Rereading

A few weeks ago, a new writing group participant asked a regular, “So basically, we just read her favorite poems and then write?” I hadn’t quite thought of it that way, but I guess it’s more or less true. It’s nice as hell being the poet in charge.

There are certain pieces of writing that make me fall more deeply in love with words, make me want to write, remind me of what it is I came here to do. These are the pieces that I use again and again in my writing groups. The list is constantly growing, but there is some writing I can rely on to free voices silenced by difficult experiences.

When I was sixteen and living in Bangladesh, my mother brought The God of Small things by Arundhati Roy from America, reading it on her 22 hour journey East. Then my grandmother had dibs, reading intently in her green arm chair in the living room, oblivious to the rest of us and the stifling heat and the sounds of Dhaka traffic. Occasionally she sighed aloud. When it was my turn, I read it quickly, staying up late into the night on my great-grandmother’s old hard bed. I was changed thoroughly by the language–the way I’d been changed by The House on Mango Street five years previously. This is the writing that stirred a desire to write inside me.

Last week I had a one-on-one writing session with a poet who was having a hard time unlocking words. I hadn’t met this poet before, so I brought several books of poetry with me so that I could find what I thought would work best. We ended up using a book of poetry that I discovered just a few months ago: Floating, Brilliant, Gone by Franny Choi. The exercise was to write down the title of a poem by Choi, read the poem and then free write for three minutes in response. One of the rules I set at the beginning of the session was that sharing would not be required on any of the poem responses.

Watch Franny Choi read her poem Notes on the Existence of Ghosts

Then set your timer and get writing. Do this with some of your favorite pieces as well, and if you’re so inclined, send me some titles so my list can continue to grow. When I think about the great volume of things there are to read that I haven’t read, it stresses me out a little. I can’t possibly discover it all since reading while driving is generally frowned upon (though for the record, I don’t know that it’s explicitly illegal).