Sheila Bender
A brief bio:
Since receiving her MA in Creative Writing from the University
of Washington, Sheila Bender has published over nine books on creative writing
(many for Writer's Digest Books and the newest, Writing and Publishing Personal
Essays from Silver Threads in San Diego) and two volumes of poetry (Sustenance:
New and Selected Poems is the most recent). She currently publishes an
online instructional magazine for those who write from personal experience at
www.writingitreal.com and directs a
yearly writer's conference in Port Townsend, WA (Writing It Real in Port
Townsend) in addition to being a visiting instructor in Tucson, AZ
and presenting at West Coast writer's conferences. A beloved teacher she
offers instruction through her site, Writers.com, and Absolutewrite.com as well
as through content for LifeJournal for Writers software.
The lines of my work:
Today Kuwano-san Is Called Kuwano-sensei, Teacher
She is instructing the tea ceremony
as her mother did before her
and opens the extension to the room
so her mother can watch from her bed,
though she is 95, blind and deaf and sleeping.
I kneel seiza and receive my bowl of thick
green tea while Kuwano-sensei tells me
I must bow to my daughter beside me saying,
"O-saki-ni:" I am going before you.
Kuwano-sensei tells me to hold my cup
with two hands before my forehead.
I look at my daughter who is coming of age;
I look at Kuwano-sensei's mother who is dying.
Soon I must take the first sip.
For My Daughter Who Has Gone to Study in Japan
Second full moon in one month tonight.
Through my skylight, I watch
it take its high place before I set binoculars
outside on a tripod and search its bright surface.
I see a navel on the moon as if it hung once
like a large fruit, white lines holding
its roundness like the ones on an orange under the peel.
I think of your arms growing tight around me
as your flight's boarding began and remember
to you the moon was always a brave soul,
lying on its back with its tiny little toes in the air,
alone in the big blue sky and the funny moon didn't care.
I sang these words to you and never wondered
if the planet that gave birth to the moon
was as brave as her offspring, if vines and trees
mourned the dropping of their ready fruit.
As the first fall fog rolls in from Puget
Sound, I walk
toward our front door crunching the fallen berries
of our mountain ash trees, almost believing
you will be inside, a girl once again under table light
folding origami paper into cranes, crossing cooking
skewers for a mobile to hang them from.
I sit awhile on the front porch staring into wet leaves,
listening for the quiet song earth sings, her belly
full of stems, her daughter far away and bright.
Excerpt from All Done Not Writing
When you feel the prickly leaves of doubt hurting your
confidence in authoring, remember these words from Lorca, "As for me, I can
explain nothing, but stammer with the fire that burns inside me, and the life
that has been bestowed on me." Then keep writing from direct experience. Don't
worry about what the head wants to puzzle out--report your experience through
your senses. Write down what you heard, saw, touched, tasted and smelled.
Before you know it, you will be absorbed in writing the experience, rather than
explaining it. You will be putting fire on the page.
When you feel the prickly leaves of grief pulled up by your
words, remember Ring Lardner said, "How can you write if you can't cry?" Write
through your tears. There will come a time in the process when you are so at one
that your tears dry. And when you have written the full experience of your
grief, you will feel peace. When grief resides on the page, its residence
is love.
When you feel the prickly leaves of fear because you cannot
control your writing but must abandon yourself to what you have called up, think
about Toby's rock, about the gift you are making. Imagine even one person
receiving it, feeling thanks for it, and placing it among their treasured
things.
When you feel the prickly leaves of distress at saying the
truth and imagining others hearing you say it, remember writer Rita Mae Brown's
words, "Writers are the moral purifiers of the culture. We may not be pure
ourselves, but we must tell the truth, which is a purifying act." Write
what you have in you to write. You can decide later what to do about those
for whom this writing would not be a gift. Many times you will be
surprised when the work is finished. Those you were most afraid would shun the
work, may love it.
When you feel the prickly leaves of thinking you never have
enough time to write because writing requires a special mood, write something
down--any thought or image will do. Soon you will notice that you have
five minutes to write, then ten minutes and then you will find twenty. You
will have words to get back to if you write something down. You will gain
dexterity in altering your state of being to the writing state. You will
begin to work on the projects you have inside yourself. Your practice will be
writing rather than wishing you were writing. You might find yourself
chanting, "All done not writing. All done."
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