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April 16, 2024 · 12:23 pm

Reflections of My Life in Poetry by David J. Rogers

Where Among Dreams She Had Often Walked

Small and delicate, fair as a flower,
A woman on this earth who
At thirty-seven of her years passed
Away. Since her absence from the visible
World she has lived in many of my memories.
She died too soon to be aware of much of
My life, and I will not be able
To tell her about it, nor she to share her
Thoughts of what her life might
Have been had she grown old where
It ended: in beauty far across the pitching
Blue sea, along rows of white-sand beaches
Where among dreams she had often walked.

Chicago’s El Trains

At eight years–
My place of birth.
Walking through
The viaduct
Under the el platform
And into and out of
The cool, spread shadows
Amidst the thunderous
Rattle of the trains
Overhead that make
The earth and my heart
Tremble

The Welcome Inn

We enter that tumult of sweat and whiskey, amidst the
Glow of the red bar lights and clouds of floating smoke
And stand next to a tattooed woman snapping a
Bull whip and wearing a black satin cape with red lining
And see a man pull a pistol on another man. The
Second man snatches the gun from the first and
Slugs him over the head. He turns to us
Disgusted with his friend, supine on the floor, and says
“He’s always doing that,” and that is the end of that.

What Are We To Do?

What’s the use trying to say what I feel?
How does it happen? How is it concluded
That this person should be happy, that one not?
This one healthy; that one ill; one blessed, the other
Troubled; he–undeserving– to live a long
And happy life; she who in her life has hurt
No one to die before she has fully lived?
How is it decided that this one should be put
Together with that one and that they should
Love each other all their days, but that another
Shall despair in loneliness. What happens to us
That we become the people we are, and
What are we to do now?

Judy Wazorick

We were in grammar school together.
She had a blue eye and a brown
And sat in the last seat of the last row.
She was very shy, but when I looked at her
She smiled at me.
Now I see she won’t be at the reunion,
And I am so sad because Judy Wazorick
Has passed away.

Butterflies, Flowers, and Lovers

Butterflies, you and I,
Fluttering over gardens–
Our little world–
From flower to flower
In search of that one who is to us,
Though perhaps to no one else,
The loveliest flower,
And when we find that lovely flower,
Then we are content forever.

The Girl in Greenwich Village

I saw you
Looking at me
Knowing I had
Looked at you,
No chance ever
To see you again
Or you to
Look at me again
With your dark eyes,
You who had I
Known long ago
I would have run
My finger over
So carefully
And held
In my hand
Like an orchid.

Awaiting the Arrival of Dawn

I delight in darkness and know that a bond
Intertwines me with everyone who exists
Or ever has, or will; and know too that some
Yet unknown purpose to my life beckons fondly
And that one day I will discover it.
So I dream of splendid things through
Each day as my life flickers away.
I welcome the luminous skies above and the
Magnificence of morning–and I will all
My life while awaiting the arrival of dawn.

A Man Like Every Other

I thought as all children think of their fathers
At that age that he was a great man. He had
Made a life out of little accomplishments that
Were magnificent to me–had made a paper
Weight, had painted a wagon, could change a tire.
Then he felt he had done something, and so did I,
A man who would live in anonymity, do the best he
Could, be remembered a little while
And forgotten. A man like every other.

Lightly Falling Snow

In the mountains, near the snow line, a blue
Haze is draped in grandeur over the land,
The summits surrounding us stupendous
.We have a snowball fight and then lie exhausted
And breathing hard in the snow while laughing
And making angels with our arms and legs.

We then come to an inn set far back from the road
Across a gravelly parking lot surrounded by tall trees
That are black with rain that fell last night.
We go up the long wooden stairway to a landing
With roughly-hewn wooden tables and chairs. But it is
Too cold to sit outside and so we go in.

The dining room is empty but for a waiter leaning
Against a wall. The tables are set with white linen
And gold utensils, and dressed as we are we seem
Out of place. We sit at a table by a wide window with
A good view of the mountains. The waiter comes over and
We order coffee.

From the window, Nick, the waiter,
And I watch a lightly falling snow.

Bedtime Prayer of a Little Boy

Of my family I thought in my child’s way–
They were all of them–each of them–good people, devoid of malice,
And I was blessed to be among them. Why, I wonder, had I been so
Favored. I thought, “Dear Lord, keep us safe, and please treat us kindly.
Spare us please from suffering or so apportion it so that none of us is asked
To bear more than one should be required to.” I prayed, as always fast,
“God bless Mom and Dad and…” and I fell asleep beseeching God.
The day ended then, and I dreamed and in a moment another dawn broke.

Hobos in a Clearing

We reach the crest of the hill at dusk.
Below us, like the camps of infantry,
Burn the scattered fires of forgotten men,
Each a separate picture.
They live in the open or in
The opulence of tarpaper lean-tos against a tree,
And migrate as punctually as geese.
They wear black–perhaps it is the soot of freight trains–
And squat on their haunches like crickets
Beside the snapping flames.
Streams of smoke trail off high into the trees
And embers flicker and fade, flicker and fade
In the harsh bite and sparkle of the wind,
And glow bronze on the men’s untroubled faces
Late into the night.

Ice Cream Man

A bevy of children
Proffering handfuls
Of nickels and dimes
To the wizened Ice Cream
Man in exchange for
A bar thickly crusted with
Brittle dark chocolate
Or nuts, or both

LONGER NARRATIVE POEMS

Lyric for Angela

At seventy-five cents per hour
I am a twelve year old
Professional bagger of cans
Of pineapples and tomatoes,
Weigher of potatoes,
Stocker of shelves
So the labels artfully frame
For the customers’ eyes
The Gerber baby,
The Scott tissues,
The orange carrots,
The vivid green peas.
When I am near Angela,
The dark-eyed store owner
Who favors me
My heart beats faster.
I cannot breathe
When I am near Angela.
As she works she sings.

Her spirit enfolds and singes me
As with molten tongs.
She smiles with
Such sweetness, gentleness,
And goodness it breaks my heart.
Her hair, her voice, her hands, her
Presence bring
A quality into my life
Which I know to be love.
My youth is purer,
My memories more
Lasting because of her.

Angela’s husband is awful
To her and treats
Her cruelly.
I vow that one day I will
Whisper to Angela,
“Why don’t you run away?”
But I fear she will not
And that after I have gone
To high school and college
And am grown up
She will still be heard
Singing in the aisles
Of this little store
Like a bird in her cage.

A Wagon, an Old Man, and Old Horse
(A Scene from Edgewater, Chicago, 1949)

Keeping to no particular schedule other than
It be daylight nearing evening, from down the alley
Through sunlight and shade, always from the west,
Never the east, comes the old disheveled
Rag Man–appearing to be a rag himself.
He sits high atop a large horse-drawn, creaking wagon
Loaded with junk, his gruff, metallic voice preceding
Him by half a city block: “Rags, old iron.”

As the wagon nears, I hear, faintly at first, and then
More clearly, more purely, more emphatically, the
Mellow clomp, clomp, clomp of the shod hooves
Of the old brown mare whose head hangs low, neck bowed,
And swaying slowly to the rhythm of her gait. She elevates
Her head as high, as majestically, as a queen of horses
Who is a about to speak and shakes her harness
Chains musically but uncomfortably and opens wide her mouth
To gulp the air. Then I hear her snorts as she struggles
Futilely with her bit and notice her bulbous brown eyes
Glazed with an expression of weariness and sorrow,
And the sunlight glistening off the thick sheet of sweat coating
Her flanks and the sinewy twitching muscles of her legs.

The sounds of hooves grow soft, then softer, and vanish,
Not to be heard again until another afternoon I witness the
Elegant procession of a wagon, a man, and a horse, and
Hear a voice bellowing, “Rags, old iron.”

On A Beach on a Wind-Blown Day

So there it is, laid out in my mind: that moment in our lives,
That day in July. We are told that memories recede, grow fainter,
Fall to tatters, but I remember that afternoon that
Has persisted through all the successive years, recalling it
Just as I lived it. Though it is intangible and lies in memory alone,
Nothing else is as real; everything vanishes in comparison.
It is with me when I bend to tie my shoelace, or ask for a fork. Or
Fall asleep: my sister on the beach gripping my hand not to be
Swept away by the swirling, angry wind, and she standing on her
Tip-toes on a little stool down the aisle in the stacks at the dusty library,
Reaching for Little Women; my realizing in that instant, watching her,
That she was irreplaceable; I couldn’t do without her. So with her
In front of me on her red bike, I on my blue English racer, the two
Of us hurtled down Chicago streets at dusk. Her black hair flowing,
We raced–a glorious day when we were young.

