Creativity -- art, poetry -- helps us work through various intrinsic, interior issues in an often cathartic way. But how best to experience this? We can see that Deng Ming Dao tells us that there are opportunities for poetry in everyday life, but how best to access those? How best to "just do it," as the archetypal Nike ad slogan says? Herewith some ideas, from none other than longtime friend of veterans and National Humanities Award winner, Maxine Hong Kingston.
(Kingston is featured in an excellent Bill Moyers / PBS documentary, shown on Memorial Day several years ago, and she's the editor of an anthology og veterans' writing called Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace. For years she's led writing workshops of veterans in Northern California, and Ted Sexauer, a former Vietnam veteran/combat medic, is a poet whose work is featured in this anthology.) She writes:
"[Ted Sexauer] gave us instruction for finding the way to poetry…He entitles the method, “How to Feel – Exercise for Integrating the Internal with the External.” A symptom of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is going numb; being well is being able to feel. “Feelings make you human. Feelings make the writing alive.” The Poet has feeling, and gives the reader feeling.
- First, pay attention to what you feel. It may be one or more general feelings, or one in particular that is asking for attention.) Write one word or a phrase.
- Close your eyes. Now what do you feel? Write it down.
- Now look around yourself. What do you see? Write down one thing or several. Make them brief; do not use a complete sentence. (Unless you feel like it.)
- Close your eyes again. How do you feel now? Write it down. Do not justify it; only acknowledge it.
- Open your eyes. Write down what you see. Do not attempt to understand or process this. Do not question why.
- Repeat this process until you are ready to stop.
- Now find your personal way to put these words together.
Tonight please let’s try feeling, seeing, noting, noting seeing, noting feeling. Let’s try for poems. Let’s meet tomorrow with poems in hand. May poetry come to one and all this night."
-- To Be the Poet, by Maxine Hong Kingston. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (2002).
