Cool Wind
And I thought how lovely
It was to feel
Through an open window
A cool wind on a hot night
Such as this
And to see let in
Between the window shade
And the window sill
Leaves’ shadows dancing on
A midnight floor.
The Silence That Settles So Softly
Silence has settled as softly
As pollen on her hospital room
As visitors take their magazines
And as quietly as moths
Go out the door, leaving
Us to face this night alone.
“How fast life goes, Dave,” she says.
“It’s no longer than a mosquito’s life.
Why does it go so fast?”
A little room, a bed,
A pair of eyes; someone watching,
A young woman very ill.
Night has come, the day is gone.
Over the city shines a blue light.
Chrysanthemums stand in a vase.
She asks, “How do you explain life?
What does a person live for?”
It is probably happiness.
Yes, that was it all the time,
The happiness one feels. No one
Could say she hadn’t known exquisite happiness.
I feel such love toward her that could I,
I would die for her
And am so regretful that I cannot suffer
Her pain for her, and am powerless to help her,
And that she soon will be gone entirely from my life
And from this world.
But now, dear sister,
Close your brown eyes.
Phoebe Leads Quite a Life
My friend Phoebe the writer leads quite a life.
She tried to explain why in affairs she chooses men that are out of character.
She said: “I read in George Eliot’s biography a perfect description
Of myself not as I seem, or would want to be, but as I really am:”
She quoted Eliot:
A retiring woman of gentle disposition and orderly habits.
A very cautious woman who chooses courses of action she cannot rationally defend.’
Sounds Beyond Number
I’ve run down the front stairs and
Out into the neighborhood
On my seventh birthday.
No adults who love me restrain me.
I am as free as the wind.
About me: the air and sunlight; the clouds,
The church tower, Lake Michigan, the cityscape
That good fortune has allocated for my pleasure
During these years of my happy youth.
These languorous streets of mine,
Mapped indelibly in my mind, are shaded by
Cool poplars, sycamores, and elms this sunny October day.
Familiar cars pass, and in the hedges
Crickets whose voices I recall are out in noisy numbers.
Bob the panhandler is dozing in his favorite doorway.
His mouth is closed but his lips flutter.
Machinists, teachers, clerks, and mechanics
On their way to somewhere else pass me by without a word.
Odors of bubbling tar are in the street where men
Soaked wet with sweat and without shirts
Work diligently in the torrid noon sun.
The silver-painted wagon I am pulling rattles
Among other street sounds beyond my counting.
They ring in my receptive ears
Like the jingle- jangle of festive bells.
Mister Koehler
When I was a boy in Chicago
Every Sunday the tallest man in the world
Sat in the seat next to mine in church–8’2”
The disparity in our height was
An object of humor, but not to me.
He had difficulty walking because he was so tall
And his spine was weak.
He shuffled between two wood canes,
Bent over, frail, his arms quivering, his eyes cast down
So that he would not fall.
He drove a car. He was a salesman.
His car had no front seat,
Only a back seat where he sat,
His long arms reaching the steering wheel,
His long legs the pedals.
There is a replica of him
In a wax Museum in London.
He is cited in
The Guinness Book of World Records
As earth’s tallest person.
He was too tall to have a long life.
Woman Sitting at a Table
In a Restaurant on Broadway
In New York City
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 mystic eyes.
You who had I
Known long ago
I would have run
My finger over
So carefully
And cupped
In my hand
Like an orchid.
Young Woman in the Pontchartrain
Hotel, Detroit, Michigan
If I tell you that in the elevator
At three a.m. she stopped me and said,
“I’ve been looking for you all night”
You would have an idea of her lonely
Profession, but no idea what kind of
Woman she was, nor how pretty.
In the summer before the often cruel cold Chicago winter each year of my childhood there came in a truck the coal-shoveler who would appear in the alley to do his job. On the way to school I would walk past him carrying my books and would look at his tall pile of coal and wonder “How in the world will one man be able to shovel all that coal?” When I returned home the coal would be gone and the coal- shoveler–his work done– would be sleeping, waiting to be picked up, or he would be gone until reappearing when I would be a year older.