Nurse’s Goodbye to Her Patient

I saw my sister’s favorite nurse up ahead
In the parking lot and called her name and she stopped
And turned around and I ran and caught up with her.
I expressed my gratitude to her for the gentleness
She had shown my sister. I told her I would never forget
Her kindness and thoughtfulness, and that I
Would remember her all my life, as I have.

She told me
What a good patient Sharon was, how despite her suffering
Sharon had never complained and was always so nice and
Had good manners, and how it would make her very sad
When she would have to say goodbye to her.

That night I left for home.

For my interview from the international teleconference with Ben Dean about Fighting to Win, click the following link:

Order Fighting to Win: Samurai Techniques for Your Work and Life eBook by David J. Rogers

Click on book image to order from Amazon.com

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fighting-to-win-samurai-techniques-for-your-work-and-life-david-rogers/1119303640?ean=2940149174379

Order Waging Business Warfare: Lessons From the Military Masters in Achieving Competitive Superiority

Waging Business Warfare812sCY9edLL._SL1500_

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Filed under Personal Stories, Poetry

February 29, 2024 · 2:14 pm

What Are Serious Writers Like? What Do They Do?

A serious writer has the identity of a writer, emphasizes the production of works, and is a skilled craftsman.

Serious Writers Have a Writer’s Identity

Sometimes a person who one day will become a serious writer doesn’t know herself what she might do with her life. But she feels instinctively that she’s good for something and has some reason for existing. She has a hunch that there is something important in her that’s worth pursuing further. She finds that something in words. She makes herself into a writer–an expert in expressing herself via written language. At times, with some people, writing becomes the center of their identity, and they become another Saul Bellow who said that when he wrote he felt like an artist, but when he was not writing he didn’t feel like anything.

As a writer you’re specially endowed with (and may have been born with) not only “creative stuff” but with an assortment of personality qualities that equip you specifically for the writer’s role. And it’s that identity that gives you the sense that you’re a person with a definite life task—to write, to create. Whether you find writers in big cities or in remote jungles or rain forests and deserts you will also find them generally to be quite similar. Writers who succeed have a combination of such inner qualities as curiosity, obsessiveness, doggedness, and endurance. They’re playful, sensitive to life, open to experience, and have an abundance of physical strength, energy, and stamina. Often it’s the end of the writer’s endurance that stops her work day. They have a much higher tolerance for ambiguity than the great majority of people—one reason they’re usually such good problem-solvers.

Your everyday identity isn’t the same as your writer identity. The “you” that shines through a novel you’ve written isn’t the same person your neighbors know. It’s a version of you, but yet it’s different. As a writer you’ve a sensitivity to language which a person either possesses or does not possess.

Language—for a writer shaping it into phrases, sentences, and paragraphs–is delightful. Amy Tan wrote, “I am a writer. And by definition, I am someone who has always loved language. I am fascinated by language in daily life. I spend a great deal of my time thinking about the power of language.”

You know the basics of grammar (know a noun, a verb, and a preposition when you see them), and have the biggest vocabulary and highest appreciation of words, the greatest skill in using them, and the best ear for them. Most writers are able to produce large volumes of work. But that’s just the tip of the characteristics writers have in common and which make up the identity of serious writer.

Serious Writers Emphasize Production of Works

A main goal of writers and all other creative people is to produce works. Writers make the structure of their creative lives by means of their work. If they are unable to work or the work doesn’t go well, they suffer. The writer–the artist, whatever the art–uses the art to express emotion and when they are denied that expression they feel tension and conflict.

Always have your production goals in mind: “The only certainty about writing and trying to be a writer is that it has to be done, not dreamed of or planned and never written, or talked about…but simply written” (Janet Frame). Saul Bellow said, “For the artist work is the main thing and always comes first.” Psychologist Howard Gardner writes about high-excelling creative people. He says, “Individuals whose stock in trade is to do things which are novel, are people who’ve got to have a pretty good command of how they work.” Psychologist Abraham Maslow said, “The fact that people who create are good workers tends to be lost.” The inventor, whether artist or thinker, creates the structure of his psychic life by means of his work…It is only as the work is done that the meaning of the creative effort can appear and that the development of the artist…is attained” (Brewster Ghiselin.)

In Art & Fear, authors David Bayles and Ted Orland write about what happens in a ceramics class that I’ve found also happens in a class of writers. You could take two imaginary groups of writers in a class—those on the left side of the room would be graded solely on the quantity of the work they produced. Those on the right side would be graded only on the work’s quality. On the final day of the class the teacher would measure the amount of work of the quantity group—500 pages an A, 350 pages a B, and so forth. Those the teacher graded on quality would have to produce only one story, but it would have to be perfect to justify an A.

A curious thing would happen. The quantity group would also produce the highest quality work. The quantity group would churn out streams of work and learn from their many mistakes and develop a wide variety of skills. But the quality group would get caught in the elusive concept of perfection and grandiose dreams and would become paralyzed. Some writers produce 10, 15, or 25 times more writing than others and those most productive usually rise higher, do better work, and find a greater sense of accomplishment.

Experienced writers almost always structure their work time and environment carefully. A perfect work place and good production routines and rituals are to be treasured. Simply by being there, ready to work repetitively the same time day after day, the power of good habits goes into effect. Some writer’s production habits will strike you as strange. The poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) splashed ink on her clothes to give her a feeling of freedom when she wrote. Hard-boiled detective writer Raymond Chandler could only write when he was drunk, and poet A.E. Housman rarely wrote unless he was sick. Voltaire wrote love poems in bed using his mistress’ back as a desk. I’m sure you have your own peccadillos too, and if we ever meet you can tell me about them. I’ll tell you about mine.

Writers’ production ebbs and flows. Some periods the words come out of you in torrents. You’re in overdrive–700 words a day, a thousand, 1,500, and every word is perfect. Other days they wouldn’t come out were you to use blasting powder. Some writers—most—find it easy to be distracted. Beth Henley, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright at 28, said, “I love to work, although sometimes I spend whole days doing nothing more than picking the lint off the carpet and talking to my mother on the phone.” Joyce Carol Oates says she squanders as much as 90% of her time writing letters—e-mails—to authors, her writer friends. “The problem is that they write back, and so do I. And suddenly the morning has vanished irretrievably.”

There isn’t one universal work/production program that suits all writers. A production program won’t work if it’s imposed on you. Your program will have to be custom-designed by yourself for yourself. To find the ways and means to improve your production should be a major aim.

If as a writer you’re productive, you’re happy. If you’re not, you’re unhappy. Ernest Hemingway, as hard a working and production-minded writer as there’s ever been, said that for him, “Work could cure almost anything.” But many writers aren’t successful because they haven’t figured out the best work/production program that equips them to:

Focus on the work for desired periods of time
Abandon what isn’t working, putting aside futile problems that will lead to dead-ends
Free themselves from distractions and time-wasters
Persist in the midst of obstacles and setbacks
Maintain their energy
Achieve a desirable level of output

Serious Writers Are Craftsmen

The sciences and anything involving a machine are mysteries to me. I have no aptitude for them. Once I got hold of an old used paperback on how to become handy around the house and did some wiring and put in a light switch in the children’s bedroom without burning the house down. My children watched me and marveled. I swelled with pride. I felt I’d really accomplished something. I’d say to guests, “come upstairs for a second” and show them the light switch and brag, “I put that in.” A very unusual accomplishment for me. But writing I understand and am good at. I’m confident about it. It’s my best craft.

Writers are talented people who have open to them many routes that could enable them to express themselves. But they focus on writing. Everyone has one dominant ability, and writing may well be yours. Ernest Hemingway could have been a professional big-game hunter or deep-sea fisherman—he was that versatile. He said, “I like to do and can do many things better than I can write, but when I don’t write I feel like shit.” William Faulkner could have made it as a painter.

The craft you choose to try to excel in has to be appropriate and can’t be simply wishful thinking. A moment comes—an experience occurs—and you become aware that writing, not something else, is the direction that suits you best and will lead to a fulfillment you might not reach if you follow another route to another craft—the craft of the engineer, the attorney, the athlete, etc., for example.

Your aptitudes, personality, abilities, capabilities, temperaments, tastes, strengths, weaknesses, and interests are matched up first of all with a writing career and then with the kind of writing you wish to do. Will you specialize in fiction or non-fiction, drama, or poetry, novels or short stories, comedies or tragedies, or will you be a jack of all trades and write more than one? What you choose becomes the craft that’s your own.

Awakening to the realization that the writing craft is appropriate to you and you to it can strike at any time in a person’s life. Harriet Doerr finished her degree at 67 and won the National Book Award at 73. Englishman Thomas Chatterton was a mature poet by the age of sixteen. Poets, like mathematicians, mature very young. Dylan Thomas was at his most talented at nineteen.

A serious writer’s identity, production, and craftsmanship are three pillars of a structure of writing excellence.

