Everyday Canvas

Surreal or Not-- Mary Oliver II

Prompt: Surrealism means writer, author combines unrelated images or events in a strange dreamlike way. Have you ever had this experience?

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Always...

Although I don’t necessarily enjoy surrealism in any art.

Sometimes I take liberties with what I write, even if it is a serious piece, even after editing it. Such are my blogs, but then, what are blogs for if I don’t jump all over the place? The trick is, to do this in such a fluent way that the reader won’t be on to me immediately. I am not always successful, but yeah, I can be surreal. I am even more surreal with things I write for me, things I don’t post. As long as I can keep the stuff real enough.

Dreams are surreal, too. Still it is not a good idea to tell a character’s dream in a story or write stories with too many dreams in them. Henry James said, “Tell a dream, lose a reader”; and some editors and publishers take his idea to heart.

What I go by is this: No matter how random or sounding pretty or shocking a writing is, even its random details need to connect to the main idea in some way.

The above prompt says, “Surrealism means writer, author combines unrelated images or events in a strange dreamlike way.” Even so, there has to be some linkage during the combining process. Maybe that linking factor is a social commentary or a specific theme, like Vonnegut sometimes did. A totally scrambled writing is exactly what it is: scrambled, which doesn’t lead to any appreciation by the reader.

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Mary Oliver- continued

Continuing with Mary Oliver from yesterday’s entry. Here are a few of her quotes that relate to writing and poetry:

“I decided very early that I wanted to write. But I didn't think of it as a career. I didn't even think of it as a profession... It was the most exciting thing, the most powerful thing, the most wonderful thing to do with my life.”

“To find a new word that is accurate and different, you have to be alert for it.”

“Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that.”

“Language is, in other words, not necessary, but voluntary. If it were necessary, it would have stayed simple; it would not agitate our hearts with ever-present loveliness and ever-cresting ambiguity; it would not dream, on its long white bones, of turning into song.”

“Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry. Yes indeed.”


And another poem:

Black Oaks

by Mary Oliver

Okay, not one can write a symphony, or a dictionary,

or even a letter to an old friend, full of remembrance
and comfort.

Not one can manage a single sound though the blue jays
carp and whistle all day in the branches, without
the push of the wind.

But to tell the truth after a while I'm pale with longing
for their thick bodies ruckled with lichen

and you can't keep me from the woods, from the tonnage

of their shoulders, and their shining green hair.

Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a
little sunshine, a little rain.

Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from
one boot to another -- why don't you get going?

For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.

And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists
of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money,

I don't even want to come in out of the rain.