The Silent Coal -Shoveler
Behind the apartment building
Where I lived with my family and
Beside a mountain of coal
Toiled the always silent, always alone,
Never-speaking, never-grunting,
Never- complaining
Muscular black coal-shoveler.
From chilly dawn
To the end of afternoon
While I was at school
Or at the playground
From the alley
Behind my gate
Across from the church,
That cadenced scrape
Of his shovel
Between coal and pavement
Could be heard, and chunks of coal
Thumping, tumbling noisily
Like pieces of thunder
Down the wooden chute
Into the dark cellar.
Encounters in the Natural World
When I was a boy my father, brother, and I would leave the city and hike in the forests north of Chicago, where now, in a thriving suburb, I live with my wife. I remember our last hike:
In the underbrush along the path we followed were morning glories, wild flowers, lilies of the valley, azaleas, and asters. In the trees squirrels preened on their hind legs, then leaped from branch to branch. A chipmunk made its departure into the lush chipmunk world.
A small female white-tail deer waited for us to pass, a puzzled expression in her bulging eyes, and then bounded across the path. We were so close we could have touched. Then a full-grown, majestic male with more serious eyes appeared as though it had come up from the ground.
Grasshoppers still damp with morning dew dried themselves in the sunlight, and we took care to step around them. A yellow finch, its head bobbing, whistled sweetly, and insects squabbled in the air. The fragrance of warm, sweet clover was everywhere.
A wind rippled across the river in front of us and the gold leaves on the trees along its banks rattled. The sun bright, the trees cast long, thin shadows that in the wind swayed on the water like a company of dancers.
Jim, Jim, I’ve Remembered You Often
Jim, Jim, I’ve remembered you often,
My roommate in college, a tortured
Red-headed business major so caught
In the grip of a terrible addiction to
Alcohol that, when desperate, he
Drank anything, including:
Lighter fluid
Hair tonic
Motor oil and lubricants
Gasoline
I had been studying all night when I heard Jim
Staggering up the stairs after a night ending at dawn at County Line, the dump
Where he often wound up after hours. There nothing was prohibited.
He was trying so hard to appear sober crossing the bedroom floor,
But his hands were shaking. His legs were as stiff as brooms.
I watched him compassionately without speaking a word
As I would watch an injured cat or dog, hoping that he would
Be able to do what I could see he had in mind to impress me with–
Hoping that he would be able to hang neatly on a hanger
Without any help the blue jacket he was holding in his right hand.
But the hanger slipped tragically from his grip and
Clattered on the wooden floor.
Then I saw what I cannot erase
From memories of my college years or of Jim:
The expression on his face of shame.
A False Assumption
Some people fall into a trap. They assume
That because the woman or man they desire is beautiful
And seems to be their ideal that they also possess fine qualities
Such as intelligence, kindness, and decency,
But often soon find them lacking virtues without a trace.
The Death of Judy Wazorick
I remember Judy Wazorick fondly.
We were in grammar school together.
She had a blue eye and a brown eye,
And sat in the last seat of the last row.
She was shy, but when I looked at her
She always smiled at me.
Now I see she won’t be at the reunion,
And I am so sad because Judy Wazorick
Has passed away.
Wings
Two seasons each year–spring and fall–
Flocks of familiar geese flutter down
From the sky to dine on the grassy field outside my home,
Waddling, pecking, bickering like
Children or thieves–then a truce–
Only a misunderstanding:
All is forgiven, friend. Departing
They assemble for the flight
In perfect order, poised, silent; air quivering.
Then torrents of ascending wings–wings.
There Were
There were pleasant, guileless women I liked on sight,
And women with the look of dreamers that I knew were
Full of dangers, but couldn’t resist and didn’t try very hard to.