For my interview from the international teleconference with Ben Dean about Fighting to Win, click the following link:

Order Fighting to Win: Samurai Techniques for Your Work and Life eBook by David J. Rogers

Click on book image to order from Amazon.com

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fighting-to-win-samurai-techniques-for-your-work-and-life-david-rogers/1119303640?ean=2940149174379

Order Waging Business Warfare: Lessons From the Military Masters in Achieving Competitive Superiority

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Filed under Advice, The Writer's Path, Writers, Writers' Characteristics

Tagged as craftsmanship, identity, production

February 8, 2024 · 5:08 pm

New and Revised Poems by David J. Rogers

DELIA POEMS

She and I (In the Manner of Catullus 84-54 B.C.)

If ever there was a young woman who is self-sufficient and
Requires nothing beyond herself
And has a heart that like stone will never break
It is Delia. While she likes me and I like her and we are content together,
It is apparent that she doesn’t need me any more than I need her.
She calls her other affairs “flings” and when they
End they end. They are brief, none intense.
She says she feels more deeply about me than she is
Capable of feeling about anyone else, yet
For her and for me love is as elusive as a bumble bee.

The Difficulty of Recalling a Past Romance`

Why when we gave ourselves to them
So passionately, tenderly, proudly
And for that period with them
Thought only of them and they committed
Themselves to us can we not now recall
Through memory’s thick gray mist what
They were like?

An Affair Begins and Ends

Unfathomable,
Troubled,
Delia entered
My life so
Suddenly
And I hers
Neither was prepared.
Three unexpected
Years together
Seemed a moment
Yet ended
Abruptly
With her flowing tears.

Goodbye

But that last night I was firm and told Delia
That I must be leaving forever
In a few minutes.
She was surprised and did not
Understand what had happened
Between Friday and Monday
That from now on the woman
On my mind would be someone else,
And that shortly I would be gone entirely
From her life.

Meeting Diana

I saw her across the college cafeteria
And put down my book and went to meet her.
Her name, my name.
Black hair. Green eyes.
Elegant. Exquisite. Young.
The most beautiful woman on earth.

GOING HOME AND OTHER POEMS

Going Home

I will go back where I grew up and visit
The people I miss the most–
My sister Sharon, my parents,
A few friends, all gone now.
I will arrive in the evening as the sun
Begins to set at the end of the street
Above the church where my father sang.
I will smell three hundred six o’clock dinners and
Watch the night hawks circle our chimney,
Neighbors coming home from work,
Children putting their bikes away.
I will watch my younger self run a race
To the corner and back.
Then I will sit on the stairs listening
To crickets in the hedge chirping
Their praise of summer nights.

Awaiting the Arrival of Dawn

I relish waking early
And feeling that tingle in my waking body,
The chilly air lying so comfortably on my skin,
The enchantment that only a five in the
Morning holds for me.
I feel the growing anticipation
Of a remarkable day waiting ahead, of a
Remarkable life thronging with possibilities.
The knowledge doesn’t frighten me that
We are all marionettes dangling
Between the vast and sacred past and the vast
And sacred future.
I delight in darkness and know that a bond
Intertwines me with everyone who exists
Or ever has or will; and know too that some
Yet unknown purpose to my life beckons fondly
And that one day I will discover it.
So I dream of splendid things through
The seasons as they measure out my life.
I welcome the luminous skies and the
Magnificence of morning–
And I will all my life
While awaiting the arrival of dawn.

The Printers

The one skill they all shared
Was that they were masters
Of the big presses–
Rough good-hearted men
Who lived like vagabonds
Leading solitary lives in Chicago
Boarding houses with broken
Chairs and tables and nine or ten
Paperbacks with crimped pages.
The soft-spoken one named Aaron
Had made and lost fortunes
In investments many times
And currently was penniless.
He worked in monogrammed
Pink, blue, or gray shirts with stiff collars
And French cuffs and
Never spilled a drop of ink on them.

A President’s Death

Poor Professor Johnson,
I pitied him–his deep feelings.
A dignified man, a scholar,
Teacher of eighteenth
Century British poetry,
Couldn’t speak but to
Say go home, there would
Be no class today.
On the subway someone
Had a portable radio.
No passenger speaking,
Everyone listening in shock,
The tinny, crackling
Radio voice telling us over
And over as though we
Wouldn’t believe him, that
The President I felt I knew
Though he was rich and I
A student struggling with
Illness and poverty,
Had been shot. Professor
Johnson went home and read
Alexander Pope’s masterful
Couplets through tears.

Her Yellow Bathing Suit

With rapturous eyes and golden tan
She was the loveliest girl
In the neighborhood.
She had freckles, was Irish,
Had an Irish name–McGuire.

She liked me. At her door
She took my hand.
As we walked to the beach–
Her hand so soft–
We sang of happy things.

Her hair was parted
And drawn back with
Thin red ribbons
Except when she swam and let her
Long hair free to float as it wished.

I can’t forget her face
Which made everyone stare as she approached and
Still after she had passed, and that
Rendered plain every other girl who,
Jubilant, dove headlong into the frothing waves.

When she turned her head
She did so gracefully, like a
Bashful doe hiding in a thicket. That day
She was wearing a
Gold necklace with tiny links.

Everything she did; everything she said,
Her every feature, enchants my memory,
Particularly the yellow, yellow,
Yellow of her yellow bathing suit,
The only yellow on the crowded beach.

A Writer’s Epiphany: The Object in the White Light

Working so hard on abstract
Problems–being so sick of them that
My brain ached. Troubled, anxious,
Confused, sleepless, I went out for a walk
Hoping that the cool late night air
Might be therapeutic and might clear
My thinking so that I could decide
Calmly if such a life would provide happiness
Or if I should choose a style of life
More conducive to peace of mind.
The dim streets empty, restful, a light rain,
The whistle of a distant train,
The bell on a boat ringing,
A woman on the boat singing.
Near the beds of flowers, on the pavement–showered
In the white light of a street lamp–a single object:
A book.
Perhaps this book I had found, which a scholar may have lost
Or angrily thrown to the ground,
Had been purposefully intended for me
By the ineffable wisdom of the stars, by good fortune,
As a sign, a portent, a clue, a key.
And that what this epiphany of the book
In the pure white light in the rain
And the shrill whistle of the far-off train
Meant was that I could not escape my pre-
Ordained destiny that suited the architecture of my genes,
The juncture of talents, gifts, desires, qualities–
Not striving to become any of the thousand entities
Others are suited to be, but that are alien to me,
Becoming thereafter one thing alone:
A being gluttonous of words, a fish content and
Self-possessed, free of anguish,
Swimming in seas of language.

The Fathers in My Youth

After dinner, when the weather was good, the fathers–
Some in gaudy suspenders, to a man seeking peace–
Went alone outside in the yard to smoke.
They stood stationary and solitary in the middle of the yard,
Gazing up at the dazzling field of glinting stars,
Being reminded of their own inadequacy, their own insignificance,
Feeling in themselves the overwhelming rapture and wonderment
Of being alive on this earth on this night.

Long Day

I’m still at work though it’s getting late.
I’m using an orange as a paper weight.

The Memory of Pain After a Long Illness

There is no memory
Like that of pain–
Impossible to share
And futile to compare.
There is no memory
Comparable to that of pain.

SIX MONTHS RIDING FREIGHT TRAINS ACROSS AMERICA WITH A FRIEND

Overview

We zigzagged back and forth across the country.
We heard the cries of hawks echoing through canyons and watched
Eagles circling like feathery kites above the great, austere
Shapes of mountain peaks. And always in the background
We heard the unceasing clackety-clack of the swaying trains.
We prowled train yards and for many hours
We sat on box cars, our legs dangling,
Gleaming railroad tracks under us.
And we felt deeply the fearful stillness of big cities
In darkness–their gloomy late nights. We saw
Women selling stuffed armadillos, a beautiful woman
Eating apricots at a picnic table, and evening after evening
Saw the sunlight fade.

A Place to Sleep

We slept on box cars and flat cars,
On benches in parks and playgrounds,
And in laundromats and on motel lawns,
The gaudy, intermittently-flashing lights of the vacancy
Signs keeping us awake. We slept without bedding
On creaking bed springs that cut your back torturously
Like knives in foul-smelling small-town two-bit jails that
Put us up for the night and fed us along with the prisoners.

Crossing a River in a Boxcar on a Rainy Night

A downpour had struck up suddenly and surprisingly
As our freight train was pulling in. Waves of cold rain rushed
In one side of the boxcar and out the other sheet after
Sheet. Flashes of lightning illuminated the entire sky
And cracked like gun shots in a shooting gallery.

Then the rain stopped just as
Suddenly, the lightning ceased, and the wind died. The
Sky had already cleared then and was tinged with a mellow
Violet at its edges. A wind, warm and refreshing in the cool
Night had come up from the south. We had
Crossed the Mighty Mississippi on a
Shaking railroad bridge that early September night.

