Judy Belsky deserves a paper platform all her own. She is the
brainstormer, along with Varda Bronfman, of the Creative
Writing group which meets once a fortnight and produces reams
of marvelous copy. Your editor first met her in action at the
day-long workshop that took place Rosh Chodesh Sivan and
which may enrich Yated's Family Section forever after.
Featured this week, elsewhere, are 2 pieces by Mindy Aber
Barad, a first- timer here.
Along with a thick writing pad, our portfolio at the
conference included an opener on Why Write:
"A holy duty lies on every one of us to record for himself
the details of all the incidents and adventures of his life.
In the Torah we read, `From my own flesh I can perceive
Hashem' (Iyov 19:26). With a clear vision, you can see
His sure hand in the happenings of your own life. Now that
most of my years have passed by in Hashem's blessed kindness
and abounding compassion, I have decided: Let me relate to my
children and grandchildren what happened to me in my days on
earth."
From Tzaddik in our Time, this is an autobiographical
fragment by R' Aryeh Levin zt'l
Today I sit at my table saying Tehillim. I am alone in the
house. I raise my voice and sing the Tehillim. I think I hear
something. I open my door and cross the hall. I listen
closely. It is the voice of my neighbor also singing
Tehillim. Thin membranes separate chambers of the heart.
There are whispers of the heart. If we could hear them in
unison, we might hear a symphony.
Writing has always been considered a solitary venture. An
artist in Western society creates alone. Authors sometimes
speak about their work, but the descriptions are just an
artifact. The work and the creative process by which it came
into being remain a solitary venture.
Writing workshops are a fairly recent phenomenon. They exist
to encourage and offer critique of writing, to provide a
critical audience. But so much creativity has been smothered
by criticism or fear of criticism. It was clear from the
start that we would not offer critique of the work. The work
needs to be sustained. Like a fire that is trying to catch
on, we would form a circle around it, we would put our backs
to the world, we would keep out the winds of negativity. We
would blow gently on the flames. We would rejoice as the
flames rise. A new piece would be met with silence -- rich,
receptive and resonant.
In the silence, the writer can begin to hear her own voice
maybe for the first time. Just the sound of her voice,
without the ready chorus of negativity; without the judgments
that weigh, measure, categorize and diminish. If we are too
ready to cede authority, and assign critical expertise to
someone outside of ourselves, how can we become the expert
who writes? Who is the "I" who is writing?
R' Shlomo Friefeld z'l, speaking of the problem of
excessive humility, once said, "A nothing cannot daven
maariv. He cannot hide behind the prayer." Excesses of
humility diminish the person's understanding that his prayers
help support the world, that his prayers are miraculous. If
he sees himself as "a nothing," he cannot reach up to G-d.
Before battle, every Jew was counted. Counted, he
acknowledges his strength. When we write poems from excessive
humility, before we have counted ourselves and found our
courage, our writing is weak. Poems written in excessive
humility are ditties or doggerel laden heavily with cliche
and forced rhyme that limit the scope of the poem. These
poems obscure both the search for meaning and the writer
behind them. We need to write from the locus of our own
strength.
Some years ago, to help me become a writer, my friend bought
me a sign that reads: NO APOLOGIES. We must write as if we
are explorers. First, an explorer depends upon herself. She
takes her work seriously. She honors her work.
No one has a map to our heart. Where the explorer goes, no
one has gone before. Lech lecha -- go you unto
yourself, Hashem's injuction-blessing to Avrohom, is an
intensely personal journey. To travel on that journey, we
must write with NO APOLOGIES.
In a drawing class I once took, the instructor would begin
each class by having us draw freely to various words: flame,
space, anger, water. She would repeat these words weekly. We
could begin to see the emerging vocabulary of our images. No
two artists speak the same language.
As a writer listens to her own voice reading her work, she
can begin to develop a deeper familiarity with her recurring
themes. She learns what draws her, what experiences captivate
her. I keep writing my grandmother poems and Varda still
writes her challa poems. These grand obsessions the
writer permits herself until they yield something: a new
direction, new insight, new truth about oneself.