There were women with long, raven-black hair that flowed like oil,
And plain, sincere, friendly women, and women who smiled
So gently, so exquisitely, that I was numb.
There were women who acted as if they were personal friends of God,
And light-hearted women, and women whose mood never changed,
And women with deep voices and treacherous eyes.
There were young, ugly-duckling women who were just about to be beautiful,
And attached women who enjoyed being fallen women, as well as a
Playful, petite woman full of horse-sense and laughter.
They and others brightened my life and are a pleasure to remember.
© 2023 David J. Rogers
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Monet was the most renowned and most influential pioneer of Impressionism–the giant of Impressionism. Painting out of doors, Monet devoted his life to creating new ways of capturing light’s changeable qualities on canvas. A 12:00 p.m. sunlight is not the same as a 4:00 p.m. sunlight, or even a 12:05 sunlight or 12:10 sunlight. Early evening sunlight is similar to but, different from morning sunlight. The suns of one month are different from the suns of every other month. Such facts filled Monet’s thoughts.
Monet became obsessed with the sculptured shape of haystacks and with the dramatic contrasts of light and shade inherent in their form. The haystack paintings were a great success and led Monet to a more elaborate analysis of the effects of light on objects.
Monet gradually transformed his art from painting spontaneous approximations of the effects of light and atmosphere to an art of abstract surfaces existing for themselves. The focus of his art became the surface of pools and areas where the balance of water, light, air and the delicate substance of blossoms co-mingled, echoed each other, crossed on another’s boundaries, and blended together so that there was no difference between them. His last works were a series of large decorative panels in which the forms of nature are difficult to distinguish.
If the water lilies are thought of as real-life water lilies they become a great disorderly mass of arbitrary color. But if the water lilies are considered abstract arrangements of color applied in careful strokes they coalesce meaningfully.
Think of the last time you were discouraged. You were knocked off balance and became weakened and vulnerable. Possibly something you longed to happen did not happen, or something you dreaded happening did happen. Then you were discouraged. Courage is a thing of the heart. The word “courage” derives from couer,” the French for heart. To be “dis” couraged is to lose heart. You were never too young and will never be too old be to be discouraged. You don’t outgrow discouragement.
Action is the most effective antidote to discouragement To rid yourself of being discouraged strive to be a person of action. The happiest and most courageous people in the world have a preference for action. Rarely are they discouraged. They are too busy to be. In high spirits they persist through difficulties, overcoming setbacks, resisting gloomy moods, never losing hope. That is why they are so happy. The samurai of ancient Japan were the most action-obsessed men and women who ever lived.
peace. So I began to search for solace and wisdom.
I chose as the basis of the book the spiritual insights of samurai warriors of ancient Japan. It may seem that the psychology of people like that who lived four centuries ago in a foreign country would have little to say to you, yet if you are interested in ways to strengthen yourself spiritually, that is the place and era to look for information. Samurai had introduced the teachings of Zen into the Japanese culture. Zen was “the religion of the samurai.” Many samurai were poets.
Samurai were models of action-oriented people. The essential feature of the samurai “Way” (way of life) is action. (That a discipline is a Way is indicated by the suffix “do.” The samurai Way is “bushido). All samurai spiritual insights and training were designed for one reason: to equip the person (a samurai or you) to make up their mind quickly and firmly and to go into action 
Every day’s goal of healthy people is to be happy, to love and be loved, and not to be discouraged. But there are many impediments–opponents. In the arts among artists and writers I know so well, and in everyday work and personal life, like a samurai in battle, everyone encounters those opponents. Some are outer opponents–an outrageous person who’s hard to get along with (a harsh critic of your writing or painting, for example if you are in the arts), personal crises, setbacks, failures, Etc. People who steal from you.
All samurai training was designed to overcome those dragons so that in your everyday life you will progress smoothly from experience to experience, challenge to challenge, achievement to achievement, happiness to happiness.
Acquiring wisdom from the samurai Way suits people who wish to overcome discouragement and are able to make use of insights and techniques from any era or culture that will help them. What strikes me is the ease with which readers of the book adapt those insights from centuries ago to their current everyday living.