Thoughts of Home

Often toward evening under skies appearing low enough to touch,
I thought of Chicago: the beaches, Sheridan Road, night falling, city
Lights starting to glitter, the people I loved.

A BOY’S ADOLESCENCE

Grocery Store Clerk/Delivery Boy

How I loved being twelve and
Out on a grocery delivery to an old
Neighborhood widow on streets whose every bump,
Hill, and crack my wagon was friends with–
No one with me to boss me, no problems to concern me,
And there feeling I was in a garden
Delighting in the air, golden
Sunlight, and glorious shades and shapes of
That tiny patch of the earth that fortune
Had so generously allocated to me for my pleasure,
And sounds beyond number that sang in my young ears.

Lyric for Angela

Her spirit enfolds and singes me
As with hot tongs.
She smiles with
Such sweetness, gentleness,
And goodness she breaks my heart.
Her hair, her voice, her hands, her
Presence bring
A quality into my life
Which I know to be love.
My youth is purer,
My memories more
Lasting because of her.

For my interview from the international teleconference with Ben Dean about Fighting to Win, click the following link:

Order Fighting to Win: Samurai Techniques for Your Work and Life eBook by David J. Rogers

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Filed under Personal Stories, Poetry

Tagged as Catullus, lyric poetry, personal stories

December 13, 2023 · 1:48 pm

Why Are So Many Talented Writers Unsuccessful?

I’m assuming that you have a writing talent, and that you may even have been the most talented in your class, in your school, and now are the most talented in your writers’ group, most talented in your home town. That’s something to be proud of. But talent alone isn’t enough to make you a highly successful writer in the competitive field of creative writing in which almost everyone is talented, everyone gifted, and everyone exceptional.

But there are qualities other than talent that will determine how successful, fulfilling, and happy your writing career will be in that competitive world of very talented people. That hard-to-define stuff called talent is just one of the many requirements of the writer who excels. If you are relying solely on the talent you were born with to bring you writing success and happiness you are making a mistake.

Poet John Berryman thought that talent was no more than 20% of a successful poet’s personality, and why shouldn’t the same may be true of novelists, dramatists, screen writers, and essayists? What I’m asking is, “What comprises the eighty percent of a writer’s personality that blended with natural talent brings about success?”

To that question there are innumerable possible answers. According to writers, teachers, critics, and researchers other factors that are important are:

Endurance/ Persistence

Novelist Kurt Vonnegut said that talent was extremely common, but what is rare is endurance, the willingness to endure the sometimes difficult and trying life of the writer. Many writers have come to the conclusion that sheer old-fashioned day-by-day doggedness is the key to writers’ success. In the book The Courage to Write, Ralph Keyes says, “Success as a writer is within the grasp of whoever can tell a story on paper that people want to hear and is willing to persevere, to put up with boredom, frustration, and anxiety. Determined writers will find ways to get published regardless of whether they are brilliant or have a degree from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.”

Whenever people say to me “I hate writing” I am shocked. Teachers tell me that most people hate writing. It is only a person who has a continuous intense interest in writing and in mastering the skills of writing who will persist in developing their abilities over a long period of time. Non-writers cannot be motivated or even forced to work at a writing task to the extent that a person with an intense interest does willingly. Writers—creative people generally—are often such astoundingly motivated people that less creative people have difficulty comprehending their zeal, their stamina, their capacity for sustained effort. Few people who ever lived–whatever their art, whatever their field–were as motivated as Shakespeare, Dickens, or Faulkner.

Passion, Intensity, Obsessiveness, Willpower, and Patience

Among the personal qualities that cause motivation strong enough to sustain a writer through the inevitable trials, disappointments, setbacks, and self-doubts are those that are not luxuries but necessities for any writer who is in any way serious about writing: passion, intensity, obsessiveness, willpower, and patience. Gertrude Stein said that all of a writer’s work comes out of a passion as a powerful force, and added that if you really have that passion you aren’t able to recognize it because you don’t know what it is to feel any differently. Many people with obsessive compulsiveness–including writers I’ve known–are especially productive not despite that affliction but because of it.

Hard Work, Commitment, and the Hunger for Success

Writing teachers are generally in agreement that it’s not the best, most talented students whose names they see in print in later years, but the hardest workers and the hungriest for success. The students with the most talent but the weakest work ethic who dazzled the class disappear into oblivion, while the hard workers often go on to great achievements. Many prodigiously gifted but poorly motivated people do not end up where gifted people belong: in the upper echelons of their field. Without pursuing all your goals with clear-mindedness, confidence, and commitment over years, you’ll probably quit after repeated failure.

Every writer, as every artist and every actor, who experiences minimal success eventually asks “Should I quit?” or lowers their ambitions. Writers who have achieved a high level of excellence and success are not satisfied to reach merely an acceptable level of performance, but are motivated to pursue increasingly higher goals.

Example of Pursing Increasingly Higher Creative Goals: Frank Loesser

In the field of music Frank Loesser began by being contracted to write individual songs for movies. To hear what they sounded like he made up makeshift lyrics. His wife told him that his makeshift words were better than the lyrics of the lyricists he turned his music over to, so he then started writing words as well as the music. Then he became more ambitious and turned to writing all the music in movies and then, more ambitious still, turned to writing the stories and the librettos (the words and music) in plays like Guys and Dolls and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Similarly, novels are often written by men and women who started their careers as short story writers where they learned the fundamentals of their craft.

Self-Confidence and The Need to do Your Best

Those who are sure of themselves intensify their efforts when they don’t reach their goal. Studies of high-performers in all the arts show that they are all universally alike: over and over again they are people who believe in trying to excel, in doing one’s best, in working very hard and spending time constructively. They are intensely attracted to their field from their first exposure to it and all through their efforts to develop their skills and their “reach.” In fact, if you have an intense interest in a creative field, that in itself is almost always a sign that you have a natural talent in it.

The Effect of Passing Comments

Talent can be ignited at any time. The cause of motivation to write a 300 page book or continue on the writer’s life path may be nothing more than a passing comment. Simply being told by someone else or telling yourself that you can achieve much more through trying harder will get most people to try harder. Just being told that they are talented is often enough to start people off to develop that talent.

An Analogy

Talent in writing will not bring success unless it is supplemented by other human qualities. Without endurance, determination, intensity, passion for writing, obsessiveness, will power, hard work, commitment, hunger for success, and self-confidence a writer would be analogous to an automobile–beautiful, streamlined, expertly designed–but lacking an engine.

For my interview from the international teleconference with Ben Dean about Fighting to Win, click the following link:

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Filed under Confidence, Developing Talent, Human Potential and Achievement, High Achievement, Intensity, Persistence, Success, Willpower, Writers, Writers' Characteristics

Tagged as Frank Loesser, Gertrude Stein, John Berryman, Kurt Vonnegut, passing comments, Ralph Keyes

November 9, 2023 · 1:07 pm

Why Your Life as a Writer Creates Conflicts

Writing is a time-consuming process of self-discovery, self-awareness, and self-expression that may satisfy a writer’s deepest needs. Some writers find that nothing can compete with, nothing can replace, the writer’s joy of creating. Many writers so saturate themselves with their work that it becomes a need as strong as sleep, sometimes stronger. Many writers think, “This writing that I am doing is essential to my fulfillment and well-being. At times I may be so involved I will forget to eat. I will forget to make love. I will block out distractions. I will arrange a life-style and personal habits and routines to accommodate my writing.”

But writers have other roles too. And this fact creates conflicts. Psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung thought that the artist’s life cannot be otherwise than full of conflicts because two forces are at war in them—on the one hand the normal human longing for happiness, satisfaction, and security, and on the other hand “a ruthless passion for creation which may go so far as to override every personal desire.” That passion for creation absorbs almost all the artist’s energy: “A special ability means a heavy expenditure of energy in a particular direction with a consequent drain from some other side of life.” The artist’s work “means more to him than his personal fate, whether he is aware of it or not. Being essentially the instrument for his work, he is subordinate to it.” (Carl Gustav Jung, “Psychology and Literature’ in Brewster Ghiselin, ed. The Creative Process).

In Silences, Tillie Olsen points out that delaying a focus on writing for a long time during a period in your life may become a habit: “The habits of a lifetime when everything else had to come before writing are not easily broken, even when circumstances now often make it possible for writing to be first; habits of years—response to others, distractibility, responsibility of daily matters—stay with you, mark you, become you” (Tillie Olsen, Silences, p. 38). If you desire to be a serious writer, these habits of letting other things come first create conflicts.

