the compassionate fight.

If you are viewing this from an email subscription, you’ll have to link through to the site to view this video of Alice Walker in Palestine in August 2010.

Ms. Walker regularly posts new poetry at her site Alice Walker’s Garden along with opinion pieces and updates on her own work and that of others.  Her Amazon page is HERE.

portrait © Virginia Bolt under CC BY-SA 2.0; Ms. cover © Ms. Magazine under CC BY-SA 2.0.

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THE HEMINGWAY CHALLENGE: Your Wednesday Writing Prompt

Ernest Hemingway

For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.” Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), American journalist and author

That’s Hemingway’s shortest story according to an oft told and often disputed tale. Hemingway was allegedly challenged to write a story in six words (some accounts say ten) to win a wager. To be a story, it had to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.  The anecdote probably is a fabrication.

At any rate, I rather like the idea. I’m no Hemingway, but what the heck. Here’s two of my tries, mystery both.  

Meticulous diary
Pages missing
No alibi

****

Moonlight sonata
Sudden pause
Lion roared

WRITING PROMPT

Your turn: write a six-word story. 

Photo credit ~ via Wikipedia Ernest Hemingway at a fishing camp in Kenya in 1954. “His hand and arms are burned from a recent bushfire; his hair burned from the recent plane crashes.”