Writers and artists throughout history have feared and hated rejections of their work.
Each rejection compounds the effects of the previous rejections and can lead writers and artists from heights of blissful optimism to the total disappearance of confidence. Yet without 
respond when editors reject their work, and there it was, the questions “What is winning? Is winning the only thing that matters? Is getting published the only thing that matters? Is that the only credential that makes you a significant literary person?”
I remember once learning that a publishing house I was interested in submitting to typically received 5,000 unsolicited manuscripts a year. Less than seventy would be published. What about those thousands of disappointed writers? I’m sure they had worked very hard and had high hopes. But their hopes would be shattered. Are they to conceive of themselves as failures? Are they supposed to give up hope of ever being successful?
You are winning and not failing when you are persistent in spite of setbacks, are able to recover quickly, and are resilient.
You are winning and not failing when you are 
Those are the ways you are really winning even during those times when it feels like you are not.
Whether you find creative people in remote little mountain kingdoms accessible only by mule or in big, modern, cosmopolitan cities, you will discover that they are surprisingly alike. The many traits they share are not all favorable; some are obstacles. Yet those traits–the worst and the best together–prepare creative people for fascinating lives other people look at with admiration and envy.
May be “overlooked” as school children. Their talents unrecognized, they may have undistinguished elementary and high school careers, only to be recognized for their significant achievements later in life to the surprise of everyone.
Sadly, at times may be too emotionally ill to work, particularly poets and writers who may be victims of the high and inexplicable incidence of debilitating 
Have an insatiable need to 
“Know who they are.” Are marked by a clear, unambiguous sense of identity, as “I am an historical novelist specializing in women’s roles in England during the Victorian era.”
Can be playful, child-like, humorous, silly, fun to be with, and seem younger than their age.
Benefit from a rare a
For survival must become skilled at overcoming obstacles, of which there are many in the arts.
painter. The storm buffeting the windows and pelting them with hail and snow made impossible even the thought of digging cars out and driving home. But everyone was in a good mood, and the house was warm. We were happy being together again after being separated so long by COVID.
accomplished people in the arts have wondered what they have that makes their creative work possible. The main quality anyone must possess if they are trying to be successful in anything, not just the arts, but certainly the arts, I feel, is energy. 
“Painters, writers, actors, and dancers enter the world talented. From the beginning of their lives they can draw better than other children or write more interesting compositions, act out scenes more skillfully, dance more gracefully. Just look at the lovely paintings some little children can paint and the poems they can write. Some children are too young to have learned to paint, yet they paint wonderfully and have technique. No one has taught them. They can paint superbly before being taught. When they are being taught they absorb information so quickly, it’s astonishing. That’s the definition of talent.
“I think that 
The storm still didn’t look so good, so they stayed the night. In the morning Paul insisted on making breakfast. I made coffee. We vowed to get together again soon. Then in early afternoon a bright sun came out, the winds died, and they left for home where work and many challenges were waiting.
or accurate. They are not interesting. Because of an inadequate handling of places, a work that may be superb in every other respect is without convincingly-described locations, scenes, and settings. Descriptions of places are not window dressing that a writer need pay little attention to, but a feature of writing fiction, nonfiction, and drama that is indispensable. Poorly written descriptions of places detract from the quality of the written piece.
Award-winning short story specialist Eudora Welty did more than anyone else to point out how central to effective fiction place is. She said that the story’s place affects “all currents” of the work, all of its emotions, beliefs, and moral convictions that “charge out from the story” as the author unfolds it. She said the places should always be identified, and adds that they should be described in a particular way that requires significant writing skills.