Some writers do consider writing the most important role in their life and give other roles short shrift. Many writers would agree with Katherine Anne Porter who said that the “thing” between her and writing was the strongest bond she had ever had—stronger than any bond she had ever had with any person or activity. A survey showed that writers and poets are considered highly desirable occupations for a mate. But many are so consumed by writing, and work such long hours in such solitude, that they may make poor spouses. Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow—married five times–said, “I have always put the requirements of what I was writing first—before jobs, before children, before any material or practical interest, and if I discover that anything interferes with what I’m doing, I chuck it. Perhaps this is foolish, but it has been the case with me.” (Saul Bellow in Conversations with Saul Bellow, p. 20)

Others consider writing enjoyable, but not nearly their most important role. Being an actively involved parent–a time-consuming function–can take precedence. Some writers think during the day about when they’ll have all the time to write whenever they want, but because they have other roles to fulfill, they consider themselves lucky if they can write at all. Married women writers especially testify to the difficulty of finding the time and support needed to have a successful writing career while also possibly holding another job and managing a family.

Here it seems appropriate to talk about my Law of Give Up to Get. The Law of Give Up to Get means simply that to get something important in life, you must give up something else. Gripe all you want, rail at the gods, and wish it weren’t so, but you have no choice. In the long run, perhaps you can have everything you desire. But at any one time, to get A you’ll have to give up B. To get X you must give up Y, and maybe you might have to give up Z too. To write, you have no choice but to give up something else—maybe more than one thing. That’s a law, the way life works: to achieve this, you’ll have to give up that—time, energy and other resources spent doing other things, attaining other satisfactions.

Your Roles in Addition to Writing

Now I want you to identify four other roles you have in addition to your role as a writer. Also think about how important each role is to you and your major responsibilities in that role. Rank them in a hierarchy from the most important to the least important. (Include the role of a writer which may be number 1, number 5, or somewhere in between).

Where does your writing role fit on your hierarchy?

Now, answer the question: “What will I do to fulfill my role as a writer to the degree I want while also fulfilling the demands of other roles that I value highly?”

Are there any roles in your life that can be supported with a smaller investment of time, energy, and other resources so that you can devote more time to writing? Are there any roles currently in your life you might dispense with?

You may have found that the life of a serious, hard-working writer is a difficult life. Yet in the midst of difficulties, writers from the Greeks and Romans to the present would agree with Henry Miller that writing is worth pursuing because, despite difficulties and disappointments, setbacks and trials, and the competition among your roles, writing is “a delectable thing.”

For my interview from the international teleconference with Ben Dean about Fighting to Win, click the following link:

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Filed under Advice, Creativity Self-Improvement, Developing Talent, Human Potential and Achievement, Goals and Purposes, Habits, Law of Give Up to Get, Writers, Writers' Life

Tagged as Carl Gustav Jung, Henry Miller, Katherine Anne Porter, Saul Bellow, Tillie Olsen, Writing

September 27, 2023 · 3:06 pm

Bring Your Memoir to Life: The Writer’s Skill of Evoking People and Places from the Past

A Talent That Is Remarkable

Exceptional writers have exceptional memories. Their talent to evoke in exact detail written images of the places, people, and events they recall is remarkable. Their writing is vivid and immensely readable. It conveys the sense of ”What I am telling you really happened” that you and all other memoirists would like their work to convey.

Most good writers find their richest material in their past. Writer after writer reports that. I believe it was John Updike who said he had all the material he would ever need by the age of twelve. No one knows why there is such a strong connection between breadth, depth, and accuracy of memory and writing skill.

Every memoirist, (as well as every writer of fiction and personal essays and every poet and playwright) should strive to make that attainable talent to evoke the past a part of their repertoire of skills. They can then call on that talent every day as they compose, and it will bring their writing vividly to life.

Exemplar: Aunt Sarah’s Living Room in 1948 as I Remember It

Aunt Sarah’s 1948 living room was wonderfully cluttered. On a gorgeous filigreed silver tray– catching your eye first–was a herd of delicate colored glass figurines of unicorns, deer, bears, tigers and leopards–red, pink, orange, green, and blue that stood in mute silence on glass shelves in a five-foot tall unbalanced glass case that rattled when anyone came too close–and a collection of miniature porcelain tea cups and saucers that seemed so delicate that a careless breath would dislodge them and send them crashing to smithereens at your feet. There were thick beige and red throw-pillows soft as balls of cotton scattered on the enormous plush sofa and on the neighboring recliner that through years of use had acquired the shape of Aunt Sarah’s body, and two large upholstered straight-back chairs. The faint path visible in the carpet leading in from the front hall was beginning to wear more noticeably this year.

There was a paisley ottoman and a footrest that you could trip over if you weren’t careful–or even if you were–and a glass coffee table that it was advisable to guard your shins from. In a corner lived a noisy parakeet that spent its every waking hour pecking at the door of its cage–to no avail.

There were not enough living room chairs to go around when the full family came over, but there were the dining room chairs to carry in and also for an overflow crowd there were gray metal fold-up chairs stenciled on the back in white “Property of Ebenezer Baptist Church.” Aunt Sarah stored them in the hall closet hidden behind her prized full-length fur coat, and was embarrassed for strangers to see them, for fear they believe the impossible, but conceivable–that she had pilfered the chairs from that house of God.

Lamps were everywhere. Aunt Sarah was a believer in bright lighting because in her words, “You have only one pair of eyes and they must be preserved.” There were gold floor lamps with shades still in their clear plastic wrappings, large, heavy, orange table lamps, and a miniature blue and white Little Bo Peep lamp on a tiny wooden platform that gathered dust on the wall over the upright piano, a piano around which a family sings together being a virtual necessity in a Welsh home.

A plastic fern decorated, as well as it could, the mahogany credenza next to the long, low radiator that from morning to night during the brutal Midwest winters and on chilly spring nights clanged, clanged again, and sputtered steam. The walls were papered in a design of vivid red and alluring pink roses with curved green stems.

On a kitchen wall, above the old serviceable stove, was fastened an Elgin clock that ran fast, forcing everyone to subtract twenty-two minutes a day if they wished for some reason to be accurate, and in the corner of the living room, close to the large drafty window fronting Austin Avenue, was an impressive century- old grandfather clock whose big bronze pendulum, to the entire family’s collective memory, had never moved.

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The Poetry of Riding Freight Trains Across America by David J. Rogers

Anyone who knew what we were planning said, “You’re crazy.” They said, “You’ll come face to face with evil in the form of men whose death would improve the world, men out there who are too evil to live in society. They live by rules you have no knowledge of. They will slit your throats for your shoes.”

After we graduated from high school my good friend Nick and I–age seventeen–decided to do something we had never done before nor had known anyone who had. We would ride freight trains across America for half a year before we started college. People told us that we shouldn’t. We were just boys.

We spent six months hitchhiking and “ridin the rails,” a life that is alien to the more secure lives of stock brokers, school teachers, social workers, demographers, meteorologists, and the like that I thought was worth writing about so there would be a record of that unique way of life.

Running Along the Tracks

How free I feel though far from my home
Along railroad tracks on a hot June day
With a knapsack bouncing on my back,
The chink, chink, chink, chink
Of crushed stones and coal cinders
Under the soles of my scuffed boots as I sprint,
Laughing with my buddy.

Setting Out

Nothing in this world will burden me.
Fields of crops out to the horizon.
Breathing in winds that rejuvenate like milk.
Waving to hikers come out from the city. We aim
To jump off this train a thousand miles away.

A Savory Dinner

Sitting cross-legged, face to face like diplomats or friends,
Backpacks for tables, water from canteens,
We dine on ham on bread with caraway seeds.

Full Throttle

We were really moving now, the hot wind raging in through the two open doors, but outside the box car not a leaf was moving. Birds sailed this way and that in the gossamer sky, grasshoppers chirped and leaped along the tracks, and butterflies, their wings outspread and fluttering, darted among the bushes. One of the butterflies flew into the car, explored a bit, found that our company wasn’t to its liking, then flew back out while in the background a scarecrow was out in a field together with a cluster of flitting blue jays and surrounded by mist. Then the ground rose to overlook a meadow resplendent with white wild flowers.

Hobos in a Clearing

We reach the crest of a hill at dusk.
Below us, like the camps of infantry,
Burn the scattered fires of forgotten men,
Each a separate picture.
They live in the open or in
The opulence of tarpaper lean-tos against a tree,
And migrate as punctually as geese.
They wear black–perhaps it is the soot of freight trains–
And squat on their haunches like crickets
Beside the snapping flames.
Streams of smoke trail off high into the trees
And embers flicker and fade, flicker and fade
In the harsh bite and sparkle of the wind,
And glow bronze on the men’s untroubled faces
Late into the night.

Knife Fight

Overcast this morning.
When we were looking for a box car to board
We saw dead beetles floating on a puddle.
And then we saw three men lying against a log.

