Where I'm From ...

Now that I’m out of school once again (finished up my MFA at Spalding U. in June), I feel like I want to open up some new doors of communication, one of them being through blogging. I intend to focus mainly on writing issues, but they have a way of spilling over into broader areas, don’t they? I invite everyone to join me in the conversation at RickNeumayer.com.

My workshop prof this time, the wonderful and great Neela Vaswani, is a big fan of writing exercises, which I have always dreaded. Neela read to us George Ella Lyon's poem, "Where I'm From," saying it could provide ideas to inspire our own writing. Here are Lyon’s opening lines:

“I am from clothespins, / from Clorox and carbon tetrachloride. / I am from the dirt under the back porch. / (Black, glistening / it tasted like beets.)”

Now I’d say that’s some pretty wonderful imagery. Imagine my dismay upon learning our assignment was to write a poem of our own with each line beginning, ”I am from a place …” or some variation. Backed against the wall, here’s what I wrote:

I am from a place … that hates writing exercises, yet here I am doing another one …

… from a tradition that commands obedience, but I am by nature and inclination a rebel …

… azaleas and rhodendrons, dogwood and red bud, beauty that can make my heart ache …

… hot humid summers and cold gray winters that drive me indoors and keep me there …

… where a mother who had dementia used to ask after every activity, “What now?”

… a wife who insists that I say the same things as my mother …

… a puzzling nation that produces miracles but cannot solve the simplest problems …

… a human race so self-absorbed that it seems bent on self-destruction …

… a planet I’d love for my unborn grandchildren to inherit in a habitable condition, but probably won’t …

… beauty and ugliness, happiness and sorrow, mysterious beginnings and equally mysterious endings.

In spite of my initial lack of enthusiasm, it opened me up by forcing me to try and say something meaningful on the spot--no doubt Neela's intention. As a result, I now have a different view of writing exercises, particularly for students. I wonder how others feel about writing exercises? Do they help unlock inhibitions? Serve as a catalyst for new beginnings?