Place has been particularly important to some noted authors. You cannot imagine the story’s characters without the place where the author has put them: Dublin to James Joyce, small town and rural Mississippi to Eudora Welty and William Faulkner, Paris, Spain, and Africa to Ernest Hemingway, Camden, Ohio to Sherwood Anderson, southern United States to Truman Capote, James Agee, Reynolds Price, Pat Conroy, and many other “Southern writers,“ the plains of Nebraska to Willa Cather, Chicago to Saul Bellow, the Mississippi River to Mark Twain, the English moors to Charlotte Bronte and sister Emily, eighteenth century London to Charles Dickens, Mexico and the state of Texas to Katherine Anne Porter, Los Angeles to mystery writer Raymond Chandler, and so on.
(My father was an air raid warden during World War II, and once he took me with him during an air raid practice when the lights of the city were turned off and the skies were filled with search lights) “My father and I turned and came up behind the church where a delivery truck was parked. We walked down the alley, keeping our eyes trained on the apartment buildings’ windows, past the empty lot overgrown with weeds and covered with tin cans and newspapers, and past the bent-in-half, arthritic and reclusive witch’s bleak house. Her ferociously unfriendly German shepherds were oddly quiet. We passed the drowsy homes and apartment buildings of neighbors, only some of whose names we knew. Behind the walls of those buildings were people not unlike us, simple people, all with the stories of their lives never to be written. All shades were drawn, and so the night was perfect, with no more reminders necessary.
and a full moon dangled in the sky. On the back porches in neat array, like miniature glass sentinels, stood the empty bottles left out for the milk man. Branches of trees laden with rain bent low over back fences like old women on canes. When the wind blew, the leaves showered the two of us with water, and we laughed. On the ground lay deep puddles that we had no choice but to step through, which was fine with me because I was wearing boots. My father’s shoes made squishing sounds and he said,” Another pair down the drain” and we laughed at that, and I splashed through, heavy-footed.”
swings. The night had taken on an indefinable splendor and given me a feeling of exquisite peace that I hadn’t felt since childhood. I saw a white yacht that was illuminated by deck lights out on the lake. Small waves rocked a rowboat that was not very far from me. With a whoosh, waves tumbled over themselves onto a beach. A bell chimed somewhere on the water. There was a splash and then another. The vivacious woman I was with took off her shirt and bra and swung them over her head like a lasso. She said, “Guess what I do for a living.” I said, “I’ll bet you four million dollars that you are an actress.”
Old cars with dented fenders and gaudy garters dangling on their rear-view mirrors and pick-up trucks with rifle racks cradling ominous shotguns and carbines were parked four deep in the lot. When the door of the Inn swung open, muscular men, their shirt sleeves rolled up above the bicep, sauntered out arrogantly, 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.”
Excellent writers should be able to describe places that they have experienced or have heard or read about and can clearly envision as they compose. They should be able to create vivid descriptions that enliven the text and appeal to the reader’s senses.
Highland Park is not a big place at all. It is an idyllic little Midwestern American city of about thirty thousand–clean and peaceful, and until the Fourth, safe. Clustered together at its center are a railroad station, City Hall, public library, and on the library lawn a long chromium sculpture no one understands. It is a community that values the arts: more writers live here than in any other community between Chicago to the south and Milwaukee to the north. Double screen writing Academy Award winner William Goldman was from Highland Park. Actor/movie director Orson Welles lived here in his adolescence and sat on his lawn reading Shakespeare; Frank Baum would take the train up from Oak Park to meet with his Oz books illustrator who lived here; the high school theatre program is renowned. Also, Michael Jordan lived here when he was leading the Chicago Bulls to championships. I’d see him at the Post Office waiting in line just like everyone else. There is no standing on ceremony in Highland Park.
have finished a painting that in your judgment is excellent in every respect. Like Ariel you are trained and educated in your craft and recognize your paintings’ consistently high quality and dazzling originality. You know you can’t do better. You feel that no one but you could have executed this project. It required blending many abilities not every painter possesses. You see in your painting, as Ariel saw in hers, something especially flamboyant and fetching. Your hopes for its artistic and financial success are high.