When we were close to the men the big one
On the right asked if we had any money.
I said no. He asked if I was sure and I said I was.
I saw that the one in the middle had a newspaper

Wrapped around his arm.
The newspaper was drenched with blood.
The man’s skin was gray, his limp eyes were
Sunken into his head, and he looked weak.

The man on the left said,
Do you want to see something?’”
And reached over and took off the newspaper.
The man’s bloody arm had a deep, three-inch wide

Gash from the crook of his arm down to his wrist.
I went closer and could see the inside of his
Arm very clearly–red, blue, purple, gristly, and white.
His eyes were dull and without luster.

Blood trickled out of his wound and dripped in the dirt.
The man on the right said,
“He was in a knife fight and the guy cut him up.
It’s pretty bad, huh?”

“It’s very bad,” I said. “You have to get him to a doctor.”
“Think so?” the man on the left said.
“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” the man on the right said.
On either side of the track were a fresh-smelling

Forest of oaks and pines and a broad stream
Running through it. We hadn’t seen buildings
For two hours on the train and there was nothing there.
“Go up front and tell the engineer that

You’ve got a dying man here and you’ve got
To get him to a doctor right away.” I said.
The dying man said, “Don’t bother,”
And closed his eyes.

Later, on the train Nick said,
“I guess he’s going to die.”
“Yes, he’ll die all right,” I said.
“He’ll bleed to death right there.”

His eyes would blur over with death
And his breath seep out,
And his associates would gaze on
With wonder as strange as dreams.

Girl for Sale

In a train yard one morning
A man approached with a girl
My younger sister’s age
Wearing a yellow sun dress,
Frail, her limbs just bones.
“You can have her for twenty dollars.”
“What?”
“You can buy this girl for twenty dollars.”
No sale, he continued down the track,
The shy girl following dutifully.

Milk

The train hadn’t stopped
For a long time, and our canteens
Were empty.
We’d never been as thirsty.

I fell asleep in the heat and dreamed
That I opened the refrigerator
At home and saw every shelf loaded
With bottles of milk.

Then in a second dream
I saw waterfalls of milk spraying
And roaring down like Victoria Falls–
Streams of milk, rivers of milk–

An ocean of cold milk. Nick asked if I was
Awake and I said I was.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked.
“Milk.”

“Milk?”
“Milk.”

Ice Cold Nights in Box Cars

On cold nights we paced back and forth,
From end to end, side to side,
Stamped our feet, pressed ourselves against the walls,
Rubbed the circulation into our hands, and
Flapped our arms against our bodies for warmth.

In the Company of the Most Beautiful Girl

We stopped for coffee one night in a little café up in North Platte, Nebraska. Outside it was cold and gray. We went inside, out of the rain, and sat at the counter and waited. In a few minutes we saw the kitchen door swing open and a waitress about our age came out. She poured our coffee carefully, biting her lower lip, her finger on the top of the pot, not looking at us, and our eyes large, we watched her closely. She had long, lovely-shaded hair that flowed like oil and tossed from side to side. She smiled so gently, so exquisitely, that I was numb. It was my opinion that she was the most beautiful girl we would ever see in our lives and Nick agreed. We stayed as long as we could just to look at her and be around her. When we paid up and left at closing time we said goodbye to her, regretting we would never see her again, and she blushed and smiled at us in a friendly way, her eyes very bright. We were warmed by the sincerity with which she said, “Good luck, boys.” The thought of her made us happy for a long time.

What You See and Hear Along a Siding On a Rainy Night

In the distant moon’s quiet light
Shadows of elegant birches
Are silk patches lying lightly
On the surface of puddles.
The chatter of fidgety locusts in the grass
Is gossip of talkative neighbors.

Arrayed along this siding are cars stenciled
Santa Fe, Illinois Central, Southern Pacific,
Northern Pacific, Union Pacific, Central Pacific,
The Soo Line, and B&O.

In a warm and refreshing wind
Whispering up from the south
You can hear
The booming midnight clash of freight cars coupling and uncoupling,
The heavy huff of released steam from brakes,
The languid breathing of engines cooling
As though they are falling asleep,
The muted voices of gaunt men stepping out of darkness,
Carrying oil cans with long necks, and swinging
With ease and grace, yellow-glowing lanterns,
Setting signals, and calling to each other in a garbled language
That we have no hope of understanding.
I may be wrong, but I think this is Montana.

Shot at, Chased By Dogs

When our freight train reached Kelso-Longview
The railroad police were waiting,
Holding the leash of a German shepherd
In one hand, waving a gun in the other.
Shouting and running, we youngest, running fastest,
Hobos leaped or fell from the cars and dashed
In every direction, chased by the cops.
As Nick and I ran we laughed at how out
Of our element we were and how ludicrous
The whole scene must appear–a hundred
Running hobos and bulls, men firing revolvers,
Other men praying not to be shot,
Ferocious dogs snapping at our heels.

Cherry Pickers

Cold, we stand at a curb in darkness at four in the morning
With a group of half-drunk, miserably poor, but good-hearted
Homeless men–day laborers–the Yakima sun too fierce
To work past noon. The boss hits Nick and me on the shoulder
With a rolled magazine. We look strong. We will work today, and
Everyone who works will be paid twenty-five cents a pail.

We are hauled out to the orchards under a tarp in a truck
Past rows of ramshackle abandoned houses with no
Windows and open front doors hanging from their hinges.
Everyone is in a good mood. Comrades now, we joke that the
Driver doesn’t know where the hell he’s going:
“Hey, he’s taking us to Walla-Walla.”
(A chorus of laughter shakes the truck.)

Working in a thick silence as though mute,
Clans of indefatigable
Migrant workers from Texas–
Old men, old women, young men, young
Women, children sweep the orchards clean
Like locusts with nimble fingers.

Love in a Parking Lot

Old cars with dented fenders and gaudy garters dangling on their rear-view mirrors, and pick-up trucks with rifle racks cradling shotguns and carbines were parked four deep in the lot. When the door of the Inn swung open, muscle-bound men, their shirt sleeves rolled up above the bicep, sauntered out, their arms tight around the waists of conspicuously made-up women, their heads thrown back in exaltation and abandon, and the chime of laughter spilled into the night like flowing wine.

On a Flat Car of a Freight Train Crossing the Great Salt Lake Desert Late at Night

Cold settles savagely on the
Great Salt Lake desert late at night.
When we reached it after a long, lazy day,
The massive red sun pulsating in the sky
Like a throbbing heart,
The temperature fell precipitously.
There would be a frost.
Then in the great, black,
Brooding mass of night,
The wind of the fast-moving train
Became a wall of icy air coming straight at us,
Death seeking to lay hold of us,
The frost to murder us, growing colder.
Colder, we in shirt sleeves.

You wanted to scream; you wanted
Someone to end this pain, to come
To your aid, to save you, to be merciful.
You prayed the train would fly off the
Track so it would have to stop
The merciless cold wind.
You wished to beg some power to
Lift you off this little island of misery
Where you knew without doubt you
Might die before the sun rose.

I had it in my mind that were
We to sleep we would never
Wake again, like mountain climbers
Dying on glaciers, so I shouted-
-La, la, la, tra-la, la, la–that
I thought would keep us awake.

I thought: “If I am about to die,
If am about to die,
If I am about to die
Why must it be as my life is beginning?
Why couldn’t death wait twenty
Or thirty years? What’s the hurry?
What is to be gained by killing a boy?”

Craning my neck I looked up
And saw the high twinkling stars.
I thought then that as long as I lived
I would never forget how beautiful they had been.

My thoughts flew like sparrows,
Repeating, “Tomorrow will be better,
Tomorrow will be warm, tomorrow
I will be out of it, and I will never have to
Come back to this place again.” And all the while
The sky was sublime: the orange glow of sunset,
The blue glow of evening; the white glow of the moon.

Eight Stalking Wolves

I point my finger and call to my friend:
“There, there up on the slope above us,
There, to the left, in those trees.”
Eight stalking wolves coming down
The mountain slowly, like liquid
Through a drizzle of large, wet snowflakes
In single file. A fawn has strayed from the herd.

.As the herd moves en masse, the wolves
Streak to the fawn through evergreens
And blue spruces, the wind blowing their tails,
Circling, wheeling, teasing, and tormenting the fawn,
Burrowing their snouts playfully in the snow.
Barks and cries echo through the canyons.
We shout and wildly wave our arms.

They stop. Every sound, every muscle,
Every movement ceases, their ears perk.
But they know that we are not hunters.
They have no fear of us. Their yellow eyes glisten.
As we leave the mountain the contours and the dim colors
Of the slopes, the sky, and the trees become beautiful.
So placid, so sublime, the radiance of the moon.