A writer can hear when a stanza works, when an image seems to
first capture the moment, then expands it. A writer can hear
when a stanza falters or when rhythm lets her down or when a
phrase fails to deliver. She can tune her ear to her own
work, in the resonant, absorbent, non-critical silence. She
can begin to hear with her third ear, her own exquisite
seismograph. No one is closer to her work than she. No one
knows what dream she is interpreting. No one can truly
appraise it. She must own her work and begin mastery over
it.
To help the juices run, we spend many weeks offering first
lines. Some serious, some quixotic: `the reappearance of
chocolate on the streets of Moscow after the war.' `Green
applies in little pieces and oranges sliced paper thin...'
With the jump start of a given line, every writer takes off
in a different direction, writes a stanza and stops. She
writes quicker than the speed of fear, quicker than the speed
of cliches which are a way of hesitating. It takes time to
put a disguise on over our own features. No detours. Straight
into the poem. Then we read the stanzas in round robin with
no comment in between. A weave of voices. Sometimes the weave
overlaps, sometimes diverges. Sometimes there are uncanny
departures and arrivals.
We break into pairs and buddies decide on a first line. Panic
staring at the cold, white page. Where can I find a first
line? Let that be the first line. Listening to the hum of
conversation, I hear how the lines seem to lift out of the
shared back and forth rhythm of regular speech. I remember my
granddaughter at three years old, and she sees me writing and
reading, writing and reading my work. She asks me to read her
my poems. I do. She asks for more and yet more. "What does it
sound like to you," I ask, wondering how this adult language
sounds to her ears. I like it, she says. It sounds
like the whole world talking.
There enters the room a lightness of heart with first- line-
buddy poems. Light seems to replace the old fear. Here is an
entry way into a poem. You don't have to sit and wait for
inspiration. You might be involved in any kind of activity,
even the most prosaic, and switch readily into a line and
from that line swing easily upon its support into your own
imagery. The way in is faster than we thought. The way in is
friendship. This makes sense to me. Our lives are peopled. We
think, act and pray from a shared community. It makes sense
that the creative act can begin in the blessings of
conversation and an act of kindness. Through love, we glimpse
the image of Hashem in man. Love makes us strong. We reach up
in greater strength. It makes sense.
I used to love to write poems in stanzas made of couplets. A
workshop leader once asked me to explain my choice of this
form. I found myself saying that it is a feminine form, two
lines chasing each other, enjambed, wrapping around the next
line, continuous, persistent. Two distinct meanings, but an
overlap. It is the way friends talk, I think. One day, while
doing a session of psychotherapy, I notice the give and take,
the direction, progression and rhythm of patient speech and
my response. We start at some given point, move away and
back. I repeat a phrase and send it deeper on its way.
Tell me more. How does this relate to what you've said
before? Within the room, against the supportive structure
of resonance, silence, acceptance, trust and tender, acute
listening, words act as scouts that forge ahead of us.
Together we notice everything we say. Words open fresh
fields.
From the play in the therapist-patient rhythm it is a short
jump into the Hot Potato poem, which we have also dubbed
Cross Pollination and Braiding Challa. We start with a pair
of writers and a first line. Then each of the writers writes
a stanza to that first line. We are getting relaxed. We can
breathe deeper and trust ourselves more. We can take our time
and let words and images spin out. We can tolerate the
mystery of not knowing what we will discover or say next.
At the natural end of the writing of the stanza, we read it
aloud to our friend. Then we each help ourselves to a line in
our friend's stanza. We feel a pull to that line so when we
start a stanza with it, our interest is charged. We pick up
energy when we pick up that line. We end that stanza, read it
aloud, as does our friend. Then we reach in and help
ourselves to our friend's words. We feed each other a fine
feast of words. When the poem seems to have finished out its
rhythm, we end there. Unexpected dialogue takes place with
many twists and turns, rich echoes and counterpoint.
[Varda's and Judy's hot potato starts with a rose. Hold
your breath but open your nose and begin sniffing... and wait
for next week's aromatic literary treat.]