your book. She recognizes its significant sales potential. She calls you In Chicago from New York and says that your book is one of the two or three best books of any type she has ever read. She is entranced with the book and pledges to you to commit to “putting it over” whatever resources are necessary to make it the country’s top best seller (The book is topical and has that kind of potential.) You call your agent and ask him about the publisher reputation and he tells you that they are known for selecting one of their titles each year and making it the kind of best seller the publisher described.
resilient means first of all accepting such adversities and those you have experienced yourself as an unavoidable part of the writer’s and artist’s life. That insight deeply-felt and never forgotten is essential for maintaining a firm, unshakeable spirit.
period the body-builder rests, those muscles are rebuilt, but bigger and stronger than they had been. Don’t be so afraid of hardships, stresses, difficulties, and crises. They strengthen you emotionally, spiritually, and mentally.
working, as confident as van Gogh and became one of the most popular American writers of his era. Ernest Hemingway said that at the beginning of his career every day “the rejected manuscripts would come through the slot in the door…I’d sit at that old wooden table and read one of those cold slips that had been attached to a story I had loved and worked on very hard and believed in, and I couldn’t help crying.” But he had faith that eventually his work would be in demand and never stopped working. The crowning achievement was the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Vincent van Gogh spent a short, intense five-year career producing an astonishing three thousand masterpieces that are now auctioned for many millions of dollars, but in his lifetime sold only one painting, and that was for a few brushes and paints. But he continued working confidently and never doubted that in the future his talents would be recognized
In every era, in creative after creative, three empowering qualities like three ingredients of a potent formula have proven to help writers and artists not to give up when they fail. Those qualities are being resilient, being persistent, and having faith in yourself. Resilient, persistent writers and artists with strong faith in themselves never give up.
Faith in yourself touches every facet of your being–whether you think about your prospects positively or in a self-defeating way, how strongly you motivate yourself, your susceptibility to self-doubt and discouragement, and the positive changes you will be able to make in your life.
successful. Catherine Cox studied greatness and disagreed. She found that persistence is a key. Persistence is so important in almost every endeavor that it compensates for lesser intelligence. Cox concluded: “High but not the highest intelligence, combined with the greatest degree of persistence will achieve greater eminence than the highest degree of intelligence with somewhat less persistence. “
I think of the famous Michael Jordan “flu game” when he had to be carried off the floor after the game with the flu by a teammate, yet scored 38 points and led the Bulls to victory. “Probably the most difficult thing I have ever done,” said Jordan.
would prefer to be cheerful and happy, but as far as creative work is concerned, how you feel is secondary. What matters most are the requirements of the craft you have committed yourself to, and one requirement is day after day to put out effort to achieve your creative goals. It seems to me that one constant goal that is shared by most people in the arts is to develop your in-born talents to the fullest and that another requirement is to 
corresponded about. Nurturing depression in and out of psychiatric hospitals, some of them committed suicide including John Berryman and Randall Jarrell. Poets Sylvia Plath and Ann Sexton were friends and felt the same. They talked to each other often, and also committed suicide.
Whatever has been said about the relationship between creatives’ state of mind and their performance, writers and painters I know or have read or heard about have found writing or painting the most fulfilling and blissful thing they do.
had the same view of the function of writers and artists. Ruskin: “The whole function of the artist in the world is to be a seeing and feeling creature.”
Painter Edouard Manet thought the urge to create is a simple reflex that doesn’t require thought: “There is only one true thing: instantly paint what you see. When you’ve got it, you’ve got it. When you haven’t, you begin again.”
Creatives have complex memories from which their art derives: “The essential factor of development of expertise is the accumulation of increasingly complex patterns in memory” (Andreas Lehmann).
Since the earliest civilizations people have been theorizing about creatives among them and the creative process. The first question was: is creative ability a gift from the gods?
The best writing resists critical explanation: “In truly good writing no matter how many times you read it you do not know how it is done. That is because there is a mystery in all great writing and the mystery does not dissect out” (Ernest Hemingway).
davidjrogersftw 