The Flanks of Tall Mountains

The flanks of tall mountains are abundant with gray shale
Slipping from higher elevations and lying like the rubble
Of fallen pillars of ancient kingdoms and battlefield dead.
On windy days and nights the air hisses in lofty evergreens
Slanting off mountains, furtive sounds everywhere.
Always vast distances lie wherever we look.
The lumpy hills of Sun Valley, with red-brown and
Black shadows spread like blankets, rise and gently dip.

Occasionally in the pall of night, here and there,
As though to frighten us, appears an unexplained light
Through the darkness, mysterious and indifferent.

For my interview from the international teleconference with Ben Dean about Fighting to Win, click the following link:

Order Fighting to Win: Samurai Techniques for Your Work and Life eBook by David J. Rogers

Click on book image to order from Amazon.com

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fighting-to-win-samurai-techniques-for-your-work-and-life-david-rogers/1119303640?ean=2940149174379

Order Waging Business Warfare: Lessons From the Military Masters in Achieving Competitive Superiority

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Filed under Poetry, Travel

Tagged as freight trains, Hitchhiking, Hobos, stories from youth

July 6, 2023 · 1:59 pm

Good Writers Who Were Discovered by Agents and Publishers

Writers, are you having trouble getting published? I sympathize. Yet, be ready! In a month, week, or day or a few hours, or minutes, you may come in contact with that one editor, one agent you must have confidence exists here, there, somewhere, who will discover you, recognizing your potential, your craft, your genius the way young Faber & Faber editor Charles Monteith recognized novelist William Golding’s immense promise when no one else in the world did.

William Golding

Monteith was charming, witty, and sophisticated, qualities Golding did not possess. Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies was Monteith’s first editorial project; his first taste of an editor’s role. Some editors–very capable in other areas–are surprisingly poor at judging the work of beginning writers, but that was not the case with Monteith.

The manuscript Golding submitted was worn, torn, and stained when Monteith first saw it. It had obviously been rejected by other publishers. Even Monteith agreed that this work of a public school teacher was over-written, disorganized, repetitive–a mess–and seemed never to get started. After many rejections Golding was losing hope of having the book published, of ever being published.

But Monteith saw “something” in the book, and in Golding –the work of a unique talent–and fought for it at editorial conferences, almost coming to blows with a senior editor who was known to have impeccable taste in picking properties that would succeed. Monteith prevailed, staking his young reputation on the book. Lord of the Flies was published, caught on, and was published in many languages. Many Golding/Monteith novels followed. Monteith and Golding were editor and author friends the rest of their lives. William Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1983.

What might have happened had Golding’s beaten-up manuscript not caught the eye of the best possible editor for him? One day you may be fortunate: a Monteith may be excited by your work and discover you.

The Need to Be Discovered

The logical conclusion of the process of serious writing is to see the work published. Before writers get published they have to be discovered, to be recognized as a person with a talent that can generate revenue. When a writer is discovered by an agent or publisher, their life changes for the better. This post is about writers who were discovered, then published, and found success–perhaps more success than they expected. There are so many writers with all the talent in the world who are trying very hard to be discovered by an agent or publisher who is trying as hard to discover them. There is a good chance that many writers we read would never have been published had they not been discovered by the right agent and a right publisher.

Harold Kushner

A friend of mine was the late Rabbi Harold Kushner. He too was discovered by an editor with insight and moxie. Harold personally hand-carried his manuscript to publisher after publisher in New York and Boston. Every publisher rejected When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Editors said the book couldn’t possibly succeed. For one thing it was “too Jewish.”

Finally a small publisher picked it up. However, this editor who discovered the book, was different. He was enthusiastic and said to Harold, “Your book is going to be a best seller.” Finally what Harold had been hoping for: someone had faith in the book and its spiritual message. It became a phenomenal best -seller, the most popular book in the world, selling twenty -five million copies.

Thomas Wolfe

Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins discovered biographical novelist Thomas Wolfe. Wolfe was the most talented writer of his generation. His monumental goal was to convey in his writing every experience he had ever had. His vocabulary and expressiveness with language was so stunningly extraordinary that it didn’t take a genius to recognize that Wolfe was one. Wolfe wasted ten years trying to be a playwright until his married lover, patron, and muse Aline Bernstein told him, “You were not meant to be a dramatist. You should be writing novels.” The popularity of his first novel Look Homeward Angel marked him as a major talent, so much so that when fellow American Sinclair Lewis was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in November, 1930 Lewis praised Wolfe as the writer to be reckoned with in the future.

Maxwell Perkins was the greatest American editor. Editor of giants Wolfe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway at the same time, he tutored and guided Wolfe who never had a concept of “a publishable book.” Thousands of hand-written words poured out of high-energy Wolfe in a frenzy all night long. In the morning a woman picked the pages off the floor of his New York apartment, where Wolfe had thrown them, and typed them up. Perkins taught and tutored Wolfe literally daily. Each man considered their meeting and their relationship the most important event in their lives. Perkins gave Wolfe assignments such as “You have to cut this episode by six thousand words,” and “Cut the book by 200, 000 words. I’ll help you.”

Jack London

Persistent and confident in spite of failures, Jack London submitted his manuscripts hundreds of times to publishers that rejected the work before an editor discovered him. But after that, within a single year London, a self-educated writer, took the literary world by storm and was the most popular, most critically and financially successful novelist/short story writer in the world.

Talented People Looking For a Break

I traveled extensively in North America and Europe during my career as author/public speaker and often after a work day and dinner would have a drink in the hotel lounge and enjoy the entertainment. Invariably I would think, “All these incredibly talented performers I see–artists who are looking for a big break and are dying to be discovered.” Much like them, so many writers with so much talent also are trying very hard to be discovered. Without the people who discovered William Golding, Thomas Wolfe, Harold Kushner, or Jack London, would we have ever heard of those famous authors?

For my interview from the international teleconference with Ben Dean about Fighting to Win, click the following link:

Order Fighting to Win: Samurai Techniques for Your Work and Life eBook by David J. Rogers

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http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fighting-to-win-samurai-techniques-for-your-work-and-life-david-rogers/1119303640?ean=2940149174379

Order Waging Business Warfare: Lessons From the Military Masters in Achieving Competitive Superiority

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Filed under Adversity, Charles Monteith, Confidence, Developing Talent, Human Potential and Achievement, Editor, Goals and Purposes, Harold Kushner, Jack London, Maxwell Perkins, Publishing, Thomas Wolfe, William Golding, Writers

Tagged as artists and writers, goals, talent

May 10, 2023 · 2:22 pm

Why Writers and Artists Are So Intense

I wanted to know why artists and writers are so self-absorbed.

Then I wanted to know why writers, painters, and other artists bloom late.

In popular posts I addressed those questions. Now I want to know why so many writers and artists are intense and have intense personalities.

Waking, Wanting To Get Going

I was excited waking up at 3:00 A.M. yesterday, and I was not thinking of going back to sleep. I wanted to finish some poems where I had left off the night before. I thought, “Let my wife–a calmer, less excitable person–sleep; I love to work and I have work to do.”

Then I started thinking that it was likely that other creative people I know–good friends in the arts–at that very moment also were waking early and were anxious to get to work on their project, that we are similar–we resemble each other in regard to the emotions we bring to bear as we live and work–that we are all creative and we are all intense and excitable. Certain qualities endear creative people to me. One is their intensity.

It seemed to me then that intensity and excitability were a pattern, a hard and fast characteristic of myself and my artful friends, and come to think of it, of many of the famous writers and artists and other creative people I have been reading about, studying, admiring, and writing about all my life. Their intensity made them different.

The Feeling of Intensity

What does intensity feel like?

Intense writers and artists do everything intensely–experiencing, feeling, thinking, and imagining. They are significantly different human beings from other writers and artists (and agents and family members and co-workers) who are not intense. They feel their emotions strongly. They soar high with elevated emotions, and they plunge into dark moods, at times their moods changing so fast as to be bewildering. In contrast, people who are not intense the way so many writers and artists are feel their emotions more mildly and without such major fluctuations between the high moods and the low moods. Differences in intensity between people who work closely together or live together may cause conflicts.

Some writers and artists feel that they are being flooded by waves of joy, that their every cell is being excited. Some writers and artists–perhaps you, certainly I–revise their work tirelessly, at times almost maniacally, ten times, twenty times, thirty times, until they are satisfied the work is the best they can do. Only then can they stop themselves.

The intensity of writers’ and artists’ personality is a powerful element of their creativity. The wonderful poet John Keats thought that intensity–not intelligence or any other quality — in and of itself is the most powerful creative element of all.

Intensity and the Arts

Intensity is a quality found in many creative people that facilitates artistic pursuits. Abbe Dimnet said that the creator’s intensity will be reflected in the quality of the work: “The experience of most artists is that the quality of their production is in keeping with the intensity of their wish.” Henry James wrote: “It is art that makes life, makes intensity, makes importance.” Horace said, “Painters and poets alike have always had license to dare anything.” It is their intensity that gives them strength. Keats said, “The excellency of every art is its intensity “ A problem every writer and artist faces is maintaining in every phase of their story or painting the intensity that keeps it going and energizes the creator’s every gesture and the work’s every detail. They must be able to generate and sustain intensity as they work.

Emotional Intensity and Over-Excitability of Many People in the Arts

“Emotional intensity” of the kind I am describing is a quality that Polish psychologist, psychiatrist, physician, and poet Kazimierz Dabrowski found when he studied intellectually or artistically gifted people. The degree of a person’s emotional intensity is a stable characteristic. Some people are intense; some are not. Just as self-absorbed artists and writers can’t help being self-absorbed any more than they can help having the color eyes they do, intense artists and writers can’t help being intense.

Dabrowski recognized that, as I thought, creative people experience an intensification of experience much beyond what other people experience. Dabrowski considered the intensity of their emotions, their sensitivity and emotional extremes–their “over-excitabilities”–to be part and parcel of their makeup. Every aspect of their personality is intense.

They are “spirited,” and are also more sensitive, perceptive, energetic, and persistent than other people. They possess what I have called “inner” skills such as persistence, confidence, and courage that not everyone has but that lead directly to success in the arts. Dabrowski identified five “overexcitabilites” exhibited by more people in the artistically gifted population than in the general population.

The Five Dimensions of Intense Writers’ and Artists’ Lives

Sensual

Sensualists, intense writers and artists seek an enhanced sensory and aesthetic pleasure in seeing, smelling, tasting, touching, hearing, and sex. They delight in beautiful objects and in sounds of words, and in form, color, and balance. Negatively, they may overeat and be sexually over-indulgent.

Psychomotor

Intense people have a surplus of energy, are competitive, enjoy intense physical activity such as fast games and sports, often are compulsive talkers–they may jabber–and act impulsively. They may have nervous habits. They may bite their nails or have nervous twitches.

Intellectual

They enjoy intensified activity of their mind in their curiosity, concentration, and in their capacity for sustained intellectual effort, avid reading, asking probing questions, and making keen observations. They can vividly recall what they see with their eyes (that fundamental necessity for writers and artists) and may be detailed planners. They are tenacious problem-solvers. They search for truth and understanding. They think about thinking and love theory and analysis. They are logical and independent thinkers.

Imaginational

In speaking and writing, intense writers and artists often use images and metaphors, are given to poetic and dramatic perceptions, and are skilled at inventing. Some can make up fantasy worlds of their own and imaginary companions and are attracted to magic and fairy tales. Under emotional tension their imagery can mix truth and fiction. They may have elaborate dreams and illusions. They cannot tolerate boredom. They may lack self-judgment and be overly-critical.

Emotional

The feelings and emotions of over-excitable writers and artists are intensified. They are given to extremes of emotions, complex feelings and a large range of emotions and have an awareness of the feelings of others. They have heights and depths of emotions that others lack. At times their mood soars. And it also may plunge. Their moods change quickly.

They may have strong physical expressions of over-excitability such as tense stomach, sinking heart, pounding heart, sweaty palms. Intense writers and artists experience euphoria, enthusiasm, and ecstasy, but also shyness, timidity, and obsessiveness.

But Dabrowski found that inner forces were at work in them also, forces that generated overstimulation, conflicts, and pain, and often set them out in a search for a way out. One way out may lead to inner growth and transformation, another may lead to results such as addiction.

Examples of Famous Intense Writers and Artists

Who could be more intense than poet Walt Whitman who expressed a wish to have “one hour of madness and joy,” “to feed the remainder of life with one hour of fullness and freedom,” “To have the feeling today or any day I am sufficient as I am.” Who more intense than novelists Charles Dickens with his phenomenal storehouse of drive that enabled him to work on a multiplicity of books, speeches, plays, travels, and social projects at the same time without ever tiring?

Or Thomas Wolfe whose monumental goal was nothing less than to describe in the millions of published words that poured out of him uncontrollably, as from a spigot, every experience he had ever had? And Gustave Flaubert, a pioneer of a modern writing style, who agonized rewriting his novels and stories to perfection? Or intense painter Vincent van Gogh who produced a masterpiece a day, or Claude Monet, who for his artistic experiments could paint thirty or forty canvasses of exactly the same scene.

There are drawbacks to a writer or artist being over-excitable and intense. But the advantages of being a writer or artist who is intense and has the powerful energies, the drive, and many other qualities that facilitate success in the arts far outweigh the negatives. The creative’s intensity is reflected in the quality of the work they produce–more intensity, better quality work.

If writers and artists are asked to identify the important characteristics they would l really like to have that would positively affect their career, they will be wise to identify intensity.

An intense writer or artist trying to create a vision they perhaps alone perceive is fortunate.

For my interview from the international teleconference with Ben Dean about Fighting to Win, click the following link:

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Filed under Artists, Charles Dickens, Claude Monet, concentration, Dabrowski, Developing Talent, Human Potential and Achievement, energy, Excellence in the Arts, Imagery in the Arts, Inner Skills, Intensity, Moods, Over-Excitabilities, talent, Walt Whitman, Writers, Writers' Characteristics

Tagged as Creativity, over-excitability

March 29, 2023 · 2:54 pm

Embrace Your Destiny as a Writer

If you are to be a writer who will be recognized, you must have faith that you have been created to be a writer, that writing is a destiny toward which your life has been aimed. Virginia Wolf and Toni Morison felt that way, and James Joyce, Dylan Thomas, and Ernest Hemingway. Many writers we haven’t heard of yet, but will, also feel that way. The faith that you are fated to be a writer is a writer’s first requirement. You must believe that it is when you are writing that you’re doing what you were brought into the world to do.

That sense of being fated stirs writers to action: now they must go out to embrace with their whole being their writer’s destiny, to accept it, to resolve to be it, to realize their writer’s vocation, and not flee from it the way many people flee from the heights they could have reached.

As a gift to you–a person with a literary talent–nature has singled you out. You have been specially endowed with not only “creative stuff” that is the source of achievement in all the arts and is possessed by only a minority of people, but with personal qualities that equip you specifically to fulfill the writer’s demanding role–energy, high intelligence, curiosity, a love of your language, a dictionary in your head of favorite words, the playfulness of a child, doggedness, discipline, daring, intuition, intensity, deep emotions, imagination, self-assurance, a warrior’s courage, the stamina of athletes, maturity, refined taste and wise judgment.

History shows that writers who will amount to anything also all have an attitude of “seriousness” about their work and their lives: “This is my only life; I am not playing games. I try to write every day. I strive to get better and better still and will do that all my life.”

It is the identity of a writer that gives you the confidence that you are a person with a definite life task—to write, to spend your life writing, to create poems, stories, novels, dramas, screen plays, essays–whatever form of literature you desire that comes out of you assembled in your own words, fashioned from the disappointments and glories of your own life, different as your life and your writing are from the life and writing of all other writers who are alive now or have ever lived.

Writing–the physical acts of writing, the movement of your muscles to write, your eyes to focus, the shifting of your weight in the chair–is so essential to writers that if they are prevented from writing for any reason, they will be tense and conflicted until circumstances change and once again they are able to write freely, confidently, and without holding back. And then, as though touched by a healer with extraordinary powers, they will be well again.

As a writer you must be true to your awesome potential–must be in fact what you are potentially. If you are not doing enough with your gifts, your conscience lets you know. The conscience of a writer asks, “Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? Have I become what I should have become? If I have not become what I should have become, what will I do now?” Your writer’s conscience is the voice that calls you to be the person you are fully prepared to be, the uniquely talented writer you have been created to be.

For my interview from the international teleconference with Ben Dean about Fighting to Win, click the following link:

Order Fighting to Win: Samurai Techniques for Your Work and Life eBook by David J. Rogers

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http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fighting-to-win-samurai-techniques-for-your-work-and-life-david-rogers/1119303640?ean=2940149174379

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Filed under Developing Talent, Human Potential and Achievement, High Achievement, Success, talent, The Writer's Path, Writer's Destiny, Writers' Characteristics, Writers' Life

Tagged as destiny, fate, Writing

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Reflections of My Life in Poetry by David J. Rogers

What Are Serious Writers Like? What Do They Do?

New and Revised Poems by David J. Rogers

Why Are So Many Talented Writers Unsuccessful?

Why Your Life as a Writer Creates Conflicts

Bring Your Memoir to Life: The Writer’s Skill of Evoking People and Places from the Past

The Poetry of Riding Freight Trains Across America by David J. Rogers

Good Writers Who Were Discovered by Agents and Publishers

Why Writers and Artists Are So Intense

Embrace Your Destiny as a Writer

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